Midnight Exposure (Midnight #1)(42)

The Black Bear Inn was only a few blocks away, but Nathan would feel better if he saw her inside just the same. Just because she was through with his sorry old ass didn’t mean he wouldn’t continue to love her.

“No. Jed’s waiting outside.”

“You shouldn’t string him along like that, Mandy.” Nathan felt the fatherlike frown pull at his mouth. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt paternal toward her, and that dynamic to their relationship disturbed him. Mandy’s dad had died when she was young. Had Nathan taken advantage of her yearning for a father? If so, he was a poor excuse for a human being.

Again, the river called.

Mandy shook her head. Denial tinged her voice with irritation. “Jed and I are just friends. I’ve known him since grade school.”

“Honey, that man is in love with you. Probably been that way since grade school.”

“No way. Yeah, he cares, but like a brother.”

Nathan held back the retort. Mandy was clueless about Jed. The hunting guide looked at her with big soulful eyes like one of his faithful Labrador retrievers. Jed wasn’t very smart, but he’d figured out that he wouldn’t have a future with Mandy. Still, the hunter would do anything for her. Nathan saw the pain in Jed’s eyes every time he was in the same room as Mandy. Nathan could empathize. He felt like a million gallons of water were pressing on his chest as she turned and walked out of his office—and his life.

The jingle of the bell on the glass door and the vroom of Jed’s truck punctuated her exit. An empty silence, hollow as Nathan’s heart, filled the diner as he grabbed his coat and headed out the back door, the confines of his small office suddenly intolerable. His official office in the municipal building next door was more spacious but lacked privacy.

White flakes danced in the beam of the streetlight. Slush packed under his feet. He sniffed, looking for that crisp dampness to refresh him, but the winter night just felt dark, cold, and endless.

His SUV huddled alone in the back lot. He’d plowed the rectangle several times, although a few inches had accumulated since the last once-over. South of Maine, the East Coast had gotten slammed. Three feet of snow was a state of emergency in the lower states, but in this neck of the woods it wasn’t a big deal.

Plows had cleared Main Street and moved on to the secondary roads with practiced efficiency. The two-mile-long trip home took all of ten minutes. Evan had run the blower. Neatly cleaved banks of snow flanked the driveway. Nathan parked in the attached garage and depressed the automatic door button.

With the engine still running, he sat for a few long minutes. Wouldn’t be a bad way to go. Easier than a swan dive off the bridge. Peaceful. Quiet. Painless. Sure as hell beat a slow decaying of the brain. How long would it take? A garden hose hung on the far wall. That would speed things up. All his problems would just fade away.

Evan’s inside.

If his son heard the door close and the engine still running, he’d be out here in a minute. Besides, Nathan couldn’t abandon his boy. Evan was far too young to be saddled with their uncle’s long, drawn-out illness and death.

Uncle Aaron wouldn’t go gently into that good night.

Nathan turned the key and shut off the engine. He held his breath as he pushed open the door and stepped into the kitchen. Evan was pouring boiling water from the kettle into a cracked old teapot on the granite island. Nathan exhaled. Nothing terrible had happened. Maybe they could have an almost normal, quiet evening.

He turned and hung his coat on the rack in the corner, then toed off his boots.

Evan turned. The blond goatee didn’t make him look as old as he hoped. At twenty-two, Evan could pass for sixteen. “Hey, Dad.”

“Hey. Uncle Aaron’s tea?”

“Yeah.” Evan set the steaming kettle on the unlit stove. The aromatic concoction of his uncle’s special tea wafted toward him. Uncle Aaron was grasping at the straws of alternative medicine. Nathan could hardly blame him. Once his uncle had been a professor. To watch the former scholar in him slide into madness broke Nathan’s heart. “Think this stuff is OK for him to drink? I thought mistletoe was poisonous.”

“The berries, yes. But with the leaves it depends on the variety.” Nathan shrugged. His uncle’s disease was progressing, defying all medical treatment. “Doubt it matters much.”

Uncle Aaron was dying. But the end wouldn’t come before he’d endured a year of suffering, just like Nathan’s mother, Aaron’s sister. Nathan almost wished he had the balls to end it for his uncle now, but there was always that grain of hope germinating in the back of his mind.

Uncle Aaron’s voice carried from the basement stairwell, the place where they’d stored his collection. “The crow. The crow is here again.”

Evan sighed hard. “He keeps talking about a crow following him around down there. Been at it for hours.”

Hallucinations were new. The relief Nathan felt at arriving home and finding relative peace evaporated in one beat of his pulse.

Crows portended death.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Jayne awoke to darkness, and for a brief second she was back in that dim, frigid basement. Sweat-dampened sheets clung to her limbs. Despite the warm blankets that covered her, a chill burrowed into her body and lodged itself in her bones.

Her body tumbled onto concrete. She rolled, helpless and limp. A distorted and blurry shadow loomed. Callused hands grasped her wrists. Metal bit into her flesh as her wrists were bound. Fingers stroked her face, lovingly circled the scar on her cheek. A knife sliced her palm. Her stomach heaved.