by Brenda Novak
She liked his dark five o’clock shadow, loved how his hair was going every which way. Somehow seeing him fresh out of “bed” made him even sexier, which was rather...unsettling, since such thoughts were so unusual for her. “Okay, I appreciate your generosity. So why don’t I go out and clean your truck, and then we can agree to forget about it?”
“Since I’ve already cleaned my truck, we can forget about it even sooner.” He gave her a grudging smile. “I didn’t think the smell would get better with time.”
She returned that smile simply because it was hard not to smile at a man who looked so good. “I can’t fault your logic, and of course I’ll pay to have it professionally detailed.”
“Like I said, I took care of it. It’s not the first time I’ve encountered someone who’s gotten sick.”
“Well, it’s the first time I’ve ever humiliated myself in that way.” And if she had to do such a thing, why couldn’t she have done it with someone else?
“I can’t say that’s anything to pride yourself on,” he said. “It’s hard to humiliate yourself in front of others if you never hang out with anyone to begin with.”
“I have friends!”
“That you go out and have a good time with? Or are we talking about an occasional intellectual discussion—an intellectual discussion about, wait for it, deviant behavior. I’m sure that’s just what you need. More examples of men who have raped, murdered and maimed.”
She fisted her hands on her hips. “I’m not sure you can use last night as an example to show me what I’ve been missing all these years.”
“You could be more cautious next time—now that you’re aware of your limits. Most people figure that out when they’re teenagers, but...”
“But I didn’t go through my teen years the way most everyone else did. Yes, I know.”
He tossed her lap quilt aside and sat up. “You did great last night, by the way. Everyone liked you.”
She couldn’t help feeling gratified by that comment. “Do you think I won over the people who damaged Hanover House?”
“Tough to tell, but in this small of a town, I’m sure word will spread that you’re not as bad as you seem. It was a step in the right direction.”
Although it required some effort, she lifted her eyes from his chest where they tended to drift without her express permission. “Would you like some coffee—and maybe some oatmeal?”
“Oatmeal?” He grimaced. “How about eggs and bacon? Or biscuits and gravy?”
“I don’t have any eggs and bacon or—or biscuits and gravy.”
“Figures. You’re even uptight when it comes to food.”
She blinked at him. “Is there something wrong with oatmeal?”
“It’s just so...healthy.” He looked around as if he wanted to put on his shirt but couldn’t find it.
“You must’ve thrown it away,” she said.
“Thrown it away?”
“Aren’t you looking for your shirt?”
“I was. But now that I remember, I put it in the washer along with your jacket.”
Her jacket? Oh no! It would be ruined! It needed to be dry-cleaned, but she didn’t say anything about that. “I’ll move it to the dryer for you.”
“Great. While we wait for it to dry, and you make me that delicious oatmeal you promised, can I use your shower?”
Her heart skipped a beat at the prospect of Amarok stripping off those jeans. He looked amazing in them, but she had no doubt he’d look even better without them—which was another scary thought, at least for her.
“I can let you hold my gun, if it makes you feel any better about allowing a man in your shower,” he said when she hesitated.
She laughed. “Stop it. I was drunk when I asked for your gun.”
“You didn’t just ask for it. You demanded it. Wouldn’t go to bed without it.”
“I can’t believe you let me have it! You realize I was drunk, right?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of bullets. “Exactly why I unloaded it first.”
She let her jaw drop in mock outrage. “You gave me a false sense of security?”
She thought he might grin. She knew he could tell she was teasing, but he sobered instead. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
Her heart began to race for no apparent reason—actually, there was a reason, and she knew what it was, but she wasn’t willing to accept it.
She cleared her throat. “Yeah, well, thanks for that, but you should’ve left. If something like that ever happens again—which it won’t—feel free to dump me on the doorstep.”
“I promised to take care of you, remember? I would never dump you on the doorstep.”
She wasn’t sure how to take that statement. To save herself from having to decide, she gestured toward the bathroom. “There’s a shower down the hall. Actually, wait. There isn’t any soap or shampoo in that one. I haven’t stocked it since...well, since there’s probably no need to ever stock it. I’ll get what you need.”
He cut her off before she could reach the hall. “There’s no need to move anything. I’ll use the one you use.”
Acutely aware of how close they were standing, she backed away. “Sure. Okay. Whatever you want.”
He didn’t move. He just watched her intently.
“What?”
His nostrils flared slightly. “What if I want you?” he asked point blank.
Her heart jumped into her throat. She’d assumed they’d attribute what she’d done on the dance floor last night to the alcohol and never mention it again, never refer to the feelings it’d stirred. “Definitely do yourself a favor and look for someone else,” she said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m totally screwed up.”
He reached out to take her hand and held it lightly, coaxingly. “You have to get over what happened sometime.”
She wished that time was now, that she could bust through the barrier of the trauma she’d been through and finally outdistance those bad memories. Her psychologist, when she’d had one, had encouraged her to “get back on the horse,” which was a terrible yet effective cliché for what he’d suggested she do.
But she couldn’t risk failing, not with Amarok. She figured she’d embarrassed herself enough where he was concerned.
“I’ll have to give it a shot sometime—with someone else,” she clarified.
His eyebrows snapped together. “Why someone else? What’s wrong with me?”
That mark on his neck reminded her of how wonderful it’d felt to act on the desire he evoked. Even now, her fingers burned to touch his chest, his arms, his flat stomach—maybe more. She couldn’t remember a time, not since Jasper, when she’d craved a man like that. “You’re too young.”
“That’s an excuse and you know it. We’re both adults.”
But a man his age... She couldn’t hope to retain his interest for long, even if she could give him everything a normal woman could. That made it sort of pointless to try. “If I ever make love to you I want to be able to do it right,” she admitted. If she had to encounter him around town afterward, she’d prefer not to be remembered as the worst lay he ever had.
He let go of her. “You’re saying you won’t sleep with me because you actually want to? I’m not sure that makes any sense.”
She gave him a sad smile. “See?” she said. “And that’s just the beginning.”
Chapter 8
Amarok sat at his trooper station with Makita, his Alaskan Malamute, at his feet, poring through all the articles he could find on Jasper Moore, the murder of Evelyn’s friends and her kidnapping and rape. He’d looked it all up before, when he’d first heard that the government was considering Hilltop for the location of Hanover House, but he’d given it only a cursory read, enough to figure out who she was, why she was coming to town and whether or not he’d approve of her agenda.
He didn’t. That hadn’t changed. But the level of his personal interest had.
“Beacon Hill Killer Stil
l at Large” was one of the first headlines he came across, which interested him enough to read the article.
After brutally murdering three sixteen-year-old girls and attempting to murder a fourth, the Beacon Hill Killer continues to elude police. Jasper Moore, only seventeen, hasn’t been seen since a passing motorist spotted Evelyn Talbot nude and bloody and stumbling across the road. She told authorities she’d been held captive and was tortured by her boyfriend for three days in an abandoned shack before he slit her throat, started a fire to destroy the evidence and left.
“Someone had to have helped him escape,” Evelyn Talbot’s father, Grant Talbot, told an NBC affiliate this morning. “My wife and I firmly believe that his parents purchased him a plane ticket and got him out of the country as soon as they learned he was wanted by police. A boy his age simply does not have the savvy or the resources to disappear on his own.”
Irene Tillabook, principal of the exclusive private school the four victims and the alleged perpetrator attended, disagrees. “The Moores are as heartbroken as everyone else. I’ve spoken to them. I highly doubt they would protect Jasper in such a way.”
“Except that he would likely face life in prison without the possibility of parole if they didn’t do something,” Amarok muttered. That could easily cloud a parent’s judgment.
The lead detective in the case was quoted in the next paragraph, saying essentially the same thing. Although he did not formally accuse Mr. and Mrs. Moore, he did say he was “looking into all possibilities,” and that included them.
Amarok skimmed the rest of the article, then skipped to the next link.
Ten Years Later—Where is the Beacon Hill Killer?
A boy of only seventeen murdered three female classmates before the fourth victim got away. And then he disappeared. Where did he go? No one knows. His family claims they haven’t seen or heard from him since the night Evelyn Talbot emerged from some trees with her throat slit. Although there have been various leads and “spottings” over the years, none of them have panned out. It seems that Jasper Moore has gotten away with murder.
So what about that fourth victim? Evelyn Talbot finished high school, went on to Boston College and will be graduating this spring with a doctorate in psychiatry. She plans to make the study of violent offenders her life’s work, so instead of shying away from the kind of individual who nearly took her life, she will study men who are at least as dangerous in an effort to unlock the secrets of the psychopathic mind.
The heading for the next article read, “Meet Victim Number Four” and was written by a journalist for The Boston Globe.
Dr. Evelyn Talbot, a beautiful young woman, sits across from me at a corner coffee shop wearing an elegant, tailored suit. When I called her office, she readily agreed to speak with me because “there needs to be more awareness, more information on how to spot and avoid the dangers psychopaths pose,” she said over the phone. This morning she tells me, “The conscienceless live among us. They make up four percent of the population. That means that most people will meet at least one during the course of his or her life. Fortunately, not all of them are serial killers. Some are subclinical and don’t kill at all. But they do act in their own self-interest, which means they often get arrested for other crimes, crimes like embezzlement, robbery, assault. Bottom line, they destroy innocent lives, and we need to figure out why they don’t possess the same behavioral controls as the rest of us.”
After examining the photograph of Evelyn as she’d been that day in the coffee shop, Amarok read the caption: Evelyn Talbot was kidnapped at sixteen, held in an abandoned shack and tortured for three days before her abductor slit her throat and left her for dead.
He pictured the scar on her neck as he moved on to another article. This one focused on the fact that Evelyn was not abducted and tortured by a stranger. She was nearly killed by the man—or boy since he was only seventeen at the time—that she’d been dating for several months.
“I thought I knew him. I thought he loved me as I loved him,” she was quoted as saying. “It wasn’t as if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was just living my life as a normal teenager, going to school, attending prom and planning for my senior year, when someone I trusted proved to be very dangerous. Not only did he murder my best friends, he decided, once I saw what he’d done and he couldn’t lie his way out of it as he’d initially planned, that I could no longer live, either. Then he’d taken great pleasure in making what he thought were my last days hell on earth.”
Never did Evelyn say what kind of torture she’d experienced. Amarok figured that was too gruesome for the papers. But he was curious. Exactly what happened in that shack? What had she been forced to endure?
“Bastard,” he grumbled as he studied the photograph of Jasper that had been posted in the yearbook that year. From everything Amarok could find, he’d been a popular boy, an intelligent boy, even a talented baseball player. There’d been nothing to warn Evelyn that he might turn on her, which was probably the reason she’d become so obsessed with finding out why psychopaths like Jasper did what they did.
Amarok clicked on another link, which gave a little more information on Jasper’s wealthy and powerful banker father. Apparently, right after the incident they’d pulled up stakes and moved to California, and every time they were asked after that, they claimed to have had no contact with their son.
Amarok wasn’t buying it. Jasper’s parents had helped him. They had to have. They claimed he might’ve killed himself off in the woods somewhere, but if he did that, why hadn’t his body been discovered in the past twenty years? Amarok also found it highly suspect that it was his family who put forth the idea, who claimed that he was suicidal. Evelyn insisted on the exact opposite. She said he’d enjoyed inflicting pain on her, said that he’d laughed at the people who were searching for her during the time he had her tied up in that old shack.
Makita lifted his head and barked, signaling he had company even before Amarok heard the outer door open. Sometimes in the afternoons, Phil Robbins, who did the cooking at the local diner in the mornings, volunteered to act as a receptionist of sorts in the afternoons. Summers were always busy, what with the influx of hunters and fisherman. But even if Phil was off at the diner by now—it had to be getting to be that time—it was Saturday. He’d be going to Anchorage to visit his mother, so Amarok was on his own.
“Hello?” he called to draw his visitor toward him.
Ken Keterwee stepped into his office and crouched to give Makita, who’d circled around to greet him, a scratch behind the ears.
“Hey,” Amarok said. “What’s up?”
Ken straightened and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “Saw your truck outside. You’re working today, huh?”
“I’m taking care of a few things, yes. What are you doing?”
“Just had some pancakes down at The Dinky Diner.”
There weren’t many places to eat in Hilltop. Just The Dinky Diner, where Phil worked and Ken had just had breakfast, which was only open until three each day, a drive-in and the limited menu of appetizers and burgers Shorty served at The Moosehead in the evenings. For anything else, folks had to drive to Anchorage.
“Is this about last night?” Amarok asked, since he didn’t generally hear from Ken a whole lot.
Ken shifted nervously. “Yeah. I was curious about Evelyn—I mean, Dr. Talbot.”
“Curious in what way?” Amarok asked, but he was fairly certain he could guess.
“She isn’t nearly as bad as I thought—definitely not the cold bitch everyone has been making her out to be.”
Amarok minimized his screen. “Some folks aren’t happy about Hanover House. They consider her guilty by association, I guess.”
“You haven’t been happy she was coming to town,” he pointed out. “Are you one of those people?”
“I have nothing against her,” Amarok clarified.
“So you like her.”
“Yeah, I like her.”
&n
bsp; “But...you’re not dating her, are you? Last night it was sort of tough to tell. Sometimes it seemed like you were together, and other times it didn’t.”
Amarok felt possessive, which was uncharacteristic of him, but he had no claim on Evelyn. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. In order to have all the schooling she’s got, and to have established what she’s established in her life, she’d have to be a bit older than you are, right? I’m guessing she’s thirty-five or so.”
“She’s thirty-six.” She’d made such a big deal about the age gap between them that it was the first thing Amarok had checked by adding the twenty years it’d been since her “experience” with Jasper to the age she’d been when he did it.
“There you go. I’m thirty-nine, so she’s closer to my age than yours. What are you? Twenty-eight?”
“I’m twenty-nine. But what does it matter?”
“It doesn’t—unless you’re interested in her.”
“Even then?”
Ken hesitated. “So are you interested in her.”
With a sigh, Amarok shoved a hand through his hair. “It won’t make any difference no matter who’s interested in her, Ken. She’s been traumatized. She doesn’t even date.”
He rubbed his big hands together. “She seemed to enjoy herself last night.”
“She was drunk, something she considered embarrassing in the end. I doubt she’ll let that happen again.”
“So you don’t think she’ll come back to The Moosehead?”
“I doubt it.”
“That’s too bad. She’s sure beautiful, ain’t she?” He whistled. “We don’t get many women out here like her. You know...that are so pretty and educated and everything.”
“There are plenty of women in Anchorage.”
“I guess. If you care to drive there.”
Amarok wasn’t sure why he’d said that. He didn’t go to Anchorage to meet women, either. Maybe he just wanted Ken to do so—and leave Evelyn alone. “You don’t happen to know who vandalized Hanover House, do you, Ken?”
