Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

An abandoned nursery where McKenna had worked. He’d caught a break.

Garrett shoved his phone in his pocket and turned to Selena. “I need you to call BPD and get them to this address.” He circled the information for the Greenbrier Nursery, and shoved the page at her. “Call them and keep calling. That’s where he is. That’s where she is.”

And he was striding for the door.

Garrett drove like the wind on the country road under a darkening sky, wishing like hell he had Land with him. One hand on the wheel, he speed-dialed Schroeder and asked for Palmer or Morelli. Neither was in. Garrett left an urgent message.

Next he called Dispatch to connect him to the local police in Malden. “Detective Garrett, BPD. I have a possible hostage situation at the old Greenbrier Nursery. Suspect John McKenna, resident of Lincoln, whereabouts unknown. Suspect wanted for murder,” he lied. “Request immediate assistance.” He disconnected before he had to answer questions.

Just past the town of Malden, acres of dense forest had been cleared to make room for the fields of commercial trees, shrubs, and plants of the now-defunct Greenbrier Nursery. Garrett turned off the highway and onto the packed dirt road and looked out through the windshield over gently rolling slopes under dark and fast-moving clouds. Rippling on the hills were high canvas tents, erected to create a more sheltered environment for the less hardy outdoor flowers and plants, but now filthy and sagging and flapping in the strong wind.

Garrett rounded a curve and the main building came into view: a barn with several attached greenhouse wings, the whole structure vaguely in the form of a star, or a starfish, with its arms being the long glass-paned greenhouses.

Garrett didn’t drive all the way up to the nursery’s front door, with its drooping sheltered porch. Instead he parked the Explorer beside a massive spreading oak tree. He killed the engine and his ears were immediately assaulted by the spiraling rumble of the wind outside, so strong it swayed the Explorer on its tires.

He looked back toward the dirt road. Where the fuck are the cars? There were no police vehicles in sight, no sirens either, and that was unnerving.

An uneasy thought flicked through his head.

A spell. No one’s coming. He’s keeping them away.

Then he dismissed it as nonsense. Insane.

Garrett turned back and stared through the windshield as the car shuddered. There was no other vehicle in sight, no sign of the dark blue Camaro. Maybe he’d gotten lucky and arrived when the killer was off the premises. Then again, he wouldn’t expect the car to be parked anywhere immediately visible.

Wait for backup? Could he chance it?

And if Tanith is here, if she’s really been so foolish and crazy to come out here on her own, with nothing but some belief in occult powers, and perhaps a ritual knife which McKenna will take from her and use on her without blinking…

Garrett opened the console and withdrew the Glock he’d taken from the drawer of his nightstand. He checked it and holstered it on his belt. He took out the Taser and put that in his windbreaker pocket for good measure. He already had the Kevlar vest strapped on underneath the jacket. His thoughts were racing, against his will.

It’s beyond stupid to go in. But if they’re in there… if he’s in there…

He reached again to the console and took out protective latex gloves, several pairs of them. He pulled one pair on; the others he stuffed into his other jacket pocket.

He got out of the Explorer and started up toward the building, fighting the wind. It hurled dry leaves in his path, papery flurries, racing and rolling as the trees swayed precipitously, their branches shuddering and shaking. Witch’s wind, he thought, not knowing if he’d made the phrase up. The sky was layered thickly with clouds, from steel gray to purple to black, and there was an eerie orange light.

Hell of a storm coming, Garrett’s uneasy thoughts continued. As if things aren’t bad enough. He looked back toward the road, hoping to hear the sound of sirens. There was nothing.

He tried to focus ahead of him as he walked. The property had been stripped and most inventory moved away, but there were still vestiges of ponds and waterfalls and fountains in the front of the building, and some statuary and concrete garden accessories, which Garrett wound his way through now: cracked and chipped birdbaths, urns, benches, sundials, forlorn stone frogs and rabbits and turtles that had been too damaged to bother moving out or looting: the discards, the left-behinds.

The greenhouses had been vandalized; there were shattered windows and some with rock-sized holes and spidery cracks, and ugly words spray-painted on the sides of the barn. The site had been utilized, most certainly, for timeless teenage rituals; Garrett saw scattered beer cans and broken bottles and limp condoms in the dirt. But there was a pall over the place now that had nothing to do with those hopeful drunken fumblings. The wind pushed through the trees, laying branches flat and swirling dead leaves in cyclones along the packed and parched grounds. Dark and layered clouds moved and gathered in silent waves, and lightning flared on the horizon, not close enough to branch, yet, but flickering feverishly, like a dying lightbulb. Garrett braced himself against the gusts, smelled the iron scent of rain.

And as he approached the barnlike door of the main building, he saw blackened footprints in the rippling weeds: scorch marks.

Choronzon…

No, a killer. A killer named McKenna. Remember that.

He drew his weapon and surveyed the door, a wide stable type. It was padlocked shut, but it had been opened recently; he could see the drag marks in the dirt.

His instinct was not to touch any of it. McKenna’s house had been booby-trapped with lethal chemicals; it was a good bet that this location was equally contaminated.

He debated his options, with heart pounding. Shoot the lock off? If McKenna was inside, and wasn’t aware of Garrett’s presence already, that would seal it. And if he wasn’t inside, but returned anytime soon, the broken lock would alert him to someone within.

Garrett stepped back and scanned the front of the building, looking for a less obvious option.

The greenhouse wing to the left of the building had several shattered panes of glass in the tall windows. As Garrett moved toward them, a tornado of dust and leaves spiraled up in his path; he had to sidestep it, turn his face away from the choking dirt.

On the way toward the wall of windows he grabbed a concrete pedestal, and as he reached the largest of the broken windows, he put the pedestal down. He took off his jacket and wrapped the cloth around his arm to knock out the remaining glass, then threw the jacket over the window frame and stepped up onto the pedestal to look inside.

There was just enough dusky light left in the sky to light the interior of the building in gray.

As Garrett’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he looked in on rows and rows of long wooden tables of different heights, laden with all manner of plants and trees and shrubbery. It was a maze.

There was no one visibly moving within, and he could hear no human sounds.

He boosted himself up on the window frame and hoisted himself inside.

From the window he dropped down onto the cement floor; the sound was a hollow thud in the long room. A puff of powdery dust floated up from the floor; Garrett felt the gritty sting in his nostrils. He straightened up, willing himself not to cough, and moved quickly out of the dust cloud, looking around him in the dim gray light.