Sinister

by Nancy Bush

  Her gaze combed the parking lot and the building, willing the door to open and someone to rush to her rescue. Please … open that door!

  She felt him shift, one of his hands lifting, and she used that moment to kick and writhe and try to beat him off. She bit hard on the glove, tasting dust and dirt and old suede.

  He didn’t so much as flinch.

  She threw her weight against him, and his rumbling laugh, deep and throaty, convinced her that her struggles were useless.

  Think, Amber. Somehow you have to outwit this son of a bitch!

  In the slight pause she saw the knife in his free hand. The long, sharp blade glinting in the weak glow of a security lamp. Oh, dear God …

  This time, when she tried to jerk away, he lifted her off her feet and dragged her, wiggling and twisting, to a dank patch of snow behind the Dumpster. No one from the bar would see them back here. No one!

  “Let me go!” Her words were muted by his hand, but in the next second—a dark spiral of hope—she gasped as he flung her down.

  Free!

  It was her last clear thought before her head hit the frozen ground, sending an explosion crackling through her vision. Pain and fear shot into her system, but through the misery something called to her.

  Get up! Escape! Now!

  Her head ached and her bones felt heavy as she tried to pull herself onto her feet. Confused, she thought she might get away … but when she opened her eyes, he was on top of her, a heavy weight crushing her chest, pressing into her throat.

  “I said, be good!”

  In the weak light, she could only make out the glint in his eyes. A sickening glimmer of pure evil that chilled her very soul.

  “You’re hurting me,” she croaked out. “Why are you hurting me?”

  His voice was a knowing whisper as his lips curled into a cold grin. “Practice makes perfect.”

  Then he lifted the knife again. And in that last fragile instant, while snowflakes fell around her and the faint hum of music from inside the bar reached her ears, Amber Barstow realized she would never make it home to California.

  Standing outside the entrance to the cave, the killer watched snow fall on the valley below. From up here, through the haze of white, it was possible to see the river, a dark snake winding toward the smattering of lights, hundreds of bulbs illuminating the snow-blanketed streets of Prairie Creek, Wyoming.

  A night owl screeched, and then there was quiet.

  He wiped the blood from the blade of his knife on his worn jeans and thought about what the future would bring. As he cleaned the sharp steel, a ghost of a smile crawled across his lips and the pleasant hiss of anticipation buzzed in his ears.

  No one knew.

  No one suspected.

  The girl had been dead a week and not a soul anywhere around was looking at him.

  Wind whistled through the canyon, rattling snow from branches, churning up white clouds, bringing the cold from the north. Good, he thought as he ducked between rocks to the hidden entrance of his cave where a campfire was already burning, black smoke billowing upward near the skinned carcass of a coyote dripping wetly against the rocky floor.

  This was a good kill.

  A kill accomplished with only his bare hands and his knife. He relived the first thrust of his blade through the coyote’s shaggy hide. Listened again to its howl of agony, its snapping teeth going still. That was it. The rush of the kill, the feeling of flesh surrendering, the life struggle that was about to come to an end, the shudder of death.

  He’d hunted animals for years, he thought over the hiss of the fire. But they were easy prey. Easily outwitted.

  Humans, though? They were the ultimate test, the supreme target.

  His thumb stroked the hilt of the knife as he recalled taking the woman. He ran his tongue over his lips at the memory: the suddenly limp body in his arms, blood flowing from her neck, shock in her eyes as she let out her last gurgling breath. Now he felt an erection begin to rise. She’d been so naïve: a bleating little lamb to the slaughter. Killing her had been child’s play. Disabling her car and luring her in, waiting for just the right moment for her to lean forward, her balance off, the way she’d fought him and then later, the smooth feel of the knife plunging through and running beneath her skin.

  Remembering brought a shudder to his large frame, but she was, of course, just a rehearsal for the main event.

  He’d hidden her body well. He’d gutted her atop a tarp, long after throwing her in his car, leaving no trace of blood in the parking lot. No one suspected. No one even seemed to know that she was missing. Poor Amber. That was her name, according to the California driver’s license he’d found in her purse.

  But now it was time to go to the next level. That’s why he was here. That’s what he’d come for. The Dillingers … their ranch spread out below him … their souls black … their time near.

  He had to be extracareful now. Every kill had to count.

  Holding the knife above his head with both hands, he felt the power that came from the killing enter him, uplift him, send him to a higher plane.

  Do you feel me? he silently asked them, his prey.

  I’m coming for you.

  Chapter Two

  Sabrina’s hands were full as she shouldered open the glass door of the Prairie Creek Animal Clinic. This morning she balanced a cup of coffee she’d grabbed at Molly’s Diner, her purse, computer case and the business mail she’d picked up from the P.O. box.

  “Oh, good, Dr. Delaney, you brought the mail,” Renee called. “Look what I found yesterday!” Waving an envelope from behind her desk, earbud already in place so she could answer the phones wirelessly, the clinic’s receptionist was already rearranging the pamphlets and business cards on the counter. Though it was a good ten minutes before the clinic officially opened, Renee’s computer monitor with the day’s schedule was glowing as Sabrina slipped inside.

  Sabrina paused on the mat to stomp the snow from her boots as the scents of antiseptic and disinfectant greeted her. Padded benches lined the walls, and the floor was scratched from thousands of anxious paws that had crossed the threshold, but now this veterinary clinic was half hers. That had been a big personal goal—to work in her own practice and stay in Prairie Creek. Every day she thanked her lucky stars that she could check that big one off her bucket list.

  Well … almost every day, she thought as she put her coffee down in exchange for the fat parchment envelope that Renee was waving.

  “Looks like a wedding invitation!” Renee said cheerfully.

  “That it does.” It was an invitation she had thought she’d dodged. Practically everyone else the Dillingers knew had gotten one, and she’d wondered, hoped maybe, that she’d been overlooked. As Sabrina noticed that the postmark was dated six weeks earlier, Renee’s smile fell a bit.

  “I know. My bad,” Renee said before Sabrina could say a word. “I, uh, it … I think it got shuffled into the junk mail and recycling somehow and then … wow, I don’t know, I saw it poking out of an old magazine, so I pulled it out and saw that it was for you. Sorry.”

  “Okay,” Sabrina said. “But—”

  “I promise I’ll be more careful with the mail. I really don’t know how it happened.” She blinked behind her glasses as if she might break down into tears.

  “It’s fine. Truly.” And it was. Renee Aaronson was usually reliable, and she had a charming way with the customers. She was able to juggle several phone calls, all the while dealing with a yapping Chihuahua or a freaked-out Siamese or, worse yet, their overly worried owners. Sabrina almost admitted to Renee that she would prefer the invitation should go back in the recycle box, but she didn’t want to dump her life story on the young woman.

  “Seriously, Dr. Delaney, it won’t happen again.”

  “Good. So,” she said, to change the subject, “are we busy today?”

  “Swamped.” Renee glanced at the computer monitor. “Wow. Yeah. Appointments back-to-back. And that’s before the e
mergencies.”

  “I’d better get at it then,” Sabrina said, already pushing open the short swinging door to the back of the clinic with her hips. Quickly, she made her way down the short aisle to her cubbyhole of an office, where she peeled off her jacket, slipped on a purple lab coat and exchanged her boots for shoes.

  A quick check in the mirror behind the door showed her honey-blond hair still in place, swept back into a braid that usually held through most of her hectic day. Frowning, she assessed herself with cold eyes. Her face was still smooth, and her amber eyes softened the sharp line of her high cheekbones and nose. Not quite the same girl who’d fallen in love with Colton Dillinger almost twenty years earlier, but all in all she’d held up pretty well.

  “It’s all that talking with the animals,” she said aloud, recalling how her sister, after observing her treating a lame horse, had dubbed her Dr. Doolittle.

  Once behind her desk, she slit open the envelope. She knew what it was of course: an invitation to the nuptials of Pilar Larson and Ira Dillinger, to be held the weekend before Christmas.

  She wondered if Colt would be at the wedding too, and what he would think of her if they came face to face. Looking at the engraved script on the invitation, she shook her head. What was wrong with her that she could let a romance nearly two decades old still get to her?

  “Perfect,” she said, noticing the enclosed RSVP card, the date for responding long past due. She thought about making up an excuse and not attending the event, but since the Dillingers were the best customers of the clinic, that seemed like poor form. Davis Featherstone, the Rocking D’s ranch foreman, already knew that she was on duty that week as Antonia was going to be out of town. “So I can’t even lie my way out of it.”

  “Lie about what?” came a voice from the doorway. She turned to see Antonia herself walk in. Her shiny dark hair was swept back in a twist that only a few women could pull off without looking schoolmarmish. Toni was one. “Talking to yourself. Am I interrupting some morning affirmations?”

  Sabrina tapped the heavy stock card against her desk. “My invitation came. A little late, but it’s here.”

  She snatched it away for a closer look. “You must have been on the B-list.” At thirty-four, an ex–beauty pageant finalist, she was as smart as she was good-looking.

  “Just lost in the mail. But now it’s a problem because I don’t want to offend our biggest client, but there’s no way I can go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Colt could be there.”

  “So, that’s why every relationship you’ve had since has been lukewarm. Now I get it!” She shrugged; then, no longer teasing, added, “Look, you’ve both moved on, right? He has a family and bought a ranch up in Montana.”

  “Had a family,” Sabrina corrected a little too quickly. Colton had lost his wife and daughter in a terrible automobile accident.

  “That’s right.” Toni sucked her breath through her teeth. “That was tough, but it’s been a while. “The point is he does have a life, one without you.”

  “I know.”

  “And you, you’ve got this fantastic clinic with an even more fantastic partner.”

  Sabrina rolled her eyes, but the point was well taken. Her romance with Colton was ages ago. There was lots of water under that particular bridge. She pushed the reply card away on her desk. “You’re right.”

  “Scuttlebutt on the street is that Colton refuses to attend the wedding anyway. Besides, a big bash like this hits Prairie Creek once in a century. You can’t sit home just because you don’t want to run into an old boyfriend. Do you know that statistically, ninety percent of all childhood sweethearts don’t last?”

  “You’re making that up. And it’s easy for you to push me out there. You’ve already got a husband.”

  Antonia grabbed a pen from her pocket and leaned over the desk, turning the RSVP card her way. “You would think I was signing you up for the wet T-shirt contest in Jackson Hole.” She checked off a box, tucked the card into the small envelope and licked it. “Done. Now you’re committed, and you’re going to have a blast.”

  “Not likely.” Sabrina reached for the small envelope. “I’ll come up with an excuse.”

  “Nope.” Antonia scurried toward the door with the invitation behind her back. “Do it for our clinic. Think of the animals who need you to keep the peace with Ira Dillinger.”

  “That’s not fair.” Sabrina folded her arms.

  “It’s good business,” she said with a smile.

  “I’m telling you, I’m not going. I’ll get the flu.”

  Antonia held the envelope high. “Oh, Renee? I’ve got something that needs to go out in the mail today,” she called, disappearing down the hall.

  Sabrina made a sound of exasperation. Was she overreacting? Colton Dillinger had been out of her life for a lot longer than he’d been in it. He’d moved on long ago, and she sure as hell had tried to, though it had been something of a losing proposition.

  “But it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said aloud. Colton Dillinger was out of her life. Forever. He’d proved that well enough. And she’d moved on. After all, it had been eighteen years. Too long a time to carry a torch or hold a grudge.

  She heard the buzzer at the front door and looked up to see one of her patients—a corgi/beagle/God-knew-what-else mix of a dog and as bad-tempered a little beast as they came—being carried in by its owner.

  Pasting on a smile, she dropped the invitation from her mind, then headed down the hallway and into an examination room.

  “Hey, there,” she said to the dog, which promptly pulled its black lips into a snarl and, with wildly rolling eyes, started barking loud enough to raise the dead.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Colton Dillinger told the cattle as he closed the door of the holding pen. The wind was howling outside, rattling the roof and walls, nearly obliterating his words, and some of the cows were complaining, lowing loudly, their hooves shuffling in the straw. For a moment he thought of the person who had convinced him that it was healthy to talk to your cattle.

  Sabrina Delaney.

  He smiled. He’d heard Sabrina was a vet these days. Made sense. She knew her way around animals of all kinds.

  Colton had been rounding up his livestock these past few days with Cub Jenkins, his foreman, and some of the other hired hands, needing to get the herd under cover before the next blizzard came barreling down from Canada and hit Montana. Cattle weren’t given much to panic in the snow, but the wind, sometimes, if it was fierce enough it could send them searching for cover, often right into obstructions that killed them. During one blizzard when Colton was a kid, some stray cattle had bunched together at a fence to get out of the wind and suffocated each other. And everyone had heard tales of the huge number of cattle lost during the blizzard of 1949.

  Sure, the storm currently ripping through this part of Montana in a frigid Arctic blast was probably just a little howler compared to the whiteout of ’49, but Colton knew what had to be done to secure his stock. Latching the door to the pen, he pulled his scarf up over his nose and stepped into the blast of snow and ice. A few minutes in this stuff and he’d be a dead man. He mounted Mojave, a Kiger gelding that was his main workhorse, able to change gears and get the job done in the blistering wind and snow.

  If only some ranch hands could be as reliable. He snorted, his steamy breath warming the center of the frosted scarf.

  Inside the stables, he gave Mojave a well-deserved brush-down, then braved the wind one last time. According to the forecast, the weather was about to break. “’Bout time,” he muttered under his breath. His livestock were secure, safe and tucked into the barns and sheds of the ranch, but they were starting to get restless, and he couldn’t blame them.

  The warmth of the house seemed to melt his face as Colt kicked off his boots then hung his jacket on a hook by the door. He strode past the bacon grease congealed in a cast-iron skillet on the stove. It’d keep till morning.

  In t
he den he dropped down at the fireplace and stoked the fire. Another log and some old paper would do it. He reached into the paper bin and his hand closed over the fat parchment envelope.

  The invitation.

  He slipped out the engraved card and read it one last time. It had arrived weeks ago, a creamy envelope that was the harbinger of bad news.

  The honor of your presence is requested …

  Like hell. Big family wedding, his old man tying the knot.

  His sister Ricki had been bugging him about making an appearance, and much as he’d like to see all his sisters, there was no way Colton could be in the same room with the bride, Pilar Larson, a gold digger of the first order.

  He tossed the invitation into the fire and rocked back on his heels to watch his father’s latest decree curl and burn in the licking flames. He didn’t want to see Ira, he didn’t want to see the Rocking D, he didn’t want to see Pilar, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to see Sabrina because even though it had been a long time ago, they hadn’t left on the best of terms.

  Whatever the hell was happening in Prairie Creek, he wanted no part of it.

  On a clearing near the treed area of the Rocking D known as Copper Woods, Davis Featherstone slid a shovel from the back of his truck and spotted the boss’s Dodge Ram in the distance, purring up over the ridge. Wet snow gave way under his boots as he went over to the men who waited astride their horses, all ready to herd the near-grown calves back to shelter. Winter coats shaggy, the mix of black Angus and white-faced Herefords had strayed earlier, but they were complacent now.

  Probably hungry and thirsty, Davis thought. Even with all this snow around, cows couldn’t figure out how to get a drink. He’d heard of them dying of thirst in the snow.

  Not that he’d let that happen to Dillinger steers. Not yet thirty, he may have been young for a ranch foreman, but he was a cattleman. He could have run this ranch blindfolded.

  Except for the dead coyote.

  The slaughtered animal had thrown them all for a loop. It wasn’t just the place of esteem that coyote had in Shoshone stories of creation; it was the way the creature had been mutilated. Sliced and carved.