Heat of the Moment (2 page)

“Have to.”

“In English?”

He cast me a disgusted glance. “Have to.”

“Then why would anyone think you couldn't speak the language?”

He rolled his eyes the same as every kid I'd ever met. “Hence my use of
est
ú
pido
.”

I pursed my lips so I wouldn't laugh. I liked this kid so much. Why didn't everyone?

Because kids were mean. I knew that firsthand.

But were they mean enough to sacrifice helpless, harmless animals?

I hoped not.

*   *   *

I lived in an efficiency apartment above my clinic. When I'd taken over Ephraim Brady's practice after college, it was part of the deal.

My mother hadn't wanted me to move to town, but it wasn't practical to live on the farm when over half of my business was done in the office. Not to mention the small kennel where we housed post- and pre-op patients, boarders, and strays. In the winter, I might be prevented from making it into the office for a day or two, and then what? If I was already there … half the battle was won.

I exchanged my khaki trousers—which repelled animal hair better than most—for track pants, my white blouse—out of which anything could be bleached—for an old T-shirt. I covered that with an equally old sweatshirt, switched my comfy shoes for the expensive running variety, then grabbed a hat and gloves, put my cell phone in one pocket, my keys in the other, and trotted down the stairs and out the door. Time for my nightly wog—my twin brothers' word for the walk-jog I did to stay in shape.

Instead of wogging down Carstairs Avenue—the main street of town was named after my family. The Carstairses had lived in Three Harbors from the beginning, which, according to the welcome sign, had been in 1855—I took the path into the forest.

Three Harbors was a small town, but it was also a tourist town, and these days that meant bike paths and hiking trails. They were well lit and meticulously maintained. I still kept Mace on my key ring. I couldn't very well jog with a nine-millimeter. Even if I owned one.

The forest settled around me, cool and deep blue-green. The trail had lights every few feet, some at ground level, others high above. Still, I rarely ran into anyone after dark, and I loved it.

My feet beat a steady
wump-wump
. That combined with the familiar crunch of the stones beneath my shoes at first drowned out the other sound. But eventually, I heard the thud of more feet than two.

At the edge of twilight, loped a huge black wolf.

 

Chapter 2

I'd been seeing this wolf since I was a child, which would make her one old wolf. Wolves lived eight to ten years in the wild. At that rate, I should be on wolf number three. One of the many reasons I'd never told anyone about her.

Considering the nature of today's visit, I should have mentioned the wolf to Chief Deb. Except I still wasn't quite certain the wolf was real.

I'd never gotten close enough to touch her. No one had ever seen her but me. While I heard the thoughts of every other animal I came near, not a whisper from this one. Add to that her seemingly eternal—or at least freakishly long—life span, and her oddly human, bright green eyes, and she seemed even less likely to be fact than fiction.

I continued to wog, soothed by both the forest and her presence. These runs had come to be as much a part of my life as breakfast.

For the past several days, my wolf had been oddly absent; I'd even wondered if she were gone for good. The last time I'd seen her, she'd been nervous and twitchy, then she'd howled for no reason at all, and run off. Hadn't caught a glimpse of her since. I was so glad she was back.

I reached the end of the trail, paused, stretched, straightened, and a light flickered in the distance. I stepped off the path, and the wolf growled.

The hairs on my arms lifted. She'd never growled at me before. One look in her direction, and I realized she wasn't growling at me now. She was growling at that light. Which was exactly where no light should be—the McAllister place.

In every small community there was often a woman who skated the edge of sanity—a recluse, a druggie, in this case all three—who from time immemorial was branded the local witch.

Mary McAllister heard voices, even when she was on her meds. Sometimes she self-medicated. Then she heard them more.

I started toward the light. I should have pulled out my cell phone and called Chief Deb. Hindsight always has the best damn ideas.

The wolf bounded in front of me. At first I thought she would crowd me back, growl again, maybe even bare her teeth. Instead, she led the way along a well-traveled and narrow deer trail.

About a hundred yards in, the dark closed around us and I was glad for her superior eyesight. Every once in a while we reached an area where the trees weren't so thick and the moon shone down, but I still would have been lost without her.

Tiny animals skittered away from us. A doe started up, and danced off, white tail shimmering beneath the silver night-light.

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.

Of all the people to turn up on his first night back in town he never would have expected Becca Carstairs.

“You're right,” she said, gaze once again returning to the distant glow of Three Harbors. “I shouldn't be out here.” She contemplated the shovel he leaned upon. “What are you burying?”

“Bodies.”

She blinked and took a step back, landing on another stick. The resulting crack made her flinch, and he felt bad for scaring her. But didn't she know him better than that?

Owen rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. He might have been gone from this town for ten years, but he would always be “that McAllister boy.” When there was trouble, everyone pointed his way. To be honest, a lot of the time they'd been right.

Even after he'd found football and discovered he was pretty good at it—knocking heads on the field kept him from knocking heads anywhere else—folks still saw him as Mary McAllister's son. And Mary had never met a pharmaceutical she didn't love.

As she'd gone about obtaining them in both creative and illegal ways … Well, in a town like this that was hard to live down. Certainly it wasn't fair to visit the sins of the mother on the son, but when had life, or small towns, ever been fair?

Still, Becca had always believed the best of him. She'd befriended him, stood up for him, protected him. She'd loved him.

Which was why he'd had to leave.

“Animals,” he blurted. “I found dead animals in the house. I'm burying the bodies.”

“Are they black?”

“Well … blackened.” The moon cast just enough light over her face to reveal her confusion. “They were burned.”

The scent of charred flesh and fur still lingered—in the house, the yard, his nose. For an instant when he'd walked into the place, he'd thought he was having a flashback—wasn't the first one, probably wouldn't be the last.

“Show me.”

“I don't think so.”

“Why not?”

A lot of reasons, the most obvious one—

“It's not pretty.”

“I'm a vet. You wouldn't believe what I've seen.”

“You don't want to see this.” He wished he could unsee it. But he'd wished that about a lot of things, and that never, ever happened. Which was how most wishes went.

“I'm sure I don't want to see it.” She made a “move along” gesture with both hands. “But I have to.”

Owen shook his head, refused to move, and she stomped her foot. More twigs died.

“There are missing pets.”

“You think these are them?”

“Only one way to find out.” She tilted an eyebrow. He stayed where he was.

“Maybe we should call the police.”

“We will. But if the bodies are burned like you say, they'll call me to identify what they are. Better if I take a peek first. Besides, my phone doesn't work. Does yours?”

He hadn't checked, and his phone was in the house anyway. “After you,” he said.

The ground was uneven; Owen leaned on the shovel a bit. He still had a slight hitch in his giddyup he didn't want anyone to see.

Ten years and Becca didn't seem to have aged at all. The light wasn't good but what there'd been had seemed to shine right on her, like a beacon from above.

Not a wrinkle around her hazel eyes. Her skin was still redhead pale and smooth. Her only freckles dotted places no one could see. He remembered tasting them, tasting her.

Owen took a deep breath, but that only served to reveal another thing that hadn't changed. She still smelled like lemons and sunshine. He hadn't drunk a glass of lemonade since he'd left.

Lemonade had always tasted like her.

He stumbled, badly. Lost his grip on the shovel, which fell into her, and she stumbled too. He reached out and snatched her arm—just because he was lame didn't mean he was … lame. His hands were still quick, even if the rest of him wasn't.