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"GET DOWN," SOMEONE shouted. I think it was Fortune, but I couldn't be sure. Not only weren't my ears working properly, my mind wasn't either. I stood rooted to the spot.
"Stephanie, what's wrong with you?" There was no mistaking my Aunt Ida Belle's less than dulcet tones. She jerked roughly on my arm, and I collapsed in a heap next to her.
I blinked rapidly. "What just happened?"
Gertie shot me an incredulous look. "The Easter Bunny is trying out a new jelly bean delivery system. What do you think just happened?"
I squeezed my eyes shut and then reopened them, but my wish went un-granted. I wasn't in the midst of a very bad dream. "What are we going to do?"
"Avoid being shot, let's start with that." Aunt Ida Belle rested her hand on my shoulder as she rose to a crouching position . I knew that she didn't need assistance standing, she just wanted to keep me from getting up. She needn't have worried. I wasn't into playing target practice.
"Where's Fortune?" She looked around the cabin, her eyes finally resting on the open front door. "Curse it, where did she go?"
Gertie popped up, hands on her hips, a frown on her face. "Lord above, Ida Belle, that girl reminds me of you at that age." She extended a hand down to me. "Come on, Stephanie. I think it's safe to get up."
I stood, no thanks to my knocking knees. These women talked about gunfire as casually as most people talked about a spring rain shower. I didn't share their blasé attitude. I straightened my skirt and looked around the cabin.
Unlike the first time that the Sidorov family had taken potshots at us, this time there were no signs of shattered glass. The windows were all intact.
"Gertie, call Carter." My aunt headed for the front porch.
Gertie whipped her cell phone from her pocket and flipped it open. "Wait, what should I tell him?"
"Run your Easter Bunny theory by him," Aunt Ida Belle called over her shoulder as she slipped out in to the nighttime darkness.
I paced the length of the cabin as Gertie put in a call to the Sinful Sheriff's Department. These three women might look to the world like two harmless senior citizens and a blonde bombshell, but they spoke and acted like big city homicide detectives. Or perpetrators. Sometimes it was hard to tell.
"It was a single shot." Gertie held out her arm to block my way when I finally worked up enough nerve to head toward the front door. She met my eye and held up one finger, indicating she wanted me to wait for her. When I nodded my agreement, she turned her attention back to the person on the other end of the line. Carter, I assumed. "We were sitting inside painting our fingernails, having a proper little chat like Southern ladies are wont to do, when we heard gunfire." She made a few noncommittal noises in answer to questions I couldn't hear, but I could sense her growing impatience. "Are you coming here or not, Carter? I'm missing all the action while you're playing twenty questions with me."
I strained to hear what was going on outside the cabin, but I couldn't hear anything, which was both reassuring and eerie at the same time.
"Yeah, that means they're out there," Gertie conceded. "I think so, let me check." She held the phone against her chest. "Stephanie, go and see if the girls are okay. Tell 'em Carter's having six fits."
My heart hammered in my chest as I made my way to the doorway. I poked my head out. My eyes took several long seconds to adjust to the semi-darkness. I took a quick look around but didn't see anyone other than Fortune and Ida Belle. They had their backs toward me and their heads were bent together in quiet conversation.
"Aunt Ida Belle," I called out, "Gertie's on the phone with Carter and he wants to know if you're okay."
She paused before answering. "The two of us are fine."
I leaned back in the cabin and gave Gertie a thumbs up. "She says the two of them are fine."
Gertie repeated this into the phone and then listened for a quick moment more.
Startled, I moved aside as Fortune joined me in the doorway. Her face was drawn and her expression solemn.
"Gertie, tell Carter he needs to get the medical examiner out here." She blew out a long breath. "We found a body."
***
FORTUNE'S UNEXPECTED pronouncement galvanized Gertie into action, judging by the way she rattled off the information to Carter. With her phone still pressed to her ear, she shot past Fortune and hightailed it out of the cabin. The news had the opposite effect on me. I was unable to do anymore than squeak out a single word. "Body?"
Fortune nodded, a distracted look on her face. "Young Caucasian female, no older than twenty-five."
I winced. So young. "Did you see anyone else? Surely she wasn't out here hunting all alone?"
She watched me for a long moment before she spoke. "She wasn't shot, Stephanie."
"Heart attack, maybe?" I asked, hearing the false hope in my voice. I desperately wanted to hear that this wasn't murder. "Hypothermia?" Something, anything, natural. Please God. "Fortune, am I right?"
She shook her head. "She was strangled."
"But I heard a gunshot."
"That was intended to get us outside so we'd find her."
Her sympathetic expression made me feel like an absolute wimp. Which I was, I admit. This whole murder business was new to me. New, and decidedly unpleasant.
Fortune glanced over her shoulder toward the open cabin door. "Look, I really should be out there with Gertie and Ida Belle. Will you be okay alone in here?"
I nodded and forced myself to smile, although I'm sure it turned out more like a grimace. "I'll be fine."
Her relief was palpable. Apparently standing guard over a dead body out in the dark of the night was preferable to sitting inside a cozy cabin with a woman whom she feared might descend into a full-blown fit of hysteria.
"Wait, Fortune," I called as she headed for the door. "How do you know you're safe out there? What if whoever did it is still around?"
"I'll explain later," was all she said.
***
BUT THE EXPLANATION, when it came well over two hours later, made no sense. In fact, it only muddied what were already very murky waters. I looked around the group who had assembled in the cabin, wondering if everyone else except me understood the situation.
Carter and Deputy Breaux had arrived surprisingly quickly after Gertie's phone call alerting them to the trouble we were in, and they brought with them a man I'd never met before. Neither had my companions, judging by their curious and slightly suspicious reaction to his presence. I found my gaze returning to him more often than was strictly polite, but this stranger wasn't like any man I'd ever seen before.
First of all, he was big. Tall, easily several inches over six feet. And he was solid, built as thick as a two-hundred-year-old oak tree that had been in my grandparents' yard when I was growing up. I'd never been able to wrap my arms around that tree and I doubted I could wrap my arms around this man either.
His shoulder-length black hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. His eyes, which he kept trained on Carter, appeared to be a dark brown color. His skin was deeply bronzed. Stoic was the perfect word to describe his bearing.
"Stephanie," Carter's voice cut through my reverie. "I know this has all been a shock to you." He followed the direction of my gaze. "You don't have to be worried about my colleague. He's here for a reason."
I nodded quickly and looked away, grateful for the cover story even though the reason I'd been staring wasn't because I was worried.
"Well, why is he here? Who is he, Carter? And why did you let Deputy Breaux take the body to the morgue without us?" Aunt Ida Belle stood beside where I sat perched on the edge of the sofa. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her voice was in full no-nonsense mode. "You tell us now or we clam up."
Carter's face flushed. I didn't blame him for resenting my aunt's brisk tone. Where had she ever learned to issue orders like that?
"We'll get to that in due course, Ida Belle," he said, his voice impressively calm. "I'll remind you that I'm leading this investigation, so I'll ask the questions."
"Well, get on with it, then," Aunt Ida Belle snapped.
Her waspish tone was hardly one a well-bred lady would employ under normal circumstances. But then these weren't normal circumstances. We'd come out here to glamp and now we were sitting around discussing a murder.
I snuck what I hoped was another discreet peek at the stranger. A tattooed snake began at his wrist and ran up the length of his arm, disappearing under his black t-shirt sleeve and reappearing around the other side of his neck. I shivered. I'd never seen such extensive body art before.
I jumped when my aunt poked my shoulder. "What?"
"Stephanie, Carter asked you a question."
I felt my cheeks redden. "I'm sorry, Carter. Can you repeat it, please?"
"I need you to take a look at the body."
My eyes widened. "You want me to look at a dead body? Why?" I sank back on the couch, as if the retreat into soft upholstery could save me from such a hideously unpleasant task.
"I want to know if you can identify the victim."
"But that's ridiculous," I protested. "I hardly know anyone in Sinful."
I watched as Carter glanced at the man he'd brought with him. He nodded in response to whatever unspoken question Carter had just asked him.
Fortune, who had been unusually quiet up until this point, cleared her throat. "I think you need to tell her, Carter."
A rush of heat swooshed through my body as all eyes turned to me. Whatever this news was, I wanted—no, make that needed—to hear it. "Go ahead, Deputy."
His eyes met mine. "I'm aware that you're too new to Sinful to be able to ID one of our residents, but I have a reason to believe you might know this victim."
"What reason?" I asked.
He held out an evidence bag. "This note was pinned to the victim's shirt."
Hands shaking, I took it from him. It was easy to see through the plastic, especially because the handwriting on the note was so large. The writing was decidedly crude and the message was downright chilling.
Tell Stephanie she's next.