by Lisa Jackson
He checked the list of incoming call numbers on the display and saw that the most recent was unknown; prior to that, his name was listed twice, then Evergreen Elementary, interspersed with names, some of which he recognized, others that he didn’t. He checked the texts and saw that all the messages asked her to text or call back.
“Where the hell are you?” he wondered aloud, the small apartment almost echoing his voice. There was no sign of a break-in; nothing seemed out of place. Her laptop, television, and even some change left on the kitchen counter hadn’t been disturbed. Wet cat food was turning dry in one of the small bowls on the floor near the garbage can.
He walked back to the living room hall, where he saw that her car and house keys had been left in a small dish by the front door.
Odd.
She left and locked herself out?
Unlikely as the dead bolt had been latched.
Nothing more to do than call her friend back and tell her what he’d found: nothing. From there, he supposed, the next step was to alert her family or maybe the police.
Locking the front door behind him, he replaced the key where he’d found it, then returned to his car and hoped to high heaven that Jocelyn was all right.
He had a very bad feeling she wasn’t.
It was after seven when Kacey turned her Ford Edge off the main road to her house. She’d been fighting a bit of a headache for the last couple of hours, and her stomach was rumbling.
She checked her rearview mirror, and the car that had been following her sped past, a minivan with a Christmas tree strapped to its roof, as it turned out. Nothing sinister. Unless you thought cutting a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving was a sin, and Kacey was on the fence about that.
The minivan was followed by a dark pickup, the primary mode of transportation in these parts, and a light-colored sedan, none of which appeared malevolent as they all continued on the county road leading into the hills. Most of the time she was fine, but she wondered if she would ever feel completely safe. Whenever she was alone, old memories and doubts crept in.
All your imagination. Again. Get over it! The attack was nearly seven years ago. Are you planning to live your life by always looking over your shoulder? You’re here. In Grizzly Falls, not Seattle. You’re safe.
Kacey clenched her teeth and counted to ten. Her headlights cast warm beams over the two inches of snow that covered the ground and reflected in the millions of swirling flakes that fell from the dark sky.
The old farmhouse where she lived came into view, and she almost smiled at how, under the blue bath of the security lamp, the little cottage appeared quaint and welcoming. Built of clapboard nearly a hundred years earlier, the house had a steeply pitched roof, two dormers, and a wide porch that skirted the entire first floor. Two lights were burning, one in the living room, the other in the den, both on timers so that she wouldn’t have to walk into a dark house.
She hit the garage door opener, then, as the door yawned wide, drove inside. She made certain to close the garage door before climbing out of her SUV. She was cautious, much more careful than she’d been growing up here as a child, or as a student who had let nothing get in her way in her quest for success. With stellar grades and an athletic scholarship to a small junior college, she’d been fearless.
Which had proven to be her downfall.
Now, grabbing her laptop case, she let herself out of the garage. After locking the door quickly, she hurried along a short walkway to the back porch, where a welcoming light burned by the door. Her boots broke a path in the snow, then were muffled a bit as she climbed the few steps. Unlocking the door as she stamped off the snow, she then slipped inside and twisted the dead bolt.
She thought about getting another dog but couldn’t face the thought of leaving it for the length of time she would have to be at work every weekday. Sometimes she left the house before six in the morning and didn’t return until nearly eight in the evening. Since she lived alone, it just didn’t seem fair or right to leave a dog alone that long, and though she could adjust her schedule, and she could hire people to walk the dog, or she could bring it to the office or to the doggy day care in town, so far she’d resisted the idea. But maybe it was time to rethink that?
She glanced around this kitchen that had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. As a child, she’d visited here often, this little house on the farm her grandparents had owned. And with the house had come a succession of strays and herding dogs, sometimes three at a time, which she remembered from her long summers and winter vacations when she’d visited. The dogs had been a part of the landscape and the house.
Later, while she was married, working opposite shifts as her husband, they’d owned an aging Boston terrier he’d inherited from his mother when she’d moved into a condo that prohibited pets. The black and white dog had lasted another two years, but when Black-Jack had finally died, their marriage had been eroding and they’d never made the effort or commitment to find another dog.
Or to save the marriage.
Peeling off her coat and scarf, she hung both in a closet near the back door, then kicked off her boots and lost two inches in the process.
After filling a cup with water and placing it in the microwave, she scrounged in her refrigerator, where she found two pieces of a pizza she’d picked up three nights earlier and an unopened salad in a bag.
“Perfect,” she muttered under her breath and reminded herself that she had to stop at the store tomorrow. Her toilet paper, dish detergent, and coffee levels were getting dangerously low.
The microwave dinged and she quickly made a cup of tea, which she carried upstairs to her bedroom tucked under the eaves. Between sips of the hot brew, she stripped out of the slacks and sweater she’d worn all day. As she reached for her flannel pajama bottoms, she eyed her workout gear, black sweats, and an old Huskies long-sleeved T-shirt.
Could she do it?
Really?
With this headache?
The last thing she wanted to do was lift weights in front of the television, even though there was bound to be a Real Housewives of somewhere on and she could indulge in her own personal guilty pleasure. She’d rationalized that the mindless TV helped her unwind, and if she could exercise while watching it, all the better.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath, but she was already pulling her sweatpants from the hook where she’d hung them.
Back downstairs she finished her tea, ate half a banana, then turned on the television in the den, a cozy room separated from the front foyer with French doors, a spot where, if she closed her eyes and imagined, she could still smell her grandfather’s blend of pipe tobacco and her grandmother’s potpourri—a mixture of cinnamon, vanilla, and fruit, which she’d hoped would mask that very same tobacco.
Of course those scents, like the memories, were all in her mind. After a quick perusal of the news and finding it too depressing, she switched channels and began an exercise routine she could do by rote. While the housewives spent their normal days deep in high drama, four-inch heels, and glittering jewelry, Kacey worked out with the hand weights she kept in the long cabinet under her flat screen, while balancing on a large ball she kept tucked in the closet.
She thought longingly of the treadmill she’d left in Seattle as part of the divorce decree. At the time of the split, when she’d been an emotional wreck, Jeffrey had insisted that he needed all the exercise equipment they kept in their personal gym, and she’d been too tired to fight him for something so trivial. She had just wanted to move on, had been desperate to start a new life.
And now, with snow falling, running the country roads was out, and she wished she had the damned treadmill instead of a cardio workout tape from the nineties.
She finished her routine, somehow managing to work up a sweat. The housewives were over, and she had the remote in her hand to click off the television when the lead story for one of those entertainment “news” shows flashed on the screen and she found her
self staring at Shelly Bonaventure’s smiling face while the announcer, in a cheery voice, said, “And now the latest news on Shelly Bonaventure’s suicide.” A slide show of Shelly’s life, from the time she was a toddler until her most recent red carpet appearance, rolled over the screen. Kacey hated to admit it, but Heather was right: she and Shelly Bonaventure did look a little alike. During the quick biography, the announcer mentioned that Shelly had spent the first five years of her life in Helena, Montana, before the family moved to Southern California.
“Huh.” So the B-level actress was born in the same city as Kacey and had Montana roots. Not exactly an earth-shattering coincidence. Just because they looked alike and came from the same area, there was no reason to make anything of it. The situation was a little odd, maybe, and even possibly a bit disturbing, but really, it was just coincidence.
“And though the case has been ruled a suicide, there is still one Los Angeles detective who isn’t quite convinced,” the announcer said. The screen flashed to a handsome black man in a crisp suit and sunglasses. He was standing outside, palm trees visible in the background. The announcer’s voice continued, “Veteran detective Jonas Hayes has been with the LAPD for over fifteen years.”
A reporter appeared on the screen with the policeman. “Detective Hayes, could you comment on the ruling that Shelly Bonaventure’s death was a suicide?”
Hayes’s face turned into a scowl. “No.”
“A reliable source quoted you as saying you weren’t convinced that she took her own life.”
“No comment.”
“But, Detective Hayes,” the reporter insisted, chasing after the much taller man as he strode toward a parking lot of cars. “Is it possible that her death was a homicide?”
Hayes’s broad shoulders, under the expensive weave of his jacket, visibly stiffened. He turned slowly, pinning the reporter beneath his shaded glare. Very slowly he said, “As with all investigations, Shelly Bonaventure’s case will remain open until all the facts are in.”
“So there’s a chance of foul play?” the reporter replied, pushing.
Unlocking his car door remotely, Hayes shrugged. “Isn’t there always ‘a chance’?” he asked rhetorically, then slid behind the wheel of his vehicle.
The final frame was of taillights as his SUV blended into the thick Southern California traffic, and the screen returned to the hosts of the show.
“So I guess nothing’s conclusive,” the blond anchor said. “You know, Shelly was found much like Marilyn Monroe was half a century ago. The similarities in their deaths are really bizarre.” With that the camera panned to a large black-and-white head shot of Marilyn Monroe, which morphed into a montage of pictures of the iconic blonde and ended with an interior black-and-white shot of the death scene, her bedroom within her Brentwood bungalow.
“Trash TV,” Kacey muttered because of the exploitive edge to the segment.
And yet, possibly because of the morbidity of the report, she experienced a chill crawling up her spine, and she glanced to the window and the darkness outside.
She remembered the depths of her own despair, the fear in those frightening moments when her own life had been threatened, when she was certain she would die, when she stared into the face of evil.
For a split second, she remembered those horrid last words spoken by the man who had meant to run a knife through her heart. She shuddered, his last words, which had been snarled as he staggered away, reverberating through her mind. It’s not over. . . . You’re one of them.
His vile prediction had meant nothing, the ramblings of a deranged man whose psychosis and deadly intentions had somehow been trained on her. Don’t go there.... It’s over!
Shaking off the memory, she forced her attention to the television screen.
The hostess of the show, a blonde who appeared to be a human version of a Barbie doll, mentioned Shelly’s acting credits, rumored lovers, and reiterated the fact that though her death was ruled a suicide, detectives at the LAPD “hadn’t ruled out the possibility of foul play.”
Wide-eyed, glossy lipstick perfect, the hostess went on to the possibility of a conspiracy with her cohost, a younger, hipper man in a dark suit, with spiked hair.
Kacey clicked off the television.
On her way to the bathroom for a quick shower, she started peeling off her workout clothes and was naked once she reached the small room. Inside, she turned on the water and hit the play button on her radio before stepping into the old claw-foot tub and drawing the curtain closed.
Hot water pulsed against her skin, and she felt the tension of the day start to ease from her muscles. Lathering, she washed, humming to a song by Katy Perry and forcing her mind away from Trace O’Halleran, where it had wandered whenever she had a free minute to herself, which, today, in the midst of flu season and appointments all day, hadn’t happened often.
In those few minutes, though, she’d found herself wondering about him, about Eli’s mother, and the unknown Miss Wallis, his “girlfriend” according to his son.
“Forget it,” she said aloud, twisting off the tap. He wasn’t even her type. She’d never been one to go for the backwoods, rugged alpha male in battered jeans, a beat-up jacket, who lacked a razor.
Yeah? And what good did that do you? Remember polished, sophisticated Jeffrey Charles Lambert, the heart surgeon whom you fell for? Was he your type? That didn’t turn out so well, now, did it? Face it, Acacia, your track record when it comes to men is pretty dismal.
“Oh, stop!” she muttered under her breath, disgusted with the turn of her thoughts. Maybe she spent too many hours with her own thoughts when she was alone. It could just be time to rethink the issue of owning a dog.
So O’Halleran was the most handsome cowboy she’d met. So he seemed dedicated to his child. So her own biological clock was ticking like crazy, so loudly that she avoided the maternity wing in the hospital. So what?
The old pipes groaned. She heard over the DJ’s chatter on the radio a noise that didn’t seem to belong in the house. Grabbing a towel, she wrapped it around her as she stepped out of the tub, listening hard.
Nothing.
Was someone in the house?
Or was the sound only her imagination?
Still dripping, her heart pounding a little, she toweled off quickly and snagged her robe from its hook on the back of the bathroom door. Shoving her arms down the thick terry sleeves, she strained her ears, hearing nothing. Cinching the robe around her waist, she moved cautiously into the hallway.
Nothing looked or sounded out of the ordinary.
Scraaaape!
Her heart flew to her throat, and she walked stealthily along the hallway toward the noise. It’s nothing.... But she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle in warning. Peeking around the corner, she saw that everything was just as she had left it. The exercise ball still in the middle of the den, the remote for the television on the carpet nearby.
She rounded the corner and was starting for the kitchen when the sound, a deep grating noise, erupted nearby. She spun around, her eyes wildly searching the darkened dining room, her heart a drum.
Scraaape! Against the glass of the old window. She nearly shrieked when she saw a skeletal hand rake along the pane.
“Oh, God!” She staggered back, a scream rising in her throat just as she recognized the blackened hand for what it was—a weathered, leafless branch of the shrubbery on the east side of the house.
She sank down hard on a kitchen chair, drained, her vivid imagination and her deep-seated fears getting the best of her. She was a doctor, a professional, trained to be calm in emergencies, and yet a stupid tree branch had nearly sent her running for her grandfather’s shotgun. “Get a grip,” she told herself, feeling like a fool. “This is ridiculous.”
Pulling her wits about her, she heated the slices of pizza in the microwave, threw the salad into a bowl, poured herself a glass of red wine from the bottle she’d opened three days earlier, and carried it all to the den, wh
ere she clicked on the television again and told herself this was the life she’d always wanted after she’d divorced Jeffrey.
She glanced out the window to the darkness beyond.
There was no one lurking in the shadows, just beyond the veil.
She was safe here. Home at last.
Or so she tried to convince herself as she shuttered all the blinds and refused to look beyond the frosty glass.
But in her heart, deep in the darkest of places only she recalled, she knew that she’d run away. Not only from a cheating husband, a doctor with a God complex, but also from the past, and the one night she tried never to remember.
The problem was, she couldn’t run away.
Wherever she went, the memory of that night chased her down, nipping and snarling at her heels, the pain and terror never quite leaving her alone.
From the knoll, he trained his long-distance binoculars on the cottage, but even with the high magnification, he saw little through the curtain of snow. Yes, there were images of her in her den and kitchen, and the bathroom light came on for a few minutes, but her figure was indistinct, her face completely blurred, and when she finally pulled the shades, he could watch no longer.
He had the audio, of course, tiny microphones hidden in her house, in spots she would never find, but he’d never been able to install a remote camera, and that bothered him for he would have enjoyed watching her surreptitiously, from a distance, learning more about her, about her routine, about what really made her tick.
His fascination was obsessive, he knew, as he stood shivering in the thicket of aspen and spruce that grew at the edge of a field near her house, but he couldn’t help himself.
She was the special one; of all the pretenders, she was the most dangerous. Smart and beautiful, Acacia Collins Lambert, a doctor no less.