At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(60)

She slipped outside, closing the door behind her. The volume of the music fell to that of a college dorm party.

She flicked on the flashlight. The wooden deck gleamed with moisture. Straight ahead, shadows leapt and slithered in the knot garden with its square hedges and blind corners. Evan loved the garden. But the tall boxwood made Addie think of the maze in Stephen King’s The Shining; she half expected a man with an ax to leap out at her, swinging for her chest.

Now she skirted the garden on its west side, running along a narrow path between the hedges and a thick forest of winter-shorn trees. Her bare feet found every stone and root. Lower branches scratched her face, clawing for her eyes. On her right, the hedges kept a menacing pace, like a square-shouldered enemy force.

At the crest of the low hill, she hesitated, her breath coming hard. The trail led down to a large rectangular building—the mews. The mews had two rooms, a storage closet for equipment, and an outdoor weathering yard. A single door faced south. Five barred windows—designed to let Ginny enjoy the light and the view without tempting her to flee—were arranged on one end. More barred windows on the roof let in light and—when hinged opened—the elements. Evan had explained that because hawks depend on their sight more than any other sense, they need to be able to see out. But they also require a place where they can retreat and not be seen.

A single light fell through the slats on the south-side windows and patterned the dark.

She skidded down the slope, rehearsing in her mind the scolding she’d give Evan for whatever carelessness had diverted his music system into its martial assault. Not to mention what the rain had done to her dress.

A sharp sound broke her out of her reverie. The snap of a branch somewhere up ahead.

She played her light over the still-distant building. There! A form—little more than a shadow, standing by the door.

“Hey!” she shouted.

The shadow shifted, and her light caught something pale—skin or clothing—before the shadow moved away from the building and broke into a sprint, racing across the grass, heading east to where there was a small pond and more gardens and then a high fence.

She bounded the rest of the way down the wet hillside in awkward leaps, trying to keep her light trained on the fleeing figure.

“Stop!” she shouted. “Police!”

The figure kept running.

With the image of the stick-and-twine figure in her mind, she stopped and raised her gun, then just as quickly lowered it. Leaving a doll—no matter how ugly—on someone’s front step was hardly a capital offense. And for all she knew, she’d be firing on the gardener. Or a neighbor.

She skidded to a halt at the building’s single door, grabbed the doorknob, and twisted. The door was locked. She punched in the code on the keypad, and this time the knob turned soundlessly. She let herself inside.

Ginny was on a high perch, preening herself. Evan sat nearby, thumbing through something on his phone. He looked up as Addie came in.

“Sorry about the noise,” he said. “I was just scrolling through an online edition of Beowulf. Not a great translation.”

She closed and locked the door behind her. “Did you know you just had a visitor?”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone was standing at the door to the mews. And, Evan, there’s a super-weird doll on your doorstep.”

“A doll?”

“Just a bunch of twigs tied together, really. But there’s something creepy about it. Did you piss off one of your students? Someone who has the code to your gate?”

A series of expressions swept across Evan’s face—surprise, concern, unease. But he settled on an expression of disinterest and shrugged. “Anything is possible. Did you scare off the intruder?”

“For the moment.”

“Well, I can’t speak to the doll.” He stood and stretched. “But that might have been Jo you saw at the door. Sometimes she comes through our properties to visit Ginny. Strictly without her parents’ permission. I’ve told her to always call ahead, but tonight she was disappointed that—Addie, are you okay?”

Addie’s heart felt like it had just flatlined. She leaned against the door as her legs went weak. She nodded at Evan, but she wasn’t anything like okay. Had she really aimed her gun at a little girl? Was this what happened to a cop who spent all day hunting killers?

“Let’s go back to the house,” Evan said. “I’ll get you a drink.”

Addie looked down and saw that her hands were shaking. She shoved them in her pockets. “The music,” she managed.

“That is a problem. I’ve called the company that installed the system. They’ve promised to get back to me.”

She managed to push herself upright. The bottoms of her feet throbbed. “You run the music off an app, don’t you?”

“I’ve tried everything. It—”

“Delete it.”

“Really? You think—”

“Please.” Her hands balled into fists. “Just try it. Or I’m going to go back up there and take a sledgehammer to your walls until I find the speakers and rip them out by their little wires.”

“Ah, the rational approach.”

Evan tapped a couple of times on his phone’s screen, and a moment later, the only sound filling the night was the rain, quieter now, gentling onto the ceiling of the mews. Ginny gave a contented squeak, the shake of her feathers a soft rustle like the turning of old pages.