But there were only the footsteps. Just one set. Thud, thud.
And then, he grabbed her shoulders. Iron-hard fingers gripped her, tugging her back to him.
"No!" Alyssa screamed again, but those strong hands had found her neck.
"No! No!" she shrieked, flailing.
But then the fingers closed hard around her throat. Her words choked in her mouth.
These strong fingers were killing her. Her head felt dizzy, and she felt as if she was floating, even as the shadows closed in upon her.
Alyssa tried to scream once more, but her voice had been stolen.
Instead, she slipped into darkness.
CHAPTER ONE
“You’ll never find your sister.” The voice whispering in May Moore’s ear was sibilant, threatening. “And you’d better not start looking. Because if you do, I’ll find you. Then you’ll be sorry.”
With a gasp, May woke from her nightmare, sitting bolt upright in bed, breathing hard. Shivers prickled her spine. She reached for the light switch, needing to banish the shadows that seemed to be lurking in her quiet bedroom.
That had been a weird and troubling dream. How had her subconscious come up with such a scenario? she wondered. Her dreams had definitely been more intense since she’d reopened her sister’s missing person case. It was preoccupying her more than she realized.
Looking at the clock, she saw it was four a.m. It was Sunday morning, the one day when she could usually sleep in, if the responsibilities of her job as the county’s deputy allowed. But she knew she wouldn’t get back to sleep now.
Instead, May got up, pulling on jeans and a T-shirt, and sat down at the kitchen table. In another half-hour it would start getting light, revealing the summer-green view of farmland that the kitchen window offered.
In the meantime, she decided to spend some more time analyzing the evidence and file in front of her.
The disappearance of her sister, Lauren, ten years ago had shattered May's life. She'd agonized over how it was possible, in the calm town of Fairshore, Tamarack County, Minnesota, that someone could disappear without a trace.
She thought in a way that Lauren’s disappearance had pushed both her and her older sister Kerry into an investigation career. High-flying Kerry, always the more successful sister, had aced the entrance exams and joined the FBI. To her shame, May had missed the mark by a couple of critical points and had become a local police detective. Her recent promotion to the first female county deputy was something she was proud of, but she knew that to her parents, Kerry would always be the one who had truly achieved in life.
However, two recent cases in her own neighborhood had proved to May that murder was truly everywhere, and that small town folk could be well concealed psychopaths. This was why she was relooking at Lauren’s case with a new passion, keen to bring her new experience to this old investigation and see if anything had been left unexplored.
There were only a few items of evidence that had been found on the shores of Eagle Lake. With the case reopened, May had been able to investigate the evidence box.
It contained a water bottle. A button from Lauren’s shirtsleeve. A scrap of bloody fabric linked to Lauren's top. And a small key, with a label that had, so far, been beyond May's efforts to decipher.
She had no idea what this key was for. She hadn't known about it. It hadn’t been listed in the evidence log, or mentioned in the police report.
"Why was it there?" May muttered to herself, staring at the darkened window as she took a sip of her coffee.
She wished she could ask the previous sheriff who'd managed the county, and the investigation, at the time. But he'd passed away from a heart attack a couple of years ago. Sheriff Jack, the new county sheriff who was May's boss, hadn't been involved in that case at all.
"What does it open?"
Yet again, she turned the key around and around in her hands. Sheriff Jack had given her permission to bring the evidence box home at night, because May hadn't wanted to work on this case during office hours. Her working day was too busy. She wanted to devote her own time to this case.
May felt compelled to turn over every stone, to sift through the evidence with fresh eyes, and to find out everything she could. She longed to discover something that would help in her personal quest to get answers about her sister's death.
But so far, her spare time was being spent in a state of curiosity and frustration.
She pushed a lock of sandy blonde hair back from her face with a sigh.
She had no idea what the key unlocked, and she couldn't read the label. The lettering was just too smudged. May was wondering if there was some kind of a computer program that might be able to decipher the blurred letters.
She'd researched the type of key, but there were too many possibilities. It wasn't a safe key, that she knew. But it might be a padlock key, a locker key, or maybe a key to another kind of container.