by Rachel Lee
Annabelle still looked reluctant, but Todd spoke. “Sure. You don’t want her holding back because it’s something we don’t want to hear. We’ve got an office. Not much space left after all the stuff we’ve had to cram in there, but there are two good chairs. Oh, and a tabletop for playing cards.”
“Ooh, the office,” Vivian said, her blue eyes brightening. She grinned at Steve. “I’m not supposed to go in there.”
“Well, this time you can,” her father answered. “Just this once. Clear?”
Vivian giggled and jumped off her chair. “Come on, Buddy. Let’s show Mr. Steve the office.”
The office was pretty much as Todd had described. It was still amazing. He didn’t know computer screens came big enough to be large-screen TVs. Large tablets occupied some space and Viv pointed them out proudly. “Daddy sometimes draws me pictures on these and then they’re on the TV.”
“Wow!”
He saw large posters tacked to the walls that looked like superhero stuff. Keyboards, mice, papers, pencil holders full of colorful pens... The scope of this work must be something else.
Vivian, taking on the role of hostess, placed the two office chairs, one on each side of an empty worktable. Buddy lay down nearby with a small huff. Clearly this wasn’t his idea of playtime.
“So why can’t you come in here often?” Steve asked casually, although from all the expensive equipment in here he could guess the answer.
“Mommy and Daddy told me I can mess up their work. They said the ’puters are always working even when they’re not here. So if I bump something, I could stop the work.”
“Makes sense.” Her words drew his attention to the background sound of quiet fans blowing. “It’s never quiet in here, is it?” Not if these machines never stopped working.
Vivian shook her head and reached for cards as Steve began dealing them. “I like this game.”
“I can see why. You always win.”
She giggled again. “Mommy says you want to know about my room.”
That was direct and to the point. He’d expected to have to draw her slowly into the subject. Cripes, it made her scared enough that she wouldn’t go in there anymore, not even to get her toys.
“I do,” he answered as they both stacked their cards into neat piles. “What do you most want to tell me?”
“About the man.” She kept looking at her cards, her hands steady, but she didn’t flip a single card over. She wasn’t thinking about them at all. Fear had taken over.
He could have tried to reassure her, but how could he do so truthfully when he didn’t know what the hell was happening here?
“The man?” he prompted gently. “Someone you know?”
She shook her head violently. “Bad man. Bad man!”
“That’s not good. Tell me what he looks like so I can hunt for him?”
She shook her head. “No. No.”
He had to think his way around that. A lot of ways he could respond, none that wouldn’t lead her. Damn, he needed to know exactly what she experienced.
Then her voice turned almost quiet, even a little singsongy. “I can’t talk about him. He might hurt me.”
The back of his neck prickled. A break? God, he hoped not. “Viv...”
She lifted her head and her gaze focused on him. Thank God. “Can’t see him.”
“I can’t see him?”
“Nobody can. Not even me.”
“Well, that makes it tough. How do you feel about that?”
Vivian swiped the stack of cards away, some of them scattering to the rug. “I don’t like it! If Buddy could see him, he’d save me.”
Steve looked down at the superfriendly dog and wondered if Viv’s certainty about his protectiveness was true. Regardless, he had no doubt that dog could knock a full-grown man off his feet with his relentless friendliness. “Buddy makes you feel safer.”
“He used to.”
“Used to?”
“He won’t come in my room anymore. He used to always sleep with me.”
Well, that was downright heartbreaking. “Do you know why he won’t come in?”
“The man talks to me. I hate it! But I think Buddy hears it, too, and he hates it, too!” Buddy rose and came to sit right beside her. Some protectiveness there after all. Or concern for Viv’s upset.
“It’s scarier because you can’t see the man?” Leading. Watch it, Steve.
“Yeah.” Viv quieted and leaned over to wrap her arms around Buddy’s neck. The dog visibly leaned into her. “Buddy growled at the wall. Mommy said maybe it was a bug.”
“Does he do that often? Growl at the wall?”
Viv held up three fingers as she pressed her face against Buddy.
“Three times, huh?” More than the Castelles had mentioned. But maybe that was three more times when only Vivian had seen it. God. He rubbed his hands over his face. This was going to be a tough one unless he could figure out where that sound was coming from. A radio, a pipe, something being transmitted up through the wall.
But it could be as simple as that, so he’d better start hoofing it. He wasn’t willing to wait until his crew arrived if he could solve this now.
But first, he needed to ask one more question before he let Vivian flee back to her parents.
“Do you know what the man is saying?”
Viv lifted her face and shook her head. “I tried. I told him to shut up.”
“Loudly?”
She let go of Buddy. “I screamed it.”
“Did it stop?”
“Once.”
Steve tucked that one away. He didn’t like the pallor that had washed Viv’s face while talking about her experience and decided to postpone further questioning. “Come on, let’s go back to Mommy and Daddy, okay?”
Viv leaped up as if shot out of her chair and ran back to the kitchen.
Steve wasn’t sure how much he had to work with, but he knew one thing for certain: that child wasn’t lying. Well, two things. She was also truly terrified.
* * *
AT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE, Candy found little enough to do. The dispatcher, a middle-aged woman named Neesa, handled most of it with the ease of experience. Candy needed to offer her aid only occasionally, mostly to handle standard calls and pass them to deputies and city cops still on patrol.
But then the camera footage began to arrive. Black-and-white, it was being broadcast in as part of the forensics records. Black-and-white or not, Candy mentally filled in the colors and felt her gorge rise.
She didn’t want to look, but understood it was expected of her, especially after Gage radioed and told her to keep an eye out for things they might miss, areas that were overlooked.
So she was glued to a view of two older teenagers, one male, one female. Left to die in the night’s cold, then presumably savaged by wild animals. She prayed the savaging hadn’t come first.
Cruel beyond words. What could those kids possibly have done to deserve this? Nothing. Nobody deserved this. Nobody.
She forced herself to sit in front of the large monitor, doing as she’d been told. Keeping an eye out for blind spots in the camera coverage. Which meant she had to look intently at everything.
“This camera thing is new,” Neesa said. “I don’t think I like it. Anyway, it’s supposed to make sure we don’t lose film at the site. Everything gets sent back here and if anything goes black we’ll know it before the scene is cleared.”
Made sense. Except for people like her who had to sit here and look at the images and couldn’t do a damn thing to help.
Then the camera homed in on various wounds. Detailed photos.
Nothing Candy hadn’t seen before, but that didn’t prevent nausea.
She clicked on the radio and spoke. “So far nothing that remotely resembles knife wounds or gunshot wounds. Mostly tearing
wounds.”
“Thanks,” Gage’s gravelly voice came back. “Thought so.”
“Well, I’m not a medical examiner.”
“None of us are either. I guess we should scan for a weapon anyway. You’re going to get close-in shots of the places we look. Have Neesa put it on a split screen. But first I’m going to send you a three-sixty. You catch any jumps, let me know.”
“Man, things have changed,” Candy muttered. It reminded her of military operations.
“You can thank the commissioners. Gage wanted some more space, to get dispatch into another room because it’s hectic and can interfere with comms in both directions.”
“Makes sense.”
Neesa’s response was dry. “Sure. Not to the commissioners. Evidently some new tech caught their eyes. This is what that brings.”
“Good backup?” Candy suggested as she watched the screen closely.
“Maybe for the military.” Neesa sighed. “Gage is still trying to figure out all the advantages.”
“Seems like he’s found one.”
“Possibly. We’d have gotten all this back on the helmet cams, and from forensics, who are probably already taking over.”
Which would be a very good thing, little as she knew about the subject. She almost joined Neesa in a sigh but swallowed it. Bad enough she had to look at this horror.
“Candy?” Gage’s voice came through the headset. “You get the full three-sixty?”
“I believe so.”
“Okay, we’ll let forensics place the markers close to the bodies. We’re drawing back to look for anything we might find. Although at this point I think we’ve scuffed the ground quite a bit.”
There was that, she acknowledged. And when this was over, she was probably going to go back to her house and vomit, right up and into dry heaves. Troops on the battlefield often did that, much as civilians might not want to hear it. Few grew hardened enough not to react.
Then there was the so-called thousand-yard stare. The empty, blank look in the eyes when the mind could handle no more. She’d seen that often. Sometimes she’d had it, too. Maybe still did at times.
She wasn’t certain she wasn’t experiencing it right now, that total shutdown. And she was supposed to go from this back to aiding Steve Hawks. Sure.
* * *
STEVE LEFT THE CASTELLES, determined to make a plan of some kind. He needed more info about the house, of course. As he emerged, and was about to climb into his car, he saw a truck pull up at the end of the driveway, blocking it. It might be a friend of the Castelles or someone else, but for a fact he wasn’t going anywhere until that truck moved.
He waited, saw the driver climb out. Oh, well, he’d just walk out to meet the guy and ask him to move. He strolled down the drive, his hands tucked in his pockets against the chill. The man, better dressed for the weather but still ragged in appearance, strode toward him, his step a little hesitant.
What was going on here? Someone who didn’t know the Castelles after all? Steve felt instantly protective, mainly because of that little girl inside. “Can I help you, stranger?” he asked when they were about six feet apart.
The man paused, stopped walking. “You Steve Hawks? From that ghost show?”
At that moment Steve would have preferred to deny it, but there might be information he needed. “I am.”
The man nodded, his gaze growing distant. “I’m Ben Wittes. It’s going to happen again.”
Steve’s attention sharpened. “What is?”
“The murders. Like when Samuel Bride lived here.”
Steve felt his insides congeal. “What do you mean?”
“My spirits told me. People will die. The same thing is happening.” Wittes looked at him again. “It’ll happen again. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Steve, a man who didn’t believe in psychics, nonetheless stood frozen as the guy returned to his truck and drove away.
He needed to get to Candy. Maybe that had been a threat.
Or maybe, Steve thought, looking back at the house, this Wittes guy knew something about the Castelles. He still wasn’t ready to jump into the perfect-family scenario they painted.
Nobody was that perfect.
Chapter Eight
Candy made it home without puking. It wasn’t easy. Her gorge kept trying to rise, but she battled it down and finally reached her kitchen table with a cup of tea, the gentlest thing she could think of. It’d either settle her or get rid of her stomach contents. At this point, even the latter would be a relief. She hadn’t even changed out of her uniform, except for ditching her utility belt.
She put her hands on her head and tried not to cry. She had years of experience at holding back tears even though she’d seen plenty of tough guys give in to them occasionally. Still, she had tried not to. Tears might unnerve others who were holding up better.
But there was no one to see her right now, and nothing left to prove. She’d already proved she was as tough as anyone who went into battle. And her life had changed forever.
She couldn’t leave it all behind. No way. But with each passing day, she shoved it back deeper into the mental locker.
Until today. She’d seen even more gruesome things, but those kids...
What had they done? Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to deserve that. And she hadn’t expected to see such graphic video.
That had been a sideways punch to the gut. Maybe she ought to quit and find a different job. Except she’d tried that without success. Unless she wanted to be a mercenary.
Never.
Tears finally started rolling down her cheeks as memories of her time in the Army rolled through her mind. The sound, the smells, the screams. Oh, God, the screams. People she knew torn up, burned, dead. Faces she would never forget, not until the day she died.
Initially, she didn’t hear the knock on the door. Eventually it penetrated as it grew louder.
She shook her head, dashed away her tears on her shirtsleeve, hoping there hadn’t been another emergency. She’d turned off her radio. She was off duty now, her cell phone was off, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be bothered by anything less than a mass shooting in town.
So much for her idea that a small town would be calmer. Less violent. Stupid idea. People were the same everywhere.
She opened the door reluctantly and saw Steve Hawks. “Now’s not a good time,” she told him. Rudely, but it was the truth.
“I heard,” he said. “I heard something.”
For some reason that made her step back and let him in. He’d heard what? From where? She doubted the news was making the rounds in town yet. The sheriff had locked down all information. Did that matter? Maybe not, but Steve sure hadn’t seen what she’d seen.
“You don’t look good,” he said as soon as he was inside.
“Tough.”
“I’d have brought a bottle if I’d known. You’re white. Your eyes are red and swollen. Get your butt into the kitchen and tell me what you can stomach.”
He surprised her by reaching out to touch her cheek. “Cold as ice. Where’s a blanket?”
What did she care?
Then he spied the throw over the back of the couch in the next room. “Here or the kitchen?”
She moved toward the kitchen. It wasn’t as comfortable, but she didn’t care about comfort.
When she sat at the table, he spread the throw over her and tucked it around her. Vaguely she sensed the warmth.
“What have you got? Anything you prefer?”
Her lips felt frozen.
“Alrighty, then. I’ll look.” Followed by, “Damn, I can tell you were in the Army. Remind me to ask you to organize me someday.”
Distantly she felt as if that might be amusing. At another time. Right now it seemed pointless. Empty conversation.
Clatters. Cupboard d
oors closing. Even in this state, situational awareness never deserted her.
“Here.” A cup appeared before her. Steam rose from it. She saw it and didn’t care.
“Drink,” he ordered. “Hot milk.”
Hot milk? Her mother had made that for her. “I don’t like it.”
“Who cares. It’ll warm you, maybe help you relax a bit.”
Obediently, because she always followed orders, she reached for the mug with trembling hands. Hands that felt as if they belonged to someone else.
She hadn’t raised it more than an inch when it slipped from her grip and spilled everywhere. She stared at the milk running across the table, some of it down her front. What did it matter?
She watched Steve’s hands and arms as he wiped up the mess, including the milk that had run down her front.
“Okay, that’s not going to work. Not until your fingers warm up.”
He pulled a chair close and reached for her hands, chafing them with his bigger, warmer ones.
“Come back to me, Candy,” he said quietly. “You’ve come back from far worse.”
Had she? Apparently not. Like a tar pit, it just kept bubbling up and dragging her in.
But as he rubbed her hands, she began to return from the nightmare. His gentleness called to her. Drew her back from the brink. Offered her a touch of emotional safety. No one had ever treated her so kindly when the ugliness rose from the pit.
His touch reached her in a way that little enough had. Slowly she drew her hands back and tugged the throw tighter around her.
And gradually her vision returned from the tunnel. She saw Steve, saw her kitchen, saw the rag he’d used to wipe up her mess. Sour milk, she thought irrelevantly. She needed to wash it soon.
“Candy?”
Her gaze trailed back to Steve. “I’m here.”
“That was rough for you. Take your time. About that hot drink?”
Her stomach had settled, she realized. “Cider. Please.”
“Coming up. I think I’ll join you. I’m wondering how any little kids could possibly want to trick-or-treat around here, as cold as it’s getting.”