Chapter Three

Maddy woke the next day with a cat she had no intention of adopting meowing at her kitchen door. She sleepily let him outside and watched him bound off her back stoop and onto the silent street.

It was early.

The town was still asleep.

Curtains were drawn. Garage doors were closed. There was no movement and no noise.

High above the houses—so far above that it was nothing more than a black dot—a bird circled overhead.

Maddy closed the door.

Distrust was an itch beneath her skin that she couldn’t scratch. She’d always worked long hours, but she’d managed to make friends in Scarlet Falls and had many friendly acquaintances beyond that.

They couldn’t all be suspect.

Not the eccentric matron of the Scarlet Falls Historical Society with her constant knitting and her long-dead stuffed cat.

Not the infamous occult author with his predilection for expensive Scotch and hoarding historical objects both creepy and bizarre.

Not his new wife, the nurse, with her constant walking and her sweet but sad smile.

No.

She couldn’t live afraid of everyone and everything because of Gracie’s violent end.

Maddy moved toward the coffeemaker. She flicked its switch and waited as the aromatic scent of her morning blend rose up around her. Sleepiness fled and was replaced by trepidation.

She remembered the strong pleasant espresso scent of yesterday.

Gracie had focused on Sheriff Constantine. Maddy had to acknowledge that unspoken warning even if she was secretly drawn to the man with his shadowed eyes and determined jaw. What if that pull of magnetism was actually her instincts trying to point her toward her stepsister’s killer?

∗ ∗ ∗

She raked leaves that morning with two photographs in her pocket even though she could have made her excuses and Mrs. Jesham would have understood. The yellow leaves from the elms that lined the street on which the Historical Society stood had blown and drifted onto the lawn of the recently renovated Victorian.

So she had dressed for work and locked all her windows and doors before taking the van across town. Making small things right like cleaning up the messy leaves soothed her.

Physical exertion gave Maddy something to focus on besides fear and frustration. The curtains twitched several times as Mrs. Jesham checked on her progress, but the senior woman didn’t venture outside. She rarely did in spite of her involvement in Scarlet Falls’ Garden Club. She seemed to prefer to man the reception desk while she plied her knitting needles surrounded by thousands of old photographs and dusty memorabilia.

Claustrophobia tightened Maddy’s chest as she thought about Violet Jesham’s preferred environment. Maddy had always needed to be outside. Even today, when the scent of earth and leaves reminded her of dark deeds, she was still glad to be beneath the October sky.

As she thought it, she looked up. Her chest tightened more. Another bird circled and circled, this time lower in elevation so she could see its beating wings. Lazily, it caught one current and then another, cycling ever downward, closer and closer still.

Maddy pulled her eyes away from the bird’s movements. She ignored the irrational sensation of being watched and followed by the same bird she’d seen on the fence post the day before.

Of course the same bird wasn’t stalking her.

Maddy worked until the leaves were bagged and left on the curb for recycling collection later in the day. All morning she’d been aware of the photographs in her pocket and the silent intention they represented.

She was going to The Falls.

She had the two photographs that seemed different from the others. She had finally realized what had caught her attention about the first—the one of Sheriff Constantine on his back stoop. Constantine’s eyes had been cut toward the camera. He’d been all too aware of being photographed. She’d also brought the picture of the small waterfalls that connected High Lake to the river that ran through the town.

Her stepsister had been there just before she died. The photograph she’d taken was from a year ago, when autumn leaves had been on the ground like the ones that must have covered her grave.

Maddy waved to Violet Jesham when the lace curtain fluttered again, and then she climbed into her van to drive to The Falls.

∗ ∗ ∗

The woods around High Lake were dark and damp. There were still enough leaves on the deciduous trees to block the meager autumn sun. Paired with the conifers—spruce, pine and cedar—the trees shadowed the trail that meandered to The Falls even at midday.

Maddy hunched her shoulders against the chill and made her way along the path her stepsister must have taken. The Falls weren’t impressive enough to draw tourists and the metallic bite in the air from the iron-heavy water was unpleasant enough to discourage locals. In fact, High Lake itself was mostly barren—glassy and dead.

But there was music ahead nonetheless—the sound of water rushing over mossy stones as gravity sucked it down toward the town. The hissing symphony grew louder and louder.

The trail opened up only slightly at a small clearing where The Falls sang. For some reason the sound caused goose bumps to rise on Maddy’s skin. Maybe it was the drop in temperature near the cool water and the misty air. Or maybe it was the vulnerable feeling of being watched that wouldn’t leave her. The jagged and jumbled stones at the base of The Falls mirrored the tumultuous landscape of her emotions.

She’d heard the gurgle of waterfalls likened to the sound of laughter, but in the shadowed glade she thought the water over the rocks sounded like incessant whispers whose meaning she couldn’t fathom.

She took the picture of The Falls from her pocket and looked at it. She wanted to position herself where her stepsister had been when the photograph was taken. A large stone at the midway point of The Falls’s drop was too rounded and covered by slimy moss to be a safe perch, but Maddy determined it had to have been where Gracie had stood to capture the shot.

Thankful for her lug-soled boots, Maddy stepped her way from one slick stone to another, surrounded by sibilant whispers of water that splashed against the rocks and further slicked her shoes. The water shooshed, shivered and shied along its path only to disperse in a misty explosion of chaos on the rocks below.

Finally, she held herself and her breath on the large stone where Gracie must have stood a year ago. Metallic mist coated her skin and her hair, causing tendrils to curl damply around her face. She looked up at the top of The Falls to try to see beyond the landscape, knowing her stepsister wouldn’t have been here for the view.

The whispers seemed to grow louder here and more distinct. The noise was almost physical. It joined with the mist on her skin and seemed to trickle into her ears.

Always.

The water seemed to whisper the word always again and again in a chorus that ran together. Trying to decipher the sounds made her dizzy.

Alwaysalwaysalwayssssss.

The heavy iron taint in the water coating her skin made her taste blood in the back of her throat. One particularly deep hole below her swirled with a cyclone of water. She had looked at it long enough to feel the suction of gravity. Her head became light and her body grew heavier and heavier..

Always.

She heard it and believed it wholly for several seconds, and for some reason that belief syphoned all her energy until she was left weak and teetering on her already sketchy footing.

“Madeline.”

Her name, her full name, startled her, and her chest expanded in a gasp of sudden respiration. Even as her name called her back from the strange weakness that seemed to claim her and call her to the rocks below, the precarious position she held gave way because of her infinitesimal movement.

She slipped.

She would have fallen.

Into the chilled and whispering water and onto the unforgiving sharp peaks of the rocks.

But strong hands grabbed her wrist and pulled her the other direction onto the mossy bank—not only onto the ground—but also full and flush against a tall masculine form that smelled of woodsy cologne.

And tasted of espresso.

It was madness to kiss a man she didn’t know and couldn’t trust.

It happened anyway. It was sudden and quick and she didn’t push him away. His lips were warm compared with hers because she’d been standing in the cold mist rising from The Falls. She’d gone weak looking at the cyclone of water being sucked into the deep hole beneath her feet as she listened to the constant hissing. It happened again in Constantine’s arms. Her head went light and she allowed the kiss to happen. Their tongues met for the briefest touch of textures and tastes before it was over as quick as it had begun.

And not once had she made a conscious decision to kiss him.

It had happened as if someone else controlled her lips, though her desires had been all her own.

“Do you have any idea how many people have fallen off those stones…or jumped?” Sheriff Constantine asked.

Maddy couldn’t move. He held her tightly with a grip too fierce for the current situation, but that wasn’t why. She couldn’t move because even to step away meant brushing against him, sliding out of his arms—skin on skin—and she was very busy not moving, not breathing, not feeling his strong, warm body against hers even as her lips tingled with the memory of his tongue.

She didn’t know why they had kissed. She didn’t know why she’d almost fallen before he’d said her name.

He was all hard muscle and tense sinew. Every flexed inch of his six feet plus form. And there was no ignoring it with her body held to his by such muscular arms.

But she tried.

She pressed her lips together and tried.

The situation was eerie even as her physical response to Sheriff Constantine was very real and very raw.

“I told you to be careful, and instead you decide to visit one of the most dangerous spots in town,” Constantine said.

He said it into her hair with his lips perilously close to her mist-dampened forehead, his warm breath fanning across her cool skin.

“You saw the photographs,” Maddy said.

“Yes. I saw them,” he replied.

That was all. No explanation or excuse for him being the main subject.

“I had to walk where she’d walked. I should have come here before now,” Maddy said. “But I was in limbo—waiting, hoping but already grieving.”

“Wandering here alone…leaving your doors unlocked…not sharing evidence…” Constantine said. “You told me you’d be careful. You lied.”

Maddy took the risk of pulling out of his arms, quickly, to minimize the sensation of her body sliding from his. He let her go, loosening his hold so she didn’t have to exert any effort beyond merely stepping away. And for some reason it was damn hard even though she should have been eager to extend the distance all the way out of town.

“Did you follow me?” she asked. No one knew she was here. Had the same been true of Gracie? Had Gracie been followed to The Falls only to never be seen alive again?

“I came here because of the photograph I saw in your room yesterday,” Constantine said. He didn’t mention the other photographs. The ones of him. Over and over, again and again.

“Did you know Gracie?” Maddy asked. It was blunt. It was reckless. She might be prodding a dangerous man.

“Your stepsister had very determined, unusual beliefs. Some of them involved the house I’ve rented for several years. For a couple of weeks last summer, I knew her. She was stalking me,” Constantine said. He rested his hands on his hips.

Maddy’s face heated even in the cool misty air. She’d seen the evidence of her stepsister’s obsession. Worse, she knew Gracie had a relentless reputation for getting the shots her employers desired.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved when she left me alone, but I always believed she’d left to chase some other ghost story,” Constantine said.

“She never would have left without her camera,” Maddy said.

“People leave Scarlet Falls all the time. It wasn’t unusual to have her pass through and away. You. Staying. That’s been the mystery,” Constantine said. His eyes narrowed and focused on her face.

“I lost Gracie, once, a long time ago. When my mom died and my stepfather decided he didn’t like the constant reminder of Mom he saw in me. I left home at seventeen. I left Gracie. And she never got over Mom’s death. Her mother had died when she was born. My mother was the only mom she ever knew. Maybe she would have recovered from Mom’s death if I’d been around or if her father hadn’t grieved so relentlessly,” Maddy said. “We reconnected about six months before she came here and disappeared. I wasn’t ready to lose her again.”

Maddy’s throat tightened and her eyes burned but she didn’t shed any tears. They were acidic against the tender base of her eyelashes, but she held them there.

Constantine watched her swallow down her emotion and then shove her hands into her pockets.

She brought out the picture of The Falls and gave it to him while it whispered behind them in real time. She tried not to hear what she’d heard before.

“This was the only photograph she took while she was in Scarlet Falls that wasn’t of you,” Maddy said.

He took it, his fingers lightly brushing hers. They didn’t discuss the kiss. How could they? It had been as impossible as her growing faint from watching a waterfall. But she noticed his inadvertent touch. Casual, yet still electric.

“She was strangled, Madeline. Probably at the time of her disappearance,” the sheriff said.

He was haunted. Even if she didn’t believe in the kind of ghosts that Gracie believed in, she would have to be blind not to see that the sheriff was definitely trailed by ghosts. Was it unsolved cases that wouldn’t let him go…or darker things?

And why kiss her here? Now?

Worse than that, why had she kissed him back, and why was she still savoring the flavor of him on her tongue?

Her gaze held William Constantine’s. She didn’t verbally express her doubts and fears in him, but he had to see them swirling behind her eyes.

He took a step toward her, narrowing what was already a marginal distance between them on the shadowy bank of the waterfall’s stream.

Maddy didn’t back away.

There was nowhere for her to go but down onto the rocky rapids below.

Constantine tilted his face to hers, coming close enough for her to imagine narrowing the gap that remained herself. Crazily, she wanted to. She wanted the warmth of his espresso-flavored mouth to chase the chill bite of The Falls away. And this time, this desire was all her. She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t dizzy. She was drawn to him against her better judgment.

“I’ll find the person who killed her. You only need to worry about staying safe,” he said.

She couldn’t interpret his words. They could have been a threat, a promise or something in between.

Just then a disturbance of leaves and moisture rained down on them from above and a loud raspy caw sounded, echoing around them.

Constantine stepped between her and the noise, to shield her or nudge her closer to the edge, she couldn’t be sure.

She dug in her heels and looked up. They both looked up. A large crow sat on the branch of an oak tree surrounded by dry rattling leaves. It cawed again, stretching out its neck and opening its impressively sharp beak.

“A forensics team will be here shortly. We’re going to comb the area,” Constantine said. He barely looked at the bird. Maddy paid it closer attention, feeling more stalked than before.

Constantine had straightened, and she was no longer torn between tasting his lips or her own tears.

The water behind her was only water. The kiss had been a natural reaction to their chemistry and her charged emotions. She didn’t believe in ghosts.

“In that case, I’ll get out of the way,” Maddy said.

If Scarlet Falls was haunted, it was haunted by nothing more than an unsolved crime.

But she did wonder which watcher caused her spine to tingle the most as she walked away—the crow or the man?