by Kaylea Cross
“I will.” Unless something unforeseen came up, like the FBI arresting her. She didn’t like the way Agent Hunter’s interrogation had gone. But unless they found another lead, she would remain the focus of the investigation.
She had to give them a lead. Whatever it cost her. Her mind was full of fear of what that meant, as she said good-bye to Isabelle and hung up at last.
Simply wishing for another vision hadn’t worked. How did other psychics control their dubious “gift”? The only thing she could think of was a documentary she’d recently watched about a psychic who visited crime scenes to help solve murder cases. Her visions seemed to have been triggered by some magical “vibes” violence left at the scene of the crime.
Ashley looked out into the twilight. If her “sensitivity” could be used the same way… She knew only one place connected to Blackwell, one place where the man had done something terrible. She thought of the shallow grave where Jack had been buried alive. What if some vibes had been left behind?
Maybe if she went out there, she could pick up something. The psychic on TV had talked about years and years of effort to develop her skill into what it was today. So if the “skill” could be developed, that meant Ashley might get better at it if she kept trying.
If she could bring back the vision, if she could expand it instead of fighting it… If she could see Blackwell put Jack into the grave, she could draw the man.
Tomorrow, said the voice of fear in her head.
It always said, tomorrow, whether it talked about going to the grocery store or starting a new painting. Tomorrow you’ll be brave, fear whispered. Tomorrow you’ll be normal. Just give me today.
That was how fear stole whole lives away.
But she had to stop letting fear win.
She had to do it for Maddie. Her daughter needed a real mother, not the shadow of one. She needed to reclaim her life. Starting right now. Because if she didn’t do it right now, she might never do it, and she wasn’t willing to lose her daughter over stupid cowardice.
So she dressed as warmly as she could, got into her car, and drove down Hadley Road, without looking once at the reservoir, pulled over at the exact same spot as she had before, and forced herself to step out of the car.
Fear, like the night, surrounded her completely. An owl hooted somewhere in the woods, making her jump. She almost got back into the car.
But then she thought of her daughter and marched forward.
Memories of the night she’d first come out here to search for the grave flooded her. She put one foot in front of the other mechanically, ignoring the bushes that tore at her pants. At least this time her legs and feet were covered.
Soon she could hear the creek up ahead. She pushed through a jumble of branches, and there loomed the solitary boulder twenty feet or so in front of her. A pretty impressive gravestone, she thought.
Finding the grave was easy, even in the dark. Police tape flitted all around it, pale moonlight reflecting off the yellow plastic.
She stopped outside the circle and drew a deep breath, looking up to the stars. Waited to feel something, see something. Come on.
Nothing happened.
She looked down at the grave then and tried to think back to the time when she’d been on her knees next to it, clawing at the dirt with bare fingers. The images came back easily enough, but nothing else, nothing new.
Frustration battled with anxiety inside her.
She lifted the police tape and stepped under it, moving all the way to the grave, stared down into the black hole and shivered. She stared hard, trying to see shapes, movement, an image.
And she did get glimpses of a man, hidden by shadows, and Jack, but they did not feel true. They weren’t like her visions. They were images her brain was making up because she was forcing it.
She tried to focus harder. Closed her eyes.
The hand settling on her shoulder made her scream into the night.
She spun around, her heart racing so hard she could barely catch her breath.
Not a hand, she realized, still on the verge of a heart attack. Just a branch dipping in the breeze.
She drew back, nearly falling into the grave, caught herself before she would have tumbled.
“Okay, enough craziness for one night,” she said to herself and began walking back to her car, feeling like an utter failure.
No. She didn’t fail until she gave up. And she wouldn’t give up.
Visiting “the scene of the crime” obviously didn’t work for her. She had to find something that would.
She thought about that all the way back to her car, unaware that she was being observed from afar.
* * *
Jack came close to smiling as he drove back out to the old firehouse Tuesday morning. Full, active duty. Finest three words in the English language, he’d ever heard. He got a new service weapon and a new badge, and he swore he’d die before he’d let anyone take them away from him.
Harper was in the hospital with a bullet wound to the shoulder, the poor bastard. A jealous husband had clipped him. The idiot was currently cooling his heels at the county jail. Bing and Jack had taken him in.
The jerkwad was out of circulation and would be out for a long time, but the shooting left the department one man short, which meant Bing had to bring Jack back to active duty.
He’d passed his physical first thing Monday morning, then did whatever he had to so Dr. Beacon would sign the psych release. By noon, he’d been reinstated and was interviewing burglary suspects. He was in charge of that now, officially. And only him. Harper had Joe working with him, but Bing moved Joe over to looking for a runaway teen. The captain wanted to keep Jack busy enough so he’d stay out of the FBI’s way.
So he’d read the burglary case files, then reinterviewed the victims. Then, since he was on that side of town, he decided to swing by to see the old firehouse again. It matched his criteria for location for the place where he’d been tortured. Maybe he’d missed some hidden basement entry before.
The place was connected to Eddie Gannon; he kept the big plow there. And Eddie Gannon spent time on Ashley’s land. He would know the lay of the property, the best spot to hide a body. He went there for wood all the time. For a woodstove?
There’d been a woodstove in the torture chamber.
Jack pulled up in front of the building, his pulse kicking up as he noted the open door. He checked his gun down below the dashboard without being too obvious about it.
Eddie was coming outside by the time Jack pushed out of his car.
The man held a tire iron by his side, but his expression was friendly enough. “Hey. Looking for me?”
They knew each other by sight but hadn’t interacted much in the past.
“Running down some leads.”
“Out here?”
“Looking for the place where I was kept.”
Eddie turned somber. “That was a messed-up business. You think he’s still around? They said on the news that he moves from state to state.”
He shrugged, keeping his arms loose, making sure his weapon was in easy reach. “I hear you recently bought a shovel.”
Eddie’s face went blank, then surprised. “That’s why you here?”
“Just running down some leads.” He kept his tone neutral. “Mind if I come inside?”
“No, man.” Eddie stepped aside immediately. “You look at whatever you want.”
“After you.” Jack gestured. He wasn’t about to let Eddie get behind him with that tire iron.
The big plow was in the middle of the bay, some tools lying around the front tire. Eddie must have been working on that. He plodded back there now and dropped the tire iron next to the other tools. “I can get you the shovel.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Jack stared at the woodstove in the back. He hadn’t seen that when he’d looked through the windows before. It had been covered by a partially open door.
But this was not the place where he’d been kept. The sound wasn�
��t right, the echoes different as they walked and talked, the high ceiling affecting the sound.
He checked but couldn’t find any place a basement entry could be hidden. He asked anyway, “Basement?”
Eddie shook his head as he brought him the shovel. “Old rock foundation. It’s actually sinking a little at the east corner.”
Still in the wrapping, the tool didn’t have a speck of dirt on it. It had never been used, at least not out by the creek where the rocks would have scraped it some if it had been pushed into the ground.
Okay. The building and the shovel weren’t a match. Jack moved on to the next item on his checklist. “Can you tell me where you were the first three days of this month? From the first to the third?”
The man had to walk over to his calendar to check. He scratched his head. “Right here. Working on Gerty.” He glanced toward the big plow. “She had a few small problems. They were predicting some weather. Wanted to make sure she was ready for it.”
“Day and night?”
“No, man, I went home to sleep.”
“Alone?”
“Unfortunately.” He gave a good-natured grin.
He lived in a one-bedroom apartment above the diner on Main Street. Jack had already checked into that. No basement there either. He made a mental note to ask the neighbors if they’d seen him coming and going during the three days he was interested in.
Blackwell had stayed with him nearly the entire time in that basement.
One more question left. “Captain Bing said you were out there on the roads, down Hadley Road the evening of the third. Have you seen anything out of place?”
The man didn’t strike him as Blackwell. He was too relaxed, too happy-go-lucky, even with Jack up in his face, in his business. Blackwell had plenty of piss and vinegar in him.
But even if Eddie wasn’t Blackwell, he might be a witness.
“Nope. Thought about that a hundred times since. The FBI asked too. I’m sorry, man.”
He thanked Eddie for his cooperation, then moved on to the next burglary victim, the Blackwell case always in the back of his mind, the puzzle pieces in constant shuffle.
The middle-aged shopkeeper he popped in on was missing some of his power tools. The next, an old woman, had her jewelry taken. Another guy had his entire DVD collection booted. The woman after that, her laptop. And it kept going like that. Relatively small items, items that could be easily sold online and shipped. Nothing terribly valuable, not even the jewelry. At a few places, the beer in the fridge and some smokes had also gone missing.
Didn’t seem like a serious burglar with serious connections. Plenty of high-value items had been left behind. Harper had already lifted prints, but none of them were a hit in the police database.
When Jack went back to his car after the last home visit, he pulled out an old-fashioned map from the glove compartment and took a good look at the streets where houses had been picked. They were all over town and outside of town. If there was a pattern, he sure didn’t see it.
But he did have a few hunches. The burglar was either a small-time crook, trying to support a drinking habit or a minor drug addiction, or… Those kids he’d seen twice now, out after dark in places they shouldn’t be, came to mind.
Questioning them was going to be tricky. For one, they were minors. Two, the son of the high school principal as well as a councilman were on the team. There would be a lot of huffing and puffing on the parents’ part, exactly the kind of small-town politics he hated.
Maybe he’d run his thoughts by Bing, see how the captain wanted to handle it.
But not tonight. Tonight, he still wanted to check out the grave site.
First he stopped by the diner to appease his growling stomach. He made a point of having a decent meal at least once a day. He wanted his full strength back for the inevitable face-off with Blackwell. He also wanted to see if Eddie had an alibi.
He did, according to the owner.
“Eddie has breakfast and dinner here every day, hasn’t missed a meal this year yet,” the round-faced woman told Jack, one hand on her hip, the other holding a dishrag. “I remember him being here the evening of the first, specifically, because one of the giant dishwashers in the back threw a hose and Eddie went back there to help us fix it.”
“You’re sure it was the first?”
“One hundred percent. There was some water damage, so I had to fill out stacks of insurance papers.” She frowned. “I haven’t yet seen a penny of that insurance money either.”
Jack thanked her and, after he ate, he took the long way out to the reservoir, taking the back roads, some of which, technically, were closed for winter. Creedence played on the stereo, an old CD that skipped on track four, right in the middle of “Born on the Bayou.”
He’d taken to driving the back roads at night when he couldn’t sleep. Hoping for what? That he’d catch Blackwell dragging some victim off into the bushes? But he had no leads, and anything was better than lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and obsessing.
Or worse, falling asleep and dreaming of Ashley in his arms, his hands on her breasts, his mouth crushing hers in a wild kiss. He was that far gone now. Oh hell.
His high beams caught an ancient Chevy pulled over to the side of the road, almost in the ditch. He was instantly alert, shoving his coat aside to make sure he’d have easy access to his weapon if needed. Then he recognized the car and grinned into the night.
He pulled up to the side of the parked car and shone his halogen onto the backseat, and looked away from the tangled mass of limbs scurrying for clothes.
He rolled his window down, thinking he recognized one of his neighbors who lived a few houses down from the small ranch house Jack rented. He didn’t like apartments. He liked to be able to look out the windows in every direction and see what was coming.
“That you, Billy Pickett?”
“That you, Jack?” Billy, the fifty-something town mechanic was struggling into a white sweatshirt. With his head stuck somewhere shy of the opening, he looked like a cartoon ghost.
“Detective Sullivan, under the circumstances. And would that be Molly in there with you?” He risked another look. With one eye. Squinting.
“Hey, Jack,” said the woman, now wrapped in a wool blanket, thankfully.
“Road’s closed. You get stuck out here, good luck getting a tow.”
“Jeanne moved back with the kids again.” Billy’s head finally emerged.
Jeanne was their oldest, with twins and a deadbeat boyfriend. When things turned rough from time to time, she moved back with Billy and Molly. Who also had the four younger kids still in the house, plus Molly’s parents.
He didn’t blame them for sneaking away for some private time, but he was the law in town. He supposed he had to say something.
“Open lewdness is a misdemeanor of the third degree,” he told them mildly. Then added on a more serious tone, “There could be dangerous people out in these parts.”
“You should know. Shouldn’t you be home, recovering?” Molly asked with feeling. “You let me know if you need help around the house.”
Darndest thing about small towns. He hadn’t thought he’d made friends here. He’d kept to himself as always. Yet after he’d gotten home from the hospital, Molly had come over to clean. Another neighbor had brought an entire lasagna that had lasted him a week. Bewildering stuff for a man who’d spent his whole life a loner. “Seen anyone since you’ve been out here?” he asked.
Billy shook his head, but Molly said, “We did hear some snowmobiles.”
Those kids again. He was going to have a talk with them and soon, get a feel for them.
“All right. Go home. Stay safe.” He shut off the halogen, rolled up the window, and cranked the Creedence song as he pulled away.
As the old Chevy disappeared in his rearview mirror, for a moment he wondered what that would be like, having all that normalcy, having a good woman to love, family. Something weird tickled in the middle of his chest, some
thing that felt irritatingly similar to longing.
He didn’t have time to be lonely.
But he wondered if Ashley was, living out there by herself. Whatever her problems were, she was a fine woman. Seemed insane that somebody hadn’t snatched her up yet.
He was a morose bastard; that he was alone was to be expected. But Ashley needed more in her life than what she had now. She deserved more—her daughter back, a family, a man to stand by her, a house full of laughter.
For a second, he almost wished he was the kind of guy who could give her that. Then he gave a sour laugh. Jesus, he was going soft in the head.
He drove down the road, watching for tire tracks, keeping alert. Finally he came out of the woods and onto the paved road again. In five minutes or so, he was coming up on Ashley’s place. Her downstairs windows were dark, only one light on in the house, upstairs but not the loft, probably her bedroom.
On an impulse, he gave her a ring. “Hey, it’s Jack. Just wanted to check in. Painted anything today?”
“Finished a pretty good abstract.”
“Nothing else?”
She hesitated on the other end.
“It’s not an official inquiry.”
He could hear her releasing her breath.
“No, not today.”
Something inside him relaxed. “All right. Good night, then.”
“Thank you for the shovel,” she hurried to say.
He didn’t want her to read anything into it. “You needed one,” he said gruffly, then hung up on her.
The dark hole in the ground.
The light in Ashley’s window.
There was a choice there, whether or not he wanted to admit it. The light drew him. But he drove past her driveway and turned right on Hadley Road, toward the grave.
Chapter Nine
Ashley woke later than usual, cursing herself for missing the best morning light for painting. She shoved out of bed bleary-eyed.
Since visiting the grave hadn’t worked the night before, she’d convinced herself that her “visions” were brought on by anxiety, stress, and exhaustion, so she’d stayed up most of the night, trying to think of all the things she was scared of. A pretty miserable way to spend the time.
