Chapter Fifteen
Keep calm and embalm.
His and hearse.
Prettiest woman in the morgue.
How had she never thought mortuary humor to be funny until now? Probably because she hadn’t been as close to death as she was right now.
Winnie laughed to herself, not really processing where she’d ended up.
Her brain hadn’t caught up yet. She’d been awake.
Then not. Now, she was here, and no matter how many times she tried, she just couldn’t remember why.
Why this sense of urgency had taken root and refused to let her go to sleep.
Oh, and she wanted to sleep. A nap would feel so good right now.
Wait. No. That fire in her chest was back.
There was something she’d forgotten to do.
Had she left the iron on? She couldn’t imagine that being the case.
She hadn’t ironed anything. Ever. She worked from home in sweats.
So that couldn’t be it. It was right there on the tip of her tongue.
She just couldn’t force her brain to reach it.
Something to do with… Dan? Her stomach clenched.
That didn’t feel right. And this place almost felt familiar.
Her head wasn’t working right. She couldn’t feel her extremities.
Something was wrong.
Winnie blinked up at the exposed rafters of the tallest, emptiest building she’d ever seen.
No. That wasn’t the right way to describe it.
It wasn’t a building. More like an oversize shed with no…
doors. Yes. She was good with the words.
A thirty-foot-high doorless shed that smelled like fish and rotting guts and opened onto nothing but ice and snow.
Her snicker seemed to echo off the thin walls punctuated with narrow windows every few feet. “Guts. Guts. Guts.”
That was a funny word. But she wasn’t laughing anymore. Her throat hurt when she said it, though. Like she’d been screaming for hours or eaten too many Sour Patch Kids. Which was entirely possible while she cleaned out her dad’s house.
A click resounded so loudly in her head, she jerked her upper body off the…dock? Weird addition to a shed, but who was she to judge? Everything she owned had been piled into the back of her sedan before she came back.
Back home. She’d been cleaning out her dad’s house.
She’d gone through his case files. Her chest threatened to cave in at the thought of his death, of all the stolen time she should’ve had.
Why? Why did it hurt so much? And why couldn’t she move her arms?
She had to get it together. Collapsing onto her back, Winnie tried recalling exactly how she’d ended up on a dock, soaking wet from head to toe.
She chased that line of thought, catching the sound of something low and soothing somewhere out of reach.
She was back in Black Hollow because her dad was dead.
She wanted to solve the case that’d finally killed him.
No. Not killed him. Someone had killed him. Had tried to kill her. And…
“Adrial.” Her head swam as all the missing pieces slotted into place. She’d left him on the ice. Stabbed and bleeding. She’d left him, but the ice had given out. Panic seized her from head to toe in a burst of heat that wouldn’t do any good against her soaked clothing.
Winnie craned her head up and over her shoulder to find the source of the humming. She’d recognized the melody as one her mother used to sing whenever Winnie had gotten sick, but it didn’t make her feel better now.
Because her mother wasn’t the one humming.
A shiver chased down her spine and then kept going, spreading fast through her legs and arms. The cold seemed to seep through every inch of her sticky wet clothing.
Not even her hair had been spared, felt like it was frozen straight through and breaking.
Frayed rope scratched at her wrists as she twisted to get a better look at the black-clad figure at the end of the indoor dock.
Red hair—much shorter than Winnie’s—lifted on a rogue tendril of wind coming through one of the broken windows to the right.
Winnie recognized this place now. The dilapidated boathouse served as storage for one of the cabins that’d been built south of Hollow Lake but hadn’t been used in years.
Constructed of cheap shingles and vertical siding, the structure protested the constant onslaught of extreme weather.
Every kid in her fifth-grade class had been convinced it was haunted, and took turns daring and double-dog daring each other to step inside.
She’d been the only one to find it kind of peaceful.
Somewhere Henry and Darby and their fan club didn’t dare intrude.
Adrial had found her here after her mom’s death.
Had sat with her on this very dock that split the two bays, their toes dangling in the water, without saying a single word.
He’d seen her. Even back then. She wasn’t just the chief of police’s daughter, and he hadn’t been the mayor’s son.
That day—and every time they’d found themselves coming back throughout those formative summers—they’d simply enjoyed the seclusion with tension-filled looks and smiles and the occasional scream when the lake plants got long enough to brush against the bottoms of their bare feet.
Now, it looked like her death might actually make this place haunted. Because there was no way in hell she wouldn’t haunt the person who’d stabbed Adrial until their dying breath.
The humming came to a close, and every cell in Winnie’s body went on alert. Footsteps vibrated through the aged wood that somehow still supported her weight until they, too, pulled to a stop. “Hello, there.”
A shudder coursed through her. Winnie tugged on the rope securing her hands at her lower back and the section wrapped tightly around her feet. “Why am I not dead?”
“Letting you drown—as entertaining as that was—is too easy.” Joints popped as the killer crouched near Winnie’s shoulder, hands at ease over her knees.
The mask still hid a good amount of her features, but this close—and not actively fighting for her life—Winnie could make out a few freckles through the eye holes.
Long lashes, too. No makeup…and soft blond eyebrows.
“Fitting, but too easy. I have something much more interesting planned for you, and if it works, you’ll be the next great cold case in Black Hollow.
Almost as popular as Lila Mercer. No one will find your body or the person responsible.
No one will care enough to look for you, either.
Everyone in this backward town will forget you even existed. ”
Acid charged up her throat. Millions of thoughts streaked through her mind, but there was only one that took her next breath. “You killed my dad.”
“I did.” Something about the rise in the killer’s voice told Winnie a smile had stretched beneath the mask. Gloves hid any telling scars, features or tattoos, but the way she talked about Black Hollow said a lot. This woman—whoever she was—felt just as unseen and cast out as Winnie had.
Like she knew the town all too well, too.
Winnie’s mouth dried at the thought the two of them might have anything in common, but she could use that to her advantage. Maybe when her brain came back online. “Because he was still investigating the Lila Mercer case?”
“Is that what you think the chief of police has been doing all these years? Trying to find Lila’s killer?
” An icy laugh hit Winnie’s ear and caused dread to pool at the base of her spine.
The killer swiped at her masked face with one gloved hand.
“Oh, thank you. I needed a good laugh. Wow. The things people will believe about those they love. It’s really amazing what a little gaslighting and manipulation can accomplish. ”
She didn’t understand.
“You’re… You’re wrong. He never lied to me.
I have the case files. I have all his boxes of notes and interviews.
” When had she stopped shivering? Winnie couldn’t recall, but it’d been a while.
That wasn’t a good sign. The longer she lay prone like this, unable to move, the higher chance she’d succumb to hypothermia or frostbite.
Neither of which she could afford if she wanted to get to Adrial.
Before it was too late. And she wanted that.
She wanted to know that he was okay. That he would make it through this and that she hadn’t lost him all over again.
She wanted that kiss they’d shared at the lake’s edge to be the first of a new phase of their lives and to mean something more than simple right-time, right-place circumstances.
She wanted to ease the pain that clung to his every movement and chase away the shadows in his eyes.
She wanted the chance she’d never gotten when he’d left Black Hollow.
“My dad has spent his entire career trying to solve that case.”
“How do you think two vital pieces of evidence went missing during the investigation, Winnie? Arthur Hutton was the lead detective on that case, then the chief of police. There were only three officers who had full access to the evidence room during that time, and neither of them had a connection to Lila Mercer.” The killer cocked her head in that predatory way Winnie couldn’t get over.
“Who do you think made that evidence disappear? Who do you think wanted to cover his tracks and convince everyone in this place that he was the upstanding chief of police they believed him to be?”
Winnie wanted to shake her head, but her hair had frozen to the dock planks. All she managed was a jerk of her head that tore some of her hair free. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. My dad was a decorated officer. Everything he did, he did for this town.”
Hadn’t he? Her entire childhood had been built on that belief once her mother had passed.
Arthur Hutton was a pillar of the community.
That was his entire life. So much so, he didn’t have the room to be the parent she’d needed, but he’d done his best. He worked overtime and nights and weekends and birthdays and Christmases to ensure the community’s safety by patrolling the streets and serving justice to the people who hurt others. Her father had been a hero.
“I think I’m the only one here who knows what she’s talking about.
” The killer reached out and pushed back a rogue strand of Winnie’s hair from her face.
“You see, Daddy Dearest didn’t want anyone running forensics on Lila’s underwear or that hair the techs recovered from the chains.
Because then he’d have to explain why his DNA was all over a woman who’d been beaten and then chained down in a lake. ”
No. It wasn’t true. That evidence… It’d just been misplaced.
Except, why hadn’t her father made note of it?
Why were there two difference evidence lists?
One written in his handwriting, and one in the official case file?
Why hadn’t anyone working the case questioned the disappearance of case-altering information?
Blood drained from her face and neck as denial screamed up her throat.
She twisted her ankles, just out of her attacker’s peripheral vision, and another splintering shock hit. The ropes came loose. “You’re lying.”
The killer wasn’t smiling anymore. “Am I?”
Two words—nothing more than a whisper—rocked through her. The scream that tore from Winnie’s chest rattled dust from the rafters as she charged to her feet and tackled the killer off the dock.
Straight over the edge.