by Nancy Bush
Well, at least the weather looked okay for trick-or-treating, she determined, but a day off from school would have been way better.
Will’s cell phone rang as he and Gemma were in the shower. They both heard it and Will kissed Gemma hard, then stepped out, grabbed a towel and walked quickly to where the phone had landed: Gemma’s bedroom floor.
“Tanninger,” he said.
“It’s nine-thirty,” Barb said. “Where are you?”
“Taking a shower.”
“I’ve got some kind of odd information for you. You know that gray van that went over the ridge? The dead guy’s name is Spencer Bereth.”
“Spencer Bereth supposed to mean anything to me?” Will had tucked the towel around his waist and now sensed Gemma coming in the room behind him. He reached his free hand back for her and she took it, her own hand surprisingly cold.
“Only that he’s from Quarry. Been picked up a few times for suspected abuse, but the wife won’t admit he beats her, or her kids.”
“I take it you think his history has something to do with the accident.” Gemma released his hand and headed toward her closet. He could hear her rooting around inside and looked over to see her grab some clothes and head back toward the bathroom. A sudden wave of modesty?
“He was playing duck and weave with another driver. Possibly a woman. The witness doesn’t know. But I wrestled Ralph for the partial license plate. He’s crying like a baby to Nunce, but I’m checking on it.”
“Okay.” He heard Gemma shut the bathroom door with surprising finality.
“And get this. Spencer Bereth? Somewhere along the way, he got in a tussle with a gun. He was shot in the ass with a .22.”
“Shot?”
“I think this woman driver is our avenger, that’s what I think.” Barb’s voice grew sterner. “She shot Bereth but he got away, so she ran him down.”
“That’s a leap.”
“Same MO.”
“Not the gun,” Will said.
“And doesn’t the LaPorte woman drive a truck? White, or whitish? That’s the description we’ve got. Fits for me.”
“Witness said there was only one headlight.”
“She coulda had it fixed by now.”
Will felt himself tighten up. “We don’t even know for sure the driver was a woman.”
“It will be. When we chase down the license plate.”
“What’s that number?” Will grated. He wanted to shout at her that it wasn’t Gemma, but he managed to keep himself in check.
“I’ll give it to you when you show up here. You just can’t bear to believe your damsel in distress could be a killer,” Barb declared, thoroughly pissed. “Fine. I’ll work the case without you.” She hung up with a sharp click.
Will quickly grabbed his clothes and dressed, as pissed at Barb as she was at him. Maybe he was working too hard to absolve Gemma, defending her at every turn, but Barb was working just as hard to nail her. Hell, she really was getting as bad as Burl.
He was just about to rap on the bathroom door when it opened and Gemma stood in the aperture. Her hair was wet and combed away from her face. Her cheeks were pink from the heat of the shower, but she looked pale in a pair of jeans and a loose, tan sweatshirt.
“I’ve got to go to work. See you later?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m going to check with Macie and see if she needs some help this afternoon. I’m not on, but it’s Halloween and people might want off early.”
“I guess we know what our costumes are: a cop and a waitress.”
As he headed for the door she came halfway down the stairs, then hesitated. “Will?”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“Why did you mention Spencer Bereth?”
It felt like Will’s blood slowed inside him. “You know him?”
“If he’s who I think he is, I may have met his family.”
“Tell me what you know about him,” he said flatly.
“Why? What’s happened to him?”
Will’s emotions were at war inside him. He shouldn’t talk to her about Bereth. Barb thought she was a suspect in his death. But then, this was his opportunity to learn what she knew. “He was the victim of a fatal accident.”
She seemed to lose all strength, collapsing on the step, her hands still on the stairway rail. “Macie’s daughter, Charlotte, is classmates with Robbie Bereth. She and I—returned—Robbie’s bike, and I met the mother. Charlotte seems to think Robbie’s father beats her. I never heard his name.”
“So you’ve never met him,” Will said slowly.
She shook her head, but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Not that I know of. When…when was this accident? Last night?” She lifted hopeful eyes.
“The night before. His van went over a ridge. He was the only occupant and he’d been dead for hours before he was found.”
She could feel him watching her closely, almost with fascination, as she would watch a poisonous snake. She’d been home the night before. Home alone. It shouldn’t matter. She had nothing to do with Spencer Bereth. It was Charlotte who’d had a run-in with him.
“It was a single-car accident?” Gemma asked.
“A witness saw another vehicle. A truck. But when Bereth’s van went over the ridge the truck sped off west.”
“Did the truck driver know the van went over the ridge?”
“We haven’t found the driver of the white truck yet.”
“White truck?” The color drained from her face.
It was damning. Will had said it deliberately but he didn’t like her response.
But I have a partial license number, Will reminded himself. And now finding out whom it belonged to had just jumped to the top of his to-do list.
The wolf knew where to find her. He’d been there, seen her there before. But he’d been too eager. She’d chased out of the diner and he’d chased after her and he’d gotten too close and she’d ended up in the ditch. There was a car approaching the opposite direction so he’d had to drive away. His frustration had made him throw back his head and howl. He’d tried several other times to go back for her but there had been too much traffic, too much activity. Drivers flying by, unaware there was anyone inside the mangled silver car.
And then a young man had finally stopped and realized she was there. Wolf had cruised slowly along and then, when her savior had gotten her safely into his car, Wolf had followed them to the hospital. She’d stepped out of the vehicle, teetering, and the man had driven away. There’d been a moment when Wolf could have grabbed her. Almost. But her unsteady steps were faster than he’d reckoned on, and she made it inside the building.
These thoughts ran clearly through Wolf’s mind. They were a relief, because things had been getting kind of wavy. Sometimes he wasn’t sure what day it was. Sometimes his dreams were more real than what he knew to be reality. Sometimes the mother-witch was right there!
But this one—the One—had killed his brother and he had to make her pay. Had to burn her and send her back to the fires of hell. He was going to throw himself on her and listen to her scream. And then burn her. Burn her bad.
His head was pounding, a hammer slamming against an anvil. Slam. Slam. Slam.
He was here. In Quarry. Could he risk going back to the diner? There were witches there. Many witches. Maybe he could have a taste of one of them…just a taste…before he got the One. The murderess.
He pulled the truck into the lot and stepped out. A baseball cap was tilted low over his eyes. He was in jeans and a red-and-black hunter’s jacket, the collar pulled up over the healing wounds on his neck. Ducking his head, he entered the diner and then stopped short, his heart seizing.
The witches were all dressed like witches in cartoons. Black gowns. Pointed hats. In disbelief, he stared until his eyeballs felt dry in their sockets. One of the witches sidled toward him, a stack of menus cradled in one arm. She had long, black hair. Like the mother-witch. And green eyes. And a smoky flavor that expelled from her mouth when she s
aid, “Hi, I’m Heather. Let me show you to a booth.”
And she sashayed ahead of him in a black skirt with silvery stars on it. Wolf moved after her, dreamlike.
He sat down where she indicated, and when she handed him the menu, his hand brushed her fingers. Electricity. Desire.
“Happy Halloween!” she said, bending over to relight the candle on his table. He caught a glimpse of curved breast.
You can’t touch, little fucker, the mother-witch said in his head. And she laughed and laughed in her harsh, smoky voice. Cackled. His hands circled her throat and he choked her and choked her. He threw her on the floor and fucked her over and over and still she laughed. On and on. Filling his head. Until finally she was still. It was October. Under a full moon. And then he dragged her outside and set her, and the fields behind his house, on fire. It had been a brilliant orange, smoke-filled inferno. Hell on earth. He’d just managed to drag her charred body away from the scorching blaze before the volunteer fire department saw fit to arrive and finally put it out. While they toiled he shoved her body into the basement closet and screamed and ranted at her until his brother came home to chaos.
“What happened?” EZ demanded, racing from Wolf to the window to outside. He was EZ to Wolf, not Easy like the dumb fucks like Lachey had labeled him because he screwed around a lot.
“I killed her,” Wolf said. “Burned her.”
EZ’s eyes had glowed like mirrors in the firelight. “What?”
“I fucked her and killed her and burned her.”
“She’s out there?” He threw an arm in the direction of the fire, his face contorted with revulsion and fury.
The wolf had nodded. Recognized that his brother didn’t understand. Better to let him think she burned.
“They’ll find her body,” EZ said.
“No.”
“They will.”
But Wolf just shook his head and of course they never did. The days were blurred and unseparated. EZ moved out of the house to an apartment. He pretended everything was the same. He helped get Wolf the job. But he was distant. He’d gone somewhere else. Away from Wolf. Away from the mother-witch. Wolf hadn’t known for a while that it was because of her, the One. Ani. EZ had been crazy nuts about her. That’s what he said. Crazy nuts. But she’d used him up and killed him.
Wolf had been lost at that time. In a dark place. A hell of his own. He buried the mother-witch’s body behind the house under the charred earth, under a full moon. Now the land was green again, but his brother had never come back and he never would.
The wolf had slowly realized his mission. He had to kill witches. All witches. He had to kill Ani. Find her. Shove his cock inside her while she thrashed and wailed. Then burn her.
He gazed at the flickering flame in the votive. His eyes traveled past the other customers to Heather. She was giggling and tossing back her hair. As if sensing his eyes on her, she flounced over to take his order.
Wolf couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Food disinterested him. He said, “Do you wear other costumes?”
“Huh?”
“On other days?” His eyes traveled past her to the only waitress who wasn’t dressed in Halloween garb. She had an orange button on her breast that lit up and flashed Boo To You! on and off.
“You mean our uniforms? Sure. Mine’s powder blue. Know what you want?”
Wolf’s gaze blurred. The mother-witch’s garb was blue.
“Grilled cheese,” he blurted. “Water.”
“Okay, then.” Off she went, her hips swaying.
The wolf’s fingers wrapped around the edge of the table and he tried to slow the heavy beating of his heart, tried to pull himself back from the abyss, tried to gain control.
But all he wanted to do was screw this young witch-whore and burn her. Send her back to the fires of which she was born.
Heather Yates thought Halloween was a fun holiday, though working at the diner today was lame, lame, lame. The diner job was just to keep her old man happy, since he was paying for her classes at Portland Community College and expected her to invest in her education, too. Not that he’d had to fork over much so far. He was just a cheap bastard. She guessed she loved him. He was her father, duh. But he could be such a ginormous pain in the ass. So she got a C on her accounting test. So what? Jesus. It was his idea that she take business classes and she just wasn’t into it. Now, fashion designer—she could do that. But these classes made her feel like her head was stuffed with cotton and her eyes were crossing.
Working her way through school was just a time-waster, really, until Barry asked her to marry him. He was real close, now. She could tell. She’d been hinting about a ring and thought Christmas was too far away. Wouldn’t it just be the coolest if he bought it for her for Halloween!
She wanted to squeal with delight at the thought. It was all she could do to keep her excitement contained. But the thought of him giving her a little velvet box while they were making out at Lover’s Lane tonight was enough to give her a little thrill right down there!
She wriggled her hips and shivered, glancing around the diner. The only person who seemed to notice was that creepy cretin in the baseball cap. He thought the diner uniforms were costumes? “What planet are you from, psycho?” she whispered beneath her breath, but then the door opened and a cute older couple in matching clown noses walked in.
She laughed and said, “Hi, I’m Heather. Let me show you to a booth. You both are soooo cute!”
Chapter Nineteen
“No need, hon,” Macie said into the phone. “Denise and Heather are here and the Halloween crowd is thinning out. Everybody’s getting ready to go home and take their kids trick-or-treating. You just stay put and take it easy. I gotta keep reminding myself that you’re a part-timer. I could get way too used to having you every day, and that just won’t work.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Gemma promised.
“No way. You’re not on Saturday’s schedule. I’m counting on you on Sunday.”
“I could be there both Saturday and Sunday.”
“To hell with that. Get a life, girl!” she snorted, then said over her shoulder, “Milo, for God sakes, what is wrong with you? The orders are piling up. I gotta go,” she said into the phone, then clicked off before Gemma could say another word.
Gemma hung up, thought briefly, wildly, about calling Will on his cell phone, then forced herself to go sit in her office. Macie was right. She was marking time and it was time to move on. Get out of the diner business and find what she wanted to do, what she was good at.
She just didn’t want it to be psychic readings.
She wanted Will. Wanted him right now. In her bed. Wrapped around her like a vine. Wanted to make love for hours.
She made a sound of disgust and shook her head at herself.
Think about something else, she told herself, forcing thoughts of Will aside.
Immediately the name Spencer Bereth ran across the screen of her mind in big, black letters.
Someone had run him off the road. Someone had shot him. Someone had killed him.
Charlotte’s voice: It’s Robbie Bereth’s dad! He came by the diner to tell me off about stealing the bike. But he’s the guy, Gemma. The one you chased out of the diner that day!
“But I didn’t kill him,” she said aloud.
Will said it was two days ago, right?
“I was home. Or at Tremaine Rainfield’s office.”
But yesterday you were really tired. Like you’d been awake all night when you were sure you’d slept like the dead.
And a few days ago you woke up naked on the couch with no memory of taking your clothes off.
“But I didn’t kill him,” she said again, in a voice that sounded less convinced.
Will looked down at his desk, then over at Barb’s empty seat. He was wondering where she was when she came down the hall with Sheriff Nunce. “I’ve decided to retire,” the sheriff said as he entered the room. “For real. You should run for the
job,” he told Will.
Will smiled faintly. His mind had been on the way Gemma’s hips moved when she walked, the way her hair swung around her chin, and her lips curved, and her breasts felt, warm and firm and luscious. What would the sheriff think if he knew his number-one choice for his position was sleeping with a suspect in a homicide?
“What’s with you?” Barb asked as she rolled back her chair and perched on it.
Nunce was talking amiably with Jimbo, whom he’d met in the hall. Will watched them walk off together.
“Have you got that partial plate number?”
“Yeah. But I’m not giving it to you.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Because you’ve been sleeping with the enemy.”
Will had been in the process of looking over the notes on his desk. Now he deliberately didn’t react. She couldn’t know. It was just a figure of speech. Still, his heart rate jumped. “I’m assuming you mean Gemma LaPorte.”
“I don’t know what the fascination is for her but you’ve got it bad.”
He picked up his cell phone and placed a call. Barb gave him the Who? frown and he said, “My mother. I want to know how she rode out the storm.” Then, “Hi, Mom, it’s Will.” And he turned a shoulder to Barb, more to collect himself than worry that his conversation was overheard. His mother gave him an earful about what she thought of the noise of the storm and Will let her ramble. Barb kept her eyes on him for a while, then finally dug into her own work.
When Will said good-bye and hung up, Barb reached over and handed him a paper. He glanced at it. It was the partial license plate. “I’ve got about four possibles for a white or tan truck.”
Will’s heart beat hard. He gazed down at the numbers. They weren’t even close to Gemma’s father’s truck’s license. It hadn’t been her vehicle.
