“I didn’t see anything.”
“Ned stumbled on it. But not until dinnertime yesterday. He went back to the scene after everything was cleaned up, to take another look around, and spotted it about twenty feet from where you found her body.”
Cain hadn’t seen anything like that. But then, it’d been dark and he’d been so horrified by her murder he’d only been looking for danger. The minute he realized Amy was dead, he’d panicked and run back to the house to make sure Sheridan was safe. “What’d he write?”
“I love you, Amy.”
Cain shoved his hands in his pockets. “That’s some love.”
“Love is cruel,” Tiger said and shut the door.
It wasn’t the sight of her uncle’s house that did it. It was the smell—a mixture of old furniture, new polish and the scent of roses wafting in from the open door behind her.
Sheridan stood inside the front entrance and braced against the wall in the entryway while the memories came tumbling back. As Cain had supposed, she’d just returned from the supermarket when she’d been attacked. She remembered that clearly now. She also remembered that she’d carried her groceries into the kitchen and was putting them away when she’d seen a shadow move along the side of the house.
Curious and a little unsettled, she’d walked to the living room window and gazed out at the side yard. In the deepening dusk, she could see the trash can and the empty newspaper recycle bin, but not much else.
Trying to shrug off a sense of unease, she’d told herself her misgivings were merely the effect of an overactive imagination. Her line of work tended to make one overcautious. And it wasn’t easy coming back to the town where she’d been shot and nearly killed. All kinds of nostalgic, poignant emotions had surfaced as soon as she’d driven past that Welcome to Whiterock sign, especially when she began to notice the changes to her hometown.
With a new gas station at one end of Main Street, the motel recently refurbished, and the only bar in town boasting a new neon sign, there was plenty of evidence that everyone had carried on very handily without her.
“What’s wrong?” Skye cut into her thoughts. Her friend had gone in ahead of her, but once Skye realized Sheridan had stopped, she returned. “You okay?”
Sheridan nodded, but she was afraid of the other memories—the ones that were quickly coming into focus. They brought back the sudden terror and helplessness she’d felt.
“I locked the door,” she said.
Skye angled her head quizzically. “You what?”
“I wasn’t stupid. At least I locked the door.”
“You’re talking about the night you were attacked?”
Sheridan drew a deep breath and nodded again. “I thought I saw something, couldn’t really confirm it, but I came back and locked the door, anyway.”
Skye drew her into the living room, where Sheridan sank onto the stiff old couch. She refused to even look at the kitchen. She knew now what had happened there, remembered turning from the counter to be confronted by a man wearing a ski mask. Seeing a figure so similar to what she’d faced when she and Jason were shot had stolen the strength from her limbs. Because she knew he’d come back to kill her.
“How’d he get in?” Skye asked, gently touching her shoulder.
“He had a key,” she whispered.
“How?”
“Cain said there was one under the mat. I never thought to check. My family knows better than to leave a spare in such an obvious place. The tenant must’ve left it behind when he moved out.”
“Did you hear this person come in?” Skye was trying to pull the details from her. But it wasn’t easy to sort through so much mental debris.
Sheridan wrapped her arms around herself. “No. But he must’ve come through the door. There was no breaking glass, no forced entry. As a matter of fact, I heard nothing until the floor creaked right behind me. And then it was too late.” She closed her eyes, wishing she didn’t have to relive those minutes. But she knew it was important to examine every detail.
“What’d he do, Sher?”
“He shoved me. I tried to fight him off, but he put his hands around my neck and squeezed until…until everything went black.”
“Then he could take you from the house.”
“He tied me up and gagged me first.” She licked her dry lips, tried to regulate her breathing. “The next thing I knew, he was carrying me through the woods. I had some kind of cloth stuffed in my mouth. My hands were tied, but not my feet.”
Skye’s voice was low, intense. “Was he still wearing the mask?”
“I think so.” Sheridan concentrated, wishing she could remember more clearly. “Yes,” she said confidently. “I wish that, once I freed my hands, I’d grabbed for it, but at that point all I could focus on was escape. I knew my life depended on what I did in the next few minutes, maybe seconds.”
“What did you do?” Skye asked, taking her hands.
Sheridan watched her friend gently squeeze her fingers. “I shoved at his chest. I wasn’t the only thing he was trying to carry. He also had a—a shovel or something. Yes, that makes sense. He had a shovel later. That must’ve been it.”
Skye waited with an anxious expression but she didn’t interrupt.
“Anyway, when I woke up, I started working at the ropes. I couldn’t believe it when I felt them loosen. He probably tied me very quickly and didn’t expect me to be in any position to get free. So when I began to kick and fight, it took him by surprise, sent him off balance. He stumbled and fell, and I went sprawling to the ground.” The words were coming faster as memories intensified. “That gave me a chance to get up and run. I took off, but it was so hard to move my legs. They felt as if they weighed a hundred pounds each. And branches kept gouging my face and cheeks and arms.”
“He must’ve come after you.”
She swallowed hard. “He did. A minute later he grabbed hold of my clothes.” She fell silent, trying to come to terms with what he’d done next. She’d never been through anything more harrowing in her life. Even the shooting at Rocky Point hadn’t been as traumatic—not at the time. Because it had happened so fast. She hadn’t felt the bullet for several seconds.
This attack was different. She’d known from her first glimpse of that mask that she was in trouble. And she’d never felt more fear than those few minutes when the man who’d choked her was chasing her through the forest.