The Witch of Stonecliff

by Dawn Brown

  Chapter Seven

  Kyle flopped into the desk chair, watching a range of emotion flit across Eleri’s delicate features. If she were the cold-blooded serial killer people claimed, he had no idea how she’d managed to be so successful. Not when her every thought and feeling flashed across her face for everyone to read. Especially fear.

  When he’d had her pinned to the door, he’d seen it naked and raw in her pale skin and glassy eyes, heard it in her pleading voice, felt it in her trembling body. The irony that he could terrorize this alleged stone-cold killer had not been lost on him. He might have laughed had he not been sick to his stomach.

  Some distant part of him had wanted to step back, to reassure her, comfort her. Instead, he’d taken that fear and used it, manipulated with it until he got his way.

  Maybe old Jack Peirs wasn’t completely gone after all.

  Exhaustion rolled through him like a wave. He tossed the rope back into the desk drawer. His conversation with Eleri had dragged all those memories from dark corners of his mind, so he saw them in crystal clear Technicolor. He was shaken, raw and so bloody tired, but he needed answers. While he’d hoped to charm Eleri into trusting him, maybe laying his cards on the table would get him what he wanted without all the games.

  Provided, of course, she was telling the truth.

  “We both want the same thing,” he told her. “But my firsthand account probably has me further along then you’ll ever be.”

  Her dark eyes bored into him while she considered his words. “You stopped writing about me because you were attacked. Why didn’t I hear about it? If someone had survived an attempted murder, all of Cragera Bay would have been talking about it.”

  Cold sweat sprang to his skin. He hated thinking about that night. “No one knows about it. The man who found me took me to a hospital in Bangor—”

  “But that’s on the main land. Holyhead would have been closer.”

  “He also moved my car so authorities would think the attack took place away from the village.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would he have done that?”

  “He said it was for my protection. If I appeared to pose no threat to the persons who had done this, maybe they wouldn’t come after me.”

  She nodded slowly. “So you didn’t tell police what really happened to you.”

  “I told them everything I remembered,” he said, with a humorless chuckle. “Unfortunately, my story no longer jibed with the evidence. I was last seen leaving the pub with a woman, pissed out of my head—later, they found GHB in my system. My car was found fifteen miles from the village, where my rescuer claimed to have found me. Presently, the theory is the woman I left the pub with drugged me, drove me out to the middle of nowhere, then robbed me and cut my throat leaving me for dead. My memories of The Devil’s Eye are considered merely drug fueled hallucinations.”

  Her brows lifted sceptically. “Isn’t it possible that’s exactly what happened?”

  Anger flickered inside him. “No.”

  “You know, there’s a certain irony that you should be nearly killed while writing articles trying to make me look guilty.”

  Fury spiked like a solar flare. “Are you saying I deserved this?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped, folding her arms over her chest. “But I didn’t deserve to have you print lies about me for the world to read.”

  Hot shame squashed his anger. “You’re right, you didn’t. I’m sorry. I was a different man then.”

  She glared. “No you weren’t. You just threatened to go to the police and lie about me.”

  Maybe she was right. He wanted to believe Jack was gone, that he was no longer the same self-serving son-of-a-bitch. Then he thought of the naked fear in Eleri’s face when he had her pinned to the door and he wanted to throw up.

  “I can’t let you toss me out before I find the people who did this to me. You want that, too.”

  “You threatening me hardly suggests you have my best interest in mind. Incidentally, lying about your reason for being here has already been done. Our last groundskeeper only took the job to help gather evidence for the detective.”

  “I know all about Reece Conway. Where do you think I got the idea?”

  “He was better at it than you were. No one figured him out until he confessed.” She jutted out her chin and smiled. “I had you made in less than forty-eight hours. If you’re right about that bit of rope, so has whoever tried to kill you.”

  His blood turned to ice in his veins. She was right, of course. But if he’d guessed the pattern… “I have a week before I need to worry.”

  She frowned. “How can you know that?”

  “Because I know when the next man is going to die.” He turned to the map on the wall and pointed to the blue, black and red pins. “Each of these represents a man who disappeared.”

  “That can’t be right,” she said, coming up behind him. “There must be thirty pins, twice as many as the men found in the bog.”

  “A certain number of disappearances are people purposely dropping out, running away from debts or crimes, starting again, or those who simply had no tie to what’s been happening at Stonecliff. I’ve marked those with blue”

  “You can’t possibly know which disappearances are tied to The Devil’s Eye and which ones aren’t.”

  “I can, actually. The rest disappeared around the same dates.”

  She snorted. “You think you’ve stumbled onto a pattern no one else noticed, even the police?”

  He’d have to be deaf to miss the doubt in her tone. “They only take one man a year, and acquiring them from different locales has probably worked well to hide the pattern. And the police might have missed it because they’re focused on the wrong person. Haven’t you wondered why you haven’t been arrested?”

  Her throat jumped, but her expression turned shuttered. “Reece believes the police will be extremely cautious this time. After Ruth killed three people, they’ll want to be able to prove she had nothing to with the men in the bog.”

  “Reece is probably right, but it’s been more than a month. At least some of those bodies must have been identified by now. Surely, they would have been able to prove Ruth Bigsby had nothing to do with some of those men. I’d bet money at least one of those bodies is represented here by the black pins. They’re men who vanished more than fifteen years ago, some as far back as twenty-five. Let’s see, that would make you four, five when they went missing. Evil as the village claims you are, I doubt you’d be capable of slitting a grown man’s throat while in primary school.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she muttered. “How can you be sure any of these disappearances have to do with The Devil’s Eye?”

  “The date they disappeared.” Kyle turned to the desk and pulled out a pad of paper, rifling through pages filled with notes until he found the right list. He held it out to her and tapped his finger on the page beside the names. “These are the men who went missing from Stonecliff most recently. I didn’t include Matthew Langley for obvious reasons. I could have told you from the start his murder had nothing to do with the other men who disappeared.”

  “If only you’d been around, you’d have saved us all a lot of trouble. Wait a minute, you were.” She shot him a pointed glare.

  “I’ll get to all that. Look at the dates these men were last seen.”

  Eleri stared down at the list of names and dates, refusing to give in to the small ember of hope flickering in her chest. Did she really believe Kyle had spotted a pattern no one else had? Or was he delusional, and she so desperate she clung to every word?

  The dates weren’t exact, but close enough to give her pause. January twenty-ninth, October thirtieth, October twenty-seventh, April twenty-ninth, April twenty-eighth. Her gaze caught on Griff’s name and a chill blew through her.

  “He didn’t disappear,” she said, tapping her finger on the pad. “He’s gone to France.”

  Kyle frowned. “Have you heard from him since he lef
t?”

  She shook her head, swallowing the lump swelling in her throat. “No one has. He’s Stephen Paskin’s son. They’d had a row and Griffin left. He wouldn’t risk Stephen finding out where he’d gone.”

  Kyle’s gaze bore into her for a long moment as if he were trying to see inside her. She struggled not to look away. Finally, he shrugged. “He fits the pattern.”

  “What pattern?” she snapped. “Aside from men disappearing around the end of the month, there’s no pattern.”

  “It’s always the same four months.”

  He was right. April, October, January, July. It was like that all the way down the list. She frowned.

  “It’s the same months, but there’s no pattern. Here you have April twice in a row, then October and January. July, October twice more. What does it mean? A killer operating seasonally, sort of? You’ve been recognized. This,” she banged her finger on the page, “hardly guarantees your safety for another week.”

  “They’ve never broken the pattern before. I doubt they’ll start now.”

  She snorted. “I think it’s unlikely anyone’s ever escaped before and survived. Such a deviation might have this killer make an exception.”

  “Killers, as in more than one.” He pointed to his own name on the page. “They took me on August first. Then nothing until this man disappeared while hiking in Snowdonia Park at the end of October.”

  “The park’s not even on the island. It’s on the mainland. There’s no way you can be certain this man died at The Devil’s Eye.”

  “His disappearance fits the pattern. There were no reported disappearances right after the attempt on my life. They waited until the end of October.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want to risk drawing attention to themselves after you’d escaped.”

  “Police didn’t believe a thing I said. Maybe the date is as important as the killing.” His face was pale, his eyes hollow. “You’re right, though, me escaping broke their pattern. For all I know, I could wind up dead tomorrow, but it’s too late to run now. And I’m so bloody tired of hiding.”

  Pity she didn’t want to feel welled inside her. He’d clearly been through something awful, but that didn’t excuse his articles, or his lies, or his threats. Still, she softened her tone when she spoke next. “Whoever left the rope could have killed you already. Lord knows I would have been blamed. Maybe they are waiting for something, and the end of April is as good a reason as any. Plenty of time to get away from here while you’re still breathing.”

  His brows rose in mock surprise. “Eleri James, are you actually trying to reassure me?”

  Heat crept into her face and she scowled. “If people waiting a week to kill you is reassuring, then I suppose I am.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I know what happened that night,” he told her seriously. “Besides, the man who took me to the hospital might have left this to scare me off. He knows I’m here, and wasn’t happy about it.”

  “Who is he?” Did this man believe Kyle had fallen victim to her, or could he know more about the people who really tried to kill him?

  “I promised I’d leave out his name.” He sighed. “If I could remember where I dropped the rope, I would have a better idea who left it. I remember slipping one hand free next to The Devil’s Eye, but not if I managed to get the whole thing off before I ran. Or while I was running. Or once I was on the way to the hospital.”

  The image of Kyle running through the woods, the scar on his neck open and bleeding, churned her stomach.

  “What happened to you that night?” she asked, but a part of her didn’t want to know. She wanted to hate the man facing her, but couldn’t smother the thin worm of sympathy boring into her subconscious.

  He raked his fingers through his hair and turned away from her, tossing the notepad onto the desk. “You can see what happened.”

  “I’m not talking about your injuries. How did you wind up at The Devil’s Eye? How did you escape?”

  He faced her, eyes bright, his features tight and furious. “Why so curious?”

  Who wouldn’t be? “I can only assume you’ve told me this much—all the while pointing out that we want the same thing—because you’re hoping I’ll help you.”

  “Maybe I’m hoping you won’t go blathering who I am.” His expression remained guarded.

  “If the blackmail wasn’t enough, you mean?”

  He dropped his gaze, but didn’t respond.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We do want the same thing. I don’t like you, but you didn’t deserve what happened to you, any more than I deserved to have the blame pinned on me. I’ll help you, and you won’t even have to pretend you’re attracted to me anymore.”

  He jerked his head up and met her gaze, expression inscrutable. “Eleri—”

  “Don’t.” She lifted up her hand and cut him off. There was no way she could listen to some weak apology for kissing her and manipulating her without wishing she’d expire on the spot. “Where do we start?”

  “Tomorrow I’m going to The Devil’s Eye, and you’re coming with me.”

  * * *

  Eleri leaned against the window frame, her gaze fixed on the small bit of roof peeking through the trees. She tapped her nail without rhythm against the glass. What was Kyle doing now?

  There’d been no offer of dinner. With her discovery of Kyle’s true purpose at Stonecliff, there’d been no need to go ahead with their date, no need to continue his sham. So she’d left the lodge, and Kyle. He’d watched her go, looking haggard and more than a little exhausted.

  What if she was making a mistake by not telling anyone about who he really was? For all she knew everything out of his mouth had been a lie, an attempt to gain her sympathy, her trust, while he put together more destructive stories about her.

  The image of his wan face and dull eyes flashed through her head. He hadn’t been lying. She was almost certain. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t telling her something.

  Who could have done that to him? To all the men who’d been found, who’d disappeared? There’d been so many. And if Kyle was right, those men had been going missing long before she could have been responsible. If Kyle was right, and not grasping at any perceived pattern to alleviate his own fears.

  She blew out a long sigh, closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the glass. She wanted him to be right. She wanted to believe he’d found that one crucial piece of evidence that could clear her name, set her free.

  Of course, that would mean someone had been killing at Stonecliff for as long as she’d been alive. Someone she knew.

  Meris seemed the obvious choice, having tried to drown her own daughter. But she was long gone, even before the disappearances that would be laid at Eleri’s feet. So whom did that leave? Hugh Warlow? Her own father? Stonecliff was a large estate, anyone could be moving about the property without her knowledge. The list of potential suspects was endless.

  She opened her eyes and glanced at her watch. Nearly six. She should go down to dinner. If the killer was somehow connected to anyone in this house, she needed to behave as she always did and observe carefully.

  She left her room and started for the servants’ stairs. She had no idea if the sconce at the main stairs had been replaced, but didn’t have it in her to deal with shadows tonight.

  After opening the door, she started down. Light fixtures at the top and bottom of the narrow passage cast long shadows up the walls. Cool musty air wafted to her nose. She picked up her pace, ignoring the mild claustrophobia wrapping around her.

  At the bottom, she let out the breath she’d been holding and grasped the brass knob, but it didn’t turn. Fear prickled her skin, but she ignored it. The door didn’t have a lock. The bloody thing was just stuck. Everything else in the house was falling apart. Why not the door, too?

  She rattled the knob, but it still wouldn’t turn. The air around her cooled, thickened. Invisible pressure bored between her shoulders.

  Ridi
culous. She was letting her fear get the better of her. She shook the knob again. It still wouldn’t turn.

  The hell with it, she’d go back up and down the main stairs. Burned out sconce or not.

  A loud bang exploded in the quiet. Eleri jumped, her heart lodging in her throat. The lights flickered then went out, casting her into complete darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  Darkness wrapped around Eleri like a shroud. Her heart thudded against her chest, nearly drowning out the sound of her own ragged breaths.

  A mossy stink tinged the frigid air. Tiny, whispered voices rose up around her, their words indiscernible.

  For a moment, she was a child again, locked in the cellar, screaming, pounding on the door, clawing at the wood until her fingers were bloody. All the while the thing that lived in the darkness had drawn closer.

  She needed light. She slid her hand over the rough plaster feeling for the switch.

  The whispers faded but the air turned colder. The stink intensified, putrid and rotting. Hot bile bubbled up the back of her throat. She clenched her jaw to keep from gagging. At last, her fingers brushed the switch. She pressed down, but nothing happened.

  A thin whimper tore loose from her throat. She pressed again. Nothing.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered, hammering the button again and again. The blackness closed in tighter.

  Deep, rasping breaths rose up from behind her, choking, gurgling.

  It was just like when Meris used to shut her down the cellar when she was a child. And she knew, just as she had then, if that thing touched her, she’d lose her mind.

  Her fraying control snapped. She slammed her fists against the door. “Help! Someone, help me!”

  Her screams couldn’t drown out the choking breaths moving up behind her. An icy chill radiated from its dark form, sinking into her bones.

  As if it had some hypnotic power—God knew she didn’t want to look at it—Eleri glanced back over her shoulder. A man’s shadow loomed over her, tall, broad, his dark outline blacker than the darkness. She could make out the silhouette of his long coat and brimmed hat. Where his face should have been, two red eyes peered out at her.