Saturday, 6:30 p.m.
They started to arrive right on time.
Mayor Lawton came first, then Underwood. More followed.
Alone or in pairs, never in a group large enough to be noticed on the street, they’d smile at anyone passing by, then carefully make their way into a private side door of a building that was supposed to be closed for the weekend. The building, which provided office suites to a number of attorneys, investment types, and accountants, apparently also offered after-hours meeting space for some of its wealthy tenants.
Chief Jack Dunston watched them from his window-front table at the restaurant directly across the street. He’d specifically requested the spot, because of this view. Spending a long time looking at the menu and ordering slowly, he’d spread out his meal as long as he could.
Ignoring everyone else in the crowded place, which was popular with business lunch customers during the week and laughing young adults looking to hook up on Saturday nights, he took out a notepad and pencil and began jotting down names. He knew all of them by sight. Most he’d expected to be there. A few surprised him.
What he didn’t know was how many more would show up, how they might know each other, and, most important, why they were here. Why did these men gather at this building the second Saturday of every month? Were they the mysterious “club” his own officers sometimes talked about?
“So, Chief, will that be it for the night? Would you like me to bring you your check?” his waitress asked, startling him into covering up his notes with his arm.
“Uh, give me a little while, okay?” he said, offering her a big, aww-shucks smile. “I might want some dessert.”
“You got it,” she said before sauntering away.
He immediately peered out the window again, seeing two more men go through that door. Young and Wilhelm. He added their names to the list, which had grown to about twelve. Twelve men who he wouldn’t think had much in common, beyond being respected around these parts. What the newspaper owner and the bank manager had in common with teachers and administrators, he had no idea.
One of them glanced around, his gaze falling on the front of this very place. Though he almost certainly couldn’t be seen through the window, Jack pulled back instinctively, not wanting them to know he was spying on them.
Though he’d known about these meetings, he’d never given them a second thought. Jack had noticed the once-a-month pattern—no matter what anybody might think about him as a chief, he did pay attention. He’d seen some of the successful men of this town coming together at this place, on certain nights of the month, and then leaving together in a big rented van. He’d never questioned it, never asked them why. He’d certainly never spied on them before.
But he had noticed.
Just like he’d noticed how nervous and jittery they sometimes got, especially back when those articles had been published in the paper.
Did he think some of the most respected men of Granville had anything to do with the disappearance of a bunch of Boro girls? Hell no. Not a chance. But he didn’t doubt they were up to something. He had the feeling they feared too much attention about those missing girls could cast a glimmer of light on whatever they were trying to hide in the shadows.
Until now, he hadn’t really cared about being left out of the loop. Lately, though, it had started to bug him. Maybe because he’d been embarrassed, caught with his pants down in the paper and again at the game last night. Maybe because of the bruises on that reporter’s throat—the woman might be a pain in the ass, but she was only doing her job. And he sure didn’t want to think people were really getting attacked on the streets of Granville in broad daylight, no matter what neighborhood they were in.
He was losing control of this town. And that he didn’t like most of all.
No matter what anyone thought, and no matter how much he liked getting that wad of cash in his porch fridge, Jack Dunston would never ignore actual murder.
That might not be related to this.
But he suspected it was. Something was going on with those secretive men across the street. Something dark and ugly going on here in Granville. The small bag of bones locked inside his desk at the station told him that much. He’d let himself believe they didn’t—couldn’t possibly—belong to a human being. But he’d since begun to wonder.
“So have you decided on dessert, Chief? The carrot cake is awful good!”
Jack didn’t respond at first, merely watching as the big passenger van pulled into the parking lot across the street, just like always. He couldn’t see who was driving, but was able to make out a couple of shapes in the passenger seats, even before anyone from the building got in.
He wondered who those shapes belonged to.
The men began to emerge from the building, heading for the van. They were on the move, on schedule to leave right around seven p.m. Going to do whatever it was they did one Saturday a month.
He could stay here and eat a piece of cake. Maybe feel the mayor out tomorrow, hint that he’d seen activity in the building and wonder aloud what was going on. Or he could be a cop and follow them.
He thought of the cake. He thought of the cash.
He thought of the bruises. He thought of the bones.
Finally he said, “Tell you what, why don’t you wrap up a piece for me to take along. I just remembered, I have somewhere to be.”
And, he thought, someone to be.
Granville’s chief of police.
Saturday, 7:15 p.m.
It was full dark by the time they found the house.
Aidan had driven Lexie up and down the Old Terrytown Road, pulling into a few overgrown, nearly forgotten driveways, checking out ruins that appeared to have been untouched by human hands for decades. There had been no recent tire tracks, no footprints, no signs of life. When they’d shone flashlights through the hanging doors or broken window frames, they’d seen rotting wood, half-fallen walls, nests left by wintering animals long since gone. The insides of the structures appeared far too flimsy and decayed to house any secret meetings.
They had been about to give up, ready to go back and pick up the others, who were still searching for human remains in the reeds and woods, when his phone had signaled he had a text message. It had been Julia, with some advice from Morgan: Head back this way, go another quarter-mile from where you are now. The driveway is intentionally concealed by a downed tree.
And they’d found it. Right where Julia’s ghostly friend had said they would.
“I would never have even realized this place was back here,” Lexie whispered, visibly shaken.
He had the feeling she hadn’t quite accepted Morgan’s existence. Now she was beginning to understand. The dead guy wasn’t always reliable, sometimes disappearing when Julia seemed to need him most. But whenever he came back, he always had excellent information. He was already two-for-two today.
“The way that driveway is hidden, we never would have found it,” she added.
“Which is exactly what they intended when they put that huge tree down.”
It had been hollow. And easily moved, once he’d known to look for it.
There were no “Private Property” or “No Trespassing” signs. Nor did any kind of fence or chain try to keep people out. The men who used this place didn’t want anyone thinking there was any property worth trespassing on deep in these woods, so they’d simply made all evidence of its existence disappear.
“Who would ever have imagined this was back here?”
This was an elegant old plantation house. The exterior almost fully intact, it stood about three hundred feet off the main road, behind a thick stand of thorny, dense trees, all decorated with tangles of Spanish moss as twisted and gray as an old terrorist’s beard.
The two-storied structure, graced with columns and also with wide verandahs on both the bottom and top floors, had once been white. And it had once been beautiful.
Time and neglect had dulled the house to a mottled gray—the color most resembling a corpse’s skin on this moonlit night. Moss and vines had encircled it in a thick, woodsy embrace. Runners clambered in all directions, climbing toward the sky, looking like veins pulsing with green blood.
Though no longer conventionally beautiful, the place remained darkly stunning. Mesmerizing, in fact. Unnatural and mysterious, the old plantation had seemed to become one with the woods at some point over the past century, as if the Georgia earth had reclaimed the land on which it stood, and the old house along with it.
Lexie said something else, but Aidan didn’t answer; he couldn’t. Because he had a hard time hearing her. His mind had opened up as soon as they’d rounded a curve and spied the house. The tension had grown exponentially when they’d driven past several small, decrepit buildings that he suspected had once served as slave quarters.
Something in him had known, intuitively, that they’d found what they’d been seeking. The pounding in his head and the pressure in his chest couldn’t be denied. He wasn’t sure why yet, but already he felt this haunting place was tainted, so ripe with evil and ugliness, it might as well have come equipped with a poison sign.
Poisoned earth.
Knowing there was much to discover, he’d let the connection happen, anxious to learn any secrets hidden in this strange, desolate hideaway. Now, parked right outside the front door, he heard a cacophony of whispers that lingered here, hanging in the air like the remnants of a woman’s perfume after she had passed through a room.
There were so many voices. Dozens. Hundreds. Each sharing thoughts, moments, memories, emotions.
None sounded like they were from today and he would bet anything not a single soul was currently inside that house. These thoughts and memories didn’t feel immediate; they were weeks, months, years, and centuries old.
But they were still vivid. They hit him hard. Jerking back in the seat, he didn’t fight it. He kept his body relaxed and flowed with the sensations, knowing they weren’t his, weren’t personal, and couldn’t harm him physically. This wasn’t his version of reality; it belonged to countless other people who’d come to this place before him.
His eyes dropping closed, his breathing became shallow and open-mouthed. He pushed back against the pressure, finally breaking free of it. Getting that flying sensation as his consciousness spewed up and over the entire area like a geyser, he began to search, seeking answers, or at least entrances into the past.
Beside him, Lexie’s worry grew to something almost tangible, and he knew she was watching, fearful, wondering if she should do something. But he couldn’t tell her he was all right, couldn’t let her know this was his version of normal. He just had to ride it out.
Feeling like he was being pummeled by tiny pebbles, he tried to evade the impressions that wouldn’t help him. He began to pick and choose the remnants, discarding the wispy, self-indulgent thoughts of Southern belles in their ball gowns, and the heartbreaking ones of the slaves who’d once worked the place. He ignored the smells of the fields and unwashed bodies, evaded the painful lash of the whip. Aidan didn’t let himself think about it or acknowledge just how doomed to darkness and suffering this genteel, lovely estate had been from the moment it had been conceived.
He moved forward, swirling through time, pushing on into decay and silence, when the grand old dwelling had been abandoned and the trees had thickened and closed in around it. A little further—memories of curious children, vandals, thieves. Breaking glass and falling beams. And every so often, rough male voices, as if despite the abandonment, over the decades the place had often been used by men looking to abuse women.
Finally, he entered a recent time. Modern. He heard ugly, cruel laughter and loud, twangy music. Smelled sweat and sex.
And he burned. For an infinitesimal second, he felt like his feet were being held over an open flame, his skin melting off his bones, though he had noticed no burned remnants or other evidence of fire.
A man’s voice, raucous and deafening, confirmed he had arrived in the present day. Aidan’s instinctive reaction was to lift his hands to his ears. Of course, that wouldn’t block out something that existed only as a memory inside his mind. Besides, he had to listen. He needed to.
Woo-whee, boys, would you look at that one? Look at those titties. Nothin’ store-bought about ’em. No plastic surgeon ever made anything so fine. Girl, come on over here and show my son here what you got between your pretty little legs.
Other voices joined in, talking about their delight in their oh-so-special club. Laughter and brutal lust made animals of men the world probably saw as decent. They’d been here a hundred and fifty years later, but the words and tone sounded the same as the echoes from the slave quarters.
These monsters had passed along their warped tastes to their own sons, keeping the cruelty alive generation after generation.
He groaned, overwhelmed by a sense of fear that had consumed that nameless, faceless girl, knowing why she was afraid. She had been abused—slapped, pushed, and dragged. Rough hands had torn at her clothes and forced her down. Anguish overwhelmed her.
Someone else’s tears burned Aidan’s eyes; another person’s screams wanted to erupt from his mouth.
He couldn’t do this for much longer.
“Vonnie,” he whispered, certain the key to her disappearance was here, needing to find it.
A new voice intruded, and suddenly it all became clear.
He’d already found her.
Mama, why? Why’d you do this to me? Please. No, please, don’t touch me! I don’t want to. Don’t make me! That hurts, oh God, Mama!
His eyes flew open as Vonnie’s voice—and everything else—disappeared. Aidan stared forward, unseeing. All the sounds, the words and impressions settled into place in his mind, forming a picture, one he knew would never leave him. Just as the echoes of her tearful, girlish pleas would never leave him.
He understood now, saw the complete truth of this secret club and the men who came here. Saw what they wanted and what they did and who they did it to. They’d done it to Vonnie Jackson, long before she’d disappeared.
God, had that poor kid never had a happy day in her entire life?
“Aidan?” Lexie whispered. She reached for him, putting a hand on his arm, pulling back when she felt his undeniably tense body. He couldn’t stop fisting and unfisting his hands, filled with anger he was desperate to release, as he’d released it against that thug in the alley earlier. Not at her, of course. God, no. But at the men whose voices he’d just heard.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Taking a few deep, steady breaths, he nodded. His pounding heart slowed and he forced himself to relax, release his fingers, unclench his muscles. “Yeah.”
“What happened?”
Huh. He couldn’t explain it in a million years. Not to anyone, not even her, whose mind had melded with his the previous night. He didn’t know that he could find the words to describe what it was like to have hundreds of voices all talking in his head at once. Especially when those voices had revealed some of the ugliest, most vicious memories of their lives, things that would confirm the worst pessimist’s opinion of the vileness of the human race.
Sometimes, his ability was a punishment more than anything else. There were things he’d rather have gone to his grave not knowing. He desperately wanted to take a shower to wash clean the filth and corruption that seemed stuck to him now, as if he’d walked into a huge spider web and its stringy remnants clung to every inch of him.
Let it go. You know what to do.
He counted backward from a hundred, concentrating on the present, pushing all the rest away. There was only now, only this, only people to help, not sadness for those he couldn’t.
The one sure way he was ever able to get past something so traumatic was to focus on the good he did with his ability. The lost people he’d found, the terrified families to whom he’d provided answers and given closure.
He knew he could do at least one more good thing with it—find out what had happened to Vonnie and all the other missing girls who, he now suspected, had been subjected to the same pain, degradation, and rape.
Finally, he was able to move completely past it, his mind clearing and his fury dissipating. He no longer had to fight for control, for peace. He simply attained it between one breath and the next, the promise of doing something about what he’d heard—attaining justice—bringing him completely back to himself.
Beside him, Lexie was staring out the window, gazing at the moon-brightened shadows of the wind-whipped trees dancing across the front of the house. “This is the place, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We found the clubhouse.”
“How can something intended to be so lovely,” she whispered, “be so awful?”
“More awful than you can possibly imagine,” he replied, shaking his head slowly. “We should go. We need to pick up the others and bring them back here.”
She nodded, not asking any more questions, as if knowing he was simply incapable of answering them. “Good idea. That house is too big for just the two of us to explore.”
True. But that hadn’t been why he’d decided they needed to go get Julia, Mick, and Olivia.
He’d be willing to bet that old building contained an updated room—or several—probably lit by generator power, which contained all the modern conveniences sexual sadists would need. Bad enough for him, or Lexie, or anyone else to be exposed to any object in that room. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Mick, who, with a single ungloved touch, would see exactly how those objects had been used in the past. And who’d used them.
Hearing had been bad enough. Seeing it was more than he could stomach. But that was Mick’s gig, the reason he’d come here.
Even more disturbing, though, would be if they did find any human remains, Jessie Leonard’s or anybody else’s. Because then it would be Olivia’s turn to touch. Worse, it would be Olivia’s turn to take the place of the victim and feel everything she’d felt, for the last one hundred and thirty seconds of her life.
God, what an awful, dark power.
Olivia Wainwright had died many deaths in the two years that he’d known her. The quiet woman had been stabbed, shot, strangled, and drowned. Brutalized. He found it amazing she hadn’t ended up in a psych ward. Or—considering he sometimes wondered if being completely drenched in so much pain and death wouldn’t drive a weaker person to suicide—in the morgue.
Not Olivia. Instead, she kept coming to work every day, trying to solve those murders, help the people whose final two minutes and ten seconds she’d shared.
It shouldn’t come to that tonight, however. He doubted they’d find any remains. Not because he didn’t think any murders could have been committed in this place, but because he assumed anybody who’d committed them would have disposed of the evidence. There might be shallow graves on the property, but they wouldn’t find them in the dark.
Tomorrow, hopefully, Derek, the other EA agent, would be able to come down and help them out. Because if anyone had endured a bad death here, Derek Monahan would know it. He’d see it, would be able to watch the victim reenacting his or her own murder, again and again, at the very spot where it had occurred. Not a ghost, really, merely the imprint—the photocopy—that had been made on the world through an act of explosive violence.
Aidan didn’t doubt there would be something to see. This place, so coldly beautiful, but as wicked and corrupt as a prettily decorated chamber of hell, had definitely enjoyed its share of violence. Aidan knew that. He’d heard it and had felt its malevolence.
Funny, how all their abilities would be so important here. Mick could touch something and know it had been used in a killing. Aidan could sense death. Derek could see it, Olivia could experience it. And Julia interacted with it on a daily basis.
Every single one of those abilities would come into play. He’d found a place where each member of the Extrasensory Agents team would do what he or she did best.
Now he just had to get them all here.
Saturday, 7:35 p.m.
The area where they’d left Aidan’s colleagues shortly before dusk wasn’t far from the old house they’d found. Not in mileage, anyway. But as Lexie and Aidan drove down the hidden lane toward the main road, the tree limbs scraping the roof of his SUV like a dead man’s fingernails out of some campfire horror story, she found herself wishing they had farther to go. A lot farther.
She didn’t want to go back there. She definitely didn’t want to go inside that house.
She had never once thought of herself as being any more perceptive than the average person. Smarter than some, yeah, though not as smart as others. But in terms of instinctively knowing something was bad just because of a sensation in her bones or a crawling on the back of her neck, no. At least, not until tonight.
“Somebody should have torn it down decades ago,” she whispered, watching in the passenger-side mirror as they rounded a bend and the house finally disappeared behind them.
He said nothing, merely reaching for her hand in the darkness, confirming what she already knew. Whatever he’d seen, or sensed about that place, it had been beyond awful.
“Is Vonnie in there?” she had to ask, her throat as thick and tight with emotion as it was because of the pain and bruises. “Are we going back to find her body?” And the bodies of all those other girls?
“No, Lex, she’s not there, though I’m certain she was. At least a couple of years ago, I believe.” A muscle in his jaw flexed, and she saw the anger that had seemed about to overwhelm him a few minutes ago when he’d been in that strange, frightening trance.
“The killer brought her here?”
He shook his head.
“The club,” she said, at last understanding.
“Yeah.”
“You know what it is?”
“I know.” He sneered. “They call themselves the Hellfire Club. Good name for the bastards since I have no doubt they’ll burn in hell.”
He only hoped its flames were as painfully hot as they’d felt during those scant seconds when he’d felt them licking at his own feet.
“How do the girls come into it?” she asked, though she suspected she already knew.
“These club members are sexual deviants, or sadists, all with a taste for teenage girls. It looks as though they bring three, maybe four of them out here at a time every month or so. A dozen or more grown men spend the night sharing them, doing things to them that no decent person would ever do to another one.” His profile, stark in the moonlight, appeared as hard and immoveable as a marble statue. “It’s . . . depraved.”
For a second, she thought she would vomit. Reaching for the controls, she pushed a button to send the window gliding down, needing a rush of cool evening air on her face.
He had one more piece of information to share. “I can’t say nobody has ever died in that house, but I didn’t get any sense that murder is part of these men’s repertoire. For them, it’s all about rough, degrading sex with underage girls.”
Lexie put her head back against the headrest, letting the ugly ramifications sink in.
She’d known more than ten teenagers had gone missing, had probably been killed. And she’d believed there was a killer at large. Now, though, the scope had just grown exponentially.
A dozen men. Three or four girls at a time. Every month. For years.
They could be talking about a hundred or more rape or molestation victims here.
She pounded the side of one fist against her door, so overcome with anger and disgust, she just needed to hit something. “Oh, no, nothing bad could ever happen here in perfect little Granville,” she snarled, mimicking the locals who’d been so angry about her articles. “I fucking hate small towns.”
“Savannah’s seeming more and more like heaven the longer I live here,” he admitted.
“Or New York. You don’t see people there throwing blankets over their heads, ignoring murder and abuse, pretending they live in a place that’s much too nice for anything bad to ever take place.”
Maybe she’d leave. Maybe when this was over, she’d say to hell with it and get outta Dodge. Her house was rented, so there was no property to worry about. She had only a few friends. And, other than getting to work with Walter, she couldn’t say she loved anything about her job anymore. Picking up and taking off sounded better all the time.
It took a while in the darkness, but after a couple of minutes, they reached the end of the dusty private driveway. “Maybe I should pull the log back into position,” he said, hesitating before pulling out onto the main road. “I should have done it before, just didn’t think of it since I wasn’t sure this would be the place.”
“We’re less than a mile from Julia and the others. You really think somebody’s going to notice in the next five minutes that it’s not where it’s supposed to be?”
He hesitated, then shrugged in apology. “Sorry, I don’t like to take chances.” Pulling the vehicle out and then onto the shoulder, he said, “Wait here.”
Aidan exited and jogged back to the log, which looked massive and heavy but, he said, was easily moved. Shoving it across the lane, he was back in his seat within a minute. He’d just buckled up as a pair of headlights came into view, heading toward them, away from town.
“Close,” he said. A few seconds earlier and those headlights would have spotlighted him shoving at a downed tree in the middle of nowhere.
Shifting the SUV into drive, he pulled out onto the road just as the oncoming vehicle, a large passenger van, blew past them going well above the speed limit.
“Hope Julia, Mick, and Olivia have been staying well off the road,” Lexie said, frowning as she turned and watched the van’s taillights disappear. “Even with their flashlights, some idiot going seventy on a country road might not spot them.”
Glancing over, she realized Aidan wasn’t listening. A dark, forbidding frown tugging at his brow, he appeared in the grip of another of those strange trances he’d been in a few minutes ago at the house.
“Aidan,” she snapped. Realizing they were drifting into the oncoming lane, and another pair of headlights was heading for them, she raised her voice. “Pull over!”
He shook his head, hard, his hands jerking a little on the steering wheel, swerving the SUV back into their lane. “Damn,” he muttered, sounding out of breath and shocked.
“Did it happen again?”
He nodded once. “I started hearing those voices all over again. I didn’t go looking for them. I’d never do that while driving.” His voice shook. “I’m so sorry, Lex. I can usually control this. Guess touching the log again put me more in tune with the voices I’d heard, of the men who’d touched it before.”
“It’s okay. We’re both fine.”
He swallowed visibly, admitting in a low voice, “That house shook me up. It has some seriously bad karma.”
“I know.” Unable to help it, she had to admit, “I hate the thought of going inside.”
“So maybe we shouldn’t,” he told her. As she started to protest, he held up a hand. “Not tonight, I mean. It’s going to be pitch-black inside and even if there is a generator, as I suspect, we won’t be able to fire it up and turn on any lights without potentially letting somebody know we’re in there snooping around.”
“What about flashlights?”
He hesitated, as if trying to figure out how to put what he was thinking into words.
“What we do, what everyone on the team does, is very precise,” he finally said. “We all open ourselves up to some pretty intense situations every single day. Doing it in the dark, in a place like that, when we can’t entirely control what we’re touching, or what we might stumble over that could trigger a response . . . well, there are risks involved. Look at what happened just now, even after I thought I had shut it out.”
She thought about that, the way the evil aura of the place had actually reached out and gripped him again, even when he was driving away from it. They could have been in an accident, and another trip to the local ER was not on her to-do list. Neither was getting killed.
“There they are,” he said, nodding toward Julia, Mick, and Olivia, whose flashlights were visible just up ahead. “Let me run this by them and we’ll decide as a group, okay?”
Fair enough. If Aidan had thought there was any chance Vonnie was in that house, or that going into it tonight might help them find her, she had no doubt he’d insist on doing it. That he didn’t was both disappointing and a bit of a relief. Disappointing, because she had been hoping, deep inside, that they might actually find the missing girl at the whispered-about clubhouse.
Relieved because, as little as she wanted to go in that place at any time, doing it at night was something she just didn’t want to contemplate. Not now, not after the day she’d had.
Within another few minutes, Aidan’s three friends were back in the car. Insisting that Lexie remain where she was, Mick took a seat beside Julia in the back.
Aidan didn’t turn the vehicle around, but he didn’t head toward town right away, either. Instead, parked on the shoulder, he told them all that they’d discovered, and what he thought they should do about it.
Julia immediately agreed. “There’s nobody alive in that house,” she said, as if she’d already gotten an inside tip. “We’d go in looking for clues, not a missing person, and it’s too easy to miss something in the dark.”
“He’s sure?” Aidan asked, obviously realizing Julia had been talking to her ghost.
The dark-haired woman nodded.
Lexie, who’d been wondering about something, had to ask, “If your, um, friend can find houses and know who is or isn’t in them, why can’t he just go find Vonnie?” She wasn’t being snide, or disbelieving, she genuinely wanted to know.
“Like anyone else, Morgan needs a starting place, something to go on,” Julia explained, earnest and serious. She hadn’t taken offense at the question. “He found that house because he knew you were looking for one in this vicinity. Just like he found you because he knew roughly where you were. If we had a couple of possibilities where Vonnie might be, he could certainly check them out. But a whole town? Impossible.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling a little better about leaving without going deep into the creepy clubhouse for monsters tonight.
After hearing Julia’s information, and everything Aidan had to share about the house—and how it had affected him—they all agreed to head back to town. Julia and the others would go back to Savannah and return in the morning, hopefully with someone named Derek.
“It’s just as well we’re waiting until the morning. It really wouldn’t be a good thing for me to go stumbling around in the dark, touching things I don’t need to touch,” said Mick as they got underway. “I could get caught up in the history of an old broken teapot and get completely distracted from what we’re supposed to be doing.”
Lexie turned in her seat, looking back at the three psychic detectives. Aidan had told her nothing about what they did, or how they did it, and Mick’s words were her first clue about his ability. “You can touch something and know how it’s been used?” she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
Mick nodded. “And who used it, when, and where.”
His constant gloves now made complete sense. “That’s pretty interesting.”
“It’s a good party trick,” the man said with a grin. “Used to be a big hit on the carnival sideshow circuit.” Closing his eyes, he lifted his hand, placing the back of it on his forehead. In a chanty, fortune-teller’s voice, he added, “I see that this matchbook was used to light a cigarette for a woman in black. A woman you had dinner with when your wife thought you were at a meeting.” Dropping his hand, he added, “Unfortunately, I didn’t get much repeat business.”
She had to chuckle, surprised she was even capable of it after today, but incredibly relieved at how good it felt, even if her throat hurt a little every time she swallowed.
The others were smiling, too, including Aidan, who said, “Don’t even try to tell us you didn’t find some way to use your act to pick up women.”
“Not at first,” Mick replied with an innocent shrug, “considering I was only six.”
Lexie took a second to be shocked by that, the knowledge that this man had been put in some kind of sideshow act as a child. Nobody else seemed fazed, so they’d already known.
“But once I hit high school age?” the man added. “Hell, yeah, groups of giggly girls would come in and I’d do everything I could to get their attention.”
Julia smirked. “How many of them threw their bras on stage?”
Mick’s smile broadened, which caused Olivia, Julia, and Lexie to make, “Ew!” sounds.
“Only time I was ever able to touch something and see the future,” Mick said. “My future.”
More groans from the women, though she suspected easygoing Mick was just messing around. Something about the way he kept his hands curled together on his lap told her that his verbal openness was an intentional act to counter his physical isolation.
Fortunately, the other man’s joke had Aidan laughing, looking completely relaxed and at ease. If she hadn’t already liked these friends of his, she would have just for that. She’d seen glimpses of the real man beneath the gruff, all-black-wearing exterior. That real man was especially in evidence when he let his guard down, as he did around these people. And, she had to admit, even around her. It was like they were all unified on some team, and she felt more a part of this group than she had with any other during the six years she’d lived in Granville.
“What about you, Olivia?” Lexie asked the quiet, golden-haired woman, whose ability was the only one that remained a mystery. “What do you do?”
Olivia stared back at her, her smile remaining where it was—not widening, but not disappearing either. Still, there was something a little sad about her. Though not as forbidding as Aidan had been at first, she definitely didn’t seem the type to invite people to ask questions.
Lexie was about to apologize for being nosy when the woman answered. As if admitting she occasionally forgot to take out the trash, Olivia said, “What Mick does with things, I do with humans. He touches objects and knows their history. I touch corpses and feel how they died.”
Feel, as in experience? God.
Lexie snagged her bottom lip between her teeth, wishing she’d minded her own business. There was no laughter this time. How could there be?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was none of my business.”
“Thought people in your profession made everything their business,” Julia said, staring at her, though more in an assessing way than a judgmental one. Considering the woman was Aidan’s friend, and was therefore probably fully aware of what he’d gone through last year, Lexie didn’t blame her. In fact, she liked her for her loyalty.
Aidan answered before she could say a word. “Lexie’s not your average reporter.”
“Oh, we’re calling them reporters again?” Julie asked, her tone sharp but amused, as if she and Aidan were sharing some private joke. “Not ‘lying, manipulative media cockroaches’?”
Gaping, Lexie stared at the man behind the wheel.
He shrugged uncomfortably, but she’d swear a hint of a grin was teasing those masculine lips. “That was before I met you. And to be fair, since we’ve known each other, you have called me cranky, callous, cowardly, and an asshole,” he pointed out.
“Keep score much? Besides, I didn’t call you an asshole. I said I was thinking about you as a bucket full of assholes when you slammed the door in my face.”
The others in the back were silent for a second; then all three of them began to laugh, soft at first, then louder, desperately needing it after the tension of the day.
Mick seemed the most amused. “You’d better watch out, my friend. You are never going to get the last word with this one.”
“I like her, Aidan!” Julia said.
Even Olivia’s reserve seemed to have melted and her eyes twinkled merrily in the dimly lit vehicle. “How long, exactly, have you two known each other?”
Lexie and Aidan answered in unison, exactly the same words, at exactly the same moment. “Fifty-two hours.”
Julia gaped. “Not thinking about each other too much, huh?”
That made everyone laugh again. Embarrassment warming her cheeks, Lexie faced front, staring out the window as they came into town. For the entire evening, she’d been focused on the story, the case, and hadn’t thought too much about what had happened between her and Aidan.
Now she did, unable to think of much else. There was a lot to dwell on: The dream. The embraces. The tender words. The connection that had started immediately, and solidified with every hour they’d spent together.
Nothing like it had ever happened to her before.
Physically, in terms of pure sexual attraction, she’d have wanted to go home with Aidan McConnell if they’d just met in a bar. Sparks had danced between them from the very first, and she’d been aware of his sexual appeal from the moment she’d laid eyes on him.
But it was more than that. They’d known each other for such a short time, but she already knew whatever was happening between them wouldn’t be resolved with a simple one-night stand. The attraction wouldn’t be extinguished once it was satisfied, it would only build.
It was too much to digest. Especially under the watchful eyes of his observant friends. Hardly fair, really, to get involved with a guy who palled around with psychics and mind readers and, well, whatever Olivia was.
Involved. Funny word. But it fit. They were involved, whether either of them had intended it or not. It was a done deal; even the three near strangers in the backseat knew it.
The only thing she didn’t know was how Aidan felt about it. Seventy-two hours ago he’d been a growling, semi-retired loner. Now he was hip deep in a case, surrounded by people, and engaging in flirtatious banter with her, a woman who worked in a profession he hated and didn’t have, as he called it, an off switch between brain and mouth.
They were nothing alike, completely mismatched, and absolutely wrong for each other in every way. And yet.
And yet.
They were involved.
Saturday, 10:10 p.m.
Like most of the teenagers in Granville, the Kirby twins had spent a good bit of Saturday talking about the previous night’s game. Or, at least, the half-time portion of it, when students from both schools had taken a stand in defiance of their coaches and teachers, demanding attention and justice for Vonnie.
It had been incredibly cool. It had also been Taylor’s idea, and she was proud of herself for having thought of it. Jenny had participated, too. She was the one who’d written the speech the guys had delivered. Which had, quite simply, rocked.
So much for it being just her dad and Lexie trying to do something about all the recent disappearances that everybody knew were connected but nobody wanted to acknowledge. Now the whole town was talking about nothing else. She had heard from friends who said their parents were setting up neighborhood watch meetings, and others who were volunteering to do searches or go door-to-door passing out flyers. The usually-douchey principals of both schools were supposedly organizing a rally after school Monday, and she’d heard the phone lines at the police station had been jammed.
Everybody wanted to be involved. Finally.
Adults always accused kids her age of being spoiled, not caring for other people. Well, they were learning better now. It might take a while to get her generation moving in one unified direction, but once they had, they could be an unstoppable force. Chief Dunston and his skeevy friends couldn’t tape closed thousands of angry mouths all screaming for justice.
The whole thing almost made Taylor feel better about the lie she and her twin were continuing to perpetuate about which of them had really been the last one to see Vonnie Jackson Monday night. Almost.
“You sure you’re okay to drive?” Jenny asked. “Not too tired? I saw you falling asleep halfway through the movie.”
“No kidding,” she said as they left Granville’s pathetic little two-screen theater, heading for Taylor’s car in the dark parking lot. It was almost totally empty of other vehicles, the few remaining ones probably belonging to the workers who were inside cleaning up. All the normal, rational moviegoers, who’d gone to see a good film—the one Taylor had wanted to see—had gotten out forty minutes ago.
The movies had both started at seven. They’d just had the misfortune to see the excruciatingly long one, filled with scene after scene of sad-faced whiners crying about how miserable their lives were. If she could have climbed up into the screen, she would have gladly put them out of their misery.
“Come to think of it, I am exhausted. So you can drive,” she said, tossing her keys to her sister and moving to Jenny’s right, so she could head not toward the driver’s side of her Beetle but the passenger one. “If you’re wondering why I’m sleepy, it’s because that was the boringest flick ever made. You, Jenny Kirby, have the worst taste in movies. Geez, did you not notice that other than that couple who looked like they went to school with George Washington, we were the only people in the whole entire theater? And they had the good sense to get up and leave halfway through!”
“Everybody says it’s going to win the Oscar,” her sister replied, sounding lofty and prim in her oh-so-Jenny way.
“Okay, well, maybe it’ll win the Oscar for putting the audience in a coma, but as for Best Picture? I’ve seen more exciting stuff growing in my gym locker.”
“That’s disgusting,” Jenny said, playfully punching her upper arm.
“Next time, I pick. The preview for that 3-D slasher flick looked way cool,” Taylor added. “You can’t fall asleep when there’s a knife aiming at . . .”
Her words were cut off by a sudden sharp, vicious blow to her back. She flew forward, crashing to her hands and knees, crying out in pain. She couldn’t think for a second, couldn’t process what had happened, what could have struck her, why she’d fallen.
Then she heard a scream. Jenny collapsed onto the ground a few feet away, landing hard on her stomach. Her twin’s body was limp, her eyes closed. One pale hand was extended toward Taylor, as if she’d reached for her as she fell.
“Jenny?” she whispered, but another sharp pain sliced through her and she was unable to speak further. Tears of agony spilling from her eyes. Nothing made sense, nothing seemed real.
Jen?
She tried to reach out, tried to touch her sister, the person with whom she’d spent every day for the past eighteen years. But her hand felt heavy. So heavy. She couldn’t hold it up, having to let it fall onto the blacktop close to Jenny’s.
As it dropped, she realized she’d somehow managed it. She’d gotten so close, the very tips of their middle fingers touched.
It was one infinitesimal brush of skin on skin between two people who’d shared a womb. And it was what she most needed at that moment, just as she’d always needed to feel that unbreakable bond with Jenny at the most stressful times of her life.
Taylor stared at their hands, the seam where their skin met, and thought they must be lying like perfect mirror images, finger–to-finger, face-to-face. Tears filled her eyes, she stared so hard, and soon it became too hard to stare. Because for some reason her tears had turned red.
Not tears. No. She finally realized the red she was seeing was the pool of blood separating her from Jenny.
She just couldn’t figure out, before blackness descended completely, whether that blood was hers, or her sister’s.