by Anne Stuart
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’ve got a new family. A lovely new daughter. It’s only logical that I’d want to meet her and get to know her mother better. Why, I bet Rachel doesn’t know anything about our childhood. I could tell her stories that would probably shock the hell out of her.”
“No, thank you,” Rachel said, moving to stand by her husband. “I know all I need to know about David, and I don’t really need to know anything at all about you.”
“Don’t be rude, Rachel,” David admonished. “You’ll find that Caleb likes to stir things up whenever he can. He likes to play the bad boy, but in the end he’s really quite harmless.”
“Am I, David?” Caleb’s smile was far from reassuring. “You might be surprised.”
Whatever had happened to upset David seemed well past, and he looked at his brother with fond benevolence. “I’ve known you for thirty-five years, Caleb. I doubt you could surprise me anymore.” He leaned over and kissed Rachel on the cheek. “We’re going over to my father’s for dinner, sweetheart. That way you don’t have to cook.”
Shit, that was all she needed. Another interminable evening with Stephen Henry. “Sorry, can’t do it. It’s a school night and Sophie’s got a lot of work to do. You’ll have to take my apologies.”
“Father will be so disappointed. You know how fond he is of Sophie,” David said.
“Sorry, but rules are rules. Sophie can’t go out on school nights, even for family reunions.” She could see David was about to protest, and she forestalled him. “Last night was different—part of her school credit is from tutoring other students.”
“That’s all right, Rachel,” Caleb said. “The fatted calf can wait until the weekend. The prodigal son has no intention of going anywhere soon.”
“What about your job?” David said.
“Leave of absence. For the next few weeks I’m going to immerse myself in the old town. I want to find out just what’s been going on for the last twenty years.”
“Twenty years?” Rachel echoed, startled.
“I took off when I was seventeen. I’ve been back a few times since then, but only for a matter of days. I’m afraid the town of Silver Falls has never made me feel particularly welcome.”
“What happened when you were seventeen?”
“He stole a car,” David said. “Again. He got drunk, stole a car and ran my parents off the road. Stephen Henry has been in a wheelchair ever since and my mother died.”
There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Caleb spoke, sounding singularly unconcerned. “I hate to be picky, but I should point out that they were my parents as well.”
“You didn’t even stay for the funeral,” David said.
“I couldn’t very well—you’d been so helpful with the police that I had no choice but to disappear for a few years. Fortunately Stephen Henry cleared things up and the charges were dropped.”
“He always had a soft spot for you. He was probably more than happy to lie for you.”
“Lie?” Caleb echoed. “There are no lies in our happy little family.”
“Father’s waiting for us,” David said, the edge creeping back. He turned to Rachel. “I really think you and Sophie should come with us. If for no other reason than it would be safer. There’s a murderer loose.”
She shook her head. “We’ll lock the doors and we’ll be fine. Give my love to Stephen Henry.”
“I might think twice about that,” Caleb murmured. “The old man is a lecher.” He ignored David’s sputtered protest. “You know he is, so don’t argue. Let’s go. And Rachel’s right—she might very well be safer here.” He looked at her, and all his mockery vanished. “Keep an eye on your daughter. If you’re not going to leave town, then watch her like a hawk.”
“Leave? Why would Rachel leave?” David sounded oddly frantic.
“Maybe because there’s a serial killer on the loose, and if she took her daughter on a vacation until he’s caught it would be easier for her?” Caleb suggested.
“She can’t leave…Rachel isn’t the kind of woman who runs away.”
Rachel was feeling exactly like that kind of woman. She managed to nod convincingly.
“Even if there’s a serial killer at work?” Caleb said.
“What makes you think Rachel would be the target?” David said.
Caleb turned to look at him. “Who knows what goes on in the mind of a serial killer?”
“One death doesn’t make for a serial killer. Do you think I can’t take care of my own family?” David snapped, and she could hear the edge of panic in his voice.
“I’m sure you can.” He changed the subject. “Shall we go visit our patriarch? He wants us to bond.” Caleb’s tone of voice made it patently clear that that was a vain hope.
But David surprised her. “I’d like that,” he said, his animosity vanishing. “It’s been too long.”
Caleb looked equally surprised but not particularly gratified. “If you say so.”
“We’ll miss you,” David said to Rachel. And then, to her astonishment, he pulled her into his arms, mashing his mouth against hers, trying to shove his tongue past her lips.
David never used his tongue. He seldom kissed her, and then it was very chaste. At that moment he had one hand on her butt, squeezing so hard it hurt, and another clamped on her breast. She forced herself to remain still, resisting the impulse to shove him away, to wipe her arm across her mouth. When he finally released her she managed a smile by sheer force of will.
“Don’t be gone too long, darling,” she said in what she hoped was an encouraging voice. It sounded dubious at best.
Caleb was watching them, a faint, disbelieving expression on his face. He saw far too much, and Rachel was half-tempted to grab David and plant another kiss on him, just to show the man.
She didn’t move until they were out the door, and then she crossed the room to lock it behind them. Leaving her alone with her daughter, and her doubts.
5
Another cool, rainy day, Rachel thought the next afternoon, closing the door on her darkroom. She just couldn’t face choosing to work in even more darkness—the persistent gloom of Silver Falls was hard enough. She’d actually gotten on the internet to check out weather patterns—maybe this was just an unusually rainy period. Surely the Pacific Northwest wasn’t always so wretched, or people wouldn’t be moving there.
The research was far from promising. The rest of the state, even some of the rainiest areas, averaged far less rainfall than this tiny little college town. Silver Falls consistently averaged twice the yearly rainfall of Seattle and Portland combined, and this year was ostensibly drier than usual. It was no wonder nothing ever seemed to dry out and it felt like mold was growing everywhere. It probably was.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and stared out toward Silver Mountain, shrouded with clouds as it always was. She and Sophie had planned to hike there on the next clear day, but that day hadn’t come.
It had taken all of Rachel’s resolve not to keep Sophie home that morning. Sophie, of course, had shrugged off the murder relatively well, thanks to the invulnerability of youth, but Caleb’s words kept echoing in her ear. The victim had been young and slender, with long, straight blond hair. She’d scoured the Silver Falls Sentinel for the gruesome details—Jessica Barrowman had been a student at the college, just eighteen years old. Her face haunted her.
She looked too much like Tessa.
She and Sophie had arrived back on the west coast after two years in Spain, and the cool, foggy atmosphere of San Francisco had been a welcome change from the sun and heat and bright blue sky. It had been easy enough to find a community—she had enough connections from her photography friends and it had been easy to find a place to live and a job, and Sophie ended up at the local alternative school in the Fillmore District just outside of Japantown. Sophie settled in quickly, aided by her usual ability to make friends, the closest one being Tessa Montgomery, a girl three years older than she,
just sixteen, and almost a clone. They were always being mistaken for sisters as they wandered around the big, fascinating city.
But then Tessa had a boyfriend. A mysterious one she met in Golden Gate Park. He was older, she said, and rich, and romantic, and sexy, and he was going to wait until she was old enough to get married but Tessa didn’t want to. She’d spilled all this to Sophie, her best friend, and Sophie had been taught by her mother not to gossip and not to repeat secrets.
It wasn’t until Tessa didn’t come home one day that Sophie finally told Rachel about Tessa’s secret lover. And when Tessa’s body had been found six days later Sophie had been inconsolable.
Rachel wasn’t sure how they would have gotten through that time if it weren’t for David. She couldn’t even remember how she’d met him—one day he was just there, calm and friendly, a college professor on sabbatical, doing research. He had a sublet nearby, and his quiet, gentle manner was the perfect antidote to the anger and despair that filled her community. Even Sophie liked him. She was more like her old self when he was there, able to laugh at his admittedly pathetic attempts at a joke.
One thing Rachel liked about him was that he never pressured her for sex—he was an exquisite gentleman. In fact, she was the one who finally instigated them going to bed together, and it was…pleasant. No fireworks or earth moving, but very nice, despite David’s almost virginal shyness. And the next morning he’d asked her to marry him.
She might have said no, until she looked at Sophie. Unlike her amazon mother, Sophie had never been particularly sturdy, and she was looking almost frail, her pale skin translucent, and on impulse Rachel had said yes, anything to get Sophie out of the city that was now synonymous with death. The accelerated math program had been the icing on the cake, clearly this was meant to be.
The sun had been shining the day they’d arrived in Silver Falls, Washington. As far as she could tell it hadn’t been seen since.
And now this safe place seemed suddenly dangerous. Tessa and Jessica looked too much alike. They’d both been molested and strangled. Though Tessa’s body had been found in the Bay, and Jessica had been tossed over the waterfall at the head of the mountain that loomed over the small town like a gargoyle.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Jessica wasn’t the first. There had been others. The Sentinel printed the timeline, and Rachel read it over with grim fascination. The first was more than twenty years ago—just before David’s mother had been killed. The next was four years later, then a stretch of safety for seven years before another young, blond woman had died. And since then, nothing. Until a few days ago. Around the time when Caleb Middleton had returned to town.
It had to be coincidental. Didn’t it? Except hadn’t he himself said it wasn’t?
Suddenly the house felt oppressive, smothering. There was only a light mist today—liquid sunshine, David used to say playfully. For the next seven hours Sophie was safe at school. She had clear orders not to leave until Rachel picked her up, and she had no choice but trust Sophie’s good sense. Sophie was far from docile—there were times it was clear she thought Rachel was the fragile one, but in fact the two of them were alike. Strong-minded and not prey to bullshit. But she also loved her mother enough not to worry her by failing to follow orders. At least, she hoped so.
Rachel shoved two of her cameras into the gypsy bag, grabbed her raincoat and headed out the door. She was tempted to drive until she found sunshine, but the likelihood of getting back in time to pick up Sophie was remote. For now she just needed to get away from everything and everyone, into the dark, forbidding woods that surrounded the town. It wasn’t like she was in any danger. The local victims had all been a decade younger than she was, with long, straight blond hair and no curves. No one was going to have any interest in a curvy redhead with a temper.
She headed east, toward Silver Mountain. She was wearing her hiking shoes—she could climb up to the falls and look out over the valley. Maybe from that height she’d see sunshine somewhere in the distance.
By the time she parked her car at the start of the trail the rain was coming down a little more enthusiastically, pelting the thick canopy of leaves overhead. She had no intention of letting it slow her down. In the four months they’d been living there she’d learned that if she waited for a sunny day she’d never leave the house. The ground was slippery beneath her feet, but she moved carefully. She’d hiked all over the world, with Sophie strapped to her back and her cameras in her hands. This puny little mountain wasn’t going to be any kind of challenge.
There was something oddly liberating about climbing. Even with the muddy terrain beneath her feet and the wet branches slapping at her, her spirits began to rise. The water from Silver River was rushing down the hill, and she realized she’d never seen the waterfall that gave the town its name. She had more than enough time to make it up there and be back to pick up Sophie.
The rain came down more heavily, and she pulled up the hood of her rain slicker. “Do your worst,” she said out loud, looking up at the dark, angry sky. A crack of thunder was her answer, and she froze.
Maybe climbing in a thunderstorm might not be the smartest thing she could possibly do, but once she set a course she wasn’t likely to turn back, whether she’d made the right decision or not. She was no quitter, even when things got a little rough. Besides, she hadn’t seen much of thunder and lightning during the constant rainstorms, and for all she knew it was just God with a twisted sense of humor. She waited, but there was no sound but the heavy beating of the rain on the lush, overgrown greenery surrounding her, and the rush of wind through the trees, echoed by the roar of the waterfall up ahead.
In the end she almost gave up. Each rise looked like it would be the last one, but the mountain reached higher and higher. Her hiking shoes were caked with mud, her jacket turned out to be water resistant, not waterproof, and the wind picked up, lashing rain into her face and eyes. She kept climbing, trying to follow the omnipresent sound of rushing water, but it seemed to come from all around her. It had been too long since she’d climbed—she was out of shape, but she was damned if she was going to let this weak-ass mountain get the better of her.
But it was getting late, and not even pride would keep her from getting back to Sophie on time. She’d almost given up hope of finding the actual falls when she suddenly came upon a clearing in the dense undergrowth. The heavy torrent of rain had slowed to a sullen mist, and as she moved to the steep bank she pushed the hood off her head. The thunder of the waterfall had been muffled by the jacket, and she moved closer to the steep edge, peering into the dark, foamy water.
The pounding noise would drown out any sound a woman could make. A scream would be swallowed up in the rush of the river, and she shivered, taking a step back. She didn’t want to think about it, think about the poor girl caught in the branches of the Silver River. Old folk songs were slipping around in her head. “I met her on the mountain, there I took her life.” Had Jessica Barrowman met her murderer on this mountain, expecting a lover’s tryst and finding only death? Was that what had happened to Tessa?
What drove men to seduce women only to kill them? What strange, twisted need did that meet? Was it Freudian, reaching back into the womb? Maybe they felt abandoned by their mothers. Or maybe they had gender issues or were acting out their fears. Or maybe, just maybe they were sick fucks who got off on pain and suffering. In the long run she was better off not knowing. She could happily live the rest of her life without ever understanding the inner workings of a killer’s mind. She had no intention of getting any closer to one than reading about it in the newspaper.
Mist was rising, swirling from the water as it sluiced down the hillside, and for a moment she thought she could see something, a ghost, a memory, and she took a step closer, blindly. The earth crumbled beneath her feet, and she was falling, the mud slick beneath her, the water coming up to meet her, and she tried to scream—
The hands on her were rough, yanking her back from the precipice, stron
g arms around her, and she fought, kicking back until they released her. She went sprawling in the mud, sliding backward until she ended up against a tree, the wind knocked out of her, and all she could think was that she was going to die.
She looked up as she struggled for breath, staring at the dark, hooded figure that loomed over her, his face obscured. He reached down for her, and she tried to say something, tried to scream. It didn’t matter that he’d just saved her—he was going to throw her over into the deadly falls and when his hand caught her arm, she lunged at him, trying to fight him off.
He shoved her, and she fell back onto the muddy ground. Her breath came back with a sudden burning tear at her lungs, and she tried to get up again.
“Don’t make me hit you,” Caleb Middleton’s cool, laconic voice came from beneath the rain hood. “I’m trying to save your goddamned life and I don’t appreciate being attacked for my efforts.”
She managed to get to her feet, ignoring the searing pain in her chest. He stood between her and the falls, and she wondered whether she dared try to rush him again, to tip him over into the deadly water. She’d do anything to stay alive for Sophie’s sake, and she eyed him warily.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said. “You try to shove me over the falls and I’ll take you with me.” He shoved the hood off his head, and he looked annoyed, not deadly. “In case you didn’t notice I just saved your life. You might at least stop looking at me like I’m a monster. Believe it or not, I’m one of the good guys. At least for the moment.”
She was just beginning to breathe naturally, and common sense came back in a rush. Of course he didn’t want to kill her—he had the perfect chance and instead he’d pulled her back. Besides, what possible reason would he have to want to hurt her?
Unless of course he was a serial killer. And in that case, she was a sturdy redhead in her thirties, not a young, willowy blonde, and therefore safe.
“So, have you decided? Do you want to keep sitting in the mud or do you want to go somewhere and get dried off?”