here,” she said.
Nikki hardly dared breathe.
The beam swept closer, skating across the floor.
Slowly, Nikki raised her weapon and felt the spit dry in her mouth.
Closer.
The beam swept inches from Nikki’s feet.
Oh. Lord.
She braced herself.
“What the—?” the woman said as a rat scurried across the swath of light. It darted from its hiding spot beneath the lowest step across the muddy floor to disappear into a crevice between two stacks of boxes.
“You little shit!”
In that second, Nikki placed the voice: Jade Delacroix.
Reed’s partner.
What the hell was Delacroix doing down here?
She’s a cop; she has every right to be here. It’s you who shouldn’t be down in this godforsaken basement.
Lowering the hammer, Nikki watched from the shadows as Delacroix turned and walked back to the tomb, snapped the flashlight onto her belt, and then placed her hands on the bricks above the dark cavern. Over the drip, drip, drip of water, Delacroix whispered what sounded like a prayer.
Nikki strained to hear the words.
“I’ll find him. I swear,” Delacroix said, before making a quick sign of the cross over her chest. With that she abruptly turned, grabbed the flashlight and headed for the stairs. Once again, Nikki shrank into the shadows as the policewoman mounted the steps quickly, almost running, the floorboards creaking overhead, a door opening and closing.
A lock clicked into place.
And then it was quiet again aside from the incessant dripping.
Nikki didn’t move. She barely dared slip her phone from her pocket to check the time. Then she waited. For a full ten minutes while the cavernous basement with its makeshift graves seemed to close around her. She told herself she did not feel spiders on the back of her neck, that the rat she spied earlier was long gone, that everything was just fine.
Slowly, Nikki emerged, turning on the light from her phone, half expecting to hear Delacroix’s voice say, “I knew you were down there. What the hell are you doing here, Nikki Gillette?”
But the basement remained silent. Ominously so.
She managed to take a few more pictures, then cautiously mount the stairs. Since the door was dead-bolted and she didn’t want anyone to know she’d been inside, she left the way she came in, tiptoeing into the kitchen and hoisting herself over the sink. Once she’d wriggled outside, tumbling onto the porch and nearly losing her phone in the process, she lowered the window to within an inch of the sill, righted the bucket and observed the grounds again.
Delacroix or someone else could have arrived while she was inside. Her gaze skimmed the tall grass and dilapidated outbuildings, even sweeping over the weeping willow, but she saw no one, so she followed the path that had led her here, skirting the outbuildings before turning into the woods.
What had she just witnessed?
Was this some kind of weird ritual with Delacroix? Something she did with all her cases? Or was this specific to this case? Questions assailed her as she hurried through the rain, the path now muddy.
By the time she reached her car she noticed that the fisherman’s camper and pickup were gone. Her CR-V was parked alone on the mashed grass and weeds and sparse gravel. She climbed inside, swiped her face with her sleeve, then switched on the ignition.
The windows steamed and she cracked the passenger side and cranked on the defrost by rote. She even fiddled with the radio, settling on a station that played music from the nineties, but she barely noticed as she thought about the case and the people involved. She drove past the gates of the Beaumont estate, firmly shut, then the acres of grapevines of the Channing Vineyards. Tyson Beaumont, Jacob Channing, Owen Duval, Bronco Cravens. How were they involved with the disappearance and murder of Holly and Poppy Duval? And what about Rose? Once over the bridge she glanced at the road leading to Bronco Cravens’s home, where he had been so brutally murdered. Gunned down. Shot in the back? Because of the Duval girls’ homicides? Or some other reason? It wasn’t as if he was exactly an upstanding citizen. He could have owed the wrong people money or double-crossed a cohort in some crime.
But to murder him?
Beyond the Cravenses’ cabin, just upriver was the Marianne Inn. The spot where Chandra Johnson caught Holly Duval crying. Holly—the tough, rebellious daughter of Margaret and Harvey.
Nikki nearly turned around and drove to the old inn, but glancing at the clock she knew she didn’t have time.
Today was Sylvie Morrisette’s funeral.
As difficult as it