Virtue Falls (2 page)

Nobody … except women like her.

Damn Maya for bringing it up. Like Avery wasn’t already scared to death.

She had a good mile to walk to her tiny, crappy one-room apartment. She looked overhead at the streetlight. Droplets of moisture swirled aimlessly, without wind, without volition. Malice and an evil glee filled the fog and muffled sound, so that her own footsteps seemed dull and soft.

She walked quickly toward the nearest busy corner, chilly spider webs of fog brushing her face. On the curb, under the streetlight, she stopped and teetered on the edge. A cab. No matter the expense, she needed a cab.

But no. None were out tonight. She lingered until she heard footsteps approaching.

Two guys, big like retired football players, appeared out of the mist, hanging on each other the way drunk guys do. They looked surprised to see her, then they leered, and she realized … she looked like a streetwalker.

Shit. She was in trouble. She tightened her grip on the pepper spray.

The biggest guy staggered back a few steps, then staggered forward. “Hey, honey, you are
just
what we were looking for.” And he grabbed her boob.

She sprayed her Mace, missed, and got his friend.

That guy screamed and rubbed his eyes.

She swung her weighted bag. Hit boob guy in the nuts.

He yelled and let her go.

She ran across the street, right in front of the cab she’d been wanting.

Boob guy dodged around the back. He bashed his knee on the bumper, stumbled in a circle, then came after her again.

Thank God for the fog. She hid, cowering, in the doorway of a town house.

He ran past.

She searched frantically in her purse for her cell phone. She found the brick first, then a package of wet wipes, a disposable diaper Carter had outgrown, her wallet, a hairbrush, a Ziploc of crumbled Cheerios … and her cell phone with a shattered glass face.

The brick had killed it.

She had no way to call the cops. No one would open a door to her. And she didn’t have time to try for another cab. She had to get home before Grace left.

Avery started to cry, then forced herself to stop and concentrate on the good news—after this, even Edward Scissorhands couldn’t track her. She doubled back on the other side of the street, and ran for it, sprinting into the residential area where the dark now seemed like sanctuary. The neighborhoods got crummier, the streets narrower, lined with street-level apartments sporting rusty bars over the windows … She was close to home.

A car cruised by, slowly, feeling its way.

Sweaty and exhausted, she hid behind garbage cans, then ran again.

When she could finally see the porch light’s feeble yellow glow above her own narrow door, she slowed and drew in a relieved breath. After scaring herself witless, she’d made it again. It was two minutes after one, Grace should still be there, so even if Carter did wake, he wouldn’t be—

The hair stood up on the back of Avery’s neck.
What was that?

She swung around and scanned the darkness. She could see nothing but shifting gray shadows. But she could have sworn she heard … something. Breathing. Heavy footsteps. Somehow, Edward Scissorhands had followed her.

How? How was it possible? She had long legs. She was in shape. Every survival instinct told her she should have outrun him … unless she’d made a mistake, and he hadn’t been following her earlier.

The cops said he was a stalker. He had watched her for days, maybe months. He knew when she came home, and he’d been here all along, waiting …

Maternal instinct kicked in, strong and hard. She had to get away from her apartment, lead the killer away from her boy.

Her heart thumped as she hurried past. Sweat trickled between her breasts. She didn’t want to die, but Carter, sweet and young, his brown eyes bright with trust … to think of him murdered in his bed …

Someone lunged out of the darkness, caught her arm.

She screamed and used the pepper spray. This time she nailed the bastard.

The killer fell backward, clawing at his eyes.

She started to turn and run. Then she recognized him. “Greasy?” Greasy was the killer? Yeah, that made a weird kind of sense. He was dysfunctional. He had no family. Just now in his office, he had sounded like he hated her. Hated all women. But … Greasy?

“What the fuck did you do that for?” he shouted. “Damn it, I paid for a cab to tell you … that guy with the hair, he—” Blindly he lunged at her again.

In a panic, she smacked him on the head with her purse.

Greasy hit the pavement, and he didn’t come up again.

She stood over his body, breathing heavily.

She didn’t know what to think. Was he dead? Was he the killer? What was he talking about,
the guy with the hair
?

Unsteadily, she traced her steps toward her apartment, and as she did, she listened. She drew out her keys, fumbled to fit one into the lock—and heard the slow snick of scissors opening and closing.

No. No. Please, God, be her imagination.

Turning, she saw a gray swirl of movement.

Somebody stood just out of sight.

Not her imagination. He was here.

Behind her, the door jerked open.

Avery stumbled. She sat down hard on the doorstep. She lost her grip on her pepper spray. The can rolled away.

The babysitter shrieked, “You’re late!”

Still seated, Avery half-turned and shoved her. “Shut the door!”

“What do you mean, shut the door? You stupid bitch. I don’t have to listen to you. I quit!” Grace was crazed. So not weed, then. Coke.

Inside the apartment, Carter began to cry, frantically, desperately.

The gray swirl still stood there, waiting, a misty, man-shaped threat.

Avery got to her feet. “Shut. The. Door.”

The babysitter must have heard Avery’s cold, hard fear, or seen what Avery saw, because she stopped yelling, jumped back into the apartment, and slammed the door … leaving Avery alone. On the street. With a killer.

A hand, seemingly disembodied, thrust itself out of the fog, showing Avery the scissors, long sewing shears that opened and closed with a smooth snap.

“Who is it?” she asked. God. She sounded so calm.

He stepped out of the mist. The guy from the bar. Shawn Hendriks. The one with the nice suits, the French girlfriend, and the comb-over.

But the comb-over was gone. He had a full head of dark hair.

The guy with the hair.

Greasy hadn’t come to hurt her. He’d come to warn her. Now he was bleeding and unconscious. She’d disabled the one man who could save her.

She twisted the straps of her purse in both hands, and still in that unnaturally calm voice, she said, “You’ve been hanging around since I was pregnant. No man stalks a woman for two years.” Unless … unless the cops were right, and he’d been stalking other women at the same time. And killing them.

She swung her purse. She hit him, a bull’s-eye on the wrist holding the scissors.

But he must have seen her in action, because with the other hand he grabbed the straps and yanked her toward him, then spun her around.

Her fingers, entangled in the handles, broke. She screamed in pain, in alarm, in warning.

He pulled the purse away and thrust her into the wall, pressing her face to the grimy bricks.

She suffered one lucid moment knowing she had failed.

Carter was going to die.

Then Shawn spoke in her ear. “Let’s cut off your pretty hair. We don’t want to get blood in it.”

CHAPTER ONE

Virtue Falls, Washington State
August 14
6:15 p.m.

If Elizabeth Banner noticed the interest with which the townspeople talked about her in low tones behind her back, she gave no indication. And in fact, she didn’t notice. For as long as she could remember, she had always been the girl who had watched her father kill her mother with the scissors.

Although Elizabeth hadn’t set foot in Virtue Falls for twenty-three years, the memory of Misty Banner’s murder was still fresh in many people’s minds. That made Elizabeth a local celebrity of sorts, and the news of her return swept the small community as vigorously as the tsunami those crazy scientists were always predicting.

Townsfolk speculated that Elizabeth had come back to reunite with her father, but after one brief visit to the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility, she hadn’t gone back. Instead she spent her time at the ongoing study of Pacific Rim tectonic plates and subduction zones, researching alluvial deposits.

Or something.

Which made sense—her father was Charles Banner, the man who had pioneered the study, and now here she was, a chip off the old block, a respected geologist at age twenty-seven with lots of official-sounding letters after her name.

A few nasty people in the town darkly muttered that they hoped she didn’t follow in her father’s footsteps in any matter beyond the sciences.

Most folks didn’t think she would; Elizabeth resembled her mother, not her father, with the same white-blond hair, the same wide blue eyes, the same curvy body and a walk to make a man abandon all sense.

Every straight guy in Virtue Falls had tried to catch her attention; she stared at them blankly, and talked about igneous rocks and cataclysmic earth events until even the most determined would-be lover conceded defeat.

Her online profile said she was divorced.

Most men said they knew why; she was boring.

Perversely, most men considered the guy who had let Elizabeth Banner get away to be the biggest dumbshit in the history of the world. It didn’t matter what she said. It was the way her full lips formed the words when she said them.

Now she sat at her usual table by the window at the Oceanview Café—when she first arrived, she had noted with interest that the ocean was nowhere in view from this part of town—reviewing her notes from the dig and occasionally sipping on a Fufu Berry Jones soda and wondering why she had ordered it.

She thought she had ordered a root beer. And what was a fufu berry, anyway? Something pink …

“Here you go, Elizabeth.” The waitress slid a plate under Elizabeth’s elbow. “Eat up while it’s hot.”

Elizabeth had finished work at the dig, gone home and showered, and changed into her brand-new Tory Burch sandals and her baby blue cotton jersey summer dress that was one size too big. She wore it like that on purpose. If she didn’t, men had a tendency to stare at her boobs.

Well. Men had a tendency to stare at her boobs no matter what, but when she wore loose-fitting clothes, they were sometimes able to meet her eyes.

Rainbow wiped her hands on her apron. “Are you missing your team?”

Elizabeth paused, a fry halfway from the ketchup to her mouth. “Why would I?”

“They’ve been gone for three days to that conference in Tahoe, and you’ve been working alone at the site. Three days in that isolated canyon with no one to talk to. Don’t you get lonely?”

“No.” Elizabeth shook her head for emphasis. “At any rate, the team will soon be back covered with accolades for their research. Andrew is a very capable, if not brilliant, scientific leader.”

“I don’t know that I would tell him he’s not brilliant,” Rainbow said.

“He knows that, or he wouldn’t lean so heavily on the intuitive suggestions of others.” With great precision, Elizabeth spread mustard to the edges of the homemade bun.

“Trust me on this one, honey. There’s a world of difference between knowing it and admitting it, and Andrew Marrero is already touchy about the fact he worked for your father and stands in his shadow.”

Elizabeth considered that. “Yes. I have read my father’s work. Charles Banner was, in fact, a gifted scientist, and I say that without prejudice of any kind. But why that would influence Marrero’s opinion of himself, I do not understand.”

“I know you don’t, honey. But take my word for it, I’m right.”

Elizabeth observed Rainbow, head tilted.

Rainbow sighed. “Okay, look. Marrero is a good-looking son-of-a-bitch. Dark hair, dark eyes, swarthy skin, the image of a Latin lover. But he’s short. He says five-nine, but he’s five-seven, maybe five-eight. Maybe. He’s well hung, but he can’t tell everybody that, so he wears lifts in his shoes. Short guys just have this attitude.”

Elizabeth was fascinated with this unsuspected side of Rainbow. “You’ve slept with Andrew Marrero?”

“He’s not my usual type, but it was interesting. I used to put him on and spin him.” Rainbow’s eyes half-closed in satisfied remembrance.

Elizabeth blurted, “I thought you were…” She stopped herself barely in time.

Rainbow’s eyes snapped open. “Gay?”

So … not barely in time.

“Hey, when you’re bi, you double your chance for a date on Saturday night.” Rainbow chortled, patted Elizabeth’s arm, and headed toward the lunch counter.

Elizabeth sank her teeth into the burger while she watched Rainbow charm three sunburned tourists who chattered with great excitement about their day at the beach.

Rainbow had apparently been the waitress here at the Oceanview when Elizabeth was a child. Twenty-three years later she was still the waitress, a fate Elizabeth considered worse than death. Of course, she couldn’t even remember whether she’d ordered a root beer or a fufu berry soda, so that was part of it, but being around people all day filled her with horror.

She liked rocks.

She didn’t like people. In her experience, most of them were spiteful, or thoughtless, or cruelly curious, and always, always impatient with her lack of interest in them.

But Rainbow interested her, because Rainbow seemed to be an entirely different species of human. For one thing, Rainbow was tall, with big bones, broad shoulders, and a head full of salt-and-pepper gray hair. She was hearty, cheerful, and she seemed honestly fascinated by her customers, tourist or local, always chatting, asking questions, giving unwanted advice.

At first Elizabeth hadn’t known what to do with her; every time Rainbow came to the table she would tell Elizabeth stuff. Stuff Elizabeth didn’t want to hear because it distracted her from her work.