The thought of her little brother being sent to live among strangers, his young mind and imagination molded by the same robotic teachers who’d tried to constrain hers made Elizabeth almost physically ill, made her want to take him somewhere far away where he wouldn’t be subjected to the same killing loneliness she’d known as a child.
It was a cliché, Elizabeth knew, but her parents had never understood her, never appreciated the fact that she marched to a different drummer. They didn’t get that she had needs apart from their own, needs above and beyond the classroom and research lab. She had a fine mind, yes, but she also had a heart. She also had the same wants and desires that any twenty-year-old had. That they, themselves, had once had and lost.
Elizabeth turned slightly, studying Cullen’s profile. Sometimes she wondered if her attraction to him was yet another rebellion against her parents. If she would wake up one day to find that she’d spent a good portion of her youth pining for a man who didn’t really exist except in her dreams. Because the real Cullen Ryan couldn’t possibly live up to her fantasies. No man could.
He turned suddenly, capturing her with a gaze so dark, so intense, Elizabeth caught her breath. Her stomach quivered with awareness, with attraction, and she realized that whatever the reason for her fascination with Cullen, it was only growing more potent as she spent time with him.
“What?” he asked with a scowl.
“What what?” she managed to stammer.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because…” She fumbled for an answer. “I was just wondering…. You said you sometimes get a gut feeling about a case based on your training and experience. What do you think about this one?”
He hesitated just a fraction too long. “I don’t like to speculate.”
Elizabeth glanced at him. “You found something, didn’t you?”
“I’m not going to discuss the specifics of this case with you, Elizabeth.”
She sighed. “But don’t you find it strange there were no visible marks on her body? It was almost as if the killer went out of his way to…preserve her.”
“You’re making a pretty big assumption there.”
“I’m not assuming anything, I’m just thinking out loud.” Elizabeth paused. “Can you at least tell me if you think there’s a possibility that Bethany’s killer is the same one who murdered those women here twenty years ago?”
He looked surprised. “Why do you ask that?”
She stared out the windshield, noticing how the mist writhed and curled in the headlights. “It’s hard to imagine a town the size of Moriah’s Landing falling prey to more than one serial killer.”
“Whoa. Slow down.” He shot her a frowning glance. “One murder doesn’t make a serial killer. I don’t want talk like that getting out. Besides, twenty years is a long time for a predator to remain active.”
“Not if he was incarcerated during that time. Or if he widened his hunting ground. All I’m saying is that twenty years ago, four young women were murdered in Moriah’s Landing. Five years ago, a friend of mine was abducted and tortured, and I think she would have been killed, too, if she hadn’t managed to escape. And now this. I can’t help wondering if all the crimes could be related.”
“Those women’s bodies were dumped,” Cullen pointed out. “They weren’t hanged.”
“I realize that, but there could be another kind of connection. Do you think it’s possible—” She broke off, biting her lip.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me what you were about to say.”
“You’d just think I’m crazy. Or young. Or that I’m letting my imagination run away with me.” Elizabeth felt his gaze on her, and reluctantly she turned to face him.
He glanced at the road, then back at her, his gaze deep, probing. Sensuous, even though she was quite certain he didn’t mean for it to be. Not with her.
But the term bedroom eyes had never been more appropriate. Elizabeth couldn’t see his eyes clearly in the dash lights, but she knew they were a stony gray rimmed with darkness. His pupils were small, giving him a piercing, unearthly quality that seemed capable of penetrating a woman’s soul.
“All right,” she said nervously. “But please promise me you won’t laugh.”
He shrugged, refusing to commit himself one way or the other.
She drew a breath. “Sometimes I can’t help wondering if this place, this town drives people to violence, if something from the past, something…evil resides here.”
Cullen stared at her for a moment, then shifted his focus back to the road. To his credit, he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even appear amused. But he wasn’t buying her theory. “A place doesn’t kill. People kill.”
“I know, but—”
He did laugh then, a low, throaty chuckle that sent a warm thrill up Elizabeth’s backbone. “Don’t tell me you’ve bought into all those old stories. Someone with your brains? I’m surprised.”
She shrugged. “I’m smart enough to know there are things in this world that can’t be explained.”
“There are things in this world that haven’t been explained yet,” he said. “Big difference.”
Face it, Elizabeth thought. She and Cullen were probably never going to see eye-to-eye on this particular subject. He was too pragmatic, but she wasn’t surprised by his attitude. She’d faced the same skepticism from her parents any time she’d tried to broach the subject of the supernatural with them.
After a moment, Cullen said, “That friend you were talking about earlier. Was it Claire Cavendish?”
“How did you know?” Elizabeth asked in surprise. “You’d already left town when she was abducted.”
Cullen studied the road. “I must have heard about it somewhere. I seem to recall something about a sorority initiation.” He glanced at her expectantly. “You were there, weren’t you?”
Elizabeth nodded, a lump forming in her throat. She still had a hard time talking about that night. “Yes, I was there.”
“What happened?”
“Why do you want to know?”
He shrugged. “Because, on the slight chance that you’re right and there is a connection to this latest murder, I’ll need to know anything you can tell me about what happened to her.” When Elizabeth remained silent, he said, “You did say you wanted to help, right?”
He would use that against her. Elizabeth folded her arms and turned to stare out the window. After a moment, she said, “There were five of us that night. Kat Ridgemont, Tasha Pierce, Brie Dudley, Claire and myself. We were supposed to camp out in St. John’s Cemetery near McFarland Leary’s grave, and one of us had to spend part of the night alone in the old haunted mausoleum.”
Elizabeth shivered though it was quite warm inside the car. “It was a bad idea from the start. Hazing had been banned by the college and by all the sororities years ago, but this particular sorority had a set of secret rules that pertained only to the local students who wanted to join. Most of the girls came from Boston and New York. Those of us from Moriah’s Landing had to prove ourselves worthy. And we didn’t really object. Not at first. We just thought of it as an adventure. All of us except Claire. She was scared even before we got to the cemetery, but she really wanted to be accepted by the sorority. She was afraid if we didn’t go through with the initiation, one or all of us would be blackballed.”
“What happened when you got to the cemetery?”
“A storm was about to hit. I remember the flashes of lightning in the distance, and the wind. There was a moon, but heavy clouds blocked most of the light. We had to use flashlights to locate Leary’s grave, and then we drew lots to see who would have to spend the night in the mausoleum. Claire lost. We all told her she didn’t have to do it, that we didn’t care whether the sorority blackballed us or not, but she insisted she wanted to go through with it.
“When she disappeared inside the crypt, the rest of us gathered in a circle around the grave, joining hands to form a
protective circle to keep out evil—”
Cullen threw her a startled glance. “You what?”
Elizabeth’s face burned with embarrassment. She hadn’t really meant to tell him about that part. She’d never told anyone about the spell. Not her parents, not the police, not anyone. She and the other girls had never spoken of it again. For one thing, there were too many people in town who wouldn’t understand. For another, there were too many people in town who would.
She said in a rush, “Like I said, it was all supposed to be harmless. Then we heard Claire scream. By the time we got the door of the mausoleum open, she was gone. Vanished without a trace.”
Cullen said grimly, “What do you mean without a trace? The police found nothing?”
“No.”
“And you and the others didn’t see anything? Didn’t hear anything? How far away from the crypt were you?”
“Maybe ten yards.”
“And someone got inside, took Claire, and no one saw or heard anything?”
Elizabeth detected the skepticism in his voice, and suddenly she was transported back to that night. Back to the terror. The awful guilt. The suspicion gleaming in the eyes of the police officers who’d questioned her.
That suspicion hadn’t gone away for a very long time, and neither had the guilt. And now Cullen was making her live it all over again. The one person whose trust meant more than anything to Elizabeth was looking at her as if he didn’t believe her.
She said defensively, “I don’t know how it happened. Or why. But Claire has never been the same since.”
Cullen threw her a careful glance. “What exactly was done to her?”
“We…never knew the details. The police withheld the information, partly for her sake, and I think partly because they still suspected one or all of us may have been involved. I think for a while they were hoping one of us would slip up.”
“So you don’t know the extent of her injuries?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “All we were ever told was that she was tortured before she managed to escape from her kidnapper, and her mind just shut down. When she was found in the cemetery a few days later, she couldn’t tell anyone where she’d been or who had taken her, let alone what was done to her. After that, her mother whisked her off to a private institution in another town. She’s been there ever since.”
“Can she have visitors?”
Elizabeth turned. “Why?”
“Because if you’re right and her abduction is connected to Bethany Peters’s murder, then I’m going to need to talk to her.”
“It’s no use. You’d be wasting your time. She can’t tell you anything.”
He lifted a brow. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.”
“Maybe you’re right, then. Maybe I would be wasting my time.” He pulled the car to a stop outside the electronic gate at Heathrow. Flushed from his warm station, George, the guard, hurried over to the car with an impatient scowl, but instead of lowering the window, Cullen turned back to Elizabeth. “If it’s all the same with you, though, I’d like to try talking to her anyway.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Why? You said yourself you don’t really think the crimes are connected.”
He gave her a ghost of a smile. “Let’s just say, you have me intrigued.”
Elizabeth’s heart pounded against her rib cage at the look he gave her. At the way he leaned slightly toward her. With very little effort, she could lift her hand to his face, stroke her fingers along his cheek, trace the outline of his jaw, his chin, his lips. With even less effort, she could touch her mouth to his….
She glanced at George outside the window. He was peering in intently.
“I wouldn’t want you to upset her,” she said in a breathless half-whisper. “She’s been through so much. If you start talking about that night—”
Cullen cocked his head. “What? She might remember something?” He stared at Elizabeth for a long, tense moment, ignoring the rap of George’s knuckle on the window, the glare of his flashlight beam. “Why do I get the feeling there’s something you aren’t telling me about that night?”
“There isn’t.”
“No?” His gaze slipped over her. “Then why are you trembling, Elizabeth?”
SURROUNDED by a low stone wall, Elizabeth’s cottage—one of several residences granted by the college for some of the faculty members—was almost hidden from view by a thick stand of oak and maple trees that provided thick shade in the summer and a dazzling display of color in autumn. In the winter, however, the trees looked skeletal, desolate and not a little eerie with mist curling like smoke around their bases.
The house was small, a one-bedroom with a steeply pitched gable roof and diamond-paned casement windows that were in perfect keeping with the local architecture. The only access was by cobblestone walkways that connected the residential area to the rest of the campus. A faculty parking lot was provided nearby, and as Cullen pulled into a space, Elizabeth was surprised when he shut off the engine. She’d been certain he would let her out as quickly as possible.
He opened the door, and a wintry blast gusted through the car. “I’ll see you home.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Elizabeth was suddenly nervous. “It’s not far, and the campus is perfectly safe.”
But was it? Bethany Peters had been a student at Heathrow, and although her body hadn’t been found on campus, they didn’t yet know where she’d been killed. Or who her murderer was. Or if, in fact, there might be some connection to the college.
Elizabeth had always felt safe behind those lichen-covered walls, but now she realized that the elaborate security precautions were hardly more than an illusion. If someone wanted in badly enough, the walls could be scaled. The gate could be short-circuited. The guard could be fooled.
The murderer could even be someone who lived behind those walls….
Cullen came around and opened her door, reaching out a hand to help her from the car. If he noticed how badly her hand shook, he said nothing.
Climbing out of the car, Elizabeth patted down the folds of her heavy cloak and the swirling hoops of her skirt. “I don’t know how women used to manage,” she muttered, trying to alleviate the fear that had suddenly gripped her.
“That is some outfit,” he agreed.
For a moment, their gazes met, and in the light from a street lamp, Elizabeth saw amusement spark in Cullen’s dark gaze. Amusement…and something else. Or was that, too, her imagination?
A tremor slowly rolled along her nerve endings.
“This way,” she said breathlessly and started down the walkway to her home.
The campus slumbered unaware. In the distance, an occasional light glinted from a dorm window where an unfortunate student was having to pull an all-nighter. Or more likely, where a late-night drinking party and gabfest was taking place. In a little while, Bethany’s room would be roped off with police tape, and word of her murder would be all over school. Elizabeth could already feel a funereal pall settling over the campus.
She turned up her walkway, pausing at her front door. “Well, this is it.” She stared up at Cullen. “Thanks for walking me home.”
“I’ll see you inside.”
Elizabeth’s heart gave a funny little trip. Alone with Cullen in the close confines of her house? How was she going to handle that? What was she going to say to him?
She had a feeling small talk wasn’t going to be a problem. Undoubtedly, the only reason he lingered was to lecture her again.
I’m warning you, Elizabeth.
I’m losing my patience with you, Elizabeth.
Don’t go playing Nancy Drew with my case, Elizabeth.
Bracing herself for his complaints, she unlocked her door and walked inside. She’d left a lamp burning earlier, and now, after such a night, her diminutive living quarters were even more of a welcome sight than usual. She closed the door behind Cullen, then turned, surveying the room with a quick, critical sweep, wondering what he would se
e, what he would think of her home. What it might reveal, inadvertently, about herself.
The area was crowded with furniture—refinished antiques, tall bookcases, deep tufted sofas and chairs where she could curl up in front of the stone fireplace at night or on a rainy day and read a good book. The floors were maple, stained a golden hue that was a welcome contrast to the darker, heavier pieces of furniture.
On the walls, she’d mounted old photographs and newspaper articles collected from area flea markets and antique shops which provided a rich cornucopia of the town’s history dating back over two hundred years. The earlier annals of Moriah’s Landing, including the witch trials of the late 1600s, were retold in dozens of leather-bound tomes she kept under lock and key—along with some of her other prized volumes—in an old scarred armoire in the bedroom.
She turned expectantly to Cullen.
“It’s chilly in here,” he said with a frown. “Do you want me to start you a fire?”
Did she want him to start her a fire?
She’d wanted that for a very long time.
“Yes, thank you,” she murmured. “I’ll make some tea.”
Hurrying into the tiny kitchen, Elizabeth leaned against the doorframe for a moment as she tried to catch her breath. She’d been dreaming of this moment for years. She finally had Cullen Ryan alone in her home. She was making tea while he built a fire. It all seemed so cozy. So…domestic. Perhaps they could snuggle up in front of the flames and sip their tea, and then later—
“Elizabeth? Better make that tea quick. I can’t stay long. I have to get back.”
The romantic record on Elizabeth’s imaginary phonograph scratched to a halt.
So much for later, she thought as she put the kettle on the stove.
While she waited for the water to boil, she slipped out of her cloak, and using the tiny washroom off the kitchen, tried to tidy her hair. She’d had it styled that afternoon at Chops, the best salon in town, but the elaborate updo had come loose in places, and tendrils fell about her shoulders in hopeless disarray. Nothing short of brushing the whole thing out completely would help, but Elizabeth didn’t have time for that. She removed a few hairpins, gave her head a good toss, and then shrugged. That was the best she could do.
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