Annie stepped around Jake, kneeling beside the woman and peering down at the bruises as thunder boomed behind the mountain again.
“In all honesty, Jake, these could be older bruises. Hickeys, even. They could have been there for hours before she died. Days, maybe, but there’s only one way to be sure.”
Jake screwed the lens cap on the camera. “Autopsy?”
“Autopsy.” Annie nodded. “If the cause of death comes back as asphyxiation, I guess we’ll know for sure what we’re dealing with.”
The rain was starting in earnest, tapping against the rocks, and Jake lifted his face to the sky.
“If they can manage to get her out of here today, Doc Porter said he’ll be able to look her over first thing in the morning, so hopefully we’ll have some answers soon.” Jake lowered his chin, meeting Annie’s eyes. “But for right now, I need you to not say anything to anyone. Not my parents, not anyone in town. Nobody. Until we know for sure what we’re dealing with, we have to be careful how much information gets out.”
Annie nodded. “Okay.”
She understood. In a town this size, one whisper about murder could be the spark that set the whole house ablaze. For the time being, she andJake had to bear this burden alone, and the weight of it was like an anvil on her shoulders. It felt oddly personal. A dead outsider in a closely knit town. A woman with no voice of her own. No way to reveal what had happened to her.
“And, Annie?” Jake’s voice was hard. “You better find that cougar. Just in case.”
Annie nodded again. “I will.”
The raindrops were falling faster now, pattering on the rocks with the cadence of a snare drum. There was no more time to lose.
“We have to go,” Annie said, rising to her feet.
Jake hesitated, gazing down at the woman on the rocks. “I hate to leave her out here.”
Annie shook her head as the rain fell between them. “We have to.”
He nodded and turned to leave with Annie a step behind, following him toward the woods as the storm rose behind them.
Chapter 9DANIEL
A woman screamed.
The sound ripped through the woods on the far side of the lake and echoed like a shock wave over the water to where Daniel stood on the dock, winding a spool of fishing line in the cool, twilight air.
His hand stilled, and the crawling sensation of goose bumps ran the length of his spine as he scanned the dense forest from where the piercing, guttural sound had come. The last echoes of the cry fell away into the forest behind him, and Daniel stared at the southern shore, his nostrils flaring with each shallow breath. Every hair on his neck and arms was standing at attention, every sense alert, but the sound did not come again.
A hiker?
No. Not this time of day. Not in such a remote patch of forest with less than half an hour of light left.
He waited, watching the woods for movement, for whoever had screamed to come sprinting through the trees, waving their arms and shouting for help—but there was only the violet calm of dusk and the shadowy firs across the water, tall and still.
He set the half-wound spool of fishing line on the dock and turnedfor the door. He should call Jake. Get him up here with his badge and take the boat across the water. If there was trouble, the last thing he needed was to be caught out there alone, with no one to prove that he wasn’t the cause of it.
Daniel had one hand on the doorknob when the sound came again, longer this time, drawn out. It was terror personified. A death scream, the sound of a woman in the peak agony of torture, and he yanked open the door and ran for the phone.
He lifted the receiver from the wall, fingers poised to dial, when the small white card pinched behind the phone stopped him short. He had memorized the number on that card even before the taillights of Annie’s Jeep vanished into the trees, and he hesitated now, his finger hovering over the buttons.
If you see any tracks or if you hear him, and believe me, you’ll know if you do, give me a call.
Daniel shot a glance over his shoulder toward the open door and the lake beyond.
Was that it? He’d never heard a cougar’s scream before. The only animal sounds that came at night were the chirping of insects, the haunting yips of coyotes, and the deep snuffling grunts of black bears who went nosing around the boathouse in search of food every once in a while. He’d read about the eerie vixen’s cry made by the large cat that was often mistaken for a woman in peril, and therehadbeen something otherworldly in the shrieking tenor of that scream, something both male and female that had made him want to sprint inside and lock all three dead bolts behind him.
Daniel deliberated, staring down at the buttons as the dial tone hummed softly through the earpiece.
He had one reason to call Annie Heston. Just one. But there were about a dozen reasons not to.
