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Synopsis
Former movie star Jenna Hughes left Hollywood for an isolated farm in Oregon to get away from fame. But someone has followed her-an obsessed fan whose letters are personal and deeply disturbing. While Jenna's already shaken up by what she's seen on paper, she'd be terrified if she knew what Sheriff Shane Carter is investigating. It's a shocking case that started with the discovery of a dead woman in the woods. Now two more women are missing, one of whom bears a striking resemblance to Jenna. As a winter storm bears down on the Pacific Northwest, a merciless killer's grisly work has only just begun. Jenna is getting closer to meeting her biggest fan-one who wants nothing more than to see her dead.
Release date: November 24, 2015
Publisher: Zebra Books
Print pages: 512
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Deep Freeze
Lisa Jackson
Last Winter
Unmoving, she waited.
As if she sensed he was near.
He could feel it—that throb of desire between them as he looked across a dimly illuminated expanse to the bed where she lay in semidarkness. Jenna Hughes. The woman of his dreams. The single female he’d lived his life for. So close. And in his bed. Finally in his bed.
And he was ready. Oh God, he was ready. Sweat began to bead on his upper lip and forehead. His cock was stiffening, his nerve endings dancing.
The lamps were turned low, a few night-lights giving the large room an intimate atmosphere of shadows and fuzzy, muted corners. Soft music, the romantic score from the movie Beneath the Shadows, whispered through the cold, cavernous room. His breath fogged as he stared at her in the sexy black teddy he’d bought for her. So nice that she’d decided to wear it for this special tryst. Their first.
Good girl.
The silk and lace had fit perfectly, sculpting her body. Just as he’d known it would.
He caught a glimpse of her breasts through the sheer fabric. Dark nipples looked nearly wet as they peeked through the lace. Had she moistened them for him? In eager expectation?
Beautiful.
He smiled inwardly, knowing that she was as eager as he was.
How long had he anticipated this moment? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. The time was now. The pills and vodka he’d swallowed had kicked in and he was working on the perfect buzz—just enough chemicals to make this moment even better.
“I’m here,” he told her quietly, expecting her to turn her head, arch one of those delicate black eyebrows, and cast him a come-hither look. Or perhaps she would rise on one elbow and slowly crook a finger toward him, silently drawing him closer, her silvery-green gaze holding his.
But she didn’t move. Not one strand of ebony-colored hair shifted. She just lay on the bed and stared upward.
That was wrong.
He froze.
She should look his way. That was what he wanted.
“Jenna?” he called quietly.
Nothing. Not so much as a flicker of a glance in his direction.
What was the matter with her? Dressed like a damned harlot, she acted as if she didn’t care that he was near, that this night was special to her. To him. To them.
Not again!
His back teeth ground together in frustration at her cool disinterest. Was it a game? Was she teasing him? Just what the hell was going on here?
“Jenna, look at me,” he commanded in a near-whisper.
But as he edged closer, he realized that she wasn’t as perfect as he’d thought. No…her makeup wasn’t quite right. Her lipstick was too pale, her eyeshadow barely visible. He’d wanted her to look more like a whore. That was the plan. Hadn’t he told her to play the part of a prostitute? Isn’t she dressed as a prostitute? Isn’t this part of your fantasy?
Damn, he couldn’t think straight. His mind wasn’t as clear as he’d hoped. Probably the drugs…or was it something else? Something vital? Jenna wasn’t responding the way he’d hoped.
She knew what he liked.
But then, she’d always been defiant. Always aloof. Icily so. That was part of his attraction to her.
“Come on, baby,” he whispered, deciding to give her another chance, though he was having trouble focusing. Maybe he was a little too high and he wasn’t seeing those little nuances of lust that she was known for. That was it. His mind was a little too cloudy, his thoughts not quite joined, his lust overtaking reason. He was quivering inside, and his lungs felt constricted. His erection was rock-hard, straining against his fly, but the images in his mind were a little blurry.
He licked his lips. No more waiting.
He placed a knee on the bed beside her, and the mattress creaked loudly.
Still she refused to look at him.
“Jenna!” he said more sharply than he’d intended, his temper catching fire, his tongue a little thick.
Take it easy. She’s here, isn’t she?
“Jenna, look at me!”
Not so much as a flinch.
Stubborn, thankless woman! After all he’d done for her! All the years he’d thought of no one but her! Rage burned through his blood, and his hands began to shake.
Calm down! You can still have her. In your bed. She hasn’t moved away, has she?
“Jenna, I’m here,” he said.
She ignored him.
Fury blazed white-hot, but he tried to fight his anger. This was her game, that was all. She knew that the more she pretended disinterest, the more he would want her, the higher the erotic stakes. And that was all the better.
Wasn’t it?
He didn’t know. Couldn’t really remember.
He was sweating though it was cold in here, the temperature hovering only a few degrees above freezing. And yet he was hot inside, a fire raging through his blood.
Didn’t she feel it—the intimate bond that tethered them together?
He leaned closer, and with a trembling finger traced the outline of her cheek. It was warm to his touch.
Then he understood. This was all part of her fantasy. She wanted him to think of her not as Jenna Hughes, but as one of the roles she’d played on the big screen. Wasn’t she dressed as Paris Knowlton, a New Orleans prostitute in Beneath the Shadows? Hadn’t he wanted Jenna to act like Paris tonight? Isn’t that exactly what she was doing? Suddenly he felt better, the warmth running through his veins due to lust and drugs rather than rage.
“Paris,” he cooed, touching her dark hair lovingly. It shimmered a blue-black in the shadowy lights. “I’ve been searching for you.”
Still no response.
Jesus, what did she want? He was playing his part…or was he?
“Jenna?”
Not so much as a glance his way. Anger sparked. It tore through him, his blood suddenly thundering in his ears. “Oh, I get it,” he snarled, his fingers roughly grazing her neck. “You’re really into this, aren’t you? You like acting like a whore.”
He heard a gasp.
Finally!
His fingers surrounded her throat. It was warm to his touch. Pliant. He tried to feel her pulse as his hands pressed against her skin.
A groan.
Pain or desire?
“That’s it, isn’t it? You like it when I’m rough, don’t you?”
“Oh God, no!” Her voice seemed to come from a distance, echoing in his head, bouncing off the walls. “Don’t!”
His grip tightened, sinking into her nearly hot flesh.
“Stop! Please! What are you doing?”
He was so hard he was trembling, but he couldn’t take his hands from her neck, couldn’t unzip his fly. He shook her then and her head wobbled wildly, beautiful green eyes fixed straight at him.
A terrified scream ripped through the room.
Jenna’s head fell backward.
Her neck wobbled in his hands.
Another horrified, panicked shriek ricocheted off the rafters, the sound echoing through his brain.
“Bitch!” He slapped her hard.
Smack! Her face twisted hard to one side.
“Oh God!” There was crying now. Sobbing. “No, no, no!”
Her makeup began to run, her perfect features distorting from the blow. Her hair came loose, the thick black wig falling onto the rumpled mattress, her bald pate visible in the dusky room.
A gasp.
Her head twisted to one side.
That was better.
He raised his hand again.
“Don’t…oh God, please don’t!” she pled from immobile lips. “What’re you doing?” She was wailing violently, nearly incoherently, panic stretching her vocal cords. But her shoulders remained stiff. Inflexible. Her face without any passion.
Something was wrong here, very wrong…
“Oh God, oh God, oh God…please stop.”
The sound of fear, the gulping, gasping sobs, reverberated through the room, yet no tears fell from Jenna’s eyes, nor did they blink. Her lips didn’t tremble. Her shoulders didn’t shake. Her body didn’t convulse…
He blinked. Cleared his head. His erection softened as he realized where he was and realized what he was doing.
Hell!
He stared down at Jenna Hughes, and as if his hands were burned, dropped her onto the mussed silk sheets.
Crack!
Her head hit the bed frame.
A shriek of pure terror ripped through the room.
Jenna’s neck snapped.
Her bald head fell away from her body.
“Oh God, noooooooooo!”
Eyes wide, the head rolled off the mattress.
With a dull thud, her skull landed on the concrete floor of this, his sanctuary.
The screams became hysterical, violent, horrible sobs that tore through the chamber, bouncing off the walls and climbing up his spine.
“Oh God! Please, don’t!” Her voice seemed to echo to the rooftop. So she could feel. And yet she wasn’t looking at him. Something was wrong here…very wrong.
On the floor, Jenna’s features compressed and flattened in the ooze that had once been her face.
His mind cleared.
He realized that his near-perfect creation, his waxen mask of Jenna Hughes’s gorgeous face, was destroyed.
Because he hadn’t been able to wait.
Because he’d taken too many pills.
Because he wanted her so badly that he’d lost his judgment and slapped her. Long before her likeness had hardened.
“Fool,” he ground out and slapped himself alongside the head. “Idiot!” All that work for nothing. The beautiful face—could it be reconstructed? Where once it had been nearly lifelike, now it was goo; once a Michelangelo, now a Picasso, her beautiful features distorted as they pooled around sightless eyes that were glassy and stark.
He leaned back, away from the mess on the bed. There was no blood. No flesh and bone. Not from this lifeless form. Swiping the sweat away from his forehead, he glanced across the shadowed expanse to his darkened stage, already set, where several near-perfect mannequins stood silently waiting in the gloom. They were beautiful, if not alive. Replicas of Jenna Hughes.
But this one! He looked again at what had once been his masterpiece and frowned. A pathetic imitation! He’d been distracted lately.
“Please…let me go.”
He rocked back onto his feet and looked over his shoulder to the murky corner. His eyes focused on the live woman, bound and naked, just waking up from a drug-induced slumber. Hers had been the voice he’d heard. Her terror was the emotion that had rippled through the room.
“Please…” she mewled again softly, and he smiled, feeling a renewed hope as he surveyed her musculature and facial features. The width of the forehead, the straight nose, the high cheekbones beneath big, frightened eyes. She was a dirty blond, but hair color was the least of his worries. Facially she was a near-match. His grin stretched wide, and the mess on the floor was instantly forgotten.
His next replica of Jenna Hughes would be perfect.
This pathetic creature, bound and begging for her life, was anatomically correct.
His anger subsided in an instant as he glanced to one window, where the barest hint of moonlight slipped through the panes. Snow was melting on the outer sill.
Winter was slipping away.
The spring thaw was already in the air.
He’d have to work fast.
This Winter
“So you’re concerned about the coming storm,” Dr. Randall said calmly from the chair near his desk. He’d positioned his body so that there was nothing between himself and his client but an imported rug covering the polished wooden floor of his office.
“I’m concerned about the winter.” The response was angry, but coldly so. The man, tall and taciturn, sat near the window on a padded leather chair. He stared straight at Randall with a hard, unforgiving gaze.
Randall nodded, as if he understood. “You’re concerned, because—?”
“You know why. It seems that things always get worse when the temperature drops.”
“At least for you.”
“Right. For me. Isn’t that why I’m here?” Tension was evident in the stiffness of his neck and the bleached knuckles of his clasped hands.
“Why are you here?”
“Don’t patronize me. None of that psychobabble doubletalk.”
“Do you hate the winter?”
A beat. A second’s hesitation. The client blinked. “Not at all. Hate’s a pretty strong word.”
“What would you say? What would be the right word?”
“It’s not the season I don’t like. It’s what happens.”
“Maybe your concern about things being worse at this time of year is just your perception.”
“Do you deny that bad things happen in the winter?”
“Of course not, but sometimes accidents or tragedies can occur in other months. People drown while swimming in the summer, or fall off cliffs while hiking in the mountains, or become ill from parasites that only breed in the heat. Bad things can happen at any time.”
His client’s jaw became solid granite as he seemed to struggle silently with the concept. He was a very intelligent man, his IQ near genius level, but he was struggling to make sense of the tragedy that had scarred his life. “I do know that intellectually, but personally, it’s always worse in the winter.” He glanced to the window, where gray clouds were muddying the sky.
“Because of what happened when you were a child?”
“You tell me. You’re the shrink.” He cut a harsh glance at the psychologist before offering a bit of a smile, a quick flash of teeth that Dr. Randall supposed would be considered a killer smile by most women. This man was an interesting case, made more so by the pact that they had agreed upon: There would be no notes, no recording, not so much as a memo about the appointment in Randall’s date book to indicate that the two had ever met. The appointment was cloaked in the deepest secrecy.
His client glanced at the clock, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his wallet. He didn’t count out the bills. They were already neatly folded and tucked into a special compartment.
“We should meet again soon,” Dr. Randall suggested as the money was left on a corner of his desk.
The tall man nodded sharply. “I’ll call.”
And he would, Dr. Randall thought, idly pressing the fold from the crisp twenties as his patient’s boots rang down the steps of the back staircase. For no matter how hard the man tried to convince himself he didn’t need counseling, he was smart enough to realize that the demons he was trying to exorcise had burrowed deep into the darkest parts of his soul and wouldn’t be released without the proper coaxing, the treatment he so abhorred.
Pride goeth before a fall, Randall thought as he slipped the bills into his own worn wallet. He’d seen it time and time again. This man, though he didn’t know it, was about to tumble.
“Dad-gum dog—where the hell did ya run off ta now?” Charley Perry said around a wad of chewing tobacco. He was tramping through the wilderness, high above the Columbia, through old-growth timber and little else as the first light of dawn splintered through the trees. Winter was chasing down the gorge, and his stupid, two-bit spaniel had taken off again. He considered leaving her out here—she’d probably find her way back to his cabin—but a bit of guilt nagged at him, and truth to tell, she was all he really had in the world. Tanzy had once been a helluva huntin’ dog, Charley mused, but like himself, she was half-deaf now and more than a little crippled with arthritis.
Squinting through the sparse brush, he whistled sharply, the sound piercing its way through the forest as branches rattled overhead. His gloved hands tightened over the barrel of his rifle, a Winchester that his daddy had bestowed upon him over half a century earlier when he’d returned from the war. He had newer weapons, a lot of them, but this one, like the tired old dog, was his favorite.
Damn, he thought, but he was gettin’ nostalgic in his old age.
“Tanzy?” he called, knowing that he was chasing off any chance of prey. Stupid bitch of a dog!
He stomped up a familiar trail, his gaze scanning the ground for signs of deer, or elk, or even a bear, though they’d already gone into their dens for the winter. There had been talk in town of a mountain lion that had been seen near the falls this summer, but Charley hadn’t come across any spoor that indicated the big cat was prowling these slopes. Charley didn’t really know what cougars did in the winter but he didn’t think they hibernated. Not that it mattered. Never, in all his seventy-two years of living in these mountains, had he ever seen one. He didn’t figure today would be his unlucky day.
His feet ached from the cold, even in his wool socks and hunting boots. The shrapnel still embedded in his hip pained him. Still he hunted, searching these woods as he had as a kid with his pa. He’d nailed his first buck up on Settler’s Bluff when he was fourteen. Hell, that was a long time ago.
A blast of wind hit him hard in his face and he swore. “Come on, Tanzy! Let’s go, girl!” It was time to drive his battered Ford truck into town, pick up a paper, and drink coffee at the Canyon Café with the few of his friends who were still alive and healthy enough to leave their wives for an hour or two. Later, he’d do the crossword puzzle and stoke the fire in his woodstove.
Where the hell was that mutt?
He whistled again and heard a whimper, then a bark.
At last! He turned and walked down a sharp gully where Tanzy was suddenly going ape-shit, her nose to the ground around a decaying log. “Whaddaya got, girl?” Charley asked, as he stepped over a bleached-out snag and into a scattering of brush. His boots snapped small twigs as he inched his way down to the dog, bracing himself for a squirrel or weasel to dart out from what appeared to be a hollow log. He sure as hell hoped it wasn’t a porcupine or skunk holed up in there.
A breeze stirred the branches overhead and he smelled it then—the rank odor of decaying flesh. Whatever was inside was already dead. No worry about it dashing out and scaring the bejeezus out of him.
Tanzy was barking her fool head off, jumping at the log and leaping back, the bristles of her spotted coat standing on end, her tail swatting the air.
“Okay, okay, just let me have a look-see,” Charley said, lowering himself on one knee and hearing it pop. He bent down and peered into the cavity of the log. “Can’t really tell.” But something was wedged inside and it smelled bad. Curiosity got the better of him, and he shifted the log a bit, allowing the wintry sunlight a chance to permeate the darkness. As he did, he got a good glimpse of what was inside.
A human skull stared back at him.
Charley’s blood turned to ice. He yelped and dropped the log.
It splintered against the forest floor.
The skull, with tiny, sharp teeth, strings of blond hair, and bits of rotting flesh attached to the bone, rolled into the pine needles and dry leaves.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he whispered, and it was a prayer. The wind seemed to pick up, shaking the snow from the trees, skittering across the back of his neck. Charley took a step back and sensed evil—from the darkest part of Lucifer’s heart—lurking in the gloom of this forest.
“Charley Perry’s a crackpot,” Sheriff Shane Carter groused as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe that simmered for hours on end in the kitchen of the sheriff’s department. As soon as the last cup was poured from the glass pot, another was made.
“Yeah, but this time he’s claiming he found a human skull up near Catwalk Point. We can’t ignore that,” BJ Stevens said. She was a short woman, a little on the hippy side, with three men’s names. Billie Jo Stevens. She didn’t seem to mind.
“Send two men up there.”
“Already have. Donaldson and Montinello.”
“Charley claimed to have seen Bigfoot a couple of times before,” Carter reminded her as he headed through the break room toward his office near the rear of the Lewis County Courthouse. “And then there was the incident where he was certain a UFO had hovered over the Bridge of the Gods, remember that?”
“Okay, so he’s eccentric.”
“Nutcase,” Carter reminded her. “Full-blown.”
“Harmless.”
“Let’s just hope this is another one of his wild-goose chases.”
“But you’re going up to investigate,” she said, knowing him better than he wanted her to.
“Yeah.” Carter made his way past glowing computer monitors, jangling phones, cubicles, old desks, and filing cabinets to his office, a glassed-in room with miniblinds he could lower for privacy. His two outside windows overlooked the courthouse parking lot and Danby’s Furniture Store across the street. If he craned his neck, he was able to peer down Main Street. He rarely bothered.
He set his cup on his desk and checked his e-mail, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was more to Charley Perry’s story than they knew. It was true Charley was over the top, an eccentric loner who lived by his own rules, especially when it came to poaching game, but he was essentially harmless and, Carter suspected, a decent enough guy. But every once in a while he seemed to freak out, or need attention or something. The Bigfoot fiasco had gotten him some press. Two years later he claimed he’d spotted a UFO and had been beamed aboard so that aliens who looked humanoid with huge heads could study him. Well, if the poor aliens had thought Charley was a prime specimen of the human race, they were probably sorely disappointed in humankind. No wonder they hadn’t been back.
The phone rang and he answered automatically, managing to drink from his cup as he turned from the computer screen.
“Carter.”
“Montinello, Sheriff,” Deputy Lanny Montinello said, his voice barely audible for the bad cell phone connection. “I think you might want to come up to Catwalk Point. It looks like old Charley is right. We’ve got ourselves a body. Or, at least, most of one.”
“Damn,” Carter muttered, asking a few more questions before ordering Montinello to seal off the crime scene and keep Charley on ice. As soon as he hung up, he called the state crime scene lab, grabbed his jacket, hat, and weapon, then collected BJ. On the way he left messages with the Medical Examiner and D.A.’s office.
“What did I tell you?” BJ asked as he drove his Blazer up the winding logging road to Catwalk Point, a mountain that rose three thousand feet from the Columbia River basin floor. They’d been delayed, called to an injury-accident on a county road just south of town that had held them up for nearly two hours.
By the time they reached the end of the gravel-and-mud road, yellow crime scene tape had been strung around the area. Not that there was much chance of rubberneckers up here. Sooner or later the press would hear of it and converge, but not for a while. Carter pulled the hood of his insulated jacket over his head as he stepped out of his rig.
It was cold with the promise of winter, a snowstorm having been predicted for the next few days. The ground was nearly frozen, the tall fir trees shivering and dancing in the icy blasts of an east wind that roared down the gorge.
Carefully he and BJ picked their way down a sharp ravine where detectives from the Oregon State Crime Lab were already at work.
Pictures were being snapped by one photographer while another aimed a video camera at the ground. A grid had already been established over a wide area, the scene secured. Through the snow, soil samples were being collected, debris sorted through, a hollow log tagged. Bones had been carefully laid upon a plastic tarp. The skeleton was small, but incomplete. And the skull was odd, its teeth too tiny and sharp.
“What’ve we got?” Carter asked Merline Jacobosky, a reed-thin investigator with sharp features and an even sharper mind. Her eyebrows were slammed together over the tops of rimless glasses and her lips, devoid of any color, pinched together as she stopped writing on the pages attached to her clipboard and again surveyed the human remains.
“Off the top? White female, mid-twenties to thirties, I’d guess, but don’t quote me until the M.E. releases her to the lab and there’s a full autopsy. She’d been stuffed into that log over there.” With her pen, Merline pointed to the hollowed-out cedar. “We’re missing a few bones, probably because an animal or two dragged off parts of her corpse, but we’re still looking. Already found an ulna and tarsal that were missing at first. Maybe we’ll get lucky with the rest.”
“Maybe,” Carter said without much enthusiasm as he surveyed the forest floor and the craggy hillside that dropped steeply toward the Columbia River. The terrain was rugged, the forest dense, the river wide and wild as it carved a wide trench between the states of Oregon and Washington. Even tamed by a series of dams, it raged westward, whitecaps visible through the trees. If a body were ever dumped in the Columbia, there wasn’t a whole lot of chance of it ever being recovered.
He heard the whine of an engine struggling up the hillside and glimpsed the M.E.’s van through the trees. Not far behind was another rig, one belonging to one of the Assistant District Attorneys.
Merline wasn’t finished. She said, “Here’s what I think is really odd. Check out her teeth.” Jacobosky knelt and pointed with the end of her pen. “See the incisors and molars? That isn’t a natural rot…I think they’ve been filed.”
Carter felt a whisper of dread touch the base of his spine. Who would file someone’s teeth? And why? “To keep the body from being identified?” he asked.
“Maybe, but why not just pull the teeth or break them? Why go to all the trouble of filing them to tiny points?” She rocked back on her heels and tapped her pen to her lips as she studied the skull. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe our guy is a dentist with a sick sense of humor.”
“The sick part is right.”
“Any ID?” he asked, but assumed the answer.
“Nothing yet.” She shook her head and flipped over a page of her clipboard. “No clothes or personal effects, either. But we’ll keep looking, under the snow, through the ice and into the soil. If there’s evidence, we’ll locate it.” She squinted up at Carter as gray clouds scudded overhead.
“What’s this?” Carter bent down and studied the skull with its grotesque teeth and gaping eye sockets. He indicated her hair. There was something clinging to the strands that were visible. A pinkish substance that he didn’t think was flesh. It reminded him of eraser residue.
“Don’t know. Yet. But some kind of manmade substance. We’ll have the lab check it out.”
“Good.” He straightened and noticed BJ talking with one of the photographers as Luke Messenger, the M.E. arrived. Tall and rangy, with curly red hair and freckles, he made his way to the crime scene and frowned at the body.
“Only a partial?” he asked Jacobosky.
“So far.” He knelt beside the bones as Amanda Pratt, the Assistant D.A. lucky enough to be assigned this frigid job, picked her way down the hillside. She was bundled in layers of down and wool and smelled of cigarette smoke.
“God, this is miserable weather,” she said, her pert nose wrinkling at the partial body. “Jesus, would you look at that? Found in a hollowed-out log?”
“So Charley says.”
“You can’t believe a word out of his mouth,” she said flatly, but eyed the scene.
“Maybe this time he’s telling the truth.”
Her eyes flashed behind thin, plastic-rimmed glasses. “Yeah, right. And I’m the friggin’ queen of England. No, make that Spain. England’s too damned cold. Jesus, we’ve got ourselves a regular party up here.” She scanned the vehicles. “Is Charley still around?”
“In one of the pickups—over there.” Jacobosky hitched her chin toward a white truck idling near the end of the road. Montinello was at the wheel. Charley Perry was huddled in the passenger seat. “He’s not too happy about being kept up here,” Jacobosky added. “Making a whole lotta noise about wanting to get home and warm up.”
“Don’t blame him. I’ll talk to him.”
“Good,” Amanda said. “Be sure to have your bullshit meter with you.”
Carter laughed, took another long look at the grid that was the crime scene, then said to the Medical Examiner, “Let me know what you find out.”
“Soon as we sort it all out,” Messenger replied. He was still crouched over the remains. Didn’t bother looking up. “You’ll be the first to know.”
“Thanks.” Carter headed up the hillside and found Charley as cranky as ever. He was cradling a cup of coffee someone had brought up, but he glared through the passenger window at Carter as if he held the sheriff personally responsible for ruining his day. Carter tapped on the glass, and Charley reluctantly lowered the window.
“Are you arrestin’ me?” he demanded, short, silvery beard covering a strong, jutted chin. Angry eyes peered from behind thick glasses.
“No.”
“Then have one of your boys take me home. I done my duty, didn’t I? No need to treat me like some kind of damned prisoner.” He spat a long stream of tobacco juice through the window to land on the snowy dirt and gravel. Fortunately for Charley, this area wasn’t considered part of the crime scene.
“I just want to ask you some questions.”
“I been answerin’ ’em all mornin’!”
Carter smiled. “Just a few more, then I’ll have Deputy Montinello take you home.”
“Great,” Charley muttered, folding his arms over a thin chest. He cooperated, if reluctantly, and was right; he didn’t have any more information. He told Carter that he’d been out hunting, lost his dog, and found her down in the gully near the hollow log. He’d lifted the log and a skull had rolled out, nearly scaring him to death. “…and that’s all I know,” he added petulantly. “I half-ran home and called your office. And don’t you give me no grief ’bout huntin’ with Tanzy. I needed a trackin’ dog to get me back home,” he said, as if he realized he could be in trouble for hunting with a dog. Hurriedly he added, “Two of your men hauled me back up here a few hours back and I’m still freezin’ my butt off.”
“We all are, Charley,” Carter said, and slapped the door of the department’s truck. “Take him back home,” he said to Lanny Montinello before looking at Charley’s grizzled face again. “If you think of anything else, you’ll call, right?”
“’Course,” Charley said, though he didn’t meet Carter’s eyes and the sheriff suspected that the loner was stretching the truth. They’d never gotten along, not since Carter had debunked Charley’s Bigfoot story and had once threatened to call the game warden about Charley poaching deer. No, Charley Perry wasn’t likely to call again, not if he had to speak to the sheriff. Carter glanced at Montinello and said, “Take him home.” The interview was over.
“Will do.” Montinello slid the pickup into gear, and Carter slapped the door a couple of times as Charley rolled up the window. Within seconds the truck disappeared around a stand of old growth that was as dense as it was tall. The firs loomed high, seeming to scrape the steel-colored bellies of the clouds just as the first drops of icy rain began to fall.
Carter shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his parka and looked down the hillside to the crime scene crawling with investigators. The unknown woman’s partial skeleton was stretched out on the plastic sheet. Amanda Pratt was standing a few yards off, smoking a cigarette and hashing it out with Luke Messenger. In the midst of it all was the corpse, with her filed teeth and bits of pink gunk in her hair.
Who was she and what the hell was she doing up in this isolated part of no-damned-where?
Click!
The French doors opened.
A gust of wind, cold as all of winter, swept inside the darkened house. Near-dead embers in the fireplace glowed a brighter red. The old dog lying on the rug near Jenna’s chair lifted his head and let out a low, warning growl.
“Shh!” the intruder hissed.
Jenna’s eyes narrowed as she squinted at the silhouette easing into the large great room. As dark as it was, she recognized her oldest daughter slinking toward the stairs. Just as she’d expected. Great. One more teenager sneaking home in the middle of the night.
“Hush, Critter!” Cassie whispered angrily, her voice sharp as she tiptoed to the stairs.
Jenna snapped on a nearby lamp.
Instantly the log house was illuminated. Cassie froze at the first step. “Damn,” she muttered, her shoulders sagging as she slowly turned and faced her mother.
“You are so grounded,” Jenna said from her favorite leather chair.
Instantly, Cassie was on the offensive. “What’re you doing up?”
“Waiting for you.” Jenna unfolded herself from the chair and met her daughter’s sullen expression. Cassie, who so many people said was a carbon-copy of Jenna as a younger woman. Cassie was taller by an inch, but her high cheekbones, dark lashes and brows, and pointed chin were nearly identical to Jenna’s. “Where were you?”
“Out.” She tossed her streaked hair over her shoulder.
“I know that. You were supposed to be in bed. As a matter of fact, I remember you saying something like ‘Night, Mom’ around eleven.”
Jenna was rewarded with an exaggerated roll of Cassie’s green eyes. “So who were you with? No, forget that—I figure you were with Josh.”
Cassie didn’t offer any information, but in Jenna’s estimation, Josh Sykes was a foregone conclusion. Ever since Cassie had started dating the nineteen-year-old, she’d become secretive, sullen, and mutinous.
“So where did you go? Precisely.”
Cassie folded her arms over her chest and leaned a shoulder against the yellowed log wall. Her makeup was smeared, her hair mussed, her clothes rumpled. Jenna didn’t have to guess what her daughter had been doing, and it scared her to death. “We were just out driving around,” Cassie said.
“At three in the morning?”
“Yeah.” Cassie lifted a shoulder and yawned.
“It’s freezing outside.”
“So?”
“Look, Cassie, don’t start with the attitude. I’m not in the mood.”
“I don’t see why you care.”
“Don’t you?” Jenna was standing now, advancing on her rebellious daughter, getting her first whiff of cigarette smoke and maybe something else. “Let’s just start with I love you and I don’t want to see you mess up your life.”
“Like you did?” Cassie arched one brow cattily. “When you got pregnant with me?”
The barb hit its intended mark, but Jenna ignored it. “That was a little different. I was almost twenty-two. An adult. On my own. And we’re not talking about me. You’re the one who’s been lying and sneaking out.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“You’re sixteen, for crying out loud.” And a woman. Cassie’s figure was already enviable by Hollywood standards.
“I was just out with friends.”
“‘Driving around.’”
“Yeah.”
“Right.” Jenna wasn’t buying it for a minute. “Haven’t you heard the old axiom that ‘nothing good happens after midnight?’”
Cassie just glared at her.
“Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere now, so go on up to bed and we’ll talk in the morning.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Sure there is. We’ll start with sneaking out and cruise right into the pitfalls of teen pregnancy and STDs. And that’s just for starters.”
“I can’t wait,” Cassie said, reminding Jenna of herself at the same age. “You just don’t like Josh.”
“I don’t like that he seems to have some kind of control over you, that you’d do anything to be with him. That he talks you into lying to me.”
“I don’t—”
“Ah-ah. If I were you, Cassie, I’d quit while you’re ahead, or at least while you’re not too far behind.”
But Cassie’s temper had sparked and she was suddenly defiant. “You don’t like any of my friends,” she accused, “not since we moved up here, so it’s your fault. I never wanted to come.”
That much was true. Both of her daughters had had fits about her decision to leave L.A. behind and seek out some kind of peace and normalcy in this quiet little town perched on the rocky shores of the Columbia River in Oregon. Jenna had heard the complaints for a year and a half. “That’s old news. We’re here, Cassie, and we’re all going to make the best of it.”
“I’m trying.”
“With Josh.”
“Yeah. With Josh.” Rebellion flashed in Cassie’s eyes.
“To punish me.”
“No,” Cassie said slowly, her jaw setting. “Believe it or not, this isn’t about you, for once. Okay? If I wanted to ‘punish’ you, I’d go back to California and live with Dad.”
“Is that what you want?” Jenna felt as if she’d been sucker-punched, but she didn’t show any emotion, didn’t want to let Cassie know that she’d hit a very strong and painful nerve.
“I just want someone to trust me, okay?”
“Trust is earned, Cassie,” she said, and inwardly cringed as she realized she was echoing words she’d heard from her own mother years before.
Jenna bit her tongue rather than start in on that one. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” She snapped off the lamp and heard Cassie’s footsteps trudge up the stairs. I’m turning into my mother, she thought, and refused to let her mind wander too far in that frightening direction. “Come on, Critter,” she said to the dog as she relocked the door and started up the flight of stairs to the second story. Her bedroom was halfway up the stairs, just off the landing, the girls’ another half a flight higher. “Let’s go to bed.” The old dog padded behind, his gait slowed by arthritis. Jenna waited for him at the landing and heard Cassie’s door shut with a quiet thud. “We’re finally all safe and sound.” And you have to get up in two and a half hours. Inwardly groaning at the thought, she turned the final set of stairs, but from the corner of her eye, through the landing’s stained-glass window, she caught a glimpse of something.
Movement?
Her own pale reflection?
Critter growled softly, and Jenna’s muscles went rigid. “Shh,” she said, but squinted through the colored glass, searching the distorted image of the yard and outbuildings of her ranch—“the compound,” as Cassie referred to it. Security lamps glowed an eerie blue, casting pools of light on the barn, stable, and sheds. The old windmill creaked, its blades turning slowly as it stood, a wooden skeleton, near the lane. The main gate gaped open, the result of the lock freezing and snow piling up around the gateposts. The lane leading to the gate was empty—no rumble of a car or truck engine cutting through the night.
Still, the forested hills and craggy banks of the river were dark and shrouded, the cloudy night a perfect cover…
For whom?
Don’t be silly.
Surely no one was lurking in the wintry shadows.
Of course not.
The worst-case scenario would be that Josh Sykes was still hanging around, hiding behind the corner of the barn, maybe hoping to follow Cassie inside.
Right?
Nothing more sinister than a horny boyfriend hiding near the barn.
The old dog growled again.
“Hush,” Jenna said as she turned into the double doors that opened to her master suite, a cozy set of rooms that she shared with no one.
She’d moved to this isolated spot on the Columbia River for peace of mind, so she’d ignore the knot of dread in her stomach. She was just edgy and out of sorts because her teenager was giving her fits. That’s all.
And yet as she stepped into her darkened bedroom, she couldn’t shake the sensation that something was about to happen.
Something she wouldn’t like.
Something intimately evil.
“Cassie!” Jenna yelled up the stairwell. “Allie! Breakfast. Get a move on! We have to be out of here in half an hour!” Listening for sounds of life coming from upstairs, she walked into the kitchen and glanced at the clock mounted over the stove. They were going to be late. There was just no two ways about it. They really should be at Allie’s school in forty-five minutes and it would take at least twenty to get to the junior high. She flipped on the television, slammed two English muffins into the toaster, and yelled, “Come on, girls!”
She heard the thud and shuffle of footsteps overhead. Thank God.
She swallowed her second cup of coffee, nearly tripping over Critter, who was hovering near the counter, dropped her empty cup in the sink, and yanked open the refrigerator door. Still no sound of water running. Cassie was usually in the shower by this time. Yanking open the refrigerator door, she found a carton of orange juice and poured two glasses as the muffins popped up. From the television, the local weatherman was predicting the worst snow of the season so far, as temperatures had dropped far below freezing.
Slathering the first set of muffins with butter, she heard footsteps on the stairs. A few seconds later, Cassie appeared.
“There’s no water,” she said glumly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s no friggin’ water. I turned on the faucet and nothing!” To prove her point, she walked to the sink and twisted on the faucet. Nothing happened.
“No hot water?” Jenna said, hating the thoughts running through her mind. Better a problem with the water heater than the pipes.
“No cold, either.” Cassie looked over at the coffeepot. “How did you…?”
“Got it ready last night. It’s on a timer.” She was at the sink, trying to get the water to flow and failing miserably. “Damn. I guess you’ll just have to get dressed without a shower.”
“Are you out of your mind? I can’t go to school without washing my hair.”
“You’ll survive. So will the school.”
“But, Mom—”
“Just eat your breakfast and then change into something clean.”
“No way. I’m not going to school.” Cassie slumped into a chair in the nook. Dark smudges surrounded her eyes, and she couldn’t keep from yawning from her tryst the night before.
“You’re going. Remember the old saying, ‘If you fly with the eagles, you have to rise with the sparrows?’”
“I don’t get it.”
“Sure you do.”
“Well, it’s dumb.”
“Maybe so, but it’s our credo for the morning.”
Cassie rolled her eyes and took a swallow of her juice, but let the muffin sit untouched on her plate. Critter planted himself under the table, his head resting on Cassie’s knee. She didn’t seem to notice or care.
“You and I still need to talk. Last night isn’t going to happen again. I don’t want you sneaking out. Ever. It’s just not safe.”
“You just don’t like Josh.”
“We went over this last night. Josh is fine.” Even if his IQ was smaller than his shoe size. “But I don’t like him manipulating you.”
“He doesn’t.”
“And, if you two are having sex—”
“Oh God. Save me.”
“—I need to know about it.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Of course it is. You’re a minor.”
“Can we talk about this later? Or never?” She glared at her mom as if Jenna was soooo out of it, which, Jenna supposed, she was. But she had to tread softly or she’d do exactly the opposite of what she wanted and send Cassie reeling into Josh Sykes’s ready and randy arms. Jenna glimpsed the kitchen clock counting off the seconds of her life. “Okay, later. After school, when we have more time.”
“Great. Just what we need. More time,” Cassie mumbled as Jenna, telling herself that timing is everything in life, stepped out of the kitchen and away from the confrontation they’d have this evening. She walked down a short hallway to the bottom of the stairs. “Allie? Are you up?”
She heard the shuffle of feet and Allie, still wearing her pajamas, inched her way into the kitchen. Her red-blond hair was a disaster, her pixie-like face pulled into a pained expression worthy of an Oscar. “I don’t feel good.”
“What’s wrong?” Jenna said, though she suspected it was nothing. This was one of her twelve-year-old’. . .
Unmoving, she waited.
As if she sensed he was near.
He could feel it—that throb of desire between them as he looked across a dimly illuminated expanse to the bed where she lay in semidarkness. Jenna Hughes. The woman of his dreams. The single female he’d lived his life for. So close. And in his bed. Finally in his bed.
And he was ready. Oh God, he was ready. Sweat began to bead on his upper lip and forehead. His cock was stiffening, his nerve endings dancing.
The lamps were turned low, a few night-lights giving the large room an intimate atmosphere of shadows and fuzzy, muted corners. Soft music, the romantic score from the movie Beneath the Shadows, whispered through the cold, cavernous room. His breath fogged as he stared at her in the sexy black teddy he’d bought for her. So nice that she’d decided to wear it for this special tryst. Their first.
Good girl.
The silk and lace had fit perfectly, sculpting her body. Just as he’d known it would.
He caught a glimpse of her breasts through the sheer fabric. Dark nipples looked nearly wet as they peeked through the lace. Had she moistened them for him? In eager expectation?
Beautiful.
He smiled inwardly, knowing that she was as eager as he was.
How long had he anticipated this moment? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. The time was now. The pills and vodka he’d swallowed had kicked in and he was working on the perfect buzz—just enough chemicals to make this moment even better.
“I’m here,” he told her quietly, expecting her to turn her head, arch one of those delicate black eyebrows, and cast him a come-hither look. Or perhaps she would rise on one elbow and slowly crook a finger toward him, silently drawing him closer, her silvery-green gaze holding his.
But she didn’t move. Not one strand of ebony-colored hair shifted. She just lay on the bed and stared upward.
That was wrong.
He froze.
She should look his way. That was what he wanted.
“Jenna?” he called quietly.
Nothing. Not so much as a flicker of a glance in his direction.
What was the matter with her? Dressed like a damned harlot, she acted as if she didn’t care that he was near, that this night was special to her. To him. To them.
Not again!
His back teeth ground together in frustration at her cool disinterest. Was it a game? Was she teasing him? Just what the hell was going on here?
“Jenna, look at me,” he commanded in a near-whisper.
But as he edged closer, he realized that she wasn’t as perfect as he’d thought. No…her makeup wasn’t quite right. Her lipstick was too pale, her eyeshadow barely visible. He’d wanted her to look more like a whore. That was the plan. Hadn’t he told her to play the part of a prostitute? Isn’t she dressed as a prostitute? Isn’t this part of your fantasy?
Damn, he couldn’t think straight. His mind wasn’t as clear as he’d hoped. Probably the drugs…or was it something else? Something vital? Jenna wasn’t responding the way he’d hoped.
She knew what he liked.
But then, she’d always been defiant. Always aloof. Icily so. That was part of his attraction to her.
“Come on, baby,” he whispered, deciding to give her another chance, though he was having trouble focusing. Maybe he was a little too high and he wasn’t seeing those little nuances of lust that she was known for. That was it. His mind was a little too cloudy, his thoughts not quite joined, his lust overtaking reason. He was quivering inside, and his lungs felt constricted. His erection was rock-hard, straining against his fly, but the images in his mind were a little blurry.
He licked his lips. No more waiting.
He placed a knee on the bed beside her, and the mattress creaked loudly.
Still she refused to look at him.
“Jenna!” he said more sharply than he’d intended, his temper catching fire, his tongue a little thick.
Take it easy. She’s here, isn’t she?
“Jenna, look at me!”
Not so much as a flinch.
Stubborn, thankless woman! After all he’d done for her! All the years he’d thought of no one but her! Rage burned through his blood, and his hands began to shake.
Calm down! You can still have her. In your bed. She hasn’t moved away, has she?
“Jenna, I’m here,” he said.
She ignored him.
Fury blazed white-hot, but he tried to fight his anger. This was her game, that was all. She knew that the more she pretended disinterest, the more he would want her, the higher the erotic stakes. And that was all the better.
Wasn’t it?
He didn’t know. Couldn’t really remember.
He was sweating though it was cold in here, the temperature hovering only a few degrees above freezing. And yet he was hot inside, a fire raging through his blood.
Didn’t she feel it—the intimate bond that tethered them together?
He leaned closer, and with a trembling finger traced the outline of her cheek. It was warm to his touch.
Then he understood. This was all part of her fantasy. She wanted him to think of her not as Jenna Hughes, but as one of the roles she’d played on the big screen. Wasn’t she dressed as Paris Knowlton, a New Orleans prostitute in Beneath the Shadows? Hadn’t he wanted Jenna to act like Paris tonight? Isn’t that exactly what she was doing? Suddenly he felt better, the warmth running through his veins due to lust and drugs rather than rage.
“Paris,” he cooed, touching her dark hair lovingly. It shimmered a blue-black in the shadowy lights. “I’ve been searching for you.”
Still no response.
Jesus, what did she want? He was playing his part…or was he?
“Jenna?”
Not so much as a glance his way. Anger sparked. It tore through him, his blood suddenly thundering in his ears. “Oh, I get it,” he snarled, his fingers roughly grazing her neck. “You’re really into this, aren’t you? You like acting like a whore.”
He heard a gasp.
Finally!
His fingers surrounded her throat. It was warm to his touch. Pliant. He tried to feel her pulse as his hands pressed against her skin.
A groan.
Pain or desire?
“That’s it, isn’t it? You like it when I’m rough, don’t you?”
“Oh God, no!” Her voice seemed to come from a distance, echoing in his head, bouncing off the walls. “Don’t!”
His grip tightened, sinking into her nearly hot flesh.
“Stop! Please! What are you doing?”
He was so hard he was trembling, but he couldn’t take his hands from her neck, couldn’t unzip his fly. He shook her then and her head wobbled wildly, beautiful green eyes fixed straight at him.
A terrified scream ripped through the room.
Jenna’s head fell backward.
Her neck wobbled in his hands.
Another horrified, panicked shriek ricocheted off the rafters, the sound echoing through his brain.
“Bitch!” He slapped her hard.
Smack! Her face twisted hard to one side.
“Oh God!” There was crying now. Sobbing. “No, no, no!”
Her makeup began to run, her perfect features distorting from the blow. Her hair came loose, the thick black wig falling onto the rumpled mattress, her bald pate visible in the dusky room.
A gasp.
Her head twisted to one side.
That was better.
He raised his hand again.
“Don’t…oh God, please don’t!” she pled from immobile lips. “What’re you doing?” She was wailing violently, nearly incoherently, panic stretching her vocal cords. But her shoulders remained stiff. Inflexible. Her face without any passion.
Something was wrong here, very wrong…
“Oh God, oh God, oh God…please stop.”
The sound of fear, the gulping, gasping sobs, reverberated through the room, yet no tears fell from Jenna’s eyes, nor did they blink. Her lips didn’t tremble. Her shoulders didn’t shake. Her body didn’t convulse…
He blinked. Cleared his head. His erection softened as he realized where he was and realized what he was doing.
Hell!
He stared down at Jenna Hughes, and as if his hands were burned, dropped her onto the mussed silk sheets.
Crack!
Her head hit the bed frame.
A shriek of pure terror ripped through the room.
Jenna’s neck snapped.
Her bald head fell away from her body.
“Oh God, noooooooooo!”
Eyes wide, the head rolled off the mattress.
With a dull thud, her skull landed on the concrete floor of this, his sanctuary.
The screams became hysterical, violent, horrible sobs that tore through the chamber, bouncing off the walls and climbing up his spine.
“Oh God! Please, don’t!” Her voice seemed to echo to the rooftop. So she could feel. And yet she wasn’t looking at him. Something was wrong here…very wrong.
On the floor, Jenna’s features compressed and flattened in the ooze that had once been her face.
His mind cleared.
He realized that his near-perfect creation, his waxen mask of Jenna Hughes’s gorgeous face, was destroyed.
Because he hadn’t been able to wait.
Because he’d taken too many pills.
Because he wanted her so badly that he’d lost his judgment and slapped her. Long before her likeness had hardened.
“Fool,” he ground out and slapped himself alongside the head. “Idiot!” All that work for nothing. The beautiful face—could it be reconstructed? Where once it had been nearly lifelike, now it was goo; once a Michelangelo, now a Picasso, her beautiful features distorted as they pooled around sightless eyes that were glassy and stark.
He leaned back, away from the mess on the bed. There was no blood. No flesh and bone. Not from this lifeless form. Swiping the sweat away from his forehead, he glanced across the shadowed expanse to his darkened stage, already set, where several near-perfect mannequins stood silently waiting in the gloom. They were beautiful, if not alive. Replicas of Jenna Hughes.
But this one! He looked again at what had once been his masterpiece and frowned. A pathetic imitation! He’d been distracted lately.
“Please…let me go.”
He rocked back onto his feet and looked over his shoulder to the murky corner. His eyes focused on the live woman, bound and naked, just waking up from a drug-induced slumber. Hers had been the voice he’d heard. Her terror was the emotion that had rippled through the room.
“Please…” she mewled again softly, and he smiled, feeling a renewed hope as he surveyed her musculature and facial features. The width of the forehead, the straight nose, the high cheekbones beneath big, frightened eyes. She was a dirty blond, but hair color was the least of his worries. Facially she was a near-match. His grin stretched wide, and the mess on the floor was instantly forgotten.
His next replica of Jenna Hughes would be perfect.
This pathetic creature, bound and begging for her life, was anatomically correct.
His anger subsided in an instant as he glanced to one window, where the barest hint of moonlight slipped through the panes. Snow was melting on the outer sill.
Winter was slipping away.
The spring thaw was already in the air.
He’d have to work fast.
This Winter
“So you’re concerned about the coming storm,” Dr. Randall said calmly from the chair near his desk. He’d positioned his body so that there was nothing between himself and his client but an imported rug covering the polished wooden floor of his office.
“I’m concerned about the winter.” The response was angry, but coldly so. The man, tall and taciturn, sat near the window on a padded leather chair. He stared straight at Randall with a hard, unforgiving gaze.
Randall nodded, as if he understood. “You’re concerned, because—?”
“You know why. It seems that things always get worse when the temperature drops.”
“At least for you.”
“Right. For me. Isn’t that why I’m here?” Tension was evident in the stiffness of his neck and the bleached knuckles of his clasped hands.
“Why are you here?”
“Don’t patronize me. None of that psychobabble doubletalk.”
“Do you hate the winter?”
A beat. A second’s hesitation. The client blinked. “Not at all. Hate’s a pretty strong word.”
“What would you say? What would be the right word?”
“It’s not the season I don’t like. It’s what happens.”
“Maybe your concern about things being worse at this time of year is just your perception.”
“Do you deny that bad things happen in the winter?”
“Of course not, but sometimes accidents or tragedies can occur in other months. People drown while swimming in the summer, or fall off cliffs while hiking in the mountains, or become ill from parasites that only breed in the heat. Bad things can happen at any time.”
His client’s jaw became solid granite as he seemed to struggle silently with the concept. He was a very intelligent man, his IQ near genius level, but he was struggling to make sense of the tragedy that had scarred his life. “I do know that intellectually, but personally, it’s always worse in the winter.” He glanced to the window, where gray clouds were muddying the sky.
“Because of what happened when you were a child?”
“You tell me. You’re the shrink.” He cut a harsh glance at the psychologist before offering a bit of a smile, a quick flash of teeth that Dr. Randall supposed would be considered a killer smile by most women. This man was an interesting case, made more so by the pact that they had agreed upon: There would be no notes, no recording, not so much as a memo about the appointment in Randall’s date book to indicate that the two had ever met. The appointment was cloaked in the deepest secrecy.
His client glanced at the clock, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his wallet. He didn’t count out the bills. They were already neatly folded and tucked into a special compartment.
“We should meet again soon,” Dr. Randall suggested as the money was left on a corner of his desk.
The tall man nodded sharply. “I’ll call.”
And he would, Dr. Randall thought, idly pressing the fold from the crisp twenties as his patient’s boots rang down the steps of the back staircase. For no matter how hard the man tried to convince himself he didn’t need counseling, he was smart enough to realize that the demons he was trying to exorcise had burrowed deep into the darkest parts of his soul and wouldn’t be released without the proper coaxing, the treatment he so abhorred.
Pride goeth before a fall, Randall thought as he slipped the bills into his own worn wallet. He’d seen it time and time again. This man, though he didn’t know it, was about to tumble.
“Dad-gum dog—where the hell did ya run off ta now?” Charley Perry said around a wad of chewing tobacco. He was tramping through the wilderness, high above the Columbia, through old-growth timber and little else as the first light of dawn splintered through the trees. Winter was chasing down the gorge, and his stupid, two-bit spaniel had taken off again. He considered leaving her out here—she’d probably find her way back to his cabin—but a bit of guilt nagged at him, and truth to tell, she was all he really had in the world. Tanzy had once been a helluva huntin’ dog, Charley mused, but like himself, she was half-deaf now and more than a little crippled with arthritis.
Squinting through the sparse brush, he whistled sharply, the sound piercing its way through the forest as branches rattled overhead. His gloved hands tightened over the barrel of his rifle, a Winchester that his daddy had bestowed upon him over half a century earlier when he’d returned from the war. He had newer weapons, a lot of them, but this one, like the tired old dog, was his favorite.
Damn, he thought, but he was gettin’ nostalgic in his old age.
“Tanzy?” he called, knowing that he was chasing off any chance of prey. Stupid bitch of a dog!
He stomped up a familiar trail, his gaze scanning the ground for signs of deer, or elk, or even a bear, though they’d already gone into their dens for the winter. There had been talk in town of a mountain lion that had been seen near the falls this summer, but Charley hadn’t come across any spoor that indicated the big cat was prowling these slopes. Charley didn’t really know what cougars did in the winter but he didn’t think they hibernated. Not that it mattered. Never, in all his seventy-two years of living in these mountains, had he ever seen one. He didn’t figure today would be his unlucky day.
His feet ached from the cold, even in his wool socks and hunting boots. The shrapnel still embedded in his hip pained him. Still he hunted, searching these woods as he had as a kid with his pa. He’d nailed his first buck up on Settler’s Bluff when he was fourteen. Hell, that was a long time ago.
A blast of wind hit him hard in his face and he swore. “Come on, Tanzy! Let’s go, girl!” It was time to drive his battered Ford truck into town, pick up a paper, and drink coffee at the Canyon Café with the few of his friends who were still alive and healthy enough to leave their wives for an hour or two. Later, he’d do the crossword puzzle and stoke the fire in his woodstove.
Where the hell was that mutt?
He whistled again and heard a whimper, then a bark.
At last! He turned and walked down a sharp gully where Tanzy was suddenly going ape-shit, her nose to the ground around a decaying log. “Whaddaya got, girl?” Charley asked, as he stepped over a bleached-out snag and into a scattering of brush. His boots snapped small twigs as he inched his way down to the dog, bracing himself for a squirrel or weasel to dart out from what appeared to be a hollow log. He sure as hell hoped it wasn’t a porcupine or skunk holed up in there.
A breeze stirred the branches overhead and he smelled it then—the rank odor of decaying flesh. Whatever was inside was already dead. No worry about it dashing out and scaring the bejeezus out of him.
Tanzy was barking her fool head off, jumping at the log and leaping back, the bristles of her spotted coat standing on end, her tail swatting the air.
“Okay, okay, just let me have a look-see,” Charley said, lowering himself on one knee and hearing it pop. He bent down and peered into the cavity of the log. “Can’t really tell.” But something was wedged inside and it smelled bad. Curiosity got the better of him, and he shifted the log a bit, allowing the wintry sunlight a chance to permeate the darkness. As he did, he got a good glimpse of what was inside.
A human skull stared back at him.
Charley’s blood turned to ice. He yelped and dropped the log.
It splintered against the forest floor.
The skull, with tiny, sharp teeth, strings of blond hair, and bits of rotting flesh attached to the bone, rolled into the pine needles and dry leaves.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he whispered, and it was a prayer. The wind seemed to pick up, shaking the snow from the trees, skittering across the back of his neck. Charley took a step back and sensed evil—from the darkest part of Lucifer’s heart—lurking in the gloom of this forest.
“Charley Perry’s a crackpot,” Sheriff Shane Carter groused as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe that simmered for hours on end in the kitchen of the sheriff’s department. As soon as the last cup was poured from the glass pot, another was made.
“Yeah, but this time he’s claiming he found a human skull up near Catwalk Point. We can’t ignore that,” BJ Stevens said. She was a short woman, a little on the hippy side, with three men’s names. Billie Jo Stevens. She didn’t seem to mind.
“Send two men up there.”
“Already have. Donaldson and Montinello.”
“Charley claimed to have seen Bigfoot a couple of times before,” Carter reminded her as he headed through the break room toward his office near the rear of the Lewis County Courthouse. “And then there was the incident where he was certain a UFO had hovered over the Bridge of the Gods, remember that?”
“Okay, so he’s eccentric.”
“Nutcase,” Carter reminded her. “Full-blown.”
“Harmless.”
“Let’s just hope this is another one of his wild-goose chases.”
“But you’re going up to investigate,” she said, knowing him better than he wanted her to.
“Yeah.” Carter made his way past glowing computer monitors, jangling phones, cubicles, old desks, and filing cabinets to his office, a glassed-in room with miniblinds he could lower for privacy. His two outside windows overlooked the courthouse parking lot and Danby’s Furniture Store across the street. If he craned his neck, he was able to peer down Main Street. He rarely bothered.
He set his cup on his desk and checked his e-mail, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was more to Charley Perry’s story than they knew. It was true Charley was over the top, an eccentric loner who lived by his own rules, especially when it came to poaching game, but he was essentially harmless and, Carter suspected, a decent enough guy. But every once in a while he seemed to freak out, or need attention or something. The Bigfoot fiasco had gotten him some press. Two years later he claimed he’d spotted a UFO and had been beamed aboard so that aliens who looked humanoid with huge heads could study him. Well, if the poor aliens had thought Charley was a prime specimen of the human race, they were probably sorely disappointed in humankind. No wonder they hadn’t been back.
The phone rang and he answered automatically, managing to drink from his cup as he turned from the computer screen.
“Carter.”
“Montinello, Sheriff,” Deputy Lanny Montinello said, his voice barely audible for the bad cell phone connection. “I think you might want to come up to Catwalk Point. It looks like old Charley is right. We’ve got ourselves a body. Or, at least, most of one.”
“Damn,” Carter muttered, asking a few more questions before ordering Montinello to seal off the crime scene and keep Charley on ice. As soon as he hung up, he called the state crime scene lab, grabbed his jacket, hat, and weapon, then collected BJ. On the way he left messages with the Medical Examiner and D.A.’s office.
“What did I tell you?” BJ asked as he drove his Blazer up the winding logging road to Catwalk Point, a mountain that rose three thousand feet from the Columbia River basin floor. They’d been delayed, called to an injury-accident on a county road just south of town that had held them up for nearly two hours.
By the time they reached the end of the gravel-and-mud road, yellow crime scene tape had been strung around the area. Not that there was much chance of rubberneckers up here. Sooner or later the press would hear of it and converge, but not for a while. Carter pulled the hood of his insulated jacket over his head as he stepped out of his rig.
It was cold with the promise of winter, a snowstorm having been predicted for the next few days. The ground was nearly frozen, the tall fir trees shivering and dancing in the icy blasts of an east wind that roared down the gorge.
Carefully he and BJ picked their way down a sharp ravine where detectives from the Oregon State Crime Lab were already at work.
Pictures were being snapped by one photographer while another aimed a video camera at the ground. A grid had already been established over a wide area, the scene secured. Through the snow, soil samples were being collected, debris sorted through, a hollow log tagged. Bones had been carefully laid upon a plastic tarp. The skeleton was small, but incomplete. And the skull was odd, its teeth too tiny and sharp.
“What’ve we got?” Carter asked Merline Jacobosky, a reed-thin investigator with sharp features and an even sharper mind. Her eyebrows were slammed together over the tops of rimless glasses and her lips, devoid of any color, pinched together as she stopped writing on the pages attached to her clipboard and again surveyed the human remains.
“Off the top? White female, mid-twenties to thirties, I’d guess, but don’t quote me until the M.E. releases her to the lab and there’s a full autopsy. She’d been stuffed into that log over there.” With her pen, Merline pointed to the hollowed-out cedar. “We’re missing a few bones, probably because an animal or two dragged off parts of her corpse, but we’re still looking. Already found an ulna and tarsal that were missing at first. Maybe we’ll get lucky with the rest.”
“Maybe,” Carter said without much enthusiasm as he surveyed the forest floor and the craggy hillside that dropped steeply toward the Columbia River. The terrain was rugged, the forest dense, the river wide and wild as it carved a wide trench between the states of Oregon and Washington. Even tamed by a series of dams, it raged westward, whitecaps visible through the trees. If a body were ever dumped in the Columbia, there wasn’t a whole lot of chance of it ever being recovered.
He heard the whine of an engine struggling up the hillside and glimpsed the M.E.’s van through the trees. Not far behind was another rig, one belonging to one of the Assistant District Attorneys.
Merline wasn’t finished. She said, “Here’s what I think is really odd. Check out her teeth.” Jacobosky knelt and pointed with the end of her pen. “See the incisors and molars? That isn’t a natural rot…I think they’ve been filed.”
Carter felt a whisper of dread touch the base of his spine. Who would file someone’s teeth? And why? “To keep the body from being identified?” he asked.
“Maybe, but why not just pull the teeth or break them? Why go to all the trouble of filing them to tiny points?” She rocked back on her heels and tapped her pen to her lips as she studied the skull. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe our guy is a dentist with a sick sense of humor.”
“The sick part is right.”
“Any ID?” he asked, but assumed the answer.
“Nothing yet.” She shook her head and flipped over a page of her clipboard. “No clothes or personal effects, either. But we’ll keep looking, under the snow, through the ice and into the soil. If there’s evidence, we’ll locate it.” She squinted up at Carter as gray clouds scudded overhead.
“What’s this?” Carter bent down and studied the skull with its grotesque teeth and gaping eye sockets. He indicated her hair. There was something clinging to the strands that were visible. A pinkish substance that he didn’t think was flesh. It reminded him of eraser residue.
“Don’t know. Yet. But some kind of manmade substance. We’ll have the lab check it out.”
“Good.” He straightened and noticed BJ talking with one of the photographers as Luke Messenger, the M.E. arrived. Tall and rangy, with curly red hair and freckles, he made his way to the crime scene and frowned at the body.
“Only a partial?” he asked Jacobosky.
“So far.” He knelt beside the bones as Amanda Pratt, the Assistant D.A. lucky enough to be assigned this frigid job, picked her way down the hillside. She was bundled in layers of down and wool and smelled of cigarette smoke.
“God, this is miserable weather,” she said, her pert nose wrinkling at the partial body. “Jesus, would you look at that? Found in a hollowed-out log?”
“So Charley says.”
“You can’t believe a word out of his mouth,” she said flatly, but eyed the scene.
“Maybe this time he’s telling the truth.”
Her eyes flashed behind thin, plastic-rimmed glasses. “Yeah, right. And I’m the friggin’ queen of England. No, make that Spain. England’s too damned cold. Jesus, we’ve got ourselves a regular party up here.” She scanned the vehicles. “Is Charley still around?”
“In one of the pickups—over there.” Jacobosky hitched her chin toward a white truck idling near the end of the road. Montinello was at the wheel. Charley Perry was huddled in the passenger seat. “He’s not too happy about being kept up here,” Jacobosky added. “Making a whole lotta noise about wanting to get home and warm up.”
“Don’t blame him. I’ll talk to him.”
“Good,” Amanda said. “Be sure to have your bullshit meter with you.”
Carter laughed, took another long look at the grid that was the crime scene, then said to the Medical Examiner, “Let me know what you find out.”
“Soon as we sort it all out,” Messenger replied. He was still crouched over the remains. Didn’t bother looking up. “You’ll be the first to know.”
“Thanks.” Carter headed up the hillside and found Charley as cranky as ever. He was cradling a cup of coffee someone had brought up, but he glared through the passenger window at Carter as if he held the sheriff personally responsible for ruining his day. Carter tapped on the glass, and Charley reluctantly lowered the window.
“Are you arrestin’ me?” he demanded, short, silvery beard covering a strong, jutted chin. Angry eyes peered from behind thick glasses.
“No.”
“Then have one of your boys take me home. I done my duty, didn’t I? No need to treat me like some kind of damned prisoner.” He spat a long stream of tobacco juice through the window to land on the snowy dirt and gravel. Fortunately for Charley, this area wasn’t considered part of the crime scene.
“I just want to ask you some questions.”
“I been answerin’ ’em all mornin’!”
Carter smiled. “Just a few more, then I’ll have Deputy Montinello take you home.”
“Great,” Charley muttered, folding his arms over a thin chest. He cooperated, if reluctantly, and was right; he didn’t have any more information. He told Carter that he’d been out hunting, lost his dog, and found her down in the gully near the hollow log. He’d lifted the log and a skull had rolled out, nearly scaring him to death. “…and that’s all I know,” he added petulantly. “I half-ran home and called your office. And don’t you give me no grief ’bout huntin’ with Tanzy. I needed a trackin’ dog to get me back home,” he said, as if he realized he could be in trouble for hunting with a dog. Hurriedly he added, “Two of your men hauled me back up here a few hours back and I’m still freezin’ my butt off.”
“We all are, Charley,” Carter said, and slapped the door of the department’s truck. “Take him back home,” he said to Lanny Montinello before looking at Charley’s grizzled face again. “If you think of anything else, you’ll call, right?”
“’Course,” Charley said, though he didn’t meet Carter’s eyes and the sheriff suspected that the loner was stretching the truth. They’d never gotten along, not since Carter had debunked Charley’s Bigfoot story and had once threatened to call the game warden about Charley poaching deer. No, Charley Perry wasn’t likely to call again, not if he had to speak to the sheriff. Carter glanced at Montinello and said, “Take him home.” The interview was over.
“Will do.” Montinello slid the pickup into gear, and Carter slapped the door a couple of times as Charley rolled up the window. Within seconds the truck disappeared around a stand of old growth that was as dense as it was tall. The firs loomed high, seeming to scrape the steel-colored bellies of the clouds just as the first drops of icy rain began to fall.
Carter shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his parka and looked down the hillside to the crime scene crawling with investigators. The unknown woman’s partial skeleton was stretched out on the plastic sheet. Amanda Pratt was standing a few yards off, smoking a cigarette and hashing it out with Luke Messenger. In the midst of it all was the corpse, with her filed teeth and bits of pink gunk in her hair.
Who was she and what the hell was she doing up in this isolated part of no-damned-where?
Click!
The French doors opened.
A gust of wind, cold as all of winter, swept inside the darkened house. Near-dead embers in the fireplace glowed a brighter red. The old dog lying on the rug near Jenna’s chair lifted his head and let out a low, warning growl.
“Shh!” the intruder hissed.
Jenna’s eyes narrowed as she squinted at the silhouette easing into the large great room. As dark as it was, she recognized her oldest daughter slinking toward the stairs. Just as she’d expected. Great. One more teenager sneaking home in the middle of the night.
“Hush, Critter!” Cassie whispered angrily, her voice sharp as she tiptoed to the stairs.
Jenna snapped on a nearby lamp.
Instantly the log house was illuminated. Cassie froze at the first step. “Damn,” she muttered, her shoulders sagging as she slowly turned and faced her mother.
“You are so grounded,” Jenna said from her favorite leather chair.
Instantly, Cassie was on the offensive. “What’re you doing up?”
“Waiting for you.” Jenna unfolded herself from the chair and met her daughter’s sullen expression. Cassie, who so many people said was a carbon-copy of Jenna as a younger woman. Cassie was taller by an inch, but her high cheekbones, dark lashes and brows, and pointed chin were nearly identical to Jenna’s. “Where were you?”
“Out.” She tossed her streaked hair over her shoulder.
“I know that. You were supposed to be in bed. As a matter of fact, I remember you saying something like ‘Night, Mom’ around eleven.”
Jenna was rewarded with an exaggerated roll of Cassie’s green eyes. “So who were you with? No, forget that—I figure you were with Josh.”
Cassie didn’t offer any information, but in Jenna’s estimation, Josh Sykes was a foregone conclusion. Ever since Cassie had started dating the nineteen-year-old, she’d become secretive, sullen, and mutinous.
“So where did you go? Precisely.”
Cassie folded her arms over her chest and leaned a shoulder against the yellowed log wall. Her makeup was smeared, her hair mussed, her clothes rumpled. Jenna didn’t have to guess what her daughter had been doing, and it scared her to death. “We were just out driving around,” Cassie said.
“At three in the morning?”
“Yeah.” Cassie lifted a shoulder and yawned.
“It’s freezing outside.”
“So?”
“Look, Cassie, don’t start with the attitude. I’m not in the mood.”
“I don’t see why you care.”
“Don’t you?” Jenna was standing now, advancing on her rebellious daughter, getting her first whiff of cigarette smoke and maybe something else. “Let’s just start with I love you and I don’t want to see you mess up your life.”
“Like you did?” Cassie arched one brow cattily. “When you got pregnant with me?”
The barb hit its intended mark, but Jenna ignored it. “That was a little different. I was almost twenty-two. An adult. On my own. And we’re not talking about me. You’re the one who’s been lying and sneaking out.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“You’re sixteen, for crying out loud.” And a woman. Cassie’s figure was already enviable by Hollywood standards.
“I was just out with friends.”
“‘Driving around.’”
“Yeah.”
“Right.” Jenna wasn’t buying it for a minute. “Haven’t you heard the old axiom that ‘nothing good happens after midnight?’”
Cassie just glared at her.
“Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere now, so go on up to bed and we’ll talk in the morning.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Sure there is. We’ll start with sneaking out and cruise right into the pitfalls of teen pregnancy and STDs. And that’s just for starters.”
“I can’t wait,” Cassie said, reminding Jenna of herself at the same age. “You just don’t like Josh.”
“I don’t like that he seems to have some kind of control over you, that you’d do anything to be with him. That he talks you into lying to me.”
“I don’t—”
“Ah-ah. If I were you, Cassie, I’d quit while you’re ahead, or at least while you’re not too far behind.”
But Cassie’s temper had sparked and she was suddenly defiant. “You don’t like any of my friends,” she accused, “not since we moved up here, so it’s your fault. I never wanted to come.”
That much was true. Both of her daughters had had fits about her decision to leave L.A. behind and seek out some kind of peace and normalcy in this quiet little town perched on the rocky shores of the Columbia River in Oregon. Jenna had heard the complaints for a year and a half. “That’s old news. We’re here, Cassie, and we’re all going to make the best of it.”
“I’m trying.”
“With Josh.”
“Yeah. With Josh.” Rebellion flashed in Cassie’s eyes.
“To punish me.”
“No,” Cassie said slowly, her jaw setting. “Believe it or not, this isn’t about you, for once. Okay? If I wanted to ‘punish’ you, I’d go back to California and live with Dad.”
“Is that what you want?” Jenna felt as if she’d been sucker-punched, but she didn’t show any emotion, didn’t want to let Cassie know that she’d hit a very strong and painful nerve.
“I just want someone to trust me, okay?”
“Trust is earned, Cassie,” she said, and inwardly cringed as she realized she was echoing words she’d heard from her own mother years before.
Jenna bit her tongue rather than start in on that one. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” She snapped off the lamp and heard Cassie’s footsteps trudge up the stairs. I’m turning into my mother, she thought, and refused to let her mind wander too far in that frightening direction. “Come on, Critter,” she said to the dog as she relocked the door and started up the flight of stairs to the second story. Her bedroom was halfway up the stairs, just off the landing, the girls’ another half a flight higher. “Let’s go to bed.” The old dog padded behind, his gait slowed by arthritis. Jenna waited for him at the landing and heard Cassie’s door shut with a quiet thud. “We’re finally all safe and sound.” And you have to get up in two and a half hours. Inwardly groaning at the thought, she turned the final set of stairs, but from the corner of her eye, through the landing’s stained-glass window, she caught a glimpse of something.
Movement?
Her own pale reflection?
Critter growled softly, and Jenna’s muscles went rigid. “Shh,” she said, but squinted through the colored glass, searching the distorted image of the yard and outbuildings of her ranch—“the compound,” as Cassie referred to it. Security lamps glowed an eerie blue, casting pools of light on the barn, stable, and sheds. The old windmill creaked, its blades turning slowly as it stood, a wooden skeleton, near the lane. The main gate gaped open, the result of the lock freezing and snow piling up around the gateposts. The lane leading to the gate was empty—no rumble of a car or truck engine cutting through the night.
Still, the forested hills and craggy banks of the river were dark and shrouded, the cloudy night a perfect cover…
For whom?
Don’t be silly.
Surely no one was lurking in the wintry shadows.
Of course not.
The worst-case scenario would be that Josh Sykes was still hanging around, hiding behind the corner of the barn, maybe hoping to follow Cassie inside.
Right?
Nothing more sinister than a horny boyfriend hiding near the barn.
The old dog growled again.
“Hush,” Jenna said as she turned into the double doors that opened to her master suite, a cozy set of rooms that she shared with no one.
She’d moved to this isolated spot on the Columbia River for peace of mind, so she’d ignore the knot of dread in her stomach. She was just edgy and out of sorts because her teenager was giving her fits. That’s all.
And yet as she stepped into her darkened bedroom, she couldn’t shake the sensation that something was about to happen.
Something she wouldn’t like.
Something intimately evil.
“Cassie!” Jenna yelled up the stairwell. “Allie! Breakfast. Get a move on! We have to be out of here in half an hour!” Listening for sounds of life coming from upstairs, she walked into the kitchen and glanced at the clock mounted over the stove. They were going to be late. There was just no two ways about it. They really should be at Allie’s school in forty-five minutes and it would take at least twenty to get to the junior high. She flipped on the television, slammed two English muffins into the toaster, and yelled, “Come on, girls!”
She heard the thud and shuffle of footsteps overhead. Thank God.
She swallowed her second cup of coffee, nearly tripping over Critter, who was hovering near the counter, dropped her empty cup in the sink, and yanked open the refrigerator door. Still no sound of water running. Cassie was usually in the shower by this time. Yanking open the refrigerator door, she found a carton of orange juice and poured two glasses as the muffins popped up. From the television, the local weatherman was predicting the worst snow of the season so far, as temperatures had dropped far below freezing.
Slathering the first set of muffins with butter, she heard footsteps on the stairs. A few seconds later, Cassie appeared.
“There’s no water,” she said glumly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s no friggin’ water. I turned on the faucet and nothing!” To prove her point, she walked to the sink and twisted on the faucet. Nothing happened.
“No hot water?” Jenna said, hating the thoughts running through her mind. Better a problem with the water heater than the pipes.
“No cold, either.” Cassie looked over at the coffeepot. “How did you…?”
“Got it ready last night. It’s on a timer.” She was at the sink, trying to get the water to flow and failing miserably. “Damn. I guess you’ll just have to get dressed without a shower.”
“Are you out of your mind? I can’t go to school without washing my hair.”
“You’ll survive. So will the school.”
“But, Mom—”
“Just eat your breakfast and then change into something clean.”
“No way. I’m not going to school.” Cassie slumped into a chair in the nook. Dark smudges surrounded her eyes, and she couldn’t keep from yawning from her tryst the night before.
“You’re going. Remember the old saying, ‘If you fly with the eagles, you have to rise with the sparrows?’”
“I don’t get it.”
“Sure you do.”
“Well, it’s dumb.”
“Maybe so, but it’s our credo for the morning.”
Cassie rolled her eyes and took a swallow of her juice, but let the muffin sit untouched on her plate. Critter planted himself under the table, his head resting on Cassie’s knee. She didn’t seem to notice or care.
“You and I still need to talk. Last night isn’t going to happen again. I don’t want you sneaking out. Ever. It’s just not safe.”
“You just don’t like Josh.”
“We went over this last night. Josh is fine.” Even if his IQ was smaller than his shoe size. “But I don’t like him manipulating you.”
“He doesn’t.”
“And, if you two are having sex—”
“Oh God. Save me.”
“—I need to know about it.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Of course it is. You’re a minor.”
“Can we talk about this later? Or never?” She glared at her mom as if Jenna was soooo out of it, which, Jenna supposed, she was. But she had to tread softly or she’d do exactly the opposite of what she wanted and send Cassie reeling into Josh Sykes’s ready and randy arms. Jenna glimpsed the kitchen clock counting off the seconds of her life. “Okay, later. After school, when we have more time.”
“Great. Just what we need. More time,” Cassie mumbled as Jenna, telling herself that timing is everything in life, stepped out of the kitchen and away from the confrontation they’d have this evening. She walked down a short hallway to the bottom of the stairs. “Allie? Are you up?”
She heard the shuffle of feet and Allie, still wearing her pajamas, inched her way into the kitchen. Her red-blond hair was a disaster, her pixie-like face pulled into a pained expression worthy of an Oscar. “I don’t feel good.”
“What’s wrong?” Jenna said, though she suspected it was nothing. This was one of her twelve-year-old’. . .
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