Nocturne In Ashes: A Riley Forte Suspense Thriller, Book One

by Chase, Joslyn

  She’d have to maneuver the kayak closer to shore where she could see the houses that lined the contour of the lake. She pulled to the right and paddled for several long minutes without seeing anything beyond the prow of the kayak. Just as she thought she might have entered the Twilight Zone, the faint outline of a house materialized, just a shimmer at first, then clarifying into something solid. Beside it, another house loomed, and Riley knew where she was.

  Again, she stopped to listen for sounds of pursuit. Tiny, gentle waves lapped the nearby shore, but she heard no rhythmic paddling. There was something, though, some sound she couldn’t identify. A kind of electric hum. No motorized boats were allowed on the lake and she was pretty sure the boat yard harbored no such craft. It was difficult to distinguish from whence the sound came and as she drifted closer to shore, the hairs on the back of her neck rose in a prickling wave.

  The volume increased suddenly, as if an obstacle had been removed, and around the corner of the nearest house, a golf cart bobbed into view. It bounced over the manicured lawn and gained the path that ran along the shore of the lake. She was close enough to look into Teren’s eyes as he sat at the wheel. They were flat and hard, matching the granite planes of his jaw.

  The path circled the lake entirely. He could dog her the whole way, and he’d never let her reach the clubhouse. If he lost sight of her, he’d cover that end of the lake, cutting her off. If she shouted, would someone hear her? Would it matter?

  They could play cat and mouse until one of them ran out of juice, or she could just cut and run, heading for the opposite shore and banking that he couldn’t get clear around the two long sides of the lake before she could cover the short radius and disappear into the forested ridge once again.

  She opted for Plan B, turned, and dug in with the paddle.

  CHAPTER 88

  FRANK STOOD OVER HIS HELPLESSLY sobbing wife. The name Myrna spoke when she roused from her comatose state had shocked them all. Teren was a respected member of their community, and Millie had adored him. It was near impossible to assimilate the thought that he was the killer who’d terrorized their camp and murdered a string of innocents.

  He rested his hand on Millie’s shoulder. Her bones felt fragile under his fingers and a flash of anger speared through him. He wanted to do something, take some kind of constructive action against the evil that had permeated the shelter he’d provided for his wife, for their friends. He gave Millie a gentle squeeze and kissed the top of her head, then went to find Chief Deputy Steadman. He was in the dining room, staked out at a table with a map and his two-way radio, neither of which seemed to be doing him much good.

  “Two of our people are still out there, Sheriff,” Frank said. “With a killer. What’s the plan?”

  “We’re going to pull together an old-fashioned posse. I’ll leave Deputy Frost here to cover home base. You and I will comb the ridge. Can you gather three or four men to go with us?”

  “Give me ten minutes.”

  Cappy was pacing the deck outside the lounge, ready as a snapping turtle. Sandy Dawson hugged his wife and daughter, strapped a sheathed hunting knife to his belt, and gave a salute. Frank found Tim and Marie Strauss outside the vestibule in the basement, engaged in a screaming match.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Marie,” he said, “but I need your husband.”

  “Get in line,” she said, turning hot eyes on him.

  “Whatever you need from me,” Tim said, “I’m in.” He shook off Marie’s clutching hand and walked away without a backward glance.

  As they climbed the stairs, Frank said, “We don’t know what might happen out there, Tim. Do you really want those to be the last words she ever hears from you?

  Tim shrugged, but his face was tinged with shame.

  Frank sighed and stopped at the top of the stairs. “Go ahead, I’ll wait.”

  As he watched Tim trudge back down the stairway, he considered including Hal Jeffries in their party, but hesitated. He’d never known Hal and Sandy to resist debating politics, and he didn’t want to risk any distractions, however good-natured their arguments might be. He was also concerned about thinning the home base contingency, so when Tim reappeared, it was just the five of them who left the clubhouse ten minutes later, heading up around the lake, into the ash-shrouded forest and the dark, looming ridge.

  CHAPTER 89

  RILEY PADDLED WITH ABANDON, DIGGING at the water’s surface, harsh breath ripping from her throat. The distance she had to cover was far shorter than Teren’s, but his golf cart would travel faster and spare him physical exertion while she was wearing herself out. There were no docks on this forested stretch of the lake shore, and the water was murky, dotted with submerged and broken tree trunks.

  She watched out for them, looming beneath the surface like surly ghosts, and her progress slowed as she was forced to steer a path between them. A creaking groan broke through the rhythmic slapping of her oars as the kayak scraped over the splinters of a water-logged tree, tendrils like fingers grasping at the boat. With a sob, Riley braced an oar against one of the stumps and pushed off. A shriek of protest sounded as the tree relinquished its hold and the kayak glided forward. Weak with relief and exhaustion, Riley aimed for a stretch of bank overhung with willowy branches, hoping she could use them to pull herself from the boat without taking a swim.

  The sour smell of marshland was overpowering as she paddled among the husks of dried and broken cattails. She maneuvered the kayak under the shelter of the mossy trees, the mass of limbs providing handholds, and Riley scrambled from the cockpit with a minimum of splashing. She crossed over the cart path and wasted no time in attacking the uphill climb. Too frantic to bother seeking a trail, she barreled upward with a desperate need to lose herself in bushes and trees. She noted the absence of the golf cart’s drone, but took no comfort from it, never doubting that Teren would be close behind. With luck, the drooping tree branches she’d used to pull herself to shore would hide the kayak, obscuring her entry point into the woods.

  Her chest began to hurt and she realized she’d long ago lost her dust mask. She found a level piece of ground and stopped, pulling a water bottle from her pack. Her hands shook, and she felt too weak to unscrew the cap. Moaning, fighting tears, she steeled herself and opened the bottle. She gulped some of the water and felt the coolness of it spread through her chest, calming her a little. She fitted a fresh dust mask across her mouth and nose and as she replaced the package, her fingers brushed hard metal. The dart gun case.

  She pulled out the metal box, popped the clip that held it closed, and examined the contents. A rough schematic was pasted into the lid of the box, showing how to load and operate the gun. Three darts, essentially syringes filled with some sort of sedating agent, rested in slots among the foam padding. Each was tipped with a large-gauge hypodermic needle. A tuft of fibrous material fluffed out on the tail end so that each dart resembled a sleeker, more lethal badminton shuttlecock. The kit included a dose of antidote in an injector like an Epipen. Following the schematic, she loaded a tranq dart into the barrel of the gun. Tossing the case back into her pack, she shouldered it and resumed her uphill march, careful to hold the gun pointed away from herself as she climbed.

  The smell of wood smoke reached her before she broke through into a small clearing. A battered hut leaned in the middle of the leaf-strewn circle of alder and pine, a thin stream of dark-gray smoke streaking up from the chimney, dissipating into the ashen sky. An overwhelming surge of relief flooded over Riley and she took a few running steps toward the cabin, then stopped. The impulse to throw herself on the mercy of a stranger was strong, but she realized the result might be disastrous.

  If Teren traced her this far, the obvious hiding place would be this hut, and it was no fortress. It would likely offer little defense against a determined intruder, and the inhabitant was an innocent. She thought of Myrna, whose only crime was being on the sideline when Teren attacked. Riley didn’t want to involve a bystander when their chances
of surviving were so small. Her only weapon was the dart gun, and who knew how effective that would be? What are the odds the cabin’s occupant would have a rifle? She briefly weighed her options and, with reluctance, decided to press on over the ridge where she counted on finding safety in numbers.

  She struck off, away from the cabin, and continued her climb. The mist of ash distorted both sound and vision as it wafted in the air, and a blanket of eerie silence hung over the forest. Riley felt a lull and thought of studies she’d read about deprivation chambers, the claim that floating in a medium devoid of sensory stimuli provided a release from stress and pain. She could understand the appeal, thinking how marvelous it would be to simply lie down in a bed of needles and let her troubles fade into the fog. The idea held a certain hypnotic pull, and Riley shook her head to clear the notion, and forced herself to plod on.

  Her back ached under the weight of the pack and she stopped to shift it off her shoulders and take another swallow of water. Somewhere, a twig snapped, but Riley couldn’t tell if her own foot had done it, or someone else’s. She froze, and then cringed as a flurry of birds broke cover and flew to the sky. As she stood gazing after them, a strong arm looped around her from behind and Teren pulled her to his chest. His breath feathered against her ear in soothing tones.

  “I’ll protect you, Riley. You won’t be needing this.”

  He yanked the dart gun from her fingers and hurled it into a clump of underbrush.

  “I’ve been watching over you for a long time, Riley, and I know what’s best.”

  She struggled against him, trying to gain a position where she could kick at his shins or stomp down on his foot.

  “Did you know what’s best when you murdered Harp Mayhew?”

  He laid a gentle kiss against the shell of her ear.

  “I never murdered anyone, Riley. I offered up a sacrifice, and I acted in our best interest.”

  She shuddered, swallowing hard to keep from retching.

  “And now you’re planning to kill me, too.”

  He stiffened. “I never wanted that, Riley. To extinguish your flame just as you’re reaching your zenith distresses me. But she requires it, and as much as I will miss you, I must obey.”

  Riley still held the pack and she worked her hand into it, fumbling for any kind of weapon. She hoped to find the Swiss army knife, but it evaded her hand. She needed to keep him in this expansive mood, giving her a chance to think, to form a plan.

  “Who is she?”

  “She?” His tone was surprised. “Mother. The mother of us all.”

  Riley’s hand found the clasp on the metal case and she worked to manipulate it, but it was slick and her fingers kept sliding off. “My mother and your mother are not the same.”

  “Oh, but they are, Riley. Undoubtedly, they are.”

  The catch flew open and Riley hoped she wouldn’t encounter the needle end of a tranquilizer dart. Her fingers felt the fluff of a fletching and closed around it, taking it into her fist. “What mother are you referring to?”

  Teren’s voice hardened. “Can you be so ignorant, Riley? No wonder she’s displeased.” He tightened his grip on her, as with a wayward child. “The Earth, Riley. I speak of Mother Earth.”

  She swung her arm forward and jabbed back with all her might, driving the dart into his thigh. He screamed and fell back, letting her go.

  Riley ran.

  CHAPTER 90

  TOPPER STARED INTO THE FIREPLACE, mesmerized by the whispering rustle and pop. The flame was finished, and all that remained was a wisp of charred log and the lambent coals beneath it. He was debating himself over putting another log on, when the sound of pounding footsteps invaded the sagging porch of the hut. He watched the knob turn and the door fly open. He gaped at the mass of red-gold hair streaking back from a face covered by goggles and a sooty dust mask as the wild female figure advanced into the room, her hands making frantic motions in the air.

  She pulled the mask from her face. “Please help me. I’m sorry to break in like this, but I need your help.”

  Topper jumped from his stool. “Of course.”

  The woman was distraught, and Topper wondered which of the many hazards brought by Rainier’s eruption had put her in such a state. He tried guiding her to a chair, but she gripped his arm and pulled him toward the door.

  “A man tried to kill me. I’ve injured him, but I don’t know how long he’ll be incapacitated. We must go for help.”

  Topper resisted her pull. “Hold on,” he said. This was not a hazard he’d anticipated. “Explain what you’re talking about.”

  The woman fixed him with a pleading stare, but he stood firm. “I’m not going anywhere until I understand the situation.”

  She bit her lip, clearly unhappy about the delay, but began talking. He gathered the injured man was known to her, and that she believed he’d been intent on killing her. She explained how she’d jabbed him with a tranquilizer dart, anesthetizing him.

  “What kind of agent did you use?” Topper asked.

  She stared at him, lines of consternation forming on her brow. “I have no idea. I just grabbed what I could get my hands on.”

  “Let me see the case.”

  “For the love of Pete,” she cried, “what does it matter?”

  “Drug and dosage matters,” Topper said.

  She huffed out an agitated sigh and dropped her pack to the cabin floor. She rooted through and tossed him a metal case. He surveyed the contents, then snapped it shut and tucked it under his arm.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  She bolted out the door and he followed. At the edge of the clearing, she waited for him to catch up.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  She looked confused. “I was headed up and over the ridge.”

  “No, I mean which direction to the man you hurt?”

  Her eyes widened and a flush spread up from her neck. Before she could dig into him again, Topper explained.

  “I think it’s best we know what we’re dealing with. If he’s dead, or if he’s already up and moving.”

  She pressed her lips together, but led him in a northerly direction. Less than five minutes brought them to where a man lay sprawled in a churned-up patch of dirt and pine needles. Topper gently nudged the body, but got no response. He knelt and felt for a pulse, then ran his hands over the man’s legs and arms, checking for weapons.

  The woman stood well back, twisting her hands together, a low-level moan escaping her lips at regular intervals, almost like a chant.

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Deep under?”

  Topper shrugged and stooped to brush the hair off the man’s forehead and lift an eyelid to peer at the bloodshot orb beneath. “So it seems.”

  He dropped to a knee and opened the metal case. Seizing the pre-loaded injector with the antidote, he plunged it into the man’s thigh.

  “What are you doing?” the woman shrieked.

  “You have an appointment this afternoon. I’m helping you keep it.”

  CHAPTER 91

  RILEY WAS STUNNED. THE ACCUMULATION of stress, shock, and physical exhaustion dropped over her like a tangling net, trapping her in a nightmare from which there was no waking. She needed to move, to get away from these horrid men, but her feet wouldn’t respond to the urgent message she sent out. Her heart was booming in her chest, pushing out sickening waves of hot fear that washed through her extremities with an electric tingle. She watched the man from the cabin drop the spent injector into the case. He pressed his hand to Teren’s neck and turned calm eyes in her direction.

  His calculating look broke through her malaise, acting as a spur. In one motion, she shed the pack from her shoulders and bolted uphill with a lurching gait as her feet slipped, then regained traction. Sobs broke from her throat, and she grabbed onto them, using them as a woman in labor uses her utterances to muster strength. Pressing upward, she snatched at bushes and branches, heedless of the
cuts and scrapes they carved into her hands.

  She tossed a frantic glance over her shoulder and felt a surge of panic. The man behind her leapt and scrambled like an agile leprechaun. There was a determined gleam in his eye and his lips stretched in a rictus of a smile. Riley ran, her heart sinking, pulling her to the ground even as her eyes rose to the heavens, pleading, praying to be caught up, plucked out of the grasp of this demon-like pursuer.

  He hit her like a Peterbilt on a Yugo, sending her sprawling and coming down on top of her, pinning her to the pine needles. He stretched over her, squeezing the breath from her body, and Riley’s head swam in a darkening sea. As she neared total blackout, he rolled off her and she half-sat, gulping in lungfuls of air. Before she could fully catch her breath, he swung a fist into the side of her head, knocking her flat and sending a burst of pain and white-hot light through her skull, like a brief glimpse of a Fourth of July sparkler. He yanked her from the ground and dragged her back in Teren’s direction, his hands digging painfully into her armpits.

  Teren was still prone, but moaning and stirring as he swam back to consciousness. Riley’s captor kept one vise-like hand clamped on her forearm while he rummaged through her opened pack with the other. Discovering the skein of twine, he pushed her facedown to the ground and used it to bind her hands behind her back.

  Riley struggled against him, but achieved nothing beyond badly chafed wrists. “Why are you doing this?”

  He was slow to answer, waiting until he’d finished his task before rising with a grunt and giving her bottom a hard slap that stung through the denim.

  “Let’s let Teren tell you about it.”

  A sluice of ice water chill trickled over Riley’s scalp. He knew Teren? She turned her head away and lay staring into a thicket of trees. The man placed one large hand atop her skull and twisted her head back toward Teren.