Lost

“Knowing you, it was probably an accident.”

He liked that she sometimes saw through him better than others did. Because of his military background and his hard line regarding certain types of legal infractions, some in town considered him a hard-ass. To be accurate, he had his calluses and edges, even an unhealed wound or two; but as long as people didn’t probe those too much, he considered himself one heck of an amiable guy—and patient. Particularly where one diminutive career cynic was concerned.

As Michaele finished filling out the invoice for his car, he reached out to wipe at a streak of grease along her jaw. Like the rest of her, that chin was finely contoured, in total contrast to her personality and occupation. Barely tall enough to reach his Adam’s apple, and easily a hundred pounds lighter than him, she made most people around her feel huge. But most knew she was as physically tough as she was psychologically resilient. Heaven help her, she had to be.

Not surprisingly, she stepped out of his reach, but kept writing. “Get it over with,” she said, sighing.

“What?” He waited for her to look up so he could feel the kick that always came when their gazes connected. To define her eyes as blue was as insulting as saying that short mop of hair, mostly hid under her cap, was black. The media could fuss all they wanted about Liz Taylor, but to him nothing struck the heart like Michaele’s gem-clear eyes.

“Ask me out so I can say no, and you can be on your way.”

“Not tonight.”

As she handed him a copy of the bill, there was an instant when concern broke through her cool reserve. “What’s wrong?”

“Did I say anything was wrong?”

“You don’t have to. It’s written all over your face. Come to think of it, you look as though you were served bad oysters at lunch.”

“Maybe I’m worrying that nothing’s ever going to change between us.”

She quickly lowered her thick lashes. “Knock it off, Morgan. How many times do I have to tell you that you’re wasting your time toying with me?”

“Until it sinks into that pretty but thick head of yours that I’m not playing a game.”

“There is no us.”

“Right. Keep trying to convince yourself of that.” Fighting a stronger frustration than usual, Jared shoved the receipt into his shirt pocket.

Michaele slapped the clipboard back onto the workbench. “What’s gotten into you? We go through the same song-and-dance every time you come over, then you go on your merry way. Why get bent out of shape today?”

“Because, believe it or not, you’re not the only one who’s had a long day, and maybe I’m a little tired of you insisting this is all a joke, when you know damn well it’s not.”

Her laugh was brief, but confirmed her confusion and growing unease. “Of course it’s a joke. That’s why you mess with me. You know I’m not interested in a relationship with anyone. And I sure as hell wouldn’t start anything with someone who drinks!”

Jared knew that, all right, and thought her reasoning reeked worse than their creeks’ stagnant water during a dry spell. “Damn it, not everyone who has a beer once in a while is going to turn into the alcoholic your old man is!”

“Didn’t say they were. But I’m not planning to test the theory, either.”

He didn’t want to analyze it, but something that wouldn’t stay contained got the best of him. “Then start dressing like you mean it.”

“Excuse me?” Arms akimbo, she stared down at her stained denim shirt and jeans.

“Getting as dirty as a man doesn’t make you one. You know full well that my office window faces here. In the future, try wearing a bra once in a while and jeans that don’t look sprayed on, if you find my attention so offensive.”

As he headed for his patrol car, Michaele followed like a rabid terrier on the heels of a postman. “What I wear is my business, Chief Morgan, have you got that?”

Jared didn’t answer. Instead he all but threw himself into the patrol car and slammed the door shut. Tight-lipped, he gunned the engine and drove the hell out of there.

Son of a bitch. He groaned as he headed toward Split Creek High School. Of all the stupid blunders…

He’d met Michaele Ramey when she’d been a runt of sixteen, and she’d already known more about cars than most men learned in a lifetime. Even then she was going through seven kinds of hell with her family. Her inner strength, that incredible determination not to crumble, had quickly won his respect, just as her apparent disregard for—or more accurately, her obliviousness to—her exotic beauty had won his admiration. But, of course, she’d only been a kid…and he had met Sandy. Sandy, who, after his parents’ death, brought a calm and sweetness to his life—until that awful day six years ago when he’d kissed her good-night, not realizing it was goodbye.

Jared rubbed his stubble-rough jaw, disgusted with himself. This was the wrong time to think about that, just as he’d chosen the wrong moment to push Michaele. She still wasn’t ready.

Fool, she probably never will be.

Damn Garth’s phone call. Who needed old ghosts resurrected?

He owed Michaele an apology—and she would get it, right after he dealt with whatever was going on at the school. Watch that not be anywhere near as bad as Garth had insinuated, too, he thought grimacing. But then, nothing could be that bad again. Not ever.

Split Creek Jr.–Sr. High School was located right after the bridge over Big Blackberry Creek, a half-mile before the eastern perimeter of town. Jared pulled into the sprawling school’s curved driveway, eyed the near-empty parking lot, and stopped before the canopied entryway. Hurrying inside, he found Garth Powers waiting for him in the main hallway.

At 42, the six-foot-seven-inch former basketball star had served as trail master to herds of high school kids for several years longer than Jared had been a cop, and had the trim build of a man several years younger. His open-minded sense of humor had helped him sustain a more youthful attitude than many his age, so he’d proven himself to be a big favorite among students, faculty and parents. Now Jared grew uneasy as he noted Garth’s spooked countenance and the way the grim-faced man kept glancing nervously over his shoulder.

“Thanks for coming,” Garth said. “By chance did you see anyone hanging around outside?”

“No. Are we waiting for someone else?”

“I’d say he’s already been here and gone. The question is, for how long?” Garth pushed open the door to the men’s rest room, and Jared entered.

He stopped only a step beyond the threshold.

Up on the tiled wall were scrawled large letters painted in a bright red that ran the entire length of the tiled urinal wall. Garth illuminated them even more by turning on the rest of the overhead fluorescent lights. That made the message look even more insane.

I’m back! 666

3

Although every instinct told him to turn around and walk out, to climb back into his car and keep going until he ran out of gas, Jared forced himself to stay put.

“Tell me it’s not blood,” Garth said, his voice barely more than a hoarse whisper.

“It sure as hell looks it.”

“But surely not…?”

“Human? Considering the amount this would have taken, let’s guess against it for the moment, and hope to heaven somebody doesn’t show up missing within the next day or so.”

“Jesus, Jared.”

“If you don’t want the truth, don’t ask the questions.”

The harsh reprimand had the older man backing away a step. “Just tell me what kind of sick bastard decided to resurrect this part of our past.”

Someone who remembered what horror they’d lived through that terrible day six springs ago tomorrow. Someone who knew what it had done to the town and wanted another taste of that craziness. But he knew Garth didn’t want to hear that any more than Jared wanted to believe such a thing possible.

“It’s almost graduation,” he said, grasping for a credible alternative. “You of all people know how revved kids get at this time of year.”

“This isn’t something to joke about. Not in Split Creek.”

Amen, thought Jared, because the last time they’d been exposed to anything like this—the first time—the price had been a life, one very dear to them both, a life that had cost the town its innocence. Anyone who thought it amusing to stir up any of that was sick, pure and simple, and needed to be found.

“Who else has seen this?” he asked, unable to take his eyes off the numbers.

“Just me. I noticed the light under the door, but knew Brady had finished in here over an hour ago.”

“Brady Watts? Where is he?”

“Over in the science lab. Should I get him?”

The school’s janitor was a gentle-natured old black man, who kept to himself and wasn’t the kind to repeat gossip, let alone encourage it. But first and foremost he was a Southern Baptist. Seeing this message would shake him enough to seek out spiritual guidance, which would mean Reverend Isaac Mooney entering the picture, someone who did like to talk. Jared neither needed nor wanted that.

“No. But if you can find a couple of mops and pails, then lock that door, I’ll help you clean up this mess. Or paint over it, if we need to.”

“Don’t you want to take a picture, get a sample, or dust for—”

“It’s kids!” Jared snapped. “Yeah, it’s six years tomorrow, but that’s no secret. You’ve heard the talk around town. People always remember what they should forget and forget what they should remember.” He turned back to the wall. “No, this is a juvenile prank meant to shock us, and why should we be surprised? Local gossip reflects what’s on TV and in the movies these days. People are being desensitized right and left, and the kids are the first to be affected. Apparently, one or two of them thought it would be fun to spook you. Don’t give him, or them, the satisfaction. We’ll wash it off and forget it. When they see this didn’t get a rise out of you, they’ll lose interest and move on to using keys to scratch car paint or something equally lamebrained.”

“She was my sister-in-law, Jared. How can I forget?”

“Damn you, Garth. She was my fiancée! I say, let her rest in peace.”

Garth looked as though he wanted to continue arguing the point, but after several seconds, although red-faced, he stormed out of the rest room. As soon as the door shut behind him, Jared reached for his pocketknife and pulled a paper towel from the wall dispenser. The procedure wasn’t as pure as using the collection gear in his trunk, but he couldn’t afford to take the time to get it. If Garth got so much as an inkling of how deeply troubled Jared was by this, the guy would need a tranquilizer to get any sleep tonight, and that would mean bringing Jessica into the picture. Sandy’s older sister didn’t deserve this, either.

Acutely aware of the risks he was taking, he used the knife to scrape at the driest corner of the first letter.

4

6:06 p.m.

Michaele didn’t bother trying to rouse her father after locking up. It wasn’t the first time she’d left him snoring in his chair, and she doubted it would be the last. In any case, she didn’t have the energy to put up with the wrestling match and verbal abuse it would take just to get him into the truck; what would she do with him at home? Besides, with the police station directly across the street, he was perfectly safe, and she would have the time alone that she needed with Faith…once her sister showed up.

Preoccupied, Michaele drove badly through the intersection, and the wrecker shuddered in protest to her delay in downshifting. But she finally got the 454 big-block engine smoothened out and continued north on Dogwood, then turned west on Cypress and across Little Blackberry Creek.

Convinced she would find her sister at the house soaking in the tub, as Faith was apt to do on afternoons when she was feeling particularly lazy, Michaele was disappointed to reach their place and find only the family’s aging pickup truck in the dirt driveway. The irony of her reaction didn’t escape her. How often had she pulled in here hoping there would be no one at the two-story frame house?

So be it, she decided. If this was to be her moment, she would celebrate. There was more to be grateful for than peace and quiet; there was also the acquisition of the Cameo. This called for a pan-fried steak, and later maybe one of Faith’s luxurious, long baths. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d taken the time to pamper herself.

But once inside the house—dark and stuffy from being shut up all day—she felt like a stranger. It was the unusual quiet, she supposed, so unnatural considering her volatile family. The mess was the same, though. There were dishes in the sink, newspapers and magazines everywhere, laundry waiting for someone to shove it into the washing machine or dryer.

“Gross,” she muttered.

She supposed she could keep the house in better shape if she did everything herself; however, working herself into an early grave the way her mother had wasn’t on Michaele’s list of goals. Bad enough her father and sister let her support them.

She loaded the washing machine, adding the shirt and jeans she’d been wearing. Then, stripped down to her cotton panties, she ran upstairs for a shower.

It was a rather quick shower. Thanks to her line of work, she could scrub herself raw daily and still fail to get off every last trace of the day’s grime. That was also part of why Jared had upset her so.

It had been unfair of him to accuse her of being a tease. She had never tried to be anything but what she was—a damn good mechanic, who would never have clean nails or Faith’s flawless skin. Michaele dug around in too many engine manifolds, had wrestled with too many stubborn nuts and bolts to win those kinds of compliments. So where did that big lug get off thinking she was interested in provoking him? She needed a man about as much as she needed an earring pierced through her tongue.

When she returned downstairs, there was still no sign of Faith.

Determined to wait up for her no matter what, Michaele fried the steak and nuked a potato in the microwave, then ate the simple meal, balancing the plate on her knees as she sat outside on the stoop to escape the stale house smells.

For as long as she could remember, they’d lived on this wooded dead-end street in the middle of a cleared pasture that a tornado hadn’t yet found. Thirteen acres of sandy loam that liked yucca cactus, nut grass and every other variety of weed, but resisted her sporadic attempts to grow vegetables without pesticides or heavy doses of chemical nutrients. The garden had been her mother’s idea, as had been the E tacked on to Michaele, after Buck—disappointed that he wasn’t getting the son he’d wanted—insisted on keeping the male name, anyway.

By the time she returned inside, it was nearly dusk. After cleaning up in the kitchen, she threw the washed clothes into the dryer and added another load to the washing machine. Then she stretched out on the couch with a mystery novel she’d been meaning to get to since buying it for herself as a Christmas present.

By ten o’clock she gave up trying to pretend she was concentrating and accepted that something was seriously wrong. Faith had never been this late, not from classes; and if she’d had plans, she would have stopped at the house first to change.

Michaele’s concern grew after she called her sister’s closest friends. All of them—with the exception of Harold, whose mother had answered and informed her he wasn’t home yet, either—said they hadn’t heard from her today.

Could Faith be with Harold Bean? They hadn’t dated in some time, but both attended Northeast Texas Community College and remained friends.

Frowning at the clock, Michaele decided to give her sister until midnight, simply because she dreaded the thought of calling the police station. It didn’t matter that Jared wouldn’t be there; he would be told, and she didn’t want to be accused of playing another game. Surely Faith would wander in before then.

Michaele returned to the front room, turned off the lights and settled in the rocker by the picture window. It looked so much darker out there tonight. The driveway seemed longer, and the woods across the street appeared downright ominous. For the first time since those early days after her mother’s death, she regretted that their neighbors were acres away, hidden by trees and thick brush.

She closed her eyes against the view and tried to think pleasant thoughts. What came was an ugly scene this morning with Faith, the way her sister had stormed out of the house…the taunting image of her lying bloody and crying for help in a crushed car somewhere…her father telling the police, “It’s Mike’s fault! She drove my poor baby to her grave!”

The ringing phone made her jerk upright. Disoriented, in her rush to get to it she almost knocked the whole thing to the floor before successfully bringing the handset to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Is Faith there?”

She didn’t recognize the voice, wasn’t even alert enough to know if it was a man or a woman calling. “Um…no. Who’s this, please?”

“You mean she didn’t call to say goodbye? She wanted to.”

Michaele’s confusion turned instantly to lung-freezing dread. She gripped the phone more tightly. “What did you say? Who is this?”

There was no reply…only a soft click as someone hung up.

5

Thursday, May 14

12:01 a.m.

Michaele stood there in shocked disbelief. Even after the buzzing reminded her to hang up, she remained rooted in place, trying to reassure herself that she’d heard incorrectly.

Suddenly, reacting as though the phone’s handset was a venomous thing, she dropped it back into the cradle, then stared out the picture window at the empty road. Beyond. Into the opaqueness of the dense woods.

As understanding grew into fear, she reached for the phone again, only to draw back.

Who are you going to call? Calm down. What if you’re wrong? What if this is somebody’s idea of a joke?

That was it. Michaele rushed into the kitchen and jerked open the door. “So help me,” she muttered under her breath, “if you borrowed someone’s car phone or got someone else to call me, thinking you would pay me back for—”

The Firebird she had expected to see in the driveway, with her sister laughing behind the wheel, wasn’t there.

Michaele’s stomach grew queasy. Quickly locking the door, she snatched up the phone book next to the refrigerator and, with trembling fingers, flipped through the white pages. Her dialing was equally haphazard, and she exhaled with relief when she finally heard the ringing that told her she hadn’t botched that last attempt. The stove clock read 12:03. The ghoulish time didn’t slip past her, nor did the belated realization that she must have dozed off, after all.

On the fourth ring, he answered. “Yeah?”

“Jared, thank God.” His strong, though irritated, voice had her instantly forgiving him his earlier behavior. “I know I should’ve called the station, but I—”

“Michaele?” There was a muffled sound as though he were sitting up. “What’s wrong?”

“I think Faith is missing.”

He was silent for several seconds. “Come again?”

“She never got home, and I just got this awful call. He said—”

“Are you and Buck at the house?”

“Yes. No! Buck’s at the garage.”

“You’re there alone? Stay put,” he snapped. “I mean it. Don’t go outside. Do nothing until I get there.”

“But I haven’t told you—”

He hung up.

She couldn’t believe it. Instead of listening to what she had to say, instead of assuring her that he would immediately have his men on the night shift look for Faith, he was coming here because she was alone? Heaven save her from the entire male race! Calling him instead of the station had been a mistake, after all.

But her frustration didn’t last long. As soon as she hung up and looked out the parted kitchen door curtains, out beyond the moths circling dizzily in the porch light to the indecipherable darkness beyond, the skin along her arms and at the back of her neck began tingling. Someone could be standing just beyond, maybe hiding as close as behind the wrecker, watching her. The thought made her feel exposed even though the oversize NASCAR T-shirt she liked to wear to bed almost reached her knees.

Her heart pounding, she rushed over to tug the curtains closed and to recheck the lock. The lock was one of those flimsy twist jobs in a door that was half glass, which made her think about the other doors. Not once since she’d come home had she bothered checking them to see if they were locked or not.

With a new dread, she hurried from the back door to the front, testing each one. Everything was as it should be, but her heart continued its wild beating, anyway, and so when done, she stopped in the hallway, her back pressed to the wall, the one spot where she knew she couldn’t be seen from any window.

Get a grip, Ramey. This isn’t like you.

Nevertheless, a flash of lights on the living room wall made her catch her breath. In the next instant she recognized them as car lights. Jared? He lived north on Dog-wood, more than a half-mile away. Could he have dressed and gotten here this fast?

Faith!

Anger blossomed anew as Michaele ran to the kitchen. Once again she flung open the door.

With mixed feelings, she heard the white patrol car’s engine shut down just before Jared climbed out and rushed up the steps. It looked as if he’d pulled on the short-sleeved blue shirt he’d been wearing earlier because one of the buttons was undone, and his jeans were zipped but not fastened. Although his face was shadowed by the straw cowboy hat, she saw that his eyes were bloodshot and that the always pronounced shadow of whiskers was darker than ever. The scent of beer that drifted in with him confirmed the hunch that he hadn’t gotten as far as bed yet when she’d called.

“Should you be driving in your condition?” she asked as he entered.

“If that’s an invitation for coffee, I won’t turn it down.”

With a lift of her eyebrows, she took the saucepan they kept on the stove and filled it with what she estimated was enough water to fill a large mug. They didn’t bother with coffee machines in the Ramey household; Faith refused to drink anything but store-bought latte, and Buck doctored anything put before him with so much sugar and milk, Michaele figured instant was good enough.

As she went to the pantry for the jar, she said, “Maybe you should call one of your men to handle this.”

“I’m not drunk.”

She refused to be intimidated by his terse reply. If anyone had the right to be out of sorts, it was her. “I call you and tell you that I think my sister is missing, and not only don’t you ask me any questions about her, but you waste valuable time driving over here when you should be out looking for her.”

“My first priority was to make sure you were all right.”

“Of course I’m all right. I’m here!”

Jared took off his hat and ran his other hand over his hair. “Michaele, you don’t know what’s—” He signaled her to give him a moment, then replaced the hat. “It’s not going to help anything to get sarcastic.”

Although not ready to admit she was out of line, she did back off by getting a mug from an open cabinet. “Faith never got home from school,” she told him. “And there’s been a phone call.”

She repeated everything the caller had said. When she finished, she glanced over her shoulder. Jared just stood there, his eyes closed.

“You’re thinking someone’s pulling one over on me, that I’m being melodramatic. I hope I am. But the more I think about it, the more I feel—He was smiling when he spoke, I could tell. That’s what unnerved me. He was enjoying himself.”

Once Jared met her gaze again, not only did his expression tell her that he didn’t think she was overreacting, but he looked sick to his stomach. “Did you recognize the guy’s voice?”

“No.” She suffered a new pang of guilt. “To be honest, I’m not even sure it was a man.”