“The cloth!” He spat the word. “How did you know? What have you done—hacked into my computer? Not enough to steal my watch, now you want to take my work?”
Kaitlan threw another helpless look at Margaret. The woman’s face creased in sadness. She closed her eyes and shook her head.
Oh.
The horrible truth sank into Kaitlan. Her grandfather was talking nonsense. Forget not being able to write— the King of Suspense was now nothing but a mindless old man.
Kaitlan’s heart folded up. She couldn’t bear this. She wanted to run out the door and forget she’d ever come.
“Kaitlan!” He shook his fist at her. “Answer me. How did you know?”
She licked her lips. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me!” He reared back, cheeks flaming. “I see what you’re doing. You’re playing with me. You want me put away so you can get my money.” He creaked around toward Margaret. “And you’re in on it. The two of you, planning against me.
Margaret stuck her palms out. “Now calm down, D. You don’t know what you’re—”
“I know exactly what I’m saying! Strangled, using black fabric with green stripes—that’s what!” A ragged vein popped out on his neck. “I’m calling my lawyer. I’ll tell him you two are conspiring.” He jabbed his finger from Margaret to Kaitlan. “You won’t get away with it!”
Kaitlan started to protest, but her mouth snapped closed. A tingle started down in her gut.
“Wait.” She caught her grandfather’s bony wrist. “What do you know about the fabric? All I know is—this is the third victim in Gayner it’s been used on in the past year.”
“Third? In a
“Please. Lives may depend on it. Including mine. What do you know?”
Her grandfather’s forehead flattened. He pulled back and looked to Margaret. She nodded in encouragement. His eyelids flickered. In that little motion, Kaitlan saw his vulnerability. He wanted to believe them.
He straightened his shoulders. Lifting his arm from Kaitlan’s grasp with all the dignity he could muster, he raised his chin, surveying her with the haughty expression she knew so well. For a moment he looked like the grandfather she remembered.
Relief burst in Kaitlan’s chest.
“The fabric you spoke of. Silk, is it?”
Her eyes widened. “Yes.”
He nodded. “Of course. Because it’s straight from the manuscript I’ve been working on for the past year. My antagonist’s MO—the crazed killer who hears the dead knocking. He strangles his victims using a black silk cloth with green stripes.”
UNTITLED MS.
nine
The fabric silks across Hugh’s palms like the soft kiss of a lover.
Black with green stripes. An alluring sight, fraught with familiarity. He balls the long, enticing strip, raises it to his nostrils. Breathes in deeply. The scent of promise and lust, joy and betrayal, ecstasy and revenge.
The scent of death.
His eyes consume her lithe form across the dim and crowded bar. She leans with nonchalance against a railing, wine glass in hand, held up and crooked toward her bare decolletage. So casual, so cool. In a motion of pure fluidity her left fingers ease a strand of blonde hair from her temple. Her glossed red lips are parted, bent in a slight smile of amusement at the story of the hopeful male before her. Her lashes are feathery, thick. When she laughs her head tilts back, exposing the tan suppleness of her throat.
Hugh’s fingers flex.
She is a goddess.
She is a witch.
No one pays the slightest attention to him, but that’s the story of his life. No matter. He has learned to edit its once stuttered prose. He sits in a corner on a three-legged stool, his face and torso beyond the umbra of light. Pale white rays from an overhead lamp spill across his jeaned legs, puddling on the hardwood floor. His hands, rubbing the black and green vesture of his vengeance, rest against his chest. Hugh arches his shoulder blades against the wall, imagining the mystery his half-illumed body must surely project—should anyone notice.
No one will.
They don’t see, though they seek him. They don’t know, though the criminal profilers have psychoanalyzed him to the core.
The cloth brought him here. To
Whenever he lifts it from his dresser drawer, cradles it in his arms, Hugh feels the power. It electrifies his veins with desire. Always, always it sings him into the night, and he follows, captive to its siren song. Until it leads him to the one who must die.
Across the bar, for no apparent reason her head turns—and she gazes in Hugh’s direction.
ten
Darell studied his granddaughter’s reaction. She may have fooled him before but not this time. He wasn’t a doddering old man. He still had his wits about him.
Kaitlan’s cheeks washed white. She stared at him, arms sliding up to cross against her chest. A protective gesture.
Her grandmother used to do that.
Darell’s heart cramped.
Kaitlan had grown to look so much like Gretchen. She was no longer the ragged, hard-faced teenager with movements jerky from crack. Her features had softened, filled out. And she had a new confidence. Those wide-set brown eyes held light in them, even now through her fear. Her shoulder-length hair was lustrous, stylishly cut in layers with bangs. That upturned nose, the oval face—all Gretchen.
Darell’s fingers tightened on his cane. He set his jaw, casting a sideways glance at Margaret. No deceit on that face he knew so well. She looked completely flummoxed. He could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. She held his gaze, obviously trying to read him, trying to figure out if this was one of his “loose goose” moments.
Stupid woman.
“Your manuscript?” Kaitlan swallowed. “I don’t … what do you mean?”
He looked down his nose, surveying his granddaughter under half-hooded eyes.
No sign of her lying either.
It hit him then—a punch in the solar plexus. Breath snagged in his throat. Could this be true? A real-life killer,
