Forever Close (Selena Raven #2)

PROLOGUE

Dusk settled over Harlan County with a copper light that made every field look scorched at the edges. To most, it would have been picturesque. But to Warren Holt, a lifelong resident of Elmsview, it had lost some of its beauty.

Warren drove with one hand tight around the wheel and the other resting near the gearshift, his pickup rattling along a dirt road that hadn’t seen a county grader in weeks.

Loose stones and sun-dried clumps of dirt pinged against the undercarriage.

The tires threw up a long brown tail behind him, and every few seconds the truck lurched hard enough to make the dead deer in the bed shift against the ropes.

"Stay put," Warren muttered, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

The deer didn’t move again. He had managed to get in a few hours of hunting before the meeting was due to take place. It may have seemed mad. But hunting always helped when he was stressed. Helped him put things into perspective. Doing it had taken the edge off, if only temporarily.

That was one good thing, at least.

There weren’t many tonight.

Had his life continued as he'd hoped, he would have been home by now.

He should have been pulling into his driveway, skinning knife laid out, tarp spread, freezer bags ready.

A man who knew what he was doing didn't leave a kill lying in the back of a truck while the June evening cooled around it, not in Kentucky.

His father would have had something to say about leaving it too long.

His father had always had something to say.

Warren checked the clock on the dash, then cursed under his breath.

I’m late, he thought. Not late enough that a reasonable person would make trouble over it.

But then reason would be in short supply at the meeting.

He had received the note earlier in the day, destroying it as soon as he had read it.

But that would not end the dirty business there.

Blackmail was the subject matter. Blackmail that would shatter his family apart.

It gave him a time and a place to be. And here he was.

A wash of low sun cut through the woodland to his left, flashing between trunks in hard little glints.

Warren turned his head just enough to catch them.

Pine and oak crowded the slope, the undergrowth darkening already beneath them.

Beyond those trees, the land rolled down toward creeks and old logging tracks and the kind of places a man could vanish for hours without seeing another soul.

As a boy, he had loved that about it.

Back then, those woods had felt like a private kingdom.

He and his father moving before dawn, boots wet from grass, rifles carried carefully, both of them speaking only when they needed to.

Warren could still picture his old man ahead of him in a brown coat, broad shoulders blocking half the trail, one hand raised whenever he wanted silence.

The memory came so clean it made the present feel dirtier somehow. Hell, just looking in the mirror was enough to tell him that time had done a number on him.

A younger Warren had stood under those same trees with cold fingers wrapped around a rifle stock, trying not to breathe too loudly. Keen to prove to his old man that he had what it took. He’d take aim and get advice even if he didn’t want it.

“Don’t fight the shot,” his father had told him. “Let your body settle. Keep your aim steady. That’s the secret, Son. You keep everything in life simple, it’ll all come easy.”

A laugh left Warren now, short and dry.

It almost caught in his throat.

“Yeah,” he said to the empty cab. “Easy.”

Nothing had come easy in a long time. Not business. Not his marriage. Nothing. Hell, even the card games he’d once loved had turned against him. A win seemed far off on all horizons.

If things were easy, he would have been headed home. If things were easy, he wouldn’t have been driving to that lodge at this hour with dust in his teeth, a deer in the truck bed, and his stomach twisted up so tight he could feel it under his ribs.

Who the hell is trying to blackmail me in this town?

The road dipped, then climbed. Branches brushed the passenger side with a dry scrape. Warren eased off the gas at a bend where the ruts deepened, but the truck still jolted as it crossed them. From the back came another dull thump.

“Damn it.”

At the next flat stretch, he looked again in the mirror.

The deer's antlers were visible, pointing up jaggedly to the darkening sky.

Rope crossed the body twice, tight enough.

Still, Warren didn't trust anything tonight.

Not the knots. Not the road. Not himself.

At least after his meeting at the lodge, he'd know what sort of future he had.

His fingers tightened until the leather wheel cover creaked.

It’s just a meeting.

That was what he had told himself when he’d turned off the main road.

Just a meeting. Don’t build it up, ya fool. There’s a way to get out of this. There always is.

People met and talked all the time. They worked things out.

They said what needed saying, then everyone went back to their lives.

That was how decent people handled trouble.

Warren had spent most of the afternoon repeating those words as if repetition made them true.

He’d been a real estate expert for so long, he prized making deals.

But this deal was more important than all the others.

The woods opened on the right.

Through the break, the hunting lodge appeared at the end of a narrow track, sitting in the last of the evening like something the county had forgotten to finish tearing down.

One story. A sagging porch. Three front windows, one of them cracked at the corner.

The roof had lost shingles in patches, leaving darker squares where rain had worn at the boards beneath.

A rusted stove pipe leaned from the rear side as if tired of holding itself upright.

Humble. That was the word Warren’s father would have used.

Warren had other words for it now.

The lodge had once belonged to a hunting club that had more members than money and more pride than sense.

Men came there every November with rifles, cards, coolers, and stories that got bigger each time they were told.

Warren had first slept there at eleven, wrapped in a plaid blanket on a narrow cot while the older men laughed in the next room.

He had woken before dawn to the smell of frying bacon and gun oil, convinced there was no better place on earth.

For a moment, parked memories stirred in him. His father is cutting apples with a pocketknife. Men arguing over who had missed what and by how much. Rain ticking on the roof. A fire in the black stove, all orange mouth and heat.

Maybe a little of that luck had stayed in the boards.

“God knows I need it,” he said. He looked to the empty passenger seat next to him for a moment. It somehow glared back, the emptiness of it. All that money. All those deals he’d made. And here he was. Lonely.

Warren turned off the road and guided the truck up the track.

The pickup rolled to a stop near the porch. Dust caught up with him and drifted past the windows before thinning into the trees.

Warren left the engine running for a few seconds, listening to its rough idle.

No other vehicle sat in front of the lodge.

No voices came from inside or light showed in the windows.

The lifeless sight of it affected him in uncertain ways.

For the first time since he was a kid, he suddenly realized how eerie the place was out there in the countryside, far from prying eyes.

His watch read twenty minutes past the hour.

“Wonderful.” Maybe he’d missed them. But if he was lucky for once, maybe they were late, too.

Either way, he had to hang around to find out.

If they had left a number, he would have called.

But that wasn’t how blackmailers worked.

It was all anonymous. They held the cards.

He was just waiting to see what the buy-in would be.

After killing the engine, Warren sat without moving. The sudden quiet made the small sounds sharper. A bird is calling once from the tree line. Wind touching leaves. The tick of heat fading under the hood.

Somewhere far off, he heard another sound.

An indecipherable noise that sounded almost bird-like.

It amazed him that even after all these years, there were things in the woods he couldn't identify.

He laughed for a moment, thinking of his dad's pal, Buck.

Buck told stories of Bigfoot and how he'd seen one once, and that it chased him out of an area he intended to never return to.

Warren was almost certain that story was just made to scare him when he was a kid.

But that little slither of doubt made the woods keep their mystery and hold his interest even now as he entered the later chapters of his life.

He opened the door and stepped down.

The ground felt dry under his boots. Fine dirt clung to the leather at once.

He shut the door, then walked around to the truck bed and checked the deer.

The animal lay stiff and heavy, its head turned at an awkward angle, glassy eyes fixed on nothing.

The ropes had held, but one had loosened near the rear leg.

Warren tugged it tighter and made a sound of irritation.

“I’ll be processing you by midnight at this rate.”

His voice came out louder than expected. That glassy eye kept staring. Kept looking. If Warren didn’t know better, it felt like it was looking right at him.

“Hello?” he shouted just in case.

No answer came from the lodge.

Warren looked toward it, waiting. The front door was closed but not latched all the way. A thin black line showed between the door and the frame.

He removed his cap, ran one hand over thinning hair, then put the cap back on. Sweat had dried at his temples, leaving a gritty feel against his skin. The summers were so humid that he could feel his vest under his clothes was saturated.

The porch boards complained under his weight. Near the steps, weeds had grown through gaps in the planks. A wasp nest, old and papery, clung beneath the eave. Warren paused by the door and listened.

Nothing.

He knocked once.

The sound was flat.

“Hello?”

No response.

Warren tried the handle. It turned without resistance.

Inside, the lodge held the day’s trapped heat, mixed with old wood, cold fireplace ash, and the faint animal trace of mice. Fading light slipped through grimy windows, laying weak bars across the floor. His boots struck the boards, each step answering itself in the empty rooms.

“It’s Warren,” he called again. “I’m here.”

The words moved through the lodge and died somewhere beyond the hall.

Warren took in the front room first. A stone fireplace with blackened bricks.

Two chairs with torn vinyl seats. Pegs along one wall where coats used to hang.

A rack for rifles, empty now. Beside it, a photograph hung crooked in a cheap wooden frame.

Four men stood beside a buck strung up from a branch.

One of them was his father, younger and grinning, one arm around a boy who looked too proud to fit inside his own skin.

Warren didn’t step closer.

The past could wait.

A doorway to the left opened into the dining room.

He found the long table where hunters had once eaten chili from chipped bowls and dealt cards after dark.

Its surface had been wiped cleaner than the rest of the place, though a gray film still clung in the corners.

Six chairs stood around it, all tucked in except one at the far end.

On the table lay a single white envelope. The sight of it made him nervous.

His name had been typed across the front in block letters.

WARREN HOLT

His throat tightened. He had been late. The message had been left for him and him alone.

For a few seconds, the room seemed to pull away from him. The table. The chairs. The long window with dirt gathered in its lower corners. All of it looked ordinary, and that made the envelope worse. It stood out like a white pin stuck into his side.

Warren took one step closer.

“Real cute,” he said, but the words carried no weight. He was unnerved, and no amount of bravado was going to undo that.

A creak sounded from the kitchen.

Warren turned so fast his shoulder clipped the doorframe.

“Who’s there?”

No answer. Was he alone? He felt compelled to find out.

The kitchen waited beyond another doorway, dimmer than the dining room. Warren moved toward it, each board underfoot making him wince. Old cabinets lined one wall. A sink sat beneath a window clouded by grime. A dead fly lay belly-up on the counter. Nothing moved.

“Come on,” Warren said. “I’m here, aren’t I? Show yourself. If you ain’t a coward.”

Only the trees answered, brushing against the outside wall.

His watch glinted when he lifted his wrist.

Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t this. No one to barter with; no face waiting across from him. Just an envelope on a table in a room where too many men had once laughed, and none of them were here now.

Warren returned to the dining room. He would read whatever was in the damned letter and then leave. If he could afford whatever the amount was, he would pay it and be done with this. But in his gut, he could feel it. The blackmailer would only be done with him when they chose.

The chair at the far end in front of the envelope seemed to be waiting for him. He didn’t like that. Still, after one more glance toward the kitchen and another toward the front door, he sat. The chair gave a small groan beneath his weight.

The envelope felt dry and crisp in his hands.

His name stared back at him.

He took a breath and held it for a moment, then began.

A thumbnail worked under the flap. Paper tore louder than it should have. Inside was a single folded sheet.

Warren pulled it out and opened it.

Confusion then came.

Blank.

He stared at the page, then turned it over.

Both sides were empty.

At first, irritation cut through the dread. A stupid joke. A mind game. He had been made to drive all the way out here just to sit at an old table and sweat over nothing. He sighed with relief. Maybe the blackmailer had nothing on him after all.

Then footsteps rushed behind him.

Fast.

Close.

Warren began to turn.

The gunshot cracked through the lodge, and the blank paper in his hand splashed red.

He fell forward onto the table, the blood oozing out onto its wooden surface.

Not another thought went through Warren Holt’s mind.