Our girl dug out a quarter and flipped it. The coin gleamed in the dark and she caught it cleanly, then peered at it. “Tails,” she said unnecessarily.
Luck always favored Chance. With a quick smile, he set off to spy on the twelve.
The Devoted Dead
Fifteen minutes passed.
Dale slipped back outside and sat, just beneath the window, drinking from a flask. In a way, I envied his alcoholic purple haze. The rest of us might as well see what we could learn in here.
Time to loot the desk. Quietly, I rummaged through the drawers, looking for anything of interest. In the bottom-right one, I found an interesting manila dossier full of pictures, old-fashioned black and whites that would’ve required a dark room. Among them, I found shots of us. So I hadn’t imagined that “being watched” sensation.
More telling, I found shots of Curtis Farrell half naked with a girl who probably wasn’t even eighteen. That would’ve been why England fingered him for a dirty job, but when blackmail didn’t work, he moved to brute force. What the hell had England wanted him to do to Miss Minnie?
Rob her? Frighten her into a heart attack? Silence her?
Or maybe I’d been right the first time. If England had been monitoring our movements and he’d known we would be there that night, maybe Farrell wasn’t supposed to do anything but die. Did Farrell know something about England, then?
Shannon came over, peering across my shoulder. “Holy crap,” she whispered. “I didn’t know Missy was sleeping with Curtis Farrell.”
Aha. “That would be—”
“England’s daughter,” she finished.
So England used his leverage with Farrell to get him where he wanted him. What then? Well, let’s see. If you had all the money and power in town and you caught a dirty, weed-smoking gas station clerk messing around with your daughter, what would you do? Find some schmucks to kill him for you, of course. The perfect crime.
Mr. McGee must’ve found out that Farrell was running around with Melissa England; hence the argument. He’d wanted Farrell to stay away from the girl, hoping he could get out of Kilmer. Neither one of them would be going anywhere now.
We can ask the sheriff to look at the scratches on England’s hands before they heal and at the bruises on Farrell’s neck. If only they had DNA testing there . . . but I might as well have been wishing for the moon. I thought about that for a moment; I could accuse him falsely and blame England for the bruises on my neck too, if I believed the end justified the means. Of course, we couldn’t be caught poking around his property for that to hold. He could say he’d acted in self-defense since we’d broken into his home.
Dammit. Where the hell was Chance?
As if in answer, he slipped silently around the corner and back into the study. Relief surged through me. He held his finger to his lips and motioned that we should go. I didn’t need a second invitation.
I slipped over the windowsill, and the others followed me. Jesse went last and secured the screen behind him and then slid the window back down soundlessly. It took a kick in the side to rouse Dale. He’d been drinking steadily since we arrived, but somehow he managed to stagger back to the SUV along with the rest of us.
My heart didn’t stop its wild hammering until we were well away from there. Chance kept looking over his shoulder like he couldn’t believe we’d gotten away clean, but his luck held until we were a good distance along the highway. I sensed it cutting out that time, similar to leaving the range of a radio station. I wondered if anyone else had heard it.
“Details,” I demanded.
Chance sat between Shannon and me in the back. We hadn’t been willing to share the seat with Dale, so he rode up front with Jesse. Even with the windows cracked, my eyes watered. We needed to hose him down and dose him with hot coffee in order to get any sense out of him.
“So here’s the deal,” Chance said. The vehicle’s interior fell silent, everyone ready to listen. “There was a lot of bitching about us and how we’re messing everything up. I’m paraphrasing, of course.”
“Were there any complaints about us meddling kids?” I asked.
Chance flashed me a grin. “Not exactly, but close. Keep a tight hold on your sense of humor, Corine. You’re going to need it.” He paused and took my hand. Oh, that couldn’t be good. “They didn’t mention the particulars, but apparently your surviving that house fire put a huge crimp in their plans. They seem to think killing you will resolve all the trouble that’s been plaguing the town in the last year or so.”
Holy shit. I tried to wrap my mind around that.
“You mean . . . like a human sacrifice?” Shannon asked.
Jess agreed. “That’s what it sounds like.”
So the townsfolk wanted me dead—and the demon didn’t. The bizarre juxtaposition seemed almost funny. “I wonder why they didn’t try to kill me when I was a kid, if that’s the case.”
“At that point . . . I’m sure they didn’t know what the recup . . . repercushions would be,” Dale slurred. “’Sall in the book.”
Jesse tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove, thoughtful. “And people might talk if a little girl who’d lost her mama suddenly turned up dead. People were watching, after that.”
It was as good a theory as any. I turned to Chance. “What else?”
“They plan to mount a ‘search,’” he told me quietly. “Tomorrow they’re going to invite you to lead the party, looking for more missing persons. They think you’ll feel flattered and obligated to assist.”
I blew out a breath. “All twelve of them will be out there ‘helping’ me?”
“Yeah.” His unease communicated itself to me in the way he gripped my hand.
“Perfect,” I said at once. “I’ll never get a better crack at them.” Then I sighed. “You don’t think I should do it.”
Chance parried that. “It’s not my decision to make.”
Well, I’ll be damned. He’d learned.
“There will be a hunting accident,” Jesse predicted as he turned down the long road toward the house. “People running around the woods? These things happen, they’ll say. Such a shame when she was just trying to help.”
Shannon took my other hand. “Then they’ll have a big potluck and talk about how nice you were. Corine, I don’t think you should do it, either. It’s a trap.”
“Duh,” I mumbled. “But forewarned, we can turn things to our advantage.”
Beside me, I could feel Chance squirming with the need to tell me how dumb this idea was. But I trusted in my team. We’d be on guard and could make them rue the day they decided to mess with us. Face it; they had to be desperate to consider venturing to a demon’s home ground.
Some might argue that loosing a demon on the world would be worse than letting a few people in a small town get away with murder. I didn’t agree; they were responsible for my mother’s death. Besides, maybe out there in the woods, we could accomplish both—see justice done and deal with the demon.
I wouldn’t hold my breath, but if I had to pick? The twelve were going down. I didn’t know how, but we had twenty-four hours to work it out. We pulled up at the house and found everything quiet, thank goodness. Tomorrow they’d come with their request for our help. We had plans to lay.
The guys dragged a protesting Dale Graham off to the bathroom and tossed him in the tub. He sat under tepid water, cussing his head off for a good ten minutes before he sobered up enough to strip and actually shower. Shannon and I avoided that duty by virtue of being female.
She’d come up with an idea. “So you guys were talking about the sigils, right? The ones built into the library and England’s house.”