Reckless Surrender Page 5

  Phoebe had actually forgotten Amber was by her side.

  They became aware that he had a white T-shirt fisted in his hand when Michael pulled it over his head to cover his wide chest and flat stomach. Phoebe ruthlessly stifled a disappointed groan.

  “Ladies.” Although he greeted them both with a nod, his eyes stayed glued on Phoebe.

  “Good morning, Commander,” said Amber.

  Phoebe just stared.

  Amber elbowed her in the side.

  “Good morning,” she softly uttered. There was a noticeable pause after her simple greeting. She watched his jaw harden and an unmistakable glint appear in his sharp eyes at her staunch refusal to call him Commander. There was something too charged in the term. Too sexual, as if she were submitting to him. Phoebe clenched her thighs at the tingling sensation caused by her wayward thoughts.

  “You ladies should not be out here alone. This area can be dangerous.”

  His voice was dark and low…commanding, like the schoolmaster he was. Once more the schoolgirl fantasy floated across her heated mind.

  “Thank you, Commander. We were just heading back to the campus,” responded Amber.

  “Good. I would hate to see either of you harmed.”

  Phoebe just stared.

  Amber once again elbowed her in the side.

  Phoebe could only nod, still transfixed. It annoyed her how his presence affected her. He was just so male!

  As Amber bent down to stuff her now-empty coffee cup in her backpack, Michael took a step toward Phoebe. Tilting her head back because of his superior height, she noticed how his dark blue eyes appeared almost black in the weak morning light. He reached out and stroked the edge of her mouth with the pad of his thumb. Her own lips parted as he raised the thumb to his mouth and licked.

  Michael then leaned in to whisper in her ear, “You taste sweet, babygirl.”

  Until that moment, Phoebe had not realized it was possible for a person’s heart to stop from a rush of desire. She felt as though she may never breathe again. She didn’t know if the endearment was a reference to her diminutive height or if it had a deeper, more sexually charged promise. Either way, it made her feel weak.

  Taking a step back before Amber noticed their interaction, he said, “You ladies have a pleasurable morning.” His eyes were once again only for Phoebe.

  They both watched as Michael turned and ran back along the path, into the forest.

  “I’d play headmaster and naughty schoolgirl with him any day,” quipped Amber.

  Phoebe’s cheeks heated as her new friend mentioned the precise fantasy she herself had been having about Michael…every damn night.

  “Come on. We’ll be late for our classes.” Phoebe grabbed her own backpack and they followed the shore to get back onto the walkway which would take them to campus.

  After walking in silence for a few minutes, Amber shivered and quickened her step. “We shouldn’t have taken this way.”

  “Why? Isn’t this the quicker path back to campus?”

  “Yeah, but this place gives me the creeps,” responded Amber as she motioned with her head to the right.

  There was a small clearing between the edge of the woods and the beginning of the shore. Despite the gorgeous golden and crimson hues of the trees about them, there was one which stood out in stark relief. Its gnarled and twisted branches were bare. The thick trunk of the tree was marred with black scorch marks. At its base was a massive rock. Its top was smooth and flat, and along the edges there were numerous strange carvings. It was impossible not to feel a sense of foreboding.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s called the witch’s tree but legend has it that it’s where they burned the Mad Monk.”

  A chill crept down Phoebe’s spine.

  “It’s also where they found those two poor women,” continued Amber.

  “They found them here?” asked Phoebe as she slipped her phone from her pocket. Turning her body slightly, she kept the phone low to her hip as she tried to secretly snap photos of the place and the carvings etched into the rock’s worn surface. If she wasn’t mistaken, several of the carvings resembled the symbol painted in blood on her door. The same symbol carved into the murder victims’ chests.

  “Yeah. It was awful. The whole campus is still shaken by it.”

  “Did you know them?”

  Amber shook her head no. Leaning in, she whispered, “I heard the evil bastard who did it carved a pentagram on their breasts and left them naked on top of the rock. What kind of sick bastard would do such a thing?”

  Before Phoebe could answer, they heard a soft mournful tune on the wind. If Amber hadn’t grabbed her by the arm and inched closer, Phoebe would have thought she’d imagined it. She listened intently. There, just above the sound of the crashing surf. A child’s voice. Singing. It sounded like Rock-a-Bye-Baby but the words were wrong. As they listened, a figure appeared. It was a female with a coarsely woven blanket draped about her shoulders. Her hair hung in wild, tangled waves about her shoulders.

  Wee little fingers, eyes are shut tight

  Now dead asleep - never again to see light

  Amber huffed in disgust and quickly dragged Phoebe away. As Phoebe struggled to keep up with the other woman’s marching steps, she cried out, “Hold up, Amber. Who was that?”

  “Fucking Loony Ludtz,” Amber snorted.

  “That was Mrs. Ludtz?” Phoebe was incredulous. The figure was some ways off but still, it didn’t resemble the extremely restrained, pinned up woman she was accustomed to seeing scowling about campus.

  “I don’t know if Mrs. applies any longer,” sneered Amber.

  As they quickened their steps back to the safety and relative sanity of campus, Amber regaled Phoebe with the story of Mrs. Ludtz’s recent failed marriage. Apparently after learning her husband had been cheating on her with a much younger woman a few months ago, she had become unhinged. For a month she wore only unrelenting black to mourn the death of her marriage. Then she disappeared into the woods for over a week claiming she needed to go back to nature to find herself. When she returned to school, Ludtz started to chastise and verbally abuse any of the female staff who wore makeup or high heels, which explained her instant dislike of Phoebe.

  “Her latest craziness is to claim her Indian heritage is demanding she cleanse the area after the murders.”

  Phoebe didn’t know what singing an old nursery rhyme had to do with the local Indian culture, but she kept that to herself.

  “Why does Michael… er… I mean the Lieutenant Colonel keep her on staff?”

  Amber shrugged her shoulders. “He’s new to the position and Ludtz knows this school like the back of her hand. She wasn’t anyone’s friend before this but people still feel sorry for her. Besides, I’d much rather he focused on Drake and Casey than Mrs. Ludtz’s marriage problems.”

  “Who are Drake and Casey?”

  “You mean no other teacher has warned you about those two midshipmen?”

  Phoebe shook her head, trying to picture her roster to remember if she had them in her class. “No, why?”

  “Rumor has it they were suspects in the murders before they announced it was that homeless man no one can find.”

  Phoebe was about to comment that she hadn’t seen their names mentioned in any of the articles she had read, but she didn’t want to clue Amber in on the fact that she was interested in or researching the murders.

  “No!” she exclaimed with appropriate shock and horror.

  Amber’s eyes were lit with gruesome excitement. “They both have an odd way about them, always getting written up for something or other, and they were caught trying to cut up a dead squirrel. You know what they say about people who kill and torture animals.” Amber nodded her head sagely.

  Phoebe made a mental note to look into both Drake and Casey. She remembered Henry’s theory of the crime, that some rich politician’s son was actually behind the murders and was being protected because of their parents’ influ
ence. She wondered if Drake or Casey had powerful parents. The only way to find out conclusively was to look in the student files. Unlike a regular school, Puller Academy would have extensive information on the parents’ backgrounds and professions. She might also learn more about the boys through their disciplinary records.

  The only problem was, the files were guarded over by Loony Ludtz, and her office was right outside of Michael’s.

  It was like some kind of macabre game, thought Phoebe with a wry smile.

  You are trapped in Buzzards Bay.

  Your goal is to get past the lunatic and fight the scary powerful king to learn the secret behind the mad monk murders.

  Be careful not to fall under the king’s seductive spell or you may lose your life!

  Good lord! Perhaps the monk wasn’t the only one who was mad around here.

  Chapter 6

  “What about the blood?”

  “It will be messy but I think it will be worth it in the end.”

  Standing outside her classroom door later that same morning, Phoebe listened to the conversation of the midshipmen inside, horrified. After leaving Amber, she had raced to change and make it to her first class. Thoughts of the witch’s tree and that ominous rock clouded her mind, competing with thoughts of murder and satanic symbols, and now this!

  “I want to hear it scream, like really scream.”

  Phoebe dropped her shoulder bag and turned to run down the hallway. She needed to find Michael. Now was not the time to wonder why her first thought was to run to Michael for help. At this very moment, all she could think about was running to him for help. He was big and strong and honorable and she wanted to feel his protective presence while they decided how to proceed.

  “Professor Pringle.”

  Stopping, she hazarded a look over her shoulder. “Yes?” she asked, her voice sounding weak and hesitant.

  “I see you overheard our plans. You might as well come in and hear all the gory details.”

  The midshipman picked up her shoulder bag and waited, expecting her to follow. Taking a deep breath, knowing she would never be able to outrun the midshipman, she had no choice but to enter the classroom. All the men turned as she walked in.

  “Professor Pringle, you are just in time. Do you have any good quotes from Shakespeare about murder or death?” asked Thomas.

  “Men, whatever it is you’re planning—”

  “I don’t think Shakespeare would be appropriate. It should be something from a Native American author,” offered Chris.

  “No. You both have it wrong. It has to be something from the Bible, that makes more sense,” piped up Joe.

  Several classmates called out their agreement to Joe’s idea.

  Phoebe couldn’t take it a moment longer. Without another thought to her own safety, she cried out, “You have to stop! Please! You can’t do this!”

  “But, Professor Pringle, it’s tradition,” complained Thomas.

  “Tradition! Murder is tradition?” What the hell had she gotten herself into?

  “Well, yeah,” said Chris. “Every twenty-fifth of October.”

  Raising her hands protectively in front of her, Phoebe took a step back. This was insane. This couldn’t be true. “You murder someone every twenty-fifth of October?”

  “Well, in effigy,” corrected Joe.

  “You are all mad. You need hel— Wait. What?”

  “We murder someone in effigy. The Mad Monk.”

  Forcing them all to close their eyes, Phoebe took a quick swig from the flask of whiskey she kept in her shoulder bag. It had been a gift from Henry. He said every true journalist should always have something strong on hand to help a source loosen their tongue when necessary. It also came in handy for other things… like thinking your entire class was involved in a heinous murder plot.

  After getting over her shock, Phoebe learned the details of the Mad Monk tradition.

  The Order of Saint John monks arrived in Buzzards Bay in the spring of 1665 to convert the Wampanoag, the local tribe of Algonquian Indians, to Christianity. In the fall of 1666, Brother Phineas and Brother Godfrey headed deep into the thick woods to seek out the winter camp of the tribe. Although misguided, they thought they were doing God’s work by converting the ‘savages.’

  They never arrived at the camp.

  Weeks later, Brother Phineas was found, naked and covered in blood, crouching over the partially consumed body of Brother Godfrey. Phineas’ emaciated appearance and wild ravings led the tribe’s shaman to declare he had become a wendigo, an evil spirit. Mythos among the Algonquian was that anyone who became lost in the woods and resorted to cannibalism forfeited all their humanity. They became violent creatures who brought death and decay with them along with an insatiable hunger for more human flesh. The only way to kill the evil spirit was to burn the wendigo alive and scatter its ashes to the four winds.

  Brother Phineas, or the human shell of the man he once was, was seized by the Wampanoag. After burning him alive, his charred body was placed on the large rock in front of the tree now called the witch’s tree, the bones pulverized into dust and scattered.

  It didn’t work.

  The monk’s evil spirit continued to roam the woods at night on the anniversary of his death, claiming victims.

  The legend of the Mad Monk was born.

  Eventually, even the colonists began to fear the annual return of the monk’s evil spirit. So every twenty-fifth of October they began to recreate the shaman’s ceremonial killing of the wendigo by burning an effigy of the Mad Monk. When the military took over the monastery in the early nineteen hundreds and converted it to the Puller Academy, the midshipmen kept up the local tradition.

  Dressing in black robes and carrying torches, they ran into the woods to chase each other around. The idea being they were scaring the evil spirit, corralling it toward the waiting effigy. Then at midnight, they would light the specially prepared bonfire, complete with a stuffed dummy perched on top to represent the Mad Monk.

  Apparently, it was quite the celebration on campus and the highlight of the fall term. Their Halloween, really.

  This year the midshipmen were planning on using a more realistic dummy with a cheap speaker placed in its chest so it sounded as if the dummy were screaming in pain.

  One of the midshipmen approached the blackboard where he drew a strange symbol. “We are going to paint this on the dummy. Isn’t it awesome?”

  Phoebe couldn’t believe her eyes. It was the symbol carved on both women’s chests. The one the police file said was a pentagram, a satanic symbol. She had always had her doubts but had not been able to find anything on the internet that more closely resembled the symbol. “What does it represent?”

  “It’s the Wampanoag’s symbol for a wendigo.”

  And the symbol left on her door a couple nights ago.

  Chapter 7

  Phoebe quickly sprinted across the damp and chilly quad, careful not to slip on the slick flagstone path. She needed to see those student files and then get to the library to research the wendigo symbol. Her time was running out. Soon someone was bound to learn she wasn’t actually a professor named Pringle. There was no use denying she was worried about one person in particular, one handsome, arrogant, sexy-as-fuck person.

  Speaking of Michael, some of the teachers had thrown an impromptu welcome lunch for her in one of the outlying buildings. She had overheard Amber complain she couldn’t get in to see the commander until the following morning because he was off-campus at a meeting all afternoon.

  It was an opportunity she didn’t want to pass up.

  These teachers were all so sweet and welcoming, Phoebe felt a twinge of guilt for lying to them, using them for information. It was strange; she hadn’t felt guilty when she took down the King of Chinatown or that time she spent working the front desk of the gym chain to expose their coercive contract practices.

  This just felt…different. She was actually enjoying being a teacher. She had forgotten how much fun
it was to share her love of literature with someone. The debates on hidden meaning and symbolism. Chatting about the world events that were taking place at the time of writing that may have impacted the manuscript. The challenge of coming up with material that would engage and excite the midshipmen.

  She was also learning all about the fascinating hierarchy and rigid class system of the school. The fourth class were actually what she would call freshmen. First class were the seniors. It was daunting to learn that many would graduate and launch straight into a military career. The men chatted animatedly about what it would take to be accepted into the naval flight training program or signing their ‘2 for 7s.’ This was apparently a commitment document the Navy or Marines had each man in his second class sign upon entering his third class, or junior year, committing to two more years of school and then five years of military service. When Phoebe thought back on what she was thinking about during her junior year in college, she grimaced. Let’s just say it didn’t come close to committing her life to protecting her country. There were even rumors buzzing about campus of making the academy co-ed. The men, as would be expected, were excited over the possible change.

  It also gave her a whole new respect for Michael. She had learned over the last few days that he was a celebrated graduate of the Puller Military Academy and apparently one of the youngest Lieutenant Colonels in the Marines. The midshipmen talked with reverence whenever they mentioned the Commander. She had heard about his hair-raising battles in Afghanistan and close calls during two tours in Iraq. The men he had saved. The villages he had helped. The difference he had made in the world. Here she thought she was doing her part taking down corrupt business owners, and in a small way she was, but that was nothing compared to what he had done.

  It also helped Phoebe understand his demeanor toward her. It didn’t excuse it, her inner feminine warrior harrumphed in a fit of pique, but it did help her understand it.