Chapter 20 #2
“As long as you stick to our agreement,” he said, and then, before she could argue, he twisted and pulled her onto his chair.
“Oh!”
“You were teasing me,” he accused as he positioned her so that she was straddling him.
“A little.”
“A lot.”
Then he kissed her. Long. Hard.
His tongue probing.
She melted inside. Warm and wanting.
And beneath her, she felt Pierce’s arousal. “For once, you’re right,” he said. “We do need to play. Come on!” Still holding her tight, her legs wrapped around him, he stood and carried her to the stairs.
“Don’t,” she warned. “Pierce, you’ll trip.”
“Worth the risk.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Nikki, where’s your sense of adventure?”
More easily than she could have imagined, he mounted the stairs, while she clung to him, burying her head in the curve of his neck. They reached the second floor, and he swept her into the bedroom, somehow managing to kick the door closed with a soft thud.
Arlo whined on the other side, but Nikki barely noticed as she and Pierce tumbled onto the bed together.
For the moment, she forgot the rest of the world.
Long after the day shift had gone home and the night shift had settled into its more quiet routine, Sol walked out of the station, the two stones in her pockets feeling heavy as gold bricks, but no one stopped her as she made her way to her rattletrap of a pickup.
The Ford was nearly twenty years old and needed new struts, but for now, it would have to do.
It had served her well for fifteen years; she figured it had another five in it. Or maybe more. If she made all the repairs it needed.
One of the reasons she liked the old F-150 was because it was innocuous. It fit into the landscape. No one thought twice about a dented and dusty older-model truck in or out of town. And it looked like it belonged in the woods.
She rolled down the windows and thought about the case.
Make that cases. Obviously, Billy Huber’s homicide was tied to Mavis Greenlee’s, and so far, the only serious connection the department had found was odd: the polished stones left on or near the bodies.
The killer’s calling card, one he wanted the police to discover, one that meant something special to him, if not to the victims.
Ever since most of her colleagues had gone home to their families, Sol had stayed at the station, drinking coffee, cherry cola, and Red Bull, using the caffeine to fire her blood.
She had a long night ahead of her, and she’d need to stay awake as she read through every report, affidavit, and statement on the two homicide cases for the second and sometimes third time, looking for something, anything that would spark a new avenue in the investigation.
She was through with the done-by-the-book investigating. At least for tonight.
As she drove, the city disappeared behind her into the low country, where wax myrtle and loblolly pines created a blind and she knew of a seldom-used road, one where she would have privacy. She found the turnoff, stopped to open the rotting wooden gate, and drove through.
The lane was little more than ruts, with potholes and tall grass that scraped the undercarriage, but her headlights cut through the darkness as the truck bounced along what had once been a long drive to a sawmill.
She heard the whistle of spring peepers and the chirp of crickets, barely audible over the sound of the Ford’s engine.
Sol drove for nearly half a mile to a clearing on the soggy banks of an old sawmill pond, the main building near it now in ruin, a skeleton of what had been as large as a barn.
No longer was there a roof on the building, and the waterwheel beside it creaked slightly as she stopped the truck and cut the engine.
Through the windshield, she noticed clouds moving, partially obstructing the crescent moon and stars.
She snagged her oversize bag from the worn bench seat next to her and stepped outside and into the thick night, where the crickets’ music crescendoed and the frogs gave full-throated accompaniment. She felt at one with the earth here.
Using the flashlight on her phone, she followed an overgrown path leading away from the dilapidated structure, through a copse of trees to a ring-shaped, open area.
In the middle of the clearing, someone had created a fire pit, the ring of jagged stones now blackened by the soot of previous fires, the logs within the pit charred.
She reached into her bag, brought out dry kindling and a week-old newspaper, which she crumpled, then placed in the pit; then she turned the partially burned logs over to expose the dryer underside.
With a shot of lighter fluid from the can in her bag and the flick of her lighter, she started the fire.
Rocking back on her heels, she watched as the newspaper, with Nikki Gillette’s story on Billy Huber front and center, her byline visible, curled and burned.
Then the kindling caught, eager flames crackling hungrily skyward.
Satisfied, Sol wasted no time. She removed her clothes and kicked off her boots.
With the damp ground pressed against her soles and the grass and soil squishing between her toes, she removed the polished stones from the pockets of her jacket, the stones she’d “borrowed” from the lab. Now, she held each in a hand.
Sol stared into the fire, sensing the energy in the stones, and whispered, “Come to me,” adding her voice to the frog and cricket symphony. “Come to me.”
A breeze blew across her face, and the leaves in the nearby trees rustled. She smelled the scent of longleaf pine and saw the gossamer Spanish moss hanging from the live oaks dance, pale and ghostly.
Slowly, she closed her eyes, her concentration on the weights in her palms, her fingers clutching each stone gently at first and then more tightly, her caress turning into a death grip.
She felt the sharp indentations of the etchings pressing into her flesh, and as she did, she heard the pitiful bleat of a goat and the pained moan of a cow.
And then another, more distinct sound, a human cry.
A hiss of sorts. Like the swift intake of breath when one is surprised or feels sharp, unexpected pain.
Her own blood seemed to congeal in her veins, her own nerves twitching.
“Who are you?” she murmured quietly, trying to slow her own heartbeat, hoping to hear the sounds of the night, to sense the aura of the stones. “Who did this?”
A sizzle crawled up her spine, like the wispy touch of a butterfly’s wings quickly skittering over her bare back, from the curve of her buttocks to the nape of her neck.
Slowly, she brought her hands together, clasping her fingers around the two stones, hoping to meld the tortured spirits she felt trapped inside. “Tell me,” she intoned. “Tell me who did this to you?”
The breeze picked up. Stronger now.
The frogs lost their voice.
Even the crickets grew eerily silent.
Sol felt a cold needle of fear in her heart.
The rocks grew hot in her hands.
A tremor ripped through her body.
“Who?” she repeated as her skin prickled.
And then he came.
The figure of a man—dark and looming. His face was blurred as if he were masked, his voice muffled.
But she understood the meaning.
It whispered through her brain like a serpent’s hiss:
“The consequence of sin is death.”
And then a cold wind blew through her soul, and she cried out.
The wraith had disappeared and yet … she felt his breath, and by instinct, as if pulled by a spiritual magnet, she turned to face west. Deeper into the woods. Toward the swampland.
Somewhere in the darkness, she sensed evil lurking.
She stared into the night. “I see you,” she said, but spied no eyes catching in the moonlight, heard no breathing.
And yet …
He was moving.
Quietly.
On measured footsteps.
The scent of blood in his nostrils.
On the hunt.