Her father had been talking about the depths of her despair and the weight of her failure. But now she felt the simple truth of his words.
If she believed that text message, this moonless night may very well be her last.
Rubbing her wet hands on her thighs, she snatched her phone off the ground and forced herself to look at the screen again. Hoping the text had magically disappeared.
No such luck.
Who would think six little words could have terror weighing her down until her body felt like a bag of wet concrete?
Orpheus is hunting you. Run. Hide.
“Who’s out there?”
When the porch light snapped on, she thumbed off her phone and crouched next to the bushes. They still had a few late summer blooms, and the smell from the flowers was sickeningly sweet.
She’d been sure no one was home. The house had been dark. There’d been no cars in the gravel drive. No bark of a dog on the lookout for trespassers.
“I heard the water running!” the raspy voice called again. “I know you’re there. Show yourself!”
This command was followed by a sound Grace would recognize anywhere. For as long as she could remember, her father had carried a Glock 22. The weapon made a very specific metallic shnick when a round was chambered.
Damnit!
“FBI! Don’t shoot!” She thrust her hands in the air at the same time she stood to her full height. When the yellow porch light beamed into her eyes, she squinted and scolded herself for stopping.
It’d take a full minute for her eyesight to adjust to the darkness after this. And on such a night, a minute could be the difference between life and death.
A ratty terry cloth robe covered the man who stepped through the open front door of the creaking old farmhouse that was nearly as bent and grizzled as he was. The few tufts of snow-white hair atop his liver-spotted head waved gently in the warm breeze.
The end of August in the upper Midwest was a capricious creature. Sometimes it held onto summer with tenacious fingers. Other times it slipped quickly and quietly into fall.
This August was shaping up to be one of the hottest on record.
As if on cue, a bead of sweat cut through the dust on the side of her face. The warm drop reminded her of the blood she’d washed into the man’s flowerbed. How hot it’d been when she pressed her hands over the wound in Stewart’s back. And then how quickly it’d turned cool and dried into a sticky crust that had stained her cuticles and coated the undersides of her fingernails. The iron-rich smell of it had made her retch anytime she’d breathed too deeply.
Hence, her giving in to the urge to use the outdoor spigot.
“FBI, eh?” The old coot stepped farther onto the porch. The wooden beams groaned under his slippered feet. “Got some ID to prove that, missy?”
“If you’ll allow me to reach into—”
“Easy there.” He waved his pistol in a fast circle. “One hand’ll do ’er. Keep that other one sky-high if ya know what’s good for ya.”
She obliged. Partly because she didn’t want to take a round center-mass. But mostly because the act of swinging the gun loosened the belt tied around the man’s waist. She was beginning to suspect he was naked beneath that threadbare robe.
Wouldn’t that be the cherry on top of this craptastic sundae? she thought a little hysterically. Here it is, possibly my final night on earth, and one of my last visions will be of ancient, wrinkly wedding tackle.
“You’re the boss.” She kept her right arm in the air and used her left to slowly pull her FBI credentials from the inside breast pocket of her jacket.
Unfortunately, he didn’t lower his weapon even after she flashed her badge. “That real?” he asked instead.
“Why would a woman in a pantsuit be standing in your yard in the middle of the night with a fake FBI badge?” she countered, wincing when her impatience came through in her tone.
“You tell me.” He hitched a narrow shoulder. “What were you doin’ with my outdoor faucet, eh?”
“Getting a drink. It’s a hot night.”
“But what’s an FBI agent doin’ all the way out here?”
Running for her life, she thought, feeling the effects of the panic and desperation that’d been her dogged companions since she’d heard Stewart shout her name from the adjoining room. The thought of spending a few minutes rocking herself in a corner and indulging in a good old-fashioned pity party complete with teeth gnashing and hair pulling sounded really, really tempting.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have the time.
“My partner and I are staying at the Moonlight Memories Motel down the road. We had a suspect escape and head in this direction. I gave chase on foot but lost the trail in the woods. When I stumbled on your house, I couldn’t pass up the chance for water.”
Lies. All lies.
They came to her easily, but that didn’t mean they didn’t sit on her tongue like poison pills. Having grown up a Beacham, she’d been taught being a straight shooter—both literally and figuratively—was the only thing that mattered.
“A suspect, eh?” The man lifted an eyebrow so bushy Grace imagined some of the hair from his head must’ve migrated down his face. “He the dangerous sort?”
“You should go inside and lock the door behind you. Better safe than sorry,” she answered evasively.
The well-timed ee-oo-ee of a siren sounded in the distance. Usually she took comfort in the familiar hi-lo clammer. This time, and despite the stickiness of the night, she had to suppress a shiver.
“Those will be my colleagues.” She was glad to give the codger at least one truth, even if it was only a half truth.
The sirens weren’t crying out for some mysterious missing man. They were crying out for her. She was the suspect.
“Alrighty.” To her relief, he lowered his sidearm and took a step back inside the door. “Happy hunting to ya, Miss FBI Agent. Hope ya catch the guy.”
“Thanks.” She offered him what she hoped passed for a smile and didn’t wait around to see if he did as she instructed and locked the door behind him. Instead, she turned and sprinted for the cover of the woods.
The rubber lug soles of her sensible duty shoes seemed to find every twig and snap it in two. Spindly limbs made clattering noises as she brushed by because her night-blind eyes made them impossible to avoid. Her labored breathing sounded as loud as thunder as she bolted…where?
Where the hell am I going?
She had no idea.
Usually, when she was scared or in trouble, she ran home. Between her father, who was a sheriff, her two older brothers, who were both cops, and her kid sister, who was busy climbing the ranks of the U.S. Marshals, one of them would help her find a solution to her problem.
But she couldn’t leave a trail back to Buncombe County. She didn’t dare drag her family into this.
Whatever this was.
Skidding to a halt beside a fallen tree, she pressed a hand to the stitch in her side as she tried to catch her breath and think. Think. If she had any hope of making it through the night she needed her wits about her.
Something moved in the undergrowth to her left. Somewhere off in the distance an owl hooted. To her right? The snap of a twig broken by a footfall.
Instinct had her flattening herself beside the log. The rich smell of fertile soil and decaying plant matter tunneled up her nose. And she bit her lip to keep from crying out when another footfall landed on crunchy leaves.