Beth was stunning, her hair straight, a nice blouse and jeans on. “Dad’s working today. In his illustrious words…” She waved a hand to her daughter.
“A road crew never sleeps. I know, I know.” Isabelle took a seat, and so did Taylor and Brent.
They ate with Beth hovering over them, asking questions about their school, some already answered the night before. Her aunt had a nervous energy around her, as if she was waiting to talk to Taylor about something but didn’t know how to broach the subject. Taylor loved the smell of her kitchen. It had the scent you could only find in an older house, one with lots of home-cooked meals and poor ventilation.
“What are you up to today, Auntie?” Taylor asked.
“The search party’s out again today. I thought about going, but…” Beth looked over at Brent, then Taylor.
“He knows about it. All about it,” Taylor said, as if this explained everything.
“Good. Good. How’s your dad, Taylor?” Beth asked out of the blue.
Taylor poked at some scrambled eggs. “Don’t you talk to him, like, every week?”
Her aunt smiled. “I do. I’m just feeling uneasy this morning, having you here. Don’t you remember what your grandma told your father at Greenbriar that day?”
“What did she say?” Brent asked as he reached for the last piece of bacon.
“She said she couldn’t protect Taylor. That was why Paul wasn’t supposed to come back to the Creek,” Beth said.
“What the hell does that mean?” Brent blurted out.
“We aren’t sure, but with Brittany missing, we have to be careful. Whatever you three are up to, do not let Taylor out of your sight.” Beth stared from Brent to Isabelle. “And I want you to take your uncle’s rifle with you in the trunk.”
Taylor wasn’t a fan of guns – another thing she got from her dad – but Brent looked only too happy for the protection. “Good idea.”
“If this thing is still here in a nest…” Taylor frowned at her cousin. “Do you think shooting it’s going to do any good? Plus, didn’t Uncle Darrel shoot his friend when he tried to hit it?”
Brent’s mouth dropped. “I need to hear this story.”
Aunt Beth stood up, grabbing her purse. “Just take it. Isabelle knows how to use it.”
The girl gave a thin smile and pushed her plate aside.
After reading the journal last night, Taylor couldn’t argue with her aunt. It was dangerous for her to be there, but it was just as dangerous for anyone in their bloodline to be near the creature. For a second, she considered telling Brent they were leaving. She could make the drive to Manhattan, spend the week with her family, and forget all about Red Creek. But something in her gut told her to stay put.
_______________
Tom was heading over to Red Creek and had on his sunglasses, even though it was another overcast day in the county. Since when had every damned spring morning become a dreary cloud-covered mess? He didn’t remember this from last year’s thaw. He recalled a bright sun and happy people. Now it was the opposite, and he was beginning to understand the foul mood of his co-workers, even in Gilden.
Tom took a sip of coffee from his shiny metal travel mug and noticed his tongue felt like a cat’s. He wished he’d brought some water instead. He felt hung-over, even though he rarely had more than a glass of red wine on occasion. Last night had been no exception, and he’d gone to bed as soon as he’d entered his tiny house.
His first stop was meeting with the guy who’d seen something out his back window on the night the girl had gone missing. He was a single man in his early forties, living with his mother. Tom was really seeing the truth about the neighboring town over the last few days. It was in a never-ending economic slump. He’d thought Gilden was small when he’d moved there, but they had most major fast-food places, not that that was a good thing.
To Tom, it was more a mark of the town’s size than anything. But it also had a recreational center, and a hospital equipped with an emergency room and mostly empty beds. It fed the county, full of eight smaller towns like Red Creek. They had four schools, and a big high school that few of the kids from this area attended.
Anyone within five miles of Red Creek had to go there by zoning law, even though he’d heard a few bending the rules if they knew whose itch to scratch. It made Tom think about Abigail and her parents owning the dealership in Gilden. Even they couldn’t get around the bureaucracy of those zones, and that made Tom a happy man.
He pulled into town, taking the highway instead of the back roads this morning. Something about seeing Buzz and his woman last night at the orchard set off an alarm bell in his already throbbing head. She thought she’d heard a scream. At around eleven. He was guessing Brittany had been abducted from her home at close to ten, so the timeline would be sound.
Deputy Rich had sent him the resident listing for the Orchards condo building first thing in the morning, and the record of seedy tenants had a few priors among them, mostly for drugs or public intoxication. Nothing remotely close to abduction or sex crimes.
Oddly enough, there were only two tenants with no priors, and one of them was a seventy-year-old woman from Florida, Emma Jeanne. From the information he’d been given, she’d moved to the area two years ago. They had that in common. Maybe he could use it. He decided to add her to the list of interviews, if only because she was a fish out of water here. She might not have the same Creek-bred superstitions as the rest of them, and being clean made her more likely to come forward with any strange sightings.
Tom absently drove
