by Mary Stone
The man—if he could even be called a man—had been less than two feet from her when he met his untimely end. Winter had personally watched the life vanish from his eyes as the shot from an M4 Carbine ripped through his head. To this day, she still replayed the moment in her head when she woke up from a nightmare about the night her parents were killed, or the night Bree was kidnapped, or any other number of her brushes with the madman the press liked to call The Preacher.
She thought she had moved past the sense of loss, but here she was.
Swallowing hard against the tightness in her throat, she finally pried her stare away from the shadow house to glance over to Autumn. The woman’s green eyes were narrowed, her attention fixed on the house. She looked like she was about to bear witness to her own death. Even in the low light, Autumn’s fair face was even paler, and her knuckles had turned white from her grip on the steering wheel.
Before she spoke, Winter made sure to move enough so Autumn would catch the motion in her periphery. She didn’t want to scare her friend again, and it was obvious that Autumn was on guard.
Winter cleared her throat for good measure. “You don’t have to go in there with me if you don’t want to.”
All at once, the haunted look vanished from Autumn’s face. “No, I’ll go with you. I said I’d come with, and that includes going in the house. You said the last time you were here you got hit with a pretty intense vision, right?”
Winter’s stomach churned at the memory. “Yeah. I passed out, and Noah and Bree found me in a pool of blood.” As Autumn’s eyes widened, Winter rush to clarify. “From a nasty nosebleed. No one attacked me or anything, and, well…I didn’t see any ghosts or anything. No vengeful spirits.”
Though fleeting, a flicker of amusement passed over Autumn’s green eyes. “So, you’re telling me I brought all that salt and holy water in my trunk for nothing?”
Her lighthearted words pushed away part of the heavy haze of grief that had settled in Winter’s mind. For most of her life, she’d been too paranoid, too afraid to share such a vulnerable part of herself with another person. When she had come to the house during the Kilroy investigation, she hadn’t even told anyone about her plan, much less asked them to accompany her.
But tonight, she was grateful for Autumn’s presence.
“Are you all right?” Autumn’s voice had softened.
Tugging at the ends of her long hair, Winter nodded. “I’m okay. As well as I can be, anyway. You ready?”
It was Autumn’s turn to nod. “Yeah, but I’ll be honest. This place gives me the creeps. You know how I can tell how people are feeling by touching them, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, I haven’t really had much of a chance to confirm it one-hundred-percent, but the same thing sort of happens to me when I go to places where something stressful has happened. Not quite like your visions, but similar.” With a nervous chuckle, Autumn brushed the hair from her forehead. “Good lord, that makes me sound like some kind of crazy psychic or something, doesn’t it? I swear, I was joking about the rock salt and the holy water.”
A little more of the melancholy lifted as Winter offered her friend a slight smile. “No. You don’t sound crazy. Besides, even if you did,” she paused to jab herself in the chest with a finger, “I’m the queen of crazy, okay?”
Autumn let out a quiet snort of laughter before she turned to push open her door, Winter following suit in short order. As they approached the cracked sidewalk, they exchanged glances.
Squaring her shoulders, Winter nodded. “All right. Let’s do this.”
Without any further prompting, Autumn reached into her jacket to produce a black Maglite. “I don’t have a Glock like you, but this thing is solid.” For emphasis, she smacked the end into her open palm. “Pretty sure it could kill someone.”
The corner of Winter’s mouth turned up in the start of a smile, but the moment of mirth was short-lived.
As they made their way down the sidewalk, Winter glanced down to a familiar concrete square. Sure enough, there it was. The signature of five-year-old Winter Black effectively etched in stone like she had signed a contract with this damn house. A contract that bound a part of her there forever.
Her steps were as slow as if she were walking through quicksand, and the temperate night air felt like it had dropped by at least ten degrees.
The dilapidated wooden stairs groaned in protest as she and Autumn ascended to the porch. Beneath her feet, the planks shifted. If she stomped one booted foot down, she would be liable to fall through to the patch of dirt below.
When she had come to the house during the Kilroy investigation, Winter had pulled a page from Chuck Norris’s playbook and kicked in the rickety front door. A dent still marred the splintering surface, but a padlock had been installed. The shining silver lock was a stark contrast from all the other worn surfaces of the exterior of the house.
Winter glanced to Autumn. “Last time I was here, I just kicked down the door. I think I was actually wearing these same boots. But that was in the middle of the day, and right now, I can’t help but think it’ll draw attention to us.”
Autumn nodded. “You’ve got your badge though, right?”
Reaching into an interior pocket of her leather jacket, the ruddy orange streetlight glinted off the metallic FBI insignia as she flashed her badge at her friend.
“Well, if you don’t mind, Bruce Lee.”
When Autumn produced an item from her pocket, Winter’s eyes widened. “A lock pick?” she asked incredulously.
With a nonchalant shrug, Autumn turned to the padlocked door and went to work. “You know, in case I get locked out of my house or something.”
In the rush of curiosity, Winter almost forgot where they were. Almost. “Where’d you learn how to do that?”
“Well…” she paused, and Winter heard a light click, “I grew up on the bad side of town, remember? My mom was a junkie, and I’ll give you two guesses as to how she supported her habit.”
“She was a thief?”
“A petty thief, and a burglar.” The next click was more pronounced. “She taught me to pick locks when I was nine. She figured I could help her out, I guess. Believe it or not, in my school district, picking locks made you one of the cool kids. Then, when Kim and Ron adopted me, I turned it into an entrepreneurial venture at my new school. It was a nicer district, and none of the kids there knew how to pick locks. But I did, and I charged those rich little bastards an arm and a leg every time they wanted me to break into something for them.”
As if to punctuate the end of her story, Autumn gave the splintering door a shove. With a rusted creek, it swung inward. Though Winter wanted to hear more about her friend’s teenage years, the sight of the shadowed foyer stole the words from her tongue.
Autumn brought the Maglite to life with a quiet click.
The house was as quiet as a tomb.
It was a tomb.
No one would ever live here again. No one should ever live here again.
“Shine the light on the floor.” Winter hardly recognized her own voice. She sounded so…calm. Composed. But within the confines of her mind, she was anything but.
Autumn flicked the halo of light to the tarnished wooden floor, but the dust was undisturbed. There was the faint shape of footprints leading to the stairwell, but for all Winter knew, they might have been hers from the last time she was here. Aside from replacing the door handle with a padlock, she could already tell no one else had been inside, at least from this doorway.
“We’re looking for signs that anyone was here, right?” Autumn’s voice cut through the fog of messy emotions that had started to bubble up in Winter’s thoughts.
Winter nodded. “Right.”
Pausing mid-step, Autumn’s green eyes flicked over to Winter’s. “Hey, you doing okay?”
Winter swallowed, but as much as she wanted to say yes or even just offer a nod, she could bring herself to do neither.
Her movement
slow and deliberate, Autumn clasped Winter’s shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with feeling overwhelmed right now. This is a big deal to you, and that’s completely justified. Try to keep yourself here with me, okay? We’re looking for clues, remember? Try to focus on that. I know you’re good at it.”
This time, Winter managed a slight nod.
The circle of illumination flicked from the floor to the walls as they stepped past the foyer. As soon as they were out of the bubble of fresh air, a pungent odor wafted past them as if it was desperate to escape out into the night.
Winter knew that smell. That was the smell of decay.
The smell of death.
Raising the neck of her t-shirt to cover her nose, Winter didn’t bother to acknowledge the cloying odor. Aside from wrinkling her nose, Autumn remained silent.
In the relative stillness of the night, the only sound was the gentle creak of the floorboards beneath their feet. Part of her thought she and Autumn were both afraid to speak. They were afraid they would bring their fears to life if they talked.
But as they approached the area that had once been a living room, Winter wondered what in the hell they expected to find.
A body? A crazed hermit living in the basement? A demon in the attic?
Winter clenched her jaw as she and Autumn stopped to stand in the center of the space. Autumn shone the flashlight over the musty drywall, and Winter glanced over her shoulder to the faint halo of orange light that spilled through the open doorway. Reflexively, she reached to the holster beneath her left arm.
She didn’t know what she expected to find, but she was prepared for the worst.
“What the actual hell?” Autumn’s voice was a little louder than a hiss, but the volume cut through to Winter like a thunderclap.
Following Autumn’s outstretched hand to the circle of white light on the blue-gray drywall, Winter took in a sharp breath.
Scrawled across the far wall in a reddish-brown substance was a line of neat handwriting she didn’t recognize. But she didn’t have to recognize the writing to know who had written it.
The hairs on the back of Winter’s neck abruptly stood on end. She didn’t know when it had happened, but her service weapon was in her hand.
Hey sis, you just missed me.
Justin. It had to be Justin. No one else would call her “sis.”
He’d even included the punctuation.
As for the substance in which the cryptic comment had been written, well…
“It’s blood.” The words rolled off Winter’s tongue before she could even contemplate the meaning.
“There’s nothing on the floor in here. I think that nasty smell is coming from upstairs.”
Upstairs. Where her parents had been killed.
Her stomach did a series of rolls and flips, but she swallowed the sudden bout of nausea.
We’re looking for clues, she reminded herself. This wouldn’t be a repeat of last time. She wouldn’t wake on the side of the street in a fog of uncertainty and despondency.
“Let’s go,” Winter said. “Stay behind me. I don’t think anyone or anything is here, but you never know.”
Jaw clenched, Autumn nodded.
With every creak of the wooden steps beneath their feet, Winter inwardly cringed. She had been truthful to Autumn—she didn’t think anyone was here. The house was so quiet, they would have heard the disturbance of another person as soon as they entered.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. On the agonizingly slow trip up the stairs, she glanced to every nook and cranny in search of a hidden camera. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had installed a webcam to spy on her. During her and Noah’s first investigation together, Douglas Kilroy himself had snuck into her hotel room to place a camera behind a painting in the wall.
These walls were bare, though. Aside from cobwebs, the corners of the ceiling were empty. Nothing stirred in the shadows at the corner of her eyes.
As she and Autumn stepped onto the second-floor hall, she saw it. The door to the master bedroom.
Glancing over her shoulder to Autumn, Winter inclined her head in the direction of the closed door. When Autumn nodded, she returned her attention to the hall. Step by agonizing step, she neared the entrance to the veritable hell she’d discovered almost fourteen years ago.
She felt like she was moving in slow motion as she reached out for the door handle. When she turned the knob, she half-expected it to be locked. But when the hinges creaked, she raised the Glock. Staring down the sights of the weapon, she took the first step, and then the second.
Before she could make the third, a wall of the foul stench rose up to greet her. The air was viscous. All she could do was hold her breath.
Clasping one hand over her nose, Autumn raised the flashlight and swung the beam around the dark room. A faint sound emanated from a corner, and as soon as the area was lit up, Winter let out a string of four-letter words.
Flies buzzed around a feast that had been prepared for them days—maybe even a week—earlier. At least four rats of varying sizes were piled one on top of another, each disemboweled and decapitated.
The heads were nowhere to be found.
She didn’t know what had happened here, and she didn’t have time to sort through the possibilities before her attention snapped to the drywall beside the broken window.
See you soon.
The same neat handwriting. The same reddish-brown hue.
Justin. Her baby brother.
By this point in her career, Autumn was still impressed with her ability to remain calm in the face of an unsettling scene. And the heap of eviscerated headless rats in the corner of an old double murder site was more than unsettling. Even once she and Winter were back on the curb in front of the house, the surge of adrenaline in Autumn’s veins hadn’t abated.
Since she’d called the local crime scene unit in to sweep the premises, Winter hadn’t uttered a word.
A million and one thoughts were whipping through Autumn’s head, not the least of which was what kind of psychopath had left the gruesome message inside. But as each sentiment surfaced, she shoved it back down. She was here for a reason, to support her friend, and she wouldn’t let Winter down just because she’d gotten a little queasy at the scene of a fourteen-year-old double homicide and a quadruple rat murder.
Jaw clenched, she took a firm hold of herself and pulled her attention back to the present. “How are you hanging in?”
Finally, Winter dropped her gaze away from where she had been staring vacantly at the house across the street. Her countenance was grim, but there was a determined edge, a glint of fixation. A look Autumn knew well.
It was the same look her mother had worn when she set out to secure stolen valuables so she could sell them for drug money. It was the same look her father wore before he pulled on a ski mask to go hold up a gas station.
It was single-minded determination, and if it wasn’t curbed before it had a chance to take a firm hold, it would consume the Winter that Autumn had come to know and love.
But of all the people who could have accompanied Winter tonight, Autumn was glad she had chosen her. As much as she respected and adored Noah Dalton, this would have been uncharted territory for him.
For Autumn, aside from the grisly scene, it was just another day at the office.
Maybe I should have been a hostage negotiator.
Propping both elbows on her knees, Autumn glanced over to her friend. “You’re going to make me put on my psychologist hat if you don’t say something soon.”
“He was here.” Her voice was quiet but unwavering.
Autumn nodded. “It would seem so. I can tell from that look on your face that you’re planning something, or you’re thinking of planning something.”
As Winter opened her mouth to object, Autumn held up a hand.
“You can’t lie to me. You know that by now, right? Even Aiden can’t lie to me, and he’s a good liar.”
&nb
sp; She could practically hear Winter’s teeth grind together. “Douglas Kilroy took Justin when he was six. I don’t know what happened after that, but I need to find him so I can know.”
“How are you going to find him?”
Straightforward questions were always Autumn’s preference. More often than not, to someone who was overanalyzing a situation, a straightforward inquiry would knock them on their figurative ass.
More teeth grating. As Winter’s eyes darted away, she shook her head. “There has to be something in there. Something that’ll point me in the right direction.”
“And you’re going to sift through all the potential evidence they collect in there?” Autumn lifted an eyebrow.
“No, I…” Winter pursed her lips together so hard they turned white for a few seconds. “We had to have missed something in the initial investigation. I’ll go back through it.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes…I mean, I wasn’t the only one who worked it, but…” Leaving the statement unfinished, she shrugged again. The glint of irritation behind her eyes told Autumn her technique was working.
“If you weren’t the only one who worked it in the first place, why would you solo it now?”
Winter gave her a flat stare. “I thought you said you weren’t going to put on your psychologist hat.”
With a grin, Autumn nodded. “I haven’t pulled out any pictures of gray blobs and asked you to tell me what you see yet, but don’t tempt me.”
As Winter rolled her eyes, much of her exasperation appeared to be feigned.
“Look, I get it. I understand the need to be in control of something that’s so important to you, and not wanting to let it out of your sight if there’s even a slight chance you can figure out a solution. Or, in this case, if there’s even a slight chance you can find your brother. And the ability to take charge like that can be a good quality, but after a certain point, it becomes self-destructive.”
Winter combed her fingers through the ends of her low ponytail. “I just can’t help but wonder if I missed something.”
Holding out her hands, Autumn offered her a hapless look and shrugged. “Honestly? You probably didn’t. And even if you did, I doubt Noah and Aiden did too. I could show you the math if you want me to, but suffice it to say, the odds of all three of you missing a piece of information that critical are slim to none.”