Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(31)

Had she imagined the thing outside? She was hallucinating from hitting her head, that was it. No, she’d seen the thing, heard those sounds before she’d hit her head.

It came again, the nightmare. A creature was peering in the window—black face, empty eyes—and antlers, sharp, long antlers with red points. She was face-to-face with it through the dirty glass....

Kate’s shrill scream hurt her own ears.





10

Grant raised his hand to knock on Kate’s door. Was that a scream? It sounded as if it came from around the back of the house. It was nearly dark. He didn’t see anyone. Her rental car was parked in the driveway and looked empty.

“Kate,” he called. “You out here?”

He heard pounding. He sprinted into the backyard. Someone hammering in the garage? “Kate!”

“Here! In here!”

The garage. She must have hurt herself, maybe fell or twisted an ankle. He ran closer. She was pounding on the inside of the door, not the big door but the small side one. He saw an unlocked padlock had somehow slipped into the hasp on the door.

“Kate? Just a sec. The padlock slipped down when you pounded on the door but it’s not locked.”

The lock looked old but lifted free. To his surprise, she yanked the door inward and threw herself into his arms and held tight. Her hair was a mess, her slacks had dirty knees and she had tears on her face—Kate crying? He couldn’t believe it.

He clasped her to him. “What happened? You locked yourself inside?”

“Someone else did it. Come around the back with me.”

“Did you see someone? They’re still out back?”

“I saw someone—some thing. Oh, my head,” she said as she dragged him around the back of the garage facing the huge cornfield. “I hit it on a metal chair. Got dizzy, saw colors.”

“I’ll run you into the Regional Med center.”

She turned back to him and gripped his upper arm so hard it hurt. “Grant, it was someone in a mask!”

“What do you mean? If you hit your head—”

“No, I absolutely saw it, heard it. Footsteps, a snort. It was a deer-head mask with antlers like the Beastmaster.”

Oh, yeah, he thought, she’d hit her head for sure. But the image of his own Adena mask flashed through his brain. “Kate, listen to me,” he insisted, reaching out to steady her, trying to sound calm when his heart was pounding. “There are deer around here—stags, too. If there was one hanging around this building, the animal could have rubbed against the door, jolted the shackle of the lock into place. I see deer out in back of my house all the time. As for the sounds, it’s windy, so who knows what’s rattling outside?”

“No, it was a person in a stag mask,” she insisted as they stopped in front of the back garage window. “It could not have been an animal, not the way it stared at me—face-to-face with its eyes kind of hidden or sunken in.” She bent to look down at the ground. “Oh, no. Just grass here, no footprints.”

“Or deer prints.”

“But its nose brushed the window—the mask, too.” She bent close to the dirty pane of glass, but he saw her wobble. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her back to lean against him. “See!” she insisted, trying to tug him closer to the window. The streak across the dirty pane was almost impossible to discern in the dark. Night was sliding down from the hills and creeping across the fields, and her Adena-obsessed imagination had played a trick on her.

“It’s getting too dark to see, but that streak could have been made by anything,” he said. “Come on. We’re stopping by the med-center E.R. so they can have a look at your head.”

She turned in his arms to face him. “You have to believe me. I hadn’t hit my head when I saw it.”

“What I do believe is that, if it was a person, you can’t stay here tonight. If someone was spying on you, tried to trap you or scare you, it’s a good thing I showed up. Who knows what might have happened next with you locked in there? Come on. Let’s get your things, and you can stay at my place tonight, even longer if necessary. Brad can easily move out of the guest suite to his old room. We can tell Deputy Miller about what you saw tomorrow if you want.”

“I’d better get my laptop and the star. I was going to leave them in the garage, but they’re not safe now. I wasn’t scared to be here alone before, but I feel—threatened. If someone wants to scare me away, maybe it’s Bright Star. Maybe he had someone watching the mounds and knows I took his stars. Or, if Carson stopped and talked to him when he left—”

“Carson Cantrell was here?” he demanded, following her into the dark garage. “I have no doubt he’s familiar with this so-called Beastmaster mask, but why would he want to scare you?”

“It can’t be him, but yes, he was here this afternoon. I just meant he could have visited Bright Star and got him even more upset at me. Carson took one of the stars to get the blood analyzed in a lab. We ran into Brad uptown at the English pub. Over here, I know right where I left my laptop and the other star,” she told him, feeling her way along. “It wasn’t dark when I put them here. And let’s really padlock the place this time. I’ll take the key from the kitchen when I get my things.”

Grant took the laptop from her, then kept an arm around her waist as they went out. He put the lock in place and clicked it closed.