“No alarm system, except for Bonzi.”
“Weapons?”
“My grandfather’s shotgun.”
“Do you want to go to the police?”
“No,” she answered immediately. “Not yet.”
“Then I’ll stay here till morning. You take the dog upstairs, and I’ll camp out on the couch with the gun.” He opened the front door, and they headed back inside, which was just as well because Kacey had started to shiver.
She wasn’t sure what she thought about him spending the night. What did she know about Trace O’Halleran? He seemed like a nice enough guy, a good father, but that wasn’t enough to hand him a gun and go off upstairs to sleep soundly. Not after what had been happening.
“How about you keep the dog and I’ll take the gun?” she whispered.
He almost smiled. “Smart,” he said, already reaching for the blanket that was always folded at the end of the couch. “Tell ya what. You take ’em both.”
Snow was falling in big, wet flakes to pile on the ground at the edge of the night-darkened river. Shivering, Kacey stood on the icy bank, where the wind shrieked down the canyon and billowed her nightgown. Barefoot, she stared down at the rushing water and shivered with the cold.
“Kacey!” She heard her name over the screaming wind and saw Grace Perchant with Bane, her wolf dog. “Evil,” she said, her voice a whisper over the keening wind. “Evil.”
“Who?” Kacey tried to say, but her voice was lost and the thick falling snow became a shroud, Grace and the dog disappearing into the gloom.
Fear coiled around her heart, and when she glanced down to the water again, she saw faces beneath the surface. Distorted and pale, they stared up at her in horror. Shelly Bonaventure, her makeup smeared; Jocelyn Wallis, crying; Elle Alexander, her eyes round with accusations; and then her own face, floating up to the surface, as if disembodied, her features twisted and ever-changing, but hers nonetheless. And Leanna O’Halleran, she was there, too, with Trace’s face, his mouth twisted into an evil grin, between Jocelyn and Leanna. . . . He stared up at her through a watery veil, and Jocelyn’s naked body drifted past him. Her breasts were flaccid, the dark nipples pinched, and a jagged, raw, Y-shaped autopsy scar marred her pale skin.
Kacey tried to scream but no sound came. She tried to back up, but her feet seemed rooted on the bank, and the snow, as it continued to fall over the river, turned pink, then red, before dropping in thick scarlet drips of blood.
Sweet Jesus!
A dog growled and barked, and she looked across the river again, where she made out Grace, now no more than a skeleton, her pale hair whipping frantically in the wind, her jawbone opening to expose a dark hole as she whispered, “Stay away. . . . He’s evil.” The now emaciated animal beside her growled low in his throat as the bloody snowflakes caught on what was left of his coat.
“Who?” she cried again as the dog’s voice startled her. A low, gruff growl ...
Kacey sat bolt upright in her own bed.
The room was dark; her bedcovers were mussed. Bonzi stood at the window, staring out to the backyard. The hackles on the back of his thick neck were raised, hair stiff, tail unmoving, while his nose was pressed to the glass, fogging the pane in two tiny spots.
Her heart froze. “Bonz . . . ?” she said softly as she eased out of the bed. She stood next to him at the window, near the curtains, next to the shotgun she’d loaded and propped against the casing. Through the glass, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. The yard and surrounding shrubbery were covered in white, shivering in the wind that moaned through the rafters of this old farmhouse.
It was almost morning, but the outbuildings stood in dark relief, black against the blanketing snow, illumination pooling from the twin garage lanterns.
Was there something or someone out there? Just around the corner of the old barn? Or farther still, in the dark row of saplings and scrub pine that edged the fields her grandfather had plowed? A light snow was falling. Gentle and soft.
Nothing. It’s nothing. Maybe a stray cat or a hare . . .
But her heart was knocking irregularly, her nerves strung tight as bowstrings. The edges of her dream clawed at her brain, disturbing images of dead women and bloody snow and Grace’s ominous warning.
Evil . . .
She saw her own pale reflection in the window, an ashen image that reminded her of the women in her dream. Was it true? Could Gerald Johnson possibly have fathered all the women she’d found and who were now being killed one by one?
She heard a noise coming from the lower floor. Her heart jolted at the same moment she realized it was Trace.
“Kacey?” he called softly up the stairs, the sound of bare feet slapping the steps as he climbed upward. “I thought I heard—” He appeared, filling up the doorway, his bare shoulders, silhouetted by the night-light in the hallway, nearly touching the jamb, his battered jeans hanging low on his hips. “The dog.” He glanced around the darkened room and demanded, “Something wrong?”
“No.” She forced the image of his leering face from the nightmare from her brain. “Bonzi woke me.”
Hearing his name, the dog finally turned to look over his shoulder and then, whatever enemy he’d thought he’d sensed no longer snagging his attention, wandered around the end of the bed and waited for Trace to scratch his ears.