by Kay Hooper
That was troubling.
Even though long distances had to be covered, and quickly even over rough terrain, he thought he slept a lot, because there were long gaps in his memory. That was troubling, too, because he was growing more tired rather than more rested, and sometimes when he woke up his whole body ached, as though he had run a marathon.
And his sleep, though deep, was often restless, his dreams filled with red. Everything red, so much red.
And screaming.
He thought the screaming made a kind of sense, because the second pair of harlots had been a bit more difficult to subdue and had screamed a lot. They had screamed and fought, one giving him a black eye. And that one had screamed even more later. Every time he woke up, it was to hear her screaming.
Still, if he concentrated on a song he liked and kept that music in his head, he could mostly block out the screaming. So he did that, most of the time.
It didn’t really help with the smell, though.
He tried to ask the voices when they could leave the place because it smelled so bad, but they were impatient with him for the first time, and that was troubling.
That was very troubling.
The time he liked best was when he was making the crosses. He had always been good with his hands, and the voices hadn’t had to teach him for long before he had it all down. He loved melting the silver, bits of jewelry and coins and other things the voices told him to use. And he loved pouring the liquid metal into the mold.
He loved filing away the rough edges, and drilling the tiny, perfect hole for the ring, and sometimes stamping names and messages into the metal.
He felt so much more righteous when he was making the crosses, so . . . in control.
That was it. When he made the crosses, he was in control. He felt like himself.
The rest of the time . . .
Well, it was troubling.
Very troubling.
But he was a soldier of God. He was doing great and noble work, important work.
He just wished he could sleep without dreaming in red.
And he wished he could escape the screams.
And the smells.
—
MELANIE JAMES HAD worked at the Hollow Creek Bank for more than three years, and she liked her job. The bank truly was a “hometown” sort of place and had been for at least three generations, its canny local investors and managers both smart and skilled enough to keep it prospering even during the periodic economic downturns of the state and even the country.
And since Sociable was a small town where neighbor still helped neighbor and most had very strong work ethics, being the loan officer for the bank seldom involved unpleasant duties such as turning down a request for a loan, whether personal or business.
“It’s just for the rest of the winter,” John David Matthews was saying in his laconic, matter-of-fact voice. “Got some fine stock to sell in the spring and over the summer months.”
“You’ve always been a good credit risk, John David,” Melanie told him with a smile as she gave the paperwork a final check. “Hey, how is that pinto mare coming along?”
“My daughter’s training her, says she’s smart and good natured. No vices. You still interested in her?”
“Definitely. I’ve been saying for the last year that I wanted to have a good riding horse, mostly for weekend trail rides.” It was a favorite activity among several of her friends, enjoyable because the area was crisscrossed with miles of mountain trails.
Also because there really weren’t a whole lot of options when it came to things to do in Sociable.
“The pinto would be a good choice.”
“For a Sunday rider?”
He smiled. “I’d say. Sophie trains with kindness and takes her time; her horses always seem to take on her own sweet nature. With a pasture to run in when you aren’t riding so she gets plenty of exercise, the pinto’s bound to be a calm mount.”
“Good. Maybe I’ll come see her this weekend, if it’s okay.”
“’Course it’s okay. I’ll tell Sophie you’re still interested. You can call the house and let her know if you do decide to come.”
“Great, I’ll do that. And you be thinking of a price, okay? I’d be boarding her with you, of course.” Her downtown apartment was nice but hardly boasted a stable or pasture. And John David provided fine care at a reasonable price for any animals boarded with him.
His rugged face appeared mildly pleased, which for him was as good as a broad grin; training and boarding fees, along with the occasional guided trail ride, made up most of his income from fall to spring, so a prospective new boarder was welcome news. As was the strong possibility of a horse sold.
Still, being a practical man, he said, “You know you can always borrow a horse if you want to ride. Don’t have to have the expenses of buying and boarding.”
Melanie gathered up the signed paperwork into a neat stack and smiled at him. “Little girls dream of owning their own horses one day. I did. Now I can actually do it. And I’ve got my eye on that pinto, John David.”
“Consider her reserved.”
“Thanks. Now—here are your copies of everything, and here’s your check. Always a pleasure doing business with you.” The words were conventional, but her tone made them friendly and personal.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He smiled as he rose, and they shook hands before he headed out into the bank to deposit his check.
Melanie rechecked to make sure all the paperwork she needed was in his file, then closed it and for a few moments gazed down at the folder on her blotter without really seeing it.
Good job. Good town. Good people. She had friends. She had dates when she wanted them. She had a nice home she enjoyed and money enough to live comfortably, even well.
It was a good life.
Or, at least . . . it had been.
Until the dreams had started. Until she’d begun to catch glimpses of . . . something . . . from the corner of her eye, just quick enough to be gone when she looked.
Until she had begun to feel that too-familiar, almost gleeful sense of being watched from the shadows.
Until they started hearing about what was happening in the mountains so near.
Until people started dying.
The cold knot in the pit of her stomach was never very far from her awareness now. Because something was very, very wrong in Sociable, something . . . unnatural was here. Something a deeply primal part of herself recognized.
And she was afraid that meant at least one person in her life wasn’t at all who or what she believed them to be. In fact, she was almost certain that was the case.
Not a stranger, Trinity had said, eyeing Melanie calmly. No evidence of that, and plenty going the other way.
It was entirely possible, Trinity had said, that someone in Sociable was a murderer.
It’s not natural, what happened to Scott. It’s not . . . normal. Normal is when somebody gets mad and somebody else gets dead. Shot. Stabbed. Hit on the head. Somebody gets greedy and somebody else gets dead. Somebody gets jealous and possessive and somebody else gets dead. Simple motives for simple, stupid crimes, mostly obvious right from the start. That’s what Deacon says. And he’s right. That’s the way it works. But this . . .
This was definitely not simple, and if the killer was stupid, he or she was hiding it well.
Even with no experience investigating murder in Sociable, Trinity was no fool and probably better trained to handle the unlikely than most small-town sheriffs, given her background in big-city law enforcement. And she wouldn’t hesitate to arrest even a friend if the evidence warranted it.
She was giving Melanie the benefit of the doubt.
For now, at least.
Melanie had so far gotten only a few odd looks from some of her fellow citizens, but she knew it was early days yet. There were just a few rumors now, mostly because too many gossips had been in the restaurant when Scott had been so angry and Melanie so icy, their relationship cle
arly on the rocks.
So gossip said, preferring the drama over the more prosaic truth that a fiery relationship had simply burned itself out.
And long before that public display of . . . emotions.
Just gossip now. But with every day that passed without the murder being explained and the killer being unmasked, let alone caught, she would get more and more of those looks. As time went on and the very air grew thicker and thicker with tension, with anxiety, people would look for a focus for their suspicion and fear.
She was a relative newcomer to the town. And even if they didn’t know for sure, people would imagine . . . motives. From the reasonable to the irrational, there were bound to be motives.
Hell, she could think of a few herself.
Which explained her panicked call to Deacon.
Melanie wasn’t exactly having second thoughts about that, except that she hated feeling this need for . . . somebody on her side. Somebody who knew her too well to believe . . . even reasonable motives.
Someone who knew she was not a murderer.
—
DEACON ABSENTLY TRACKED a casually dressed woman from the door to the counter. She had dark brown hair, pulled back at the nape of her neck. Hard to tell from the loose, bulky jacket, but he judged her to be slender, average height. He couldn’t hear what she said to the staff, but they seemed to know her and be eager to serve her.
It wasn’t until she turned with coffee in hand and came directly across to where he was sitting that he saw the gun on her hip.
And the badge.
He began to rise out of automatic courtesy, but she waved him back and took the chair across from him. Since the table was small, they were close enough that he could detect the unusual gold flecks in her rather startling green eyes.
“Sheriff,” he said. “Did I park illegally or something?”
She smiled briefly, the expression turning her face from rather ordinary to something close to beautiful. “No, Mr. James, you didn’t park illegally.”
“How did you—”
“You and your sister favor. The same blue eyes. High cheekbones. Even the way you raise your eyebrows.”
He thought about it, sipping the last of his coffee, then said, “And you ran my plates.” He was driving his own car.
“And that,” she agreed amiably. She sipped her own black coffee. “I’m Trinity Nichols, by the way. But I expect Melanie told you that much. Probably told you a lot more.”
He pegged her age at not much past thirty, which was young for a sheriff—except maybe in a small town where her father and grandfather had also served as sheriff.
Melanie had told him a lot, including the fact that Trinity Nichols had hardly inherited the job but had earned it on merit; she had spent nearly ten years as a cop in Atlanta, on the streets and as a detective, so she was most certainly not a politician or a desk jockey.
Deacon nodded. “I’m not here to cause trouble. Not here to interfere with your investigation.”
“Just here to support your sister.”
“Yeah.”
“So there’s nothing at all official about your visit.”
“No. Just visiting Melanie. I had vacation time coming and no pressing cases.”
“So a busman’s holiday of sorts.” Her tone was still affable.
“Brothers worry.”
“Do they?” She smiled, something a bit wry in the expression. “I wouldn’t know.”
Deacon thought that might prove an interesting tangent to explore, but also knew enough about small towns and the people who lived in them to be certain such probing wouldn’t be welcome.
Not yet, at any rate.
He hesitated, not entirely sure just how much this keen-eyed woman knew or had guessed, then said, “Melanie can be . . . overly dramatic, especially if an idea takes hold. And she has a very active and vivid imagination. But she isn’t capable of murder. I hope you know that.”
“I would have said.” Her green eyes never left his face. “Still resisting the notion, actually. But—evidence.”
“Circumstantial,” he said.
“True enough. But about all I’ve got. And apparent motives all over the place. A romance on the rocks. Arguments in public. Her fingerprints found in the home of the murder victim.”
“Well . . . they were involved.”
“Yeah. But Scott was a neat freak. And his habit was to make very sure all traces of his latest ex were wiped out of his apartment.”
“Still, a little cleaning wouldn’t—”
“He hired an industrial cleaning crew. Practically had them on retainer.”
After a startled moment, Deacon said, “Wow. That’s a little extreme. On retainer? How many exes did he have?”
“A few. But if you’re thinking more suspects, most remained at least friendly with him afterward. And Melanie was the most recent. The one showing anger in public. So . . .”
“So your number one suspect?”
“Not exactly. It’s just that his place was . . . awfully clean. And they had that argument in public. So I have to take notice, so to speak.”
“I assume you also have to take notice of the unlikelihood that my sister—or any woman without special training—could have broken the neck of a healthy, fit, adult male with plenty of his own muscle. And most especially when his neck is broken with no bruising or ligature marks, no sign of a rope—and the body found in a room with windows and door locked from the inside.”
Sheriff Nichols nodded slowly and with no surprise. “It is a puzzle,” she conceded. “I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around it, without much success.”
“Then you don’t believe my sister killed him.”
“The thing is,” Trinity Nichols said, “I’m having a hard time believing anyone killed him.”
“And yet he was murdered.”
“And yet he was murdered.”
—
THEY WERE COMING.
He could feel it, like a change in the air before a storm, a kind of oppressive heaviness even though the sky was clear. And not just heavy, but more, like power of some kind let loose to roam, prickly, tingling, uncomfortable. Both light and dark energy moving slowly all around him, restless and uneasy.
Like him. The restlessness, at least. And a growing sense of power within himself. He wasn’t exactly uneasy, just . . . alert. That was it. He was alert and aware.
Not a bad thing, surely.
An edge.
It fascinated him that he could feel them coming nearer. He hadn’t expected that. He’d expected to feel her, of course, because she couldn’t close herself off, and even though he was being careful that she didn’t sense him, he’d always expected to sense her.
Except that she felt . . . different, somehow. More than she had been? Less? Or just different? He didn’t know.
Not knowing bothered him.
It was something out of his control.
Then there was him. He was different now, too. Shut inside himself like before, protected like before, but . . . connected in a way he hadn’t been before. Connected to her. So something new there, too. Something he couldn’t . . . quite . . . get hold of.
It was irritating.
And if the truth be told, he wasn’t sure if this uncertain sensitivity to both of them, all these change in what he had expected, would make things easier—or more difficult.
Not that it mattered, really.
He had A Plan. And he intended to stick to his Plan no matter what sort of tricks they brought with them.
A muffled sound drew his gaze from the town and stunning scenery around it to the bound man at his feet. He studied the sluggishly bleeding cut in the center of a swelling bruise on the man’s temple, then shook his own head, not so much in impatience as in regret.
“It’s a shame you came to,” he told the man. “I thought I hit you hard enough to keep you out. It would have been much better for you that way. I’m sorry, I really am. But this one has to look very . . . phys
ical. Because the other one wasn’t. I need to throw them off the scent, so to speak. I’m sure you can understand.”
The sounds muffled behind the very efficient tape and gag became even more frantic.
“It’s nothing personal,” he assured the man as he bent and unrolled a soft leather case filled with assorted very shiny tools. “I mean, you didn’t do anything to me. You just fit my requirements, that’s all. You have a part to play. A Very Important Part. And isn’t that better than anything you could have found for yourself in your really boring life?”
Pleading sounds, garbled panic and terror.
“Oh, stop it.” He studied his tools for a moment, then stepped over to recheck the rope around the man’s ankles. “I know it’s terribly undignified, going out like this, and I’m sorry about that, I really am. If it’s any consolation to you, I’ll do my best to make sure nobody in your family finds you. Of course, the police’ll probably take lots of pictures, but I don’t think they show the really bad ones to the family, do you?”
A long, low moan, then even more urgent sounds.
“And morticians can do wonders these days, so you’ll look good in the box so everyone can pay their respects.”
This time, the sound was more a muffled scream.
He looked briefly interested, then shrugged, checked the hoist and rope for a final time, and began to slowly, carefully raise the man until he was hanging upside down with his head not much more than a foot off the ground.
For a few brief moments, he twisted around desperately like a newly hooked fish, but then subsided, still making those moaning sounds.
“I really am sorry,” he told the man again as he tied off the rope. “If I had another choice . . . But I don’t. It’s just something I have to do. You understand that, right?”
