He opened it without pause. Then he stopped.
So did I.
And so did Denver as he stood there on the other side of the door, hand clasped into a loose fist as he looked ready to knock.
Shit.
Denver.
He looked right at me, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.
I’d moved on from one brother quick smart to the next.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Thorne asked pointedly.
It took Denver a few seconds to stop staring at me. “I had to come and tell you in person.”
“What?”
“A Federal task force is being created. This is no longer solely a local matter. From now on, you’ll be working with the FBI.”
“What?”
“These murders involved interstate travelers, and the sequence of events thus far suggests the activities of a serial killer; both of these are Federal matters and fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI.”
“I don’t need to be told the law, Denver,” Thorne snapped.
“You’re taking the case from the Wetlake police?” I asked quietly from behind Thorne, already lost.
“No.” Denver barely glanced my way. “This is not the movies. The FBI doesn’t and can’t sweep in and take an investigation from local law enforcement. We have been called in to assist though, and we will be starting up a task force.”
“I don’t need your help,” Thorne spat back. “We can do this on our own.”
“Don’t be such an ass; this isn’t about you. We have a potential serial killer on our hands. The only way to catch this guy and to do it quick enough is to draw on Federal resources.” Denver’s expression went beyond stony; he was glacial.
“Guys,” I said quietly.
“You think we can’t handle this?” Thorne let go of the door and stepped closer to his brother.
“Guys,” I raised my voice.
“How many times do I have to tell you, this is not about you. And yes, you can’t handle this alone. US law is explicit on that one. This matter crosses state borders and is far bigger than Wetlake. You’ve already had two interstate travelers brutally murdered. Are you going to wait until there’s another one until you accept you need every resource we can give you?” Denver flicked his gaze to me and then quickly returned his furious attention to his brother.
He’d glanced my way only for a split second.
The effect on me was instant though – I grabbed a hand to my mouth as a powerful wave of sickness rushed through me.
Another one? A serial killer? Shit. Did Denver still think I’d be next?
Thorne practically hissed at his brother, but didn’t say another word.
“Now, I didn’t mean to interrupt you two—” Denver began.
“I was just sleeping on the couch,” I announced immediately and really awkwardly.
In fact, Thorne looked around blinking at my rather stressed assertion.
I coughed as I felt my cheeks turn bright red and tried to compose myself. “Ah... I was just on my way to the police station to give a statement.”
“And then she’s heading out of town,” Thorne filled in, his tone unreadable.
“Yeah,” I agreed in perhaps the dodgiest tone I’d ever used. Clearing my throat, I nodded my head repeatedly.
Christ, there was nothing going on between Thorne and me – or at least not yet – but here I was frothing at the mouth in my attempts to allay Denver’s fears.
Not done making an ass out of myself, I tugged my hair over my shoulder and promptly got my ring stuck in it.
“Right, whatever,” Denver managed, his glacial stare thawing slightly, but still decidedly edgy and mean. “It’s a good idea to get out of town, but you’re going to have to share details of where you’re headed.”
“Of course. I’m not in any... real danger, am I? Thorne’s right, yeah? This is just a misunderstanding? Just some dumb joke? None of the others received threats, did they?” it was a real struggle forcing out my jumbled thoughts, but I managed it. It was even more of a struggle considering both Scott brothers were looking at me intently, both as moody as the other.
“No,” Thorne said.
“I don’t know,” Denver spoke over him. “We’ll play this by the book. So far all three suspected murders have been people attending the reunion.”
“Sorry, three? What do you mean three suspected murders? Has there been another one?” I spluttered.
Denver looked pissed off at himself for a moment and even shook his head.
“Smooth,” Thorne muttered.
“It doesn’t matter; it’ll come out in the papers soon enough. And god knows we can’t stop people in a small town like this from chatting.” Denver thumbed his nose as he spoke gruffly.
“This has something to do with Nancy’s room, doesn’t it? What did you find in there? And what happened to her?”
Neither of the Scotts answered me, instead choosing to face me with virtually the same stiff-lipped silence.
This was driving me mad.
I put a hand up quickly and forced my fingernails hard into my palm. “Fine, I get it. I’ll just go home and wait on the couch until this hits the news or I get a knock on the door from a guy with a gun.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” Thorne began.
“You’ll be monitored,” Denver spoke over the top of him.
Well shit.
Fine.
I took a sharp breath.
My stay in Wetlake was over. No more tempting brushes with Denver in motels, and no more home-cooked breakfasts with Thorne up in the mountains.
Which was probably a good thing. If the threat of possibly maybe impending murder weren’t enough, the animosity between these too would drive me nuts.
I took a sharp step forward and headed for the door, scratching my neck hard with my nails as I went. “I’ll give my statement and go.”
Though Denver reluctantly got out of my way, he gave me one of the most conflicted looks I’d ever seen – half-angry, half-worried, and all messed up.
I tried to ignore what it did to my stomach and nerves, and headed straight out to my car.
“Hey, I’ll be right behind you,” Thorne said quickly, “just let me get dressed.”
I waved in reply as I listened to the front door close.
Before it did, I heard the two brothers exchange some highly charged words.
Christ, anymore of this and there’d be two more murders in Wetlake; Thorne and Denver would kill each other and likely take the house down with them.
Walking over to my car, I quickly heard that someone was following me.
Denver.
Shit.
I reached my car and grabbed my keys from my bag.
I wasn’t quick enough to open the door, start the ignition, and speed off though; he reached me.
He didn’t clear his throat, and neither did he ask me to stop; he placed a hand on my shoulder.
It wasn’t aggressive, and his fingers didn’t weigh down heavily into the flesh and muscle.
But damn did it send all the wrong kinds of tingles through my stomach and up my back. It was like electricity blasting through my veins.
Letting out possibly the most pathetic noise in the history of utterances, I fought the urge to duck forward and shelter in my car.
I couldn’t keep on trying to hide from this guy while he was right there.
Finally I mustered the courage to turn.
Though he let his hand drop as I shifted, that didn’t change the fact he was right there, barely a half meter away, close enough so that I could see the exact expression playing through his eyes.
“Denver?” I shook a little as I said his name.
I was usually far more confident than this. Then again, my life had never been this complex. My usual dates did not involve murder, intrigue, and a double crush on the world’s moodiest brothers.
“What happened last night?” he asked directly.
I h
ad to snort at that. Really? Did he think he’d known me long enough to be that direct? While something had almost happened with us in the motel room, the operative word there was almost.
We were not together, and he had no real right to inquire what I’d done last night.
He didn’t ask again; he simply locked me in the same damn deep and questioning look until I snorted and gave up. “Though it’s none of your business, nothing happened. I went back to my room and there I stayed until Thorne came around to tell me what had happened – though he didn’t end up telling me much at all. When I told him I’d had jack of this town and what was happening here, and that I wanted to drive home, he tried to stop me. He told me it was safer to leave in the morning, and me being the complicit and sensible girl that I am, I believed him. When I told him I couldn’t bear the thought of staying at the motel, he said I could crash in his house while he was at work. I woke up approximately half an hour ago and I ate eggs with fresh dill at his kitchen table. And then you showed up and started asking all your damn personal questions, as usual,” I blurted out my long account, voice harsh and quick.
I wanted Denver to know he had no right to be a) inquiring about me, and b) judging what I’d done.
Denver’s gaze did not change. He did not look relieved and neither did he look moved in any way. “That’s not what I meant. But thank you for that rather long and tiresome tale nonetheless.”
“Excuse me? Where the hell do you get off being such a jerk? And what exactly were you asking then?”
“I wanted to know—” he began slowly, clearly thinking of an excuse.
“Bullshit,” I interrupted in a snap, “you wanted to know if I’d slept with your brother. Well the answer there is no. But once again, that’s none of your business. Now I’m going to the police station, and then I’m going to leave this frigging town behind me.”
I said town, but we both knew I meant him.
Grabbing my keys, I yanked my door open and sat down with a thump.
He took a step back from the car, but that’s it. He didn’t try to stop me, and neither did he say a single word.
He just watched me key the ignition, reverse, and drive off.
Damn him. Damn him.
Hitting the road, I turned onto it in a screech of tires, not exactly slowing down as much as I should. Then I slammed my foot on the accelerator as I sped up, enjoying the hum of the engine as the computer changed gears.
“Goddamn asshole,” I spat as I glared at the trees lining the road and thought only of one man.
Just where did Denver Scott get off being so... insensitive?
Okay, so maybe he’d been legitimately shocked to see me in his brother’s house. Yet when I’d explained myself, that hadn’t dampened his holy and vengeful fire in the least.
The guy had a chip on his shoulder, and I was sick of standing underneath its shadow.
Realizing it was a seriously bad idea to drive angry along roads I barely knew, I quickly slowed down.
I was going to head to town, but as I drove those tight, winding roads, it took me a while to realize that just maybe I was driving in the wrong direction.
“Oh fuck,” I swore as I slowed the car down, pulling over to the side of the road.
I let the engine run idle as I grabbed my phone from my bag. I had every intention of checking the GPS map and every hope that the darn thing wouldn’t tell me I was in the middle of a field or a lake.
There was a problem though – my phone was out of charge. What with murder and the distraction of those Scott boys, I’d forgotten to charge it for a day and a half.
I swore again, even louder than before.
Turning off the engine, I rooted around in my bag, looking for my car charger. Unable to find it, I let out the tersest breath you could imagine as I got out of the front and grabbed my luggage roughly from my trunk. I tore through it looking for the car charger, but I couldn’t find it.
Goddamn.
Great.
No phone. This was brilliant.
Now I had no option but to turn around and try to make my way back to Thorne’s house.
Getting back in the front seat, I indulged in striking the steering wheel several times with the base of my palm.
Then I started the ignition – or at least I tried to.
I turned the key to on, but nothing happened.
My eyes grew wide in disbelief.
I tried the engine over and over again.
It didn’t work.
Holy crap. No phone. No car. No idea which direction town was.
Had I really just stormed out on Denver and Thorne only to wind up lost, alone, and in trouble?
I sat there for a few minutes, trying to calm myself down. All I had to do was walk back in the direction I’d come. I could find Thorne’s house on foot. And if I was seriously lucky, I’d run into the guy on his way to town.
Okay, it was a plan. But I was kind of forgetting something here.
There was a serial killer on the loose in Wetlake.
Now was not a good time to be stranded on the side of the road, surrounded by such dark and menacing woods.
“Oh... god,” I managed.
Then I forced myself to get out of my car.
I grabbed my bag, I hooked it over my shoulder, and I locked the car behind me.
Then I turned around, and I started to walk.
It wasn’t a particularly chilly day, but I shivered with every step. It was a combination of the dark, dank woods and the cold realization I was now on my own.
Willing myself to believe that I wasn’t in any real danger and everything was in my mind, I diligently took one step after another.
It was at moments like these that you realized just how wild forests were. The sounds and smells were completely different to the smog and car horns of the city.
Grating my teeth together, I tried desperately hard not to jump at every bump and scrape filtering in from the tall trees above and the dark dips and valleys below.
It took me a long time until I heard a car, and though at first my heart leapt, it quickly sank fast.
When I’d first driven into town, long before anyone had been murdered, I’d expressed a real fear of getting lost in the woods only to come across some friendly psychopath all too ready to torture me to death in their abandoned cabin.
Well, now my imagination wasn’t just getting the better of me – it caused sweat to race over my brow as my blood practically froze with fear.
Jerking my head to the side, I genuinely thought about jumping over a slim section of metal railing protecting the edge of the road from a sheer drop off that led all the way down to a winding section of river far below.
It was dumb, it was dangerous, but that did not stop me from scooting over to the railing and groping at it with sweaty hands as I tried to hook a leg over it.
Before I could manage to vault over, the car came into view.
My heart could have popped as so much adrenaline rushed through me that I started to quake like an animal.
The car was a station wagon. Long and rigidly square, it was from the “70s or “80s and had that atrociously bad fake wood paneling over the side.
Definitely a serial killer’s car, my mind screamed at me.
The car started to slow down.
Fuck. I tried to continue my suicidal attempt at jumping over the railing that led down to a long fall and almost certain death.
The car reached me.
The car stopped.
I could have died from fright as the driver wound down their passenger window and leaned out.
“Patti?”
I blinked hard.
I knew that voice.
It was sweet, it was genuine, and it sure as shit didn’t belong to a man with a foot-long beard and a penchant for carving up women in the woods.
I relaxed, letting out the biggest breath of air I could.
“Annabelle?”
“What are you doing trying to climb ov
er that railing, sweetie? There’s a sheer cliff behind. You’ll do yourself an injury.”
I started laughing, because seriously, I was a complete idiot. Foot-long beards and axes? It was freaking Annabelle Shaw, possibly the nicest person to have ever graduated from Wetlake High and certainly the most sociable. Though I couldn’t say her reunion had been a hit – though several people had been hit – even I could appreciate why she’d organized it.
Personalities like Annabelle wanted to bring people together.
They also wanted to help. Right now I could do with a whole bucket of help.
Straightening up and pulling myself back over the railing, I let out another brief laugh at how stupid I’d been. “Yep, Annabelle, that’s a very good point. Look, I’ve kind of run into a bit of car trouble—”
“I saw a gray little hatchback thing pulled off to the side of the road a few miles back. Is that yours, honey?”
I nodded.
“But why are you trying to climb over that railing? It’s a long way down to the river, and you can’t exactly swim the thing back to town; she’s full of rocks, boulders, and the occasional bear going for a fish. You need a lift instead?”
I smiled widely.
Yes, I needed a lift. I also needed a head examination. Had I really worked myself up so much that jumping over a freaking steep cliff had sounded like a good idea?
Firmly tucking my tail between my legs, I nodded and gingerly walked up to her car. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but thank you so much for your offer. And as for why I was climbing over the railing,” I let out a nervous but thankful burst of laughter as I opened her passenger door and climbed in, “well, this is going to sounds nuts, but what with all the murders,” my tone dropped and tightened, “I...” I trailed off, breathless.
“Thought you might meet someone nasty on the road. Yeah, I get it, sweetie. We’re all a little jumpy in town. I just...” she trailed off and swallowed loudly, “can’t believe someone could be doing this in Wetlake and to our reunion class. This was meant to be a time to get together, but instead—”
“I’m so sorry, Annabelle, I know you probably put your heart and soul into organizing this,” I commiserated as I did up my seat belt and felt some much needed sorrow for someone other than myself.
This reunion and its horrible aftermath hadn’t just affected me; the whole town and every guest that had traveled here were all swept up in it too.
A Deadly Reunion Page 12