Chapter 1
The belief in a supernatural source of evil
is not necessary: men alone
are quite capable of all wickedness.
--Joseph Conrad
Was he gone?
Sheridan Kohl lay in a heap on the ground, her
clothes, her cheek, the entire left side of her body, wet from
the moist earth. The taste of her own blood sat bitter on her
tongue, but the fecund smell of the thick vegetation growing
all around her reminded her of her childhood. She’d grown
up in eastern Tennessee, in the small town of Whiterock.
Not that this was the type of homecoming she’d
expected.
The scrape of a shovel let her know the man who’d
attacked her was still close. So close she dared not move or
even whimper.
After a few turns of his spade, his breathing
grew labored, and she heard him grunt every so often.
Scrape...plop. Scrape...plop. The digging
wasn’t easy, but it was rhythmic enough to tell her it
was progressing. Although he wasn’t particularly tall,
he was strong; she knew that already. Even after she managed
to get free of the rope that had bound her wrists, she hadn’t
been able to fend him off. Her determination to fight had only
made him angrier, more violent. She was sure he would’ve
killed her if she hadn’t ultimately gone limp.
She gingerly explored her top lip. It was busted,
but that was probably the least of her injuries. Unless she
angled her head just right, blood rolled down her throat, choking
her. She could barely open one eye. And his fierce blows to
her head had left her dazed, unable to think coherently. On
some level, she knew she needed to get up and run now that he’d
turned his attention elsewhere. But she couldn’t stand,
let alone make a dash for freedom. It was painful just to breathe.
The promise of complete darkness and total silence
hovered at the edge of consciousness. She longed to embrace
it, to drift away and leave her broken body behind. But her
best friend seemed to be standing at her shoulder, shouting:
Get up, damn you! Don’t allow this, Sher. Gain the
upper hand no matter what you have to do. Fight for your life!
For a moment, Sheridan even wondered she was sitting in one
of Skye’s self-defense classes back at the victim’s
charity they’d started five years ago.
But then she felt the rain, light sprinkles hitting
her parted lips, forehead, eyelashes. She was in the forest
in the middle of the night, alone with a man wearing a ski mask.
And he was digging her grave.
The dogs, barking and jumping against the chain-link
fence, woke Cain Granger from a deep sleep. He told himself
it was probably just another raccoon or possum, and rolled over
to go back to sleep. But when the racket didn’t stop,
he realized the instigating factor could also be a bear. He’d
spotted a couple of brown bears in the area not more than a
week earlier; they seemed to be foraging closer and closer to
the house.
“I’m coming,” he grumbled. Forcing
himself to get out of bed, he yanked on a pair of jeans and
some work boots. It was the height of the summer--too hot and
sultry to bother with any more clothes, even in the mountains.
A bear wouldn’t care whether he was fully dressed or not.
But by the time he grabbed his tranquilizer gun and reached
the dogs’ pen, he didn’t find a bear or anything
else, at least in the immediate vicinity.
“Quiet down!”
The dogs stopped barking, but they didn’t
come toward him. All three Coonhounds stood rigid as statues,
sniffing the air and pointing with their noses, as if they were
tracking.
Cain frowned at this odd behavior, but he was
too tired to do much about it. If the bear wasn’t close
enough to cause any harm, he didn’t care to mess with
it. Drugging and transporting such a large beast was a major
feat; he knew because he worked for the Department of Fish &
Game and did that type of thing for a living. “I’m
going back to bed,” he told the dogs and started toward
the house, but Koda, his oldest and smartest hound, gave a warning
growl that brought Cain up short.
Koda didn’t spook easily....
Instead of going back inside the house, Cain opened
the gate and all three dogs raced toward him, shimmying and
shaking but not barking because he’d already chastened
them for making too much noise. “What’s up?”
he asked, giving them each a good pat. They generally loved
his attention, reveled in it as long as possible, but tonight
they tried to slip between him and the fence so they could head
out into the forest.
“Hang on.” He was planning to put
them all on leashes, but Koda didn’t want to wait. The
black and tan bounded to the edge of the clearing, glanced back
for permission and whined to achieve it.
“If it’s a bear, you’ll get
your ass kicked,” Cain told him, but Koda wasn’t
stupid enough to attack a bear. Not on his own. The dogs would
corner and hover until he arrived--and hopefully they’d
be quick enough to get out of the way if a bear charged them.
“Fine, do it,” he relented with a
wave, and that was all it took to send his hounds racing out
ahead of him.
Taking a flashlight from the shed, Cain jogged
behind, using the noise they made as a guide.
It wasn’t long before the tenor of their
barking changed: they’d found something.
Picking up his pace, he used the flashlight to
help him avoid obstacles. The moon hung full and bright overhead,
but it was beginning to rain, and it didn’t hurt to have
the extra light when he had to weave through the shadowy trees.
A lot of stumps, pinecones and broken limbs littered the ground.
But there weren’t a lot of people in these mountains.
Which was why Cain loved them so much.
The dogs grew louder, more excited as he neared
the far corner of his property. Whatever they had was on his
land.
He put the tranquilizer rifle to his shoulder,
in case he’d need to use it, and came up behind Koda.
But they hadn’t cornered a bear. They hadn’t cornered
anything threatening at all. From the looks of it, they’d
surrounded a life-sized doll.
Was this some sort of joke? The boys in town,
whom he occasionally had a few beers with, liked to pull pranks....
“Take it easy.” He spoke low in his
throat, warning the dogs to calm down and back off. Reluctantly,
they inched away--and that was when Cain realized it wasn’t
an inflatable doll or a mannequin or any other inanimate object.
It was a woman.
“What the hell?” Whoever she was,
she’d been badly beaten. She wasn’t moving, wasn’t
responding in any way to the noise and activity around her.
Was she dead?
Cain used his flashlight to search the surrounding
trees. He appeared to be alone with his find, but the existence
of a discarded shovel and a partially dug hole not more than
a few feet to his right told an unsettling story. From the looks
of it, someone had murdered this woman and brought her out here
to bury her.
No wonder his dogs had been going crazy.
“Son of a bitch.” He stretched his
neck as he tried to process the gruesome discovery. He should’ve
come sooner. Maybe he could’ve saved her.
Setting his gun on a nearby log where he could reach it in a
hurry if need be, he issued another command to keep his hounds
out of the way and knelt beside her. Her limp wrist felt small
and fragile in his hand. Thick black hair covered her face;
he could see, even in the darkness, that it was matted with
fresh blood.
What must she have gone through? Who was she?
And why had this happened?
Cain was so sure she was already dead the faint
butterfly-like beat of her pulse surprised him. But it was there--thank
God, it was there.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he silently begged
her to hang on while he tied his gun to Koda’s collar
so the black and tan could drag it home.
He had to get this woman some help. Fast. But
there was no time to put her in his truck and drive seventy
miles to the closest hospital. She’d never make it.
Lifting her as gently as possible, he carried
her to the clearing that served his house and animal clinic.
He’d have more room for her in the clinic, an easier place
to wash her up. But as clean as he kept it, he couldn’t
imagine putting a woman where he’d been nursing sick and
injured dogs, cats, horses and the odd coyote, deer or bear.
Opting for the house, he shoved the front door open with his
shoulder, then weaved through the furniture to the spare room,
where he laid her on the bed.
Her head lolled to the side, smearing blood on
the bedding, but the mess didn’t matter. He’d never
seen anyone so close to death. Except one of his stepbrothers.
This couldn’t end the same way.
Ordering the dogs who’d followed him in
to stay out of the house, he hurried to the living room and
called the oldest of the two stepbrothers he had left, who happened
to be the only doctor in town. Then he tried to contact Ned
Smith, Whiterock’s chief of police, but the dispatcher
didn’t know where to find him.
“Want me to wake Amy?” she asked,
offering him an alternate.
Cain didn’t even hesitate. Amy was also
a cop, but she was Ned’s sister--and Cain’s ex-wife.
“No,” he said. He definitely didn’t want Amy
to land in the middle of this. She had no experience with violent
crime. Neither did the other two officers on Whiterock’s
small police force, which is why he didn’t suggest the
dispatcher continue down her list of available officers. Cain
wasn’t sure Ned would be any better, but he was chief
of police. “Just track down Ned and tell him to call me.
Immediately.”
“Okay.”
Relieved to think that help was on its way, he
returned to the spare bedroom. “You’re going to
be okay,” he told the woman lying inert on the bed. That
was when he carefully smoothed the tangled hair out of her face,
wiped away the mud and blood--and realized, with some shock,
that he knew this woman. It’d been twelve years since
he’d seen her. But he’d slept with her once. Right
before she’d gone to Rocky Point with Jason.
