by Kaylea Cross
Her muscles that had been clenched the whole time went weak with relief, and she walked away from the sink on wobbly legs. But as she passed the easel, the odd rock that sat in the middle of the painting drew her eyes and the vague memory took shape at last in her mind.
Cold, disbelieving shock sucker punched her.
She knew that rock, had painted it before, albeit from another angle, from the creek side. The creek that ran at the far end of her hundred-acre property, land she had bought after her first major art show.
Before she had time to consider the implications, her gaze slid lower. She broke out in cold sweat as her eyes zeroed in on the face of the man who occupied the lower right quadrant of the canvas.
He stared at her.
She blinked. She could swear she’d painted his eyes closed. She had meant to. But she had thought about the color…
Goose bumps prickled her skin. His face had less gray than the other victims she’d painted in the past. His body too lay differently—limp but not frozen in death with the stiff angles of a corpse.
As her breath hitched and her heart slammed against her rib cage, terrible thoughts clamored in her mind. This one was on her land. And he was still alive.
Fear pushed full force against the thought that she should help. She was all alone. Twilight was falling. Her land was impassable—back when she’d bought the property, there had been some tractor trails through it, but she’d left them to be overgrown long ago.
She could drive down Hadley Road until she reached the right spot, then walk in.
Would have to drive by the reservoir.
She didn’t drive that road anymore.
But even if she could, she wasn’t going to chase some imaginary dead man, or almost dead man, around the countryside.
Feel normal. Act normal. If she couldn’t do that, she would never get Maddie back. Normalcy had become her holy grail, the thing she ceaselessly sought, fought for, dreamed about. Going off like some madwoman would be the very opposite of that.
She watched the man watching her from the painting. Just more of her craziness. She was always imagining stuff—noises in the night, things moving behind the house in the woods. Which always turned out to be deer, or teens sneaking around for a smoke.
Yet she whispered, “He’s alive,” to the empty room without meaning to.
No. She turned her back to the easel.
But the next moment, she was running down the stairs, not just away from the painting but toward the door.
Because what if saving a life would make up for the one she’d lost? Maybe then the dead would finally leave her alone. What if this single act could end the nightmare she was living?
She swept up her keys and coat. And ran into the mailman on her front stoop.
He smiled his usual, cheerful smile, a man without a care. He was so profoundly…normal, it was like looking into a parallel universe.
“Brought the mail up. Last delivery for the day. You got a package.”
Pete Kentner was in his midforties, wearing regulation hat and coat with hunting boots. More often than not, he brought her mail to the door when the temperature dropped to below freezing, so she wouldn’t have to walk to the mailbox. He was a nice guy, helpful to everyone, took care of his mother.
“Thanks. Hope you had a nice break.” She tried for normal conversation, her mind spinning. She rubbed her hands over her arms, shivering. “Wow, it’s cold. What was it this time?”
Could she ask him for help? And say what? He’d think she was crazy.
“Good hunting weather. One fox, a half-dozen woodchucks, a couple of raccoons. Didn’t get a bobcat permit this year. Didn’t see any, anyway. That’s all the excitement until deer season next year.” Disappointment crept into his tone, but he perked up as he gestured at the package she held. “Late Christmas present?”
She glanced at the return address. “Samples from one of the online art-supply stores, I think.” They sent those from time to time to frequent customers, nudging artists to give new brands a try. A treasure on any other day, but right now, she was jumping with impatience.
She gave Pete a strained smile, willing him to leave.
But he chatted on instead. “Been ice skating yet? Saw a bunch of folks down by the reservoir earlier—” He snapped his mouth shut. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. Don’t know where my brain is today.” He adjusted his hat. “Better get going.”
He gave a cheerful wave, shuffled back to his mail truck, and backed out of her driveway.
She put the box on the hall table just inside the door, then locked up behind her and hurried to her own car.
His bringing up the reservoir and skating didn’t help. She sat behind the wheel for a moment, fighting the urge to go back inside. But those cerulean eyes were burned into her brain and drew her forward.
Turn the key in the ignition. Put the car in drive. Step on the gas.
Pete had turned left onto the main road, toward town. Broslin sat just a few miles from the Maryland border in one direction and about the same distance from Delaware in the other, a quaint little town with a history of art, a large Amish population, mushroom farmers, a lot of mom-and-pop stores still, nice, regular people. It had been paradise to her when she’d moved out here, a place to live in peace and create.
Then everything had fallen apart. But she was about to fix that, even if panic bubbled in her stomach as she reached the end of her driveway. Deep breath. She yanked the steering wheel right, away from town and toward the reservoir, not allowing herself to hesitate.
Her gaze skimmed the abandoned Miller farm at the corner. Hadley Road came too fast, another right. Blood rushed loudly in her ears as she turned. She stared straight ahead. Don’t look at the reservoir. She hadn’t been out this way in a year.
She focused on the two cars a few hundred yards ahead on the side of the road: a pickup in the front, a police cruiser in the back.
Her heart beat a mad rhythm.
In her mind, she saw another evening like this with police at the reservoir, cops and other emergency personnel. All the more strange because she couldn’t possibly have seen anything at the time. She shivered as she felt the bone-splitting cold of that day all over again. She let go of her death grip on the steering wheel long enough to crank up the heat.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” The police officer looked at Ashley through the side window of her SUV.
Of course, it had to be Bing.
She bit her lip. She’d gotten distracted by her memories to the point of forgetting to keep her foot on the gas pedal. She hadn’t realized that she’d slowed to a stop.
The police made her uneasy. God, so many things made her uneasy these days. No, uneasy didn’t begin to describe how she felt. Half the time, she was scared to death.
The captain watched her. She knew most of the local police, had been interrogated over and over about Dylan’s death. She swallowed, not wanting to sink into those memories.
She cracked the window an inch. “I’m okay. Thank you, Captain.”
She shivered again as cold air swept into the car. She rolled the window up and stepped on the gas, watching in her rearview mirror as Bing turned after her.
She drew her gaze from him and focused back on the road, glancing at her land on the right. Her hundred acres stood unused: some trees, some brush, some abandoned fields. A lot of farms lay fallow these days. Closer to Philadelphia or Wilmington, developers were buying up land to put in cookie-cutter housing for freshly minted yuppies who couldn’t afford the existing, expensive suburbs. This far out, commuting would be a major drag, so developers left the area alone.
Farming as a lifestyle was no longer economically feasible for most, and the new generation didn’t have the same dreams as their grandfathers anyway. A hundred-acre farm could still be bought here for a reasonable price.
Not many people were thrilled at the prospect of a hundred neglected acres, but she’d bought the place specifically for untouched nature. Sh
e loved painting that, loved the views she had of the woods from her studio window, had once loved the proximity of the reservoir she had painted a hundred times.
She didn’t even look at the frozen water now, grateful when the pine forest started on her left and blocked the view. She drove slowly, not wanting to miss her spot. In her mind, she could see the man in the shallow grave, those cerulean eyes.
She pulled over when she thought she was in the right place and dashed forward into the waist-high brush. Her feet sank into the snow, frozen branches tugging at her midcalf-length wool skirt. The police cruiser drove by, slowed, and stopped.
“You need any help, Miss Price?”
“I, uh, I’m looking for a place to paint.”
“It’s cold out here.”
Right. She had no hat or gloves on. “Just ran out on a sudden idea. I won’t be long.” She glanced down at her bare feet in her house slippers, nearly swallowed by the snow. At least, the captain couldn’t see that.
He watched her. “It’s going to turn dark soon.”
She should have brought a flashlight. “Just the dusk I’ve been looking for.” She attempted a smile and stood on the spot until the captain drove away.
Then she ran toward the creek, a couple of hundred yards from the road. I can’t be late. I have to save him. If I save him, everything is going to be all right. She needed that hope, because she wasn’t sure how much longer she could live the life she had lived this past year or so since the accident.
She trudged around a clump of larger bushes and finally spotted the small clearing in the twilight. She circled the rock, judging the distance as it had been on the painting, looking at the creek to orient herself to the correct angle. Dead weeds and low brush grabbed after her with every step, getting tangled in her long skirt, scraping her legs.
“Where are you?” Frustration had her yelling out loud.
She searched in a random pattern, then finally saw the patch of disturbed soil and fell to her knees, attacking the loose dirt with her bare hands.
Small stones scraped her skin, frozen dirt packed under her nails. She dug harder, her fingers becoming stiff with cold within seconds.
“I’m here,” she whispered as she clawed at the ground. But along with the urgency in her mind, on a parallel plane loomed the doubt that none of this was real, that she had finally gone truly and irrevocably mad.
Snow began to fall, the only sounds her fingers scraping the frozen ground and the way she gasped for air from the effort. But she uncovered absolutely nothing. Anger had her slapping her hands into the dirt.
She shrieked when she touched russet strands of hair caked with bloody mud.
Chapter Two
Jack Sullivan stared at the bright light at the end of the tunnel. He looked straight into the damn light, walked toward it, and was so glad to be rid of the pain, he couldn’t have cared less that he was dying.
Time stood like seawater trapped in a tidal pool, disconnected and unmoving. But after a while, he realized he wasn’t alone in the void.
Shannon?
No, not his sister. But someone definitely there. And the fact that he wasn’t alone brought him some peace.
Until he was yanked back—by the cold and the pain and his unfinished business—and realized that he wasn’t dead yet after all, but close to it. He couldn’t lift his hands. He tried to blink and got an eyeful of dirt.
Something heavy sat on his chest, on his whole body. Seconds passed before he understood that he’d been packed into some cold, tight space—then another second before he realized he was buried.
If there’d been anything in his clenched stomach, he might have thrown up and choked himself to death. As it was, he only heaved as disjointed memories floated back, vignettes from hell—the worst torture man could devise, and no food or water, no clothes.
His head swam. Buried alive and too weak to do anything about it. He was going to pass out again.
No.
He was a tough bastard cop, dammit. He willed himself to live.
He heard whispers—probably hallucinating. But then fingers touched his face. He wheezed for air, and then he could finally see at last. It was night, or nearly so. He had no idea what day. His eyes burned as he tried to make out the shadow that loomed over him.
Blackwell.
Fear gripped him now harder than the cold. The pain would begin again.
He couldn’t take more torture. When his hands popped free, he fought back with what little strength he had, trying to blink the dirt and blood away. The sharp smell of paint thinner hit his nose as he grabbed an arm and held it tight, twisted it, pulled the bastard down to the ground.
Wrong shape. Whoever he held felt slighter than Blackwell. This one couldn’t have gotten him the way Blackwell had. Jack held the man from behind, seeing only the back of his head and his stringy hair, some of which was stuck between them.
“Let me go!” she screamed.
What the hell?
He wouldn’t have figured Blackwell for having a partner, let alone a woman. But it all made some sick sense to his fevered mind. Some women nurtured serious obsessions for criminals. Some women struck up correspondence with murderers in prison and married them. Not impossible that Blackwell could use his sick mind to tie a woman like that to him.
He spat dirt and held on tight as she flailed. She looked a few years younger than him, dirty and ready to run, fighting him wide-eyed.
“Who are you?” He sat up, not letting her go, not giving an inch. He could barely feel his body, just enough to know that he’d been bound. No, not bound. He shrugged off the plastic, then struggled to standing, bringing her up with him.
He had no clothes on but could barely feel the cold. “How—” He cleared his raw throat. “How did you get here?”
“Car.” The single word squeaked out in a panicked whisper as she tried in vain to tug herself away. “I can’t breathe.”
And he could? In the grave?
“I couldn’t care less.” He spat again. “Which way?” He’d been blindfolded on the way here, and before, during the days of torture. He shook her as she struggled. “Stop it.”
She stilled, trembling, and reluctantly gestured with her head. He dragged her forward. In a few hundred yards, they burst out of the woods and he could see the older model Chevy Blazer, blue. Still no sign of Blackwell.
“Where is he?”
She didn’t respond, just gave a long whimper.
He dragged her along, ignoring the pained and pleading noises she made, ignoring the blackness that hovered at the edges of his vision. He was too weak to carry himself let alone somebody else, but he made it to the vehicle on sheer will. The keys dangled from the ignition.
He opened the passenger-side door and shoved the woman in, pushed her over before getting in after her. “Drive,” he growled. “Up the road, toward Broslin. You try anything, I swear to God, I’m going to kill you.”
Wishful thinking on his part. He probably couldn’t kill a fly at this stage. Hell, he wasn’t in good enough shape to drive. But by some miracle, the woman looked suitably terrified. Good. She must have seen a thing or two from Blackwell.
Her hand shook so hard, for a moment it looked chancy whether she could start the car. Since he knew his hand would shake harder, he didn’t even try.
“Go!” he shouted, not sure how long he had before Blackwell returned.
She managed at last, did a three-point turn in about a dozen jerky moves. But as darkness narrowed his peripheral vision, Jack realized he’d made a mistake. He was too far gone. He wouldn’t make it to Broslin. “Give me your phone.”
She kept her terrified gaze on the road. “I don’t have it with me.”
A quick look around netted no purse, nothing usable in the glove box either, just a sketchbook and a couple of sticks of graphite. He reached over and patted down her coat, ignoring when she shrieked and nearly landed them in the ditch.
He searched the falling night around t
hem, desperate for help, and caught sight of a farmhouse with lights in the windows in the distance. He could call for backup from there.
“The house.” He gestured with his head, then regretted it when everything before him went swimming. “Take me there.”
Tears rolled down her face. “Please.”
“Do as I say.”
She drove to the house, shivering, and pulled up the driveway. He dragged her up the two steps and held her in front of him as he knocked on the front door. If someone looked out the window next to it, they might not open up for a naked man covered in blood and grime.
But nobody answered the door, not even on the second try. Maybe they were out. His body awash in pain, he rammed the wood with his shoulder. When the door didn’t budge, he rammed it again.
“Wait.” She drew him toward the car, and he went because he no longer had the strength to stop her.
She was too scared to notice, too terrified to realize that if she knocked him down, he wouldn’t be able to rise. She grabbed the keys from the car, hobbled back to the door with him as he did his best to keep his hold on her arm.
She unlocked the door, and he pushed her in, went after her. He was about to ask why she had a key when it all clicked into place in some distant recess of his pain-fogged brain.
She lived here. Which meant Blackwell probably lived here, was probably in the house. Jack swore under his breath at the irony. He’d escaped death just to fall back, defenseless, into the hands of his worst enemy.
He let her go and turned, his vision swimming. Get back to the car. Keys first. He grabbed after her, but she was running away.
He blinked against the darkness that closed in on him. By the time he hit the floor, he was too far gone to feel a thing.
* * *
A naked, possibly dead man lay in her foyer.
Now what?
Ashley peeked from the kitchen, shivering against the cold that poured in the open front door. When she’d rushed off to save him, she hadn’t thought this far ahead, what she would do once she found him. She hadn’t thought he would attack her.
Maybe she hadn’t been supposed to save him. Maybe he was the same kind of man as whoever had put him into that shallow grave, one criminal taking out another, eliminating competition.