Chapter 1 #2
Then there was Shiloh and Gunner, friends I’d gone to school with.
Their happy-ever-after was the culmination of years of dancing around a brother’s best friend thing and an “I can’t—I’m your teacher” complication that drove a wedge between them when Shiloh’s first teaching job turned out to be Gunner’s senior English class.
Cotton, aka Emery, found Brodie, my cousin, when he was sent to kill her by the extended family we pretend doesn’t exist—the Irish mob. They’re relatively harmless unless you fuck with them, usually only needing me or Brodie to do the occasional job for them.
Brodie couldn’t kill Cotton, though. He took one look at her and was pretty much gone for her. He kidnapped her instead, whisked her away to someplace safe until he figured out how to keep her permanently safe, and now she has a ring on her finger and one-point-five kids.
So it all worked out.
It’s just me on my own now, and Jack—who definitely had a thing for Harry at one time, but we don’t talk about that—and Sammy, Shiloh’s younger brother and Gunner’s best friend.
But Henry Thurston’s not interested in dudes.
We watch Jack walk out, silence thick in his wake.
“Probably definitely just a hiker.” Harry echoes Sam's call and forces a laugh that doesn’t sound like her at all. “Tourists can’t read warning signs.”
“Yeah.” I pick at a loose thread on the rug. “Probably.”
The Falls are dangerous as hell in winter. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. Wet stone, black ice, tourists who think Instagram is worth a broken neck… It could definitely happen.
But even as I say the words, my brain is already pulling up a very specific file.
When Shiloh was being stalked, when a depraved watcher started leaving her creepy gifts and sending her messages, things started at the Falls, too. There was a threat spray-painted where tourists liked to take selfies. A missing girl whose last known location was the overlook.
And it turned out that Jason Adams, her brother’s doctor and the stalker-slash-killer who is now thankfully in prison where he belongs, wasn’t the only monster in play. He was only one half of a depraved partnership with his brother, Henry Thurston.
Henry, who managed to slip away, and occasionally shows back up to taunt and remind us that he’s still out there. We never really closed the book on him.
“Shy.” Cotton’s voice is soft. “Sit down. Breathe. We don’t know anything yet.”
Shiloh shakes her head, curls bouncing, eyes wide and already shiny. “It has to be him. It has to be Henry. I knew he’d show back up. I knew it.”
Sam scoots closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “We don’t know that, sis.”
“I have a bad feeling,” she whispers. “And all that stuff with Harry a few years ago… and then me…I never thought he’d just…stop. He’s not the kind to give up and go away.”
Gunner catches my gaze across the room. The tension in his features mirrors my own.
I push to my feet, cheeks flushing as everyone looks my way. “Brodie, can you take me home, please?”
Cotton tilts her head. “Already? It’s early. For you, anyway.”
“I need to…check some things.” I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, fingers trembling just enough that I hope nobody notices. “See if anyone’s talking online yet. If it’s just a fall, there’ll be chatter. If it’s not…”
If it’s not, I’ll see the pattern before anyone else does. That’s my job.
Brodie’s eyes sharpen, comprehension humming in them. “Sure thing.”
We fumble through goodbyes, the lightness from earlier gone. Outside, the air slaps my face with a cold that smells like dead leaves and woodsmoke. I climb into the back of their SUV, hugging my arms around myself as Cotton buckles herself in the front seat.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” Brodie says mildly, catching my gaze in the rearview mirror.
“I need to know if everyone’s freaking out about the same thing we are,” I say. “If anyone’s already saying Henry Thurston’s name. Shiloh and Harry don’t need that on top of everything else. And Jack will want to know.”
“What if it is him?” Cotton asks quietly, looking out her window.
“Then I’ll find out,” I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
If anyone can do it, it’s you, the rational part of my brain tells me.
The irrational part remembers a time when that wasn’t true, a time I wasn’t able to help.
A hospital room with too-bright lights and my mother’s hand going cold in mine.
And then there was my father’s body in a casket just a couple of years earlier.
.. Both of them leaving me in December, like winter had personalized its cruelty just for me.
I look away from Cotton and focus on the darkness streaking by outside the car. The trees blur into vertical lines, a barcode of bare branches and shadows. My reflection in the window looks small and pale and too young to be thinking about serial killers.
But that’s the thing. The world doesn’t give a shit how young you are when it starts breaking you.
By the time Brodie pulls to a stop in front of my building, a third-floor walk-up in an old riverfront warehouse turned into apartments in downtown Lucy Falls, my pulse has steadied into a determined hum.
Cotton unbuckles her belt and reaches for the door handle. “I’ll walk you up.”
“You don’t have to—”
She levels a look at me. “Yeah, I do.”
Brodie kills the engine. “Let me check everything out first. I don’t know why you insisted on renting here when you could have stayed on the farm with us.”
He doesn’t wait for me to argue, and I don’t bother with a response. It’s an old argument. He wanted me close. I wanted my space. I let him have access to my exterior security camera feeds.
The corridor smells like old paint and the lemon cleaner the landlord uses when he feels guilty about not fixing anything. Brodie takes my keys and does a full sweep of the apartment—lights on, bathroom, bedroom, closet, under the bed. He checks the windows, the cheap deadbolt, the back door.
“All clear,” he announces, tossing my keys back to me.
“You sure?” My fingers close around the cool metal.
“Nothing out of place.” Cotton touches my arm. “Text us when you start seeing anything online, okay? Even if it’s nothing. Especially if it’s nothing. Shy’s going to obsess either way.”
I nod. “Got it.”
They leave with one more round of hugs and orders to eat something besides donuts. I lock the door behind them, engage the deadbolt and the chain, then double-check everything out of habit.
Three locks—knob, deadbolt, chain. Two windows right beside the door. Another above the kitchen sink. Patio sliders.
I flip the locks three times each—right-left-right—then check and double-check the latches on each window. Nightly routine completed, I sigh and settle behind my screen.
My fortress is secure.
With Brodie and Cotton gone, I drop the beanie to the counter and pull off my coat. The computer pulls me, but I force myself to send Jack a text first.
Any word? Do I need to start looking for a certain someone?
His reply comes immediately in the form of the phone ringing.
I answer the call, putting it on speaker, and set the device down beside my computer station. “Jack. Do we need to be worried?”
“Not sure. Not going to lie, though…it’s not looking good. We have a twenty-something female, nude, with ligature marks.”
“What’s the cause of death?”
“Bullet to the brain.”
Ice crawls through my veins. “It’s him, Jack.”
“I don’t want to say that right away—” The words are half hearted.
“But you can’t rule it out.”
A long pause. Then a tired sounding, “No. No, I can’t rule it out. Especially since the fucker got away. It’s possible that Henry Thurston has returned.”
I sit down and wake my computer, the three screens before me lighting up with a blue glow that instantly soothes the anxiety I haven’t been able to quell since Jack received the call. I crack my knuckles, then flutter them as I position them over the keyboard.
“Then a-hunting I will go.”