me.” He turned and started slowly up the stairs. He could hear Grace and Eddie following behind him, Grace’s breath coming out in frantic whimpers, Eddie murmuring words of encouragement.
J.D. They were both terrified of J.D.
Lincoln reached the top of the stairs. There was no way around it; he’d have to lead them through the blood- splattered kitchen, right past Jack Reid’s body. If Grace was going to collapse in hysterics, it would be here.
Thank god for Eddie. The boy draped his arm around his stepmother, hugging her face against his chest. “Go, Chief Kelly,” he whispered urgently. “Please, just get us out of here.”
Lincoln led them through the kitchen, into the hallway. There he halted, every nerve suddenly giving off panic alarms. By the beam of his flashlight, he saw that the front door hung open. Did I close it when I came in the house?
He whispered, “Wait here,” and he inched toward the front door. Glancing outside, he saw moonlit-silvered snow. The cruiser was parked about thirty feet away. Everything lay still, as silent as air trapped in a bell jar.
Something is wrong. We are being watched. We are being stalked.
He turned to Eddie and Grace and whispered: “Run to the car. Now!”
But Grace didn’t run. Instead she backed away, and as she stumbled past a moonlit window, Lincoln saw her face was gazing upward. Toward the stairs.
He pivoted, just as the shadow came hurtling down at him. He was slammed backwards so hard the breath whooshed from his lungs. Pain sliced across his cheek. He staggered sideways, just as the knife blade came down again, stabbing deep into the wall near his head. His weapon had fallen, knocked from his grasp by that first tackle. Now he scrabbled frantically on the floor, trying to locate the gun in the dark.
He heard the squeak of the knife being pried free from the wood, and spun around to see the shadow rushing at him. He brought his left arm up just as the knife came stabbing down. The blade struck bone, and he heard his own gasp of pain like a distant, foreign sound.
Somehow he grasped the boy’s wrist in his right hand and twisted the knife free.
It thudded to the floor. The boy wrenched away, stumbling backwards.
Lincoln dropped down and grabbed the knife. His sense of triumph lasted only for an instant.
The boy had risen to his feet as well, his silhouette framed by the window. He was holding Lincoln’s gun. He swung it around, aiming the barrel straight at Lincoln.
The explosion was so loud it shattered the window. Glass blew out in a hail of shards, raining down onto the porch.
No pain. Why was he feeling no pain?
Frozen in bewilderment, Lincoln watched as J.D. Reid, backlit by moonlight through the broken window, slowly crumpled to the floor. A footstep creaked behind him, then he heard Eddie’s tremulous voice ask:
“Did I kill him?”
“We need light,” said Lincoln.
He heard Eddie stumble through the darkness into the kitchen and down the cellar steps. Seconds later, he flipped the circuit breakers, and all the lights came on.
One look at the body told Lincoln J.D. was dead.
Eddie came back out of the kitchen, still holding Jack Reid’s shotgun. He slowed, halted beside his stepmother. They were both unable to pry their gazes from the dead boy, unable to utter a sound, as the terrible vision of J.D. Reid, collapsed in a pool of blood, burned its way forever into their brains.
“Amelia,” said Lincoln, and he glanced up the stairs, toward the second floor.
“Which bedroom is hers?”
Eddie looked at him with dazed eyes. “The second one. On the right..
Lincoln ran up the stairs. At his first glimpse of Amelia’s bedroom door, he knew the worst had already happened. The door had been hacked open, and splinters of wood littered the hallway. The girl must have tried to lock J.D. out, but a few swings of an ax had shattered the wood. Dreading the scene he knew lay within, he stepped into the girl’s room.
He saw the ax, embedded in a chair, almost cleaving it in two. He saw the shattered mirror, the ripped dresses, the closet door hanging askew on a broken hinge. Then he stared at the girl’s bed.
It was empty.
Mitchell Groome was behind the wheel of Claire Elliot’s Subaru as he drove slowly down Beech Hill. He had waited until midnight, an hour when no witnesses would be awake, but unfortunately the sky was clear, and the light of the full moon reflected with alarming brilliance off the snow. It made him feel exposed and vulnerable. Full moon or not, he had to finish this tonight. Too much had already gone wrong, and he had been forced to take far more drastic measures than he’d planned.
His job had started off as a simple assignment, to keep an eye on Dr. Tutwiler’s work, and, posing as a journalist asking questions, to quietly and discreetly assess the natural course of parasitic infection in the youth of Tranquility.
His job had suddenly become complicated by Claire Elliot, whose suspicions had veered dangerously close to the truth. Then Doreen Kelly had added an even worse complication.
He would definitely have some explaining to do when he returned to Boston.
He felt certain he could come up with a reasonable explanation for Max Tutwiler’s disappearance. He could hardly tell his superiors at Anson Biologicals what had actually happened: that Max had wanted to quit after he’d learned how Doreen Kelly really died. I was hired to find the worms for you, Max had protested Anson told me this was nothing more than a biological treasure hunt. No one said anything about murder and for what? To keep this species a corporate secret?
What Max refused to understand was that the development of a new drug was like prospecting for gold. Secrecy was paramount. You cannot not let the competition know you are closing in on a fresh vein of treasure.
The treasure, in this case, was a hormone produced by a unique invertebrate, a hormone whose defining effect was the enhancement of aggression. A minute dose was all it took to hone the fighting edge of a soldier in battle. It was a killing potion with obvious military applications.
Only two months ago, Anson Biologicals and its parent company, Sloan-Routhier Pharmaceuticals, had learned of the worms’ existence when the teenage sons of a Virginia couple were admitted to the psychiatric wing of a military hospital.
One of the boys had expelled a worm-a bioluminescent species that none of the military pathologists could identify The family had spent the month of July in a lakeside cottage in Maine.
Groome turned onto Toddy Point Road. In the seat beside him, Claire groaned and moved her head. He hoped, for her sake, that she didn’t fully regain consciousness, because the end that awaited her was not a merciful one. It was another unpleasant necessity. The death of a woman as pitiful as Doreen Kelly had raised few eyebrows in town. But a local doctor couldn’t simply vanish without questions being asked. It was important for the authorities to find her body, and to conclude her death was accidental.
The road was only gentle rises and dips now, a lonely drive at this hour of night. Groome’s headlights skimmed across deserted blacktop crusted with ice and road sand, the beams illuminating an arc just wide enough to see the trees pressing in on both sides. A black tunnel, the only opening a swath of stars overhead.
He approached another curve, where the blacktop veered sharply left, and braked to a stop at the top of the boat ramp.
Claire groaned again as he dragged her from the passenger seat and positioned her behind the steering wheel. He buckled her seat belt. Then, with the engine still running, he put the car in gear, released the hand brake, and let the door swing shut.
The car began to roll forward, down the gentle grade of the boat ramp.
Groome stood on the roadside, watching as the car reached the lake and continued rolling. There was snow on the ice, and the tires slowly churned through it, the headlights jittery on the barren expanse. Ten yards. Twenty How far before it reached thin ice? It was only the first week of December; the lake would not yet be frozen thick enough to support the weight of a car.
Thirty yards. That’s when Groome heard the crack, sharp as gunfire. The front of the car dipped down, its headlights suddenly swallowed up by snow and fracturing ice. Another crack, and the car tilted crazily forward, the
