by Kate Harre
Copyright © Kate Harre
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.
Prologue
Her throat was on fire; the breath heaving in and out of her burning lungs in uneven, exhausted spurts more painful than her screaming leg muscles. But still she kept running.
It was so quiet in the woods she briefly entertained the hope that she’d eluded her pursuer. Except the darkness was so complete she couldn’t risk looking back for fear she’d trip over an exposed tree root, so she pushed on, desperate to break free from the forest, back into a more populated area. A twig slapped the side of her face; its wilted leaves like slimy fingers as they streaked her cheek with freezing cold droplets of water. Biting back a gasp of surprised fright, she kept her momentum, weaving haphazardly through the ghostly trees.
The soggy leaves underfoot masked the sound of her pounding feet. An advantage perhaps, but one her pursuer also had. The thought propelled her forward at a pace she hadn’t known she was capable of… until a brittle branch snapped with a loud crack under her sneaker, the noise carrying endlessly through the stillness of the forest.
She froze instinctively, her legs quivering with fatigue, waiting to see if she’d been detected, and risked a glance over her shoulder. Her slight frame sagged with relief when she couldn’t see him and she took a moment to suck in a deep, much needed gulp of air. A light beckoned in the distance, which meant she was getting close to the road. Renewed strength surged into her exhausted legs as she began moving again, certain now she was going to make it back to safety, away from the insanity of the last few endless hours.
Scrambling blindly through the dense bush, she tried futilely to make out the forest track leading to the edge of the woods.
And then she felt it… warm breath expelled against her neck, drifting past her cheek, rancid and terrifying. Her stomach clenched and she whirled clumsily, wondering hysterically how he’d approached her so quietly. She opened her mouth to scream, but her vocal chords registered the terror clogging her brain and seized up. Instead, a pitiful whimper crossed her lips as she raised her head to… her eyes flared in disbelief.
It wasn’t him… it was so much worse!
Staggering backwards, she barely even registered tripping on a tree root and tumbling down into the decaying leaves. Her eyes wide with horror, she stared up into the malevolent red gaze of the beast above her.
It was huge, wolf-like but with scabby patches of missing fur and a gaping maw that exposed a set of rabid fangs, already salivating.
Her brain tried to tell her to move, to somehow fight for survival, but her limbs felt paralysed, her will to live not strong enough to overpower the fear disabling them. Tears leaked unnoticed from the corners of her eyes as she waited for that horrible mouth to devour her. Fleeting images of her parents and two younger brothers flashed across her mind and she wished she’d had one last chance to tell them how much she loved them.
But the beast didn’t move to eat her.
Instead, it lifted a paw, one hooked claw extended. In an oddly human gesture the claw slid slowly across her exposed throat, cutting through the flesh and sinew as if it was silk.
Again she tried to scream, but all that emerged was a bloody gurgle as her life drained away.
Chapter 1
Dragging herself wearily out of bed to the smell of bordering-on-burnt bacon, Annabelle Archer winced as she instinctively rubbed her over-dry eyes without thinking better of it. Usually a bright golden brown, this morning they resembled dull, dirty sludge thanks to a disturbed night with little real sleep.
Wrapping herself in the oversized dressing gown she’d pinched from her father years ago, she pushed her long mahogany hair back off her forehead and stumbled down the stairs, following her nose to the kitchen. Her mother must be having a rare spurt of domesticity… which meant she was probably suffering from a creativity block. Annie took it as a good sign there wasn’t yet smoke billowing out the door.
‘Good, you’re up.’ Karen stood in front of the stove, frantically trying to save the bacon while simultaneously flipping a limp, underdone pancake. Her dark auburn hair was tied back in a messy bun, but several strands had broken free and were plastered to her damp forehead, testament to the frenetic disorganisation of her cooking. ‘I had a craving for waffles with bacon, banana and maple syrup, but I couldn’t find the waffle maker so it’s going to have to be…’
Her voice trailed off, the smile fading from her face as she turned and took in her daughter’s dishevelled appearance and shadowed eyes. ‘It happened again,’ she stated soberly, not even bothering to make it a question.
Annie nodded and slumped into a chair, propping her elbows on the table to support her head. ‘It’s been almost four months. I really thought it was going to be okay here.’
‘I’m sorry, honey. Maybe small town North Carolina isn’t unpopulated enough. Would you consider moving to Alaska?’ Karen joked lamely.
‘Why is this happening to me?’ Annie whispered glumly, not for the first time and probably not for the last.
Karen was silent. She didn’t know the answer to that any more than Annie did and, as a mother, it hurt that she couldn’t fix her daughter’s problem. ‘Was it the same as the other times?’
‘The last few minutes of her life,’ Annie confirmed tiredly. ‘But I’m not exactly sure it counts as murder this time. The killer wasn’t human.’
‘What do you mean it wasn’t human?’ Karen dropped the spatula she was holding, unconcerned her action sent bacon fat flying in all directions. Automatically flicking off the stove elements, she sank into a chair opposite Annie and reached for her daughter’s hands.
Annie looked at Karen with haunted eyes, stress creasing the corners with tiny crow’s feet. ‘It was some kind of animal, like a wolf. Only it didn’t look entirely natural.’
The colour leeching from her face, Karen bit her lip, an unconscious trait Annie had inherited from her. ‘Which only makes it more difficult to identify the killer.’
‘You’re not going to like this, Mum, but I need to go and look for her,’ Annie stated flatly, extracting her fingers gingerly from Karen’s bruising grip. ‘I can’t leave her lying in the forest until someone stumbles across her. In a town this small it could take days.’
Karen opened her mouth to object. ‘That’s not –‘
‘I think she was young, Mum, possibly someone I go to school with.’ Wrapping her arms around herself, she fought the tears threatening to fall. ‘The things she was thinking… her family…’
‘Okay, okay… I’m convinced,’ Karen capitulated with a sigh, her face worried. ‘I guess you want to go now?’
‘I’ll just get changed.’
Annie almost flew up the stairs, shedding her dressing gown and pyjamas as soon as she hit her room. She jumped in the shower for a quick freshen up, grateful her hair didn’t need to be washed this morning. She’d known Karen would come around. One of the good things about having a young mother was that she and Karen were almost like best friends. Karen trusted Annie’s instincts, often more readily than her own. Considering Karen had a tendency towards vagueness when it came to the real world, it was probably a good thing Annie was generally more grounded.
Ten minutes later, they were in the car, driving the couple of blocks to the edge of the forest. Usually Annie would have walked such a short distance, but with what had gone down the previous night it seemed safer to have a car nearby.
‘Sorry about your pancakes,’ she murmured, as Karen swung the car into the gravelled area that served as a parking spot.
‘The mixture will still be good when we get back. Possibly better.’
‘I take it the creative juices aren’t flowing too well at the moment?’
Karen grimaced feelingly and turned off the car. ‘Nope. I’ve got nothing. And I have a big commission for four paintings to deliver in a few weeks, so nothing is not working well for me!’
Emerging from the car, Annie zipped up her jacket. There was a frost on the ground, lightly coating the gravel, and she could see her breath when she exhaled. ‘Maybe you need to treat yourself to a day spa or something and clear your head.’
‘That’s not a bad idea.’ Karen locked the car and pocketed the keys. ‘I think I’m so used to drawing inspiration from the hustle and bustle of New York that this quiet little town is taking a bit of getting used to.’
Annie bit her lip. She hadn’t thought about how Karen created her works of art and where she drew her inspiration from. Realising she was responsible for squashing her mother’s passion was devastating.
‘Mum! I’m sorry… I never thought…’
Karen wrapped her arm around Annie’s shoulders and steered her towards the path leading into the forest. ‘It’s not your fault, honey. You didn’t ask for this to happen. We all agreed this was the right move.’ Karen chuckled ruefully. ‘Besides, my paintings were getting stale. A change of scenery is exactly what I needed… it just takes a little time to absorb the changes and then they’ll start outworking through my imagination.’
‘I hope so,’ Annie muttered. Stopping, she turned slowly, visually sweeping the area for anything familiar from the previous night. She pointed to the left. ‘This way, I think.’
As soon as they passed under the canopy of trees, conversation ceased. Somehow it seemed disrespectful to chat while a dead girl’s body lay somewhere in the underbrush. Shivering, Annie stuck her hands in her jacket pockets, hunching her shoulders against the cold. It was damp and dreary under the trees, eerily silent for a Sunday morning.
They trudged along the forest track, Annie’s gaze swinging from left to right and back again, searching for something recognisable from her dream. It felt morbid looking for a dead body and there was a part of her hoping they wouldn’t find it.
The forest was musty in the early morning fog, but freakishly familiar and as they approached the spot Annie expected to find the body, she couldn’t help but glance through the trees towards the street they’d driven down. It was so close. A mere hundred metres or so drew the line between life and death for this girl.
A patch of yellow caught her eye and she veered off the track, moving quickly towards what appeared to be a piece of clothing.
‘It’s her,’ Annie said over her shoulder to Karen, who was right on her heels. She stopped just short of the body. The yellow item she’d seen was the girl’s jacket, the vivid colour marred by several tears; probably a casualty of her desperate flight through the forest. Her long, honey blonde hair was a tangled mess around her porcelain white face.
Annie gasped. ‘Mum, I do know her. She’s a Senior at school.’
‘Damn,’ Karen muttered under her breath, already pulling her phone from her pocket. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Danielle, I think. She’s one of the cheerleaders… or was.’
Up to that point Annie had avoided looking at the mortal wound, but now she pulled her eyes away from the familiar face and studied the cause of death. To a casual observer it would probably seem strange that she was unmoved by the gruesomeness of a violent murder. Perhaps because she’d seen so many of them in her young life she’d become emotionally detached. Annie didn’t think it was that so much as the horror of the death itself. When she felt and experienced those last few minutes of a victim’s life, it was traumatic and emotionally harrowing. So far, she hadn’t become used to it and she didn’t imagine she ever would. Compared to that, the bodies themselves were simply lifeless shells.
‘The wound is so perfect,’ she murmured. There was a single neat slice from one side of the throat to the other.
Karen, who didn’t have quite the same indifference to dead bodies, cautiously peered down at where Annie was pointing. ‘I thought you said the killer wasn’t human. That wound looks incredibly precise for an animal attack.’
‘I know, right. Something doesn’t add up.’
Karen started punching numbers into her phone. ‘I’m calling the Sherriff to report the body.’
‘But –‘
‘I know what you’re going to say, but we have to call it in. If we don’t, sooner or later they’ll find out we were here and want to know why. We just won’t say how we came to know about the body, okay?’
‘And no mention about any of the others,’ Annie pressed.
‘Deal.’
Moving away a couple of steps, Karen turned her back to make the call. Annie resumed studying the wound, wondering what motivation an animal could have to mortally wound a human and then leave without eating even a small part of its’ victim. It was completely weird. She stepped closer, leaning down for a better look…
A hard arm clamped around her waist and jerked her backwards.
‘What the –‘ She was abruptly released and she staggered, almost ending up on her backside.
‘Don’t touch the body,’ a male voice hissed angrily from behind her.
Annie spun around, intending to furiously confront the presumptuous intruder. Except there was no one there. She frowned and scanned the area around her. Pressed against a large tree, she spotted a tall figure, cloaked in shadow.
‘I wasn’t going to,’ she spat out, squinting to try and make out his features. ‘I know better than to contaminate a crime scene.’
‘It’s not that. I don’t know what it is, but something doesn’t feel right. The body could be poisonous or contagious. Touching it before it’s been medically examined would be crazy,’ he explained gruffly, his deep voice gravelly, as if it wasn’t used often. He backed further into the shadows.
On the verge of stepping closer to find out who he was, Annie promptly turned back towards the body. ‘You really think there’s something wrong with the body?’
There was no reply. When she glanced back over her shoulder, he was gone. Which was a shame, since technically he’d been trying to prevent her from having contact with a potential hazard. He hadn’t known she’d had no intention of touching the body, much less the wound, so she should probably have thanked him.
‘What are you looking at?’ Karen asked curiously, stepping up beside Annie and following the direction of her contemplative gaze.
‘There was a guy…’ she started to explain, dragging her eyes away. ‘Actually, never mind. What did the Sherriff say?’
‘I spoke with Deputy Fields. He and the Sherriff are on their way and want us to stick around.’
‘Of course they do,’ Annie said with a sigh.
Karen squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. ‘They don’t know anything about what happened in New York, so they’ve got no reason to be wary of you.’
‘What’s our story then?’
‘We were out for an early morning walk and saw the yellow jacket. It looked out of place, so we moved closer to investigate and found the body. That’s all; just keep it simple.’
Annie took a few quick snaps on her phone while they waited for the police to arrive. They didn’t take long. Sherriff Denton strode through the forest with an air of authority that belied her small stature. As a woman in a small town with traditional values, she’d had to earn her stripes the hard way and every one of her battles was written in the lines of her face and the strands of her steel grey hair. She didn’t exactly exude friendliness.
Deputy Fields, on the other hand, had the kind of face you instantly warmed to. He wasn’t handsome by any stretch of the imagination but his hazel eyes were warm and he had a cute snub nose, which was scattered with freckles. He loped behind the Sherriff as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Sherriff Denton pulled on gloves and went directly
to the body, ignoring Annie and Karen for the moment. She sighed when she saw the age of the victim. Not totally without compassion then.
‘Anyone know who she is?’ she asked in a grave voice.
Annie stepped forward. ‘She’s a Senior at Ridgeville High, Sherriff. I’m pretty sure her name is Danielle.’
‘That’s the name of our missing girl,’ she murmured to Deputy Fields, who nodded and made a note on his pad.
Karen sucked in a shaky breath. ‘That poor mother,’ she whispered in a stricken voice. ‘I can only imagine what she must be going through and when she hears her daughter’s dead…’ Moving closer to Annie, she wrapped one arm around her shoulders. ‘I’d be devastated if anything happened to you.’
Annie patted Karen’s hand reassuringly. Her mother might be prone to vagueness, but Annie had never doubted how much she loved her. Deputy Fields turned away, embarrassed by Karen’s emotional display, but the Sherriff simply scrutinised Annie. ‘You’re the one who found her?’
Annie nodded.
‘Was there anyone else around?’
‘No. Only Mum and I.’ Annie decided not to mention the guy. Having seen no identifying features she figured there wasn’t much point.
The Sherriff’s steely gaze shifted to Karen. ‘Do either of you know the victim?’
‘No, ma’am.’ Despite being the parental figure, Karen was easily intimidated and had never been good when faced with people in authority.
‘Can you explain why you are in the forest so early on a Sunday morning?’
‘Mum burnt our breakfast pancakes, so we thought we’d go for a walk while the smoke clears out of the kitchen,’ Annie answered before Karen could get browbeaten into revealing the truth, the lie tumbling effortlessly off her tongue. Probably because it wasn’t that much of a stretch! She had learnt the key to a good lie was making sure there was as much truth in it as possible.
For once, Karen didn’t miss a beat, rallying to support her daughter. ‘I’m afraid I’m not a very good cook,’ she said with a wry grimace.
