PROLOGUE
“I’m frightened! Please… I’ll be good… Let me out!”
“Make one more sound and you’re never coming out.” As the key turned, the tumblers fell in the lock, trapping them in darkness.
Terror gripped them and tears stung their eyes as footsteps disappeared down the stairs. There would be no escape from the torment. Teeth chattering as cold seeped from the tiles through worn clothes and into young bones, they pulled their arms inside the thin T-shirt to keep warm. Hugging a bony chest with freezing fingers, as shivers wracked their body and goosebumps spread all over their flesh. It was so dark in the closet and the strange smell threatened to suffocate them, but they clung to the tiny shaft of light peeking through the crack alongside the door and wall.
The tiny beam of light shone directly onto cobwebs. In the lacy woven silk, a fat spider moved up and down, back and forth, its front legs working to repair the damage they’d inflicted. The spider was always there, staring, watching, threatening. They’d tried to squash it under their shoe but had tripped and fallen into the web. Batting at their hair, sure the hairy monster would crawl into their ear and eat their brain, they’d bitten their lip to keep silent. Convinced the spider was bent on revenge, when its black eyes fixed them with a glassy stare and it dropped an inch away from their face, they hammered on the door. “Let me out. Please. Let me out.”
Footsteps came, through the house and up the stairs, slow and deliberate. Panic gripped them. There would be no supper again tonight. Screaming wasn’t allowed. Children didn’t scream. Children didn’t cry. Children must not be seen or heard.
Shocked awake, they sat straight up in bed, with the lingering smell of mold and rose perfume still clinging to them from the nightmare. It was always the same. Alone in the dark closet with the spider. The old lady would come, a faceless blur to drag them away. They remembered the smell of the leather belt and her insane singing as the belt came down countless times across the bruised flesh of their back and thighs. She would choose only tunes with numerous verses, and each time the beatings continued until the end of the song. Battered and bruised, the old woman returned them to the closet with a warning to behave or there’d be no breakfast either.
Wiping at the sweat coating their face, they stared into the darkness trying in vain to control the rage. The memory wouldn’t leave. The nightmares never stopped. With trembling hands, they pushed wet hair from their face, turned on the bedside light, and stared at the photograph they’d cut from the newspaper of the quilting club’s last outing. The members all looked the same—old, white-haired, and small. They had no true recollection of the face of the lady who’d cared for them—trauma had erased that unpleasant memory, so their shrink had told them, but the smell of rose perfume and a musky damp odor had remained in a cloud of terror. Not one feature distinguished one woman from the other in the picture or triggered a memory of the person who’d made their life hell—but they’d remembered the quilting circle. They’d had to be extra quiet when they came for their weekly meeting. All the women had one thing in common: They all lived in Black Rock Falls—and they were all going to die.
ONE
SUNDAY NIGHT
The sensation of someone being there prickled her skin. Agnes Wagner had lain awake for hours unable to sleep. Alone in the darkness, she watched the light from the full moon shine through the budding tree outside her bedroom window, and with each breath of wind, leopard spots would bound across her wall. At times, she’d imagine being in the jungle and watching the wild cats play with their cubs, but th
e last few nights it wasn’t the creak of the branches brushing the side of her house that had stolen her sleep. Fear gripped her at the unusual shuffling and rattling of doors she couldn’t explain. The long winter was coming to an end, and it wasn’t the drip of melting snow or the whooshing slide as chunks of ice fell from the roof and landed in a plop on the ground that worried her. Frightened of someone murdering her in her bed, she threw back the blankets and pushed her feet into slippers. Moving wasn’t so easy these days and she took her time pulling on her robe. The sounds came again and Agnes stood for a moment listening. The loud thumping of her heart filled her ears, drowning out the strange noises. It wasn’t rats or other critters inhabiting her roof. She’d had the pest control man stop by and he’d given the house a clean bill of health.
The idea of sneaking downstairs in the dark to go check the doors and windows again went against her usual sound judgment but remaining in her room, terrified someone might come in and kill her, wasn’t an option either. Bad things happened at night and no one in their right mind would go downstairs in the middle of the night, let alone under a full moon. She’d seen the movies and read the books. Her imagination took flight, creating terrifying scenarios, and she paused at the bedroom door. In the movies, it was always teenage girls or college boys who became the victims of a serial killer, and she was in her seventies. I’d be no fun at all to murder—no fun at all.
Overriding common sense, she turned the sturdy lock on her bedroom door, pulled it open a crack, and, heart pounding, peered into the dark hallway. The nightly rounds of the house to check doors and windows had become a ritual. Waiting and listening, she flung the door wide. Underfoot the floorboards creaked as she grasped the banister and made her way down the stairs. Halfway down she could see through the hallway to the windows on each side of the front door and stopped mid-stride at the supernatural-sounding laughter. As ghostly shadows glided by, she swallowed hard, wishing she hadn’t sat up late watching horror movies. Taking a firm grip of her overactive imagination, she headed down the stairs.
With each step the house grew colder until the air was freezing and goosebumps rose on her flesh. The furnace was new and she’d never had any problem with the heating before. As she took the last step, and turned to check the back door, she froze with one hand pressed against the wall as the door to the cellar moved. It squeaked, opened a little, and then almost closed before opening again to allow an icy cold wind to rush up the cellar steps and cut a path to her. Earlier, the maintenance man had come by to check a faulty lock on the basement trapdoor. Perhaps he’d neglected to shut the door properly or left a window open? The old house was once part of a ranch, and the trapdoor used to drop produce directly into the cellar. Doubt crawled up Agnes’ spine. Hadn’t she checked the cellar door before going to bed?
Breathless with fear she stared at the door. Horrific stories of people venturing into dark cellars and vanishing forever came to the front of her mind. Nobody in their right mind went into a dark cellar in the middle of the night but, all alone, she had little choice. The strange noises came again with ghostly whines on each flow of air. Trying to ignore the ice-cold tremors sliding down her back, Agnes pulled open the door and stared into the abyss. She searched for the light switch and an instant later the cellar flooded with muted light. She heaved a sigh of relief. No one haunted her cellar, the trapdoor appeared to be secure, but the window at ground level was wide open. She found the hook she used to pull it shut, nodding to herself as it closed with a satisfying click. Behind her the furnace groaned and whined. Still shaken, but proud of resolving the problem, she headed back up the cellar steps, secured the door, and just to be sure, walked through the kitchen and into the mudroom to make sure she’d locked the back door before heading upstairs.
Spooked by the experience, she paused, staring at the moving shadows creating mythical creatures of the night on the wall beside the stairs. Hairs rising on the back of her neck, she hurried up the staircase, and glad to be inside her room, slipped the lock and switched off the light. As she turned toward her bed, a movement across the room caught her attention. She laughed at her stupidity as she stared into the long mirror taking up her entire closet door. In the moonlight, her reflection peered back at her, but then something moved over one shoulder. Terror gripped her as an apparition of a white face with sightless black eyes wearing a thin black smile floated toward her. She gasped, clutching her chest as a disembodied white fist clasping a knife, raised high and its deadly sharp edge sparkled in the moonlight as it struck deep into her neck.
TWO
MONDAY
Sheriff Jenna Alton stretched and looked at the time. She gasped and fell out of bed, tripping over her slippers as she hurried to the shower. As work was quiet in Black Rock Falls of late, she’d taken a day for herself. She’d be heading out to Helena with Dave Kane, second in command and the love of her life, and good friend Dr. Shane Wolfe, the medical examiner. Intending to have been up at five to tend the horses, she suspected Kane had tampered with her alarm clock again. Kane had the unique ability to wake up at precisely the time he planned and hated the sound of an alarm. He’d leave her sleeping and head out to do the chores himself, returning most days to work out with her before leaving for the office, but today they’d be meeting Wolfe and taking the chopper to Helena.
Life had changed dramatically since arriving in Black Rock Falls, Montana. She’d once lived as DEA agent Avril Parker and been darn good at her job. After spending a horrific four years undercover, she’d brought down drug cartel kingpin Viktor Carlos. Although he’d ended up in jail and many of his cohorts had died in a gun battle, it was Jenna who’d received the life sentence. No longer able to work due to the threats on her life, she’d taken the offer of plastic surgery and a new name. In witness protection, with a cool ten million in an offshore bank account, she’d joined the backwoods town of Black Rock Falls as a deputy, and after becoming acting sheriff, had decided to run in the local elections. To her delight, the townsfolk had elected her as sheriff in a landslide and she was now on her second term.
She showered and dressed in lightning speed and headed for the kitchen. Inhaling the smell of hotcakes, bacon, and coffee, she went to Kane as he stood at the stove and wrapped her arms around him. “Morning. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Oh, I figured a day off should start without chores.” He turned to kiss her cheek. “And our workout can wait. You’ll need all your energy for shopping.” He chuckled. “Should we hire a truck for the day, to carry everything?”
Jenna met Deputy Dave Kane a couple of years later when the off-the-grid ex-military sniper had applied for the position of deputy sheriff. It had not been until the arrival of Dr. Shane Wolfe that she’d discovered the men came as a package deal. Wolfe was Kane’s handler with contacts up to the Oval Office, and after a couple of years, she’d discovered POTUS had concealed Kane’s true identity with plastic surgery. She understood Kane would never reveal his birth name and not even Wolfe had the clearance to find out. One thing was for sure, whatever Kane kept locked in his memory was valuable information to the enemies of the free world and they’d placed a bounty on his head. If they ever discovered he was alive, all the nasties would come out of the woodwork to take him down or, worse, capture him for interrogation. For this reason—she’d never understand why—the powers that be had sent Kane and Wolfe to Black Rock Falls, but she was over the moon to have their experience in her team, and in the last few years they’d become like family.
Laughing, Jenna took out plates and silverware. “Maybe. We both need new boots, jeans… well, everything.” She held out the plates as he loaded them with food. “Will Duke be okay at home today?”
“Yeah.” Kane tossed his bloodhound a strip of bacon and filled two cups with coffee. “I don’t think he’d enjoy being dragged around the stores all day.” He headed for the table and sat down, pulling his plate toward him. “He has the doggy door, food, and heating. I’m guessing he’ll sleep all da
y as usual. I notice that Pumpkin”—he offered the black cat a piece of his bacon—“has been sleeping in his basket with him. I think Duke enjoys the company.”
“Me too.” Jenna looked at him appraisingly. His dark blue pants and cable-knit woolen sweater matched his eyes, and, as always, he’d polished his boots to a mirror finish. He’d wear a long black coat and his Glock in a holster at his back. “I like it when you dress up for the city. Not that I don’t like the all-black gunslinger look you have around town, but the bad-boy persona look is good too. You look so slick and handsome.”
“You look pretty good too.” Kane gave her a lopsided grin. “But then you always look good to me.”
After breakfast they headed to the medical examiner’s office. The chopper sat on the helipad on the roof and Wolfe was busy making his final preflight checks. It was still bitterly cold and the windchill factor sucked the heat from Jenna, making her cheeks stiff. All around lay the evidence of the ending of a hard winter. Icicles dripped from gutters onto the once pristine snow to leave pockmarks. Gardens resembled great pans of hotcake mixture bubbling on a stove. The blacktop wound through great piles of once white snow, topped with gray ice crystals and littered with twigs, leaves, and bits of garbage.
Pulling her coat tighter around her, she waited as Kane talked to Wolfe and noticed him handing Wolfe something and them both laughing. When Kane walked back to her side, still chuckling, she looked at him. “What’s so funny?”
“As Wolfe is heading in the opposite direction to us, I asked him to drop by a store for me.” Kane smiled. “He said he had a list a mile long from his girls and figured one more stop wouldn’t make much difference.”
Jenna nodded. “We could split the girls’ list.” She frowned. “He’ll be in meetings most of the day.”
“Yeah, but he has a two-hour break between one of them this morning, so he’ll be fine.” Kane headed for the chopper. “Let’s go.”
When they arrived at Helena airport, Jenna discovered Kane had already organized a rental. They all climbed inside and Kane headed for the ME’s offices and they dropped Wolfe off. Everything he needed to do was in walking distance, so they headed into town to enjoy a morning of shopping. By the time they staggered into a local diner for lunch, Jenna’s feet ached. She sat down at a table and peered at the menu. “Have you eaten here before?”
“Yeah.” Kane sat down opposite and waved over the server. “I came here with Jo and Ty over the weekend of the convention. It’s not Aunt Betty’s but it’s okay. The chili is good and the pumpkin soup.”
Jenna smiled. “I’ll have what you’re having and coffee… lots of coffee.”