From the Shadows (Buckhorn, Montana #2) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,39

more Shirley hid, the more determined Megan was to corner her.

It became a game, one Megan had clearly relished. She would go out of her way to do something nice for Shirley in front of the others to force her to accept. Shirley would decline, saying that brand of lotion made her break out, she couldn’t eat candy because of a tooth that had been bothering her, she couldn’t take that expensive blouse Megan no longer liked because the color was all wrong for her.

Pretty soon everyone was watching—waiting and watching. By then they all knew how treacherous Megan could be when she wasn’t getting the satisfaction she demanded.

Shirley had known it would end badly. There was no way it couldn’t, she’d learned from experience. The harder Megan tried to get to her, the more frustrated she got. Megan had grown tired of tormenting the others. There was no one left but Shirley.

One of them was going down.

* * *

CLAUDE STOOD WATCHING the flames die to embers, knowing he should leave. Coming here had been a mistake, he thought as he glanced at the dark, hulking form of the hotel beyond the faint firelight.

Most everyone was probably in bed already asleep by now. Only a few lights glinted from inside. The structure had taken on an eerie, skeletal look that would have frightened him ten years ago. Nothing could scare him now, he told himself. Not even Megan’s ghost.

He studied the backlit windows and saw no faces. No one cared enough to watch him. Everyone had left the fire earlier, ignoring him as they walked away and disappeared inside. He glanced toward the woods. He had to go back in there. As he slipped away from the fire, just as he had that night, he thought he might have forgotten how to find the exact spot where Megan had died. Bludgeoned to death with a rock. At least that was the theory, since the rock had never been found.

But even in the pitch black inside the pines, he made his way to where he’d last seen her. It was his amazing brain. It could hold unreal amounts of information and not explode. He could remember everything, which in this case was a curse.

Standing where her blood had drained into the soil, he was reminded of the scrap of paper he’d picked up when no one was looking. It had Megan’s blood on it. He had stared at it for a moment before pocketing the note.

It wasn’t until later that he’d read the words that had been printed on the paper. Meet me in the woods. It hadn’t taken all that much effort on his part to connect the handwriting to the person who had written it. But like his pocketing the scrap of paper, he hadn’t told anyone, especially the marshal.

Until he’d returned here, he wasn’t sure he’d planned to do anything with what he knew. He stared down at the ground, remembering exactly what she’d looked like lying there. Often when he couldn’t sleep, he imagined her eyes, unfocused, her slack face, her skin already draining of color. He’d memorized her dead face and put it in a special place in his brilliant brain.

Instead of haunting his dreams, the image gave him peace. Death didn’t scare him. Megan didn’t scare him. Nothing did anymore.

That young boy he’d been hadn’t feared Megan. It was what she’d unlocked in him that terrified him. His parents had seen his genius and ignored the rest. They knew there was something inherently wrong with him. He’d seen the alarm at what they realized they had created. Megan had brought out a dark side of him, and he’d liked it.

At the sound of a twig snapping somewhere in the darkness, he turned. For a moment, he couldn’t make out the approaching shape, but he didn’t have to. He knew exactly who it was. Like him, this person knew where to come. The scene of the crime.

“I was beginning to wonder if you would show up,” Claude said, even though he couldn’t yet see the killer in the deep shadow of the trees. He could feel Megan’s twisted malevolence in him, thrumming in his bloodstream, just under his skin. He hadn’t been able to handle it as a teenager. It was too powerful. But he was ready now. He heard another twig break, off to his left, but he ignored it. He felt invincible and realized that, right now, he was actually glad that he’d come