Page 3 of Reaper

His other hand reached for the door handle.

I stepped into the open, directly into his sightline through the passenger window, and tapped the glass with one knuckle.

He froze. His eyes found mine through the half-open window. Dark. Assessing. The same empty calculation I’d seen at the festival, but sharper now, honed by surprise.

“Evening,” I said.

He didn’t answer. His right hand was still on the console, inches from whatever he’d been reaching for. The badge lay flat on the leather, catching the faint orange glow from the festival. Detective. County Sheriff’s Department. The name was too small to read from this angle.

The hayride wagon rattled past, thirty feet to our left, heading for the festival entrance. The woman never looked our way. She was watching the bonfires now, the flames reflected in her eyes as the wagon carried her back into the light and noise and safety of the crowd.

The watcher’s expression flickered. He looked at me the way a man looks at a problem he hasn’t figured out how to solve yet.

“Club business?” he asked. His voice was flat. Professional. The kind that doesn’t give anything away.

“Peacekeeping,” I said. “Nothing personal.”

He held my gaze for three long seconds. Then he nodded, once, sharp, and reached for the gearshift.

“Tell your president I was never here.”

“I don’t tell him anything he doesn’t ask for.”

A thin smile touched the corner of his mouth. Not friendly. The kind that acknowledges an opponent who understands the game.

The SUV pulled away, gravel spinning under its tires, heading for the main road at a pace that suggested he had somewhere else to be. I watched the taillights until they disappeared around the bend. Then I keyed the radio.

“Clear. Watcher was county. Gone.”

The radio clicked. Twice, this time. All good.

I stood in the cold for a minute, listening to the festival noise swell and fade as the wind shifted. The woman was safe in the crowd now, anonymous, just another face under the orange light. Whatever had brought the detective here tonight—whatever case, whatever suspicion—it would keep for another day. Or not. Not my problem.

My problem was the festival. The crowd. The peace.

I turned and walked back toward the bonfires, boots on gravel, eyes already moving grid-pattern across the orange-lit sprawl, looking for the next thing that didn’t belong.

Chapter 2

REAPER

The crowd had thickened since I’d stepped back from the parking lot. More bodies, more noise, more of that orange firelight turning everything into something carved and temporary. I worked the fence line behind the hayride queue with my shoulders loose and my eyes doing what they’d been trained to do: read the pattern, find the break.

The PA system near the main stage was blasting something loud enough to vibrate the gravel under my boots. Distorted guitars, some Halloween-themed rock cover with too much reverb. A couple hundred people were bouncing along to it near the bonfires, drinks raised, costumes catching the light. Skeletons, vampires and at least three guys in cheap Scream masks. Kids ran everywhere, shrieking for the sake of shrieking, sugar-fueled and wild. The hayride wagon was grinding its way along the track behind me, wheels on gravel, chain clanking through the dark stretch of trees. The attendant’s voice carried over it all, shouting his rehearsed spiel about ghosts and ghouls. Nobody was listening.

I’d been standing at the edge of the hayride fence for twenty minutes. Long enough to map the flow, the choke points, the blind spots where the bonfire light didn’t reach. The club had three men working the perimeter. I could feel them out there without seeing them—radio clicks, subtle shifts in the crowd, an awareness that came from working together long enough to read each other’s silences.

Then I saw him.

Twenty feet out, working the edge of the hayride queue with the kind of patience that doesn’t belong at a festival. Generic skeleton hoodie, dark jeans, boots that hadn’t seen enough mud to be convincing. His shoulders were squared under the hood, right hand drifting toward the hem of his jacket every time the crowd surged loud enough to cover movement. Not casual. Deliberate. The drift-and-pause of a man keeping his hand close to hardware.

His eyes never left the woman standing three people deep in the hayride queue.

She was small. Dark hair pulled back, skeleton hoodie of her own—not the same design, something with more glitter, the kind you buy at a drugstore the night before Halloween because you forgot to plan a costume. Boots with a heel just high enough to make standing on gravel uncomfortable. She was scrolling her phone, thumb moving slow, head tilted to keep the screen out of the bonfire glare. Normal behavior. Bored, half-present waiting, the kind everybody does in a line.

Except the man in the skeleton hoodie wasn’t waiting. He was hunting.

I clocked the distance between them. Fifteen feet. Closing. He was using the crowd noise as cover, moving only when the PA system hit a peak or when a group of drunk college kids staggered past laughing too loud. Each step brought him closer to her back. Each pause put his hand within an inch of his jacket hem.