were quiet again. They’d reached the ranch. None of them looked toward the woods as they parked and got out of the car.
Trisha slipped her arm around her husband’s. “Let’s see that Scarlet gets upstairs safely. We’ll just walk through the museum and make sure no one’s there.”
“That would be great,” Scarlet said. “Thanks.”
Ben opened the door to the building. Trisha hit the lights. They walked through the museum. It was empty.
Empty, of course, except for the stationary residents standing on their pedestals, bearing silent witness to the night.
“Upstairs,” Trisha said, and started walking up. Ben followed her.
Scarlet followed Ben, then paused at the foot of the stairs, staring at the mannequin of Nathan Kendall.
If the artist’s rendering had been a true one, he’d been a handsome man. He’d been captured in time in his early thirties, the age he’d been when he’d died.
His eyes seemed to be wise and world-weary. They’d been painted blue.
For a moment she almost felt as if he would speak.
She forced herself to reach out and touch the statue.
Wood. It was made of wood.
“Scarlet?” Trisha called.
“Coming!”
“We’re right next door,” Trisha reminded Scarlet as she reached the top of the stairs. “And you really are more than welcome there.”
“I know,” Scarlet said. “Thank you. And thank you for waiting for me and driving me home.” She hesitated. “I asked an old friend out here to help. My ex-husband, actually. He’s with the FBI. Do you mind?”
“Mind?” Ben asked. “I think that’s great.”
“I’m guessing his partner will be coming with him. They should be here tomorrow, I hope. Sometime in the morning.”
“Wonderful. We’ll get some rooms ready for them,” Trisha said. “For now, let’s check out this whole place, just for safety’s sake.”
They went together from room to room, then wound up in the kitchen, staring at one another.
With everything seemingly safe and nothing more to be done that night, an exhausted Scarlet followed them downstairs and locked up behind them, then made her way back up to her apartment.
She couldn’t help wondering, though, whether she really was going to be all right, or if maybe she should have agreed to sleep at the main house.
After all, two people had been brutally murdered just where the mountain rose to meet the Conway Ranch. She shouldn’t be alone.
But she was exhausted, so exhausted that she didn’t even take off her clothes as she pitched down on the bed.
It wasn’t over, she thought. Not for her. Lieutenant Gray had said so.
But Diego was coming. He had said that he would, and he was always true to his word.
She thought she would never sleep, as her distraught mind kept going over the events of the day.
The pictures on her camera...
And then two people dead just like the people in the photos...
And then she’d been interrogated. The kid who had never stolen so much as a piece of gum.
To her amazement, her eyes finally closed and her mind began to shut down. She was just so tired.
But her dreams were troubled...
Blood was everywhere in her mind’s eye. She could see the dead, and they could see her. She felt their eyes, and the intensity of their regard sent chills up her spine...
Restless, she awoke. She walked into the kitchen and made herself a cup of chamomile tea. At the kitchen table, she sat sipping it, listening. The museum was quiet. The door below was locked.
Diego would be here soon.
She finished her tea, walked to the window and looked out. Everything was peaceful.
Bizarrely peaceful, given what had happened there in the woods.
And as she stood there, she felt once again that she was being watched.
She told herself that was foolish. “I am alone,” she said into the empty air.
The feeling persisted, but she forced herself back to bed, leaving the door to her room ajar so that she could hear anything that went on in the museum.
Surprisingly, she fell asleep easily, and so deeply that she was untroubled by dreams.
The next thing she knew, she heard birds.
She smiled slightly, waking up. It was nice here, that sound of birds in the morning, with the feel of the sun, strong and warm at this time of year.
She opened her eyes, feeling as if everything would be all right.
Then she realized someone was standing at the foot of her bed, and a scream tore from her lips.
She stopped with a gasp when she saw who that someone was.
The decidedly not-alive statue of Nathan Kendall was staring down at her.
Diego wondered why he had ever turned down an invitation to join the Krewe of Hunters.
By 6:00 a.m. he was aboard a private plane with Brett Cody, along with Krewe agents—and lovers—Meg Murray and Matt Bosworth. They were flying out via a friend of Adam Harrison’s, the man who had established and still ran the Krewe. Nothing they were doing was official yet—and might never be, Matt had reminded him. Until the local authorities asked for their help, they couldn’t officially give it, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t run their own investigation.
That was one of the greatest assets of the Krewe. Their purpose was to investigate when there were strange and otherworldly elements to a crime, but they operated independently, beholden to no one and able to operate freely.
All Diego really knew was that he was incredibly grateful that he had been able to ask for assistance, and that it could so quickly and easily be granted.
“Adam will be coming out himself,” Matt had told Diego earlier. “Estes Park is apparently one of his favorite places in the world. He’s a major supporter of our national parks, and Rocky Mountain National Park is one of his favorites.”
Diego was glad to have a seasoned agent like Matt on the case. Meg was still new—not even a year out of the academy—but she was a rising star, and since the Krewe had its own rules, their personal relationship was no barrier to the two of them working together.
All they’d had to do was make a few phone calls to set everything in motion. Special Agent Angela Hawkins—wife of Jackson Crow, their official field director—had made travel arrangements for them and found out everything the police knew so far regarding the murders at the Conway Ranch.
The dead couple was Candace and Larry Parker, who’d been visiting the area from their home in Denver. They had apparently headed out to Estes Park without hotel reservations for a lodge; one supposition was that they’d been hiking up to the Conway Ranch to see if there was a vacancy.
Based on bark found in abrasions on his back and blood found on a nearby tree, Larry Parker had been strung up and had his torso ripped repeatedly by a bowie knife or something similar, and then he’d been shot in the head. Candace had been shot in the gut and bled out in about twenty minutes, according to the medical examiner’s estimate.
Bertram—aka Ben—Kendall