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  The truth clawed at his ego. That was it. Nothing more.

  He would find out everything about her, then figure out a way to help her. The sooner he ended this case, took her back home and returned to Falcon Ridge, the sooner he would get his head back on straight again. Women were trouble—trouble to be avoided.

  The faded dusty library books, ouated encyclopedia collection and ancient computers raised his doubts about the educational system in Wildcat.

  A thin woman wearing a Minnie Mouse shirt and bifocals approached him. “Sorry you had to wait. I was just finishing up with the children’s story hour.”

  The reason for the shirt, he guessed. “No problem, ma’am, I just got here. I’m interested in old articles about the town. Specifically anything to do with Wildcat Manor.”

  She tapped her fingers on the desk, her friendly demeanor disintegrating. “Why do you want to know about that old place?”

  “Just curious. I’ve heard some interesting rumors since I arrived in town.”

  She leaned closer, her eyes darting around as if she feared someone was watching them. “Wildcat Manor is haunted, has been for years, ever since old Mr. Hodges died there.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that. I’m specifically interested in the orphans.”

  Total panic registered on her face. “It’s dangerous snooping around asking about them,” she said.

  “I can take care of myself,” he said. “Just show me the files, ma’am.”

  She jerked her bony shoulders upward as if he’d offended her, then escorted him to the microfiche section. He settled into the chair and pored over the clippings. First, he skimmed several articles about various supernatural sightings and legends. Apparently more than one person claimed they’d spotted the devil living in the woods. Other rumors told of a mutant species of people that had mountain lion heads. They fed on people. Pictures of the so-called creatures looked obscure in the shadows of the photographs. But they were creepy.

  He read further, disgust shooting through him. Wild animals had been killed for ritualistic purposes at a nearby cliff and several people had died at a ridge they called Satan’s Falls.

  Finally he found an article about the orphanage. The caretakers, Hattie Mae and Howard Hodges, were supposedly dedicated to helping young girls in trouble. No names of the girls were listed, but they came from across the States. Many had been forced to be confined by the legal system, some were runaways, drug addicts, others homeless, pregnant teens. Girls no one wanted.

  Like Elsie. Or so she’d thought.

  He swallowed back sudden emotions, and tried to put an image of her out of his mind. With so many children in the center, especially pregnant teens, the orphanage must have offered medical care and counseling services. He’d explore that angle. Maybe a social worker or doctor could shed some light on Elsie and what had happened to her while she’d lived at the orphanage.

  He flipped through several more articles, searching for names, and hit pay dirt. Local family practitioner Morty Mires had offered medical services while a counselor named Renee Leberman had assisted in the girls’ placements.

  He made a mental note to pay them both a visit.

  Then he read on, noting various other articles about teenage crime that two girls from the orphanage had been blamed for. Again, no specific names were listed. Over the next three years, similar stories surfaced, along with articles about town protests and efforts to shut down the facility. Finally he located an article featuring the fire at Wildcat Manor.

  Hattie Mae Hodges had called the police and firefighters who arrived in time to save most of the building. Barring two children who were unaccounted for, the others had survived. Elsie and a ten-year-old girl named Torrie, had been missing. Their bodies were never found, so police assumed they ran away.

  Hattie Mae’s husband, Howard, died in the fire, which started in the basement. The blaze was ruled accidental, although reports hinted at arson. The implication that the two missing girls had started the fire was clear.

  Deke grimaced and scrubbed his hand over his face. Had the police searched for Elsie and the child, Torrie? Where had Elsie gone? Why had she run?

  Because she was guilty….

  If Elsie had set the fire that had caused Hodges’s death, then she would have been charged with murder. That would explain why she’d fled Wildcat Manor and never returned. Only she’d come back now. And if the sheriff suspected her of arson or murder, why hadn’t he questioned her or arrested her?

  Why was he warning her to leave town instead of trying to pin the crime on her?

  THREE HOURS LATER, Elsie finished her errands, and left the town square, the sight of two women and their little girls making her pause. She’d overheard the women, Donna and Eleanor, chatting in the store. Unable to help herself, she stood beside the soda shop and watched the children eating ice-cream cones and giggling. They were the same age as her daughter would have been.

  “Come on, Missy, let’s go to the park.” Missy turned brown eyes toward her friend, a blue-eyed blond who reminded Elsie of someone, but the connection eluded her.

  “We can ice-skate,” Missy said. “Or do you want to swing, Ellen?”

  Elsie choked back tears as they began to whisper. The mothers noticed Elsie and gave her an odd look, then bustled the girls away as if they thought Elsie was evil, just as the teenagers had done years ago. Choking back the pain in her chest, she headed to her car, the curious eyes of strangers burning her back. She checked over her shoulder sensing that someone in town had followed her, and saw a shadow disappear into an alley. Her nerves on edge, she thought about Deke and wished he was with her, but her last comment to him had probably sent him packing. It was better he left, she assured herself, although an emptiness swelled in her throat at the prospect of never seeing him again.

  Twigs snapped behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder again, the certainty that she was being watched sending a chill up her spine. She hurried to her car, jumped in and locked the door, then scanned the street.

  Nearly empty. Thank heavens.

  Still, she checked over her shoulder as she drove up the winding road to the manor on the mountain. Someone had definitely been on her tail all day. Logging her every move. Waiting for their chance. When she was alone. Vulnerable.

  Then they would strike.

  Her palms grew sweaty as she gripped the steering wheel harder, fighting to keep the car on the road as the vicious wind whipped her sideways. The dark skies and ominous ridges reminded her that she skirted on the dangerous side simply by driving the curvy roads in treacherous weather conditions.

  And that staying alone at Wildcat Manor posed other dangers, as well. Physical and mental.

  The memories crashed, sharp and clawing at her sanity. The other children’s faces. Girls so lost they cried into their pillows until dawn. Children having children, with no one to love them or care what happened. Men so despicable that they took from the innocent and laughed at the pain they caused.

  People who stood by, watched and did nothing.

  She had vowed all her life she would not be one of them.

  But had she fallen into that trap by keeping silent? By not coming forward to expose the horrors that had taken place in the darkest hours of the night at the manor?

  Her reputation and name be damned, what about the other girls? They were grown now with lives of their own. Even if she revealed the horrors at the orphanage, what would her announcement do to them? Some hopefully had survived, moved on to find families, husbands, lovers, happiness. They might not want her opening closed doors, their lives uprooted because guilt ate steadily at her conscience, like the mice that had nibbled away at the wooden floors in the rooms where the girls had slept.

  Would exposing the truth somehow shatter any peace they’d found and destroy their lives?

  Or would it help them in their personal recovery?

  She had no right to make that decision for them. Besides, Hattie Mae and Howard Hodges were
both dead. Who would believe her?

  You’ve been in your own self-imposed prison anyway. What difference would it make if you came forward now?

  No, God had punished her enough. She didn’t deserve to be put behind bars, caged like a wild animal….

  Did she?

  A tree limb flew across the road, and she jerked the car sideways to avoid it. Dead leaves and debris scattered before her, twigs snapping and breaking off the trees and falling to the icy ground as if they were nothing but toothpicks.

  Her anxiety tripled as she veered onto the deserted drive that led up the hill to Wildcat Manor. The absence of a moon or stars painted the stone structure in abject darkness.

  A fog of fear nearly engulfed her, but she summoned her courage. She’d purchased a small revolver to protect herself. If the man who’d attacked her appeared again, she’d be prepared.

  She ground the car to a halt, tugging her coat around her as she gathered the gun to her side, then snatched two bags of groceries from the backseat. Shuffling them to one arm, she stumbled her way up the pebbled steps to the front door, her keys lodged between her numb fingers.

  Suddenly, she stopped cold, her chest heaving at the sight on her front porch. The bloody carcass of a mountain lion lay on the doormat, its head severed. Blood also dotted the front windows and door. And the cryptic message warning her to leave was painted in bold, bloody letters.

  You know what it’s like to murder, Elsie. This could be you, next.

  ELSIE TIMMONS.

  God. He couldn’t believe it. All these years he’d wondered what had happened to the little bitch, when she might reappear, where she’d been, if she’d resurface one day to destroy him….

  Why had she returned now?

  Was she looking for the lost girls? The sinners….

  Anger, pure and bitter, snaked through him, coiling from deep in his belly as he fantasized about touching that long dark curly hair. Elsie, the girl who should have been grateful and compliant, the one who had balked and fought the hardest.

  The one who had gotten away.

  God, he had loved her feisty spirit. But Elsie wasn’t innocent, either. She had secrets she didn’t want exposed. Secrets she might die to protect.

  Secrets he could use to destroy her.

  A laugh bubbled in his throat and spilled out, echoing in the woods, its sound so filled with rage that animals skittered and ran to escape it.

  Just as Elsie had.

  But now she was back, she wouldn’t escape him.

  He’d make sure she never talked. Or if she did, that no one would believe her. They’d think she was crazy. They’d know what she had done.

  And he’d make her suffer long and hard for it.

  He lifted his hands, letting the blood spill down his fingers, remembering the joy he’d felt when he’d severed the animal’s head.

  The joy he’d feel when he did the same to Elsie.

  Chapter Eight

  Nausea climbed to Elsie’s throat at the sight of the animal’s brain matter spilling out, splattered against the door. The grocery bag slipped from her hands and hit the porch floor, contents overflowing. Suddenly, a firm hand gripped her arm. She screamed and jerked around, trying to raise the gun, but another hand grabbed it before she could raise the weapon.

  “Elsie, it’s me, Deke.”

  Her gaze shot upward, the scream on the tip of her tongue dying. “Deke?”

  “Yes, you didn’t hear me approach?”

  She shook her head, glancing toward the driveway. His Range Rover was parked down the drive, but she should have heard his footsteps approaching. Yet he had walked so quietly she hadn’t detected a sound.

  Either that or she’d been in shock and had mentally blacked out for a moment.

  He muttered an expletive as if he’d just seen the mutilated mountain lion. “Damn it, what kind of sicko did this?” Releasing her, he eased her aside, putting himself between d the nearly decapitated animal, another round of curses erupting from his mouth as he stared at the bloody message on the door. His anger forced her to take a step backward. When men lost their temper, they took it out on whoever was closest.

  But he shocked her by kneeling to stroke the mountain lion’s back, his tone lowering to a soothing pitch. “Poor fellow. You didn’t have a chance, did you?”

  Elsie’s heart sputtered at Deke’s tender reaction and the control he’d mastered over his anger. When she had been injured, he had touched her with the same kind of compassion, as if his fingers and gruff voice held magic.

  “Did you see anyone?” he asked, teeth gritted.

  “No. I just got here.”

  He glanced back up at her, pain in his eyes. What did he think about the message? Was he wondering who she’d killed?

  “I’ll bury him in the backyard,” Deke said. “But first I want to check the house.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No.” Steel hardened his tone this time. “Get in the car and lock the doors.” His gaze fell to the revolver. “Do you know how to use that?”

  She nodded, but didn’t elaborate. More secrets she’d rather not confess. Yet the knowledge had saved her life a couple of times.

  “If the guy who butchered this animal shows up, or comes near you, fire the gun.” He tipped her chin up, then leaned forward and brushed a kiss across her lips. “Don’t hesitate, Elsie. Whoever did this is one sick bastard.”

  She nodded, her lips tingling from his kiss, her mind memorizing his touch. She’d dealt with plenty of bastards over the years and knew how to fight. But she wasn’t prepared for a man like Deke. The very reason she hadn’t stopped him when he’d kissed her. She’d liked the feel of his lips, and the protective way he’d looked at her.

  He removed a .38 from inside his jacket. “Now, go. He might be waiting inside.”

  She started to tell him she could take care of herself, that she had done so for years. But his lethal look forced her into silence, and she headed toward her car, scanning the woods beside her. She’d concede this point, only because Deke was here, and he was experienced, but she couldn’t learn to rely on him.

  And she couldn’t let herself fall for him, no matter how tough or how gentle he acted. Or how well he kissed….

  Besides, being near her put him in danger. She didn’t need another man’s death on her conscience. And people wore masks. At first, they only revealed the layer on the outside, but peel it away, and ugliness lay below the surface.

  Even as she thought it, her insides quivered with a protest. Deke was different.

  She climbed in her car and locked the door, then braced the gun to fire as she watched the house. Drawing on self-preservation skills she’d learned on the streets, she yanked her cell phone from her purse and laid it on the seat beside her in case she needed to call for help. To the right of the manor, debris tumbled across the ice-coated land and pond, and the water shimmered with its own dark secrets. Hadn’t she heard rumors that one of the girls claimed to have heard a baby crying out by the pond? The ghost of her own child, taunted to life by her guilt maybe? Or perhaps a little one who had drowned in the frigid water before Elsie had arrived…. Or Elsie’s baby….

  She jerked her attention back to the porch. Deke slowly entered the manor, his movements as sleek and smooth as a panther’s, the scent of danger floating in the wind as the trees trembled around her.

  She scanned the property again, then the outside of the house. A shadow of light flickered, and she glanced up at the attic dormer window. Darkness cloaked the stone structure, the windows mere black holes, but a movement caught her attention.

  Her breath locked in her chest as a ghostly shape floated in front of the glass….

  DEKE LISTENED FOR SIGNS of an intruder as he searched the dark corners and dusty closets of the manor, bracing himself for anything he might encounter—man or animal, or half human. His anger simmered inside like a fire that couldn’t be extinguished. Whoever had killed the animal deserved to feel the
same horrific pain he’d inflicted on the innocent cat. The fact that the man had used the brutality as a way to terrify Elsie was even more despicable.

  Once he found the sicko, Deke would punish him.

  No animal or woman deserved such cruelty.

  You know what it’s like to murder.

  A creaking sound from above jarred him, and he aimed his penlight to guide the way, utilizing his keen sense of vision and hearing. Every groan and rattle in the house made him pause. The dozens of nooks and crannies offered possible hiding places for the culprit that had to be checked out. Situated on top of the mountain, above the old mines that had been carved out of stone years ago when people migrated to the area looking for gold, tunnels might even run beneath the mountains. Back in Tin City, some builders had structured houses above or near the tunnels, providing secret escape routes in case of an emergency.

  Convinced the main floor of the manor was empty, Deke climbed the steps to the second floor, hoping the intruder was waiting inside so he could confront him. He’d rub the man’s face in the blood, make him choke on the smell of the vicious act he had committed by desecrating the wild animal, then torment him until he begged for his own life.

  Shadows floated from the corners, while an odd scent of sandalwood and some odor he didn’t quite recognize—maybe a chemical of some kind—engulfed him. The two dormlike rooms were empty, the bathrooms untouched, yet he sensed that someone had been inside the room where Elsie slept. He hadn’t noted the details the first time he’d searched the house, and couldn’t be sure. Not knowing everything she’d brought with her, meant she would have to check for missing items.

  But the room was also empty.

  The damn coward was sneaking in and out, playing games. Biding his time. Trying to rattle her.

  Eventually, though, he would grow tired of the game and he would surface. Then he might hurt Elsie.