Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
A dirt path, already a muddy stream, led from the shed to the house. Jessica took it at a run but got drenched within seconds. Rain ran in rivulets down her arms, cascading down her chest and filling her sneakers to overflowing. She’d become a human water feature.
She splashed up the wooden steps. A tiny arched awning over the front door served as the house’s porch.
Cowering under it, she reached down for the doorknob, but just as her hand closed around it, it was yanked out of her grasp.
The door sprung open, revealing Inglis standing there in his dripping wet parka.
One hand was resting on the grip of his holstered handgun.
He blinked at her, then removed his hand from the gun and stepped aside to let her in. She entered a small entrance hall, squeezing water from her hair as she went. “Anyone home?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“No serial killers?”
He gave her an odd look, then said, “The place is pretty cleaned out. Hard to know if whoever lived here left yesterday or last year.”
“Was the door locked?”
“Key was under the mat.”
She looked around the entrance hall, noting its threadbare carpet and mold-spotted wallpaper. “What happens if the owners come back?”
A gust of wind barreled into the house, making it shiver on its stilts.
Inglis shook his head. “No one’s going about in this.”
She caught his eye, and she knew what he was thinking. That whoever had been following them was probably still stuck out there in the storm. And hopefully not seeking shelter anywhere near them.
He turned and led her down the hall to the kitchen.
The air hung heavy with the smell of stale smoke and mold, making the room feel dingy and oppressive.
The linoleum was ancient, the wallpaper peeling.
Inglis was right about the place having been cleaned out: there was just an old stove with a coil range, a refrigerator that might have been new in the sixties, and a chest freezer in the corner.
She wandered around the rest of the house. It had been reduced to its bare bones. A single, sagging couch sat in the otherwise empty living room; the only other piece of furniture was a double bed in the bedroom, beneath a boarded-up window.
Jessica stood in the doorway, taking in the depressing digs. A ceiling fan had a milky center light entombing dozens of dead bugs.
It suddenly flared to life. She turned to see the marshal standing behind her, hand on the switch.
“Power’s still on.” As soon as the words had left his mouth, a gust slammed into the house. The bulb dimmed, then grew bright again. “Though maybe not for long,” he added ominously.
She looked at the bed, which was just a mattress covered with an old sheet.
Inglis glanced at it, too, his face expressionless. Then he turned and left without another word.
If the guy were any less animated, he’d be dead, she thought.
Next door was a bathroom, which was as sparse as the rest of the place. Toilet, pedestal basin, old enamel bathtub with a shower head above. Metal shower curtain rail, sans curtain.
She sighed. Home sweet home for the night.
She went back into the kitchen to find Inglis standing there. They were both soaked through and dripping trails of water everywhere they went.
“What have we got for food?” she said. Not waiting for an answer, she went to the cupboards over the sink, opened them, found nothing but a few stacked plates and mugs.
The refrigerator was unplugged and filled only with a musty odor.
A pantry by the oven yielded more promising results: a couple of cans of chicken soup, another of beef stew and one can right at the back with no label.
She pulled out the mystery can and gave it an experimental jiggle. “What’d you suppose this is?”
He came closer and took it from her. Turned it over to exam the bottom of the can. “Whatever it is, it expired three years ago.”
She spied something amber glinting at her from the back of the cupboard. A bottle of whiskey. That might come in handy later.
The chest freezer was plugged in and switched on, so she went to it and cracked it open.
She immediately dropped the lid and skipped back from it.
“Oh my God,” she yelped. “It’s a body. And it’s been…” she swiveled to look at the marshal, her face aghast, “chopped into pieces.”
* * *
Ryan closed the distance in two quick strides, instincts kicking in before thought. The air in the kitchen was cool, but he felt the warmth radiating from Jessica as he stepped beside her. A faint scent clung to her—something floral, a contrast to the sharp, damp chill of their surroundings.
Ryan forced himself to focus, pushing aside the distraction. He lifted the door, the cold air rushing out in a cloud of frost. He leaned in and pulled out a plastic bag containing a frozen slab of meat.
Jessica came close enough to peer over his shoulder. “Is it a…person?”
He dropped the bag with a clunk onto the rest of the dismembered carcass. “Venison’s my guess.” He shut the freezer door. “I hope you’re not a vegan.”
Jessica exhaled sharply. “Oh good. Just a hacked-up woodland creature.” She gave him a look. “Next time, maybe lead with ‘don’t worry, it’s not a corpse.’ Just for me.”
Another enormous gust of wind shook the house from floor to ceiling. Heavy rain hammered the iron roof. He left the kitchen and walked through to the derelict living room that overlooked the front drive.
Two of the three windows were already boarded up, probably the causalities of previous hurricanes.
He went to the one that wasn’t and looked down at the yard.
Everywhere there used to be grass was now water.
The wind was making a constant assault on the house.
It wasn’t strong enough to turn the items on the lawn into missiles, but it was getting there.
He tried to guess how far away they were from the coast. Five miles, maybe six?
Far enough away to escape a storm surge?
He knew they should have kept driving, kept pushing as far from the sea as possible.
But he also knew that being swept away in a car while trying to outrun a hurricane was one of the leading ways people actually died in hurricanes.
Jessica joined him at the window. He kept his gaze locked on the glass, though his peripheral vision was doing a damn good job of reminding him she was right there.
He hadn’t meant to stare when she came bursting through the door, but the wet t-shirt had made it physically impossible not to.
The rain had plastered the sheer fabric to her skin like a second layer, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.
And clearly, bras weren’t part of her emergency weather protocol.
He cleared his throat and tried to focus on the storm outside. If she noticed the flush creeping up his neck or the way he’d suddenly forgotten how to breathe properly, she didn’t let on. Calm as ever, she followed his gaze out the window.
“How long do you think we’re going to be stuck here?” she asked, as if she wasn’t standing there dressed like a goddamn temptation in a disaster movie.
He forked dripping hair off his forehead with his fingers. “At least tonight.”
Lightning, thin and mean, sliced across the sky.
Her eyes moved apprehensively to the ceiling. “This place is gonna hold up, right?”
As if to underline the dubiousness of that prospect, thunder boomed overhead. It was so loud it seemed to shift the air in the room.
They glanced at each other, and he succeeded at holding her gaze. “God willing,” he said grimly. “And the creek don’t rise.”