Midnight Sacrifice (3 page)

“Why?” For Mandy, digging into the case would be like poking a hibernating bear with a stick. She’d had more than enough of State Police Detective Rossi, with his sharp eyes and I-don’t-miss-anything demeanor.

“My sister doesn’t sleep at night. Do you?”

Mandy paused. Exhaustion washed through her. Damn him. Why did he have to rehash everything? She was having
enough trouble maintaining her staying-vigilant-but-trying-not-to-think-about-it balancing act. She pounded the dough flat, formed a loaf, and shoved it into a greased pan. “Detective Rossi said we might never know what happened to Nathan. I have to live with that.”

“But can you?”

“You make it sound like it’s a choice. It’s not.” She slapped another quarter of dough onto her board and attacked it with the wooden pin. “Do you know how many people have tried to find him? What makes you think you can make a difference?”

“Because for me, this is personal. I have to try.”

Mandy stared at her abused bread dough. It was personal for her, too. Her family was just as much at risk, maybe even more so, than Danny’s sister, who was now hundreds of miles away.

If he only knew…

But she couldn’t tell him anything. Her own family had to come first. She raised her chin. “You don’t know the area or any of the locals, and you don’t exactly look like you’re familiar with the wilderness.”

Danny’s gaze met hers. His eyes hardened with anger and wounded pride.

“Thanks for your time.” Danny straightened. “I’ll let you know if Rossi says anything interesting.”

He turned away and walked out, leaving a swath of emptiness and vulnerability in his wake. Mandy followed him to the door and flipped the deadbolt with a finality that spanned more than the moment. Three generations of the inn being open and welcoming had come to an end. The
snick
of the lock represented the end of an entire lifetime of feeling safe and secure.

Returning to the kitchen, she finished forming the loaves. She placed the pans in the refrigerator to cold-rise overnight, even though the dough’s chances of rising evenly were iffy because
she’d beaten the daylights out of it. She paced the kitchen. Emotions that had been worn smooth before his visit were freshly honed. Normally, cooking was therapeutic, the kitchen her sanctuary, but not today. Despite his ruthless determination to dig up all the emotions she’d buried, Danny Sullivan made her feel other things she couldn’t afford. A bond had formed when they’d saved Jed’s life together. Lying to Danny gave her an ache in the pit of her stomach.

She moved away from the oven.

No, she couldn’t help him in any way. The threat she’d received had been clear enough. Mandy already had enough guilt on her conscience to make a psychiatrist salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

Thunder boomed in the distance. The rush of falling water drew her to the front parlor window. The rain had increased from drizzle to downpour. Water was pouring off the eaves. A clog in the gutter. Grateful to have something physical to do, Mandy donned her waterproof jacket and jogged out the back door. Rain and damp air cooled her face. She stopped short at the sight of Danny sitting in his old car in the parking lot. A pang of longing zinged through her. She ignored it and jogged across the lawn.

Why couldn’t she have met him before December, before the shadow of fear and death cast her life in darkness?

By the time she reached the garage, her sneakers were soaked. The overhead door rattled up on its tracks. Inside, she grabbed work gloves, then hauled the aluminum ladder down from its hook and dragged it across the lawn. Heaving one end up to the side of the house, she wished for the billionth time in her life that she was bigger than the average ten-year-old. At the top she curled her arm into the gutter and rooted for the blockage. Her fingers encountered a blob of slimy muck. She swept it clear, scattering decaying leaves and twigs on the grass below. Something
slippery hit her cheek. She wiped it off with a forearm as rain rushed unimpeded through the cleared gutter.

She climbed down just as the mail truck was pulling up to the curb. Raindrops echoed in her nylon hood. She pulled off her gloves and headed down the walk, stopping to pluck a few weeds from between the bricks. Mandy stared down at the street. Large old homes occupied stately lots, their lawns greening with spring rains, early bulbs poking out of the flower beds. For visitors, Huntsville was lovely, quaint, and quintessentially New England. For Mandy, her hometown was a pretty prison. She’d lived in the old inn all her life, and it was likely she’d die in it as well.

The mailbox opened with a creak. She shuffled through the mail on the front porch. Bill, bill, bill, junk, credit card offer. Her fingers paused on the last envelope. Her breath dammed in her lungs.

Her name was neatly typed in the center. No return address. No postmark.

Just like the one she’d found resting on her pillow back in December.

She slid her finger beneath the flap and ripped it open. A photo of her brother, Bill, sitting on the front porch swing, slid out. A red line slashed across his neck. Her hand trembled, blurring the letters stenciled onto Bill’s chest in crimson ink.

S
ECRETS SAVE LIVES
. D
ON’T FORGET IT.

CHAPTER THREE

Danny sat behind the wheel in the parking lot. Through the kitchen window, Mandy finished her bread with jerky movements that belied her natural grace and broadcast her distress. A moment later, she pulled on a jacket and walked out onto the back porch. She flipped a hood over her shining brown ponytail. Halfway down the steps, she saw him. And froze. Her eyes stood out vivid blue against a sky of unrelenting gray, and the sadness welling from them was clear from across the parking area and strip of lawn.

Emptiness filled Danny’s chest. He wanted to go to her, to comfort her the way she had soothed him the night of Jed’s attack. But she didn’t want anything to remind her of what had happened, and that included him. She wanted to move on, but Danny knew firsthand that the ostrich approach to handling trauma didn’t work. Hiding the horrors in his own head had come back to bite him on the ass, big-time. Pretending everything was fine didn’t make it so. At some point, everyone had to face his personal demon.

Whether it was an explosion that shattered a Humvee and a dozen men or a psychotic killer wielding a knife in an alley on a frigid winter night.

Still, everyone processed things at different speeds. Maybe with some time, she’d be able to talk about the attack. Maybe with some time she’d be able to…

No. Don’t even go there.

Rubbing his achy forearm, Danny watched her run across the grass, open the garage door, and wrestle with a ladder that was much too heavy. She dragged it around the far side of the house, out of sight. Her slight, feminine body wasn’t cut out for heavy chores. Instinctively, he reached for the car door handle.

A pickup pulled into the lot and parked by the garage. Danny stopped. The thin man who stepped out looked familiar. A sixty-watt lit up in Danny’s head. The skinny dude was Jed Garrett, Mandy’s boyfriend. Danny had only seen him unconscious, but Jed’s face as he lay bleeding out on the snow was imprinted in Danny’s mind like everything else from that night. Another man climbed out of the passenger side. He was huge and blond and walked with an awkward, coltish gait. Mandy’s brother.

The two men walked in through the back door, marked P
RIVATE
, without knocking. Obviously, Mandy and Jed were still together. Danny swallowed his disappointment and started the engine. Jed could help Mandy with her task. Danny had upset her enough for one day, and he had no desire to see Mandy and Jed together. Not yet.

Everyone processed things at different speeds.

Danny drove out onto the street and turned toward the main drag. A few blocks down he passed through the main intersection and the empty lot where the municipal building had burned down in December. Cleared of debris, the empty lot was a sad reminder of the town’s losses. Next to it, the diner that Nathan owned sat vacant and forlorn on the corner. Someone crossed the adjacent alley, the same alley where Danny had come across Nathan attacking Mandy and Jed. What used to be the hub of town life had been rendered useless by the events of one night.

A quick stop at a convenience store at the edge of town yielded a few breakfast basics. Fifteen minutes and a few turns later, he navigated a narrow opening in the pines and stopped in front of a black
wrought iron gate marked by the number twenty-seven in fancy gold script. The driveway disappeared into the woods. Budding spring foliage obscured the view of the house Reed Kimball, the man who had saved his sister, used to live in. Reed had put his house up for sale and moved to Philadelphia to be with Jayne, keeping her far away from the Maine woods that had nearly killed her.

Ignoring the stone call box next to his window, Danny leaned across the seat and grabbed the gate’s remote control from the glove compartment. He pressed the button. The black iron barrier swung away from him. The drive curved through the forest and opened up into a small clearing. The cedar and glass home blended with the wilderness around it. Danny sighed. He was city born and bred, but Iraq had dulled his enthusiasm for urban living. Now he didn’t feel he truly belonged anywhere. Though he’d attached a truckload of discomfort to the small town of Huntsville, he’d been looking forward to the seclusion and solitude.

A red Nissan was parked out front. Danny parked next to the sedan. Reed’s house was supposed to be empty. Considering all that had happened when Danny had been here last, his instincts snapped to full alert.

He went back to the glove box for the Leatherman multi-tool he kept in case of an emergency. Like a Swiss Army knife on steroids, the Leatherman was everything from pliers to a knife, and most importantly, it was a whole lot easier to explain than the switchblade Danny had carried in his misspent youth. Sure, he’d cleaned up his act, but eight years in the army and two tours in Iraq hadn’t exactly mellowed him out. He got out of the car and stared at the house. A chill swept over him. The spring thaw had left Maine damp and a whole lot colder than mid-April back home.

The front door was wide-open. A lockbox dangled from the door handle.

The hair on his nape rose. He unfolded the knife blade and stepped over the threshold. Stale air, filled with the slight taint of mold and mildew, rushed at him. His running shoes were silent on the wood floor. In spite of the cold, clammy sweat broke out on his back. “Hello?”

“In here.”

Keeping the knife out of sight along his thigh, Danny followed the female voice to a wide, open kitchen. A bank of windows looked out onto the forest. In the center of the huge expanse of black granite and steel, a woman in a skirt, heels, and red wool coat was staring through the glass, watching a young couple having an animated conversation in the rear yard. She was likely in her late forties, but her too-thin face and bleached-blonde spiky hair added a few years.

“Carolyn Fitzgerald, Northfield Realty.” She gave him a let-me-sell-you-a-house smile.

Danny exhaled. Overreact much? Maybe his post-traumatic stress wasn’t as controlled as he’d thought.

Wrinkles fanned from the corners of mildly predatory eyes as she walked toward him. She held out a bony hand. “Are you interested in the property?”

He folded the knife against his leg and slipped it into his pocket before accepting the handshake. Social niceties made him thankful that the bomb had affected his left hand instead of his right. Small favors. “No. I’m Danny Sullivan. My sister is engaged to the owner, Reed Kimball. I’m looking in on the house.”

“Oh.” Disappointment flickered across her face, like a cat that just missed a baby rabbit. “Will you be staying here long?”

“Probably a couple of weeks.”

“Well, then I’ll be sure to call before I bring any more buyers through.”

“I’d appreciate that.” Danny accepted her business card.

“Not that there are that many.” Carolyn’s gaze drifted to the window. “It appears as if they’re done and that they won’t be making an offer.” The frown deepened. “Maybe with you here, I’ll have better luck selling it. Vacant houses aren’t very appealing.”

Danny glanced into the yard. The couple was walking toward the front of the property.

He escorted her to the front door. She put the key back in the lockbox and gave the numbers a spin. Danny watched the red sedan pull away. Standing on the stoop, he surveyed the surrounding woods. Beneath the trees, patches of leftover snow were spread on the black earth like reverse Rorschach tests. Tiny buds dotted tree boughs and underbrush. Life starting anew. Though struggling to shake off the grip of winter, things were growing.

Could spring in the country work its magic on him? Could he shake off the cold that had lodged itself in his soul?

He took a deep breath of fresh air. The clean scent of pine flushed the smell of the city from his nose. Birds tweeted. Wind rustled leaves. Danny closed his eyes and gave himself over to the peaceful sounds and smells. Something small scurried through the underbrush. Things were alive all around him. The wilderness was more subtle than the sounds of traffic and people that signaled life at home. For a city dweller, the woods were strangely soothing. But then, northern Maine was the polar opposite of Iraq. Not even the memory of December’s tragedy could taint the peace of the forest.