She checked the road before she crossed, but traffic was light. It was January 2. A Friday. Some people had returned to work but many more had taken it as a vacation day and made it an extra-long weekend.
The cottage she was headed for belonged to the church, who rented it out at a reasonable rate to families in need. It had been freshly painted bright white, the shutters a sky blue, and the shingles had been replaced since she’d been here last—the day her mother’s headstone had been installed. She knocked on the front door. No sound from within.
She waited, but no one answered. Kit’s car was here so Izzy wasn’t about to walk away without exerting a little effort. She headed around to the back door and knocked again. The lawn was slightly long but not out of control. Her glance went to the open garage at the end of the drive. A beat-up Chevy van took up most of the space, but a black dirt bike was tucked down one side. A tingle of awareness shot up Izzy’s spine. Still no answer from the cottage.
Was Kit avoiding her? That was entirely possible. But so was the chance her sister was in danger. Izzy pulled out her cell and dialed her sister’s number again. A snatch of a ring tone floated over the tall fence from the direction of the cemetery. And along with it another sound—voices. Then the voices grew louder. People were arguing and one of those people sounded a lot like Kit.
Izzy reached into her jacket and grasped her Glock and ran back the way she’d come, jogging to the main gate, trying to force herself to relax. Memories of Helena’s dead eyes refused to leave her alone and amped up her fear to full-out panic. She increased the pace but then slowed, hugging the wall of the church as she peered around the corner. Some tall lanky guy held onto Kit’s arm with one hand, a cigarette dangling from the other. He leaned down and yelled into her face. “It wasn’t my fucking idea, and the cops are going to crucify me if they find out.”
Whoa.
The young man had straight, ink black hair and pinched narrow features. She didn’t recognize him. She held the gun in a two-handed grip, pointing it at the ground but making sure it was visible as she stepped around the corner and approached the teens who stood at the end of a cracked concrete path.
“Get away from her,” Izzy gritted out.
Kit’s jaw dropped and her expression turned incredulous. “Oh, my God. Go away, Izzy. This has nothing to do with you!”
Izzy kept her expression neutral at her sister’s less than happy greeting. Nice.
“I said, get your hands off my sister,” Izzy repeated to the creep. The cop comment had her senses on high alert. What had he done that would make them crucify him?
He snorted and said to Kit. “That’s your sister? You’re right, she’s a total bitch.”
Izzy flinched and her mouth went dry. The young man didn’t seem to recognize her, which meant if he was the bad guy, he didn’t know anything about her past misdemeanors.
Kit jerked her arm out of the boy’s grip. “Shut up, Damien.” She turned back to Izzy. “What are you even doing here? Why do you have your frickin’ gun out?”
“I saw him attacking you.”
Damien shook his head and rolled his eyes. Kit looked like she was going to stamp her feet like a two-year-old.
“Dammit, Izzy, we were arguing. If you shoot everyone I shout at, you’d better start with yourself.”
Ouch. She ignored the hurt that statement wrought and slid the weapon back into the holster, but she didn’t snap it closed.
“So, what were you two arguing about?”
“None of your business,” Kit muttered.
Izzy narrowed her gaze at both of them. “Fine. Why don’t we add this to the list of potential topics? If you ever do drugs on my property again, you,” she pointed to the guy she assumed to be Damien Ridgeway, “will be receiving a visit from the police.”
He sneered. “But not your precious sister?”
“For God’s sake, grow up. She’ll be talking to the cops, all right, but she isn’t the one supplying.” She held Kit’s gaze with narrow eyes. “She’ll also be grounded until school finishes.”
Kit crossed her arms over her chest. She was wearing a couple of long sleeved t-shirts and jeans so tight Izzy could see the joints in her knees. “You can’t ground me, Izzy. You are not my mother.”
“Thank God.” Izzy smiled her professional smile. “But I’m your legal guardian and I can limit your funds enough you can’t even afford to buy gas, let alone cannabis.”
“Sal will give me more shifts at the diner.” Kit gave her a sly smile. “And, anyway, I don’t need to buy it. I can get anything I want if I ask nicely enough.”
Damien smirked at the ground.
The insinuation in the word “ask” was blatantly sexual.
“Jesus, Kit, you’re seventeen. Don’t mess up your life when you’re just starting out.”
Kit shook her head. “Why am I the only high school student getting reamed out for being normal? Everyone does it. Why do you have to be such a hard ass?”
“Helena didn’t do drugs,” Izzy argued.
Kit’s blue eyes glittered. “Helena’s dead, Iz. Thanks for reminding me.”
“Is this how you honor her memory? By going off the rails?”
Kit’s eyes filled, and the tears brimmed over. “What does it matter? She’ll never know!”
Izzy knew she was handling this wrong. If someone broke their leg, she was more than capable of repairing that injury. But when it came to messy emotions like love and guilt she could barely cope with her own issues, let alone a hormonal female who’d lost her mother and her best friend within the space of a year. Part of her wanted to wrap Kit in her arms and baby her, the other part wanted to shake some sense into her.
Kit was better than this, although she was doing a damn good job acting like a loser. The government should bring back compulsory National Service and give these youngsters some understanding of hard work, sacrifice, and service. The fact Izzy thought of the teens as youngsters made her feel as ancient as sand.
Damien shifted his feet, drawing her attention back to him.
“Where were you last night, Damien?” Izzy quizzed him.
He remained silent. Was he the one who’d broken into the tool shed? Was he the one who’d stolen her shovel? He was too young to have watched her on the beach all those years ago, but could he have killed Helena? Izzy couldn’t read him. “Where’s your mother?”
“None of your business.”
“I see you have a dirt bike.”
His brows jammed together. “So what?”
She turned to Kit because Damien wasn’t going to tell her a damned thing, the little weasel. “The night of the party, when you came back to the cottage—did you see anyone outside, near our house?”
Kit’s expression changed, and then she shook her head. “I didn’t see anything, Izzy. I was so wasted I wouldn’t have noticed a thing unless it bit me on the ass.”
Damien smiled in a way Izzy did not like. She narrowed her gaze at him and the expression vanished. “What about you? Did you see anything?”
“I was too busy looking at Kit’s ass to be looking out the window.”
She lunged forward and grabbed the guy, shoving him against the brick wall. His eyes went wide and his skin lost color. “You want me to tell the cops about you supplying a seventeen-year-old with weed?”
Kit started screeching to let him go and Izzy shoved him away from her.
He kept his mouth shut but the anger in his gaze burned. After a tense moment, he took another long drag of his cigarette, dropped the stub, screwing it into the ground with his heel. “I don’t think you know your precious sister as well as you think you do, bitch.”
She gritted her teeth at the “bitch” insult. Wasn’t the first time she’d been called it. Probably wouldn’t be the last. As for not knowing Kit very well, tell her something she didn’t already know.
“I’ll talk to you later, Kit.” He turned away, walking down the fence to a gate Izzy hadn’t spotted earlier.<
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Kit gave Izzy an exasperated look and stalked off down the path. “I can’t believe you just did that.”
“He was hurting you when I arrived.”
Kit rubbed her arm. “He was holding onto my arm. Jeez. I’d have decked him if he’d tried anything.”
And then he could have knocked the crap out of her, the same way some asshole had done to Jesse and Helena. “Damien could be the killer.”
“He’s a friend of mine.” Kit defended him.
“Didn’t look like much of a friend to me.”
“That’s because you don’t have any friends, Izzy. You’re too fucking high and mighty for the people around here.”
Izzy flinched, but she didn’t have time for a pity party, not with a killer on the loose. “Last night someone broke into our toolshed, and smacked me on the head when I went to investigate.”
Kit’s expression turned to one of total horror. “What time?”
“About two.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“When my gunshot didn’t wake you, I figured you must be exhausted and needed the rest.”
“You fucking shot someone?” Her sister’s mouth hung open.
Izzy shook her head. “Just into the ground to attract the attention of the FBI next door.”
“But you didn’t wake me?”
“You had your headphones on…”
“And you wonder why I don’t talk to you?” For once Kit looked disappointed in her, rather than the other way around.
A wave of shame rolled over Izzy. Kit was right, she should have woken her, but it was too late to change that now. She was used to doing things on her own. Izzy pushed on because what she had to say was more important than sisterly issues. “The thing is, when ASAC Frazer and I took a look at the shed I realized our shovel was missing, and…” She had to swallow repeatedly to get the words out. “He, ASAC Frazer that is, showed me a picture of the shovel that was used to beat Jesse the other night, and…it was ours.” She moved closer so her words didn’t carry on the wind. “Whoever broke into the shed last night rode a dirt bike. Is it possible Damien left you at some point in the evening on New Year’s—when you were asleep?”
Kit stared at her.
“I guess what I’m asking is, do you think he could have done it? Attacked Helena?” Izzy finished awkwardly.
Kit’s lips parted and she shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Really? “So why did he say the cops would crucify him if they found out? Found out what?”
Kit turned and walked to their mother’s grave. Izzy followed at a distance. Her mother’s stone had fresh flowers and a little Christmas tree—presumably left by Kit or Uncle Ted.
“It’s not what you think, Iz.” Kit picked up her purse, which lay beside the stone. “Damien has been in trouble with the law before. If they find out he was smoking pot, he’ll get kicked out of school and he wants to graduate high school and try and get a decent job.” She looked up, eyes pleading. “There’s no way I’d be with him if I thought he’d hurt Helena.”
After a moment Izzy nodded. What else could she do? “Promise me one thing.”
Her sister closed her eyes. “What?”
“If you have sex—which you shouldn’t be doing, but God knows you wouldn’t be the first seventeen-year-old to do it—please, please, use protection.” She raised her hands when Kit opened her mouth to argue. “I don’t want to hear anything except that promise, right now.”
“I’m not an idiot.” The expression on her sister’s face shut down. “Sure, I promise.” Kit knelt beside the grave and pulled away some of the longer grass. She stayed that way for a few minutes while the anger and sorrow of the last few days dissipated. “I wish Mom was buried next to Dad.”
A shudder went through Izzy at the idea.
“She always said how much she loved him.”
Izzy closed her eyes and clenched her hands into fists to try to contain the emotions that welled up inside her. They’d both idolized him.
“I’m glad she’s not here to see this.”
Izzy nodded. She was glad, too. For different reasons.
Kit straightened the flowers and then picked up the little Christmas tree before rising to her feet. “Helena put this here before Christmas.” She sniffed tearfully, the moody teen shifting into the grief-stricken young woman. “We’d better take it down else we’ll have bad luck.”
Tears streamed down Kit’s cheeks. This time they streamed down Izzy’s too.
She sniffed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her, Kit.”
Kit gave her a wobbly smile. “Me, too.”
Izzy’s phone buzzed and she dried her eyes and checked the screen. A slice of dread cut through her. The police chief needed to see her, urgently.
* * *
HE DROVE ALONG a highway he hadn’t traveled since Ferris Denker had been caught. He whistled along to some classic rock station on the radio, feeling happier than he had in ages. He laughed as he remembered the scare Izzy Campbell had given him last night. Scared him out of his ever-loving mind. First the cat rubbing against his leg as he’d wiped prints off the lock and door, then Izzy coming outside with her fricking gun drawn. Thankfully, she hadn’t seen his face.
If she hadn’t gotten that shot off, he might have taken her. The idea of having Izzy Campbell at his mercy was tempting. Taking her from beneath the nose of the FBI? Electrifying. Izzy was something else. He admired her. She was smart and pretty. But underneath that cool front, lay deliciously dark secrets. All these years he’d watched the family from the shadows, wondering if the day would ever come when he revealed what she’d done. So it was just as well he hadn’t taken her last night because then the show would be over and it was too much fun to rush. He licked his lips. He was getting aroused again and he glanced in the back of the van. He’d taken a whore. Given her some coke and tied her up so tight she’d be in agony if she woke up, but not dead. She wasn’t dead. Anticipation was driving him crazy, but he had to do this right, and he wasn’t some amateur who couldn’t control himself—well, except for Helena and that had worked out fine. His buddy Ferris was relying on him and he loved the fact he was the one outside orchestrating this shit, when Ferris had always considered himself the brains of their little club.
Another thirty minutes and he saw the turn off. The sign was so weathered and faded he wouldn’t have been able to read it unless he’d already known what it said. “St. Joseph’s School for Boys.”
He turned down the rutted, overgrown road, the suspension rattling and bouncing over the uneven ground. He drove past the decaying red brick building with its central clock tower. The school had been abandoned thirty years ago, but the building had been falling into disrepair long before that. Most of the windows were broken, the ground floor ones boarded up to prevent break-ins. Why they bothered was beyond him. There were bats in the belfry and rats in the cellars, damp and rot on every level in-between. A fire had taken one wing of the building a few years after they’d graduated. It had been the final straw for the school and it had shut its doors forever. Maybe Ferris had set the place alight himself.
He wished he’d thought of it first.
He drove on, past the tennis courts and the overgrown athletics track. His gut churned as he remembered all those boys with their skinny legs and knobby knees. The changing rooms had been burned to the ground years ago. He and Ferris had seen to that, smoking dope and pissing into the flames.
He wished the gym teacher was still alive so he could kill the bastard. His hands shook from the fury of what the man had done to him. Ferris had always said the guy had set them free, allowed them to become who they truly were, but he didn’t believe him. He’d been created by one man’s twisted lust and what he’d become was payback for no one giving a damn.
It was so clichéd for the abused to become abusers, but this was a school and it had taught him well.
He drove farther until he hit the edge of a wood. He looked for th
e path, but it was so overgrown he couldn’t see it. Shit. Ferris had told him to display the corpse wearing Beverley’s bracelet directly over the spot where they’d buried their first victim, under the noses of their teachers. Obviously, he’d altered that plan when Helena had interrupted him in the dunes, but this would work. In fact, in terms of getting attention, two murders worked far better than one. He parked and got out, parted the brambles where he thought the path should be. Thorns caught at his clothes, but he brushed them aside with his thick work gloves. He pushed through and spotted the hut that had covered the well. There.
He grinned and went back to the van, opened the back, dragged off the tarp.
The whore rolled on her back, twisting against the bonds, dilated pupils telling him she was still high. He grabbed her ankle and dragged her roughly toward him, bending to haul her over his shoulder. She was a prostitute he’d picked up, with a micro skirt, black leather bustier and desperate eyes. The black patent leather heels had shone brightly in the sun, attracting his attention. That’s how he’d chosen her. That’s how he’d known she was the one.
He tramped through the dense undergrowth with the woman over his shoulders, batting away the briars. Hell. The area was almost totally reclaimed by the forest. Crazy how fast that happened. His heart beat a little faster at the thought of what was to come. His erection strained against his zipper as the woman struggled against him. The coke was wearing off. She was starting to understand this wasn’t some drug-fueled hallucination. This was real.
He went past the well. Beyond was a large American oak that had probably been planted before the revolution. He turned right, pushing through the saplings and bushes. There, finally, a large clearing with a series of large stones that formed a circle about ten feet in diameter. He dumped the woman on the ground.
The woman’s terrified eyes met his, clearer than they had been when she’d first told him the price and climbed into the cab. She wasn’t worth what she’d asked but he hadn’t planned on paying her. He took off his gloves and removed a condom from his back pocket and covered himself. The DNA floating around in her pussy should keep the cops busy for a year. Get a few johns some interesting visits from the cops, that was for damned sure. He placed the condom wrapper carefully in his vest pocket and zipped the pocket. He’d shaved his body hair to prevent leaving any behind. There would be no mistakes this time. He put his gloves back on, wishing he could touch her the way he wanted to and knowing it was impossible. She was a token. A cheap gift for Ferris. The hunger was growing stronger, as if by allowing himself to take Helena it had destroyed the control he’d always prided himself on.
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