by Dawn Brown
“I think she ran,” the man from the kitchen’s voice rose over heavy footsteps coming down the stairs.
“Shut-up, Norton. She’s here,” Tic growled.
The hell with it. She swung her legs up and over.
Jagged stone at the top of the wall scraped her belly. Stinging lines flared to life over her skin. She bit her lip against the pain, let herself go from the ledge and dropped into the cistern.
Her feet landed in a pile of brittle sticks, and she lost her footing. She tipped back, landed hard on her backside, and locked stares with the black, empty eye sockets of a human skull.
Chapter Nineteen
“While some fathers who kill do so as an attempt to clean the slate and start anew, others murder out of an overdeveloped sense of ownership of their families. This was believed to be the motive behind Gwendolyn Grey Anderson’s murder.”
—excerpt from Blood and Bone by Shayne Reynolds
Oh God, she was sitting on a dead person.
Shayne slapped both hands over her mouth to hold back the scream building in her throat. Something sharp jabbed the back of her thigh. Probably another bone. A shudder gripped her, but she held herself rigidly against it.
“I’m telling you, she saw the truck and ran,” Norton’s nasal voice carried down the stairs, and Tic grunted.
A thud came from the far side of the room, near the windows. She should have broken one. They might have believed she’d escaped and gone off to look for her. If Tic checked this cistern, she was done.
There was nowhere left for her to hide.
She could whack him upside the head with that skull, or leg bone, or something. Of course, she’d have to touch the skeleton more than she already had. Her stomach lurched, and she swallowed down hot bile.
She would do what she had to.
With her lips pressed tightly closed, she eased a hand toward the tattered, dirty rags covering the bones. Even her slight movement made a dry scraping sound. She froze and held her breath, straining her ears to listen for Tic.
Judging by the heavy thud of his boots scuffing on the dirt floor, he was still checking out the windows on the far wall. With any luck, he wouldn’t notice the cistern in the low light. She hadn’t until she was standing right next to it. But if Tic was the one who put her new roommate in there in the first place, he already knew it was here.
“Is she there?” Norton asked.
“No,” Tic ground out, “and don’t sound so fucking happy with yourself. We don’t do the job, we don’t get paid.”
And what precisely was the job? To give her a good scare? Or to leave her here and rotting in this abandoned house? Icy sweat beaded her skin. Her pulse pounded in her ears.
“Maybe we can still find her. Her car’s here. She couldn’t have gone far.”
“Far enough.” Tic stomped up the stairs, the old wood groaning in protest.
The door slammed closed and murmured voices mingled with footsteps overhead, the words unintelligible. Dust and God knew what else fell from the rafters. She stood, ran her hands through her hair to shake any creepy-crawlies free, but she didn’t leave the cistern. Not even when the voices and movements ceased above.
They could be trying to trick her from her hiding place, letting her believe they’d given up, when they were waiting to pounce the moment she went upstairs. But how long could she stay where she was? Her gaze shifted to the grinning skull. Those black empty sockets stared back at her.
Long enough.
Carefully, she gathered her bag and camera then made her way to the edge of the cistern, wincing anytime something crunched beneath the rubber soles of her sneakers. She hauled herself up onto the wall, sucking in her stinging belly so she wouldn’t drag the tender flesh over the rough stone again. As she swung her legs over, she caught sight of a second skull. She’d been in there with at least two human skeletons.
God, she’d never wanted a shower so badly in all her life.
Bag hoisted over her shoulder, Shayne started up the stairs. She cringed every time the wood creaked and groaned under her feet. At the top, she drew a deep breath, held it and pushed open the door. The soft squeak of the hinges scraped her frayed nerves like knuckles on a cheese grater. She tensed, ready to bolt, ears strained, listening for any hint of movement.
Nothing. They were gone. Relief trickled over her, softening her limbs. Her knees gave out and she crouched to the floor, waiting for the wobbly feeling to leave her legs, the lightheadedness to pass.
Muffled laughter and the tinkle of smashed glass cut through the quiet. Shayne jumped, her breath lodging in her throat. They were outside now. She fumbled her cell phone out of her purse and looked down at the screen. Good, she had service again. She dialed 911, but held her thumb over the Send button as another explosion of breaking glass cut through the quiet.
Her car.
“Son of a bitch,” she hissed. Hot fury mingled with the fear coursing through her veins, and she tiptoed to the front hall, keeping her thumb over the Send button.
Peering through the dirty window, Tic shredded the canvas roof on her convertible while his friend bashed in the windows with a huge rock. With every popping explosion of glass, their laughter grew louder, and her anger hotter.
Bastards.
Des had said something about Tic’s inventing alibis, leaving the police unable to tie him to his crimes. She lifted her camera. Well, let’s see how the jerk did when she had photographic proof. Through the glass, she snapped pictures of the men, and even a few of their truck, then made her way to the kitchen and the back door. She didn’t leave the house, though. Tic and his pal had searched from top to bottom and hadn’t found her—as long as she stayed quiet, they would have no reason to look for her inside again. Besides, they were obviously too engrossed in trashing her car to be listening for her.
Shayne lifted her phone and hit Send.
Shayne spent what felt like a lifetime answering questions for the police both at the abandoned house, and at the police station. By the time she’d finished, it was nearly eleven. Having found three bodies in a single week certainly had law enforcement curious about her. Still, the photos of Tic and his pal trashing her car, and the damage said car had sustained, had gone a long way to corroborating her story.
The distant wail of police sirens had sent both men scrambling back to their truck. The shiny, black convertible she loved had been left gouged, ripped and smashed. One of those pigs had actually urinated in the backseat. The only upside was that her photos should be enough to have them arrested no matter who backed their phony alibis.
As she made her way out to the police station’s lobby, exhaustion weighed heavily on her limbs. Her every step was like trudging through water. A dull throb gripped her head and the back of her neck. Even her eyes hurt. She wanted to crawl into bed.
But she couldn’t. First, she had to head back to the cabin, load up all her things, then go to the hotel in Willow Creek—and that was twenty minutes away. And to make the entire situation all the more complicated, she had to do all this with a taxi. God only knows when she’d get her car back. At least she wouldn’t be returning to the cabin alone.
The image of Tic waiting for her in the dark sent an icy shiver slithering down her spine. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. Maybe she’d go directly to the hotel and pick up her things in the morning.
She stepped into the lobby, and her breath caught. A tiny flicker of forbidden relief burst to life in her chest. Des stood from the molded plastic bench and started toward her.
“Hey.” The smooth timbre of his voice was like a soft blanket she wanted to wrap up in.
She cleared her throat and tucked her hair behind her ear. “What are you doing here?”
“Avery called me.” He stopped in front of her, and the urge to throw herself into his arms—to press against his warm, solid chest and feel his strength—nearly overwhelmed her. Instead, she folded her arms across her chest. “And I know nothing’s ch
anged, but I’m not leaving you alone while Tic’s out there.”
She was too damned tired to argue. “My car’s trashed.”
“I guess you need a ride, anyway.”
She nodded, and together they left the station. Outside, the cool night air wrapped around her. Goose bumps prickled her skin. Her teeth started to chatter, and she had to clench her jaw to make them stop.
“You’re cold,” Des said.
“Yeah.” Ice seeped into her soul. “Aren’t you?”
He should have been. He was only wearing short sleeves. “I’m fine.”
When they reached his car, he opened the passenger’s door. The rusted hinges groaned, the sound cutting through the otherwise silent night and setting her teeth on edge. Des reached into the backseat, pulled out his battered black jacket and held it out to her.
“Are you sure you won’t need it?” she asked.
He nodded, and she took the coat from him. She slipped her arms through the sleeves, the worn leather creaking with her movements. The weight hung heavily and oddly comforting on her frame. His scent, spicy and male, wrapped around her with nearly the same soothing warmth as the jacket itself. “Thanks.”
As Des walked around to the other side of the car, Shayne slid into the passenger’s seat and pulled the door closed behind her with a thunk. Des sat next to her, started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
“Would you mind taking me to the hotel? I’ll get my stuff from the cabin tomorrow.” When it was daylight. Though, Tic had cornered her alone in broad daylight earlier. Maybe she should ask Des to go with her when she went back for her things, but she hated to ask him. Even accepting a ride to the hotel was an imposition given the shift in their relationship. Still, who else would she ask? She wasn’t exactly friendly with anyone in town.
What if Tic had been to the cabin and had trashed her belongings the same way he had her car? Cold knots tightened in her belly. And what about Bigwig? The poor cat had been on his own since she’d left this morning.
“Did you pick up the cat?” If he hadn’t, they’d have to return to the cabin tonight. Dread curdled her insides.
“Yeah, I took him back to my place,” Des said, without looking away from the dark street.
“Okay, good.” Tension eased from taut muscles and she sank into the seat. She frowned as Des turned onto a side street instead of staying on the road that would take them out of town. “You’re not driving me to the hotel, are you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Where are you taking me?”
One corner of his mouth pulled into a wry half-smirk. “My place.”
Bad idea. No matter how badly she didn’t want to be on her own tonight, staying with him would be a mistake. Exhausted and emotionally wrung out, her resolve where he was concerned was already slipping. “Des—”
“Don’t argue with me on this, Shayne, please.” His voice sounded gravelly, like the inside of his throat had been scraped with sandpaper. “Knowing he had you alone, that he could have…” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she told him, and rested her hand on his forearm before she could stop herself. Des didn’t move. His grip on the steering wheel so tight his knuckles whitened. “He didn’t even find me. That’s why he and his pal wrecked my car while I hid.”
He looked her way once more, his gaze measuring, as if he wasn’t sure he believed her, then turned back to the road. “Why did the police keep you so long?”
She let her hand fall back to her lap, leaned back against the seat and closed her heavy eyes. “While I was hiding, I found two skeletons.”
“People skeletons?”
She cracked an eye and peeked at him. The low light from the dash illuminated the revulsion tightening his features. She nodded.
“Who…” he hesitated as if searching for the right words, “…were they?”
“I don’t know. They weren’t exactly wearing nametags.”
“Where were you hiding?”
“The cistern in the basement of the house where your parents used to live.”
“You went out to an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere after I explained the situation with Tic?”
Despite the exhaustion pressing heavier and heavier into her limbs, irritation prickled the hair at the back of her neck and she sat up, turning her full attention to him. She’d have to be deaf to miss the recrimination in his tone. To be fair, visiting the house on her own when she’d already run into the man there probably wasn’t one of her brightest moments. She’d figured she’d get her pictures and get out. If Tic was going to come after her, she’d assumed he’d show up at the cabin in the middle of the night. Still, she wasn’t about to offer up excuses to Des as if he were her father and she some wayward child.
“I’m not up for a lecture, thank you,” she ground out. “And maybe if you had told me the truth about Tic before your aunt took the liberty of telling me about your deal with your grandmother, I wouldn’t have been suspicious of everything you said to me.”
Des kept his attention fixed on the road, his features immobile. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said on an exasperated sigh, “I’m just trying to deflect the blame because I feel stupid. It’s not your fault.”
“I should have told you how dangerous he was, though. Christ, I’ve seen firsthand what he was capable of.”
The sharp edge to his low voice, jagged like shredded tin, tightened the knots in her belly. Even though she probably didn’t want to know, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What did you see?”
He told her about finding Tic attacking one of the waitresses at the bar. About how the poor woman had been so terrified, she’d refused to name him to police and had left town. And while he spoke, Shayne’s insides shriveled into a tight, icy ball.
“The night I picked you up at the side of the road. It was Tic who beat you up.”
“Yeah.” A humorless smirk curled his mouth, then dissolved. “The whole time I was waiting in the police station, I kept picturing him with you, hurting you…”
Her acid stomach burned anew, and she pulled Des’s jacket tighter around her.
“I’m fine. He couldn’t find me.” But who was she trying to comfort with those words? Des or herself?
“This time.” He turned into a gravel drive behind a red brick Victorian two-story. The headlights cast a wide white glow over a small barn-shaped building the same red brick as the house in front of them, a wooden garage door on one side, and a wide picture window on the other.
Des cut the engine, and the lights vanished, plunging them into darkness. A tiny shiver crept along her spine, and she peered into the darkness, half expecting Tic to emerge from the shadows.
Des popped open his door. The clunk combined with the sudden glow from the dome light overhead made her jump.
“You okay?” he asked, straight brows drawn together in a frown.
Heat stole into her face. God, she was a jittery mess.
“Yeah,” she lied, reaching for her own door. “I’m fine.”
At least she would be once she pulled herself together. First, a shower to scrub away the grime and cobwebs and remnants of the skeleton, then a decent night’s sleep. When she awoke, she’d be back to her old self.
She slid out of the car, shoved the heavy door closed and turned to the old house. A light glowed from one of the second-floor windows, and an elderly woman peered down at them.
“You live here?” Shayne asked.
“The apartment in the garage.” He nodded at the building they’d parked in front of.
“Who’s that woman?”
“My landlady, Rose.” He waved, and the woman pulled back from the window. “She’s probably hurrying off to call Heddi to let her know you’re here.”
“Rose knows who I am?”
He shook his head and started for the door around the side of the garage. “No, she’ll tell Heddi I have woman wit
h me, and Heddi will put two and two together.”
Des unlocked the door, pushed it open, and flipped on the lights before moving aside to allow Shayne to enter. She stepped into the small square hallway. To her right, a flight of narrow, steep stairs led up, to her left, a small tidy kitchen with her boxes piled on and around the old chrome-and-Formica table.
“I dropped them off before heading back out to the police station,” Des said, closing the door behind them. “I didn’t want to miss you. I’ll move them upstairs later.”
She swallowed the inexplicable lump in her throat. She was touched he’d thought to bring her things from the cabin so she wouldn’t have to deal with it all herself.
Maybe he went through everything, read all your notes and reported back to his grandmother while you were busy explaining to the police how you wound up discovering two more dead bodies.
She cleared her throat. “Thanks. I appreciate it, but when I move into the hotel tomorrow, it’ll be easier to load them if you leave everything here.”
“Listen.” Des took her hand in his, his grip warm and strong. She had to battle the urge to entwine their fingers and cling to his touch. “I know you hate me—”
“I don’t hate you.” She almost wished she did. It would make being near him easier. She wouldn’t be craving the feel of his arms around her, or wishing she could crawl into bed and wrap herself in his warm body.
“Okay, but you don’t trust me.” True, she couldn’t argue that. “And I don’t blame you. But until you get what you need to finish writing your book, I don’t want you out of my sight.”
“Des.”
“I mean it, Shayne. If he’d hurt you, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Des.” She sharpened her tone to get his attention. “I’m not your responsibility. It’s not your job to take care of me. I can do that myself.”
Though, hiding in a cistern with a couple of dead bodies and hoping the psycho didn’t stumble upon her wasn’t exactly proactive in the self-care department. But she wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t let herself end up in the same situation again.