Maggie Shayne - Killing Me Softly

“He is.”

“I hope you’re right, Nick.”

“About him being glad you’re here? I know I’m right.”

“I meant about us making sure he’s going to be okay. We have to find out who killed Bettina Wright.”

“I hear you,” he told her.

“Don’t you worry, Dawn,” Beth called from the doorway into the dining room. “Nick is one of the best cops who ever served. The chief has put him back on duty, so he has all the authority he needs to help Bryan. And Josh is no slouch, either,” she added with a look behind her at her husband, who was carrying dinner plates into the kitchen. “To say nothing about Rico. And whether you know it yet or not, Bryan’s very good at his job, as well. And then there’s you and me,” Beth went on. “There’s no way we won’t solve this thing.”

Dawn sighed, nodding and wishing she felt as confident as Beth did. “I’m gonna head up to my room,” she said. “It was nice meeting you, Nick. Really nice. I’m glad Bryan has you on his side.” He smiled warmly at her, and she felt a connection with him. Then she turned to the others. “And that goes for you, too, Rico. Night, Beth, Josh.”

“Night, Dawn,” Beth called after her as she hurried up the stairs to her room.

Once inside, with the door closed behind her, Dawn closed her eyes, took a breath and nodded firmly, knowing what she had to do. She went to her bag, which she had yet to unpack, and fished out the pills she used to keep the dead at bay. She took out the bottle of vodka she’d thought she might need if the pills weren’t enough here, where the ghosts had always been waiting. Then she went into the adjoining bathroom and emptied both of them into the toilet. She didn’t want to have them around at all—if the ghosts started showing up again, the temptation to medicate them away might be too great to resist. Best to remove temptation once and for all.

She looked up at the ceiling then. “All right, here’s the deal. I’ll talk to the dead girl. Bettina Wright. But no one else. Okay?”

She waited, goose bumps rising on her arms, demanding she rub them away. But nothing happened. There were no disembodied voices. No pictures hurling themselves off the walls. No misty figures hovering six inches above the carpet.

“Yeah, well, I probably need to give it some time. The Ativan’s probably still in my bloodstream.”

That was most likely it. And even more reason to wait until morning to go to Bryan’s house—the scene of the crime. Maybe by then she would be able to see Bette.

She sank onto the bed, put her hand over her eyes and couldn’t believe she was actually hoping to talk to the dead again. Her father had been right, after all. You couldn’t run away from this thing. She wondered if he’d ever tried. Maybe that was how he knew.

Damn.

“You look like hell, Bryan.” Beth met him at the foot of the wide staircase and pressed a hot mug of freshly brewed morning coffee into his hands.

“Thanks.” The fragrant steam wafted up to his nostrils, waking up a few more brain cells, he thought, and took a deep sip. Then he took another as he walked with Beth into the kitchen.

“Didn’t sleep, did you?”

“Tossed and turned until around five. Then I finally passed out.”

“From sheer exhaustion, I’ll bet. You think you can eat?”

“He’ll force himself,” Josh called from the sunny breakfast room off the kitchen.

“He’s right, I will,” Bryan said. “I need to try to keep myself strong through this. Keep my mind sharp, be quick on my feet. It’d be too easy to stop eating or sleeping at all.”

“Go on out with your father, Bry. I’ll bring you a plate.”

Bryan nodded and sipped more of the coffee as he walked through the kitchen, which smelled of bacon and, God help him, cinnamon rolls. He hoped he didn’t look too much like a zombie as he stepped into the sun-drenched breakfast room, which had been added on three years ago. The frame was hardwood, gleaming boards that curved, so that the room looked like the rib cage of a capsized ship. And in between those ribs, nothing but glass.

Josh sat alone at one of the three round tables. Bryan was surprised. Not at the lack of guests—he’d known Beth would cancel any reservations and hustle out the stragglers when all this broke. She would want her full attention on him and his troubles. And on Dawn and her return. But he’d expected to see Dawn there at the breakfast table with his father.

“She’s not here,” Josh told him before he could ask. “Sit down, relax. She’ll be back.”

“Where is she?”

“Borrowed the car,” Beth said, entering the sunroom with three plates heaping with food, one balanced on her forearm. She put one in front of each of the men, then took her own and sat in the empty seat between them. “She said she wanted to take a drive. Maybe pick up a few things in town.”

Bryan lowered his head, and stared at his plate. “And you let her go? Alone?” He lifted his eyes again, spearing his father with his gaze. “Didn’t Nick tell you—”

Josh laid his napkin down while Beth paused, her first bite halfway to her mouth. “If there’s something you feel I should know about, son, then you need to tell me yourself. What is it?”

Bryan closed his eyes. “Of course Nick didn’t tell you—for the same reason I didn’t say anything yet. He probably didn’t want to scare the hell out of you both. Especially Beth. He’s old school about protecting the weaker sex.”

“If he thinks Beth and Dawn are the weaker parts of this family, he doesn’t know them very well,” Josh said, sending Beth a reassuring—and adoring—look.

It didn’t seem to soothe her at all. “What does Nick think he’s protecting me from, Bryan?” Beth asked.

“From knowing that every one of the victims of the Nightcap Strangler was between five foot six and five foot ten, slender, had long, straight, blond to light brown hair, was in her early to mid-twenties, was—”

“You mean they all looked like Dawn,” Beth said, rising from her seat. “But…but you don’t believe this was Nightcap. You said—you said it was a copycat.”

“Either way, she’s not safe running around in public by herself,” Josh said. He rolled his eyes. “Did she say where she was going?”

“Did she ask directions to my place, by any chance?”

Beth nodded. “She said she wanted to just drive past it, see where you lived, where it all happened. Like it might spur her thoughts or something.”

“She’s going to do more than drive by,” Bryan said. He pushed back from the table. “I’d better go after her.” Getting to his feet, he hesitated, reaching back down to grab the cinnamon roll and the coffee.

“But, Bryan,” Beth said. “Couldn’t you get into trouble for going there? It’s a crime scene, and—”

“I’m not going to tamper with evidence. I just need to go get Dawn.” He cupped Beth’s head and leaned down to press a kiss to the top of it. She wasn’t his mother. His own mom had been killed in an airline crash when he’d still been in his teens. But Beth treated him as if he was her own offspring, and he loved her as much as if it were true. “It’ll be okay.”

Dawn drove around a bend and had to stop the car. Ahead, in the distance, she saw a tall, flat-topped rock formation with water shooting off the end of it and plunging downward into oblivion. Beside her, a green road sign read Welcome to Shadow Falls.

The waterfall wasn’t typical, wasn’t what she’d expected—no glittering cascade glinting with the sunlight. The rock was dark, nearly black, and its mass, along with the taller cliffs around it, kept the sun from hitting the falls at all. She supposed at some other time of day they might sparkle and shine. But this early in the morning, the water looked murky and dark.