CHAPTER FIVE
Selena flinched and turned.
Connor stood in front of her. Behind them, St. Bartholomew’s church stood, now twenty years older than it had been when they were engaged.
Connor watched, waiting for an answer.
Not the young man in a damp shirt with laughter still threatening around the edges of his mouth.
This Connor was older. Forty now. Broader through the chest. Weathered a little.
Still handsome, though life had left its marks around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.
His sheriff’s jacket sat open over a button-down shirt.
Concern had pulled a faint line between his brows.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You seemed in a daydream.”
Morning air replaced summer heat.
The flowers were gone. The churchyard looked neglected now, the beds dead, the grass patchy, the stone darkened by time and neglect.
The windows no longer glowed. Several were boarded.
Others were cracked. Paint peeled from the trim.
The tower stood above them exactly where it had in memory, but the place had changed into something hollowed out.
Selena blinked once and looked back toward the upper window. The memory of the dead woman’s face was engraved on her mind. Had it been part of the daydream?
Nothing there now.
Only dark glass.
Connor was still watching her.
For a second Selena could not answer. The flash of the dead woman’s face, the same face she had seen in the crime scene photos, had left a residue under her skin, something icy and unpleasant that did not belong to memory alone.
She told herself it had been the mind playing tricks.
Old places did that. Old fears did that.
Yet the image lingered with such force it felt less imagined than witnessed.
She was beginning to worry that Harlan County was having a more deleterious effect on her than she anticipated.
Connor shifted his weight slightly. “Selena?”
She drew a breath, steadied herself, and returned her gaze to the abandoned church.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine. Just thinking through my approach.”
The words sounded thinner than she meant them to.
Wind moved through the weeds near the path.
Somewhere behind the church, metal clanged softly against metal, maybe loose fencing, maybe something else.
The neglected building stood in front of them with its tower and its boarded windows and all the years that had gathered since she last came here for anything joyful.
Selena kept her eyes on the church and said, “I just didn’t think I’d ever go inside this place again.”
The front doors of St. Bartholomew’s gave way with a long, reluctant groan.
Selena stepped inside first.
Cold met her at once. Not the clean cold of morning air, but the kind old buildings kept in their bones.
It carried damp wood, stale wax, mildew, and something mineral from the stone itself.
Daylight leaked through cracks in the shuttered windows in thin blades that cut across pews, broken plaster, and years of neglect.
Connor came in behind her and pushed one of the doors partly shut. The sound echoed through the nave and vanished into the rafters.
He held out a flashlight. “You’ll want this.”
“I have my own,” she said, taking hers out and turning it on, though enough weak daylight filtered into the church to shape the room.
The beam sharpened everything anyway. Empty pews.
Dust layered over hymn racks. Flaked paint on the walls.
The altar in front, stripped of anything sacred except its outline.
A strange pressure rose in her chest.
This place had once held weddings, baptisms, funerals, Christmas candles, choirs.
Her own memories were tied up in it so tightly she could barely look at the front without seeing other versions layered over the ruin.
A place where she should have wed but did not.
It was the first broken promise of many, and their marriage had kept that sentiment going throughout its short duration.
Now there were only shadows and rot and the hush of abandonment to be found here.
“Is there no electricity?” she asked.
Connor glanced toward the sagging light fixtures overhead. “Not since the place closed.”
Selena swept the beam across the side wall where framed stations of the cross had once hung. Most were gone now, leaving pale rectangles behind. “How did it come to this? The church used to be so important to the community.”
Connor slipped his hands into his jacket pockets. “The usual reasons. People losing their faith. The congregation shrank. Money got tight. Then there were repairs they just couldn’t keep up with.”
His voice carried quietly through the empty space.
He looked toward the altar, then up at the ceiling where damp stains spread like bruises through the plaster. “There’s still hope they can get the place back up and running one day. At least that’s what people say. For now, most folks go to neighboring towns if they want church.”
The flashlight beam moved across the front pews and caught a scattering of broken glass glittering near the aisle.
Connor let out a slow breath. “It’s really sad. It’s such a beautiful place.”
That touched something raw in her.
Selena kept her eyes on the room as the words came out. “I know. I remember when you agreed to get married in here.”
Silence answered first.
Then Connor turned and looked at her.
Even in the dim light, his eyes still had that depth to them, the one that had once pulled her in so easily she stopped noticing the danger in it. Older now. More careful. Less fire on the surface, maybe, but not less heat.
“I know, I did say that, didn’t I?” he said.
“Yes, you did.”
The flashlight shifted in her hand. “Then two weeks later you had a run-in with Father Wells, changed your mind, and said we had to get married on the grass outside the community center because we couldn’t afford it.”
Connor’s jaw tightened. “I’ve always felt bad about that, but we really couldn’t afford it, Selena.”
She gave a short shake of her head. “We could have found a way. It was just that you didn’t want it badly enough.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I had to compromise,” she said. “Like I always did.”
The words were spiraling out of her more than she meant them to.
Connor’s face changed. Not dramatic anger. Something flatter and deeper.
“I thought you wanted to keep things professional.”
Selena nodded once, annoyed with herself for letting things get to her. For letting him get to her. “I do.”
Without waiting for his reply, she moved deeper into the church.
Her beam played over the wall behind the altar until it found the first inscription. Dark letters. Uneven but deliberate. Dried brown-black against the plaster.
Verbum Domini manet in aeternum.
Connor followed a few paces behind. “I was looking this up. It’s definitely Latin.”
Selena stared at the phrase. “It means the word of the Lord endures forever.”
Connor stopped beside her. “Yeah…” He looked surprised. “I had to use a search engine, came up with something similar… How the hell’d you know that?”
A faint humorless smile touched her mouth. “I had to catch a mail bomber a few years ago. It was kept out of the news. If he’d been successful, a lot of people would’ve died.”
Connor leaned one shoulder against a pew end, watching her. “And you needed Latin because…”
“He sent Latin threats before he escalated to bombs. Churches, courthouses, schools. Enough phrases repeated often enough that I learned the common religious ones. I studied it while I tried to get inside his head.”
“You just casually picked up Latin chasing a terrorist?”
Selena took some photos on her phone. “I’m not exactly fluent. I’ve just seen enough to recognize the usual material, especially religious passages. I’ll get my office to send this on to a linguist for analysis, just in case. I’m no expert.”
The phrase on the wall sat there with its air of permanence and piety, but in this place it felt wrong. Borrowed by someone who wanted the weight of religion without any of its mercy.
Selena turned away from it. “Has the entire scene been swept over by forensics?”
“Yeah.”
“Connor,” Selena said, her voice more stern. “Are you certain? I don’t want to contaminate the scene.”
Connor raised an eyebrow. “We’re not all country bumpkins here, Selena.”
“Good. Then please show me where you found the body.”
Connor nodded toward the side door. “This way.”
They turned and walked together back down the ruined aisle to where the tower entrance sat.
The tower stairwell felt narrower than she remembered.
Darker, too. Connor went first this time, and Selena followed with the flashlight beam cutting up over worn steps and old boards.
Their footfalls thudded through the enclosed space.
Dust shifted under their shoes. The wood gave small groans as if objecting to their weight.
Halfway up, Selena caught the smell. It was faint but certain. Dried blood. She had never quite gotten used to it. No matter how many death scenes she had attended. No matter how hard she had hidden her revulsion to it all from her peers.
Connor pushed open the upper door.
The choir loft opened around them in dim angles and boards and shadow.
Shuttered windows lined one side. Weak daylight seeped through narrow gaps.
Chalk marks sat on the floor where the chair had been positioned.
Evidence tape had been removed, but the room still held the tension of something interrupted.
Selena stepped in slowly.
Connor cleared his throat. “This was where Brenda Colter had been arranged. Head bowed. Hands together. Throat cut.”
The place felt smaller than it had in the crime scene photos. More intimate, which made it worse.
“According to the preliminary report, you found the body?” she asked.
“I did.” Connor stayed near the doorway, giving her space. “Saw a light up here. I think it was candles.”