The Stroke of Winter(54)

“Wyatt,” Tess said. “I don’t remember leaving the light—”

Just then, Tess’s phone rang. She grabbed it out of her purse and slid her hand out of her mitten to answer it.

“Hi, Tess, it’s Jim,” he said. “This may be an odd question, and I hate to seem like the nosy neighbor, but are you in the house? I thought you were out today.”

Tess locked eyes with Wyatt. “Yes—I mean no,” she said. “Yes, I was out today, and no, I’m not in the house. In fact, if you look out your side window, you’ll see Wyatt and me with his dogs.”

A moment’s pause, then. “Okay, yes, there you are,” Jim said. Tess spotted him in his window, waving. She waved back. “Again, an odd question, but do you have any houseguests?”

Tess locked eyes with Wyatt. “No. Why do you ask?”

Jim took an audible breath in. “Tess, I don’t want to alarm you, but there is someone inside your house.”

His words were calm. Measured. Careful. So as not to cause panic. “In the back room. I can see him—or her—clear as day. A dark figure, silhouetted. I knew you had gone out earlier and wanted to check with you before calling the police, just in case you had a houseguest.”

Tess looked up at the studio, and there it was. She saw what Jim was seeing. A person, a figure, standing in one of the windows.

She pointed to the window. “Do you see what I see?” Tess whispered to Wyatt.

Wyatt nodded, slowly and deliberately. “We’re calling Nick.” He slid his phone out of his jacket pocket to contact the town’s chief of police.

“We see them,” Tess said to Jim. “I’m going to call Nick Stone right now. Stay tuned. And please keep watching.”

Tess rang off and was ready to make that call when she noticed Wyatt’s phone was already at his ear. “Hey, Nick. Wyatt Templeton. We need a squad at La Belle Vie. Tess and I are outside walking my dogs and we can see somebody walking around on the second floor of the house.” Wyatt put the call on speaker so Tess could hear the chief’s response.

“La Belle Vie,” Nick repeated. “I’ll be there in a minute. And I’ll call for backup on the way. You two stay outside until I get there.”

As they both watched the figure moving around near the second-floor windows, Tess tucked her mittened hand into Wyatt’s. They stepped closer to the house, until they were standing on the sidewalk just past the driveway.

A moment later, Nick Stone pulled up.

As he jumped out of the car, Tess pointed to the windows. “Look,” she said. The figure was moving back and forth along the wall of windows, as if pacing.

A loud, long scream pierced the night air.

“What the hell . . .” Nick growled, his eyes trained on the window. “What in God’s name is that?”

The three of them hurried toward the kitchen door as Tess fumbled with her keys. The scream continued, a screech of the damned. Tess’s shaking hands dropped the keys in the snow. Wyatt scooped them up and unlocked the door.

“You two stay out here,” Nick said, drawing his gun.

But the dogs had other plans. They followed Nick inside the house, pulling Wyatt as they went. He tried to hold them back, but they broke free from his grasp on their leashes and bounded into the house. Tess watched as they raced around Nick to the back stairs as though they knew the layout already, and pounded up the stairs. Nick followed closely behind.

Tess looked around wildly for Storm. He was nowhere to be seen. The screaming that came from upstairs rang in her ears, as though someone were being mauled alive. Or burned.

A cacophony of barking and snarling and rage then. Tess and Wyatt locked eyes, and despite what Nick had said, they ran up the stairs and down the hallway toward the studio.

The noise was unbearable.

They burst into the room to see Nick standing there, gun in hand, but his arm hung limply by his side. His mouth was agape, and he was shaking his head.

All three of the dogs seemed to have an invisible enemy cornered on the back wall. Storm, Maya, and Luna were standing in a row, snarling and barking, biting the air, shaking their heads back and forth like they had caught something in their jaws. The screams rang out, like the wail of a demon on a dark night.

And then it was done. Silence fell across the room, an eerie, empty silence. The three dogs sniffed the air. Storm patrolled the perimeter of the room, sniffing and emitting a low growl. Maya and Luna gazed around, their ears up.

Tess’s heart was pounding in her throat.

Nick shook his head. “I know some pretty odd things tend to happen here in Wharton,” he said. “But I’ve never experienced anything like that.” He turned to Tess and Wyatt. “Nobody was here.”

“We all saw—” Tess began.

Nick cut off her words with a raised hand. “I know. I saw a person at the window, too. Plain as day.”

“What was making that god-awful noise?” Tess squeaked out, her voice wavering. Tears were welling up in her eyes. Wyatt wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.

Nick ran a hand over his closely cropped black hair and sighed. “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard. Like someone was being tortured.”

“Or attacked,” Wyatt said, raising his eyebrows. “By a pack of dogs.”

The three of them stood silently for a moment, looking from one to the other. Tess was shaking. She felt cold on the inside.