Without Mercy

  They didn’t speak but took their places, eager and avid, the fervor of youth in their eyes. They were rabid, this cadre of bright, talented soldiers. Dedicated to God’s cause, ready to cross any line.

  Crusaders.

  A few followers cast glances at the open cabinet door, eager to get their hands on weapons, keyed up and ready to do his bidding. He wondered if one of them could be a rogue, more interested in his or her own agenda than the greater good.

  He dismissed the idea quickly as they stared up at him, if not in adoration, then at the very least awe.

  The Leader gave a nod, and the sergeant at arms swung the door shut. Once he’d returned to his seat on the pew, the Leader said, “You’ve been patient long enough. Some of you already know this, but tonight we strike. The plan we’ve discussed for so long has already been set into motion.

  “A few of you have already begun your tasks, as have I, but now all of us need to unite and go with purpose. You know what your assignments are.” He moved his gaze over each of the faces staring up at him, caught a few of them nodding, anxious, ready. “We may suffer casualties, but not if we are precise.

  “As you leave here, take the equipment you’ve been allotted and go forth with fervor and faith.” A few feet scuffled on the hard rock floor as they prepared to stand. “First,” he cautioned, “let us pray.”

  In her dream, Jules walked through the den, past the flickering screen of the television to her father’s body. Rip lay in a pool of blood, the knife deep in his body.

  “Dad … Dad!” She bent over and pulled out the knife, and Rip’s eyes opened wide, staring at her.

  Somewhere nearby a woman screamed.

  She turned, saw her mother in the archway, Edie’s face twisted in horror. “You killed him!” she accused, and ran into the room to drop onto the floor.

  “No, I didn’t. Mom …”

  Edie, kneeling in her husband’s blood, turned to look over her shoulder and stare at her firstborn. “Why?” she demanded. “Why would you kill your father?”

  “I didn’t … Mom, you gotta believe me.”

  “You’re to blame.” Rip’s voice thundered, though his mouth didn’t move, and somehow Jules knew he was talking about Edie. “You let her do this.”

  “I didn’t!” Jules insisted, the drops of blood dripping onto the floor.

  Jules sat bolt upright in the darkness, the strange room closing in on her. Where the hell was she?

  “Hey. You okay?” Trent was beside her in the bed. His strong arms surrounded her, dragging her close. She blinked hard, remembering where she was and how she’d gotten here, fool that she was.

  “No.” She was shaking her head; she was definitely not okay on so many levels. Good Lord, she was an idiot, and the memory of the nightmare still caused goose bumps to rise on her skin. “It’s … it’s everything. I get this recurring nightmare about Dad’s murder. It just keeps coming back, and it changes just a little each time. I always hear a disturbing dripping sound. And I check around and know it’s coming from the den.”

  She let out a breath, shivering a little, though Trent’s arms surrounded her.

  “And that’s where it changes. I walk into the den, and the TV’s always on and Dad’s always on the floor, blood pooling around him, but sometimes he’s still alive and he talks to me. Sometimes my mother is nearby; other times Shaylee is cowering and … and it all gets so blurry. All the people I cared about at that time in my life are nearby, but it’s as if they’re acting, playing different roles.” She shook her head in the darkness. “Oh, I don’t know what it means, if it means anything.” She let out a soft breath, ruffling the hairs on his chest. “To tell you the truth, it scares me to death.”

  “Shhh.” He kissed her hair. “Let it go.”

  “Believe me, I’ve tried, but …” She sighed, wishing that horrid night would stop haunting her. It won’t; not until the memory is clear. Her recollections of the night of her father’s death had changed with time, aged a bit, in shattered little pieces that she’d formed into a smooth montage. She was living at home, the marriage between Rip and Edie disintegrating by the day. They were continually sniping at each other, the arguments escalating. She and Shaylee had taken refuge upstairs, listening to music with the volume turned up to mute the painful words her parents thrust at each other.

  Seeing them destroying each other took its toll on Jules and her half sister. And the aftermath of Rip’s death had been worse. Jules had scrapped her plans of moving away to college and had forced Trent from her life. Shay had started getting into trouble at school, and Edie … Edie had nearly lost it, falling into a horrible depression that had only lifted with the advent of Grant Sykes into her life. She’d felt a failure with two divorces, widowhood, and the loss of any considerations of wealth. Max Stillman was determined that she never get one more dime of his money to the point that he’d nearly turned his back completely on his own daughter, doting instead on Max Junior. So they’d both lost their fathers that night. Though Shay’s relationship had always been tenuous with Max, Rip had doted on Jules. Once Rip was killed, the murderer, a robber who had taken his wallet and fled in smooth-soled, size 12 shoes, according to partial impressions in the mud, their lives had changed forever. Had it been random? A business partner who had been taken? The husband of one of Rip’s girlfriends finally taking revenge?

  No one knew.

  All in all, it had been a disaster, the night of Rip Delaney’s death changing the course of Jules’s life and haunting her dreams.

  “I think,” she said, blinking in the darkness, “the nightmare is never going to go away. It’ll always be with me.”

  “Hey.” Trent’s voice was low. Steady. “I’m here.”

  She snorted a laugh, finding a hint of macabre humor in his single statement. “And?”

  “And this time I’m not going away.”

  A lump formed in her throat, and she let his strong arms comfort her. “Even if I push?” she asked.

  “Especially then.”

  “Need I remind you that ‘here’ is in the middle of a madhouse of a boarding school where people are being killed?”

  “It won’t always be this way.” God, he said it with such conviction.

  Jules wanted to take comfort in his strong belief, she supposed, but it was difficult. As she roused and the nightmare skittered away to hide in the murky corners of her mind, she was faced with what she and Trent had discovered in Lynch’s partially burnt files. Also, now there was the heart-jarring realization that she’d made love to Cooper Trent again.

  As quick as lightning, she’d slid willingly between the sheets of the ex–bull rider’s bed, and they had become lovers again in a heartbeat.

  She hadn’t even put up a fight, and then had fallen asleep in his arms.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  What was wrong with her?

  Had she just taken solace and comfort for a few hours? Needed a reaffirmation of life and love in the middle of this chaos?

  What an inane rationale.

  Sleeping with him would help nothing. Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she fought them back. “You’re a fool, Cooper Trent.”

  “At the very least.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” He kissed her then, his lips claiming hers, and she felt as if she’d finally come home. She felt the heat of his body, the pounding of his heart, the sheer strength of him.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered. “I blamed you for something that didn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “Water under the bridge.”

  “No, it’s not. I think what scared me the most back then was how much I depended on you, how much I loved you.”

  “Tell ya what,” he suggested, and she almost felt him smile in the darkness. “Let’s give it another go.”

  She cleared her throat. “I don’t know how that will work.”

  “As my father used to say, we’ll make it work. He was a f
irm believer in positive thinking. So am I.” He squeezed her and kissed her forehead again, and for a second in the darkness, she trusted that things would be all right, that they actually had a chance to overcome this nightmare they were living in.

  “Listen.”

  She did, and over the pounding of her heart, she heard nothing. Not even the rumble of a furnace.

  “The power’s out,” he said, and she was finally awake enough to realize how dark the room was. There was no glowing digital readout on a clock, just total, pitch blackness, and the room was getting colder by the minute. “And the wind’s died down.” Trent reached over to the nightstand, and a moment later she saw the flash of his cell phone as he tried to make a call. “Out of luck.”

  Jules huddled back under the quilt, shivering.

  “Hey. Come on.” Trent was already swinging out of bed. “You’ll freeze in here. Wrap up,” he instructed, coiling a quilt around her as she tried to wake up, to think clearly.

  She couldn’t stay here all night. Not with everything that was happening. Still half-asleep, she let him guide her out to the living room, close to the fire.

  Naked, he poked and prodded the fire, his muscular silhouette in stark relief against the bloodred coals. He added several chunks of oak and fir, and as the mossy wood caught fire, he returned to the bedroom, then dragged his mattress and a pair of jeans to the living room. He dropped the mattress onto the floor and stepped into his jeans. “I have to go and check on the animals, make certain there’s heat in the stable, but stay here. I’ll bring the pillows out and you can sleep by the fire.”

  “What? No!” She didn’t want to be left alone. Not tonight. Why? Come on, Jules, don’t be one of those men-dependent women you hate.

  “Seriously. You’ll be safe here.” But there was a hint of trepidation in his voice. “Look, I’ll be gone less than twenty minutes, and I’ll leave the pistol with you.”

  “You think the killer is after me?” she asked, and felt another sliver of fear.

  “I don’t know who he’s after, or even if he’s still hunting, but I want to know that you’re safe.”

  “Well, hey, me, too. I think that’s a great idea, but what about Shay?”

  “She’s in the dorm with a buddy; she’ll be fine,” he reminded.

  “We don’t know that. We don’t know if anyone here is ‘fine.’ It would be comforting to think that the murderer is finished with his work, that Nona and Drew were his only targets, that the murders were personal. But then there’s Lauren Conway.”

  “Okay, point taken.”

  “And you were going to leave me with the gun. For safety. Because in your heart of hearts, you have a feeling this killer isn’t done. And we could be targets, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I just need to know that Shay’s safe. That’s the reason I’m down here, you know. To take her home.” She was already unwrapping the quilt. “But there have been a few obstacles in my way,” she said, tossing the quilt aside. She snagged a flashlight from a side table, flicked it on, and started toward the bedroom. What had she been thinking? With everything else going on, she had no business sleeping with Trent. No business at all.

  And all his words about sticking around, about trying again, these were empty phrases until they were out of the trap that was Blue Rock.

  Crossing the bedroom, she tripped on her boots and stubbed her toe. Swearing under her breath, she located her damned panties and bra where they’d been flung into a corner. Her jeans and sweater were on the other side of the room, testament to how fast and anxiously they’d been stripped from her body.

  Refusing to consider how foolish she’d been, she got dressed as quickly as possible.

  “For the record,” Trent said, “I think this is a bad idea.”

  She looked up and found Trent in the doorway, adjusting the waistband of his jeans.

  “Well, lately I haven’t had a lot of great ones,” she muttered, wondering why he’d returned to the bedroom. “What’re you doing?”

  “What does it look like?” Buttoning his jeans in the thin, watery light from the flashlight, he grinned. She tried not to notice how low his faded Levi’s hung on his hips. “I’ve decided we should stick together. We’ll check on the animals, make sure they’ve got heat, then head to the dorms.”

  She hated the rush of relief that swept over her. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “A bad one,” he said, “but all we’ve got.”

  In the living room, by the glowing embers of the fire, they slipped into their snow gear and boots. Trent was still shrugging on his sheepskin coat as he locked the door behind them.

  The snowscape was eerie and still. After days of the wind screeching through the hills, the night was deathly quiet, a half-moon glowing bright and casting everything in a silvery glow.

  “That’s odd,” Trent said, eyeing the campus. “The generators should be on, but there are no lights.”

  He was right: no security lighting in the buildings, no twinkling Christmas lights in the gazebo, no lampposts illuminating the paths.

  Their flashlights were the only swaths of illumination visible in the night.

  It was too quiet. Too still.

  Fear prickled the back of Jules’s neck.

  “Cut off the flashlight,” he whispered abruptly, clicking his off. As if he felt the great unlikely quietness, too. “We don’t want to be sitting ducks.”

  “Where are the security patrols?” she asked.

  “Good question.”

  Her heart turned to ice. “I don’t like this.”

  He pulled the pistol from the holster inside his jacket. “Neither do I.” He took her hand in his free one, gloved fingers linking with hers, his sidearm pointed ahead.

  Wary, Jules kept her eyes on the shadows, the drifting piles of snow, the darkened corners as they trudged past several dark outbuildings, their roofs laden with snow, their windows like a myriad of ghostly reflective eyes.

  Jules clung to Trent’s hand as they turned onto the path leading to the stable. Though there was no wind, the temperature was below freezing, the air frigid as she dragged it into her lungs. The frozen air had a burnt odor, as if someone has just doused a campfire.

  “Do you smell that?” she said. “Is it just wood smoke?”

  “Maybe.” His voice was hard.

  The stable was as dark as the other buildings, but the main door was open slightly, hanging ajar. “Hell,” Trent whispered, and waved her to stand behind him as he walked inside, flicking the light switch.

  Click.

  No flash of lights followed.

  “Something was burning in here,” he said under his breath.

  The hairs on the back of her arms raised as Trent stepped inside, sweeping the arc of his flashlight over the stalls where horses were stomping nervously and the heavy smell of smoke lingered.

  What had gone on in here?

  A horse neighed loudly.

  “What the hell?” Trent turned the flashlight to the far wall, where a huge black horse was pacing, his coat lathered, his eyes wild.

  Trent lowered the light. “Hey, boy, it’s all right. Shhh.” He kept the flashlight directed toward the floor, and Jules followed, the scent of smoke and something else, something metallic …

  “Trent—” she whispered.

  “Holy shit!” The beam of his flashlight swept over the body of Maeve Mancuso. He was on his knees in an instant, Jules one step behind. “What the hell?” He handed Jules his gun. “Just in case,” he said. “Keep an eye out.” He propped his flashlight on the floor, training its beam on the poor girl.

  Maeve was propped up against a post, blood pooled around her on the dusty cement floor. He touched her neck and shook his head. “Hell.” Still, he listened for the sound of the faintest breath whispering through her lungs, but shook his head. “She’s gone,” he said, almost inaudibly, and Jules felt something break deep inside her as she stared at the girl’s pale, lifeless face.

 
CHAPTER 39

  “It’s been staged to look like she committed suicide,” Jules said, not fooled for an instant despite the long, thin slash marks visible inside Maeve’s wrists. The bloody knife lay on the floor beneath the fingertips of her left hand, her dark hair singed. “But there was a fire in here … doused. God, what happened?”

  “That son of a bitch got her. That’s what happened.” Trent was still beside the girl, shining the beam of his flashlight over the surrounding area.

  Angry, he rocked back on his heels. “Look at this.” He shined his flashlight over the death scene to a small puddle of blood not far from the wide dark pools coagulating beneath Maeve’s open palms. The puddle had been scuffed and smeared, just like the one Jules had seen close to the spot where Drew Prescott had been left for dead. Not twenty feet from this very spot. Without thinking, she glanced to the area under the ladder to the hayloft.

  Two smeared stains … apart from the bodies. So much alike. Snake-like, but blurred. A chill slid down her spine. “Was anything like this found near Nona? Up in the loft?” she asked.

  He shook his head, then stopped. “I don’t know. If it was, I suppose, it could have been on the sleeping bag, but I never saw it as it was taken to the lab. But it sure wasn’t anywhere else in the hayloft; I looked over the place myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.” Jules stared at the spot near Maeve and felt as if it should mean something, an idea forming that couldn’t quite gel. What was it?

  From the far end of the aisle, the big horse snorted and pawed the ground, instinctively staying away from the scent of death. Jules didn’t blame him. She, too, wanted to step away from reality, away from the killing, away from this horrible school with all its dark secrets.

  She coughed. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the air and horses in surrounding stalls shuffled and whinnied. Jules shined the beam of her flashlight over the floor of the stable where the cement was marred by blackened straw and bloodstains. The big black horse that had gotten loose was still trembling at the far end of the aisle. What in God’s name had happened here? What kind of evil?