Free Sail Away by Lisa Jackson Page A

the wall, and the porch sagged a bit at the northerly end. Dry leaves rustled as they blew against the door.
    “Needs a little work,” Adam remarked, eyeing the rustic old building as he set his bags on the creaky floorboards of the porch.
    “Nothing the Montgomery touch can’t fix.” She fit a key from her ring into the heavy lock chained across the double doors and twisted. The lock held firm for a second before springing open. Marnie let the chain fall to the porch and shoved open the doors.
    Inside, she swung the beam of her flashlight over the lobby. Yellowed pine paneling dominated the room. There was a massive rock fireplace and all around the room, scattered like leaves in the wind, were tables with upside-down chairs stacked atop them. Furniture, draped in sheets, had been shoved into one corner of the cavernous lobby.
    “You planned on staying here?” Adam asked, scanning the dusty interior with a grimace.
    “Just for a few days.” The beam of light dancing ahead of her, she walked to the wall behind the desk and found a bank of light switches. She flipped each switch in turn, but nothing happened. The room was still dark except for the pale lights from their flashlights.
    “You’re staying until…”
    “Until I figure out my next destination.”
    “Another Montgomery Inn?”
    She threw him a dubious smile over her shoulder. “No.”
    Adam rubbed the crick from his neck, and Marnie could feel his eyes following her. She couldn’t quite figure him out. Sometimes she felt as if there were a hidden side to him, as if he were, as her father claimed, evil. Victor had told her often enough in the past year that Adam Drake was a predator, always on the move, ready to stalk his next prey.
    She wasn’t anxious to believe her father’s opinion that Adam was such a lowlife. From her own dealings with him, she’d found Adam Drake to be honest and hardworking. He’d been tough, but Adam’s toughness, mixed with pure cunning, had worked many deals in her father’s favor. In those days Victor had praised Adam Drake for his ruthlessness, for his sense of knowing “when to make the kill.”
    So was he really a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Or a man who’d been turned into a scapegoat? Marnie wondered if she’d ever know the answer. Not that it mattered. Adam was an inconvenience for one night. Nothing more.
    “So this is Victor’s next project,” he mused, running the beam of his flashlight over the staircase and upper balcony. Cobwebs caught in the light, and dust swirled in the illumination.
    “One of many.” Spying a short hallway that separated the bar from the kitchen, Marnie headed toward the back of the lodge. She remembered seeing blueprints of this place in her father’s office and had listened with interest as Victor had expounded on the “renovation and rejuvenation” of the old lodge where he’d spent many happy summers as a boy.
    Following the bobbing trail of the flashlight, she walked briskly down the hallway and found the door she was looking for, a door, according to the aged drawings of Deception Lodge, where a narrow flight of steps led to the wine cellar. She pulled on the knob, but the door wouldn’t budge. “Great,” she muttered, setting her flashlight down and grabbing the old knob in both hands. The door wasn’t locked, she thought, just swollen in its frame. She tugged hard, throwing her weight backward. Finally the old wood gave and she nearly fell as the door popped open. The dank smell of water seeping through cement permeated the air, but she found what she was looking for: an electrical panel.
    Crossing her fingers, she threw the switch and immediately the old lodge was awash with light. “Bingo,” she whispered, before trying to find a thermostat for the furnace. Certainly there was one somewhere. She walked through the back halls until she discovered not one thermostat, but three, one for each floor of the old building. She flipped the switch, and heard a clang