by Rita Herron
A jogger or someone who’d possibly hurt Tinsley?
He rapped on the door, then peeked through the front window facing the ocean. It was dark inside, a single light burning from the back. Tinsley’s bedroom.
Tinsley hated the dark. She’d slept with a light on since the attack.
He knocked again, then jiggled the doorknob. The door creaked as it opened.
Fear pulsed through him. Tinsley never left the door unlocked.
Never.
He pulled his gun and held it at the ready as he inched inside.
Tinsley was lying on the floor near her desk, unconscious.
He raced to her and knelt, then felt for a pulse. Weak. But at least she was breathing.
Heart hammering, he reached for his phone to call an ambulance, but she moaned and her eyelids fluttered.
Gently, he rolled her to her side and tilted her face so he could examine her for injuries. “Tinsley, it’s Wyatt.”
Her eyelids flickered, eyes widening.
“You called me. I was worried and rushed over.”
Her gaze darted from side to side, then settled on his face.
He gently grazed his knuckles along her cheek. “What happened?”
She whimpered and tried to sit up. He took her arm to help her, but she pulled away, her eyes wide with fear.
Dammit, he’d forgotten she didn’t like to be touched.
She scrambled back against the couch and propped her back to it as she rubbed at her temple. “He . . . was here.”
Wyatt tensed. She didn’t have to tell him who he was.
“You saw the Skull?” he asked gruffly.
She nodded, her lower lip quivering. “At the window . . . looking in. Then he broke the glass . . .” Her voice cracked. “He was reaching for me . . .”
Wyatt jerked his head toward the front window, then the side windows. None of them were broken.
Tinsley’s gaze followed his, shock flashing across her face when she saw that the windows hadn’t been shattered.
“I’ll check.” He scanned the room, searching for footprints, sand, a dusty fingerprint—any sign that someone had been inside. But other than the door being unlocked, nothing was disturbed.
A bottle of prescription pills sat on the end table by the couch. He examined the label. A narcotic for anxiety.
Had Tinsley taken the meds and imagined she’d seen the Skull breaking in?
Confusion clouded Tinsley’s mind as she stared at the window overlooking the ocean.
It wasn’t broken. No shattered glass. No one coming through . . .
But she’d seen the Skull.
Hadn’t she?
“Are you certain you saw him?” Wyatt asked.
Anger hit her hard and fast. He didn’t believe her.
She nodded. Although with the window still intact, how could she be sure?
She dug her fingers into the edge of the couch and pulled herself to her feet. Still dizzy, she had to take several deep breaths to steady herself.
Wyatt was watching her as if she was crazy.
She supposed locking herself inside this house made her appear unstable.
Maybe she was losing her mind . . .
Wyatt cleared his throat as he approached her. His big masculine body overpowered the room, filling her space with his woodsy scent.
Reminding her that she wasn’t strong enough to fight him off.
Emotions flickered in his eyes as if he realized he frightened her.
Humiliation washed over her. But she refused to apologize. She’d been brutalized by one man. She didn’t know whether she’d ever trust another.
He stepped back, giving her space, then claimed the club chair across from her. With one hand, he gestured toward her prescription bottle of Ativan.
“What were you doing before you saw him?” Wyatt said in a quiet voice.
“If you think I drugged myself into hallucinating, you’re wrong.” She squared her shoulders, struggling for calm. “I haven’t taken one of those in months.”
His gaze locked with hers. “Half of the bottle is missing.”
Tinsley shook her head. “That can’t be. I didn’t like the way they made me feel and stopped taking them.” Her hand shook as she reached for the medication. She removed the cap, her head throbbing as she looked inside.
He was right. Half the pills were missing.
“I don’t understand,” she murmured. “This bottle was full.”
A tense silence stretched between them.
“Let’s retrace the evening,” Wyatt said. “Tell me what you were doing before you thought you saw him.”
Tears of frustration clogged Tinsley’s throat, but she swallowed them back.
That monster’s voice taunted her—Good girls don’t cry. If they do, they die . . .
“Tinsley?” Wyatt said in a low voice.
Mouth dry, she grabbed her bottle of tea and took a sip. “I was watching the sea turtle patrol. They were releasing baby hatchlings.”
A small smile tilted Wyatt’s mouth, and Tinsley’s stomach fluttered. Wyatt Camden was a handsome man. Big. Strong. Tough. Once upon a time, she would have thought his smoldering eyes, shaggy hair, and muscles were sexy.
Sexy was the last thing she wanted now.
“My brothers and I used to watch the volunteers release the babies when we were little,” Wyatt said. “My mom even donates to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.”
“It’s a good cause.” The conversation sounded so normal that she wanted to ask more about his family. After all, he knew everything about her.
But she couldn’t make this personal. “A crowd had gathered to cheer the babies out to sea.” She gestured toward her camera. “I . . . told myself if those babies could make it, I could leave the house.”
His eyebrow shot up. “You were going outside?”
Emotions welled in her chest. “I wanted to,” she whispered.
A tense heartbeat passed, sympathy flickering in his deep-brown eyes. “Go on,” Wyatt said quietly.
She inhaled sharply. Talking about herself was always difficult. She’d learned to live alone. To be alone. Not to trust anyone or to share her vulnerability.
Her fiancé had run when she’d opened up to him. He’d wanted a whole, normal woman.
That ship had sailed the day the Skull abducted her. She wasn’t whole or normal anymore. She never would be.
“Tinsley?”
“I reached for the doorknob. I wanted to go out and breathe the salty air, b-but I got dizzy.” She rubbed at her temple, disgusted with herself. “The room started spinning, so I staggered to the couch. When I looked up, his face was pressed against the glass, watching. He was smiling, then he broke through the glass . . .”
Her chest ached again. The air was trapped inside. She couldn’t breathe.
“It’s okay,” Wyatt said softly. “You’re safe now, Tinsley. He’s gone.”
She hadn’t realized he’d moved, that he was sitting beside her. His hand was on her back, rubbing circles.
For a moment, it was comforting.
Then the fear returned and she pushed him away, then looked at the window again.
Another strained moment. “I don’t see signs that anyone broke in.”
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Panic sharpened her tone. “That I made it up?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe the wind rattled the glass so hard you thought it shattered.”
He gestured toward the entry, concerned. “The door was unlocked when I arrived. Did you unlock it?”
Tinsley rubbed her forehead again, her mind a blur. She’d reached for the doorknob. Had she unlocked the door? Yes . . . “I did, but then I got dizzy . . .”
“You could have been dreaming? Sleepwalking, maybe?”
She prayed he was right. “Maybe.”
He stood, jaw set, his dark eyes piercing her. “I’m glad you called. I want to help you.” He moved toward the doo
r. “I’ll look around outside.”
Wyatt didn’t know what to believe.
Tinsley had been hiding out for months, ever since she’d been rescued. She was afraid the Skull would return for her and suffered from nightmares and anxiety attacks.
The Keeper had frightened her even more by leaving a body on the dock in front of her place.
Those factors could possibly trigger delusions.
Wyatt stepped outside, pulled a small flashlight from inside his jacket, and shined it across the porch floor. His boot prints marred the wooden surface.
But no others.
Dammit. He didn’t want it to be true that the Skull was back. He didn’t want Tinsley to have a breakdown either.
Although if he was locked inside a house for months, he would go out of his mind.
He thrived on open spaces, on adventure activities like biking and hiking and whitewater rafting.
He aimed the flashlight along the door and searched for evidence someone had jimmied it, but he didn’t see any dirt or prints on the doorframe or knob.
The Skull was smart, though. He hadn’t escaped the law because he was careless. He would have worn gloves. Covered his tracks.
Still, Wyatt spent the next half hour searching, walking the steps and dock, looking for any hint that the bastard had been on the premises.
Just as he was about to return to Tinsley, his phone buzzed. His boss, Deputy Director Roman Bellows from the FBI’s Savannah field office.
He quickly connected. “Yeah?”
“SPD phoned us. They’ve got a case they want our help with.”
His instincts kicked in. If they wanted the Feds, it was serious. “What is it?”
“A crabber found some bones in the marsh.”
“They were murders?”
“Don’t know yet, but it gets more interesting.” Bellows paused. “The heads of the skeletons had been removed.”
“You mean they were separated from the rest of the body?”
“I mean they’re missing.”
A coldness swept through Wyatt. The Skull had kept Tinsley in a dark place, a room where three skulls had stared back at her from ropes strung from the ceiling.
Skulls that clacked together and tinkled like wind chimes made of bones.
CHAPTER FOUR
Carrie Ann Jensen hurried along Savannah’s River Street, her pulse hammering. Why wouldn’t her sister talk to her?
Sure, she’d let Tinsley down after the attack. She hadn’t said or done the right things, but she hadn’t known how to handle seeing her sister so traumatized. Still, she’d tried and tried to make amends, but Tinsley didn’t want anything to do with her.
Desperation clawed at her just like it had those first few weeks her sister was missing. Then she hadn’t known where Tinsley was or whether she’d ever come back.
She’d prayed and worried and bugged the police to keep looking for her until one of the damn cops had warned her not to call him again, had told her she was acting like a psycho.
She was not a psycho.
Granted, she had problems with anxiety and impulse control. Sometimes she was as down as a dog, and other times so jittery she thought she was coming out of her skin. Those days she went shopping. She’d become obsessed with buying things online and had ended up with boxes of unopened items that she had no idea why she’d ordered.
Her insomnia had gotten so bad that she went days without sleeping, and then she couldn’t eat because her stomach was wrecked. She’d hit the bottle to help calm her down and knock her out. But then she’d have the hangover from hell, and when the alcohol mixed with her antidepressants, sometimes she blacked out.
Twice she’d woken up in a cheap hotel with some loser she didn’t know and would never have slept with if she hadn’t been blinded by alcohol.
That had scared the bejesus out of her. The last time, the fuckwad had gotten rough with her. She’d fought him off and ended up with a black eye and a busted rib, but the bastard hadn’t gotten what he wanted.
For the first time, she’d really understood what it must have been like for Tinsley to have a man force himself on her.
That’s when she’d decided to call Tinsley. She wanted to tell Tinsley she understood now. Besides, when she started coming unraveled, her sister always grounded her.
But how could she make amends when Tinsley wouldn’t even speak to her?
She wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked herself back and forth, her breathing choppy. That damn rib still made it hurt to breathe.
Two teens sporting body jewelry and sleeves of tattoos pushed past her. A big wrestler type guy in a black jacket with a hoodie looked down at her as if she might be his dinner.
She shot him an icy look, then ducked into a shop, desperate to escape him.
Fall decorations hung throughout the store, Halloween costumes and orange and black lights and masks . . .
Vampires and zombies and superheroes and . . . a skull. Skull masks . . . all different kinds . . .
Panic charged through her. She shoved her way through the crowd, constantly checking to see whether the big brute in the hoodie was following her as she rushed out the side door. No hoodie guy, but the beady black eyes of the skulls were watching.
Laughter echoed behind her. They were laughing at her. They knew what she’d done. Just like in her nightmares.
Knew she was on the ledge.
Knew she’d been a bad sister.
That she was coming unglued . . .
Talking to Tinsley was the only way to put her back together again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Wyatt clenched his phone with clammy hands as he told Deputy Director Bellows about Tinsley’s call. Finding skull-less skeletons the same night Tinsley thought she’d seen her abductor at her door made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“You think the Skull was at her place?” Bellows asked.
Wyatt scanned the beach from the porch, still searching. The cottage looked quaint, homey, a nice place to retreat and relax.
Except Tinsley hadn’t ventured outside to enjoy the scenery these last few months.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s possible someone was out here, but there’s no evidence of a break-in. I’ll check on her again, then drive out to the marsh.”
Wyatt hung up, then kicked sand from his boots and knocked on the door.
Under the circumstances, he was nervous about leaving her alone. Would she be safe tonight by herself?
The door slowly creaked open. Tinsley’s violet-blue eyes looked up at him expectantly.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t find evidence he was here,” Wyatt said.
Her face looked pale in the sliver of moonlight slanting across the porch. “Thank you for looking.”
He shrugged. “Maybe someone was outside, but if it was the Skull, why didn’t he come in? You were alone, vulnerable.”
She winced, and he realized she must hate feeling that way.
“He wanted me to know that he’s close by,” she said. “You don’t understand how sick and twisted he is. He taunts his victims, likes to watch them squirm. The fear gets him off almost as much as the pain he inflicts.”
Wyatt’s jaw hardened. He didn’t doubt that for a moment. “I have to go to a crime scene. But I’ll come back later and stand guard for the night.”
Tinsley clamped her teeth over her lower lip, a nervous gesture he’d seen her do before.
“You don’t have to come back,” she said softly. “I . . . didn’t mean to trouble you.”
He swallowed hard. The guilt over not saving her sooner got to him. His mother said he thought he was responsible for the whole world. She was right.
All in all, not the worst flaw he could have. But emotions could hinder an investigation.
“You are not trouble,” he said softly. “If I’d killed that bastard the first time, you wouldn’t be living in fear now.”
Her expression softened. “It’s not your
fault, Wyatt. You nearly died saving me.”
It wasn’t enough. He always closed his cases. Got the bad guys. “I am going to find him one day,” he promised. “But I do have to go now.” In fact, whoever took those skeletons might be connected to the Skull.
He couldn’t discount any possibility. “I’ll call the local police department on the island and have an officer drive by.”
She cut her gaze back toward the window. For a moment, she looked so frail that he was tempted to pull her up against him and comfort her.
But he kept his hands by his sides. Touching her wouldn’t give her comfort.
The last thing he wanted to do was to hurt Tinsley.
“Having someone drive by might help,” she said.
She didn’t sound convinced. Then again, Tinsley wasn’t naive. She’d survived a monster.
A monster who wanted Tinsley. He’d told her she’d never escape him. That if she did, he’d come back for her.
Wyatt didn’t doubt that he would either. The bastard might have lain low the last few months, but the anniversary of the night he’d kidnapped Tinsley was drawing near.
He’d taken her on the first day of the Day of the Dead celebration.
His MO suggested he followed the holiday religiously. He’d sent sugar skulls to the police to let them know he had a victim. Had created an altar of flowers and a paper-skull string and told Tinsley that she should honor the dead.
Wyatt wouldn’t let Tinsley fall prey to him again.
Tinsley locked the door as Wyatt left, her body trembling.
She’d always been independent, had helped others. She’d been active and social and loved people and dogs.
Now, being in the same room with someone, especially a male, completely unraveled the calm she’d struggled so hard to regain.
She moved to the window to watch the late-night beachcombers. Sad that she lived vicariously through strangers. That those strangers had become like family.
Her sister’s face taunted her, and she rubbed the sea turtle pendant she wore on a silver chain around her neck. One lazy Sunday evening, on a trip to Florida, she and Carrie Ann had found the sea glass with their father. They’d been so excited that their mother had crafted necklaces out of the glass.
