The wolf glanced at them, but she didn’t follow. Another oddity. Predators didn’t ignore prey. I hadn’t thought they could.
The distant light became less distant, less a flicker, more a window. Then the house loomed up from a small clearing sooner than I’d thought it would. Traveling as the crows fly, rather than the roads do, cuts off a lot of time.
The witch’s house stood not far from my parents’ place. Long ago it had been a farmhouse too. But in the intervening years, government programs which gave tax breaks to farmers who planted trees instead of crops had led to the previously cleared fields becoming forest again.
The windows were broken; the front porch listed north. Local kids liked to dare one another to sneak inside and stay overnight—especially at this time of year—so close to All Hallows’ Eve.
The light, this place—and the missing animals—converged to give me a nasty, bone-deep chill. I pulled out my cell phone and discovered I had no signal. Too many trees.
If there were just a bunch of kids inside, I could probably disperse them with the threat of telling their parents. However, if Chief Deb’s idea of a budding serial killer were true, I didn’t really want to volunteer as his, or her, first human victim. I had no choice but to head back toward town, at least as far as I needed to go to get a cell signal.
A door opened; the figure of a man appeared in the halo of light. He held a shovel.
The door closed; the silhouette disappeared. But the porch creaked as he walked across it, then the steps groaned. A minute later, the distinct sound of digging filled the night. What could possibly be urgent enough to bury in the dark?
Something he wanted no one to see, which meant I could not let him see me.
My heart pounded; my palms had gone damp. I took one step backward.
Snap.
I swear the entire forest froze. Not a single bug buzzed. Not an owl hooted. Not a dog barked anywhere. More importantly …
The digging stopped.
I remained still as an opossum confronted with anything. Sooner or later he’d think a deer had tromped past and go back to digging.
Wouldn’t he?
Slowly, quietly I let out my breath, equally slowly and quietly I drew in another and waited.
There. Had he slammed the shovel into the earth again? It had sounded … not quite right.
Because it had been a huff from the wolf and not the shovel. She followed that warning with a low, vicious snarl as the man materialized from the darkness.
I stumbled back, arm up to deflect the downward slash of the shovel. I closed my eyes, braced for the impact.
“Becca?”
I opened one eye, closed it again.
Of all the people in the world to find me cowering in the bushes, sweaty, tired, and wearing workout clothes, why did it have to be him?
*
Owen McAllister’s fingers loosened on the shovel that he’d brought along for protection. Against what, he wasn’t quite sure. But considering what he’d found in his house, he was understandably on edge.
At the first crack of a branch in the darkness, his hand had gone to his hip and found only hip, no gun. He’d had to check his weapon in his luggage when he’d flown home, and he hadn’t yet taken it out. He hadn’t thought he’d need it.
Becca lowered her arm, straightened, then glanced longingly toward Three Harbors. The movement caused her riotous red hair to slide over one much-missed breast before she glanced back. “What are you doing here, Owen?”
“I’m the one who should be asking that.” It was, after all, his house. Just because he hadn’t been in it for ten years, didn’t make it any less so.
“I saw the light.”
Her parents’ place lay in the opposite direction from where she stood. Even if she’d seen the light from there, which she couldn’t because of the ridge in between, she would have had to circle around to arrive where she stood, and why would she? He had no more explanation for that than he had for her being here in the first place.
“You saw the light from where?” he asked.
“Town.”
“Did not.” There was no way his single battery-operated lantern had shone that far through the forest.
“Not town exactly. I was at the end of the hiking trail.”
“What hiking trail?”
“I’m not going to explain all the changes to Three Harbors since you left. If I hadn’t seen a light do you think I’d be out here?”
“Why are you? It certainly wasn’t to make sure the house hasn’t been vandalized. From the looks of the place that ship sailed nine and a half years ago.”
She lowered her gaze. Guilt? Why? It wasn’t her house. Maybe she’d been the first one to throw a stone through the window. Considering what had happened between them, or hadn’t, he could hardly blame her.
He shouldn’t blame anyone. Why he’d thought he could leave the place untended for ten years and everything would be right where he’d left it, he had no idea. In truth, he hadn’t cared. He hadn’t ever planned to return. Now he had, and it was worse than he could have imagined.