sense that someone was out there in the woods watching her.
Hunching inside her jacket against the wind, she shined her flashlight on the porch to see if the killer had left her another present.
She was getting royally pissed at his game. But there was nothing this time.
Flipping on every light in the house, she swept the rooms, breathing a sigh of relief that there was no one inside.
Stripping her clothes, she stepped into the shower, mentally sorting what she would say to Bryce. Before all their trouble at high school, when it had all gone so wrong, she’d known him as a kid, had ridden bikes with him on the trail and built forts in the woods. She tried to recall a time when she’d seen him be violent. One time they’d found a deer that had been shot at Rattlesnake Ridge and he’d run and gotten his father’s shotgun, telling her they had to keep the animal from suffering. She’d sworn tears had blurred his eyes when he’d shot the deer to put it out of its misery. That didn’t align with the killer on the loose, did it?
Scrubbing her skin raw with soap, she was desperate to erase the images of the Weekday Killer from her mind. But they punished her, screaming that Shondra would be next.
She had to think. Criminals who fit the profile typically had a history of abuse––by a parent, family member or even a coach. Bryce’s father was the mayor, and as kids, she’d never seen anything to suggest Mayor Waters was abusing him. No bruises or cuts. No whispers in their small-town community about it. And his mother had doted on him, thought he hung the moon.
Somewhat calmed by the thought, she stepped from the shower and grabbed a towel.
After drying off, she padded to her closet to snag some clean clothes. The light was off inside, and she flipped the switch, but it didn’t come on.
Suddenly all the lights in the house flickered off, goose bumps erupting on her skin.
Ellie froze, pulse pounding as darkness engulfed her. Panic clawed at her. Her heart rushed to her throat.
You’re safe, she told herself.
Although her senses warned her she was not.
Outside, the wind snapped branches off. Something scraped the window, and the floor groaned.
Her gun. She’d left it on the nightstand.
Easing backward, she turned to grab it, but in the darkness, someone pounced on her from behind. She clawed for the pistol but knocked the lamp over instead. He dragged her backward, and she flailed and yanked at the bedding, anything to slow him down. But he wrapped his arm around her neck in a chokehold, cutting off her oxygen. Struggling to wrench his hands from her neck, she swung her elbow back to jab him in the torso. He grunted slightly, tightening his hold. His breath brushed her ear. It was warm and sticky, making her shiver in disgust.
“Too late, Ellie. I told you that you’d pay.”
A second later, the sharp sting of a needle pierced her skin and the world faded into oblivion.
One Hundred Twenty-Four
Stony Gap
Finton banged on the glass window of Derrick’s car as Derrick parked at the sheriff’s office. Before he headed inside, he checked his messages. His heart thundered as he listened to Ellie’s. She suspected the sheriff of the crimes? Seriously?
Confusion rippled through him.
Bryce and Ellie definitely had some kind of tension between them, some kind of past. But that wasn’t enough to drive him to murder—surely Ellie knew that?
Anxious and wanting to know more before he saw Waters, he stepped from the vehicle and called her number. The phone rang four times before going to voicemail. Trying three more times, he got the same result. “Call me as soon as you get this,” he said through gritted teeth.
Praying Ellie was all right, he phoned Bennett. “Find out everything you can on Sheriff Bryce Waters. For some reason, Detective Reeves has suspicions about him. Any word from the lab on DNA under Dr. Sledge’s nails?”
“No hits yet. But we’ll keep running it.”
Derrick hesitated, before carrying on. “Run it against the sheriff.”
“You think Waters is the perp too?”
“I don’t know. Just run it, okay.”
“On it.”
“And see what you can dig up on Felix Finton, Roy Finton’s father. Roy claims McCord killed his old man. But there’s history between the two of them so who knows if he’s telling the truth or not? I’ll push him for more after he’s been in lockup for a while.”