Chapter Twenty
Twenty
Margot
The drive back to Claire and Shane’s is peaceful, both of us floating in an endorphin bubble.
When Caine takes my hand, rubbing his thumb across my knuckles, I don’t say anything snarky.
His declaration in the haunt hallway was oddly touching.
Wandering rabbit trails in my mind, I’m studying Caine’s hand.
I truly think the tattoo is the same choker I wore at the haunt, but I’d never recover from the embarrassment of assuming and being wrong.
What if it’s just a generic necklace tattoo and I’m misremembering, putting significance where it isn’t?
“Fuck!” Caine’s curse, his arm flying up to pin me to my seat, and the truck slamming to a stop all happen instantaneously. Luggage thumps in the bed, Gremlin squawks in the back seat, and my heart is beating freeway fast.
“What are you doing?” Batting his arm away is reflexive.
He nods at the windshield. “That’s new.”
A huge tree blocks the drive, the trunk so thick it comes up above the bumper. Branches with bright green pine needles extend higher than the hood of the truck. My brain itches.
Relax.
It’s a fallen tree.
“I didn’t know there was supposed to be a storm while we were gone.” The words are for me as much as him, a way to try and puzzle it out.
“There wasn’t,” Caine mutters. “At least not one strong enough to take down a healthy tree that big.”
It clicks. Flinging open the truck door, I hear Caine question me, but I need to see if my suspicions are correct.
Rounding the vehicle, I head toward the base of the tree.
It’s so large, I have to go off the driveway a good ten feet to reach it, but when I do, my throat seizes.
It’s been cut down, so neatly it must have been done with a chainsaw.
The way it’s fallen, there’s no getting a vehicle around it; the forest on either side of the drive is too dense.
It’s a barricade. Intended to keep someone out.
Or in.
Blood pounds in my head, my ears ringing with my heartbeat. Fear turns to rage, the trees blurring around me. Caine’s beside me, and when I glance at him, his jaw is tight, his eyes harder than I’ve ever seen them. He’s reached the same conclusion I have.
Spitting something under his breath that sounds like “Motherfucker wants to play fucking games,” he storms back to the truck, dropping the tailgate. Among odds and ends sits a metal bat with battered grip tape. He grabs it, slamming the tailgate shut again.
I eye the bat, and the man holding it. So this is furious Caine.
Unlike every time I saw Nicholas descend into one of his nearly silent rages, I don’t feel uneasy.
I feel validated. It’s like I’ve been screaming fire, but no one ever believed me.
Caine’s arrived with a hose, and I didn’t even have to point out the flames.
I don’t have to convince him this is happening, or that it’s bad.
I don’t have to do this alone. Someone else sees what Nicholas is doing and says, Hey, that’s fucked up.
Twentysomething me needed this care, and it never came.
Now it’s knitting something inside thirty-six-year-old me back together.
My fury is extinguished, replaced by resolve that feels downright chipper.
“I’m not a lumberjack, but I’m pretty sure you can’t beat your way through a tree.”
No laugh. I don’t think he even registered the joke. I try again. “I think whoever cut it down is gone.”
That does it. “How do you know that?”
“Why would they trap themselves on the other side? Shouldn’t they be parked here?”
“Maybe, but there are other ways in that aren’t the driveway. Glorified trails that you could get a vehicle down if you really wanted to.”
“Are we going to take one of those?”
“No.” Caine’s out for blood. “You’re going to sit your pretty ass right here while I go see if whoever did it stuck around.”
“Not a chance.” My response is instant and whip-crack sharp. “Horror rules, remember? We stick together.”
“Margot—”
“I’d rather go to the house,” I try. “You’ve got a bat. I’ve got a stun gun…”
As he weighs the options, his scowl grows deeper. “You have to stay behind me. And if I tell you to run or hide, no arguing.”
“We are going to have a long talk about why you think you’re the boss when this is over,” I grumble.
Reaching into the back seat, I fumble around and emerge with Gremlin’s bag, Gremlin watching suspiciously from inside.
Before he can ask if this is really an activity for a toy breed, I say, “We stick together, all of us.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Don’t drawl at me.” My admonishment is half-hearted.
Bat slung over Caine’s shoulder, stun gun in my hand, we’re off. Over the tree and through the woods we go, to see if there’s a stalker at Claire and Shane’s house.
· · ·
We’re only a quarter mile from the house, but Caine’s posture changes the closer we get.
The feline, almost languid way he usually moves is replaced by a rigidity that makes me think of a dog with its ruff standing on end.
I almost tease him but decide not to. I’m feeling fairly ruff-y myself.
When the house comes into sight around the last bend in the driveway, he stops hard.
There’s no vehicle visible, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone parked on the side of the house.
So help me if he tries to make me wait here.
To his credit, he doesn’t. Caine gives me a once-over and apparently decides that I’m adequately prepared.
“Stay behind me.”
Biting back a retort about having never flung myself in front of a man with a bat and not planning on starting now, I nod.
We’ve only gone a few steps when Gremlin starts sniffing. Not her dainty, pre-sneeze sniffs, but huge inhales, as if she’s trying to get as much air as possible into her lungs. “Are you okay?” I start to peek into the bag when the breeze changes, and a whiff of what she’s so intent on hits me.
Rot.
Decay.
Death.
Grabbing the back of Caine’s T-shirt, I yank hard. “Wait, do you—”
“I do.” He glances back at me. “You want to stay here? I don’t think we’re going to find anything good.”
Yes.
“No.” I shake my head. “I have a strong stomach.”
“You’re a vegetarian.”
“We can have strong stomachs,” I hiss. “We just don’t put meat in them.”
The breeze gifts us another nose full, and he grimaces. We’re moving again, a dreadful march toward the horrendous smell. While we’re still a good twenty feet out, I see darkness where there shouldn’t be.
Please, please, please, be a shadow.
It isn’t.
Dark crimson gleams in the afternoon sun, viscous liquid dribbling down the wooden porch steps.
Beyond it, a mini lake of blood covers the welcome mat, beginning to congeal.
Tempting flies only to drown them, blood is everywhere.
Sticky and congealing, gumming up the welcome mat and dripping off the edge of the porch in thick, lazy drops.
Repent is painted over the doorway. I breathe through my mouth to keep from gagging.
The metallic smell clouds my brain, a tingling feeling creeping into my extremities. Willpower alone keeps me upright.
Caine lets out a low whistle. “Jesus.”
I fight back another gag. “I don’t think he’d want a thing to do with this.”
· · ·
The next few hours pass in a blur, my brain checking out.
Two officers arrive, along with a cheerful forensic tech named Raven.
She performs a Rapid Stain Identification test on the blood, and confirms it isn’t human.
When I ask if they’ll test to see what kind of animal it’s from, she shrugs and says, “Maybe,” which I take as a no.
As if trying to console me, Raven suggests that due to the volume of blood present, it likely came from a butcher’s shop.
It doesn’t help. Guilt’s a stitch in my side that no amount of deep breathing will ease.
The house is inspected, inside and out, but there’s only the tree and the blood.
I think the police are taking this more seriously than the snake, but I can’t be sure.
Regardless, it’s another incident for the paper trail I’ll likely need.
It’s the same officer from before, but he has a partner this time, a middle-aged man who looks positively green the entire time he’s here.
Again, I don’t mention the possibility of Nicholas.
Anytime I wonder if that might be a mistake, I remember how satisfied he was that he’d outmaneuvered me by convincing them that I was the problem, not him.
By the time the police are gone, all I want to do is sit down.
Unfortunately, there’s a blood flood congealing on the porch.
I feed Gremlin her dinner, settle her in my room, and then it’s time to get to work.
When I pass Caine’s room, the door is closed.
If he’s smart, he’s hiding, from this disaster, and me.
He’s already cut up the tree blocking the drive, a tedious process considering its size.
I helped him roll the pieces off the road, but he had to do all the chainsawing.
He’s probably showering and regretting any involvement in this shit show.
Dressed in a pair of torn jean shorts and an old T-shirt, I go banging around Claire and Shane’s mudroom until I finally find a scrub brush in the cabinet above the washing machine.
I grab the industrial bottle of dish soap for refilling the kitchen dispenser and the scrub brush.
Dreading the next however many hours it’s going to take to scrub off the bloodstain, I step onto the front porch and almost trip over Caine.
He’s shirtless, on his hands and knees scrubbing, pink suds soaking his jeans.
Slick and wet, the tattoos on his forearms glisten as he works, the muscles in his back flexing and rippling.
Caine has one earbud in, but he glances up immediately.
I’m staring, slightly dazed, because first, he’s cleaning the porch for me, and second, I am aroused to the point of being frozen.
Why is this hot?
Why is everything he does hot?
“Are you okay?”