Midnight Exposure Read online

  Reed swallowed his irritation. “This thing reminds me of the ancient Celtic coin found under that teenager’s body.”

  “Shit. I hope you’re wrong.” Doug lifted a tired shoulder. His eyes shifted to the metal circle and worry creased his face. “I don’t like this at all. Looks like some freaky occult thing. I’m going to send this to the state lab. Maybe they have experts who can make some sense of it. I don’t even have a friggin’ office. At minimum they can tell us what it is and take prints from it.”

  Jayne reached for a piece of toast. “Any word on what started the fire?”

  Doug’s mouth went tight. “Point of origin was Hugh’s space heater. So far it looks accidental.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Reed asked.

  “I won’t believe anything until I get the final report.” Doug’s head shot up. His face was flushed with red spots. “But if it looks like a horse and smells like a horse, I don’t have time to go lookin’ for a zebra.”

  A bonfire flared in Reed’s gut. “Jayne was attacked twice. Her photographic equipment and purse were in Hugh’s office. Don’t you think the fire was a pretty big coincidence?”

  “Coincidences do happen.”

  My ass, thought Reed. “You’re going to blow off the similarity between this thing”—he nodded at the gold object—“and an artifact recently found under a corpse?”

  “I will not ignore it once it’s been corroborated by an expert. Look, I’ll pass your concerns on to the fire marshal, Reed. But there isn’t much else I can do if there’s no evidence of arson.” Doug folded the pillowcase over the objects and slid the whole package into a paper evidence bag. He stopped and turned toward Reed with a tight-ass frown. “Look. If you want to do some research, there’s this occult store down on Route 31 in Greenville. Maybe the lady who runs it would know what this all means.” He waved a hand over the bag. “I don’t have the time.”

  Reed drew back in surprise. Doug offering information? Was there hope for him? “Jayne and I can run down there this morning.”

  Doug nodded stiffly. “Let me know if you come up with anything. If I hear anything on the prints, I’ll give you a call. Are you going home, Miss Sullivan? Or shacking up with Reed indefinitely?”

  Jayne bristled. Reed touched her shoulder. Any hope that Doug’s attitude could change went down the drain.

  “My brothers are coming to get me later today.” Although her jaw was clenched, Jayne’s tone was miraculously civil. “Have you found the farmhouse where I was held?”

  “No. With the fire and Hugh’s death, I haven’t had two minutes to spare.” Doug stood. “Well, I guess that’s that. I’ll contact you if we get any leads on your case.”

  But don’t hold your breath.

  “You know, Doug.” Reed pointed at the evidence bag. “Crow feathers were found at the crime scene with that teenager’s body.”

  Doug’s face flushed. “Don’t go into that again. That kid died of exposure unless I get an official statement from the medical examiner saying otherwise. And it’s hardly unusual to find bird feathers outside. If and when the ME tells me the cases are related, I’ll treat them like they’re related.”

  Reed didn’t reply as Doug stomped out the front door.

  Doug didn’t even want to give Jayne’s case five minutes, let alone enough time to uncover any leads. Plus, the cop was determined to ignore any link between the crimes. In Reed’s experience, coincidences weren’t all that common. The kid’s death, Jayne’s abduction, and the fire were all related. Reed just didn’t know how or why. But Doug was right. Occult cases were disturbing.

  “Reed,” Jayne called from the kitchen.

  “Did you get it to work?”

  “No. I’m going to e-mail it to a friend of mine and see if she can do something with it. She’s a whiz with editing photos and has all the latest software.” Jayne tapped the keys much harder than necessary.

  Reed stopped next to her chair. He itched to lean down and rest his forehead against her temple. But he didn’t. Space was what he needed. And a clear head. Besides, it was going to be hard enough when she walked out his door later that day. If he let her get any more entrenched in his heart, it would crack in two the moment she left. “You OK?”

  “Yeah.” She breathed out a long sigh. “I don’t want to go home without knowing who is after me. It’ll never be over.”

  Reed inhaled the scent of her. He didn’t want her to go home period. But, putting his selfishness aside, she’d be safer at home. Even if she could stay, her family ties to Philadelphia were strong. He doubted she’d leave her brothers to live out in the middle of nowhere with him. She’d be miserable. Jayne was a city girl. She’d miss her family, and he couldn’t ask that kind of sacrifice from someone he’d known for a weekend.

  No matter how much his chest ached at the thought of never seeing her again.

  The least he could do was ensure she was safe. Doug could kiss his ass. Reed would continue to work on Jayne’s case after she left. With Doug determined to wait on official reports, the case was going stale fast.

  Careful not to touch her, Reed reached over and Googled the occult store in Greenville. “Wiccan Ways is about forty minutes away. If we leave now, we can be there when the store opens and get back here well before your brothers arrive.”

  “OK. Pat said he’d call my cell when they were a couple hours away.” Jayne stood and stretched her long, lean body. Reed’s hand twitched to stroke her torso, but he resisted. He could make love to her every day and never be sated. Better to make a clean break.

  She was leaving in a matter of hours.

  A few minutes later Jayne stepped out onto the salt-dusted stoop. The sky was a clear winter blue, the air thin and brisk as it chilled her nose and cheeks. Reed followed a few feet behind her as they walked on the path to the truck.

  As Jayne reached for the car door, Reed slipped on a patch of ice. The loud crack of a rifle shot snapped through the air. Splinters of wood exploded from the cedar siding behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Jayne’s heart vaulted into her throat. Before the shot’s echo faded into the woods, Reed launched his body at her. The air hissed out of her lungs as his shoulder slammed into her midsection. Her martial arts training kicked in and she executed a sloppy forward fall, slapping the frozen ground and spreading the impact evenly from her hands to her elbows. The move saved her from broken wrists, but her forearms still stung.

  Reed crawled up her body and pressed her down next to the driveway.

  “What was that?” she breathed over her shoulder. His breath warmed her ear as cold seeped into her body from underneath.

  “Rifle shot.” Reed’s weight on her back shifted.

  Black metal flashed in Jayne’s peripheral vision. Reed is armed.

  He whispered in her ear. “We’re in a bad spot here. I can’t see anything over those banks. We’re going to move forward so we’re between the truck and the house. Stay low.” Reed lifted himself into a crouch. “Get behind the engine block.”

  Jayne crawled to the paved drive. Reed followed closely, his back pressed to hers, obviously using his own body as a human shield. Annoyance warred with gratitude at the gesture. Jayne knelt behind the front end of the Yukon. Reed rose on his knees and peered over the hood.

  Another shot rang out. The bullet hit the house behind his head with a spray of cedar chips.

  Reed ducked. “Son of a bitch!”

  He leveled his gun over the hood and squeezed off two rounds into the woods. Though she knew it was coming, the quick pop pop, loud as firecrackers, still made Jayne flinch.

  “See how the bastard likes return fire.”

  They listened for several long minutes. No sound came from the woods except the occasional plop of melting snow dropping from sun-warmed tree limbs. Then the distant whir of an engine turning over broke the silence. The rumbling faded fast.

  “Sounds like he doesn’t like it very much.” Reed sc
anned the trees. “I’m pretty sure he’s gone, but just in case, stay in front of me. We’ll run up to the house. Don’t run in a straight line.”

  Jayne hoped he was gone, too. She estimated the distance from the truck to the house as approximately twenty feet, a flipping marathon if someone was pointing a rifle at you.

  “Let’s go.” Reed shoved her in a jagged line toward the front door, keeping his body between Jayne and the threat in the woods. “Move.”

  The few seconds it took them to run up the front walk seemed to pass in slow motion. Reed pinned her against the house and then behind the storm door until he unlocked the door, and they both stumbled across the threshold. He reached back and clicked the dead bolt into place.

  “Stay down,” he ordered as he pushed her onto her hands and knees. They crawled into the kitchen and sat down with their backs against the refrigerator while Reed called the police.

  Someone had shot at her! Just when she thought she’d been through it all, wham, something new bulldozed into her life to scare the bejesus out of her.

  Her lungs expanded in short, fast pants like a bellows. Her ears rang. Dark spots appeared around the edges of her vision. A few seconds later she was breathing into a paper bag Reed was holding over her nose and mouth.

  “Slow breaths.” His hand moved in a circle between her shoulder blades.

  It took several deep breaths into the bag before Jayne’s head cleared. She pushed it away from her face. “I’m sorry. That was the first time I’ve been shot at.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. Only an idiot wouldn’t be scared.”

  Jayne’s stomach was still on the Tilt-A-Whirl, but her head had stopped spinning.

  “What now?”

  “Now we wait for Doug.” The cordless phone on the floor shrilled and they both jumped.

  Reed picked up the handset. “Yeah.” His mouth went flat. “That’s exactly what happened. Yes, I’m sure. In the driveway. No, we didn’t see anybody. No, it’s not like the other times. This one came within a foot of my head.” He caught Jayne’s eye and sighed before he hung up. “Doug’ll be here in twenty.”

  “This has happened before?” Jayne lived in the big bad city, and no one had ever shot at her.

  “Not like this. We’ve had people hunting too close to the house,” Reed admitted. “But we’ve never had anyone shoot at the house.”

  “Oh.” She sighed. Her chest collapsed as reality cut through hope like a serrated knife through a rare rib-eye. “For a second I thought maybe it was a coincidence.”

  Reed took her hands. His palms heated her numb flesh as he spoke the words that needed to be said, the ones that clarified the situation to the last remaining shred of denial.

  “Looks like your stalker’s changed his mind. He doesn’t want to kidnap you. He wants you dead.”

  Jayne crossed her arms over her chest. “I still can’t believe Doug blew off the shooting.”

  “He didn’t blow it off,” Reed corrected. “He dug the bullet out of the house. It’s not his fault there wasn’t any other evidence.”

  “He could’ve done more.” She turned her head to watch the white landscape roll by the passenger window. They passed a green highway sign that indicated Exit 31 for Greenville was two miles ahead.

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a cop. But believing you would be a start.”

  “The fact is I’ve had poacher problems for years.” A heavy sigh escaped Reed’s broad chest. “Doesn’t really matter. The ground in the woods was frozen solid. No tire tracks or footprints.” He glanced over at her for a second before returning his gaze to the windshield. “I know you’re frustrated, and I can’t stand the guy either. But honestly, there isn’t much else Doug could’ve done. The shooter was long gone before he arrived, and we didn’t see a thing.”

  “I know.” Didn’t mean she wasn’t annoyed, though. She did not want to go home with this threat hanging over her head. How would she live? Her brothers would escort her everywhere. She’d escaped her kidnapper only to be a virtual prisoner. Unless this guy abducted someone else and was caught, something she couldn’t wish for with a clear conscience, she was SOL.

  She already knew what it was like to have this kind of threat hanging over her head for an extended period. The six months she’d waited to testify had been brutal. She’d been unable to let her guard down for a second. She’d given up her apartment, her independence, and her privacy to move in with Pat. With his wife and three kids, Jayne was lucky to sneak into the bathroom alone.

  She couldn’t live like that again. She’d hoped to move out of Pat’s house at some point. Despair ripped through her chest; her anguish was compounded by the thought of leaving Reed. After tonight, who knew if they’d ever see each other again? With the danger and upheaval she’d brought to him and Scott, she had no place in their lives—unless they could find her stalker.

  Reed slowed the truck and navigated the exit. Jayne snapped out of her mood before the SUV hit the local road. Self-pity was a waste of time. Her energy was better spent trying to figure out who was after her.

  A few miles later, they turned into a strip center. Wiccan Ways occupied the end unit in a row of half a dozen stores. With a brick front and sign scripted in Old English type, it matched all the others in the row and could’ve easily been a gift or clothing shop instead of a shop for freaky Halloweeny stuff.

  A digital chime announced their entry. Inside, the store wasn’t as exciting as Jayne had expected. Instead of a smoky haze and chanting, the store was bright. An instrumental flute piece floated softly from overhead speakers. Most of the stock ran to candles, incense, and crystals, lined up on neat displays. The cacophony of scents assaulting her nasal passages reminded her of the candle store in the mall. Bookcases brimmed with volumes on the occult. There was a definite focus on nature, healing, and divination, along with an entire section for almanacs and books on astral projection.

  “May I help you?” A short sixtyish woman hurried from a back room, brushing her hands onto her jeans as she spoke. She looked entirely too normal to be running a Wicca supply store. No black robe, no pointy hat, no warts. She tucked a hunk of her limp beige pageboy hair behind her ear. Instead of old-lady perfume, she smelled like lemon and rosemary. “I’m Ellen Dean.”

  “Are you really a witch?” The words popped out of Jayne’s mouth like a rude burp as curiosity hijacked her common sense. In her peripheral vision, Reed’s eyes did an exasperated roll.

  Ellen cocked her head and indulged Jayne with the tolerant smile of a nursery-school teacher. “Not in the fly-on-a-broom, turn-people-into-toads sense. But my sister and I have been practicing the Craft all our lives. Our coven meets at the senior center. I used to be a high-school librarian. Glenda and I opened this shop when I retired. This is so much more fun than shushing teenagers and shelving books all day.”

  “We’re trying to identify a couple of symbols. We thought an expert on the occult might be able to help.” Reed smoothed over Jayne’s flub with a Southern-gentleman routine. His accent thickened and his manners went to antebellum formal. The old lady practically simpered as he introduced them, turning his masculine charm on full blast and clasping her fragile, blue-veined hand between his strong palms.

  Flattery will get you everywhere, Jayne thought as Ellen blinked up at his handsome, significantly younger face. There was no denying Reed’s hottie factor. For the AARP set, he’d be a boy toy.

  He drew the five photos from his pocket and laid them on the glass counter.

  “Sure, let me take a look.” Ellen picked up the first picture and tapped on the image.

  “What is it?” Jayne asked.

  “A torc.” The storekeeper pointed to the metal circle with her forefinger.

  “Huh?”

  “A necklace of sorts. The Celts wore them, so did a few other European cultures in the same time period.” In full librarian mode, Ellen pulled a pair of glasses from her pocket, set them on her face, a
nd snapped on a light next to the register. She squinted at the photo. “This looks real. Where did you find it?”

  “It was a gift.” Reed smiled. Ellen smiled back.

  “Does it have any meaning?” Jayne asked.

  “It was a sign of nobility. Warriors also wore them. This one looks like gold. If it is, it would have belonged to a person of high social rank.”

  “Does mistletoe have any significance?” Reed flashed her the pearly whites one more time.

  Ellen responded with a flush, as any normal woman with a beating heart would have. “Mistletoe was sacred to the Celts’ priests, the Druids. It stood for life and fertility. Our custom of decorating with mistletoe at Christmas comes from the Druid tradition of cutting mistletoe at the winter solstice. It’s still used in many pagan ceremonies.”

  “Wow.” Reed beamed. “It looks like we came to the right place.”

  A blush spread across Ellen’s crepe-paper cheeks as she pointed at the photo. “The winter solstice ceremony isn’t as nice as the summer celebration. The weather in June is much kinder to these old bones. We do the whole ritual sky-clad.” She leaned closer to Reed and lowered her voice to a whisper. “That’s in the buff.”

  “Errr.” Reed coughed. “Really?”

  Ellen’s penciled-in eyebrows did a little shimmy. “It’s liberating.”

  “I bet it is. Sounds like fun.” Jayne swallowed a snicker. “Doesn’t it, Reed?”

  Reed shook his head like an overturned Etch A Sketch, no doubt trying to erase the image of a baker’s dozen Social Security recipients dancing around the woods in their birthday suits.

  “Don’t get me wrong, tonight’s ceremony will be lovely. You’re welcome to join us.” Ellen directed her invitation to Reed, of course.

  Reed’s smile was noncommittal. “I thought tomorrow was the solstice?”

  “We actually start the celebration tonight at sunset.” Ellen’s mauve-tipped finger lingered on a close-up of the torc. “What’s this?”

  Reed leaned sideways to view the picture with her. Their shoulders brushed. Behind the horn-rims, Ellen batted her frigging eyes. Jayne fought the urge to roll hers. But Reed was in full get-information mode, working the old lady with shameless and, Jayne supposed, harmless flirting. Ellen was going to have quite a story to tell ol’ Sis over supper.