Not What It Seems (Pierce Reed/Nikki Gillette #5)

Chapter 1

“Gol-dern birds,” Billy Huber muttered, balanced on the old extension ladder while stretching to reach the starlings’ nest that was clogging the gutter of his barn.

With one eye to the storm clouds gathering overhead, he held a trowel in his gloved hand, and he poked at the twigs and grass and bits of paper that the birds had collected, but the nest was a little out of reach.

He leaned a bit farther just as his dog started barking his fool head off.

“Not now,” he growled, glancing back at his house and noting from this angle that the patches on his roof were about shot.

He only hoped they would survive this next storm; then he’d tend to them.

And his yard. Geez. From this vantage point, it looked bad.

Real bad. Patchy grass, car parts left to rust, the old mower sitting where it died last summer, some rodeo equipment, even carnival paraphernalia.

Along with a lot of other things. He’d have to get after the yard, too.

Clean it up. He would. When the weather turned.

He sighed. Ever since Linnie had passed, about eight years earlier, he’d let the place go, and in his head, he heard her tsk-tsking. And her voice. Always her voice.

“Bill Huber, what’s got into you? Where’s your pride?

” She would eye the trash in the yard and shake her head, her blond ponytail scraping her shoulders.

“I don’t know why you collect these things.

Car parts and old washers and whatnot filling the sheds and littering the yard so that the chickens don’t know where to feed?

Old signs and posters and broken-down furniture you’re never gonna fix.

And what about them banjos and guitars you ain’t never gonna play?

And don’t get me started on the carnival crap—weird mirrors and the like!

What’re y’all thinkin’?” Her lips would be pursed, her blue eyes glittering hard as ice.

She’d wipe her tiny hands on her apron, then make shooing motions as she ordered, “Now, go on. You fix that fence, and while you’re at it, put the mower away.

Go on, now, you know you can get a new part for the John Deere down at Wheeler’s, so don’t you be gittin’ lazy on me, y’hear.

” Then she would nod curtly, turn back to the house and say over her shoulder that she would call him in when the meal was on the table.

Just before the old screen door slammed behind her, he’d hear her say, “And don’t you dare be late for supper! ”

“Yes’m,” he said aloud now, as if his dear departed Linnie could still hear him.

As if she was still in the kitchen, baking rhubarb pie, or seated in her favorite recliner, mending his clothes or reading from the Good Book.

Oh, how she liked to quote the Bible to him.

Especially once their daughter had left for college down in Florida and only returned at Christmas and on Linnie’s birthday in June.

But that was all over now. Once Linnie passed, Janelle quit visiting, just got to calling him once every week or so—“checking in,” she said, but more likely “checking up” on him, for whatever that was worth.

Probably just to see if he’d kicked the bucket.

It was a shame, really, but he and Janelle had never gotten along.

It hadn’t helped that she’d married a loud, brash ass of a man old enough to be her damned father. Well, almost.

Rather than dwell on his own mistakes in the fatherhood department, Billy let his gaze wander to the side of the house where the garden had been.

Cabbages and string beans, potatoes and squash, musk melons and strawberries, tomatoes and, oh, yes, rhubarb had once thrived in that fenced-in spot.

Now it was home to mice and weeds and God knew what else.

She had a way with gardening, his Linnie had.

She had a way with a lot of things. He felt that old pang when his thoughts ran to Linda-Sue, gone early.

Had to remind himself that what she didn’t have a way with was seeing the beauty and value of the items he found at auction or tossed onto the side of the road, or marked “free” and just waiting for him to scoop them up and toss them into the back of his Ford Ranger.

His chest tightened. It was his fault—

The dog barked loudly, interrupted his daydream—or twilight dream, as the afternoon had already bled into evening.

“Arlo! Quiet!” Billy yelled from the fifth rung.

But the mutt—part Australian shepherd and part who-knew-what—was pacing along the fence line, his hackles up, his eyes focused on the darkening woods surrounding this scrap of land Billy’s family had called home for nearly a hundred years.

“You hush!” Billy commanded as the ladder shifted under his weight.

But the dog was nervous, his hackles raised, his growl, when he wasn’t barking, low and ominous. Stiff-legged, tail raised, Arlo glared at the shaded woods.

“Darn fool mutt,” Billy said under his breath, but he glanced at the copse of hickory and pine that had caught the shepherd’s attention. Probably a deer hiding there, or maybe a rabbit or possum. Nothing to get all worked up about.

Nothing out of the ordinary to be seen.

Nothing unusual to be heard.

Nonetheless, Arlo was usually spot-on about danger.

Billy paused from his work, staring at the tree line and listening hard.

Crickets chirped over the hum of mosquitoes and the rustle of dry leaves as the wind picked up. Somewhere near the creek, a bullfrog was croaking. Dusk was leaning into night, the storm on its way.

A shadow moved in the woods.

Billy blinked.

Then saw nothing.

A chill raced up his spine, an icy touch that had nothing to do with the sultry night and a lot to do with his belief that the devil was always watching, always waiting.

Was there someone—be it Satan or someone of flesh and blood—just beyond the cover of pine needles?

No.

He was letting the dog get to him. That was all.

Time to finish up.

The destroying of the darned starlings’ nest was his last task of the evening.

As soon as it was done, he’d head inside, reheating the remains of last night’s supper—Stagg Chili over store-bought biscuits—to be washed down with sweet tea, then topped off with a stiff shot of Jack Daniel’s.

Maybe two. He just had to get rid of the stupid nest where yet again a determined starling had found a crevice in the gutter.

Ignoring Arlo’s sharp warning barks from the other side of the fence near the house, Billy leaned closer to the nest.

If he could just reach a little farther …

The tip of the trowel brushed the layer of twigs and grass.

He extended a bit more.

Stretching.

He gave a little poke.

His weight shifted slightly.

Just enough.

The aluminum ladder slid on the uneven ground.

“Shit!”

Billy tried to right it by adjusting his body. Frantically, he grabbed hold of the gutter.

Too late!

The ladder toppled. Falling away.

For a split second, Billy dangled by one arm, the gutter’s sharp edge cutting through his glove, finding flesh, then it too gave way, ripping from the building in a horrendous moan of twisting metal.

“Goddamn!” he swore. Hanging in midair, he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye again. What the hell?

A wraith, dressed in black, slipped around the corner of the old pump house.

Satan himself, come to claim his own!

With an earsplitting screech, the galvanized steel gave completely away, ripping from the eave.

“Shit!”

He lost his grip, falling fast.

Thud! He hit the ground and heard his ankle snap, the gutter crumpling beside him.

An upturned rake impaled his right arm in its jaws.

“Yow!” Steel teeth cut through his shirt, slicing into his flesh.

He sucked his breath through his teeth as the pain sizzled through his arm and shoulder.

And his ankle. It was broken, sure enough. Throbbing, hot and hard.

He blinked. Staring upward. Hoping he’d imagined the specter.

But in that moment of agony, he locked eyes with Lucifer himself, his dark form looming over him. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he whispered, trying and failing to scoot away.

Beelzebub, the damned Prince of Darkness, had come to claim his soul.

No! He tried to scream as he inched backward over the uneven ground.

No words escaped his dry throat as he saw the weapon—a sharp blade in the wraith’s hands.

Oh, sweet Jesus!

Quick as lightning, the demon struck, driving the instrument of death deep into Billy’s throat.

As blood gurgled from the wound, the specter grabbed hold of Billy’s head, raising it upward just long enough for recognition to dawn in Billy’s eyes.

Not the devil, but—

Slam!

The monster thrust Billy’s head down and onto the star-shaped blades of a garden tiller left to rust in the rain.

Lights flashed behind Billy’s eyes.

Pain exploded in his skull.

Then, thankfully, there was nothing.