O N C E   H E   P I N E S

(A Claire King FBI Suspense Thriller —Book 6)

M o l l y   B l a c k

Molly Black

Bestselling author Molly Black is author of the MAYA GRAY FBI suspense thriller series, comprising ten books (and counting); of the RYLIE WOLF FBI suspense thriller series, comprising six books; of the TAYLOR SAGE FBI suspense thriller series, comprising eight books; of the KATIE WINTER FBI suspense thriller series, comprising eleven books (and counting); of the RUBY HUNTER FBI suspense thriller series, comprising five books (and counting); of the CAITLIN DARE FBI suspense thriller series, comprising six books (and counting); of the REESE LINK mystery series, comprising six books (and counting); of the CLAIRE KING FBI suspense thriller series, comprising seven books (and counting); of the PIPER WOODS mystery series, comprising five books (and counting); of the GRACE FORD mystery series, comprising seven books (and counting); and of the CASEY BOLT mystery series, comprising five books (and counting).

GIRL ONE: MURDER (a Maya Gray FBI Suspense Thriller—Book #1), FOUND YOU (a Rylie Wolf FBI Suspense Thriller—Book #1), SAVE ME (a Katie Winter FBI Suspense Thriller—Book #1), and DON’T LOOK (a Taylor Sage FBI Suspense Thriller—Book #1) are available as free downloads on Kobo!

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Molly loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.mollyblackauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2023 by Molly Black. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Lemke Images used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY MOLLY BLACK

CASEY BOLT MYSTERY SERIES

BROKEN (Book #1)

FLAWED (Book #2)

BLEMISHED (Book #3)

DAMAGED (Book #4)

TWISTED (Book #5)

PIPER WOODS MYSTERY SERIES

SOMEWHERE SAFE (Book #1)

SOMEWHERE SANE (Book #2)

SOMEWHERE WHOLE (Book #3)

SOMEWHERE FAR (Book #4)

SOMEWHERE WRONG (Book #5)

GRACE FORD MYSTERY SERIES

NEARLY MINE (Book #1)

NEARLY SAFE (Book #2)

NEARLY FREE (Book #3)

NEARLY GONE (Book #4)

NEARLY HIS (Book #5)

CLAIRE KING MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE HE SEES (Book #1)

ONCE HE LONGS (Book #2)

ONCE HE TAKES (Book #3)

ONCE HE FEELS (Book #4)

ONCE HE KNOWS (Book #5)

MAYA GRAY MYSTERY SERIES

GIRL ONE: MURDER (Book #1)

GIRL TWO: TAKEN (Book #2)

GIRL THREE: TRAPPED (Book #3)

GIRL FOUR: LURED (Book #4)

GIRL FIVE: BOUND (Book #5)

GIRL SIX: FORSAKEN (Book #6)

GIRL SEVEN: CRAVED (Book #7)

GIRL EIGHT: HUNTED (Book #8)

GIRL NINE: GONE (Book #9)

RYLIE WOLF FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

FOUND YOU (Book #1)

CAUGHT YOU (Book #2)

SEE YOU (Book #3)

WANT YOU (Book #4)

TAKE YOU (Book #5)

DARE YOU (Book #6)

TAYLOR SAGE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

DON’T LOOK (Book #1)

DON’T BREATHE (Book #2)

DON’T RUN (Book #3)

DON’T FLINCH (Book #4)

DON’T REMEMBER (Book #5)

DON’T TELL (Book #6)

KATIE WINTER FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

SAVE ME (Book #1)

REACH ME (Book #2)

HIDE ME (Book #3)

BELIEVE ME (Book #4)

HELP ME (Book #5)

FORGET ME (Book #6)

HOLD ME (Book #7)

PROTECT ME (Book #8)

REMEMBER ME (Book #9)

CATCH ME (Book #10)

WATCH ME (Book #11)

RUBY HUNTER FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

IF I RUN (Book #1)

IF I TELL (Book #2)

IF I LIVE (Book #3)

IF I FORGET (Book #4)

IF I RETURN (Book #5)

CAITLIN DARE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

COME GET ME (Book #1)

COME FIND ME (Book #2)

COME TAKE ME (Book #3)

COME CATCH ME (Book #4)

COME SAVE ME (Book #5)

REESE LINK MYSTERY

BEYOND REASON (Book #1)

BEYOND REACH (Book #2)

BEYOND REPAIR (Book #3)

BEYOND DOUBT (Book #4)

BEYOND NORMAL (Book #5)

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Harper’s heart pounded in her chest. Her throat and mouth were dry, but that didn’t stop her tongue continually flicking out in a futile attempt to moisten her equally dry lips. It was a habit her friends and family would have recognized as a tell when she was nervous or stressed.

And she was both of those things at that moment.

Her sweat-soaked cotton t-shirt stuck to her back and chest, and it wasn’t just the hot and humid Mississippi night that caused it. For the hundredth time, she questioned what the hell she was doing there in those dark woods close to midnight.

For the hundredth time, she couldn’t give her frantic mind a satisfactory answer.

And for the hundredth time, she walked on.

The sounds of the forest were louder than she could ever have imagined. A background shrill hum of insects was overlaid by the random and often startling cries from what she hoped were birds, that seemed to come from all around her; from above in the dark canopy of treetops that blotted out what star and moonlight there was, and from beside her, in the thick foliage that crowded in on either side of the narrow, rough track she was walking down.

A flurry of wings just in front of her to the left, as a disturbed bird hurriedly took flight to avoid her approach, made her stomach flip and her breath catch in her throat. Then she looked up, along the winding path, and her eyes, as used to the blackness as they would ever be, could suddenly make out her destination.

The sight almost made her turn right round and run as fast as she could in the opposite direction. And to keep on running and running.

But she didn’t.

Somehow, she called upon the last ounce of resolve from deep inside her nineteen-year-old body, and with wobbly legs, walked towards the crumbling, decaying house.

The path widened, and then suddenly she was clear of the trees and the undergrowth. The dark house loomed over her. The moon, almost but not quite full, reflected off the three windows that remained intact, two on the upper floor, one on the ground floor.

Through the shattered window to the right of the front porch, Harper could just make out other flickering lights that made her fleetingly think of fireflies.

It was to those lights that she knew she must go. It was why she had left the safety of her family home at eleven thirty that night and driven the eight miles to the dark wood.

She was there despite all of the warnings. Against every bit of the common sense that had been drilled into her throughout her comfortable childhood, adolescence and teenage years.

She was there despite every single one of her instincts that were screaming at her to turn tail and flee.

She walked onwards towards the house, trying to ignore the fact she was walking towards, and very soon would be stepping into, the most cliched image of a house from a horror movie imaginable.

The noises of the wood were behind her, and she could now discern new sounds coming from the house. Ones made by humans. There was chanting, the words unintelligible, rising and falling in a rhythm that quickly became aligned with her breathing.

She continued towards the house until it filled her vision, the ivy-clad wooden walls, its broken windows like blind staring eyes, blocking out everything else.

The door to the porch was open and almost without hesitation she walked through, the smell of incense suddenly assailing her senses, temporarily overriding every other sensation.

Then, as she walked slowly through the front door, her eyes and ears filled in the gaps.

And what they showed her was enough to freeze the blood in her veins.

If the house was an image from every school ghost story, the vision that confronted Harper was straight out of a nightmare.

Hooded figures formed a circle in the large shadowy room in front of her. Their bodies swayed in time with the solemn chanting that rose and fell, swelled and receded. There were perhaps as many as twenty people in the circle, and Harper found herself wondering who they were if she knew any or all of them. But it was impossible to tell. They all wore hooded robes, made of what looked like in the poor, undulating light to be made of thick, brown coarse cloth, the kind she associated with medieval monks. The faces of the swaying figures were hidden behind the cloth and deep shadow.

Then, as her eyes became adjusted to the light, and her mind with the situation, she began to notice other details. The flickering light was coming from torches held by the masked figures. Flaming torches, with orange tongues of fire that came not from candles but from a ball or rags fastened to short, intricate sticks, or even horns.

In the center of the circle stood a man, his arms aloft. He too had a cloak, but his was pure black, and his hood was thrown back off his head. His head was adorned with a hideous mask that Harper couldn’t take her eyes from. It was that of a goat, a huge, grotesque skull, with massive, twisted horns that reached up toward the dark, shadowy ceiling.

Despite everything, Harper began to feel calmer as her eyes became fixated on the man at the center of the ring of figures. This was why she had come. This was what she had come for. For years she had become more and more convinced there was more to this world and to this life than high school and college, with its dramas, petty squabbles and superficialities. That there was more to life than working to secure nine to five drudgery, a family life that quickly turned uneventful at best, sour at worst.

The online chatrooms that she had found by accident had opened the door to there being another possibility. Another world, another life that existed just out of sight of the mainstream. One that was ready and waiting in the shadows. One that had always been there.

It had taken her two months from first stumbling upon that forum, to signing in and asking the questions she had always wanted to find the answers to, but had until then never known the words to use, or the people to ask.

It had taken a further six months for her to pluck up the courage and take the next massive leap. To come and see for herself what it was all about. As she stared, entranced at the goat-headed man, and the chanting, swaying figures around him, she knew that she had crossed a line. That there was no going back.

The rhythm of the chanting suddenly altered, the words, still unintelligible, becoming faster, more frenetic. The bodies’ movements kept pace with the new rhythm.

Harper edged closer so she was within touching distance of the figure nearest to her. Suddenly, she became aware that there were other people in the room, besides the goat-headed man and the hooded, chanting figures. Around the edge, lurking in the shadows, were people like her. No masks, no torches, no cloaks. Just regular people, watching, entranced by what was going on.

She wondered if any of those were there for the first time, like her. If one was in fact Angelwings 88, the person on the forum who had finally convinced her to take the next step and stop dreaming about it or imagining it but actually experience it for herself.

The sight of the observers calmed her even more, and her eyes stopped darting around the dark room, and instead, she found herself staring once again at the goat-headed figure, her body swaying in time with the incessant undulations of the chanting.

The incense that filled the room should have been cloying, but somehow it wasn’t. It helped to allow her mind to drift off, away from that abandoned house in those dark, terrifying woods, to somewhere else entirely. A place she did not how to get to, but that she suddenly knew she had always been desperate to arrive at.

She breathed in deeper and deeper, intoxicated by the whole atmosphere. At first, when she had shuffled into the room, she had felt like an outsider. That the ring of cloaked figures formed an exclusive group, one she was not and never could be a part of.

Now, she felt the exact opposite. That everyone in the room was somehow joined by an invisible bond. She felt a part of something in a way she never had before. Not in her college basketball team or her high school cheerleading squad.

Her eyes closed, as she allowed herself to be fully consumed by the rhythm of the chanting that was getting faster and faster, the voices singing out louder and louder. Her arms came up from her sides and they too started swaying as she waved them in time.

Suddenly, her eyes snapped open as she felt a sharp pain in her wrist. For a crazy second, she thought she had been bitten, and half expected to see her cat, Jojo, hanging from her arm. It took her eyes a couple of seconds to focus, and when they finally managed to, in the gloomy light, it took her brain another two or three seconds to compute what her eyes were telling it.

Blood, almost black in the half-light, was pouring down her forearm towards the crook of her elbow. Then, like a child following a trail in a puzzle book, her eyes traced the flow of blood back up her arm to its source.

A dart, three inches in length, stuck out from her wrist. She stared at it transfixed, holding her arm out in front of her, oblivious to the blood that had started to drip onto the floor at her feet. Oblivious now also of the chanting that filled the room, of the swaying figures just in front of her.

Then she heard another sound from behind her and to her right. A pfft sound, like that of air escaping from the valve on her bike tire.

It was followed, almost instantly, by another sharp pain, this time in her neck.

Her hand, the one at the end of the wrist which held the dart, went to move towards her neck, but it never completed its journey.

Harper’s eyes lost focus, then closed. Then she toppled forward.

She was dead before she hit the floor. 

CHAPTER ONE

Agent Claire King stared at the email that had just dropped into her inbox. It was what she had been waiting for, for days. In truth, it was what she had been waiting for ever since, as a twelve-year-old girl, she had been told that her mom would never be coming home to make cookies with her again.

Yet her finger hesitated over the mouse of her laptop. She felt like she was on a rollercoaster. A ride that she was only just tall enough to be allowed on. There was no way off, and there was no end in sight. To make matters worse, she had the distinct feeling that as opposed to getting her closer to the end, what the email contained would be like throwing off the seatbelt.

The last few months had been the toughest of her life, and as someone who had grown up for most of her adolescence with just one parent, a drunk, cruel and absent one at that, that was some achievement.

The case that had started everything, and in many ways had defined the woman she was now, was the one involving the Artist. Before that case, her twelve years of steady progression through the FBI ranks had been textbook. Promotions, commendations, setbacks had come and gone, but she had always felt she knew about the world in general, the world of law enforcement, and her place in both.

Then things had gotten crazy. And not in a good, high school party way. The Artist had proved to be above and beyond anything she, or indeed anyone at the agency, had faced before. She was loath to use the word genius when dealing with such a morally corrupt person, but in every other walk of life, that tag would have sat very comfortably on his shoulders.

Tyler, the first partner at work she had really connected to, and the person who had taught her so much about what it meant to be not just an agent, but a truly exceptional one, had been killed. Slaughtered in front of her at the hands of the Artist.

A short while later, she and Wilson, her new rookie partner, had tracked down the serial killer, chased him and boarded his boat. She had even managed to get the cuffs on him. For a split second, she had had her man.

And then the crazy dial was ratcheted up to eleven and beyond. An explosion on the boat had done two things. First it had allowed the Artist to escape. Second, it had killed Claire. For seventeen minutes, she was officially dead. Wilson had hauled her out of the Mississippi and worked on her chest in an attempt to keep whatever spark of lifeforce was still in his new partner, alight. It had worked. But ever since waking up in the hospital bed from a coma, she had been experiencing visions.

There was no doubt those had helped her in subsequent investigations. Even Wilson, the only other person who knew about them, now trusted what she saw when she blanked out.

But that didn’t make it any easier to deal with what was going on in her brain. What it meant about everything she had assumed about the world.

And now there was the revelation that the person responsible for killing her mother, all those years ago could very well be the same person as the man now known as the Artist. If he wasn’t, there was growing evidence that he may have worked with him. Or still be working with him.

She took a deep breath and hit the mouse button that opened the email. It had come in after her repeated demands to have access to the evidence that had been held back, forgotten about or simply ignored concerning her mother’s homicide. Demands that had reached the ears of people with higher pay grades than she. The Chief had questioned her about it, and she had got the impression that it had ruffled the feathers of people who were not used to having their feathers disturbed.

But that was not her concern.

Her eyes scanned the one line of text and the contents. There was more than she had expected, file after file attached, though she had been in the game long enough to know that quantity wasn’t necessarily related to quality.

She took a long sip of her coffee, then dived in, quickly triaging the evidence.

Some she had seen before, or were simply different version of reports she had received earlier. There were other files that she was at a loss to see how they were relevant, and she had put them aside to wade through later. Her eyes devoured each heading, before skim reading the text, searching for anything that jumped out. Names, places, things that resonated, stuck or banged against her knowledge of the case.

On a pad beside her laptop, she made a list of what did jump out, along with the file or report they were contained in. One name was mentioned on more than one occasion. The third time she saw it, she circled it on her list with her pen, then leaned back in her chair, her lips pursed.

Devyn Sheldon had been picked up as an initial person of interest, but quickly released. He was then not mentioned in any relation to the investigation into Donna King, Claire’s mother. However, two seemingly unrelated files had been attached. They related to the same Devyn Sheldon, one where he had been a suspect in an assault case, for which he had been cleared. The other, a year later and this time for battery, he had been arrested, tried and found guilty.

Claire sat up and punched in his details into the database. She tried to stop herself from getting carried away. There had been far too many false dawns, cul-de-sacs and red herrings strewn across the cases for her to pin too much hope on this latest lead, but that good old-fashioned thing – instinct – told her that it was worth looking into at the very least.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the details came back with a date of birth but no date of death. According to their records, Sheldon was still alive. He would have been twenty when her mom had been killed.

Claire scrolled down the rest of the file. It was pretty thin. According to this, he had kept his nose clean since that one conviction.

Or he had not been caught.

Three minutes later, she saw something that set her heart racing once more, this time with excitement. The shirt he had worn during the attack on the twenty-eight-year-old woman who had been coming back from the Circle K was still in the evidence room. The one crime he had been convicted for. 

She shot to her feet then steadied herself. Her first thought had been to get the evidence bag and touch the shirt to see if it would produce a vision. The fact that had been the first place her mind had leapt to shocked her as much as it scared her.

Having visions that opened the door to the past and the future was not normal. It was as far from normal as you could possibly get. And as such, though she knew she had to deal with it as part of her new reality, she also did not want to take it for granted and file it away along with her other ‘normal’ everyday instincts. The ones that had got her to where she was today.

But still, she did have to use every tool at her disposal.

Ten minutes later, she was giving the docket to the bored official in the huge evidence room located in the basement. He had raised his eyes when he had seen the date on the file she wished to locate and had wished her retreating back good luck, as she strode purposefully into the warehouse-like room.

Rows and rows of shelves stretched out the length of the room, each up to the ceiling. Ladders were placed sporadically around the narrow, claustrophobic aisles. As always when Claire visited the evidence room, she was struck by the thought that each of the boxes in front of her, far too many to count, not only represented a crime, but a victim of that crime.

It was the starkest indication of the sheer size of the job that her and her colleagues had. She automatically made her way to the far end of the room, where she knew the older cases were stored. Back before the days of DNA testing, fewer items were classed as evidence, and hence stored away, so the further you went back in time, the sparser and smaller the boxes became.

When she got to the shelf where the Devyn Sheldon evidence box should have been, only to find a battered box from three years previous, the official’s ‘good luck’ comment came back to her. Hands on hips she methodically scanned the neighboring boxes, some with labels so faded it was nearly impossible to discern what case they were from.

A nagging doubt started to creep in, that the files had been deliberately misplaced or worse, and she had to swallow down the rising feeling of frustration and anger that was building up from her gut. Then, on a shelf one up from where she had originally looked, and eight feet down, she spotted the case number she needed and let out a whistle of relief.

She looked round. There was no one else in the room, at least not in her section. She considered going to one of the tables located back near the entrance to sift through the box, but quickly decided against it. By the weight of it, there was very little in it, and more importantly, if she did have a vision, which, if she was honest with herself, was the main reason for seeking out this box, then she wanted to do it as far away from prying eyes as possible.

Kneeling down on the cold, tiled floor, she eased the cardboard lid off. Inside, there was a red plaid shirt in a bag. She lifted it up and out of the box and saw that apart from that bag, there was nothing else inside. She placed it on the floor, and after another quick look around, and with nervous, suddenly clumsy fingers opened the bag.

Claire reached in and laid her fingers on the stiff material, involuntarily closing her eyes as she did so. A wave of mild nausea swept over her, and she put her other hand back to support herself. She knelt there, waiting, her eyes clenched closed, holding her breath. Then the nausea passed and tentatively she opened her eyes. She looked around the floor beside her as if searching for answers to what had just happened.

What had just happened? Nothing.

No, her mind raced, knowing she had missed something but unable to grasp onto just what it had been and suddenly scared that if she didn’t get hold of it soon, it would fade and disappear like a dream in the cold harsh light of day.

There had been no vision. She had seen nothing apart from the dark insides of her eyelids. The only sound had been the laboring AC unit in the ceiling above her head.

And yet…

There had been something else.

She sniffed, moving her head and sniffing the air around her, then lifted the shirt up to her nose and took in a big draft of stale air.

She shoved it away, dropping the bag and the shirt back in the box and sat down on the floor, her mind still racing, but now in a calculated direction.

There had been a smell. Faint but unmistakable. It had come along with the feeling of sickness. It was fire... but something more than that, more specific. She breathed in deeply again, knowing the smell had long gone, by twenty years, but hoping it would trigger the memory.

Diesel. It had been diesel. A guy she had hung around with years ago had been constantly repairing a truck he had picked up for next to nothing at an auction and would come back from the garage reeking of it.

Suddenly, her mind flew back to her visit to Jonestown, West Virginia. It had been to follow up on an anonymous tip-off about the Artist. When she had arrived at the address, she had found a burnt-out shell of a building, only to experience a vision once inside. The vision was of a man. An arsonist.

In the original case files she had studied, there had been oblique comments about arson that seemed out of place as there was no evidence of arson at the crime scene of her mother’s death.

When she had questioned Miller about it, the cop who had run the case back in the day, he had vaguely recalled that his superior, Edwards, had had a theory that involved arson, but couldn’t — or wouldn’t — be any more specific on it.

Somehow, arson was linked to both the death of her mother, and the Artist. Was Devyn Sheldon the link to both cases? Had the link to cracking both her mother's case and that of the Artist been sitting down here in the basement all the time?

She put the lid back on the box, considered putting it in the place it should have been, but thought better of it. Her instinct told her that the fewer people knew someone had been in the box the better, despite her having to write the docket out and fill it in at the desk.

Planning her next move, she strode back along the lines of shelves and back past the official who looked up, an inquisitive look on his face.

"I needed more than luck," she said, shaking her head, "an insight into the mind of the dumbass who designed the system would have served me better.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he shot back, smiling. “Hey, promise me if you ever get that, you’ll share it. Would save us all a hell of a lot of man hours.”

“Deal,” she said and made her way back up the stairs. Halfway up, her cell phone started going crazy. She grabbed it and stared at the screen. Eight missed calls, six from the Chief, two from Wilson. She looked back down the stairs, suddenly realizing she had had no signal in the basement.

Something must have happened. Something big.

CHAPTER TWO

Claire’s heart did a little skip when she saw Wilson’s head, with its short black haircut, bobbing along above the rest of the line making their way through security. A little skip that partly annoyed her, partly made her feel warm inside.

The reason her cardiac response wasn’t met with universal approval was because she felt she was not in a place in her life when she needed, or even wanted the added distraction of a relationship. Certainly not when it came with the added complications and ambiguities that were inevitable when that relationship muddied the waters of a professional relationship.

But despite all of that, she couldn’t deny the fact that the past ten days had been wonderful. Both had given in to their feelings, that they had both admitted had been simmering below the surface for weeks. That release, that admission in itself had been liberating. The evenings and nights they had spent together had been better than she could have imagined, and she hoped, with a little bit of confidence, Mark Wilson felt exactly the same.

He spotted her over the heads of his fellow travelers and gave her a wave, his face cracking open into a beaming smile.

Despite her missing the calls from the Chief and Wilson, she had still beat him to the airport. He had been pulled into a meeting just as he was leaving the building. A case he had been working on months ago, had, in the words of his old boss, ‘blown up like a bag of pollock left in the sun’. They had been booked on the next flight to Kingston, Mississippi, a flight that she noted was leaving in less than twenty minutes.

She turned and headed to the gate, dawdling to allow Wilson to catch up, which he quickly did. He gave her a nod, which she returned before they strode down the concourse, carrying their bags. Claire was fully aware that one of those complications and ambiguities was in full swing at that moment. In normal life, the two would have greeted each other with a kiss, a hug, a warm, welcoming hand on the shoulder at the very least.

But now they were both wearing the hats of FBI agents, partners in the professional sense only. She would be lying to herself if she said it wasn't odd, but at that moment she was very happy to jump through that hoop, if it meant it could carry on the way it had started. If other hoops got thrust in their path, then they would have to deal with them as and when they were.

“All sorted?” she asked, handing her boarding card to the young woman at the desk.

“About as sorted as that case is ever going to be,” Wilson sighed. “We’ve got as much chance of getting it to court, never mind of securing a conviction, as I have of running and getting elected for mayor.”

“Which would be a good thing for the city, if a terrible one for law enforcement,” she said, making her way down the ramp leading to the Boeing.

“Jeez, the thought itself is enough to make me gray. I hate the politics in this job, imagine me doing something which is one hundred percent politics, no percent action?”

“What I can imagine is you with gray hair,” she said, stopping at the entrance to the plane and turning round to look up at Wilson, a smile on her face. “And I think I’ll like it.”

“It may be sooner than either of us expect.”

Claire got the impression that there was something he wanted to say, something behind the comment that went deeper than a throwaway joke, but they were being ushered down the aisle of the plane and into their seats. She looked at him, but he was intent on getting his bag into the overhead locker and helping an elderly man to do the same.

“Talking of hair,” he said taking his seat next to her, “I like your new shorter haircut. You should keep it.”

Claire looked at him, unsure if he was deliberately changing the subject or simply giving her a compliment.

“It’s hardly new,” she replied, her hand automatically going to the black strands that hung just above her shoulders. “I’ve even got past the stage of doing a double take when I see my reflection.”

Her hair had been burnt when she had been trapped in a burning house weeks before, forcing her to abandon the long hair she had had since her teenage years.

“But thank you,” she said, looking at her partner, but she could see that his mind had gone elsewhere, onto other matters.

The flight attendant had gone through the safety briefing, the plane had taxied down the runway then taken off and the captain had turned off the seatbelt signs before they spoke again.

“Anything about this case, our case, strike you as odd?” Wilson asked.

Claire pursed her lips. “Aren’t all the ones that land on our desk odd? I sometimes feel we must have an invisible sign on our door that says ‘crackpot cases only’.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said before pursuing his original point. “But anything particular about this one?”

Claire thought back to the brief conversation she had had with the agitated Chief. She hadn’t known if his frustration had been caused by his inability to get hold of her, the case, or one of the numerous other plates she knew he was always keeping spinning.

"There's not a lot to know…" she said after twenty seconds of deliberation.

“That’s precisely my point. There’s hardly anything. One body. One homicide. Why are we being called in? Why aren’t the Kingston PD taking care of this?”

“The Chief said he didn’t want to cloud our minds with speculation, that he just wanted to give us the facts. Sparse though they were,” Claire said. “Did you get anything more out of him?”

“No, those were his words to me. Verbatim.”

As the plane hit a pocket of turbulence, Claire turned to Wilson and said, "Maybe they just need a fresh set of eyes. You know how it is with small-town PDs. They may not have the experience to handle a homicide case."

“Or,” Wilson said, “they could be trying to keep it quiet. Maybe it’s someone influential, someone with money. They don’t want the story getting out and hurting the town’s reputation.”

Claire raised an eyebrow. “You think it’s a cover-up?”

“I don’t know,” Wilson said. “But it’s worth considering. We need to be prepared for all possibilities.”

Claire took out her notebook and looked at the notes she had made during her conversation with the Chief. It was a small book, and the hurriedly scribbled words barely covered half a page.

Paisley Brown, twenty-five, had been found dead in a cemetery four days earlier. The cause was a massive heart attack, thought to have been brought upon by an as of yet unidentified poison. Wilson was right. Why had the death of this apparently unremarkable woman been passed up the lines as far as the Chief, eight hundred miles away?

She hoped it would get clearer when they touched down in Mississippi in a couple of hours, and looked out the window at the landscape below, trying to clear her mind of the Paisley Brown case, so she could go in with an open mind, a completely blank canvas onto which to paint her theories, just as the Chief had wanted.

There were plenty of other things to fill the vacuum left in its wake. She filled Wilson in on the email on her mother's case and what she had discovered in the evidence room.

“Do you know anything about this Devyn Sheldon?” Wilson asked.

“Not a thing. I didn’t get a chance to look into him. As soon as I got back above ground, I saw I’d missed half a dozen calls from the Chief and a couple from you. But…”

“You have a feeling he is involved. In some way…” Wilson interrupted, a slight smile playing over his lips.

Claire looked back out of the window to hide her own smile. Wilson had got used to her instincts and how she let them influence, even dictate her actions, at least when it came to their job. It was something she was unapologetic about. It was mainly, along with a hell of a lot of hard good old-fashioned policework, the reason she had been so successful as an agent and detective.

The approach of Wilson was different. He used a more methodical, by the book, by the statistics and data type of approach. Perhaps, she thought, that was why they gelled, why they worked so well together, and why they had got such good results in their brief time working together. She was also incredibly thankful that despite his mindset and approach, he always, almost without fail, trusted her instincts. He even trusted the insights that came from her visions. Something she knew not only took a huge leap of faith, but could also seriously send his promising career off the rails if it were to ever come out.

“To tell you the truth,” she said, turning back to face Wilson, “I do, but I have no idea how. The whole thing just seems so… so unreal, and that comes on the back of enough things happening of late that can be labeled with that phrase.”

Wilson let her go on.

“But I’m not sure why I would have been sent the file with his name, if he wasn’t. Plus the…”

“What happened in the evidence room,” Wilson finished for her.

She nodded, wanting to grasp his hand for understanding, not just about the case but in her reticence in talking about the visions.

“Well, at least it seems like it is moving. Even if we don’t know in which direction. Movement is almost always better than stagnating.”

“Yes,” she said, noting again with a huge surge of gratitude, the use of the word ‘we’.

A comfortable silence settled over them, as they both watched the stewardess go down the aisle serving drinks.

Claire got the impression Wilson was building up to say something, and her mind went back to her feeling earlier that there was something he wanted to get off his chest, or at least that something was nagging at the back of his mind.

She knew him well enough that he needed to come out with whatever it was in his own time, that any prodding by her would in all likelihood have the opposite effect, especially if he wasn’t ready to show his hand.

Another minute went by, then her tactics proved to be correct.

“I saw Potter this morning,” he said, his eyes staring at his large hands that were laying on his lap.

Claire knew that statement was way more than a throwaway comment. She knew that this was what had been gnawing away at him. She also knew she had to wait for wherever this was leading to, to be revealed.

Leonard Potter, known to everyone — his enemies as well as his friends, with the former group hugely outnumbering the latter — as Potter, was a former colleague of Wilson’s. When Wilson had joined as a wet behind the ears rookie, it had been to Potter that he had been assigned.

Potter’s role was to teach his young protégé the ropes, show him how things worked at the agency and to set him on his way for a long and prosperous career at the coal face of law enforcement in the United States.

It had been Wilson’s role to listen, to learn, to grow and develop.

It could be said that neither fulfilled their role. Potter, twelve years his senior and equal part frustrated at his hitherto lack of rise through the ranks and ruthlessly ambitious to still achieve it, had treated Wilson with disdain and contempt from day one.

Wilson almost immediately saw his supposed mentor for what he was. Someone whose one goal was to get as high up the ladder and accumulate as much power as possible. He had no regard for whose back he stood on, whose career or reputation he ruined in order to get there.

Wilson could almost have forgiven, or at least ignored those failings. What he couldn’t ignore was the fact that Potter also showed little or no regard for actually doing the job he was paid to do with any integrity whatsoever. Guilty people were allowed to walk unhindered. Others were subject to persecution or worse.

The majority of success that Potter was credited with came down almost exclusively to him making sure he was at the right place at the right time, to take over or at the very least, piggyback onto someone else’s success.

After nine months, Wilson made probably the stupidest, but bravest call of his fledgling career. He called Potter out on it.

The upshot was that Wilson was transferred to another partner and made an enemy for life. An enemy who in the ensuing years had progressed up the ladder.

It wouldn’t be long before Potter would be in a position to apply some real pressure on Wilson’s career path, and from his own bitter experience, he wouldn’t put it past him for that pressure to come in the form of something immoral, illegal and devastating.

Wilson had spoken at length about his dilemma and the ticking timebomb that hovered just over the horizon that could destroy his reputation. Claire wondered if the conversation that morning had resulted in it peeping its head over the horizon.

What she hadn’t expected was what Wilson said next.

“He knows about us,” he said.

Claire looked at Wilson, who was still staring at his hands.

“I don’t know how, but he knows about us.”

“He said that?” Claire asked, her brain trying to catch up.

"Not in so many words, but I know Potter. I know how his mind works. He knows, and he wanted to make sure I knew he knows." He looked up at Claire, worry etched on his strong features. "I'm so sorry Claire. It's me he is gunning for, I will never forgive myself if this impacts on you.”

"Sorry for what? We both… found ourselves in this situation," she said, hating her clumsy choice of words to describe what only a few minutes before she had been thinking of as a wonderful relationship. "We both agreed we wouldn't tell HR. This is not on you, Mark. It's… no, I was going to say this is on both of us, but no it's not. It's on Potter. No one else. And Mark…" she waited until he looked directly at her again, "we will not let his poison, his corrupt ambition ruin anything about us. Professionally or otherwise. Right?"

Wilson looked into her eyes, holding her gaze for several seconds before he replied.

“Right,” he said, but Claire could tell he was far from convinced.

Kingston airport was reminiscent of so many domestic airports, especially in the south. It had a relaxed, laid-back feeling that always made Claire think of vacations. It took less than twenty minutes from the wheels hitting the tarmac to throwing their luggage in the trunk of the prearranged rental car. They had just got onto the freeway when Claire’s cell phone rang.

“Agent King,” she said.

She listened for almost two minutes, just giving the occasional 'yes' or sound of acknowledgment.

“Ok, thank you, send me the address, or the nearest thing you have to it,” she said before putting the phone back on her lap.

“Well,” she said to Wilson, sitting beside her in the driving seat. “You were saying it was odd we only had one body. You’ve got your second. Another young woman was found this morning.”

CHAPTER THREE

The house that loomed up out of the forest clearing in front of Claire and Wilson looked no less sinister in the early afternoon than it had to Harper Young in the dead of night.

Both stopped involuntarily. The sun, far from destroying the gloominess of the semi-derelict house, only served to highlight it. Claire thought she was standing face to face with the setting of dozens of childhood nightmares that had kept her pinned beneath her Tiny Toon’s duvet.

Like the sunlight that poured down from directly overhead, the prosaic details of the uniformed police officers, and the crime tape, managed to heighten the sense of threat.

“Jeez,” Wilson muttered, “what a place to go.”

Claire didn’t know if he meant as in a place to die or a place to visit, but guessed either worked just as well.

They walked up to the house and were met by a sergeant whose dark blue shirt, straining over a heavy paunch, had sweat stains around both pits. Claire imagined no one had been particularly enamored with having to walk all the way through the woods to reach there. She had long since slung her black suit jacket over her shoulder, and even in her black T-shirt was finding the heat uncomfortable.

“I’m Agent Wilson, this is Agent King,” Wilson said to the sergeant, who pocketed the white handkerchief he had used to wipe his large forehead and shook their hands in turn.

“Sergeant Bradley.”  The officer’s voice was higher than his appearance would suggest, and his dark moustache, the same color as his thinning hair, quivered as he spoke.

“Do we know who the victim is?” Claire asked, taking her notebook out.

“A Harper Young. Nineteen years of age. That’s all we have as of this minute.”

“Who found the body,” Wilson said, turning around to take in the claustrophobic clearing that the house was sitting in, “seems an odd place to just be passing through, I take it the place is deserted.”

The sergeant stepped from one foot to the other, and the handkerchief came out again.

“It was phoned in this morning. Anonymous caller. Said there was a woman, dead at this here location. It’s called the Johnson House, after the family who built it and lived here for generations. When the last of them died back in the eighties, it fell into ruin. The rumors have hardly helped the real estate folks none.”

“Rumors sergeant?” Claire asked, her pen stayed.

Bradley hopped from one foot to the other and looked back over his shoulder. Claire got the strong impression that his unease was not because he was worried about being overheard by his men, but that he didn’t want to come across as some hick in front of these two, whom he no doubt assumed were big city feds.

“Just high school stuff mainly, but folks these parts tend to get a bit jumpy ‘bout that kinda thing.” Claire saw that, like her, Wilson had seen him hopping from foot to foot, and she steadfastly refused to catch her partner’s eye.

"High school stuff…?" Claire said when it became apparent the sergeant wasn't going to elaborate further.

"The last of the Johnson's, Emily Johnson killed herself in the dining room. Was found by the housekeeper, Mrs. Hewitt, strung up. Mrs. Hewitt refused to step foot in the place again, understandably, but… there's talk that Mrs. Johnson's ghost still walks the house." He laughed, but all three of them knew it was insincere.

“Is that it?” Wilson’s voice dripped with cynicism.

“…well, and these are the rumors you understand, there was talk that it was voices and… spirits in the house that forced Mrs. Johnson to… do what she did.”

“And it’s been vacant since?” Claire asked, wanting to take the initiative away from Wilson, who she was half expecting to make some joke that would hardly help their cause.

“Sure has,” Bradley said, visibly glad he was on safer ground. “You get kids coming up time to time, doing a bunch of weird stuff, but yes, I don’t know many folks round here who will be sad to see it crumble to dust and everyone can move on and forget about it.”

“Which with what happened today is not going to help,” Wilson said.

“You can say that again agent.”

“You said it was called in…?” Claire asked.

"Yes, that's correct. An anonymous caller, male, the call handler described as middle-aged, but…" he shrugged, indicating that it was hardly conclusive.

“The body is still there?” Claire asked, nodding in the direction of the house behind the sergeant’s shoulder.

“Sure is agent. Apart from retrieving her wallet to identify her. As we found her.”

"The coroner is with the body, I take it?"

“No sir,” the uneasiness returned to the sergeant, as did his restless hopping from foot to foot. He went for his handkerchief, but when it was halfway out of his pocket, shoved it back. “He said he wanted to wait until the feds were on the scene.”

“Well,” Wilson said, his voice abrupt, “tell him the feds are on the scene so he can get his ass down here.”

“Thank you sergeant, we’ll let you know if we have any more questions.” With that, Claire strode off towards the house, Wilson close behind her.

The three other officers were huddled in the shade of the canopy of trees near to where the path emerged into the small clearing. They were whispering amongst themselves, occasionally casting nervous glances at the house. They had largely ignored the two agents and their conversation with their sergeant.

The glass in the windows, both those that had been broken as well as those that still remained intact, was filthy. Dusty smears made them look like eyes blighted with cataracts. The porch door was open, and Claire stepped through into it, then further, through the open front door into the house itself. She had been hoping it would be cooler inside, but if anything the air was hotter, more cloying. What made it worse was the unmistakable scent that hung heavily in the air. She looked back at Wilson, who was sniffing.

“Incense,” they both said simultaneously. Claire’s mind went back to the horrific events in California where Grant Holt had used incense clocks to plot the timing of his victims. Ever since then, the scent of incense has always had sinister, horrible connotations. Rays of sunshine coming through the windows lit the interior of the house, but it was still gloomy inside, and it took several seconds for Claire's eyes to get used to the dim light. The house opened out in front of them, through a small reception room, and then out into what had probably been a large dining room straight ahead. It was there, on the right-hand side, that the body of Harper Young lay sprawled.

Claire carefully walked towards the body, being careful where she trod, so as not to disturb anything that could turn out to be evidence, then crouched down beside the prone girl. Beside her was her brown leather wallet, that the sergeant or one of his officers must have retrieved from her jean’s pocket.

But it was the body that Claire’s eyes were drawn to. She heard an intake of breath from Wilson crouching beside her, and guessed that he had spotted the same thing she had.

Harper’s right arm was stretched out in front of her, along the parquet flooring. It was the dried blood, black in the dim light, that had first attracted Claire’s attention, but then when her eyes focused in on the detail, she saw what had caused the blood. A dart, three inches long, the first of those, made up of a needle-like steel tip, protruded from her wrist. The Main body of the dart was made of a dark wood, with a black feather blossoming out from the end.

“It must have hit the radial artery,” Wilson whispered. “Poisoned dart?”

“We don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but that is certainly what it looks like. She hasn’t lost enough blood from this to cause her death. Unless she fainted and hit her head.” Claire leaned over, closer to the dart. It was smooth, with no markings that she could make out.

“Which we won’t know until the coroner gets here,” Wilson muttered, annoyed at the official’s absence.

Claire looked behind her, towards the front wall of the house. “Whoever fired this dart must have been inside the house. There’s no way they could have been outside and fired in.”

“Could they have been hiding here? If it was the daytime, there’s not really anywhere to hide. It’s not that light in here, but even so…”

Claire scanned the large space that in the house’s heyday would have been two rooms, before a dividing wall had collapsed. There was no furniture, and for an abandoned house, it was remarkably free of litter. The dark wooden floor was dusty and dirty, but there was not the usual detritus and garbage you would expect.

She sniffed the air again, the sweetness of the incense mixing with the dank mustiness of the decaying house.

"What was she doing here? Meeting someone. Perhaps this is the local make-out place?"

“She’s nineteen, surely, she’s too old for that? We’re miles from the nearest house, she must have driven here. Why walk through the forest to here if you have a car? Anyway, people stopped saying make out in the eighties,” Claire said, giving Wilson a smile.

“Hey, I’m a traditionalist at heart.”

Claire's eyes roamed over the body. Harper was dressed in a black, ACDC T-shirt, black denims and Converse pumps. Her brunette hair fell down below her shoulders, fanning out over the rock band's tour dates listed on her back. Then, her eyes were drawn to something just visible through the strands of hair.

She leaned forward, peering at something sticking out. A black feather. She reached towards it, not wanting to touch or disturb the evidence. "Wilson," she found herself whispering.

She pointed to the feather, and her finger touched Harper’s brown hair.

Suddenly there was darkness, complete darkness, but her senses were overwhelmed by shouting. Shrieking and screaming. Urgent but Incoherent.

It stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and she was back inside the dusky room. Then she became aware that Wilson was holding her, his strong hands gripping her arms and shoulders.

“Claire… you’re OK, I’ve got you. You’re back.”

She allowed him to ease her up and away from the dead body that was stretched out on the floor beneath her. She regained her strength and put her arms down to steady herself on the floor.

Wilson looked at her, his concerned face inches from hers.

Claire rubbed her hand over her face. “Thanks Mark,” she said realizing she would have face planted right on top of the dead girl if he hadn’t been on hand to catch her.

“What did you see?” he asked, his voice gentle.

She shook her head. “Nothing. It was just shouting.” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to recall exactly what she had heard. “It was shouting. Yelling. Angry, I think, not scared… but I can't be sure. I don't even know if it was a man or a woman. A woman, I think. Not a child. An adult. It was… sort of distorted.”

“Could it have been in a different language?”

“No… I don’t think that’s it. It was like I was too close to it to distinguish the words if that makes sense. Ha, as if any of this makes sense.”

Neither said anything for a few seconds. Then Claire broke the silence.

"The vision in the evidence room, it was just something I could smell. The diesel. The fire. Now, this one was just the sound. I wonder if… if what is happening to me is fading?"

Wilson looked at her. “If it did fade, then went completely, how would you feel about that?”

Claire considered her partner’s question. “I don’t know if I’m being completely honest. I guess it would mean I wouldn’t be losing my mind anymore. I’d be normal again.”

"You'll never be normal Claire," Wilson said, and then when he saw the look on Claire's face quickly added, "and I mean that in a good way!"

“Hmmm, I believe you. I think,” she said getting up. She started towards the dead body of Harper Young again, when a noise behind her made her turn towards the front door.

“Agents? I’m the coroner,” a small, wiry man in chinos and a short-sleeved white shirt said, as he walked uncertainly toward them, his eyes flicking around the room.

CHAPTER FOUR

Claire gave a look to Wilson, who she could see had tensed up at the coroner’s arrival. She knew he was angry that they had arrived all the way from Illinois and had still managed to get there before the local official. But she didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with someone who in all likelihood would be invaluable in their investigation.

She met the coroner halfway between the front door, which was letting in dusty beams of light, and the corpse of the young woman, shaking his hand and introducing herself and her partner.

“We’ll let you look at the body, but you may want to start at the dart in her wrist, and another in her neck. There may be others…” She trailed off as she noticed the reaction of the man in front of her. As soon as she had mentioned the darts, his face had flinched, and he had begun chewing his lip, a small, bird-like hand fluttering over his damp forehead.

“Thank you, agent,” he muttered, making an effort to calm himself, before crossing the dusty floor towards Harper Young’s lifeless body.

Claire went and stood next to Wilson, and watched as the man put down his black leather bag, crouched next to the body, looked around uncertainly and put on his gloves.

“Looks like it’s his first day on the job,” Wilson whispered.

“I know what you mean, but I don’t think it’s that. He is certainly spooked.”

“It must be the rumors about this place. Maybe I should offer to hold his hand.”

As the coroner went about his business, Claire and Wilson did a search of the rest of the large, shadowy room.

“I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about this place… not the house as such, the way it has been left,” Claire said.

Wilson turned and looked at her. "You know what, I've been thinking the exact same thing. Go ahead, give it a try, see if it chimes with what I'm thinking."

Claire turned on her heel, her eyes sweeping the deserted house’s interior, as if the answer she was searching for was daubed on the walls.

“It’s like it feels like… it has been abandoned twice. Once years ago, and then again, recently. Last night. Whenever…that,” she nodded to the body of Harper Young, being administered to by the coroner, “happened.”

Wilson clicked his fingers, making the coroner look up.

“Spot on. That’s what I’ve been thinking. Harper Young wasn’t alone here last night, it wasn’t just her and whoever killed her. I know exactly what you mean. It’s like the place was cleared out. Quickly. But I have no idea why I’m feeling that.”

“There’s the incense,” Claire said, “and scuffs on the floor, this dust has been disturbed by multiple people, and recently too, but yes, it’s just a feeling I get.” She shrugged, knowing what the Chief’s reaction would likely be to such flimsy evidence.

Her thoughts were cut off when she saw the coroner packing his bag and standing up. She walked over to him.

“Come to any conclusions?” she asked, keeping her voice amiable.

The coroner swallowed, and again his hand fluttered over his forehead, before grasping the collar of his shirt. Then he nodded, his eyes barely landing on the two agents, as they nervously roved around the room’s dingy walls and floor.

“Shall we go outside, and I can let you know my provisional conclusions, such as they are.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead he strode towards the door, with his small steps.

Claire looked at Wilson, who raised his eyebrows before following him outside into the sunlight.

Sergeant Bradley and his men were gathered under the trees talking. One of the men noticed as they emerged from the house and whispered something to his colleagues who, as a man, turned and watched them from afar.

“What can you tell us?” Wilson said, unable to hide his impatience with the coroner and the whole situation. He hadn’t said anything, but Claire knew he felt like he was dealing with amateurs, or worse, children.

“Obviously it is still early, and I will be able to draw more concrete conclusions when I get the cadaver in the lab and run the tests,” the coroner said, gaining some composure in the sunlight. “But I can tell you one thing with certainty and another thing with something close to certainty.”

Claire looked at him, waiting for him to continue, before realizing he was waiting for them to ask. She made sure she got in before Wilson, certain his question would be a lot blunter than hers. “And those are?”

The coroner gave a little nod, happy that the agent had fallen in with his way of doing things.

“The young woman died…” he looked at the delicate silver wristwatch strapped to his left forearm and pursed his lips. “Fourteen hours ago. Give or take a couple of hours either way.”

Wilson looked at his own watch. “About midnight.”

The coroner nodded. “Give or take a couple of hours either way.”

It was Claire’s turn to nod, and her eyes went back to the house, to where Harper Young was lying on the other side of the decaying walls.

“And the other thing?” Wilson said.

“I would be very surprised if the cause of death isn’t cardiac arrest, a heart attack, brought on by the ingestion of a poison. A poison contained in those two darts that you were observant enough to notice, agent.”

“How do you know there was poison in them, you haven’t carried out any blood tests?” Wilson asked.

“Because, agent,” the coroner said, looking up at the taller man, “I carried out an autopsy on another young woman two days ago, who had been found with two darts, two identical darts. It may be a coincidence, but…” he spread his small hands out in front of him, indicating he certainly didn’t believe it was a coincidence.

“Paisley Brown?” Claire asked.

The coroner looked a little deflated, that they were in possession of some of the facts he had assumed were his to reveal.

“Yes, Paisley Brown.”

“What poison is it?” Claire asked.

“It is too early to tell. I am hoping the results from Ms. Brown’s blood will be back before too long, and they will shine some light on it as it were. There are many toxins, many readily available, that will cause a sudden and catastrophic episode, even in a young, healthy individual."

“What about the way it was administered? Isn’t a poison dart a touch…”

“Primitive?” the coroner interrupted.

“I was going to say risky,” Claire continued. “I’m guessing the light would not have been great at midnight in there. It’s hardly on the grid. Why go to the trouble of using a dart when you could just inject with a syringe?”

“Ah agent,” the coroner said, a humorless smile stretched across his face, “my job is to determine the how. It is your job to determine the why. And the who.”

Claire sensed Wilson bristling beside her. 

"Ok, let's cut to the chase here," Wilson said. "Ever since we arrived here, everyone we have spoken to has been acting like they are scared the sky is gonna fall down on them at any minute. I don’t buy it’s about some cockamamie ghost stories that the kids swap at Halloween about this place. Come on spill. What’s going on?”

The coroner looked uncomfortable, and his eyes went to Bradley at the edge of the clearing, but the sergeant was in no position or mood to help him out. He swallowed and tried to hold Wilson’s unflinching gaze. He didn’t say anything for several seconds, but Claire could see he was trying to put his thoughts in order. What she didn’t know was if he was trying to do that for his own benefit or theirs.

Eventually, he swallowed again, licked his lips and spoke, his voice low, as if he was concerned the house, or someone in it could hear him.

“There have been… things going on in these parts of late,” he began. “Not good things. Not Christian things.”

“Such as…?” Claire prompted when it looked like the man was going to dry up.

“Such as, agent, such as cults. The occult. Rituals. I don’t know exactly, but what I do know is that they are things that people, good people should not get involved in. People like Paisley Brown, like Harper Young.”

“That sounds like a threat?” Wilson said.

The coroner spun round and stared into the agent’s face, and for the first time spoke with a ferocity that gave his words an edge. “No, it was not a threat, agent. It was old-fashioned fear."

Wilson's face softened as he realized the coroner was speaking the truth, speaking from the heart.

“Scared of what exactly,” Claire asked gently.

The small man looked at Claire. "Not what you are thinking, agent. Yes, a little bit of fear of the unknown. None of us know everything about this world, never mind the other worlds that are waiting for us when we shuffle off this one. I know enough not to go poking around in what is only going to end badly. But that's not what I am most scared of.

“It’s a slippery slope. The thin end of the wedge, whatever your preferred metaphor is. It is the abandonment, the rejection of what is safe and good and wholesome, and the embracing of something that is on the opposite end of the scale from those things. That is not good for them as people, as sons and daughters, husbands and wives. And it is certainly not a good thing for this community.”

He looked into the eyes of the two agents. He was talking passionately, raw emotion giving his words an impact over and above what either would have guessed possible just a few minutes before.

"You don't know these parts. We have had issues before. Still do. Well-documented issues. I don't know what it is about people here. They maybe feel they need something different to cling to. To believe in. And they often go to the first thing that comes along. Problem is, that thing is not always what they need. Sometimes it’s the very last thing that they need.”

“Are you talking specifics, or in general?” Claire asked.

“Specifics agent. Did you not smell the incense in there?” he jerked his head towards the house behind him. Claire could see the police officers were all stood watching the three of them.

“Yes, we did," Wilson said.

“That’s what they do at these rituals, at these occult meetings.”

"What else do they do?" Claire asked.

The coroner shrugged his narrow shoulders. “That I don’t know agent, apart from a whole lot of no good.” 

Claire took a few seconds to process what the coroner was telling them. “Paisley Brown, you think she was killed at one of these rituals too?”

The coroner nodded. “As sure as we are standing here.”

“But she was found in a field, miles from anywhere. There wasn’t a…” Claire groped for the right words, then settled for two that she knew sounded like she was acting in a poor horror film, “haunted house.”

“Ms. Brown was found on Maddison’s Mound,” the coroner said, as if that answered her question resolutely. When he saw the two blank looks, he looked around then continued. “Maddison’s Mound is said to be an ancient burial ground. There have been rumors about that place for generations. It was one of the first places these occult worshippers started carrying out their business.”

Claire's mind whirled. In the space of half an hour, their routine investigation had taken on a whole new dimension. She sucked in a lungful of warm air and blew her cheeks out.

“I have to get going agents, I need to get the body back to my office and run tests. This isn’t the weather for bodies to be left lying around. You can rest assured I will be in touch with anything I find out about Ms. Young and Ms. Brown.”

“Thank you, your… honesty, is appreciated,” Claire said. “One final thing, do you know who is behind all these rituals? Anyone who attends them?”

The coroner looked straight at Claire and gave a little nod.

“Oh yes agent. You don’t have to be in these parts long to know that. Front and center of anything that revolves around the occult in these parts is one man. Jimmy Tucker. He owns a store in town, if you can call it that.”

With that, he gave them a curt nod and walked over to the sergeant who was standing, hands on hips watching.

Claire looked at Wilson. “Despite what your favorite coroner said about it not being his job, it looks like he has not only given us the how, but also the why and the who.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The room was dark. Despite it being early afternoon, the heavy black drapes were pulled tightly shut, barring any annoying sunbeams from making their way in. The only light came from the television set fixed to the far wall. The wall opposite the easy chair in which the man was sitting. The chair and the television were the only two items of furniture in the room. There was no need for anything else.

His face was a picture of concentration, though every now and then it broke out into a smile. He studied the images on the screen, his ears straining to hear every word from the anchor on the twenty-four-hour news channel. A toothy woman he normally found annoying, but that afternoon he found himself almost warming to her. That afternoon she was telling him good news.

He had been glued to the channel all morning, waiting to see when they would break the story. His story. And they just had. They had few details, only the first drips of what had happened the night before were starting to filter down to the newshounds and journalists at the station and at hundreds of similar studios and offices around the state and country.

They were repeating those few details, embellishing them with their own thoughts and conjecture. The same images were played over and over again. Normally this would annoy him, causing him to flick the channel or worse stomp out of the room, but that afternoon he was lapping every repeated sentence up. Savoring every time the images first shown several days before were flashed onto the screen.

One image that had already been shown a dozen times, added to the hundreds of times it had been shown over the preceding few days.

Paisley Brown’s smiling face filled the screen. It showed the twenty-five-year-old looking slightly to the left as if she had been smiling at someone over the photographer’s right shoulder as opposed to posing for a picture. She was wearing a light blue vest, and from the background, it looked like it had been taken in a restaurant.

In his mind’s eye, the image on the screen was replaced by the one of the last time he had seen her alive. The last time anyone had seen her alive. He remembered the hesitation as the dart thudded into her throat.

Her hand going to it as if she thought it was an insect that had bitten her. Then, the look of puzzlement as the second dart pierced her skin. And then, convinced he was not imagining it, he remembered seeing, for just the merest fraction of a second, a twinge of fear flow over her features before her whole body tensed and she fell to the floor.

He shook his head slightly to bring his attention back to the words the reporter was now telling her audience.

"We understand that the tragic and mysterious killing of Paisley Brown, a death that has rocked the community of Kingston, has been followed by a second death in the early hours this morning. Details are sketchy, and we are not at liberty to say why the deaths are linked, but our source told me just half an hour ago," the woman looked down at her cell phone, to read the quote, "that there was no doubt in their mind that the two cases were linked.” She looked back at the screen, an earnest look on her made up face and delivered a line that she was hoping would strike fear into the hearts and minds of her audience. “It looks like we have a serial killer on the loose in Kingston.”

In the dark room he sat entranced. The feeling that rushed through his veins was almost as powerful as the one when he had seen the darts find their home in the soft flesh of the two women.

He wondered when the channel would reveal more details. When the picture of the one from last night would join the one of Paisley Brown. He wondered what her name had been. She wondered what photograph her family would choose as the lasting memorial, the overriding memory of their daughter or girlfriend.

But exhilarating though the feeling was of having the world discuss what he had done, and so-called experts dissecting his motives, poring over every aspect of his actions, there was something that was way more powerful. Something that made him feel like a king. Like a god.

He knew something that they could only speculate on. He knew that there was going to be another body joining the first two. Then another. And another and another. And he knew exactly when and where.

A laugh burst out of him as the face of Paisley Brown once again filled the screen.

CHAPTER SIX

Claire’s senses, those she understood and those she was pretty sure she never would, went into overload as soon as she stepped through the door.

‘Why Not?’, Jimmy Tucker’s emporium of weird as it described itself, was tucked away on a side street in the seedier part of downtown Kingston. The store front looked like the window display designer had gone overboard with their Halloween decorations, but fall was not yet a faint orange glow on the distant horizon.

The store gave a new definition to cluttered, with piles of what at first appeared to be junk piled up on shelves, chairs, trunks and the floor.

“Jeez, it’s like stepping into some mad old hoarder’s life work,” Wilson said, stopping and looking around in disbelief. “If the mad old hoarder was a psychopath,” he continued when his eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he could make out what the objects actually were.

Claire heard him, or rather heard the words, but her brain was in no position to process or deal with them, much less produce a response. She had never had hallucinogens, either willingly or involuntarily, but she imagined that this would be what it would be like. Sounds that she knew no one else but her could hear built up into a cacophony of noise. A cacophony made up of shrieks, screams, manic, hideous laughter, and all manner of sounds that came from the darkest parts of the human soul.

One would come to the fore for a second or a fraction of a second and her mind would grasp at that, before it would slink back and join the crowd, becoming indistinct in the chaos. Then it would be replaced by another. Then another. Then another.

If that wasn’t bad enough, her eyes were not unaffected either, though thankfully to a lesser degree. Everywhere she looked, some object in the store, a skull, a cloak, a ceremonial dagger, a Ouija board, would shimmer and then it would be like another layer of time or reality was overlaid on top of it.

She staggered back, closing her eyes, trying to block out at least the visual bombardment, but it made no difference. The kaleidoscope continued, all to the background roar.

She put her hands to her head, her thumbs pushing into her ears, the heels of her hands grinding into her eyes.

Wilson was oblivious to his partner’s distress. Whereas Claire had stepped left before stopping abruptly, he had taken the right fork, looking in detached amazement at the sheer amount of stuff piled up on every available surface. 

He reached out and picked up a wooden mask hanging from a hook on a bookcase. It was three feet from top to bottom, carved from one piece of dark, heavy wood. The face painted on it was that of a wild, staring man, his features exaggerated and extended. Small holes in the mouth, eyes and nose indicated it was meant to be worn as opposed to being merely decoration. Wilson found himself staring into the huge bulbous eyes, and a feeling of unease started to rise from the pit of his stomach. He shook his head as if to rid himself of a troublesome fly, and somewhat perturbed, put the mask back on the hook.

He sniffed the air, his nose wrinkling slightly in distaste. There was the smell of incense in the air, but it was completely different from what had hung in the air at the Johnson House. This was earthier. Almost dank. He couldn't imagine spending his days working in this jumbled store, breathing in that hour upon hour. It would be enough to send anyone crazy.

It was then he realized Claire was not with him. He turned round, tried to peer over or through the piles of artifacts on his left, then quickly retraced his steps. Claire was standing by the door. She was swaying slightly, as if she was hearing a rhythm imperceptible to him. Her hands were clasped to her head.

He ran over, gently touching her elbow, wanting to make her aware he was there without shocking her.

“Claire, are you ok?” he asked, realizing it was a question he was having to ask far too often.

She spun her head towards him and slowly took her hands away. Then she opened her eyes. For a few seconds it was as if she was staring through him, into him, then they focused and the distressed look on her face began to melt away.

“Wow,” she muttered, swallowing.

“Do you want to leave; we can come back?”

“No. No, it’s easing,” she said after some hesitation. And it was. The sensations that had hit her like a train when she had stepped into the emporium had receded. They had not gone entirely, there was still the sound of the manic voices, but it was in the background like the sound of a distant ocean.

The visuals had also abated, but as she whirled around, looking at the objects that were stacked everywhere, every now and then, one would shimmer, or seem to glow, or else grow indistinct.

“Anything I should know? About…” Wilson was going to continue, to mention Harper Young, or paisley Brown, when the look on Claire’s face made him stop. He followed her eyes and saw that they were being watched by a tall, middle-aged man with long gre

y hair tied into a ponytail. He had round, wire-rimmed glasses, and was wearing black trousers and a black polo neck sweater, that seemed at odds with the summer heat, even in the gloomy store.

Claire looked at the man who seemed unembarrassed to have been caught, and wondered how long he had been there, observing her.

She went to say something, but her brain was still not functioning up to speed. It was hyper aware of certain objects in her periphery vision, but was finding it hard to concentrate on what she was trying to say, or even why she was there in the first place.

Wilson helped her out, obviously aware she was not herself. “Mr. Tucker?”

The man's eyes stayed on Claire for a second or two longer, then slowly went to the tall man next to her. He studied him for another couple of seconds, then his face broke into a small economical smile, and he gave a slight, angled nod of acknowledgement.

“At your service. Mr.…?” he said, his eyes going back to Claire.

Wilson stepped forward, intentionally coming in between Tucker and Claire. “Agent Wilson. This is Agent King.”

“Agents? Well, I never,” the smile widened.

“What would you say if I asked you about the Johnson House Mr. Tucker.”

“Well, that would depend on what you were asking about it, agent.” He looked at Wilson, his head tilted to one side, an inquisitive look on his face as if he was studying a strange exhibit in a museum.

“Ok, in relation to occult rituals,” Wilson said, maintaining his patience and composure.

“Ah, I think you have been listening to too much of the schoolyard gossip merchants agent. Too many people with too much time on their hands, too little to do, and overactive imaginations. If you want my opinion of the Johnson House, it's a prime real estate opportunity ruined by tittle-tattle. Nothing more, nothing less."

"You surprise me Mr. Tucker," Wilson said looking around and indicating the shelves of artifacts that were everywhere. "I heard on good authority you were at the forefront of that kind of 'tittle-tattle' as you call it. And everything I see here, as a novice you understand, seems to confirm it."

Jimmy Tucker’s face took on the expression of an adult having to explain a simple fact to a child for the twentieth time. “Do you like art Agent Wilson? I mean paintings. By the masters?”

The question took Wilson by surprise. He was aware that Claire had moved closer and beside him, but the fact she was remaining silent made him think she was still far from herself.

“Yes. I wouldn’t claim to be an expert, but yes. Of what relevance is that?” he said.

“Well, imagine yourself, or…no, a stranger who had never seen art before in his life. Of any kind. But he has heard about it. Heard snippets about it, snatches of conversation and descriptions about the great paintings.”

“Go on,” Wilson said, his patience starting to wear thin.

“And then this same stranger goes into a store, and sees posters of cartoons, Photographs of the latest pop sensation. Depictions of the biggest football star. What do you think he would conclude agent?”

Wilson drew in a deep breath through his nose. “Ok, ok, I get what you’re saying. So you’re saying you are an equivalent to Rembrandt, Kingston’s own Da Vinci?”

“No agent, what I am saying is that those are the spheres, the markets, if I can use such a vulgar term, that I operate in. Those who peddle the stories about the Johnson House are operating in an altogether different one. Please don’t take this the wrong way agent, but a self-proclaimed novice is unlikely to know the difference, so please don’t feel bad.” He treated Wilson to a smile.

Wilson, who hadn’t gone there for a school lesson, didn’t reciprocate.

“Ok, let me ask my first question again, Mr. Tucker. What would you say to the fact that a woman was killed at the Johnson House, almost certainly as part of a ritual.”

The question had its desired effect, and the emporium owner looked disconcerted for the first time.

“Are we still talking hypothetically?”

“No, we are not.”

Tucker looked troubled, but also shocked. “That would be a terrible thing. A terrible loss of life. Even without knowing the details.”

“Where were you last night, Mr. Tucker?” Wilson pushed.

“Last night? I was at home with my partner. We had friends around for dinner.”

“They can verify this of course?”

“Of course.”

“What time did these friends of yours leave?” Wilson asked, studying the proprietor, looking for any telltale signs.

“Ooh, that I don’t know. You would have to ask them. If I had to guess, it would have been gone midnight. One perhaps. I have a passion for vinyl, agent, and after one or two glasses I tend to indulge that passion. My guests were subjected to my record collection, which is rather prestigious."

“We will check up on this, you know that, Mr. Tucker?”

"Please do, agent.”

Wilson looked around him, giving himself a couple of seconds for his next plan of attack. It also gave Claire a chance to step in, but she remained in the background. It was all she could do to follow the conversation between her partner and the storekeeper. As soon as she tried to put a coherent argument together, she felt in danger of being swept aside by the torrent of noise once again.

“We were told that everything to do with the occult revolves around you. Is that not correct?” Wilson asked.

“I’m flattered by the description, but I would have to dispute its accuracy. Look, agent, I own this store. As you can see for yourself, it is not to everyone’s tastes or does not come under their understanding. I also used to produce a magazine, if twenty pages of my ramblings every four weeks could be given such a grandiose title. If that made me the center of everything, then…” he smiled and gave a little shrug.

“You no longer write the magazine?” Wilson asked.

"No. Unfortunately, everything is online nowadays. I had no wish to spend my days peering at a computer screen, so I gave that up years ago."

Wilson stepped forward and picked up an ornament made of a white stone in the shape of a hexagon. He was going to ask its use but didn’t want another lesson. He tried a different tack.

“So, if it isn’t you, then who is?”

“Search me agent. I have no desire to see who the top dog is. Look, let me be honest with you. There are a lot of people who dabble in things they do not understand. They watch a movie, read a book and think that it would be a jinxy idea to try it out for themselves. For whatever reason, people around here are more apt to do it than anywhere else. Maybe there's little else to do in these parts. Not everyone can lose themselves in their record collections. Nine times out of ten, nothing happens; they get bored and try something else as a distraction.”

“And that other time?” Wilson asked, putting the ornament down.

Tucker gave another of his smiles. “Again, you would have to ask them, agent. Look, I don't wish to be rude, but I have been left in the lurch today. I should be driving upstate later to purchase a rather interesting death mask, but my clerk has not come in today, so I am rather busy. If you would excuse me?”

Wilson’s ears pricked up. “Do you know why he or she didn’t come in?” he asked, convinced the reason the clerk had not turned up at work that morning, was because she was laying on the floor of the Johnson House with two poison darts in her.

“No idea. He isn’t returning my calls. Between you and me, this is probably the last straw.”

"What is his name, Mr. Tucker?" Wilson said, his hand opening his notebook for the first time during the conversation.

Tucker looked doubtful for a moment, as if he was unsure whether he wanted to throw his employee under the bus for simply not turning up to work that morning. Then he sighed. "Mason Barnes. And before you ask, yes, Mason is probably more a fan of the cartoons and teenage posters than the European masters, to return to my rather clumsy analogy of earlier."

“Could Mr. Barnes have been at a ritual at the Johnson House last night?” Wilson asked, the disappointment that his hunch about the clerk had been wrong, rapidly evaporating.

Jimmy Tucker thought for a few seconds. He took off his glasses, took a cloth from his pocket and cleaned the lenses, before putting them back on. Then he looked at Wilson. “Yes, I have every reason to believe Mason would have been at the Johnson House last night.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

"What the hell happened in there? Are you ok? Shall I book you into a hotel?”

Claire walked another few yards down the street, leaving ‘Why Not?’ behind her. She would be glad if she never had to go near that place again in her life. She let the sun’s rays beat down on her, feeling them cleanse whatever had gone on in the emporium. She took a couple of deep breaths then opened her eyes, before shielding them with her hand from the bright sunlight.

“No, I’m fine. I am now anyway. And to answer your first question, I have absolutely no idea.” She tentatively allowed her mind to go back to the awful fifteen minutes in the store.

"It was like a bombardment. An avalanche of visions. All at once. I couldn't make anyone out. It was like walking into a room where everyone is shouting at you, screaming at you. It was impossible to think. To even function.” She shuddered involuntarily at the recollection. She had felt better, normal, as soon as she had left the store, but the experience was still draining to think of.

“Do you think it had anything to do with this case? With Tucker, or those two women?”

Claire thought for a few seconds, then shook her head. "It's impossible to know one hundred percent… but I really don't think so. It seemed… and this is going to sound crazy, but it seemed like I was picking up traces from everything in that place. Like echoes from the people who had used them or had made them. It… it was overwhelming. It was awful.” She looked up at Wilson and desperately wanted to be engulfed by his arms, to lose herself in his body. She sensed he was desperate to provide exactly that, but they both knew that there were two dead young women at the coroners, and their families and loved ones’ best hope of finding the person who killed them lay with her and her partner.

They walked to the car in silence. Wilson got behind the wheel, put Mason Barnes’ address into the satnav then looked across at Claire. “Did you manage to follow what went on in there? Between me and Tucker I mean?”

Claire nodded. “Just about. I tried to focus in on that, use it almost like an anchor.”

“You believe him?”

“I believe he has an alibi for last night, or at least for most of last night. We’ll check it out, but I think that’s a dead end. I think he knows more about the local occult scene than he was making out. It’s his bread and butter. Even if they are kids getting drunk and messing around on a Ouija board, it’s his place those kids are going to go and buy that Ouija board.”

“I think you are right,” Wilson said, easing the car out of the small parking lot. “My mind keeps going back to Sergeant Bradley, the officers, the coroner. They were scared. The coroner admitted as much. Both he and Tucker said that the people around here are more likely to get into this kind of stuff than anywhere else…”

“This kind of stuff? You think those two women were murdered as part of some ritual?” Claire asked.

“That’s not what I’m saying. But we can’t look past the facts that both women were killed at what may well have been some…occult happening. It’s not what we believe, it’s what the person or people doing it, what they believe, that is what is important. It’s that what motivates them. If we close our minds to that, no matter how outlandish it may appear, we are going to get nowhere fast. Especially in a place like Kingston, Mississippi."

“Woah,” Claire said, putting the palms of her hands on the dash in front of her, “I must still be suffering from hallucinations from that emporium, as I just thought I heard you lecture me on keeping an open mind.”

Wilson laughed, taking the comment in the spirit of the joke it was meant. "Ha, yes, I know I'm preaching to the converted. I guess I was just trying to convince myself."

"We'll make a believer of you yet, Mark Wilson."

As they drove out through the backstreets of Kingston, Claire phoned Sergeant Bradley to check out Jimmy Tucker’s alibi, then she looked up Mason Barnes on the database.

“It looks like there is a little bit more to our store clerk than a penchant for haunted houses and skipping work. An ex-girlfriend filed an injunction against him six months ago, and he was found guilty of an assault on a twenty-two-year-old woman in Knightsbridge, that’s a town twenty miles from here, three years ago.” Beside her, she could see Wilson gripping the wheel a little firmer.

Mason Barnes’ house was a little over a mile out of town. The small, one-story building stood at the end of a long driveway, its nearest neighbor a half mile away further down the small, barely asphalted track in one direction and a hundred yards in the other direction. A rusted mailbox on the berm suggested Barnes had not been out to collect his mail that day, while a rusted Ford was parked at an angle halfway up the drive.

"I don't know about you," Wilson said, his feet crunching on the gravel driveway, “but it feels good to be on our way to somewhere that doesn’t involve a haunted house or some freakshow of an emporium.”

“If I was you, I’d wait until we see inside this place,” Claire replied, putting her face to the window to the right of the red painted front door. There was a gap in the drapes, but the front of the house was in shadow, and it was impossible to see much if anything of the front room.

She gave up and stood next to Wilson, who was banging on the door. They both waited, their ears straining.

Claire watched as Wilson took a step back and was about to holler out Barnes’ name when she held a hand out to stop him. She returned his questioning look by pointing to her ear.

She was sure she had heard something, but there was silence, only the faint rustle of the wind in the trees on the other side of the track, behind them.

Then the sound that had first alerted her came back. Faint, but it was definitely something. It was coming from behind the house. The right-hand side of the house was flush to a dirty white fence, but along the left-hand side there was a strip of unkempt grass, leading around to the back of the house.

Without a word, Claire and Wilson made their way around the side of the house, their hands hovering over their holstered guns. As they rounded the corner, they saw Barnes digging in the back garden, sweat beading on his forehead in the heat. He was leaned over a shovel intent on his work.

Claire and Wilson exchanged a look before moving forward, their steps quiet on the soft earth. Barnes didn't seem to notice their approach, his attention focused solely on the task at hand. As they drew closer, the familiar smell of freshly turned soil filled their nostrils, mingling with the scent of sweat and exertion.

"Mr. Barnes," Claire said, her voice firm but not unkind, holding her badge up in the air. Barnes jumped at the sound, turning to face them with a guilty expression on his face.

"I…I didn't hear you come up," he stammered, wiping a hand across his forehead. "Can I help you with something?"

"We need to ask you a few questions," Wilson said, his hand resting on his gun. Barnes glanced nervously at the weapon before nodding, his eyes darting around the garden as if looking for an escape route.

"What do you need to know?" he asked, his voice shaking slightly.

Claire took a deep breath, bracing herself for what she was about to ask, or rather what the answer might be. She realized the incident in the emporium and the whole atmosphere ever since they had arrived in Kingston had spooked her more than she thought. "First of all, we need to know what you are burying," she said, gesturing to the freshly dug hole at his feet.

Barnes' eyes widened in shock, his hand tightening around the handle of the shovel. "I…I don't know what you're talking about," he said, his voice rising in pitch. He straightened up and started to kick the mud off his shoes. Then, with a sudden movement of his right foot, he kicked something into the hole, something that had lain hidden from sight next to the heap of mud from the freshly excavated hole.

Before Claire could do anything, Barnes had kicked soil into the hole, two great lumps of it, covering whatever he had kicked in before it. Then he shouted an indistinct cry and hurled the shovel at the two agents.

Claire dived out of the way, the metal blade missing her shoulder by inches. The wooden handle hit Wilson on the forearm as he tried to defend himself.

“Check the hole,” he shouted to Claire, before setting off after Barnes who had run towards the back of the garden.

Wilson powered after the store clerk, who was younger and of a similar, if slightly leaner build. He pumped his arms and legs, opting to tackle him manually, at least as a plan A, rather than going for his gun.

“Stay where you are, or I’ll shoot,” he yelled. Ten yards ahead, Barnes didn’t hesitate. He was heading towards a low wire fence that separated the rough grass that made up his lawn with a field beyond. Wilson saw Barnes adjusting his stride pattern slightly as he bore down on the fence that would come up to his waist.

Barnes hurdled the fence, his front leg clearing the rusty wire by half an inch. His back leg almost did the same, but his trailing knee caught the taut wire.

He cried out as he pitched forward, landing with a grunt on the ground on the other side. Wilson hesitated, unsure whether to come up short or vault the fence, at the last second, deciding on the second course of action. He hurdled it, just clearing the top wire, and landed next to the panting and dejected Barnes.

“Bad idea,” he said. “Stupid idea. Now, get on your feet.” He waited for Barnes to comply, then grabbed hold of the back of the young man’s sweaty gray T-shirt.

“Step over,” he barked, forcing Bares to turn and pushing him towards the fence.

“I…” Barnes began, looking back at the agent.

“Leave that for later. Step over.”

The two men straddled the fence and made their way back towards Claire who was knelt beside the hole, Wilson half pushing, half dragging the store clerk.

“What have you found?” Wilson asked as he reached his partner.

Claire was reaching into the hole with a gloved hand, carefully sifting the topsoil. Her fingers fastened around something. She gave a quick glance to Wilson, then lifted it up.

Mason Barnes’ eyes were on the floor at his feet. Those of Claire and Wilson studied the object that she brought up out of the hole. It was a white handkerchief, covered in the unmistakable stains of fresh blood.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Where were you last night, Mason?” Claire asked for the third time.

The man sitting opposite them, across the aluminum table, remained still. His head in his hands. He was breathing heavily, the only sound in the interrogation room apart from an occasional liquid sniff that also emanated from the twenty-one-year-old.

Claire sat back in the uncomfortable metal chair and looked up at the ceiling fan whirling lazily above. A fly alighted on its wooden center.

“I knew this would happen,” Barnes mumbled, drawing the two agents’ attention back to him.

“What did you know would happen, Mason?” Claire asked, her voice gentle.

His hands slid open, revealing his boyish face, the sporadic growth of hair on his chin and cheeks making him look younger rather than older. His face was wracked with misery.

“What did you know would happen, Mason?” Claire repeated.

Wilson pushed the cup of water that was in the middle of the table nearer to their suspect.

"That you'd think I did it." Barnes looked at Claire, then Wilson, and if anything, the look of misery intensified. He sniffed again and used the back of his hand to wipe his nose.

“Why would we think that, Mason? I may not be the sharpest tool in the toolbox, but Agent King here is pretty clued up. I’m pretty sure we can get to the bottom of this if you are innocent. But she… we need your help, otherwise…” Wilson lifted his hands in resignation.

Claire was glad Wilson had opted for the good cop, good cop routine. Barnes may need a little bit of pressure exerting on him later, but at the minute he was fragile. If they came down too hard on him there was every chance he would clam up completely.

“So let’s start with where you were last night,” she said.

Mason Barnes sniffed again and picked up the cup of water, looking down into it, as if looking for inspiration.

“The Johnson House,” he said, still looking at the water vibrating in the cup from his trembling hands.

Claire glanced out of the corner of her eye at Wilson. “You were at the Johnson House last night? At what time?” she asked.

Barnes shrugged. “Got there at eleven, I guess. A little later mebbe.”

“And what time did you leave? Roughly,” Wilson asked, leaning forward slightly in his seat.

“Twelve. Twelve thirty.”

“You saw what happened to Harper?” It was Claire’s turn to push.

Barnes nodded.

“Is that yes, Mason?”

“Yes, I saw it. I was there. Ten yards away. I didn’t even know she was there; I didn’t even see her until she…  until…ya know.”

“Did you know Harper Mason?” Claire asked. Now he was talking, it was important to keep the flow going, even if it meant going a little off track on occasion.

“Yeah, I knew her. I… I thought that was one of the reasons I'm here… Ya know…” he said, looking up from the cup of water and looking at Claire.

Claire considered their options. They had gone into this interrogation with very few facts. They knew very little about Mason Barnes, his background, who he hung around with. They knew his age, his address, the fact he worked at 'Why Not?', his criminal record, and also that both his parents had died when he was eighteen. She briefly thought about bluffing, but decided the stakes were too high. They had his trust, or at least they partly had it. One wrong move now, and that would go, probably for good.

"We just want to get to the truth, Mason. We aren't interested in rumors. We only deal with the truth," she said, covering her bases.

“Did you date Harper?” Wilson asked.

Barnes looked at the older man and shook his head. “Nah. I thought she was hot. Asked her out a couple of times… but…” He shrugged. Then an angry, determined look swept over his features, the first time he had looked anything but utterly dejected and miserable. “But I didn’t do anything else that everyone was saying I did?”

Claire took a long breath in. She guessed they were delving into a teen drama here, but she couldn’t yet rule out what was relevant and what wasn’t.

“Such as?” she said, wondering if they would get more from Barnes if she left Wilson to it, mano a mano as it were.

"Such as stalking her, ringing her, messaging her. You can check my cell," he was as animated as he had been ever since Wilson had hauled him back across the fence in his backyard.

Claire thought it significant he was more passionate about the false accusations flying around about his conduct with the dead woman when she was alive than he was being about her homicide, something he must surely realize he was in the frame for her. They had found him attempting to bury and conceal a handkerchief covered in blood, just hours after admitting he was at the scene of Harper Young’s murder.

“We will do, but let’s…” Wilson began.

“My cell! My cell! Check my cell!” Barnes shouted, leaning over the table staring at the two agents who were taken back by this sudden burst of emotion.

“We will, don’t worry Mason, but we need to get back to the more important matter of what happened at the Johnson House last night.”

"But that's what I'm saying," Barnes yelled, looking across the table as if the two agents were stupid. "It's on my cell. What happened last night? Harper being killed. It’s all on my cell phone.”

***

Mason Barnes’ cell phone sat on the desk in front of them. It had been taken at the time of his arrest, but it had not yet been processed when Claire and Wilson strode into the office next to the interrogation room where Barnes was sitting on his own. They had obtained the passcode from their suspect and had followed his instructions to go straight to WhatsApp.

"Wow," Claire said as they watched the thirty-second clip for the third time. In all her time in law enforcement, she had never been presented with a video of the actual homicide she was investigating.

“We need this on a bigger screen,” Wilson said, reaching for his laptop. “We also need to trace the person who took this footage.”

The movie, filmed on a cell phone, had been sent to a WhatsApp group Barnes was in. From the comments it was obvious that Barnes and Ellie, the woman who had sent the footage had been the only people in the eight strong group who had been at the scene. The comments, dozens of them, were full of all of them freaking out about what had happened, as well as the non-attendees reiterating their obviously previously stated views that Barnes and Ellie were stupid to have got involved in it all.

Wilson connected the cell to the laptop and then took it through, back into the interrogation room. This time, Claire and Wilson stood behind Barnes, the laptop in front of them. Wilson hit play.

The footage was poor, the figures indistinct. It showed a dark room, which they could see was the room that Harper Young had been killed in. There was a circle of hooded figures, it was impossible to tell how many from the angle, but Claire guessed there number was at least in double figures. They were swaying in time to chanting that came out of the speaker of Wilson’s laptop. Some or all of the figures were holding torches, the orange flames flaring and distorting in the footage. Then suddenly the face of Mason Barnes filled the screen, the person taking the footage obviously focusing in on him. The face, eyes closed, lips moving filled the screen for a few seconds, then the angle panned out.

All three people watching the footage leaned in closer, knowing what was about to happen. Behind and to the left of Mason Barnes, almost over his shoulder, Harper Young’s face came into view. She had her arms in the air, but they were out of shot. Just as her face came into view, her eyes, that had been closed, shot open. A puzzled look came over her face and she looked up, at something off screen. Having already seen the video, Claire guessed that she was looking at the first dart, the one that had pierced her wrist.

Then, though it was difficult to see in the grainy footage, the second dart found its home in her neck. As she toppled forward, the picture scanned out, away from Harper. Three seconds later, the video stopped.

“See! See!” Barnes was shouting excitedly. “I told you I didn’t do it, I told you!”

Wilson picked up a sheet of paper he had brought in along with the cell phone and laptop, and went and sat down opposite Barnes, waiting for Claire to join him on that side of the table.

“We have also got some other… good news for you,” he said, looking at the report in his hands. “We have got the report back on the blood from that handkerchief you were burying. I expect you won’t be surprised to learn that it comes from a fowl. A chicken to be precise.”

“I told you; it was to destroy a curse. I told you. If you’d have listened…” Barnes’s confidence had returned now he had proof he was in the clear. Claire realized she preferred the sullen, scared Mason. She recalled him yelling something about a curse when they had led him away.

"Ok, Mason, spill. Why were you burying a handkerchief covered in chicken blood in your backyard?" Wilson asked.

“Look, you aren’t gonna understand…but with everything that’s been going on, with the rumors about me and Harper, then her getting killed, I thought that I was cursed. That there was a curse on me. You may not believe that kinda thing happens, but I’m telling ya it does. I seen it. I saw it with my own eyes. Best way I know to defeat a curse…" he stared at the two of them, daring them to prove him wrong.

No one spoke for a few seconds. Claire thought about what she had learned in the last few minutes. Mason Barnes was clearly not the killer. He was also clearly a troubled young man.

"Ok, Mason," she said. "Let's move on from the handkerchief. And you need to be straight with us. Did you see who did this? There was someone at that ritual last night with a blowpipe of some description. They aren't easy to hide, I imagine. Did you see who it was?"

"No. I swear. I didn't. I was caught up in the whole thing. Then, when Harper died… it was just panic. I didn't see anything, I swear."

“Ok, we need a list of everyone who was there. Everyone.”

Barnes looked at Claire, who had asked the question. "I don't know. Most people had hoods on or masks. Only the initiates, that’s those just watching, don’t and there were only a few I think. I dunno, I was kinda lost in what was goin’ on.”

“You know this Ellie… she was there…” Claire pushed, encouraging.

Barnes nodded. His eyes traveled around the room as he thought, then came back to Claire. “That’s it. That’s the only person I knew. I swear.”

No one spoke for several seconds. Then Claire nodded. “Ok,” she said. She stood up and went and knelt beside Mason’s chair, and started the video again, this time on slow motion. Wilson joined them, leaning over behind them.

All three pairs of eyes bore into the screen in front of them. Twice Claire stopped the video when she thought something came up that she hadn’t noticed before, something crucial, but both times it was nothing, just a flare from the poor lighting. Then, all three took an inhalation of breath when they saw the very last second of the footage.

CHAPTER NINE

“Who is he?” Wilson barked, his voice urgent, having well and truly dispensed with the softly softly approach.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him before in my life. I swear. When are you gonna start believing what I tell you?” Mason Barnes shot back, indignation now the dominant emotion on his face, now that the fear of a wrongful arrest had all but disappeared.

Wilson sighed. Claire looked at the figure on the screen. She rewound the video and replayed the last three seconds, repeating the process twice more, before freezing it a fraction of a second before it blacks out.

In the shadows of that room in the Johnson House, mere seconds if that, after Harper Young had fallen to the floor, her nineteen-year-old heart stopped in its tracks by an as of yet unidentified poison, a figure slunk away.

They were not the actions of an innocent bystander. Not the actions of someone who had just witnessed the murder of an innocent girl. The man’s appearance on the screen was only fleeting, less than two seconds in real time, but those two seconds were damning.

The man, with receding dark hair and prominent chin, had been in the background, behind Harper, in the area from where the darts would have been fired. As the young girl hit the deck. As everyone else started to react, he had calmly glanced in the direction of the dead girl, and also of Ellie Smith who was filming the scene. Then he had simply turned and headed out of the room.

Claire thought again how fortunate they had been that someone had captured the exact moment the crime was committed. With almost everyone in society carrying around filming devices, it was amazing it didn’t happen more often. Not only had it helped to prove Mason Barnes was innocent, and ensured they didn’t waste any more time on a false lead, it had now thrown up the face of their prime suspect.

She turned to Barnes, who had turned his attention away from Wilson and was looking at the screen again.

“Ok, I believe you when you say you don’t know who he is. But could you have a think who it could be?” she asked.

Barnes’ forehead creased as he puzzled over the question. He began to shake his head, then suddenly his eyes opened wider, and he stared at Claire.

“Now I don’t know for sure… but it could be… it could be one of the guys who works at the graveyard behind the house.”

“Of course, it had to be a graveyard,” Wilson said, shaking his head.

Claire shot him a look, then returned her attention to Barnes.

“Why do you say that, Mason?”

He shrugged. “Ellie was saying that there’s a couple of guys who staff the graveyard who prepare the house for the ritual, you know make sure there’s no one there, make it safe, that kinda thing. She seemed to know more about it. She’s been before.”

“Ok, thanks for that Mason. Do you know where this Ellie lives?”

He looked at her for a couple of seconds before looking down at his feet and mumbled the answer. “Out on Mayfair. Number 112.”

“Thanks Mason, I’ll get one of the officers to drive you home.”

She stood up, put her hand on the young man’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze, then headed for the door. Behind her, Wilson collected his laptop, unplugged the cell phone and returned it to Barnes.

"Share that video with anyone else, and you'll be back in here before your feet touch the floor. Understand?" he said, leaning down into the face of the young man.

Mason Barnes put on a sulky face but nodded.

“Good man,” Wilson said, following Claire to the door. “And stay away from any more chickens.”

***

Number 112 Mayfair was two roads behind the 'Why Not?' emporium. Ellie answered the door, looking like she hadn't slept for twenty-four hours, which Claire guessed was probably the truth. When she introduced herself and Wilson, Ellie had looked back into the depths of the small but neat house, yelled to her mom that she was going out, and ushered the two agents off the front step and into the quiet afternoon street.

Now in a coffee house she had regained some of the spark that Claire imagined made her a hit amongst her male peers in Kingston. Ellie was slim, her black vest hung off her frame as if it were a coat hanger. Her exposed navel sported a silver ring that matched the one in her nose, the half dozen in each ear and the stud in her lower lip. Her hair was short, very short, and a black color that came from a bottle as opposed to from any parental genes.

Claire watched as she took a sip of her coffee that she had had to ask the girl to repeat before giving the instruction to the barista.

She had returned to the table to find Wilson explaining that she needed to delete the video from her phone and show them that there were no others from that night.

“It’s my private property. I haven’t done anything wrong. You can’t do that. I know my rights,” she said, trying and failing to look or sound as confident as she had no doubt hoped.

Wilson gave a little wry smile. “Ok, Ellie, I’m sure you do. So I’m sure you’ll also know, that as a witness to a homicide, and with as far as we can tell, the only footage of that homicide, we are within our rights as federal agents to confiscate the item that footage was made on to give to our lab guys.” He turned to look at Claire, sitting next to him. “How long will they take do you think agent?”

Claire pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows in an ‘aw shucks’ expression. “They always promise it will be back in weeks, but we both know it never is. And it’s almost certainly going to be needed when it goes to trial. Could be months.”

Wilson nodded, his face pained at the harsh truth. “The Macmillan case took years.” He looked back at Ellie. “So, it’s up to you. Depends how much you value having your cell I guess. And don't think Uncle Sam is going to pay for a new one. It sucks, but that isn't how it works, I'm afraid."

Ellie stared at Wilson, her dark eyes trying to send daggers at and into the impassive agent’s face, but seeing them bounce off, her face creased into a sulk and she grabbed her cell from her pocket, tapped in the code and made a point of deleting the video she had sent to Mason.

Wilson held out his hand to take it, and reluctantly, with another pout, she handed it over. It took less than a minute for him to establish that that video had been the only footage she had taken that night. He handed the cell phone back.

“Thank you, Ellie,” he said.

“Now, I know you have been through a lot, we do appreciate you helping us,” Claire said, repeating the sentiments she had told the girl on the walk from her home to the café. “If you can tell us everything about what you remember.”

Ellie bit her lip, her tongue playing with the stud that pierced it. “Look, I was kinda wasted last night. I don't remember much. Anything, if I'm honest."

Claire looked at the girl in front of her. Despite her attempts at rebellion, she was still very much a young, fragile girl who lived at home with her mom and dad.

“Anything at all. It may mean nothing to you. It might be the difference to us catching the creep who killed that young woman,” she said, her voice soft.

“I don’t. It’s not that I’m hiding anything, I just don’t remember. I remember walking to the house…” Ellie said, her eyes looking down at the table in front of her, but her vision was off in the distance, to the previous night.

“Were you alone or with someone?” Claire asked.

“I went on my own. I didn’t know anyone else there. Only Mason.”

“Did you know Harper?” Wilson asked.

Ellie’s eyes flicked to the agent. “I knew who she was. Kingston is a small place. I didn’t know her, though," she said. "Look, these… these rituals, they aren't social events. You don't go there to meet people, to chat…"

“What do you go there for?”

Ellie looked back to Claire, who had asked the question. She blinked twice and shrugged before answering. "I dunno. To see if there is anything else I suppose. I mean it’s pretty lame if this… this life is all there is isn’t it?”

“There is a world outside Kingston, Ellie,” Wilson said, “and you don’t have to call up the devil or whatever to find it. You just need to get in a car, a train, a plane.”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Ellie said, her face screwed up with contempt.

"Ok, look, Ellie," Claire said, trying to steer the conversation away from parental-style advice back to a murder investigation. "We have no interest in why you went. It's a free country," she ignored the dramatic raised eyebrow look from the girl opposite her, "our only concern is who killed Harper Young. And if you can give us any information to help us do that, to do our job, then this town, your town, Ellie, will be a lot safer place."

The two looked at each other for a few seconds, then Ellie gave a slight nod.

"Look, I'd love to help you. Of course, I would. You think I'd lie to protect the sick scum bag who did this?" She swallowed and for a second Claire thought she may break down into tears. She realized, for the first time, just how scared the girl was. It was hardly surprising, it wasn’t many times you witnessed a murder, even if you couldn’t remember it.

“You can’t remember anything? The panic after Harper died?” Wilson asked, leaning over the table, an imploring look on his face.

"No…no, I don't. Look, I really wish I did." Again, she looked close to tears. She took a slug of her coffee.

“Who is this man?” Wilson said, holding his own cell phone up with a still image of the man from Ellie’s footage.

She took the cell from him and studied it. It was apparent that it was the first time she had noticed the figure or at least paid any attention to him.

She shook her head. “No, I don’t know him.”

“Mason seemed to think he may have worked at a graveyard behind the Johnson House?” Claire pushed.

Ellie took the phone back. After a couple of seconds, she looked at Claire and nodded. “Yeah. He’s probably right.”

“Why do you say that, Ellie? Who are they?”

“I dunno. The graveyard behind the house, the guys who work there, or a few of them, they seem to get the house ready. I think it’s just to… you know set the vibe… I dunno, but he is probably one of those. Yeah I think he is…” she looked at the image again, and gave a nod.

Claire looked at Wilson. This case was getting stranger by the second. Now they were going to a graveyard.

***

The graveyard had been described as behind the Johnson House, but it was a good four hundred yards deeper into the woods, set in another clearing. They had reached it via another track, and had walked through the trees, their shirts once again sticking to their skin with sweat. It was late afternoon, and though the intensity of the sun had gone, the humidity was still off the scale. The insects that buzzed and flew around them as they walked as fast as they could along the leaf-strewn path were just one more annoyance.

“There it is,” Wilson said, as the trees ahead of them parted and the ornate gates of the cemetery came into view. It was larger than they had guessed, its position out there so far from the town seemingly at odds with its size and grandeur.

They had discussed the case or what they knew so far about it on the drive and walk there. In Claire's mind, it was a rapidly moving case. Things were shifting everywhere they trod. With some elements becoming clearer, others more obscure.

The gates, eight feet high and cast iron, set in a moss-covered stone wall half the height, were closed, but there was no chain or padlock. Claire reached out her hand to turn the heavy knob. The metal felt cool clammy, even to her touch, then suddenly her body shook as if the gate was electrified, her fingers unable to release their grip.

CHAPTER TEN

The screaming, shrieking she had heard in the Johnson House when she had touched Harper Young's hair filled her ears once more. But this time, it was accompanied by an image. A hand, old, shriveled, the skin mottled, diseased looking. The long fingernails were painted a vivid red. The sight, the bright red nails burned into her vision, then suddenly the hand was no more, she was staring at her own white knuckled fingers, and the only sound was her own breathing and the birds and insects in the wood behind her.

She yanked her hand away from the gate and looked at it, sure she would see evidence of what had just happened. She turned it over, relieved that it was normal, if a little shaky. She turned to Wilson and nodded to the unspoken question on his face.

"The same as in the house. The screams, words I couldn't make out. But they were in English, I am sure of it. "But this time I saw something else. A hand."

“A hand…?” Wilson repeated.

Claire nodded. She shut her eyes to describe the fading image better.

“Like the hand of an old woman. Wizened. The skin hung off it, But the nails, they were painted, bright red. The nails made the rest of it look worse. It… I can’t tell you why, but it was frightening…”

“Was it attached to anything? A woman? A skeleton?” Wilson asked. “Listen to me! A skeleton. All day of traipsing through graveyards and haunted houses has got to me!”

Despite herself, Claire smiled. Then shook her head. “No, there was no skeleton. I think it was attached to a woman. A very old woman… alive… but I didn’t see her. But… I got the feeling that she… I don’t know. Maybe this place, this day is getting to me too. But I got the sense she was evil.”

Claire looked up and into Wilson's eyes. He put his hands on her shoulders. "Do you want to wait here? I can go in alone." He smiled, realizing how dramatic he sounded.

She put her hands on his waist, and they stood there, neither moving for several seconds as Claire got her strength back, feeling the warmth of the sun on her back, the heat from Wilson’s body on her arms and in her hands.

“No,” she said eventually. “I’m good. Come on.” She gave his sides a squeeze and turned towards the gate again, confidently taking the large metal knob in her hand and twisting it open.

The graveyard extended away a hundred yards to each side and more than that straight in front of them, behind a red modern-looking red brick building, its functional, box-like appearance strange in such a place. The partly manicured ground around it was full of tombs, graves, memorials and sarcophaguses of various sizes, intricacy and state of repair. Some, mainly those to the left, were old and largely unkempt. The stonework had given way to nature years, perhaps decades ago. Newer, better-maintained graves stretched out in front and to their right.

Claire, with Wilson alongside her walked to the building, which could have been an office at a bus depot, rather than nestled in a graveyard hidden away in the middle of a Mississippi woods behind a haunted house.

She knocked on the wooden door and opened it without waiting to hear an answer. A man in a dirt-stained gray vest chewing on a pencil stood looking at a chart pinned to a corkboard.

He turned round casually, then almost spat out his pencil when he saw the two agents, obviously not used to visitors.

“What can I do for you?” he said, his eyes shifting between the two agents, a bemused look on his weathered features.

“Are you the manager here?” Claire asked, not sure if graveyards even had managers.

“I guess you could say that,” the man said, taking the pencil out of his mouth. “Though the dead people under me outnumber the living sommat like six hundred to one.”

Claire was about to retrieve her cell phone from her jacket pocket to show him the still of the man she was hoping was one of the living ones, when she noticed some photographs on the cork board above his head.

She stepped forward and pointed to the pictures, which, though they had been taken in the room they were now standing in, looked like mug shots.

“Are these the people you have working here?” she asked, stepping around the man, who was slowly turning to face where she was pointing.

Just as he was confirming that they were, Claire could see that the photograph on the left was of the same man who Ellie Smith had caught on film.

“Who is that man?” Wilson asked, pointing to the same picture, obviously seeing the likeness just as she had.

The man looked like he was going to consider not answering, so Claire pulled out her badge.

His eyes went from the badge, to Claire, to Wilson and finally to the photograph on the wall. “That’d be Callum. Callum Pollard. Why are you asking?”

“Is he working today?” Claire asked, ignoring the question.

The man put the pencil back in his mouth and sucked on it reflectively. Then he nodded and indicated to the rear of the graveyard with his head. "Should be out back, if he aint slacked off early. Wouldn’t be the first time neither.”

Claire nodded and thanked him. She turned to go, then stopped.

“What’s the deal with this place and the old Johnson House?” she asked.

The graveyard manager looked at her, his teeth working on the wooden pencil between his lips. “The deal is agent,” he said, “his voice bored now as opposed to suspicious, “that the Johnson estate, such as it is, pays for all of this. Pays my wages, such as they are. Even pays for your man Callum out there’s wages. Used to be a family cemetery you see, then they opened it up to the good folk of Kingston when there was some dispute over land rights at the one in town.”

“Is it still used?” Wilson asked.

“In theory. If folks can be bothered to bury their loved ones this far out. Few can be, so few do. Can’t help those that are already here though. We got a job to make it all good and presentable for them folk, so that’s what we do. While the money don’t run out anyway.”

Claire thanked him again and went back out into the late afternoon sun. They skirted the side of the building and shielding their eyes against the sun peered out over the gravestones that stuck out from the green ground like rows and rows of diseased teeth.

Despite the heat, Claire found herself doing an involuntary shudder as her mind roamed over recent events.

Wilson looked at her. “You’re not spooked by the gravestones, are you?” he said, genuinely puzzled.

She shook her head, both to answer the question and rid herself of an image she couldn’t shake.

“No,” she said, her eyes scanning the scene in front of them, “it’s that hand and arm I saw at the gate. It keeps coming back to me. It is way more disturbing than it should be. But then, the… the visions I see, they often come with inherent emotions. I don’t… it’s not through my eyes, my mind that I am seeing them… if that makes sense.”

"It doesn't, but I know what you mean," Wilson said. They were walking around a large grave, a stone angel, four foot high, its wings chipped and covered with lichen but still intact, unfurled from behind its lithe body. As they passed it, a small red excavator came into view, working at the far end of the cemetery.

They quickened their pace, walking towards the machine, picking their way over the rough path, littered with flowers, real and plastic, as well as the broken headstones belonging to people whose relatives had long since passed away themselves or simply forgotten about them.

The sun was shining on the dirt speckled windshield of the small cab that the excavator’s operator was sitting in, making it impossible to see if it was Callum Pollard, but it was obvious that there wasn’t anyone else working in the graveyard. Claire hoped his boss’ suspicions about Pollard’s work ethic weren’t founded.

As they got closer, Claire could see what work the excavator was being used for. It was digging up two graves nearest to the far wall. She had no idea what the reason for that was, but would have assumed that it would have been done with a bit more care and attention than with a tool usually used to dig up freeways. Maybe, she thought, she was being naïve that they would give the bodies in a hidden graveyard the same care, respect and attention that they did for ancient skeletons that could reveal the secrets of human history.

They were less than twenty yards away when the operator spotted the two black-clad figures approaching. The machine’s arm, a great serrated scoop as its hand, hung in the air, rivulets of mud pouring from it, like drool from an open mouth.

Through the dirty glass, she could see the figure sitting in the bucket seat, staring at them. She could make out the features. The prominent chin, the receding dark hair. The same ones that had been pinned to the office corkboard. The same ones that had been captured on Ellie Smith's cell phone.

She strode forward. Her was hand groping in her jacket for her badge once more, looking down to see where she had put it, when the cry from Wilson made her jolt her head back up.

“Claire. Watch out!”

She stopped in her tracks, her eyes staring straight up.

At the huge metal bucket on the end of the excavator’s arm as it rushed towards her. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

With cat-like reflexes, Claire jumped out of the way just in time before the bucket slammed into the ground, sending a tremor through her body. She scrambled back onto her haunches, her heart pounding in her chest. The engine of the excavator roared as Pollard pumped the throttle. The arm of the excavator, like a huge robot arm reared up, sending stones and dirt flying towards the stone wall.

Claire crouched underneath the bucket, waiting to see what Pollard would do next. She could see Pollard clearly now, his eyes bulging with fear and adrenaline. People tended to do three things when faced with danger: freeze, flee or fight. And to Callum Pollard, the sight of two FBI agents striding towards him had obviously been classed as danger. That made him guilty in her book, but all of that was irrelevant unless they were able to stop him from killing them both with the lethal and huge mechanical arm.

Because of the three options, Pollard had instantly opted for number three. Fight. Once you went down that route, there was no going back. The body and its survival instincts took over from the rational mind. It often meant bad news for the perpetrator, who would likely see potential jail time doubled as the life of a federal agent or highway patrolman was added to his tally.

But it nearly always also spelled bad news for the man or woman, state trooper, rookie officer or federal agent who was suddenly in the firing line.

And that was exactly where Claire and Wilson suddenly found themselves.

Behind her, Wilson was walking slowly to her right. She knew what he was doing, creating a pincer movement. Pollard only had one weapon, assuming the gravedigger wasn’t armed. And that weapon was the ton of metal and hydraulics that hovered, poised above her. If they could approach him, attack him on two fronts, he would be forced to choose between her and Wilson.

That meant the other one would have an opportunity to take him out. Hopefully before Pollard managed to do the same to one or both of them.

"Pollard shut that down and come out," Wilson shouted, his gun drawn, skirting a cluster of graves, jogging towards the red cab. She reached for her own gun, but the movement stirred Pollard, and made the decision for him. His hand yanked the controls, and the arm careered down towards her.

The hole that Pollard had been digging was to her left, and though it might give her temporary – very temporary – safety from the metal teeth of the excavator, the last place she wanted to become trapped was in an ancient grave.

To her right was the cluster of tombstones Wilson was racing around. That left only one direction. Her legs kicked out in front of her, propelling her backwards.

The metal edge sliced into the ground two inches away from her feet. A split second slower, and they would have been severed at the ankle.

Everything was running in slow motion in her head. She could feel the vibrations of the ground as the metal thumped into it go through her body. She stared at the rent earth just in front of her black leather shoes, so close she could smell the dank ground.

She could see Wilson, despite himself, stop in his tracks and watch in horror, then relief at what was unfolding.

That gave Callum Pollard a precious second to decide his next move.

The obvious thing was to go for the kill. Claire was on her back. She could roll, but almost certainly not quick enough to avoid another strike from the excavator.

That was the obvious thing to do, but it would also have meant that he would have had a bullet, probably two, fired from Wilson’s revolver, slam into his skull.

In that precious second, he chose to save both his life, and in the process, that of the stricken agent lying on the ground beside the open grave.

Claire had been wrong about one thing, however. She had calculated that Pollard only had one weapon.

The hydraulics in the arm screamed as it lifted up out of the ground and twisted away to Claire's right. Towards Wilson, who had recovered and was striding towards the excavator, aiming at the cab.

Claire's relief at seeing the arm move away from her was short-lived, as Pollard revved the engine and shoved it in gear, sending the two tracks it ran on towards her.

Claire had two seconds before being crushed under the body of the excavator. She was still hemmed in on both sides, with only backward an option. She didn't have time to turn, or to get up. She could only scoot backwards, using her heels to propel her, back and away from the deadly machine.

She heard Wilson shout, but in her panic had no idea if it was at her, or Pollard. Then, as she thrust her shoes into the earth, pushing back and back, the air was split by two shots. The crack of the revolver followed immediately both times by the metallic clang as the bullet hit the metal bucket on the excavator’s arm.

Claire could see Wilson crouching, trying to get a clear shot, but Pollard, after years of operating the machinery, was able to deftly swing the arm so it always came in between the cab and the barrel of Wilson's gun.

Still, the tracks of the excavator tore up the earth as they pursued her. On it came, gaining ground. It was only two feet away, the engine looming up ahead of her, when her heels finally lost traction on the slippery grass and shot out from under her. The diesel engine seemed to roar in triumph. She could smell the fumes, the oil in the engine and in the mechanical arm that was still bobbing and weaving as it performed its dance with Wilson.

If there was any indecision in Claire’s mind, it was wiped away when her head banged on the cold gravestone behind her. She was trapped. Even if she managed to get her legs back underneath her, there was nowhere else to go. She would be crushed between the stone and metal.

Another shot rang out, but like the other two, it was instantly followed by a ricochet as it was blocked by the excavator's bucket.

The rusty, mud-smeared hulk of the excavator bore down on her, the cruel metal tracks chewing up the earth on either side of her.

She shouted something, but had no idea what, as she flung herself to her left, rolling and rolling, like she had as a child.

She rolled and rolled, propelling her body, her brain braced for the tons of metal to crush her any second.

But she was suddenly free. She opened her eyes and saw with amazement that the excavator had missed her. She had no idea by how much, but it could not have been by any more than inches. Fractions of inches. Fractions of a second.

She couldn't afford to rest. She leaped to her feet, panting from the exertion, her body flooded with the adrenalin of almost being killed not once but twice. In the cab of the excavator in front of her was Callum Pollard. He was frantically wrestling with the levers, keeping the mechanical arm towards Wilson, who was still on the other side of the cab from her.

She reached for her gun, and this time retrieved it. Then in a calm voice that cut through the roar of the diesel engine and whine of the hydraulics, shouted at Pollard to cut the engine in two seconds or she would shoot to kill.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Claire looked over the muzzle of her revolver at the face of Callum Pollard. Her finger squeezed the trigger, just enough to take out all the slack. If he made one wrong move, he would be dead before he realized he had messed with the wrong person.

Pollard’s eyes stared back at her, fear and anger distorting his features.

“One,” Claire said, readjusting her feet slightly. She had no desire to kill him. It was always the very last resort and she only ever considered it if her life, or those of other innocent people were at very real risk. But she also knew it was her job to protect society. At that moment, the life of her partner was in very real danger, just as hers had been just seconds before.

“Ok, Ok,” Pollard said, lifting his hands off the control and putting them up in the air, as much as the confines of the cab would allow.

Claire breathed a sigh of relief.

“Turn the engine off,” she called, the revolver still pointing between Pollard’s eyes.

The man held her stare for a second then reached forward, slowly, the other hand still in the air, and turned off the engine.

Wilson, taking advantage of the distraction, ran forward, under the now stationary arm of the excavator and jumped up onto the metal step on the side, his own gun pointing at Pollard. He took him roughly by the shoulder and hauled him from the cab.

Claire watched it happen, trying to steady her heartbeat from the terror of the last few minutes. Then she saw Wilson's face, and a new fear washed over her.

“What is it?” she said, not liking the expression on her partner’s face.

Wilson didn’t say anything, but still holding Pollard by the shoulder, holstered his revolver and retrieved his phone. Claire watched him staring at his cell, then looking up at the man by his side.

She walked over to the two of them, slowly, the gun still trained on Pollard.

“What is it?” she repeated.

Wilson looked at Claire, and she could see the disappointment on his face.

"Were you at the Johnson House last night?" Wilson asked Pollard, who seemed to be enjoying the discomfort of the man who had, only a few minutes ago, been trying to put a bullet in his head.

“That place?” Pollard said, scorn on his face. “Why would I go there, mess around with that kinda stuff. I spend my days in this place. That’s enough for any man.”

Wilson looked at him. The frustration was building in Claire. Clearly, Wilson knew something. She gave him a searching look.

Wilson answered by thrusting Pollard around, getting a curse from the man being manhandled.

Claire suddenly saw exactly what had perturbed her partner. The left ear of Callum Pollard was missing. A scar ran down the side of his head where it had once been. She looked at Wilson, who held up his cell phone, the image of the man in Ellie Smith’s video frozen on the screen. It clearly showed the man’s left ear.

“Who is this?” Wilson said, thrusting the cell phone in front of Pollard.

Pollard lazily brought his eyes up to look at the screen as if he had a whole bunch of other things he could be doing at that precise moment. When his eyes saw the image, his face broke out into a smile.

“What’s so funny?” Claire snapped, a combination of the fact that this man had tried to kill her, twice, and that their case seemed to be falling apart, creating a ball of anger in the pit of her stomach.

Pollard shrugged, a move not that easy with Wilson gripping his shoulder tightly.

“That’s Cub. My bro.” Pollard said, a smugness creeping into his manner.

"Your brother," Wilson said. It was a statement, not a question.

“Sure is. Most people think we’re twins, but the fact is there’s three years between us. Longest damn birth I ever heard of if we’re twins.”

Claire looked at the man and then at the image. It was an easy mistake to make, especially given the poor quality of the still from the video clip. In the photograph in the office Callum Pollard had had his face angled in a way to hide his missing ear, a move she imagined became second nature to someone in his position after a while.

“Would it surprise you if your brother was at the Johnson House at the ritual last night?” Wilson asked.

“Nothing would surprise me what Cub got up to,” Pollard said and gave a chuckle.

“You said you wouldn’t mess around with that kind of stuff when we asked you about the ritual. What did you mean by that? What kind of stuff?” Claire asked.

“You’d have to ask someone who went. I told ya, I wasn’t there.”

“Look here buddy,” Wilson snarled, yanking Pollard towards him and speaking into his face, “you are going to go down for attempted murder of two federal agents, you aren’t in a position to start getting cocky. Now, start talking.”

“I was protecting myself, that was all. I didn’t know you were no feds; all I know was you started pointing your guns at me. What was I gonna do? Man’s got a right to protect himself.”

“Answer my question,” Claire said, eyes narrowed, staring at Pollard, as he swung his head to face her.

“All that mumbo jumbo. I ain’t got no truck with it. Don’t do to mess with things ya don’t understand. Geez, there’s plenty I don’t understand in normal life without rootin’ around in that kinda thing trying to find some more.”

“We were told that people from this cemetery organized what went on in the house last night,” Claire said.

“Well, people told you wrong, lady.”

“What happened to your ear?” she asked, hoping to get his confidence or push a button, happy with either, as long as it worked.

Pollard’s hand instinctively went to the scar on the side of his head.

“Accident,” he said, making it plain that was all he had to say on the matter.

Claire looked at him and moved on. “What does your brother do?”

“What don’t he do? Little bit a this. Little bit a that.”

“Do you know he is attending these rituals?” Wilson prodded.

Pollard swung his attention to Wilson, shrugging his shoulders trying to ease the pressure from the agent’s grip which still held him tight.

“Aint for me to know what he does and don’t do. I ain't his mother. As I said, it wouldn’t surprise me what that old goat got up to.”

“Does that include murder?” Claire asked.

Pollard looked angry at the suggestion. “Cub may be many things, but he ain't no killer. I know that for a fact.”

“Judging from your behavior, I’m not sure how good a character witness you are,” Wilson said. “As I said, you’re going to be arrested for the attempted murder of two federal agents.”

“And as I said, all I was doin’ was protecting myself,” Pollard shot back, but Wilson was ignoring him. She watched as he phoned for someone from the police department to come and take him down to the precinct.

“Your luck’s in,” Wilson said when he had finished the call. There are a couple of cops still down at the Johnson House, so the welcoming party will be here any minute.

Claire pondered the events of the last fifteen minutes. Despite what Pollard said, his actions were those of a guilty man. He clearly hadn’t been at the Johnson House the night before, but what was it that had spooked him about their presence? Did it have something to do with the case?

She walked back up to the cab of the excavator, parked where it had stopped, its tracks where her body had laid. She could feel Pollard’s eyes and attention on her.

When she reached the cab, she grabbed the handle and hauled herself up.

“Hey lady,” Pollard cried out. “There ain't nothin’ in there for you.”

Claire ignored him, encouraged further by his obvious discomfort. The cab was small and cramped. There was a dirty windshield, but the sides were open. The metal roof over her head was dented. The black plastic bucket seat faced the several controls that operated the excavator itself and the mechanical arm.

There was an empty, crushed packet of cigarettes on the floor but nothing else. She didn’t know what she had been looking for, maybe even a blowpipe, but there was nothing. She was about to step back down from the cab when her eyes went to the back of the seat, and what was under it. There was the equivalent of a glove box in a normal automobile, a compartment tucked away under the black seat. She leaned over and saw that it was shut, but that there was no lock.

“I said there aint nothing for you in there lady. That’s private property.” Callum Pollard’s agitated voice drifted over to her, sounding like honey to her ears.

She opened the compartment and reached inside. Then a smile crept over her face. She knew exactly why Pollard had reacted the way he had.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The second victim's face, a smiling Harper Young at her High School graduation, had joined the one of Paisley Brown. The news media were linking the two murders even if they weren't saying why. He wondered what they knew. What the police had told them. What the police knew. The thought that people, so-called experts were sat scratching their heads at what he had achieved, what he might go on to achieve made him feel so so powerful. It was a rush, almost like none he had experienced before.

The fact that the media were discussing it, debating, reporting every single aspect of his actions, added fuel to that fire in his belly. Every time the news anchor came out with a theory – it didn’t matter which one, they were all so wide of the mark – he sent out a whoop of joy into the empty, dark room.

This was a part that he hadn’t even envisioned. And it felt wonderful. He was controlling the way the world worked. He was the one pulling the strings. That was not the reason he had started this. Was not the reason he had set off along this path, a journey he had known for years he must undertake but had never had the nerve, the resolve, the strength to do it until now.

That was not what he had set out to accomplish, but he was ecstatic that his actions had come with this added bonus. The news channel went to an ad break, and his mind went to the reason why he had started down the path he was on. The path that had ultimately led to the bodies of Harper Young and Paisley Brown being in a cabinet in the coroner’s office as opposed to drinking a cappuccino with their friends or filing that report for their boss or whatever they would have been up to. He hadn’t known them before, and he had no desire to start to learn about their lives now they were dead.

That didn’t interest him. He wasn’t sick or deranged enough to gloat about the deaths of those who had come in his way. That was for the sickos you read about in the tabloids. That was what those men who ended up having a true crime series made about them did.

He was different than that. His actions went way beyond that.

An image came into his mind, and the good feeling he had felt, the powerful one of just a few minutes ago started to evaporate. A tightness gripped his chest, and his fingers started to grip the sides of the armchair.

Then the news channel came back on, and the blond news anchor’s words filled the room.

“Welcome back to Kingston, a town that has been rocked by a double homicide. Two bright young women, two innocent lives plucked from their families, far far too early. We will bring you all the breaking news as and when it happens, but first I’m going to bring in the author of the true crime sensation…”

He was back in control. The tightness had gone, and his hands lay on the armrests, free of tension. A smile spread across his face once more. His eyes roamed around the dark room, the heavy drapes pulled tight, shutting the light out, shutting the outside world out. Despite the television, his eyes were used to the poor light. He lived his life in the darkness and semi-darkness. His eyes, his senses had adapted to that existence.

He checked the watch on his wrist. It wouldn't be long before evening and then nightfall, and then he would be in his element. Able to slip in and out of people's lives undetected. And that night, he would be doing exactly that. His eyes went to the corner of the room. To the corner that contained the two other objects in the room apart from the television, its remote control, and the chair he was sitting on.

The darkness meant that even with his eyes, they were indistinguishable, but he knew exactly what they were. He had placed them there earlier. One of them was why the images of those two women were on the screen of every television set in Kingston and the surrounding cities.

It would also be responsible for another face that would be joining them tomorrow. One that would show the so-called experts up as exactly what they were: fools spouting crackpot theories. While everyone at home lapped it up and put another lock on their doors, another automatic rifle under their beds.

One of the objects that his eyes played over was one of beauty. The simplicity of it, the aptness of it, thrilled him. He was not sure if the whole idea of what he would do, of what he must do, had fully formulated in his head until his eyes had first come across it. But from that moment, there was no going back. Everything suddenly had seemed not just perfect, but as if there was no possible alternative way that things could possibly pan out.

He had held the blow pipe, taken it into his hands, run his fingers over its intricate, ancient and carved surface and he had known instantly not only that he must have it, but what he would do with it.

From that moment, there was no going back. His future, and those of several people he had never met and would never know, as well as some who he certainly did, was determined and would be changed forever.

The other object was something a lot more basic, not as beautiful in its design, or the bluntness of its use, but was no less important.

He hadn’t needed it when dealing with Harper Young or Paisley Brown, as he had subsequently learned were the names of the two women.

But he had a feeling he would need it tonight. And even if he didn’t, it was important he should have it with him in case it was needed. When you are changing the world, you have to ensure you account for every possibility.

He gave a final look at the two men on the television screen, two fools discussing where he was likely to strike next, and his laugh filled the room. He picked up the remote control, switched off the television, and walked to the corner of the room. He picked up the pipe, hefting it in his hand, its touch and feel as always giving him a renewed confidence in what he had already achieved and in what he was about to.

Then he stooped and picked up the second object. The blade of the knife had no light to reflect off it, but in his mind’s eye he could see it glowing, desperate to become part of his journey.

He stood up and walked quickly to the front door.

He had work to do.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Claire reached into the compartment under the excavator’s seat and pulled the cloth bag out. It had a drawstring top, but it was open displaying the contents.

“I said there aint nothing for you in there lady. That’s private property,” Callum Pollard cried from behind her, and she could hear him tussle with Wilson who had to warn him to calm the hell down.

She lifted the black bag, surprised how much it weighed, then turned round and walked slowly down the step to stand in front of Wilson and a defeated looking Pollard.

“I think we can add theft and grave robbing to the attempted murder rap,” she said, holding up the bag for her partner to see.

"That's why you acted the way you did when you saw us coming for you. Guilty conscience," Wilson said, turning back to Pollard. Then he looked over his prisoner's shoulder at two officers striding their way.

“Agents, you been doing a little bit of garbage disposal?” Sergeant Bradley said when he saw who the man Wilson held by the shoulder was.

Pollard looked at the sergeant and grunted. They obviously had previous between them.

Claire turned to him. The sergeant appeared more at ease than when he had been outside the Johnson House. He held out the bag. "Looks like he has been helping himself to the belongings of those in the cemetery. Not just the new ones either, looking at this. One of the rings in there has the bone in it."

All four looked at Pollard, who had the good grace to say nothing and look at his feet, with the nearest thing to shame Claire guessed he possessed.

"He also attempted to kill myself and Agent King here. We'll give you our statements later," Wilson said, shoving Pollard into the welcoming arms of Bradley's companion.

“What do you know about Cub, his brother?” Claire asked Bradley.

A look of distaste clouded the sergeant’s features. “I wouldn’t want to say what I felt, not with a lady present. But if you are going to see him, I would be ready. To say he won’t take kindly to you sniffing around his affairs is an understatement.

***

Cub Pollard’s house looked almost as in need of attention as the Johnson House but was a lot newer and a lot less grand. A settee in the front yard was the only thing that vied for attention with the beer cans, cigarette packets and weeds, which between them at least offered some color. The street was far from affluent, but the owners of neighboring houses had at least made an effort to make their homes presentable, neat and tidy.

Cub Pollard’s abode stuck out like a sore thumb. Claire could imagine the consternation among the other residents. There would be accusations of the eyesore bringing property prices down in the street. Judging from Sergeant Bradley’s comments, she also doubted that they would have had any impact on the older of the two Pollard brothers. Or even if those accusations would have been made to his face rather than behind his back.

It was dusk as Claire and Wilson stepped through the gap in the chain link fence that separated the property from the sidewalk and made their way along the paved walkway to the house. The low sun almost blinded them, and they were both glad when they stepped into the shadow of the house. A dog barked in the distance, and a woodpecker eyed them nervously from its perch on the arm of the settee, before launching itself into the air and deciding the yard of the house opposite was a safer place to spend his evening forage for food.

The sergeant's words whirled around Claire's head, and her hand instinctively went to her revolver. Even if he wasn't expecting them, it would be likely he would be on his guard. They had seen how his brother had acted when he was confronted. He had tried to kill them both, and he was only guilty of theft. If Cub Pollard had killed those two women, then there was no knowing what lengths he would go to to escape the clutches of the law.

The house, a one-story wooden structure, was symmetrical, with a grimy window either side of the front door. Bamboo blinds hung down, obscuring the interior, and metal grilles on the windows and door gave it a less than homey look.

Wilson banged on the grill, the noise sending a crow from the roof flying and cawing down the street. There was no answer. No noise came from inside the house. The dog barked again. Claire’s frustration started to rise. She seemed to spend her entire time banging on the doors of empty houses.

Then her eyes caught sight of something above them, and she grabbed Wilson's sleeve and pointed.

The single eye of a security camera stared down at them from a wooden cubby hole made to blend in with the wall of the house.

“He seems overly concerned with security,” Wilson said, his voice hushed. “CCTV, grilles…”

“What do you think? Paranoid or is he running some operation here that necessitate that level of caution?” Claire whispered back. She had been involved in a joint operation with the DEA several years ago, where they had busted several houses, not dissimilar to this one, which had been home to a multi-million dollar smuggling operation.

"Both would be my bet," Wilson replied, then banged on the grille again. "Either way, he knows we are here, and I imagine why we are here." He pulled his revolver out and moved away from the door. They had both seen too many colleagues being shot through the doors of seemingly empty houses.

“I’ll go round the back,” Claire said. “Be careful,” she couldn’t help herself from adding. She stepped round the back of the house, wondering if Pollard was on the other side of the wooden walls, a shotgun in his hands, waiting.

The back yard was much the same as the front, and the low sun made long shadows of the rusty barbeque in one corner and the two foot high weeds that flanked the scrubby grass. The back of the house was also similar to the front. A door and two greasy windows, grilles over them. Then she stopped, there was one difference. Two, she suddenly realized. The far window didn't have a bamboo blind, and it also had a window open. A small, two feet by one section of the glass was open inwards, allowing, she assumed at least air into the interior.

She crouched, as she came to the blindless window. Her revolver in her hand, its reassuring weight and cool metal a counterbalance to her pounding heart. She knew when she stood up, she would be a sitting duck, if Cub pollard was there waiting for her. He would have known, if he was watching the camera footage, that she had left her partner at the front door. If he had wanted to run, he would have done it by now. His other two options were to hide and wait for them to go away, which surely, he knew they wouldn't, or fight and attack.

The little she knew about him made her convinced that it was the latter of those options he would opt for with every fiber of his being.

There was another alternative. That they had missed him, and that even now he was aiming his blowgun at another innocent victim.

That last thought gave her the final impetus to act. She stood up, just to the side of the glass, then peered in, her hands holding the revolver in front of her, her body braced both to duck from a bullet and to fire off her own.

But there was no sound of a shot ringing out, or of breaking glass. She squinted to see through the dirty glass into the kitchen beyond. The sun was shining through the window, but a combination of the grease and dirt on the glass meant it took her eyes a couple of seconds to adjust.

The kitchen was less cluttered than she would have guessed. Some dirty plates were piled neatly by the sink. A table on the left-hand side held an empty beer carton. Her attention was caught by what was next to the beer carton. A human skull had been made into a candle holder. With a horrible flashback, she was reminded of the ‘Why Not?’ emporium with its piles and piles of objects and the effect they had had on her.

The sound of Wilson banging on the front grille brought her attention back, and it was then that she saw the skull, the real one this time, of Cub Pollard.

“Wilson!” she cried out, “Wilson, get here!”

She tried to see into the shadows of the kitchen and the adjoining stairwell while Wilson sprinted round the side of the house and joined her. He looked at her, wide eyed, and she motioned through the window at what had made her call him. It took Wilson, like it had Claire, a few seconds to get used to the light in the kitchen and then another few for his eyes to penetrate the shadows on the floor and to notice the body of Cub Pollard. Or at least the head and shoulders, as they were the only parts visible from the angle they were looking in it.

They had to get into the house. It was impossible to tell if Pollard was dead or in some kind of a trance. She wasn't ruling out the possibility it was a trap either, but they had to get in and didn't have time to wait for assistance.

She tried the grille on the window and then the door, but they both held firm.

“Stand away,” Wilson said, aiming his gun at the lock on the grille over the back door. He fired twice, the lock disintegrating after the second one. He yanked the metal grille open, tried the door, finding it locked as he knew it would.

Claire had studied the face of Cub Pollard through the glass and the links of the grille as the shots were fired. There had been no reaction. No flinch. He was either dead or in a trance.

Another shot rang out as Wilson put a bullet through the door lock, then she waited while he forced the door.

Then she raced inside.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The first thing that hit Claire as she rushed into Cub Pollard’s kitchen was the hot, fetid atmosphere. The open window aside, the air felt like it had been held captive in the house for years.

The second thing that hit her was the fact that Cub Pollard had been killed in the same way as Harper Young and Paisley Brown.

Pollard, the man who had been caught on Ellie Smith’s cell phone footage was laying on the floor of his kitchen, his head in the doorway that led to the rest of the small house. He was lying as if he had just settled down on the floor to sleep, his arms by his sides, his legs out straight.

There were two things, however, that made it obvious that that was not what had happened. There was a small trickle of blood underneath his head and neck that had run onto the dirty brown linoleum. A fly was greedily drinking the dark, sticky liquid.

And there were also two darts stuck in his chest, the silver tips having pierced the orange T-shirt he wore.

Claire rushed over to the body and reached out to check that he was dead. She couldn't see any movement but laid her fingers against his neck to check for a pulse.

The force of the vision that assailed her, pushed her back on her heels and she would have fallen if Wilson hadn’t been there to catch her.

The shouting and screaming was deafening. It seemed to be coming from inside her head as opposed to from someone shouting at her. The words, which she still couldn’t make out, were like a barrage. They battered her, bruised her.

But this time, the words were accompanied by an image. There was a mouth. Again, it was far too close. It seemed to be disembodied, just a huge gaping, screaming maw spitting the words out at her from centimeters away, even closer. Like the words, it was as if the mouth was on her, inside her even, devouring her with its fury.

Claire beat at the air in front of her with her fists, trying to fight off the image but it was as if it was too close, that her hands could only reach past it.

Then there was silence. The words had stopped and thankfully the mouth was no longer there. She opened her eyes, panting for breath. Wilson, who still held her, lowered her gently so she was sitting on the floor. Then he knelt down beside her, the dead body lying next to them forgotten.

"What was that?" he said, his voice almost broken with worry. "I mean, I know what it was… but I've never seen you react like that."

Claire looked up at him, feeling like a child who had just fainted at school. “Why, what happened, what was I doing?” she asked. Her nerves were still hyped, and Wilson’s obvious concern had made her feel even worse, as had the worry about what she had been doing in the ‘real world’.

“You were fighting something, somebody,” he said, his words soft. “It looked as though something was attacking you…” He reached out and swept a lock of hair that had fallen over her face, sticking to the sweat on her forehead. “Who was it? What was it?”

Claire looked up at him. She didn’t have to close her eyes to picture what it had been. Her main fear was that she wouldn’t be able to forget it. That it would be there every time she closed her eyes.

“It… it was the words again, the torrent of anger I heard before,” she began uncertainly, “they were clearer, but I still couldn’t make out what they were saying. But… they were English, just they were coming so quick, with such anger and more… such malice. It was like a machine gun firing off these words, but too fast so they were catching each other up, overlapping, interfering with each other.” She looked down at her hands, the ones that Wilson had seen fighting off the invisible assailant.

“And I saw the mouth that was screaming the words…” she said before trailing off.

“Who was it?”

“I…I don’t know. It was disembodied. I know that sounds crazy, but all I could see were the lips. Like in a cartoon or something, but it wasn’t a cartoon, it was… real. So real.”

No one spoke for a few seconds. Claire sat there, in that kitchen, trying to get her thoughts together. Then she carried on describing what she had seen, what she had felt.

“It was a woman’s mouth. I am positive. An old woman. It was red, heavy with a bright red lipstick, but you could still see the lines in the flesh, the wrinkles. I think it was the same woman whose arm and hand I saw before. I don’t know how or why I think that, but I am sure it was.”

"Is she the person who killed those two women? Who killed… him?" Wilson said, motioning to the body beside them, who was almost forgotten.

“I…I don’t know. Why else would I be seeing her? Hearing her? But I don’t know. I have no idea.”

“We should go back to Ellie and Barnes, ask them if they saw an old woman at the Johnson House,” Wilson said.

Claire thought of something else, but stopped herself from saying anything, not sure that if she expressed her thoughts even Wilson wouldn’t think she had gone crazy. She put her hands on the floor and pushed herself up. “We need to deal with this before anything else. This is a real body. Another victim. Something solid we can deal with.”

She looked at Cub Pollard lying dead on his own kitchen floor. Less than half an hour ago, he was their prime suspect for the murders of the two young women. Now he was the third victim. Her eyes went to the two darts, sticking up from the man’s chest. Then her eyes went to the open window.

“He fired the darts through that,” she said, as Wilson came and stood next to her. “He fired through the open window.” She pointed to the gap. There was just enough room for the blow pipe to squeeze through the gap in the grill and the open window.

Wilson followed her finger and nodded. “So much for a locked room mystery. Who’d have thought something as simple as having your window open could end up killing you?” He stepped closer to the window, leaning over the sink. “Forensics should be able to work out how tall our man is from the angle he would have had to have fired at.” He shook his head, “Who uses a blow gun as a weapon? In America in this day and age?”

“There has to be some significance for that. He is trying to tell us something. Or…tell his victims. It has meaning for him either way,” Claire said.

Wilson looked around the kitchen. "I'll call the body in," he said, getting out his cell phone.

“Wait,” Claire said. Let’s have a look around ourselves first. It’s going to be hard to do that with half of the Kingston PD traipsing through the place.

Wilson gave a small smile then nodded.

Claire went to the skull candle holder she had spotted from outside. It was impossible to tell if it was a genuine skull, but if it wasn't, it certainly looked authentic. Her gloved hand lifted it slightly, feeling its weight. There was some writing scratched into the forehead. They weren't letters she recognized, more like ancient runes.

Her eyes scanned the rest of the room. There was nothing else out of the ordinary. She stepped over the body and went through the small hallway and into the next room. It was a living room cum dining room. The closed blinds meant it was gloomy, almost dark, with only the fading light coming in through the kitchen window and the open doorway giving any illumination.

Even so, it was easy to see that the room was decorated in a very particular way. Drawings on the wall showed esoteric symbols. Others were of what she assumed were mythical beasts or gods. Some looked like they were professionally done, others may have been scribbled by the man lying dead on the floor in the other room.

Claire quickly took in the scene, trying to get an image of the man who had lived there. His brother had alluded to the fact he got up to strange things, but she would never have guessed exactly what those things were.

She was conscious that they had to hurry. They had to get the coroner in as well as the police to seal off the area and conduct door to door enquiries on the street. That made her remember something else.

"The camera," she said. That should have footage of whoever did this. He would have to of come down the front path. He would have been carrying the blowgun. He couldn't have carried that through town, it would have been too conspicuous. He must have driven. The camera could pick up the license plate too." Her voice was excited. She could suddenly see a crack opening up in the case. “We just need to find where that footage is.”

“There’s a laptop in there,” Wilson said pointing into the only other room apart from the bathroom left to explore.

Claire followed him into the small room. A single, unmade bed was pushed to one wall. The floor was covered in cloths, some clean by the looks of them, many dirty. Like the lounge, the walls were covered in pictures. There was little doubt that Cub Pollard was fascinated by the occult. There was also little wonder he had been at the ritual at the Johnson House the night before. But why had he been targeted?

Wilson went over to the laptop. It was on, but password protected. She watched him look around the room in frustration, then walked out into the small reception room that the four rooms led off from. In front of her was the front door. A baseball bat was next to it. The little she knew about Pollard told her that it was there for protection rather than for sporting diversion.

“He was obviously worried about something,” she said as Wilson joined her. “Was that just the state of his mind, or was there something more specific?”

Wilson sucked in the hot, dank air through his pursed lips. "I wonder if the person who did this knew about the window being open. Did he try the front door first, like we did? Or did he just go round the back, wait for Pollard to appear, or perhaps even made a noise to get his attention, to draw him into the trap."

“The bat is still by the front door, which suggests he wasn’t overly worried,” Claire said, but I think you’re right. He must have known the window would be open, which would mean the killer knows him, or at least knows about his habits.”

“He could have checked out the joint beforehand. Or could even live locally,” Wilson said, his own voice resonating with excitement as he thought of the possibilities.

“Well hopefully the CCTV footage will answer some if not all of those questions,” Wilson said, returning to the bedroom. “We will need the technical bods to get into his laptop. That’s where the footage will be stored, unless it goes to a third party.

Wilson's voice drifted in from the bedroom as Claire walked up to the front door, her eyes roaming the walls and frame around the off-white wooden structure. She stood on her tiptoes and opened a little cubby hole that sat flush against the wall.

“Wilson, come here,” she said for the second time that day, this time trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Wilson followed Claire’s finger. She had opened the small cubicle set above Cub Pollard’s front door to reveal the back of the security camera they had spotted when they had first come to the house.

But it wasn’t the niche that the camera sat in that Claire had called her partner over for. It wasn’t even the camera. It was the lead that came out of the camera. The lead that was now hanging limply down the door. It’s plug just above Claire’s head, useless, impotent.

“That was definitely unplugged before you opened it?” Wilson said, knowing he was clutching at straws.

“’fraid so,” Claire said, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “Lift me up.”

Wilson looked at her for a second, then put his hands under her arms and hoisted her up towards the ceiling.

Claire, her head now level with the small niche, peered inside. Her worst fears were confirmed, and she used her finger to wipe along the empty socket.

“This hasn’t been used for years,” she said, showing Wilson who was gazing up below her, her dusty finger.

Wilson gently brought her down and they stood looking at each other in the cramped hallway, both trying to figure out where this left them; what their next move should be.

“Ok,” Wilson said after a few seconds, “I need to call the body in. Have you seen all you need in here?”

Claire looked around, then nodded. She listened while Wilson phoned the station, trying to come up with something they could at least pretend was a plan.

“Ok,” she said, when Wilson had pocketed his cell phone. “We’ve got some phone calls to make, so I suggest we get some office space down at the station. We need to speak to Ellie Smith and Mason Barnes and ask them if they saw an old woman at the ritual last night, or have any idea who she could be,” she looked at her partner, fully aware how flimsy that was as a strategy, and not daring to mention the other thing that she was going to check. “We need to check with the lab if they have had any joy finding what poison was in the darts, and we need to look into blowguns. How easy they are to find, who sells them, preferably who sells them locally."

Wilson nodded. The look on his face told her all she needed to know. All she already knew. With three dead bodies, what they actually had to go on amounted to very little. The growth of internet shopping may have been a huge boost for retailers and consumers, but it had been a body blow for investigations such as this. Now, criminals could source what they needed from anywhere in the globe, making it practically impossible for law enforcement to trace.

They decided to wait for the police on the sidewalk, and retraced their steps, out of the back door and into the fading light. It was Claire who spotted it first.

They were halfway down the roughly paved path that led from the front door to the gateless fence and the sidewalk when she grabbed Wilson's arm, bringing him to a sudden stop.

“Look!” The chalk design on the paving slabs was indistinct enough for them to have walked over it without noticing it, especially in the poor evening light, but it was still more than clear enough to make out.

They both crouched down beside the drawing. It had been made with white chalk and was on one of the flagstones that made up the dirty path.

The image was a stylized depiction of an eye. It was in a circle, a circle that had been divided up into four equal segments.

“How the hell did we not spot that when we came in?” Wilson asked, incredulous. “It must have been done while we were in the house.”

Claire thought back to when they had arrived and shook her head. "No, we had the sun in our eyes. We were blinded, we walked straight over it." She leaned closer to the drawing. "Look, it has been here for a while." Some of the chalk lines were more distinct, looked fresher than others, but there was no doubt that some of it at least had been done days, even weeks ago.

Claire took out her cell phone and photographed the symbol.

"What do you think it is? I'm no expert, obviously, but isn't that the all-seeing eye or some such thing?"

Wilson nodded. “I think you’re right. What do you think it is? A warning? Protection? Or maybe the killer marked out the house to come back later?” Wilson’s voice dripped with uncertainty. They were both way out of their comfort zone, and were dealing with things they did not hope to understand. Which Claire knew was as far from ideal as you could get. They had to understand the killer's motives, his passions. If they were struggling to get a grip on what those were, they were always going to be trailing behind in his wake.

"We need to speak to someone who knows about this kind of thing. Who understands the nuances," Claire said. They looked at each other, and then they both said the same name together.

“Jimmy Tucker.”

“I’ll call him. Get him here to take a look at it,” Claire said, thankful she wouldn’t have to go into the man’s emporium to conduct the interview.

It was fifteen minutes later when Jimmy Tucker arrived. He had made the short journey on foot. In those fifteen minutes, four things had happened. First of all, Sergeant Bradley and three of his men had arrived. Wilson had quickly shown them into the house, describing why and how they had broken in, and also the useless security camera.

The second thing that had happened was that the sun had finally slipped below the distant horizon, sucking the last of the evening light with it.

The third and fourth things were phone calls Claire had made to Mason Barnes and Ellie Smith. Both had seemed to recover from the events of the previous night and the subsequent interviews. Neither had seen an elderly woman at the ritual in the Johnson House, nor could they think of one who could meet the very general description Claire was able to offer them.

She was thanking Ellie when the figure of Tucker came into view along the sidewalk.

“You are feeling better I trust, agent?” Tucker said as he met Claire outside the fence of Pollard’s property.

“I am yes, thank you,” Claire said stiffly, not liking the slightly mocking smile on the store owner’s face. Wison jogged down the path from the house, nimbly stepped over the chalk drawing and joined them, giving a nod to Tucker.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure. I rarely get to speak to two esteemed members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, so to do it twice in one day, well, I truly do feel honored. He treated both agents to a smile. She got the distinct impression he was enjoying this. He had gone from a person of potential interest to one of providing assistance, and she was sure he was going to milk it for all he could.

“I do hope you were able to verify my whereabouts last night?” Tucker said, looking at Claire and then Wilson.

“Yes we were thank you,” Wilson said, his tone even. Claire knew him well enough to know that he had a dislike for the man as much as she did.

“And I understand you met up with my wayward employee, Mason.” Tucker’s smile grew into a grin.

"We aren't at liberty to divulge parts of an ongoing investigation, Mr. Tucker," Wilson said.

“And yet you are happy to drag me out here in the middle of the night?” Tucker’s tone was quite barbed, then he shrugged his shoulders and the slight, ironic smile returned. “But, as I said on the phone, I am more than willing to help. Especially if in any small way I am able to assist you to get to the bottom of this filthy business. You expect this kind of thing in the big metropolises, but Kingston? No no no.”

“We do appreciate you coming over here,” Claire said. “I hope it hasn’t inconvenienced you too much, and we need to stress that anything we tell you, or ask you this evening remains strictly between us? There is certain information we do not want to get out to the general public, and if it does leak, it won’t only hamper the investigation, but we will also know exactly where that leak has come from.” Claire held Tucker’s gaze, making him very aware that it was no idle threat, while also taking back control of the interview.

“We have two things we would like to pick your brain about,” Claire went on. “What do you know about blow guns? Blow pipes?”

The look on Tucker’s face showed that the question had taken him by complete surprise.

"Blowpipes?" he asked, bemused. He took off his spectacles and after taking a white handkerchief from his pocket proceeded to clean them with it. "To answer an unexpected question with I imagine a rather disappointing answer, I have to admit I know very little about them, agent." He looked at Claire, then to Wilson, before replacing his glasses on his nose, his handkerchief in his pocket, and his gaze once more on Claire. "Certainly, no more than the average person who has occasionally watched a documentary on the people of the Amazon." He shrugged.

“You haven’t sold any in your store?” Wilson asked.

“Ah, I get you. Yes yes, I can understand why you would think that, can see the connection your minds have made. But no, I can’t recall ever selling one, or being offered one. That’s not to say I wouldn’t, they could be considered objets d’art and I’m sure some are wonderfully crafted, but no, not one has entered my establishment. Nor would I particularly know where one would go to purchase one. Online, I guess. Isn’t that where everyone goes nowadays?”

Claire briefly caught Wilson’s eye, and the unspoken message went between them that that particular avenue had turned into a dead end.

“Is that everything? Isn’t that something you could have asked me over the phone, or did you want to see the whites of my eyes as it were?” Tucker asked.

"No, Mr. Tucker, there is something else. The reason we asked you to come here. We’d like you to take a look at this,” Claire said, leading him gently by the arm to the chalk drawing on the path, and shining the flashlight from her cell phone to illuminate it.

“Ah, now, this is more my sphere of expertise,” he said, walking round to look at it, before crouching down.

Claire watched Tucker study it, his head angled to one side. After three minutes, he stood back up and joined the two agents.

“Interesting,” he said. “Of course, it is the eye of providence. The all-seeing eye, if you will. It is probably, no, I would say the most basic, and quite frankly overused symbol in the whole realm of the occult. Misused and misunderstood by as many as understand its use and its power." He took off his glasses and pinched the top of his nose with his long fingers. Claire noticed his nails, long and perfectly shaped. Nails, she would have been proud of herself.

"The symbol is used, with slight variations of course, in every ancient culture, civilization and belief system that has existed. The eye of Horus, Ra, for example. Very little is new in this world, you understand agents. Almost everything is rehashed, given a makeover, a new lick of paint and a new moniker. But delve down beneath all the bells and whistles, and you get to the same fundamental power." He looked straight at Claire and pointed at the chalk drawing with his glasses. "That, agent, is what all this is about. What everything boils down to. Tapping that power."

“So this shape in itself, there’s nothing unusual about it,” Claire asked wondering if they had headed into yet another cul-de-sac.

"Ah, well, no, I wouldn't say that,” Tucker said, walking over to the drawing and crouching beside it once more.

Claire and Wilson joined him, both shining their flashlights onto it.

“You see, this is the, how would you say, the normal symbol for the eye,” he said, tracing the outline with the stem of his glasses. “But these,” he pointed to the diagonal lines that dissected the circle, “these are a whole lot more interesting.”

Claire felt a rush of excitement. Could picture a crack of light emerging in the previously dark and shuttered case.

Tucker rubbed his chin pensively, and muttered to himself.

“Have you seen anything like this before?” Wilson asked.

"Oh yes, there's very little in this world or any other that I haven't seen. But it is unusual, I will give you that."

Claire waited for him to expand, and was about to push, when he went on.

“You see those four segments that the lines have divided the eye into. Well, debate in certain sections of the occult, if I can use such a course term, debate rages not only as to what each segment represents, signifies, or strictly speaking, what is held in each one. There is also a debate, no less lively by the way, as to if there should be six or even eight of those segments.”

“What do they represent… or hold?” Claire asked, desperately hoping this was going somewhere and not merely another lecture by the proprietor of ‘Why Not?’

“Well, that is what the debates are about," Tucker treated Claire to another ironic smile. "But to put it simply, different realms. Different worlds, planes of existence. The debate of course is not just how many they are, but which one we are currently residing in and how we can step through the boundaries to the next one."

“So this one here specifically, what is this telling us? Why would someone have it outside their house?” Wilson asked, desperately trying to bring the conversation back to the realm of his understanding and to something that will help them find who killed the three people.

"I could tell you, but I fear I would be overstepping my sphere of expertise. You see, I hold very little sway with this part of my industry. And it is an industry. I am a store owner, I can’t very well deny it. This,” he pointed down to the symbol, “makes me feel a little uncomfortable. People who subscribe to this tend to step over the boundaries of what I feel are acceptable. Safe even.”      

“Can’t you at least try?” Claire asked, trying to keep the exasperation from her voice.

“Oh, I can do far better than that agent,” Tucker said. “I can point you in the direction of the person at the forefront of this, the man who is pushing this whole narrative.” He looked round at the two agents. He looked very happy with himself and was visibly taken back that his enthusiasm wasn’t shared.

“Who is it,” Wilson asked, slightly wearily.

"Jordon Cook. He could tell you more about that," he pointed to the chalk drawing again, "than I could ever dream of doing. Though I will warn you, Jordon is not your run-of-the-mill gentleman. He has stepped over the boundaries on more than one occasion, and I don't mean into other realms. In this instance I mean the boundaries of decency, of taste and of the law. His beliefs and actions are not for everyone. To put it mildly."

“Ok, where can we contact this Jordon Cook?” Claire said, taking her notebook out.

“Oh, he’s here. He’s currently on a book tour and is right here in Kingston. Arrived last week I believe. He is leading what he refers to as a happening this very evening!”  

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“That’s all we need,” Wilson said, getting out of the car and pointing to the sky where a full moon shone down.

“You should be grateful; without that it’d be pitch black. I’d take a full moon over that. Or are you telling me you’re scared of werewolves now?”

“Hey, I don’t care what’s responsible for killing those three people, a werewolf, Frankenstein’s monster, even Count Dracula, they are all the same to me and will end up in that holding cell in cuffs,” Wilson said, but Claire could tell that the events of the day had begun to get to him. It had to both of them. They were not used to dealing with things that were so beyond their sphere of reasoning. The events with the cult in California had been one thing, but with that it had always been about actual tangible things, understandable motives and emotions of revenge, hatred, and greed.

This seemed different. It seemed a lot more frightening, and she didn’t mean in a high school horror movie way.

But that seemed, once more, to be exactly where they were stepping into.

They had driven Jimmy Tucker back to his store where, with Claire waiting outside, he had collected a bunch of flyers he had been given, from the trash. He brought one out for them. Half of the flyer detailed a book signing in a bookstore in town, by Jordan Cook for a day earlier in the week. It was for the morning after Paisley Brown had been killed. The other half of the sheet of paper was dedicated to something happening that very night. A ‘happening’ as it was described.

Claire had thanked Tucker and reached out to take the paper, not thinking until it was too late that she could very probably receive a vision from it. As her hands closed on the shiny paper, there had been nothing, however.

It had taken twenty minutes to drive from the emporium to the abandoned warehouse on the other side of the city.

It was part of an industrial area that didn’t look like it had been used for years. Some of the buildings were surrounded by rusting razor wire, others had been left to the elements and the local youths, their windows smashed, their brickworks mosaics of unskilled graffiti.

The warehouse where the happening was taking place was a little further out, away from the main complex, and stood on its own. Its regular shape was black, against a slightly less black sky. The flyer had given no details. Not even a time. Just the address of the warehouse and the two words, “after dark.”

The nearest they could park was a hundred yards away at a barrier that blocked off the highway. Half a dozen other cars flanked the highway, all of them empty.

“Looks like we won’t be alone,” Claire said as she scanned the ground in front of the warehouse. It was open, making it hard to conceal someone, specifically someone with a blowgun. But it also meant they would be an easy target. Especially with the moon bathing everything in its white light.

They had only just started walking towards the warehouse when they heard the noise. It sent shivers down Claire’s spine and made her hair stand up on the back of her neck, despite the warm, humid conditions.

She really hoped that whatever was making the noise was an animal, and not a human, but whatever it was, it was in pain and distress.

The screaming, squealing was like fingernails being drawn down a chalkboard. It was impossible not to be affected by it. Both agents broke into a sprint. Claire's eyes played over the black, blank front of the warehouse. A skylight in the roof reflected a dim light coming from inside.

Her mind went back to the openness of the yard they were running through. It brought with it the possibility that this could be a trap. In her mind’s eye, a speaker played the awful sounds, drawing her and Wilson into the trap like moths to a candle.

It quickly became obvious that the sounds were not coming from inside the building, but from round the back, on the other side.

They quickened their pace, neither knowing what they would find, if whatever it was making the awful noise would still be alive.

Claire was the first to skirt the corner of the building, and the sight that confronted her brought her up short.

A fire in the middle of the ground provided a flickering, orange light that lit the scene.

There were about six people, all in loose, dark-colored smocks. They had their faces painted, but from the little she could see, the designs were just random colors and lines, that served to break up the features and the faces in a disturbing, unnatural way.

It was impossible to distinguish the age or even the sex of the people, the shapeless smocks hung down, almost to the ground, hiding their bodies beneath. Those with long hair wore it up.

But Claire only took these details in fleetingly. It was to the front of the group her attention was immediately diverted.

One of the group, Claire guessed it was the leader of this small group, had a knife in his or her hand. A large, curved knife, its blade reflecting the tongues of orange flame from the fire behind it. The figure was crouched, bent forward, the knife held out. Then the figure began to move. It walked slowly towards a shape, six feet in front of it. Two other members of the group were behind the shape, their arms out, fingers splayed so as to cut off its escape.

Claire suddenly realized what the shape was, and with it what the noise had been.

It was a pig. A small pig. The people must have been chasing it, trying to catch it, and she imagined, to kill it, in some awful cruel ritual or sacrificial ceremony.

She had seen some pretty twisted things in her career, but this was something else. She tried to process what was happening in front of her, but her mind refused to make sense of it. She looked over at Wilson, who was just as stunned as she was.

As the figure with the knife approached the pig, it let out another shrill squeal. Claire's stomach turned as she watched the figure raise the knife, ready to strike. She couldn't let this happen. She had to do something.

Without thinking, Claire raised her gun and fired a warning shot into the air. The figure with the knife spun around, startled. The rest of the group turned to face her, their painted faces still unreadable.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The figure with the knife yelled at her, a male voice, gruff.

Then both looked back at the pig, who as if realizing this was its opportunity bolted between the main figure and those two behind it, its little legs tearing over the dark ground, out of the light cast by the fire and disappearing, its squeals fading into the distance.

Then Claire noticed another figure. Not one of the ones in smocks with painted faces. He was standing in an open doorway of the warehouse, watching proceedings. She nudged Wilson who turned to see the man, before he slipped into the warehouse, shutting the door behind him.

Claire had only had a fleeting glimpse of the man, but that had been enough for her to recognize him as the man whose face had been on the corner of the flyer advertising the book signing and ‘the happening.’ Jordan Cook.

"He's in there," Claire said to Wilson, racing to the door Cook had just disappeared through. She turned round to see Wilson join her, and over his shoulder, the last of the figures who had been chasing the pig disappear into the darkness. She knew she couldn’t waste time with them. Their main focus needed to be on Cook.

The door had opened inwards, and she tried in vain to find any kind of handle or anything that would open the door. This side of the warehouse, and the door itself was made out of metal sheeting. It was painted black or dark blue, impossible to tell in the darkness. The moon was on the other side of the building and offered no illumination on this side.

Every second they wasted gave another second for Cook to get away, or worse, to plan his attack. She found herself wondering how long she would have between feeling the sharp sting of a dart piercing her skin and her heart seizing up.

She pushed such thoughts from her mind, concentrating instead on the problem immediately at hand. How to get inside the warehouse.

Wilson solved that for her.

Without even being aware that he had gone off, she turned to see him walking towards her carrying what looked like a gate post. He motioned for her to move aside, then he heaved the huge square wooden pole at the door, where he hoped the lock would be.

The hollow metallic thud was deafening, and she could see Wilson’s arms and shoulders shake with the impact and rebound. Undeterred, he pulled back and gave another almighty whack. This time the door bent and buckled then flew inwards, revealing the warehouse’s dark interior.

Claire stepped inside, her gun drawn, pointing to the shadowy space that opened in front of her. She was subconsciously bracing herself in case a poisoned dart flew at her, but she knew it was no good. There was nothing she could do.

The interior smelt of dust, but there was also the unmistakable, perfumed smell of incense. Had the happening taken place? Was the sacrificing of the pig the start or the culmination?

Several candles, scattered at various levels in the warehouse didn’t as much illuminate the interior, but merely gave small reference points and gavee the rest of the space a darker appearance. The black shadows looked so dark as to be impenetrable.

She stood still, her ears straining to see if they could pick up the sounds of Jordan Cook moving, but there was nothing. Just silence.

Then suddenly there was movement in front of her, on the other side of the warehouse. The barrel of her gun automatically pointed in that direction, but it was impossible to confirm if it had been Cook, or if there was anyone else in there. It could even have been a bat for all they knew, and grimly Claire thought how in keeping with the rest of the day, that would be.

“You go left, I’ll track right,” Wilson whispered in her ear. “Don’t shine your flashlight.”

Claire stepped quietly to the left, keeping tight to the warehouse wall. Putting her flashlight on was the last thing she wanted to do. It didn’t have the power to penetrate the dark warehouse, so would merely highlight their presence while keeping their eyes from adjusting to the dark.

As Claire made her way slowly through the dark, she could not shake the feeling of being watched. Every hair on the back of her neck prickled, and she could feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins.

As she crept along, she heard a faint rustling noise coming from the shadows ahead of her. She raised her gun, her finger poised on the trigger, her heart racing. Was it Cook? Or just a wild animal that had made the abandoned warehouse its home?

Suddenly, a figure emerged from the darkness, moving quickly towards her. Claire aimed her gun, preparing to fire, when she realized it was not Cook. It was a woman dressed in a long, flowing white robe, her hair loose around her shoulders.

The woman raised her hands, a look of fear and confusion on her face when she saw Claire and her gun. Claire put her fingers to her lips and motioned for the woman to stay where she was and continued along the edge of the warehouse.

Her eyes had adjusted to the dark just in time as metal stairs suddenly rose up in front of her. She was not sure she would ever live it down if she had knocked herself unconscious by walking headlong into a stationary metal object. She gripped the cold steel, wondering whether to climb up to the upper level, when the sound of footsteps on another set of stairs, over on the other side of the warehouse, made her mind up for her.

It was almost impossible for Wilson to have reached the stairs in that time. It must be Cook or another person like the woman, someone else who had been at the happening. She started to climb, trying but failing to cushion the sound of her steps. The whole staircase rattled and shook. As she climbed, the floor of the warehouse became clearer. There were as many as half a dozen candles, and she could see that they were in a circle at the far end, the opposite end to where she and Wilson had entered. She couldn’t see anyone else, but the flames of the candles only illuminated the ground a foot or so around them. 

She put thoughts of the stairway collapsing out of her mind and carried on climbing, her gun ready in case anyone should rush her from the walkway above.

When she reached it, she quickly assessed her situation.

The walkway overlooked the entire warehouse, giving her a clear view of everything below. The candles cast eerie shadows on the floor, and she could see that they had been arranged in a circle around a large pentagram drawn on the ground.

As she looked closer, she saw that there were other symbols etched or drawn into the floor, ones that she couldn't identify. She tried to see if the one that had been outside Cub Pollard’s house was there, but it was impossible in the poor light.

She walked along the walkway and reached the corner, turning right towards the candles and pentagram below her. The railing on her right was broken in several places, with nothing between her and the hard floor, twenty feet below. Suddenly there was a movement below and the candles went out one by one.

She whirled around, pointing her gun into the darkness. Once again, there was silence, just her ragged breathing. Then, she was aware of footsteps coming along the walkway. Towards her.

She flattened herself to the wall of the warehouse, her gun held tightly in her hand. Her eyes strained to penetrate the blackness. Suddenly, a figure appeared, moving quickly towards her. Claire aimed her gun, ready to fire, when she realized that it was Wilson.

"Did you find anything?" she whispered, her heart still pounding.

"No sign of Cook," he replied, his voice low. "But I think I found where they keep the animals."

Claire felt a cold knot form in her stomach.

Then from nowhere another figure emerged. A man. Cook. He sprang out of the shadows and pushed Wilson, who cried out, falling over the edge, through a gap in the balustrade.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Claire’s world stood still. In the dark, she saw Wilson, his face contorted in terror, disappear over the side of the walkway into the black abyss below. The blur of the figure who had come from nowhere to push her partner similarly vanished back into the shadows.

She was torn between watching Wilson fall, to protecting herself from the same fate. She braced herself, her feet apart, body tensed, her gun swinging in an arc towards where the figure went.

But she couldn’t stop her eyes from following Wilson off the black edge of the walkway over into the darkness below. A fall that would almost certainly break his legs, and very possibly even worse.

Then, in slow motion, she saw Wilson's hand grasp a strut of the broken balustrade. The weight of his body as his fall was suddenly arrested made the whole walkway shake. Her heart, which had stopped when she had seen Wilson disappear over the edge leapt and she went to reach for his wrist, to haul him back up.

“No!” Wilson shouted, his body swinging from his one arm. “Leave me! Get Cook!”

Claire moved forward, unable and unwilling to leave him hanging like that.

“LEAVE ME!” Wilson bellowed at her, “I’m OK, get Cook!”

Claire wheeled round, back to the dark walkway all around her. Back to the danger of where she too could be pushed down to the ground below. She knew Wilson was right, and was annoyed with herself that she had been distracted.

The metal walkway beneath her trembled as Wilson tried to pull himself back up, but she had to put that out of her mind. He was big enough to look after himself. He had saved himself from a horrific injury by managing to grab the strut. She had to believe he would be able to get himself back up. Her main focus now had to be finding and arresting Jordan Cook.

It was pitch black, with the candles having been extinguished. She peered into the shadows around her to see where Cook had gone. She felt with her left hand, her arm outstretched keeping her right hand which grasped her revolver tight to her body. Her fingers touched the wall. Then the walkway wobbled even more, and the sound of footsteps echoed around her, footsteps running away from her.

Without a second's hesitation, she charged after the steps. Putting her faith in the fact that the walkway would hold, and that there weren't any hidden objects she could trip over, or gaps she could fall down. She considered firing but quickly discounted it. The woman from earlier had appeared from out of the shadows. She had no way of knowing with certainty there were no other innocent people in the warehouse, even on the walkway. She just couldn’t take that risk.

Instead, she put all of her effort into sprinting as fast as she could.

It was a terrifying experience. Running at full pelt, completely blind to what was in front of her, what was beneath her or where her pounding feet were landing. The moving walkway made it even more frightening and disconcerting.

Claire tried to work out where they were in the warehouse. She had a feeling that the corner was not too far away, especially at the speed she was running at. She didn’t know, but assumed that Cook would have a better handle on where the corner would be. If he managed to turn and she didn't, she would hit the warehouse wall head-on. That would almost certainly knock her out, leaving Cook free to either make his escape or to stop and finish her off.

That was another fear she had to push down into the back of her mind, but it did make her consider her options.

All this went through her mind as she sprinted as fast as she could, blind, on the moving walkway. She became aware that the fleeing figure in front of her was close. She could hear his pounding footsteps, hear his hoarse breathing. 

He would be aware she was closing. She had to act before he did.

With that she put in three even longer strides before launching herself forward into the darkness, her hands, stretching out in front, reaching for the legs, back, neck, anything of Cook.

She was in the air, diving, her hands grasping, even the one holding the gun. Her heart sank as they grasped nothing, just air.

Then, just as she was about to hit the ground, her fingers felt the calves and feet of Cook.

It was enough to knock the man off his balance and with a cry he tumbled forward onto the moving walkway’s surface. Claire’s own momentum took her sliding forward, but she was instantly onto her knees, scrambling forward.

The legs of Jordan Cook were underneath her, as she gripped them, hauling herself over the winded and struggling man. When she was past his waist, she put her knees on the small of his back and thrust the revolver into the side of his head.

“Don’t move a muscle,” she said between deep breaths, “or you will regret it for the rest of your very short life.”

***

The lights that lit the inside of the warehouse made it look, if anything more disturbing than it had in the near or complete darkness.

Wilson had managed to haul himself up onto the walkway and had arrived at the two figures, one kneeling on top of the other, in time to drag Cook to his feet. Between them, and now with the flashlight on their cell phones lighting their way, they had yanked the author and occultist along the walkway and down the stairway onto the ground floor. There they had discovered two large electric flashlights which they had set up to light the warehouse.

Two more figures, both women, were huddled in the shadows, and occult paraphernalia was strewn around the grimy floor. There were skulls, huge animal ones, some with twisted horns pointing towards the shadowy warehouse roof. Chalk symbols were all over the floor, some Claire recognized, many she didn't. She searched for the one that had been outside the house of Cub Pollard, but though there were several all-seeing eye symbols, of various types, none had the four lines running through it.

There was also no blowpipe.

As Claire took stock of the situation, she tried not to think of how close she had just been to missing the fleeing legs of Cook. She also tried not to think of what would have happened if she had blanked out when she had come into contact with Jordan Cook. If she had had a vision, she would have been completely at his mercy, assuming he had any, something she very much doubted.

She expected he would have shown her as much mercy as he had shown the pig.

“Right,” Wilson said, slamming Cook against the wall of the warehouse and breaking Claire’s thoughts. Wilson was still aggrieved by Cook pushing him off the walkway. “Start talking. What was happening here tonight?”

Cook looked up at Wilson. He was Claire’s height, so several inches shorter than Wilson. He had a small, round head, and short, jet-black hair. He wore black jeans and a long-sleeved black sweatshirt, a golden, upturned pyramid on its front.

“I’ll tell you exactly what is happening here. Police harassment.”

“Don’t give me that BS,” Wilson snarled, his hand still pushing cook back onto the metal wall. “You are going down for attempted murder, and that’s before we even come to the deaths of Paisley Brown, Harper Young and Cub Pollard.”

"What the hell are you talking about?" Cook spat back. "I've got nothing to do with those, and I haven't even heard of Pollard. Why would I do that? Tell me what motive I have. I'm a successful writer. A respected member of my profession."

“Profession!” Wilson said, his voice dripping with scorn. “Some job, chasing a pig with a knife, dressing up, painting symbols on the ground.”

Cook’s face became angry at Wilson’s mockery. “You’ll never understand,” he snapped. “You have no idea what is out there. Just out of reach. Only people like me. Only very few of us who have the knowledge, the courage to go beyond the ordinary. To embrace the extraordinary. Only we have seen the truth.”

“I don’t care about embracing the extraordinary. I just care about putting you behind bars for the rest of your life. You’ll really see how extraordinary your life is then.”

Claire looked at Cook. He had a reputation for pushing the envelope when it came to the world of the occult. She wondered what that meant. Were there rules that people, other people stuck to, that he didn’t? Did that involve not just the killing of pigs, but the killing of humans? Would any of those people who had been there tonight have joined the list of victims if they had not arrived?

When she and Wilson had stepped off the plane earlier that day, they had also stepped into a world that they hadn’t even known existed. They were trying to figure it out at the same time as trying to figure out who was behind the deaths. And those deaths kept happening.

She looked at Jordan Cook. Was he the man responsible for those three homicides? If so, why had he changed tactics? The first two victims had been killed during a ritual. Cub Pollard, the third victim, had been killed alone, in his own house.

Also, why had she had no visions since entering the warehouse? It wasn’t something that always happened, and she was incredibly glad she hadn’t had one when wrestling with Cook on the walkway. But did the lack of them mean he was not the man they were looking for, or merely that there was not a murder planned that evening? The latter would also explain why his weapon of choice, the blow gun, was nowhere to be seen.

Of course, it might mean that he wasn’t the man they were looking for. He wasn’t the killer.

Which meant whoever was the killer was still out there. Perhaps he was one of the people who had been here, but had slipped away just before Cook had made his appearance at the warehouse door.

Claire had the feeling that the clock was ticking. The killer’s crimes were escalating. He had killed the last two victims in less than a twenty-four-hour time period. If Cook was not their man, there was a very strong possibility that whoever was, was already planning his fourth victim. While they were both going down a dead end.

She had a decision to make, and she knew that at least one person’s life might depend on it.

"What does an old woman mean to you? Angry, painted nails, heavy on the lipstick?" She said to Cook, who had been in a stare-off with Wilson.

The man tore his eyes from the agent and looked at Claire, his brow creased in a puzzlement bordering on annoyance.

“What?” he said.

“You heard me,” Claire said, studying his features, his body language.

“You are right, I did, but I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about,” he said.

Claire looked at him, into his eyes. She believed him, and though she knew that did not prove anything one way or another, it made her mind up for her.

“I need a word,” she said to Wilson.

Her partner looked at her, still not releasing the pressure on Cook. She sensed he could read the doubt on her face. Sensed his disappointment. He knew that he wanted the man he had pinned to the warehouse wall to be the man behind the three homicides more than anything. And she hoped she was right. That she was wrong. But she had to follow her own instincts.

With a push which caused Cook to grunt, Wilson stepped back. “Move an inch and I promise you it will be the most stupid decision of your life.” He stepped back, never taking his eyes off the handcuffed Cook.

Claire followed him, and the two stood in the middle of the warehouse floor.

“Look,” Claire began, her voice quiet so it didn’t travel as far as Cook. “I’m not saying he isn’t our man,” Claire began, “but I just think we need to cover every eventuality. You take him to the station. See what you can get out of him. See where he was at the time of the three murders. We know he was in Kingston.” She looked away from Cook and up into the face of Wilson. “But I have a feeling that if he isn’t the killer, then we need to act. Now. It doesn’t need the two of us to question him. I’ll be better off trying to see if there is anyone else. Anything else we missed. See if I can track down another lead. Then if it isn’t him,” she said motioning with her head to Jordan Cook, “we are not back to square one again.”

The two held each other’s intense look for a couple of seconds. Then Wilson gave a brief nod. “You are right, but I am certain I’m right about Cook. He’s also too arrogant not to give himself away under questioning. He won’t be able to stop himself from bragging. He’ll slip up. I have a feeling.”

"I hope for both of our sakes and those of everyone in Kingston you are right," she said.

“Where are you going to go?”

Until Wilson had asked the question, she had had no idea where she was going to go. But suddenly, she knew there was only one place. She also knew it was the last place in the world that she wanted to go.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Kingston night seemed to crowd in on top of Claire. The trees and thick undergrowth towered above her and hemmed in the narrow path that led through the woods to the Johnson House. The sky that had been clear earlier had now put on a thick coat of clouds, obliterating the stars and moon from shining through the small sliver between the trees above her.

It was oppressively warm, and as she quickly walked towards that awful house, she alternatively wiped sweat from her eyes, and batted insects from her face. She had a flashlight in her hands, and though it made the walk safer in that she didn’t fall over any branches lying across the path, it also produced long, dark, terrifying shadows that took her back to being a child, jumping at the noises the branches made on her bedroom window as a storm tossed them towards the house.

She used her time during the walk to the house to make a phone call. One to find the information she needed, but also to keep her mind occupied. She hated to admit it, but everything that had happened that day had begun to seep into her normally so-rational mind.

She checked her watch before making the call. It was late, gone ten at night, but if she was working all night, why couldn’t the coroner? She had seen that she had missed two calls from him while they were in the warehouse tackling Jordan Cook.

“Hi, sorry it’s so late, I didn’t wake you, did I?" She said, slightly out of breath with the pace of her walking, when the call was picked up at the other end.

"No. Chance would be a fine thing. You got my messages, I take it?"

“Yes, you said you had news. About the poison?” she asked, swatting away a moth that was eager to get to the flashlight.

“Yes,” there was a pause while he waited to be asked to go on, but despite her impatience to hear the news, Claire was in no mood to play his games. After three seconds, the coroner continued.

"So, I heard back on the poison used in the death of Paisley Brown. I haven't got the results back for the Harper Young death yet, or of course for the third victim…" he stopped, obviously trying to recall the name of that third victim.

“Cub Pollard,” Claire said, providing it for him.

“Yes that’s it, as I said, I have not got the results for victims two and three but I would stake my reputation on the fact that they will come back the exact same.”

Claire wondered what the strength of the reputation the coroner was willing to stake on the fact would be, but quickly dismissed the thought.

“Dendrobatidae,” the coroner said, fully knowing it would mean nothing to the FBI agent.

“What is that,” Claire said, her voice starting to show her frustration. “A type of poison?”

“No. A type of frog. Otherwise known as the poison dart frog.”

The answer made Claire stop. She swung the flashlight around, at and into the undergrowth, her heart stopping when she saw a pair of eyes reflecting back. Then the animal that the eyes belonged to fled, crashing through the foliage.

“You still there agent?”

“Yes…yes, I'm here. So you're telling me the poison comes from a frog. The ones used in the Amazon, I presume?"

“Well across South and Central America, but yes they are also found in the Amazon rainforest.”

Claire tried to filter the myriad of questions that coursed through her brain. "Where would he get such a substance from? From the frogs themselves, or is it something you can buy, already harvested as it were?"

"I am no expert, and this is the first I have ever come across a case where this was used. I understand that you can buy the toxin, already harvested, as you put it. Not easy, and highly illegal, of course, but on the internet, it is possible to get anything your heart desires, no matter how dark and depraved those desires are."

Her mind went back to their conversation with Jimmy Tucker, the store owner. “Why would someone use it? There must be easier poisons to get hold of that will do the same job. Do you think it could be a symbolic gesture?” As she asked the question, she gripped the cell phone expecting the coroner to come back with his earlier glib response that it was his job to discover the how, her’s to discover the who and why, but he pleasantly surprised her.

“There are things nature does better than us homo sapiens, even when it comes to killing our fellow man. There are easier to get hold of toxins, but none that will do the job as quickly or efficiently as the one produced by our little amphibian friends.”

Claire considered the answer and started down the trail once again, the dark shape of the Johnson House suddenly looming up out of the clearing ahead.

“Ok,” she said, “thank you, and apologies again for calling at the late hour. Do let me know if you learn anything else.”

Claire sent a quick text to Wilson, telling him the news to see if he could use it in his questioning of Jordan Cook. Then she pocketed the cell phone and turned off the flashlight, waiting for a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the almost complete blackness. She studied the building's silhouette. The windows were black. No light reflected off them from the sky. No candlelight flickered from inside. She had been half expecting to find some sort of activity. Either another ritual or people who had been morbidly attracted to the house because of what had happened there the previous night.

What she hadn’t expected was a police presence, and in that she was not disappointed. It had been obvious the officers had been ill at ease in the daytime. There was no way any of them would have agreed to stand guard over the crime scene in the dead of night. It wasn’t a case of them being scared of the dark, more that they were frightened from what they had grown up hearing about, of what they had had drip fed into their ears from the first moment they were capable of listening.

Claire didn’t mind. If anything, it made it easier for her to do what she had come for.

That thought stopped her again. What had she come for? She couldn’t put her finger on the exact reason. All she knew was that she had to do something. Go somewhere. The first murder scene was a field. There was nothing there. This was… she didn’t know. They had looked at it before, but they had just stepped off the plane. She knew more now. She didn’t know what exactly what she knew now, but she just had a feeling, that if there was anywhere that could give her an insight into the mind of the killer, she was looking up at it.

She walked up to the front door, opened it and ducked under the police tape.

Claire stepped inside. She couldn’t escape the feeling that she was starring in her very own horror movie. The house above her shifted slightly, its old wooden timbers groaning in the humid heat. Despite willing herself to stay focused and not let herself get spooked by what she knew were just childhood fears, her heart thudded in her chest, her mouth was dry, and the hair was standing up all over her body.

Her flashlight picked out details. The stairwell going up to a floor that no longer existed. A broken window. An empty fireplace. All of them should have been mundane, but because of what had happened in there less than twenty-four hours ago, added to the house’s reputation, and what had happened there decades ago, everything was given a sinister luster. A hidden meaning.

She couldn’t stop her mind flooding with what Sergeant Bradley had told them. The fact Emily Johnson had killed herself in this very spot. The rumors not only that the dead woman still walked the floors of her former home, but the ones that it was voices in the house that had caused her to take her own life.

A bird, nesting in the rafters, and disturbed by the beam of light broke into a noisy flight, making Claire’s stomach flip and almost causing her to drop the flashlight.

"Come on, Claire, get a grip," she said to herself, but even the sound of her voice in that empty house sounded eerie to her ears.

Then the idea that she had suppressed on a couple of occasions, and had not ventured to tell Wilson, came back to her. She looked around. This was the perfect place to scratch the nagging itch that she had had since that first vision. She got out her cell phone and typed in Emily Johnson. She narrowed the search then flicked through the images, sparse though they were of the house’s last owner.

She found one that was taken at a charity event a few months before she had hung herself. It was the last photo ever taken of Emily Johnson, at least of when she was alive. Claire enlarged the grainy photograph, but she already knew the answer to her question.

The face that stared out of the cell phone’s screen was not the woman she had heard shrieking at her. The lips were not the ones she had seen, the hands not the ones that had sported the bright nail polish.

She felt the disappointment that always accompanied the closing of another door that would have potentially led down the route to solving a case.

Then another thought came to her. Another snippet of the conversation they had had with the sergeant. She retrieved her notebook, and quickly turned to the relevant page.

“Mrs. Hewitt,” she muttered. She had been Emily Johnson’s housekeeper. The person who had found her employer’s lifeless body. She doubted someone with such a job all those years ago, would have any images on the internet, but typed her name into the search engine, adding Johnson House and Kingston.

Amazingly, there were a couple of articles. It seemed she had been interviewed about her life as a housekeeper, and there was even a photo. It was small and poor, but it showed Claire everything she needed to know.

Mrs. Hewitt wasn’t the woman from the visions either. She was upwards of two hundred pounds and black.

Claire sighed. Another dead end.

She walked into the center of the room, again wondering why she had come all the way out here in the middle of the night. Wilson was at that moment interrogating a suspect. Here she was chasing ghost stories.

The chalk outline of where Harper Young had fallen, seemed − as such outlines did – out of place. She looked behind her, shining the flashlight back to where the person who fired the gun would have been. The person who she now knew had used the venom from a poisonous frog to kill his victims.

Then the beam picked out something else. Something on the floor. She stooped to see them more clearly. More chalk drawings, but these instead of indicating the outline of a young dead woman were esoteric and occult symbols.

The parquet floor was covered with them. Most were very faded, and had obviously been drawn months ago. Others looked fresher, but all had been scuffed by, Claire imagined, the panic of those who had been at the ritual when Harper had been killed and also subsequently by the police officers and CSI team.

She vaguely remembered seeing them when she and Wilson had been there earlier but had not thought anything of them at the time. It just seemed part of the narrative. A dead body found in a haunted house in the middle of an occult ritual. Of course, there would be symbols on the floor.

Claire shone the beam of light over the drawings, trying to discern any meaning that would make sense. Her hand suddenly stayed over one, by the wall, near to where she had come in. It was the same symbol they had seen on the path leading up to Cub Pollard’s house. The cross dividing the all-seeing eye was very clear.

She wondered if Wilson had managed to get to the bottom of Cook’s involvement in the symbol. She shone her flashlight across the floor in big sweeping arcs, picking up more and more of the symbols. Several of them, especially the ones on this side of the room, were split into the four sections, but not all of them, in fact very few were of the all-seeing eye. There was all manner of other symbols, strange, occult scribblings. Almost all were contained in a circle.

The conversation with Jimmy Tucker came back to her. The four different realms represented by the different sections. It made sense, if anything could be said to make sense in this case, that it would not just be the all-seeing eye symbol that was divided up, but that was the only one that Tucker had mentioned.

She walked further into the room, looking at a symbol at her feet. The original circle was very faint. She could barely make it out, but the four dividing lines were distinct, as if they had been done afterwards. Recently.

Then it hit her. She put her hand to her head.

She understood it all now. Realized that they had been looking at the whole case the wrong way round. 

With one final look at the drawing at her feet, she turned and ran. Out the door, and back into the dark forest.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Claire sprinted along the forest trail. All her fears of earlier had been shouldered aside by the revelation she had had in the Johnson House. She needed to work out just what it meant, and more precisely, just what she needed to do to act on it. And in order to do that, she needed to get out of this wood and back in her car.

The sweat was pouring off her and her breaths were coming in short sharp pants when she reached her car, parked on its own in the small parking lot. But she didn’t care. She grabbed her laptop from the trunk, then jumped into the seat. She had considered driving back to the station, to find a desk, but she had everything she needed right where she was, and couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

The only thing the station could provide that she didn’t have in the car was a coffee machine, and she was so hyped on adrenalin after her realization flipped everything on its head, that mere caffeine couldn’t compete.

It had been like turning a light on inside her mind. Looking down at the strange symbols, seeing the ones that had been split into the four sections representing the disputed four realms of existence, she had suddenly realized that she and Wilson had been sucked in too far. They had failed to see what was actually in front of them, and instead had worked into their thoughts, their theories, the rumors, the speculations, the beliefs and all the other noise that was surrounding this whole disturbing investigation.

The lines that had been drawn on the symbols had not been a depiction of some left-field esoteric theory. Rather, they had been an attempt to destroy, to deface the symbols. The lines hadn’t been drawn to divide the symbol into four distinct parts, but to cross it out

They were not the work of a follower or even a believer. They were the work of someone who despised the occult. Someone who was railing against it and all of those who participated in it. Her mind once again went back to Wilson, questioning Jordan Cook. Cook was not the person who had carried out the homicides, but a potential victim.

The laptop screen on her lap glowed, lighting up the interior of the vehicle. Claire bit her thumbnail, trying to work out where this led her. The reason why the killer was acting how they were could be searched for later. Right now, she had to go for the easiest way to get into the case.

It was unlikely the person who committed the killings started with homicide. His crimes would have escalated. Graffiti, threats, vandalism. Some of those would be on the system if they were serious enough.

She rang the duty officer at Kingston PD and asked him to check any death threats that had been reported from anyone involved in the occult. After the call, doubts started to surface. Those who took part in the rituals tended to be on the periphery of society. They shunned the mainstream. Would they want to involve the police?

She called Wilson, who answered on the sixth ring, after having left the interview room to take the call.

“Hey, what’s up?” he said.

"Mark, we've been looking at it all the wrong way round. Look, I went back to the Johnson House. The floor had loads of symbols drawn on it. Some from yesterday, but others from previous rituals. Many had the cross drawn on them, the same that we saw outside Pollard's house…"

“I asked Cook about those,” Wilson said, his voice showing disappointment that his partner’s revelation wasn’t the gamechanger she obviously thought it was. “He says that there is no way that it would be used as a sign of a threat, or could in anyway relate to the killings. He said it just didn’t make sense, and I believe him.”

"I know, I know," Claire said. "Listen to me. The sign outside Pollard's house, the signs I saw just now in that house, they are nothing to do with Jordan Cook and his different realms of existence. They are crosses. Just someone writing a cross over them, like you would over a word or sentence you want to cross out. The easiest way to do it for a symbol is simply to put a cross through it. Don't you see?" She waited a couple of seconds for Wilson to respond. When he didn’t, she went on. "That's why with a lot of the older symbols in the Johnson House, the original drawing had faded, but the cross was new, fresh. Just like the one outside Cub Pollard's house. The person who had drawn the cross was trying to deface, to cross out, obliterate the symbols already there."

“The same person who killed the three people…” Wilson answered, and she could hear him working it through in his head. “So he is anti all of this stuff, not a willing participant…”

“Exactly,” Claire said. “I’ve called the PD, asked them to check any complaints about threats against anyone involved in the occult in any way, but can you ask Cook if he received anything. Letters, phone calls, emails. He is a big name in his field. His visit was well documented. Our killer must have known he was coming to Kingston. I’ll speak to our friend Jimmy Tucker again.”

“Will do. Where are you?” Wilson asked.

“I’m in the parking lot near the Johnson House. Let me know what you find. Speak soon.”

Then she made her third call. When Tucker picked it up, the sounds of jazz drowned out his voice. She introduced herself, and he went off to turn his music down.

“Agent King, this is becoming a bit of a habit, I’m starting to know what it feels like to have a stalker,” he said when he returned.

She apologized for the late hour, then got to her point. “Can I ask if you have ever, or more specifically in the last few weeks or months, received anything that could be construed as hate mail, or any kind of threat?”

A humorless laugh came down the line. “Agent, when you are the business that I am in, you get used to receiving some, shall we say, less than savory correspondence. If I had a dollar for every time someone said or sent something that fitted into that category, I could retire this very evening.”

“Ok, but have there been any that stood out. Anything different, or particularly troubling?”

There was a silence on the line. Claire was just about to ask if he was still there when his voice came back. “Well now you mention it there were a couple of… particularly vitriolic messages on my answer machine a while back.”

Claire gripped her cell phone tighter. "When were they? Have you still got the messages?"

"No, I deleted them straight away, I'm not sure when they were. Two weeks ago. And a week before that, perhaps."

“What did they say? What did they sound like?” Claire pressed.

“Oh, just that I was a stain on the fabric of the world, that I would die for what I was bringing to the world, what I was doing to the community. That I would feel the wrath of his anger, that I would pay…blah blah blah. That kind of thing. To be honest, I didn't listen to it after the first few words."

“What did they sound like? Male? How old? Local?”

"Agent, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I really do not recall. He was a man, that much I can tell you. Local? Probably. Age? No idea. I'm sorry, but as I said, I didn't really listen and took no notice of it."

Claire managed to get as accurate a timeframe for the two calls as Tucker was able to give. “Thank you,” she concluded, “and Mr. Tucker, will you promise me one thing?”

“I’m not sure I can give you my word until I understand what I am getting myself into, but please do continue.”

"Lock your door and shut all of your windows until we have found this man."

“Agent King, I…” Tucker started to protest.

“Mr. Tucker,” Claire cut across him, “Will you do that for me. It is not a question, it is a plea. For your sake and for mine. I have no desire to investigate your death in the coming days.”

“Ok,” Tucker replied after a short pause. “For your sake, and that of your sidekick, I will lock all of my windows, despite the heat.”

Claire thanked him and called Wilson back.

“Anything?” she asked as soon as he picked up.

“Apparently, he could hire a full-time secretary to field the amount of abusive messages he receives, especially online," Wilson said, his voice eager. "But he did get one a fortnight ago, just after his visit to Kingston was announced. Now, listen to this. Cook couldn't remember much about it, but he did recall the voice, a man, saying something about using Amazon to end his unholy life. He thought, as you would, he meant the company, and had found it amusing, and that's why he had specifically remembered it. But I wonder if that ties in with the poison. Those frogs come from the Amazon jungle, don't they."

Claire’s heart was racing. It felt like the pieces were finally starting to fall into place, when not that long ago, they didn’t even have any pieces.

She got the approximate date and time from Wilson and then made yet another phone call. To the communications lab at the bureau. She gave what information she had, both numbers that had received the calls, and the dates and times as near as she could. She was encouraged when the woman on the other end told her to stay on the line, as she had fully expected to be told that they would get back to her as soon as possible, which she knew may not even be until the following day.

The seconds then minutes dragged by. Claire couldn’t see out of the windshield, the blackness outside meaning all she could make out was her own reflection.

Then the woman came back on the line. They had a match. The same number for all three calls. The two that had gone through to Jimmy Tucker's answering machine and the one to Jordan Cook. She gave the man's identity, his home address and his cell phone number.

Claire thanked the woman and quickly brought up the profile of the man for the name she had been given. Noah Washington, a forty-year-old local man who lived on the other side of town. She scrolled down the details, then when her eyes reached the top of the second page, her breath caught in her throat. 

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

He used his elbow to break the glass pane on the back door. He had cushioned the blow with his jacket and had waited until a car had driven down the highway that ran outside the front of the house. But still, he knew that this was the riskiest part of everything that he was about to do.

Everything had gone like clockwork so far. The ritual on Maddison’s Mound had been so easy, he hadn’t even had to enter the despicable thing. He had calmly hidden in the shadows, picked his target, picked his time then disappeared into the blackness around. He had been half a mile away before anyone had even noticed the dead body.

The ritual at that abandoned Johnson House had been trickier, but it had still been relatively simple to get in unseen, or at least unnoticed. He had been worried that getting out and away would be a problem, but in the event it could not have been easier. The panic had created the perfect opportunity. 

That night, he had even picked his next target. That idiot who had stood near him, muttering incantations, drawing those evil signs. He had been tempted to kill him as well, but had vowed not to get greedy. Not to get careless, and so he hadn’t. He had traced him back to his home, and even when his security measures had thwarted his first attempt, he had found a way. He always would find a way.

He listened intently, his ears straining for any sound to come from the dark house. Would the noise of the breaking glass have carried? If it had, would it be put down to a raccoon in the yard?

He forced himself to wait. Two minutes, three. Five. There was no sound from inside. No light had come on upstairs, where he knew she was in bed asleep. There was also no danger of any neighbors hearing him. There were none. The nearest house was the one he had been thinking about a few minutes before. The Johnson House, behind him in the woods that bordered the property.

That was empty and beyond that the nearest people were all in their graves in the cemetery behind the house.

No, this location was perfect.

Carefully, he plucked the glass away from the broken pane with his leather glove clad fingers. He worked calmly and patiently. Eventually, he had a hole big enough to enable him to reach his hand and arm through and unlock the door. He made himself wait. The click of the lock had been quiet, hardly audible, but he knew that sounds had a habit of being amplified in the dead of night.

If she was awake upstairs, her own ears straining for signs of an intruder, he didn’t want to rush. Again, no sound reached him. No light was flicked on.

He eased the door open and let himself in. Just then a rumble of thunder in the distance rolled over the house, and almost simultaneously he heard the sound of large rain drops hitting the ground outside and the flat garage roof to the left of the door he had just entered through.

He hesitated. The thunder might mask his movements, but it might also wake her up. He had no time to lose. He walked silently through the utility room and then the kitchen, his rubber soles making no sound on the wooden floor. The smell of laundry was replaced by that of chili, and he absently tried to recall the last time he had eaten. Then he put all thoughts of that at arm’s length. He had bigger things to sort out first than filling his stomach.

The dark house opened up in front of him. He would have loved to wander through the rooms, to get inside the head of such a dangerous, sick person, see what made them tick, but he knew that that was how people got caught. They got lazy, they got careless. He couldn't afford to do either of those things. He had a mission to accomplish. And he would not rest until he had completed it. Then he could think about eating. Then, he could give in to small whims and temptations.

Until then, he had to be professional. Faultless. Unstoppable.

He tested his weight on the first stair. It didn't creak, did not give him away. Outside, he could hear the rain coming down heavier. He quietly, carefully put his weight on the second stair, waited to ensure the wood wouldn't creak and continued on up. Up towards the first floor landing and the bedroom where she was asleep.

The sixth step up gave a low groan. He lifted his foot off it, his heart beating a little faster, then skipped that step and brought his foot down on the one above it, which took his weight silently without complaint.

He was near the top of the stairs when another sound came to his ears. One that made a smile break out across his face.

A gentle snoring rose and fell over the small landing. It was coming from the room on his right, behind a closed door. It was the sound of someone fast asleep. The sound of someone at ease, oblivious to the fact that they only had a matter of minutes left to live. He quickened his pace, encouraged by the sound, and took the last three stairs at near normal pace.

Outside the bedroom door, he waited a few seconds. He hadn’t heard any more thunder, and the rain, though still falling, had eased. He took a couple of deep breaths to bring his heart rate down. Then he pulled the long knife from its sheath strapped to his waist.

He had contemplated using the blowpipe for this woman, as it was such a perfect method. So neat. So apt. But he only had a limited number of darts. A limited quantity of that toxin. He had many more people to kill, and there would be some people, like that Pollard, where the grace of the blow gun would be the only method capable of carrying his mission out.

Tonight, however, he would use a more traditional, more prosaic method. He flexed his fingers on the handle, enjoying how it felt. He could sense the power inside the metal blade, loved the idea that in combination with his own mind and muscles, it could be used to end the life of the woman who lay asleep on the other side of the door. Completely unaware. The smile crept further over his face.

His gloved hand reached out and grasped the door handle.

Quietly, carefully he lowered the handle, hearing the soft click as the latch retreated into the mechanism. He pushed gently.

The door didn’t open. He pushed harder. Something was stopping the door opening. He pulled it, yanking at the handle, the smile frozen on his face.

The door was locked.

He gave out a cry of frustration as he pushed as hard as he could, rattling the handle. Then, realizing that time had suddenly turned against him, he threw all his weight at the door.

The sound of the rain outside, even the sound of him kicking at the wood, was drowned out by the scream of the woman who only seconds earlier had been fast asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Noah Washington had killed before. He had strangled his aunt, the woman who had looked after him from the time he was orphaned at just six years old, after his parents were killed when their station wagon was hit by a drunk driver driving on the wrong side of the road.

That was only half of the story, however. The headlines that didn’t tell what really happened between those two monumental events, spaced twelve years apart.

Noah’s aunt Monica, his father’s older sister, had never wanted children. She didn’t want Noah, and if it hadn’t have been for the hundred and forty thousand dollars that she stood to inherit if she took in the confused and bewildered boy then she wouldn’t have had anything to do with him.

Monica had always been slightly different from the other moms who took and picked their kids up from Noah’s school. She wore different clothes, strange jewelry. She never stood and chatted with the other parents. She would often arrive late, sometimes not at all, but on the two occasions when Noah was late and kept her waiting at the gates for fifteen minutes, he really thought she was going to kill him.

Not at the gates, of course. Not in public. Not in the car, either. But as soon as the door had slammed shut in the squalid, perpetually dark house they shared, he witnessed an anger and hate he hadn't thought possible in another human being, especially one so small and seemingly frail as his aunt.

Those outbursts would soon become the norm, however. If he looked at her the wrong way, said the wrong thing, stood or sat in the wrong place, she would explode. If he left crumbs on the table, if his bed wasn’t made properly or his clothes weren’t washed and ready for school. Sometimes if he was just there in the house quietly reading, when she didn’t want him to be there, in the house, quietly reading.

Over the years, the differences between Monica and the other moms increased. She had always had an interest in the paranormal, but as time went on, as Noah developed from a confused and bewildered boy into a scared and bewildered teenager, those interests deepened. And darkened.

It took over her life. She would sit for hours in trances, muttering incomprehensible incantations, burning foul smelling liquids. Strange men would come round, and they would conduct ceremonies together.

Noah had befriended a stray cat, a mangy fretful little mite with one eye and a limp. He had nursed it back to health, and had just started to earn its trust when Monica had snatched it from his loving grip, bolted his door and headed downstairs. He never saw the cat again, but from the sounds he heard despite his fingers being wedged into his ears, and the blood on her ceremonial dish that was always kept on the dining room table, he could guess what its fate had been.

That was just one incident of hundreds.

When he had stood up in court and told his story to the shocked jury about those twelve years, it had taken an immense amount of courage and three and a half days.

It took the jury less than half an hour to set him free.

Claire sat in her car reading the testimony, the abuse the boy had suffered through his adolescent years into and through his teen ones. She read how he had finally snapped and throttled his aunt after demanding he took part in a demeaning and dehumanizing ritual. The process he had described made her stomach turn, and she closed her eyes.

She opened them again and forced herself to read on. It had been the photograph that had first caused her heart to miss a beat and the breath to catch in her throat. Not the one of the plain, unassuming eighteen-year-old in an ill-fitting suit. But the one of Monica, the abusive aunt. Even in the poor photograph, Claire had instantly recognized the mouth, the angry set of the bright red lips. The hands with their old, almost shriveled wrists and forearms and the brightly painted nails.

There was no doubt about it. Monica was the woman Claire had seen in her visions. The anger, hatred and vitriol had come from her lips and had been directed at Noah Washington.

Claire shook her head as the pieces started to fall into place. The dots began to be joined. She scrolled down the intervening years. There wasn't much to see. A few petty offences. Another search showed her that he had been unemployed for almost all of that time. She stared out of the window into the dark Mississippi night.

Those years had made Noah Washington unemployable. Not just unemployable but unable to integrate into society. She had taken a small child and ruined him for the rest of his life. He may have escaped a jail sentence for killing his aunt, but he was already living a life sentence that he would never break free from.

She wondered what had happened to finally snap his fragile mind. To make him rail against what he saw as the thing that had motivated his aunt. The occult.

Claire shook her head again. That was for another day. The most important thing now, the only important thing now, was to find him, take him off the streets so he couldn’t kill any other innocent people.

She called Wilson again.

"I know who it is," she blurted out as soon as Wilson picked up. She gave a very quick account of who Noah Washington was, about his abusive aunt who was the woman in her visions. She also gave him Noah's address, a house on the same street as the one he had grown up in. Five doors down from the house where he had killed his aunt.

“Are you still out by the Johnson House?” He asked.

“Yes. His house is the other side of town, near to the police station. You go, I’ll meet you there.” She said and hung up.

Claire gripped the wheel. It would take her half an hour to get to Washington's house. Wilson was ten minutes away at the most. The chances were he would be arrested by the time she arrived. Then another thought popped into her head. She looked again at the information they had on Washington, then called the woman at the agency back, the woman who had traced the calls to Jimmy Tucker and Jordan Cook. This time, she asked her to put a trace on Washington's cell.

It took less than three minutes.

“Ok, he’s pinging at… let me see… Tallahassee Drive. If you’ve got a map, it’s on the left. There’s only one property there.”

Claire thanked her and brought up the map on her laptop.

Tallahassee Drive was less than five minutes’ drive from where she was.

***

Claire slammed on the brakes outside the one house on Tallahassee Drive. It wasn’t as grand as she had imagined it to be, just a simple two-story property that happened to be out on its own. It sat on a hill, and though she couldn’t see it in the dark, Claire sensed and heard the wood behind the house and at the bottom of the hill. The wood where the Johnson House was, as well as the cemetery where Callum Pollard had tried to kill her and Wilson with the excavator.

As she had sped over to the address, she had called Wilson, told him her plan and insisted he continue to Washington’s address. There were many reasons his cell phone could be pinging at another address.

Rain was falling steadily as she raced up the drive to the house, which was dark, no lights shone from inside. She took that as a positive sign. Those hopes vanished as the silence was shattered by a bloodcurdling scream.

Claire looked up in the direction it had come. Then using a plant pot that was sitting next to the front door, she bludgeoned the door, and raced inside the pitch-black house, her every movement made to the background of the same chilling screams. It took less than a second for her to see the stairs and she bounded up them, no thoughts about her own safety, only for that of the woman issuing such sickening cries of distress.

At the top of the stairs, the screams were louder, and she could see a dim light in the room in front of her. The door to the room hung broken, off one of its hinges. She raced into the room, the screams getting more and more frantic.

A woman, in vest and short pajamas, her eyes wide with fear, her mouth agape and a long drawn-out cry coming from it, was standing by the large window. In front of her, wearing black jogging pants and a shapeless black T-shirt, was a man. He gripped the woman's shoulder in his left hand, in his right hand he held a knife, its blade sickening long.

He swung round to face the intruder, his own eyes bug-like with adrenalin and anger from the interruption.

“Drop the knife!” Claire shouted, holding her gun in front of her as she stepped into the room. Noah Washington wrenched the terrified woman by the shoulder, bringing her into the middle of the room between himself and Claire.

Claire willed the woman to move, to fight back, to kick or claw at Washington to give her a clear shot, but she was frozen to the spot. Even the scream had died in her throat.

Suddenly, Washington kicked out, a guttural cry issuing from his mouth as he swung his leg in Claire's direction. The kick was aimed at the hand holding her gun, and she was able to yank her arm away just in time. The black sneaker missed her hand, but brushed her waist as she turned away in order to keep the firearm away from his reach, and still point it at him.

As soon as Noah Washington’s foot made contact with her, the bedroom disappeared. So did the terrified woman. So did the man who had killed those three people, the man holding the deadly knife in the air.

Claire fell to the ground limp.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Claire was paralyzed. She was lying on her back in a strange, dark, evil-smelling room. She was terrified. More terrified than she has ever been before in her life. A completely overwhelming fear that poured down over her, infecting every part of her, her skin, her limbs, her brain, her heart. Even her senses seemed to be shaken.

Suddenly, her vision was filled with the woman. The aunt. Monica. She bent down over her, a sickly, ghoulish grin splitting her face, the lurid red lipstick making her mouth look like an axe wound.

“It’s time for the purge,” she said. Her voice, normally so stringent, more often than not a shriek of anger, was almost gentle. And that made it even worse. Made her words even more disturbing.

Claire lay on her back, looking up at the woman who was just twelve inches above her. She didn't know what the purge was, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the body she was occupying knew exactly what it was, and it was his emotion, his fear that was pulsing through her body.

The hand, its bright red nails, the shriveled flesh, came towards her and for a crazy moment she thought the woman was going to stroke her. But then the fingers stiffened, becoming more like a talon than a hand, and she gripped the sides of her face, forcing her mouth open.

Claire’s eyes, bulging out from her head, swiveled to the woman’s other hand. To the thick, bubbling, gloopy liquid in the green flask held in it. The reek made her eyes sting and water, and her throat gag. Not least because she knew exactly what was in it.

Then the woman was gone, the stench was gone, the fear was gone.

In Monica’s place however was her nephew. In his hand was gripped a knife, its long steel blade reflecting the dim light that came from the lamp sitting on the bedside table.

Claire’s mind whirled. The vision she had just experienced, one of the most terrifying ones she had ever gone through, was still over her like an emotional bruise. But the situation she was in in the real world was every bit as frightening, even more dangerous.

She must have fallen to the bedroom floor when the vision had hit her, when Washington's foot had brushed her. She was lying on her back, half on a wooden crate that was pushed to the wall of the bedroom, underneath the large window. Her head and shoulders cried out in pain, and she guessed she must have come down hard on the edge of the trunk.

She was also horribly aware her right hand, the one that had been holding her revolver was empty. Her arm was underneath her at an awkward angle, and she tried to move her fingers to try and search for the cold metal of her weapon.

All this was going through her mind while trying to assess the situation.

Noah Washington was stood over her, clutching the knife. Behind him, sobbing and bug-eyed with fear, stood a woman in her late twenties, dressed in a pink strappy vest and matching pajama shorts. Washington had half turned towards Claire, in between the two women, seemingly unsure of which to deal with first. The one whose house and room he had broken into, or the one who had suddenly done the same.

“RUN,” Claire screamed, directing her voice and look at the woman, pleading with her to take advantage of the second’s opportunity she had been given by Claire’s unexpected entrance and equally unexpected fall.

She would have loved to have urged the woman to pick up the bedside lamp and use it to strike the man who had just been about to kill her, but she knew she could not. The woman was in no state, did not look strong enough to put up any kind of fight, and the last thing Claire wanted to do after just saving the woman’s life was to plunge her back into mortal danger again.

She could see the woman looking at her, her brain trying to keep up, to function, to send the required messages to her limbs.

Washington, himself looking confused as to what had just happened, started to turn back to the woman, his original victim before he was so rudely interrupted.

“RUN,” Claire yelled again. “GET OUT!”

The woman seemed to snap out of whatever daze or shock she was in. She looked at Claire, then at the man who had come to kill her in her bed, then ran from the room. Claire could hear her bare feet thudding down the stairs, then the front door swing open and slam shut, then there was silence apart from her and Washington’s breathing, and the steady fall of rain on the window and roof.

Washington slowly started to turn around, looking bemused at who this woman was who had come in and effectively swapped herself for the victim he had sought out.

Claire needed to get up, and she needed to get her gun. She was helpless, lying where she was on the wooden crate, her arm beneath her. She pushed with her feet, her head and shoulders sliding up the wall, her head threatening to disappear behind the drawn drapes.

Washington started shaking his head, suddenly one hundred percent focused on her now.

“No,” he growled, “no, no, no, no.” He was standing in front of her, the knife held beside him. “You don’t come in here and ruin everything I have done. Everything I have achieved. You don’t get to decide what happens. You don’t get to change my mission,” he said, his voice rising, getting louder, more intense, angrier with every word he uttered.

“You don’t get to decide!” he shouted, inching forwards, the hand holding the knife coming up.

Claire had a split second to react. Her groping fingers hadn’t found the gun. She had to get off that crate, away from the wall or Washington would cut her to pieces. Of that, she was absolutely certain. She put her faith in her legs and arms, and with a huge cry intended to disconcert Washington, heaved herself up and off the crate, pushing with her legs and hands, lunging forward with her head.

Her shoulder connected with Noah Washington’s midriff.

She heard him gasp as the wind was knocked out of him. He started to go backwards, pushed by her momentum, his legs and feet wheeling underneath him.

Claire continued to drive forward, even as she felt his hands gripping her sides. Then she felt his right hand lift up, and knew that any second he would drive the knife into her.

Still, she carried on driving forward, unable to stop, the two of them locked in a terrible dance of death. She braced herself for the feeling of the steel blade being plunged into her side, then suddenly the pair were brought to an abrupt halt and again the wind was knocked out of Washington as his back smacked flush into the edge of the open door.

The impact stayed Noah’s hand with the knife. For a second, as they both stood there, Claire understood that the door would start to move, pitching the killer, who still had hold of her with his left hand, back against the door when it came flat against the bedroom wall. She realized she would have a fraction of a second to push away from him and escape out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out of the house.

Her gun was in the room, somewhere behind her, and if Washington had his wits about him, he would go and retrieve it rather than chasing after her with the knife. If he did the latter, she would just have to hope she could outrun him or reach her car before he reached her.

If he managed to retrieve her gun, she would have to make a retreat and then call in the PD to conduct a manhunt. It wouldn’t be easy, the woods covered a large expanse, much of it impenetrable, but they could secure the area and in time smoke him out.

Neither of those things happened, though. The door did start moving, with both of them pushing against it, but it went the other way, and slammed shut, locking them inside the bedroom together.

Claire reacted first. Her head pushing against the underside of Washington’s chin, forcing his head up, she groped for, then grasped his right hand with her left. She gripped it by the wrist, pushing it up against the wall.

It was her left hand, her weaker one, against his right, his stronger hand, and as soon as he understood the situation he turned the tables, pushing back and forcing her arm back. She knew she had to hold on. As soon as she let go of his wrist, she was dead. He would drive the several inches of cold steel into her neck, her stomach, or her chest.

She could hear Washington grunting and straining with the effort, his mouth so close to her ear she could feel his moist lips on it. But he was winning the dual. Her arm was being pushed back, further and further, starting to be pushed back against its natural movement, sending a wave of pain through her shoulder. Still, she kept her hold on his wrist, even as he started to rotate his forearm, loosening the grip from her fingers even more.

She knew couldn't hold on anymore, so in desperation she brought her knee up into his groin. She felt his body slump, and she drove her knee up again, like a piston, this time into his stomach.

It was Washington’s turn to hold on. He gripped Claire, giving himself vital seconds to get his breath back and regain his strength, hugging her to his body to stop her from driving her knee into him. Still gripping his wrist, she shot it forward, slamming his hand against the wall, again and again, desperately trying to dislodge the knife, but he vainly held on, muttering and cursing her.

Then, she heard him take a huge breath, felt his lungs and ribs expand beneath her, and before she knew what was happening, and much less able to do anything to prevent it, he let out a roar and pushed off the door and ran, carrying her in front of him like a deer on a truck’s bull bars.

The shouted roar of rage in Claire's ear was deafening, and she felt weightless as she was propelled across the bedroom floor. Then she felt Washington jump up. For a second, she found herself wondering if he had jumped onto the wooden crate that she had fallen down across only a few minutes earlier, then she was slammed into the large window.

The sound of Washington’s cry was replaced by that of cracking and then smashing glass as their trajectory, after being partially halted by the drapes and the glass, continued as they plunged through the large windowpane.

The first thought that went through Claire’s head was ‘had she been cut to ribbons by the shattering glass?’ The impact had felt like a blow as opposed to sharp cuts, but she had learned before that adrenalin did crazy things and had an incredible ability to mask injuries.

Her next thought was that she had survived the window but now she was falling from a second story window with a hundred- and eighty-pound man on top of her. The weightlessness feeling came over her again, as the two flew through the wet, Mississippi night air.

Two seconds later, way too soon for them to have fallen all the way to the ground Claire, with Washington gripping onto her for dear life crashed onto a flat solid surface. Her dazed and panicked mind couldn’t work out what had happened, then she suddenly realized that they had landed on the flat garage roof that must have extended out from the rear of the house and below the woman’s bedroom.

The next thing she realized was that they were still moving, the momentum and impact making the couple, still in an embrace, roll over. Claire was on top and was about to bring her knee into Washington’s groin for the third time that night when the ground fell away from them once more. Claire felt like she was on a rollercoaster, one she couldn’t get off, and every time she thought she had got to the end, it would plunge down another sheer drop.

The ground they fell onto the next time was wet and soft. Claire just had time to realize it was grass, the sweet smell mixing with the rank smell of Washington beneath her, when they started to roll. Faster and faster. Claire’s mind went from feeling like she was on a rollercoaster to thinking she was in a spin dryer. Garbled messages ran through her mind as she tried to not bite her tongue off as her jaw was jerked open and shut by the motion and thudding of her rolling body. She desperately tried to maintain her equilibrium and sense of where she was and just as importantly where Noah Washington was.

She remembered the house had been on a hill, so guessed she was rolling down that hill, towards the woods that flanked the bottom of the slope. Despite trying to grip onto the wet slippery grass, she picked up speed, her body jerking and bouncing as it was propelled down the slope by gravity. Her face smashed into the ground, making her head buzz and sending stars spinning across her vision, further disorientating her.

It seemed to go on and on for minutes, but it could only have been thirty seconds, forty at the most. Her dazed mind realized that she was slowing, and that she had to be ready to get back to her feet to protect herself and overpower the serial killer she had come to apprehend, when her body crashed into the solid trunk of a tree, knocking the last of her consciousness from her reeling mind.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Claire felt a wetness. That was her first thought as her body hauled itself out from its unconscious pit. Wetness on her face and on her hands. She opened her eyes, but it was just as dark, and she wasn't sure the message to her eyelids had been understood and undertaken.

Then, the reality of her situation hit her, and the horror of the last few minutes flooded back to her.

Her head and body ached, and the acrid taste of blood filled her mouth. She listened for any sign of Washington, but the only sounds were the distant screech of a bird and the soft patter of rain. She tried to recall what had happened to him as they had fallen from the roof and then onto the slope. They had been together, he had been gripping onto her, then all she could remember was rolling faster and faster, out of control, her body being battered by the ground beneath her before slamming into the tree which now stood over her, its rough bark scratching her side.

Had Noah Washington rolled all the way into the wood? Was he up the slope somewhere? If so, had he managed to hold onto the knife? Did he know where she was?

All those questions spun around in her head. She knew it wasn’t simply a case of surviving, however. A case of keeping out of his way. Her job was to apprehend him. To stop him from continuing his killing spree.

Quietly, ever so slowly, she lifted her arm to check if her cell phone was still in her pocket. Miraculously it was, it had somehow survived the journey down the hill, and probably accounted for several of the bruises she felt on her ribs. She tried to think what that meant for her situation. If she knew that Washington was back at the house, or was trying to escape, then she would be able to alert Wilson and the local PD. She was loath to do that at this minute, however, as it would give her position away.

Finding her cell phone had also confirmed her arms had not been broken in either of the falls or in the subsequent flight down the slope.

Still, there was no sound of Washington. She gradually, ever so slowly, lifted herself up into a sitting position, several ribs screaming out in pain as she did.

Shapes were beginning to form; she could make out the bulk of the tree that had arrested her fall. Had Washington rolled further into the wood? Other trees took shape, and she could see the house standing on top of the hill to her left, the shattered window they had fallen through outlined by the light in the bedroom.

Tentatively she stood up, and with her main focus still on the woods around her, she checked there was nothing broken.

Suddenly a crunching sound behind her, from further inside the wood made her whirl round. Noah Washington’s face, white, but smeared with blood was three feet away, the rest of his body apart from his hands which held an evil looking branch, invisible.

Those hands, pale streaks in the dark, were a blur as he swung the branch at her head.

Claire just had enough time to duck, and she felt the branch disturb the air above her head as it thwacked into the trunk of the tree behind her, sending a shower of bark flying, the sound echoing through the woods.

Washington grunted and dragged the branch back, holding it aloft, ready to swing it at Claire again. The branch was thick, thicker than her arm, and it was also long, at least three feet in length. Claire’s mind quickly told her that that meant two things.

First, he must have lost the knife at some stage after falling through the window. Second, she would be much better off leading him into the woods. Out in the open, at the bottom of the field they had rolled down, he would be free to swing the makeshift club he had found, to try and bludgeon her. She had to get into the woods, in amongst the trees.

Claire skipped to her side, trying to keep the tree between her and her attacker. 

She kept low to the ground, her eyes fixed on Washington's movements. He was angry, and it showed in the way he swung the branch recklessly, almost hitting himself in the process, grunting with rage. Claire knew that she had to outsmart him if she wanted to survive. She scanned the surrounding area and, in the gloom, could just make out a fallen tree trunk a few yards away.

She took a deep breath and bolted towards the trunk, dodging the swinging branch as she ran. She could hear Washington's footsteps following her, his breathing heavy and desperate. She reached the trunk and hid behind it, catching her breath.

Washington appeared, his eyes scanning the area for any sign of her. He was only a few feet away now, and she could smell the blood on him. Her heart racing, Claire took out her cell phone from her jacket pocket and flicked on the flashlight, shining it in his face.

Washington recoiled, shielding his eyes with his free hand. It was only for a second, but it was enough for Claire to make her move. She sprang from behind the trunk, tackling him from the side. They both fell to the ground, his branch clattering away.

Claire felt her head yanked back as Washington grabbed a handful of her hair, following it up with a knee to her side, which he mistimed, only landing a glancing blow.

Her head still at an angle making it impossible to see her target, Claire rained down blow after blow onto where she knew Washington’s head, shoulders and chest must be, gauging her success by not just the feel of the contact but the sounds he made when they landed.

He kicked up with his legs, letting go of her hair, and she was sent sprawling into the sodden undergrowth, before quickly scrambling to her feet.

Three feet away, Noah Washinton did the same. In the dark wood, they looked at each other, both panting hard, both bleeding.

"You don't need to do this, Noah," Claire said between gulps of air. "You can stop this now."

"No, I can't. You know I can't. I am not going to stop until I've wiped them all off the face of the earth. Until there are none left, none left to pollute everything, everyone with their evil."

"Look," Claire pleaded, "I know what happened to you. It was dreadful, and I know why you did the things you did. But they were just innocent people, Noah. Killing them isn't going to stop others doing it? It isn't going to…"

“NO!” he shrieked, “NO! Don’t tell me you know what happened! Don’t tell me they were innocent!” He spat, lunging at her with his bare hands.

Claire dodged away, and spun around to face him again, the two slowly circling. The ground was uneven, and she was fearful of stumbling and leaving herself open to one of his frenzied attacks.

“You got away with it before, because the person you killed was guilty, guilty of terrible crimes,” she said, her voice coaxing, trying to win over his trust. “But this is different, surely you can see that?”

“NO! It’s not, they are a cancer that needs to be destroyed, all of them or it will go on and on, it’ll grow and grow. There is only me who can stop it,” he shouted as he lunged at her again, his hands like claws.

Claire dodged to her left, stumbling in a dip in the ground but just managing to regain her footing. It was no good. He wasn't listening, her words were just making him more angry, putting her more in the guise of one of the enemy. She realized that the anger, hurt, and bitterness that had been growing inside of him all of these years had finally pushed him over the edge of sanity.

She had tried reasoning with him but how do you reason with a mad man? She had to try another tactic. Use his fears against him. And she had been given the tools to do just that. The visions had given her an exclusive insight into what had created the man in front of her. What had turned an innocent normal boy, into the person who broke into a stranger’s house in order to kill them, and wipe her off the face of the earth, to use his words.

But it would mean dredging up his worst fears, plumbing the depths of the memories that he will have tried to subdue, to push down, forever.

It was not something she was comfortable doing. It was the last resort, however. One of his lunges would catch her eventually. She would lose her footing in the dark or twist her ankle. He would show her no mercy. Though she would never go down to his level, she had to use every weapon available to her.

She backed away as he prowled forward towards her, wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand. Her foot landed on the branch he had used against her earlier, and she edged along it, feeling for the end of it with the toe of her shoe.

“It’s time for the purge,” she said, trying to make her voice sound as much like that of Washington’s aunt as she could.

The effect was startling and immediate.

Washington froze in his tracks. His face became a rictus of fear, his mouth gaped open.

“It’s time for the purge,” Claire repeated, her voice more insistent, more severe.

“No,” Washington said, his eyes wide, “no, no, no.” His voice was weak with fear. His whole body seemed to shrink, as if someone had sucked the air from him. Claire wondered what he was seeing at that moment. Had he gone back to his childhood, to his teen years, was he seeing Monica, his aunt, with her gaudy nail polish and lipstick, that evil mouth mocking him, abusing him?

“No,” he said, stepping back and away from her. “No!” He crouched down, putting his hands over his ears to keep out the words he had only heard in his mind, in his nightmares all of these years.

It was a pitiful sight, but Claire couldn't let pity enter her heart, not at this stage. The man in front of her was a killer. He had killed three innocent people in his deluded quest to rid the world of something he had only seen a corrupted part of. He would have gone on to kill many more innocent victims. He had had to be stopped, and she had found the only way to do it.

She sprang forward, taking her cuffs from her belt, and grabbed Noah Washington’s wrists, which were still held to the side of his head.

As she fastened the cuffs around his wrists, he was sobbing, great deep raking sobs, and all he said was the word ‘no’ over and over again.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

"How do I look?" Claire asked Wilson. They were sitting in the anteroom outside the Chief's office.

“Wonderful, as always,” Wilson smiled.

“You know I don’t mean that. Honestly, I’m not beat up too bad?”

Wilson shook his head. “Your eye is swollen, and will be black by tonight, you’ve got a fat lip, and your nose looks like it may be busted again, but other than that, like a catwalk model.”

"Hmmm, I swear my new neighbors think I'm in the UFC or something," she said, her fingers tentatively exploring the bruised flesh on her eye.

“The chief is used to you turning up looking like you’ve gone eight rounds with Mike Tyson, I think he wonders what the hell I get up to when we are working these cases.”

“Sitting on the sidelines, I guess, which wouldn’t be far from the truth,” Claire said, smiling to show she was joking, despite the action opening up her split lip again.

When Claire had called Wilson after putting the cuffs on Noah Washington, he had only been five minutes away from the house at the top of the hill, along with most of the Kingston PD. They had found Washington’s house empty, but the blow gun, twenty darts and three vials of the toxin had confirmed Claire’s theory that he was the man responsible for the three homicides.

Just after the call from Claire, they had seen a petrified Tamsin Carter in just her pajamas running down the middle of the highway. The second car had stopped to pick her up, and after ten minutes the female officer in the back seat had managed to get her to calm down enough to say who she was and what had happened.

Tamsin would not know until weeks later that she had been targeted by Washington for being the creator of and face behind the most active online forum on the occult in the area. She would never know that it was through her forum that Harper Young had become interested enough to go to the Johnson House on that fateful night.    

Washington had allowed himself to be walked slowly up the slope where the two of them were met by the welcoming party. Washington had retreated into himself, and Claire could only guess at what was going on inside his mind.

The details and formalities had taken up most of the rest of the night, and by the time Wilson had driven the two of them to the airport, the horizon was starting to become bruised with the coming of the sun.

Claire had fallen asleep as soon as she had sat in the plane's comfortable seat and had had to be roused by Wilson after all the other passengers had filed out after landing. They had both been looking forward to bed and a proper sleep, but in the car driving away from the airport, the Chief had called and demanded to see them. Wilson had started to ask why, but the Chief had already ended the call.

‘’What do you think that’s about?” Wilson had asked after relaying the ‘conversation’ to Claire.

“Search me, it’s always best not to try to get into the mind of the Chief, in my experience,” she replied. “It’s inevitably going to be futile, and I’m not so sure it’s a place you want to find yourself in, if you are successful!”

"Remember on the way to Kingston… wow, was that only yesterday? That was a full-on twenty-four hours," Wilson shook his head in disbelief, rubbing his hand through his hair and failing to stifle a yawn. "Anyway, remember on the way we were wondering why we had been given the case?"

Claire nodded, otherwise trying to keep as still as possible so as not to allow any of her bruised ribs to move.

"Well, do you think we got to the bottom of it? Why we were brought in, I mean. Don't forget, when the call went into the agency, or to the Chief, there was only, and I say that with respect, the one homicide.''

Claire looked out of the window as the city started to take shape, the buildings getting closer together and taller.

“If I had to say, it would be because not one of the people at the Kingston PD wanted to get involved in it. Did you see their relief when we brought Washington in? That went way above the scale of a normal serial killer being apprehended.” She looked across at Wilson. “Did you just hear what I just said? ‘a normal serial killer being apprehended.’ My God Mark, I sound like we’ve just been to the store to get the weekly groceries, or filed the latest taxes. I think we’ve been in this game too long!”

"It does worry me sometimes what effect all this is having on us. Some of the things our brains have to process when we go to bed at night," Wilson said, slowing down for a stop light.

“Wait until you start getting visions that give you an insight into the actual minds of the killers…” Claire said, with more feeling than Wilson could have imagined.

There was a pause, and then Claire carried on from the previous thread. "But as I was saying, in answer to your question, I'm pretty sure every last one of those cops were petrified of delving deeper into that case, worried what they would find, not wanting to deal with things they had been brought up to fear all of their lives. Brought up to stay away from. It may be part of the Ol' U S of A, but it's a different world. That's not me being derogatory, that's me saying what I firmly believe to be the truth."

"Yeah, I reckon you're right. At least they had the courage to call for help when they did. There were two more homicides and an attempted one after we were called in. Imagine if that call had come in today or later in the week," Wilson said.

Half an hour later they were sitting in the ante room, waiting for the Chief to finish the meeting he was in. Claire wondered if it was another case. If it was, she would have to get on with it, even though all she wanted was to sink into a hot bath then crawl into bed and sleep. Beside her, Wilson was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Do you know?” Claire said, expressing something that had been in her mind ever since the events in the woods. “There were four victims in Kingston, and two perps.”

Wilson looked at her for a few seconds. “You’re talking about Washington’s aunt, aren’t you?”

Claire nodded. "This case started way back when that young boy lost his parents because of some drunk driver. In that moment, Noah Washington lost his mom and dad, and Harper Young's and Paisley Brown's parents lost their daughter and Callum Pollard lost his brother."

"I have slightly less sympathy for Callum, considering what he did in that cemetery, but yeah, you're right," Wilson said. Claire had told him some of what had happened in the house the previous night and what had happened in the woods, and she would tell him all in due course. He yawned, then changed the subject. "Has anything that happened, anything we saw, changed your opinion on all that occult stuff?" He asked.

Claire looked at him, her tongue exploring the cut on her upper lip, teasing out dried blood. She considered the question, one that with everything that had happened to her of late was way more complicated than it was for everyone else, and way harder to answer. She opened her mouth to speak when the door to the Chief’s office was flung open and a harassed man in a blue suit strode out, not shutting the door behind him, or giving the two agents a glance.

"Wilson, King, get in here," the Chief's voice blasted out through the open door several seconds later.

They exchanged looks, then carefully Claire eased herself from her chair and walked into the office, Wilson behind her, who shut the door.

The Chief, his black, lined face set in a scowl, watched the two walk in and take their seats without a word. His dark eyes took in Claire’s face, then went to her partner before returning to Claire. No one spoke for a few seconds.

“All tied up in Kingston?” he asked, his voice gruff.

"Yes, sir," Claire said.

The Chief looked at the two of them again, nodded and murmured “good job.”

As congratulations went, Claire had had more gushing ones, but she knew the Chief well enough that he knew her well enough that she didn’t need praise, or smoke blown up her ass. That that wasn’t why she did the job. Wilson was cut from the same cloth.

“What the hell is going on between you two?” The Chief barked after a pause, taking both of them by surprise.

Claire opened her mouth to answer, but her boss cut her off.

“Spare me the lurid details agent,” he snapped, “it was a rhetorical question. I know exactly what is going on. I trusted you Agent King,” he said, his eyes boring across his desk at Claire.

“And as for you,” the Chief said turning his attention to Wilson, “this was your big chance, to step up, to prove you were capable of making it as a top agent.” He shook his head.

“This is Potter, isn’t it?” Wilson asked.

“No, this isn’t about Potter, this is about you and Agent King,” the Chief snarled. “I have eyes and ears everywhere. You can’t go to the bathroom without me knowing about it, and I couldn’t care less who tells me, or for that matter, why they are telling me.” He took a deep breath and shook his head again.

"I don't give a rat's ass what you get up to in your private life. What I do care about, care about a helluva lot, is what you do when you are working for me. And if you are working for me, then you shouldn't have time for a private life."

Claire knew it was pointless arguing, or protesting their innocence, or promising that their work would not be affected. She hoped that Wilson knew it too. Arguing back would only goad the Chief, fuel the fire of his anger. The best thing to do was to get out and hope something else comes along to take the Chief’s attention, at least in the short term.

There was an uneasy silence in the room. “You’ve put me in a very awkward position,” the Chief said, looking directly at Claire.

Wilson started to speak, but the Chief shut him down. "I don't want to hear it, agent," he snapped. "Go on, get out. And get that lip seen to King."

Claire and Wilson stood up and left the office as quickly as possible. The fact that the Chief had said about her lip made her think that it all wasn’t lost, but she knew deep down inside her that this wasn’t the end of the matter. That Wilson’s fears about Potter and what he might do had come to be realized.

Trouble was brewing. And it was coming their way.

EPILOGUE

Claire was following her instinct. She had been described by more than one person at the agency as like a dog with a bone. She preferred the analogy of a dog with a scent, something that seemed particularly apt in this case.

She also knew that she was potentially putting herself in the firing line from another full barrel assault from the Chief. But she wasn’t sure if she even cared about that. What she did care about, perhaps the only the only thing that mattered at that moment, was finding the person who killed her mother, and the person who was the Artist. If those people happened to be linked in any way, all the better.

Her instincts, her refusal to let a lead – a bone, a scent – go was what had made her so successful so far in her career. It was why the Chief had promoted her, why he respected her and trusted her. Well, he would just have to trust her one more time.

The house registered to Devyn Sheldon was an hour drive from Claire’s apartment. A drive that would be pushed to an hour forty in peak traffic. Sunday morning wasn’t peak traffic and Claire had arrived in the genteel, middle-class neighborhood as many of the residents were loading up their cars taking their kids to little league or football games.

From her research, she knew Sheldon lived alone. She had tried to piece together the life of the man who that diesel smelling shirt had once belonged to. It had not been easy. He had seemed to have flown so far below the radar that he had been practically underground.

That in itself had sent her instincts into overdrive.

On the drive over there, she had wondered if the person who had killed her mom, the person who had destroyed her family and her childhood, could be living a relatively normal life so close to the place where she had tried to put the pieces of her shattered life back together, and build a new one.

She had tried to put that out of her mind, and likewise the thought that she could be going to the house of someone connected to the Artist. Or even worse, could it be the Artist? She had found no pictures of Sheldon since his arrest. The one taken then had floated in and out of her mind’s eye day and night ever since she had seen it.

She had seen the Artist, of course. Had stood next to him on that boat. Had cuffed him.

Twenty years can change a person. Could the person she had stood with on that boat on the Mississippi, just before the bomb detonated, be the same person who stared out of that police photo?

It was a question she had asked herself again and again and again. And she still didn’t have an answer.

It wasn’t obviously the same person, like when you see photos from their childhood of someone you know as an adult, and it looks like the exact same person but with more or less hair and a little more life etched onto their features.

It was more a case of trying to convince yourself that it couldn’t be the same person. And she hadn’t been able to do that.

But if she thought it could be the Artist, why was she driving up to his house on her own? Why hadn’t she called half the state PD in? Why hadn’t she even driven out there with her partner?

Those were more questions she didn’t know the answers to.

All she did know was that this felt personal. She felt that Devyn Sheldon was definitely involved with the murder of her mom. That was where she was starting out. That was something she had to deal with herself. That was the first step to healing the scars from her childhood that had caused so much pain and confusion right through into her adulthood. And as such, it was something she had to do alone.

She parked at the end of the street and walked down the sidewalk. Dressed in tight blue denims, sneakers and a casual jacket over a sweatshirt, she looked like any other thirty something woman from the neighborhood. Though she doubted if they had a revolver strapped to their shoulder. And she was positive they would not have had the gadget she had in her jacket pocket.

Despite trying to play it down in her mind what she was doing, her heart knew better. It thudded in her chest as she approached the house. She walked up to the front gate of Sheldon’s property, trying to look as casual as she could despite her racing heart and wet palms.

She was way more affected by this than she should have been. She tried to tell herself it was just like any other case. That this was the house of just one more felon.

But it was no good. Because she knew it was simply not the truth. This was opening up the door to a place she knew there was no going back from.

The gate was split into two. One for vehicles, one for pedestrians. Both were locked shut, controlled by their own small keypad.

For a second, she considered pressing the buzzer that would ring the bell in the house, but quickly dismissed it. Firstly, because she had no idea what she would say, but mainly because she didn’t want to alert Sheldon she was there. She wanted to have a look at where this man lived, have a peek into his life.

She took out the small black box from her pocket. Her eyes scoured the drive in front of her and the façade of the large, modern two-story house. It was quiet. It looked deserted.

The black box had a lead coming out of one corner, and she quickly slotted it into the keypad next to the smaller of the two gates. A red display lit up on the black box, showing a four-digit number.

Claire quickly unplugged the lead, replaced it in her pocket and punched the four numbers into the keypad.

There was a click, then a whirr, and the lock on the gate sprang open. Without looking around, Claire opened the gate and quickly walked through onto the drive, shutting the gate behind her. The house stood in front of her and to the left. The drive ran alongside the house with a large garage at the end.

Claire walked causally but quickly up the drive, wanting to get out of sight from the main house as quickly as possible. If Sheldon had seen her, she was pretty sure he would come running out before she managed to reach the side of the house.

She counted her steps, fighting the urge to run, then made it to the corner of the red brick building. Here she was hidden, not just from the windows of the house, but from all of the other houses. The only way she could be spotted was if someone came right up to the gate she had just walked through.

She quickly took stock of her situation, still not sure what she was going to do. The wall behind her had a large window halfway along. Keeping flush to the bricks, she reached it, and saw with relief the blinds were drawn and continued on, towards the garage.

The ground opened up on either side of the rectangular outbuilding. A large red garage door dominated the front, but paths went on either side. Claire took the one to the right, using the garage as a shield from the house proper. Her ears strained for any sound that might give Sheldon's presence or location away, but there was nothing, only the sound of a car driving slowly past on the road outside.

A small window at head height was the only break in the side wall of the garage. Claire walked up to it. It was dark inside, obviously empty. She quickly looked around at the empty driveway to her left, the empty lawn to her light, and put her face close to the cool glass.

It was too dark to see much other than that the space was being used as a workshop as opposed to a place to store a vehicle.

She took a small flashlight from her pocket and her face still pressed to the glass, shone it inside.

The powerful beam picked out the concrete floor, then a bicycle. Then it moved onto a workbench next to a larger table, tools and works in progress covering its surface.

The beam was travelling onwards towards the rest of the garage’s interior, when an alarm bell rang in her mind, and she swung the beam back to the table. Her mouth dropped open.

Without a shadow of a doubt, she knew exactly what she was looking at.

A homemade bomb. 

NOW AVAILABLE!

ONCE HE WANTS

(A Claire King FBI Suspense Thriller—Book Seven)

FBI Special Agent Claire King dies chasing a killer—and is resuscitated minutes later to realize she has changed. Dark images flash through her mind in a newfound power, visions leading her towards serial killers. But when victims of recent accidents later turn up murdered, Claire is stumped. Has lightning struck twice for all of these people? Or is there a more nefarious motive?

“Molly Black has written a taut thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat… I absolutely loved this book and can’t wait to read the next book in the series!”

—Reader review for Girl One: Murder

ONCE HE WANTS is Book #7 of a long anticipated new series by critically-acclaimed and #1 bestselling mystery and suspense author Molly Black, whose books have received over 2,000 five-star reviews and ratings.

FBI Special Agent Claire King has a reputation for brilliance, for being able to crack serial killer cases that no other agent can. Before she died and came back to life, she relied solely on this brilliance. But now that she has this fleeting, newfound power, Claire is confused: should she follow what she knows? Or what she senses? Are visions more powerful than intellect?

Or will they lead her right into a killer’s trap?

A page-turning and harrowing crime thriller featuring a brilliant and tortured FBI agent, the Claire King series is a riveting mystery, packed with non-stop action, suspense, twists and turns, revelations, and driven by a breakneck pace that will keep you flipping pages late into the night. Fans of Rachel Caine, Teresa Driscoll and Robert Dugoni are sure to fall in love.

Future books in the series are also available!

“I binge read this book. It hooked me in and didn't stop till the last few pages… I look forward to reading more!”

—Reader review for Found You

“I loved this book! Fast-paced plot, great characters and interesting insights into investigating cold cases. I can't wait to read the next book!”

—Reader review for Girl One: Murder

“Very good book… You will feel like you are right there looking for the kidnapper! I know I will be reading more in this series!”

—Reader review for Girl One: Murder

“This is a very well written book and holds your interest from page 1… Definitely looking forward to reading the next one in the series, and hopefully others as well!”

—Reader review for Girl One: Murder

“Wow, I cannot wait for the next in this series. Starts with a bang and just keeps going.”

—Reader review for Girl One: Murder

“Well written book with a great plot, one that will keep you up at night. A page turner!”

—Reader review for Girl One: Murder

“A great suspense that keeps you reading… can't wait for the next in this series!”

—Reader review for Found You

“Sooo soo good! There are a few unforeseen twists… I binge read this like I binge watch Netflix. It just sucks you in.”

—Reader review for Found You

ONCE HE WANTS

(A Claire King FBI Suspense Thriller—Book Seven)

Molly Black

Bestselling author Molly Black is author of the MAYA GRAY FBI suspense thriller series, comprising ten books (and counting); of the RYLIE WOLF FBI suspense thriller series, comprising six books; of the TAYLOR SAGE FBI suspense thriller series, comprising eight books; of the KATIE WINTER FBI suspense thriller series, comprising eleven books (and counting); of the RUBY HUNTER FBI suspense thriller series, comprising five books (and counting); of the CAITLIN DARE FBI suspense thriller series, comprising six books (and counting); of the REESE LINK mystery series, comprising six books (and counting); of the CLAIRE KING FBI suspense thriller series, comprising seven books (and counting); of the PIPER WOODS mystery series, comprising five books (and counting); of the GRACE FORD mystery series, comprising seven books (and counting); and of the CASEY BOLT mystery series, comprising five books (and counting).

GIRL ONE: MURDER (a Maya Gray FBI Suspense Thriller—Book #1), FOUND YOU (a Rylie Wolf FBI Suspense Thriller—Book #1), SAVE ME (a Katie Winter FBI Suspense Thriller—Book #1), and DON’T LOOK (a Taylor Sage FBI Suspense Thriller—Book #1) are available as free downloads on Kobo!

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Molly loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.mollyblackauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

BOOKS BY MOLLY BLACK

CASEY BOLT MYSTERY SERIES

BROKEN (Book #1)

FLAWED (Book #2)

BLEMISHED (Book #3)

DAMAGED (Book #4)

TWISTED (Book #5)

PIPER WOODS MYSTERY SERIES

SOMEWHERE SAFE (Book #1)

SOMEWHERE SANE (Book #2)

SOMEWHERE WHOLE (Book #3)

SOMEWHERE FAR (Book #4)

SOMEWHERE WRONG (Book #5)

GRACE FORD MYSTERY SERIES

NEARLY MINE (Book #1)

NEARLY SAFE (Book #2)

NEARLY FREE (Book #3)

NEARLY GONE (Book #4)

NEARLY HIS (Book #5)

CLAIRE KING MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE HE SEES (Book #1)

ONCE HE LONGS (Book #2)

ONCE HE TAKES (Book #3)

ONCE HE FEELS (Book #4)

ONCE HE KNOWS (Book #5)

MAYA GRAY MYSTERY SERIES

GIRL ONE: MURDER (Book #1)

GIRL TWO: TAKEN (Book #2)

GIRL THREE: TRAPPED (Book #3)

GIRL FOUR: LURED (Book #4)

GIRL FIVE: BOUND (Book #5)

GIRL SIX: FORSAKEN (Book #6)

GIRL SEVEN: CRAVED (Book #7)

GIRL EIGHT: HUNTED (Book #8)

GIRL NINE: GONE (Book #9)

RYLIE WOLF FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

FOUND YOU (Book #1)

CAUGHT YOU (Book #2)

SEE YOU (Book #3)

WANT YOU (Book #4)

TAKE YOU (Book #5)

DARE YOU (Book #6)

TAYLOR SAGE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

DON’T LOOK (Book #1)

DON’T BREATHE (Book #2)

DON’T RUN (Book #3)

DON’T FLINCH (Book #4)

DON’T REMEMBER (Book #5)

DON’T TELL (Book #6)

KATIE WINTER FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

SAVE ME (Book #1)

REACH ME (Book #2)

HIDE ME (Book #3)

BELIEVE ME (Book #4)

HELP ME (Book #5)

FORGET ME (Book #6)

HOLD ME (Book #7)

PROTECT ME (Book #8)

REMEMBER ME (Book #9)

CATCH ME (Book #10)

WATCH ME (Book #11)

RUBY HUNTER FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

IF I RUN (Book #1)

IF I TELL (Book #2)

IF I LIVE (Book #3)

IF I FORGET (Book #4)

IF I RETURN (Book #5)

CAITLIN DARE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

COME GET ME (Book #1)

COME FIND ME (Book #2)

COME TAKE ME (Book #3)

COME CATCH ME (Book #4)

COME SAVE ME (Book #5)

REESE LINK MYSTERY

BEYOND REASON (Book #1)

BEYOND REACH (Book #2)

BEYOND REPAIR (Book #3)

BEYOND DOUBT (Book #4)

BEYOND NORMAL (Book #5)