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  When she heard the sound of the garage door closing, Carly rolled gently over to the edge of the bed and looked over. Ethan hadn’t said a word.

  She lifted the pink dust ruffle.

  “Hey you. Coast is clear.”

  No response. Her throat tightened just a bit and she reminded herself to breathe.

  “Ethan?”

  His hand shot out from under the bed and grasped her wrist. She squealed as he pulled her off the mattress onto him as he rolled from beneath the bed. She landed on top of him, along with half the covers.

  “Damn it!” She swatted him but laughed.

  He grinned. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

  “Well, Braveheart, he’s gone now.”

  “Did you hear what’s up?”

  “No, I didn’t want to listen in. If he knew I was on the line snooping he would have been pissed.”

  She got up from the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. He sat next to her.

  “Do you think I should go?”

  Carly looked into Ethan’s face. His sharp features, his deep, caring eyes. “No.”

  She drew him into an embrace and they kissed. He leaned over and laid her gently down onto the bed. He took off his T-shirt. Then he wrapped her in his muscular arms as they kissed some more, exploring with hot tongues. Pressed against her, she could feel his stiff erection through the cotton of his jeans and the soft fabric of her nightgown. She responded to his advances, hands roaming over his sinewy muscles, but despite her desire to have him inside her, when his hand grazed along her bare thigh, sliding the silken fabric of her nightgown up to her hip, she gasped, but tried to slow things down. She didn’t want to ruin the moment, but it was so important to her to wait. Her promise to her mother, not to mention the simple fact that if Ethan were the right one, he would understand.

  She didn’t have to say anything. Ethan got the message, his hand straying to her chest, caressing her lightly. He pulled away from her lips and looked upon her in the darkness.

  “You’re so beautiful, Carly.”

  “Oh, Ethan. I’m sorry. I want to, it’s just that....”

  “Shh, I understand. It’s hard, but I understand.”

  “It certainly is.”

  He groaned and rolled over to lie next to her.

  “Sorry, bad time for a joke. But I want to as bad as you do, it’s just that I ... well, I want it to be something special.”

  “I know. It’s okay. I do, too.”

  He rolled over and lay on his back, eyes drowsy, and she curled into the nook of his arm, content. He held her tight. Carly nuzzled against him, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

  “I love you, Carly Wagner.”

  “I love you, too, dufus.”

  “Are we gonna get married someday?”

  “Only if you’re quiet and go to sleep.”

  “So, only if I demonstrate the ability to take orders?”

  “You’re not off to a very good start. Now kiss me.”

  He did.

  “That’s better.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Chief Gavin Wagner steered the Carson Lake Police Blazer through deep woods along a trail that didn’t qualify as much of a road. They followed the path through a ravine, dodging hunks of granite protruding at broken angles from the earth. In some places the trees were so close together the vehicle barely squeezed between them. Ruts had been worn into the grassy loam where the ambulance and patrol cars arrived before them. The headlights of the truck beamed up a final steep slope. The path leveled off at a mountaintop clearing surrounded by a grove of towering pines.

  Gavin steered the truck over a thick piece of deadfall, jostling the vehicle as Oliver balanced the cup of coffee in his hand. A little bit sloshed over the side and he grunted, wiping it away.

  “Should’ve let me drive.”

  “Should’ve let you come alone.”

  Oliver grunted again. “The way Officer Thomas was carrying on I thought he was gonna hyperventilate. Must have been something awful to shake the kid up like that. Not every day we get three dead bodies around here.”

  Gavin studied the unfolding scene as they parked in the miry clearing. Parked around the clearing were two ambulances and two patrol cars; one of them was unmarked for a sheriff’s detective who’d been the first to respond. Their globes were dark, but the squad cars had their spotlights shining into the back of a faded red pickup with a white camper top. A few civilian cars were left around the bonfire in addition to the red camper truck: a blue four-door Saturn, a silver Cutlass rusted along its bottom edges, and a black Ford F150. Nine teenage boys and girls, presumably the drivers of the cars and their friends, were corralled near the trunk of Officer Thomas’s patrol car. Outside the crime scene, the EMTs leaned leisurely against the side of the ambulance. Gavin recognized one of them as Jay Parsons, who he’d pulled over coming out of the Pine Gables after he’d had a few too many last Sunday.

  In the clearing at the top of the hill, the remnant of the bonfire was a giant pile of glowing embers that still flickered with an occasional flame in the fire pit.

  Gavin was careful to park well outside the perimeter of activity. He killed the engine and looked over at Oliver, sipping at the coffee.

  “Sorry to snap at you Oliver. You know I don’t like to leave Carly home alone.”

  “No sweat, partner. I know it, and I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t think you should get up here right away.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  They climbed from the truck as the new addition to their local force, Officer Thomas, came over to meet them. He was young, with stark black hair and blue eyes gals would lie for, but Gavin could see in those eyes that whatever he’d witnessed here tonight put a few years on him. His face was pale and drawn.

  “Morning, Chief.”

  “Officer Thomas.” Gavin nodded. “What’ve we got?”

  Oliver came up next to him, coffee steaming like a smoke pit in his hand. He moved slow, like the joints of his old bones weren’t taking well to the cold snap, and scratched at the gray stubble on his cheek. He sipped coffee, squinting at the red pickup like a sniper sighting his target.

  “A group of kids were up here partying. Rhonda got a call about one thirty from a ...” He checked his notepad, “Don Lundy of Carson Lake. He was up here with some friends when it happened.”

  Gavin nodded toward the group near the back of his car. “So they saw it?”

  “Well, that’s not everybody who was here. A lot of ’em took off in a panic when it happened. I got some of the other names, but ... anyway, when the kids were killed, there was some confusion about what exactly happened.”

  “Okay.”

  “The kid who reported the murders, the tall blond fella over there, Don, said there was a green glow around the back of the pickup before it happened. Then the camper hatch was ripped off and thrown into a group of folks. A couple of people were hit, one knocked into the fire. Then they said the glow seemed to take the shape of something ... almost human, and then it slipped inside the camper and, well, did that.” He tilted his head toward the back of the truck. “The others in the group over there who saw it give slightly different versions of the story, but that’s about the gist of it. Not everyone saw everything that happened. Some of them just stayed behind because they were friends of the victims.”

  Oliver gave his characteristic grunt, and his belly heaved under his thick flannel shirt as he did so. “So it must have been aliens.”

  “The kids had been drinking, but Don seemed pretty lucid to me,” Officer Thomas said.

  “Scared sober, eh?” Oliver said. “We’ll want a blood test on those kids for narcotics.”

  Gavin closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and t
humb. He took a deep breath and fixed his gaze on the back of the pickup.

  A county detective in plain clothes wandered over, tall and imposing. The black man’s crime-hardened eyes fixed on them from beneath stern brows. Gavin recognized him from a missing person case they worked on with the sheriff’s office last year. When the man spoke, his voice was deep with years of authority.

  “Chief Wagner.”

  Gavin nodded and shook hands with the man. His grip was firm, hands rough.

  “Detective Rice,” Gavin said. “I guess you were the first one on the scene.”

  “That’s right. I passed a line of cars coming down the road on my way up. I got as many plates as I could. I figured most of them had to be at the party, as there’s not much cause for anyone else to be up this way so late. If anyone’s camping they ought to be asleep. I put a call out for another car to accommodate you folks. Should have a deputy up this way soon.”

  Gavin nodded. “Has anyone contacted the park superintendent to see if they’ve got campers out here?”

  “I tried before I left the station,” Oliver said, still holding the hot coffee near his lips. “Marcy and Jax Dimmock. No answer.”

  “We’ll want to send a patrol around to check some of the campsites, make sure everyone’s all right and see what we can learn,” Gavin said. “You seen enough here, Thomas?”

  The young officer never looked more anxious to receive an order in his short career in law enforcement.

  “Why don’t you head down and check out some of the campsites? Just do a routine check and talk to anybody you can.”

  “You bet, Chief.”

  Officer Thomas hurried to his car, advising the group of teen-agers to move over and stand near the trunk of the detective’s car. Once the group began to murmur and relocate, the officer slammed his door closed. When he shut off his spotlight, only the county car’s spotlight remained. As he turned around and pulled out, his headlights scanned the party spot then left them in a darker version of the scene. A cold wind carried the musky scent of wood smoke from the fire. The wafting smoke traveled like phantoms through the remaining beam of light from Detective Rice’s car.

  “Your officer and I secured the scene best we could,” Detective Rice said. “Once we determined there wasn’t any help for the victims, the EMTs stayed clear. They didn’t have to touch anything to know they were dead. My guess is you’ve got the coroner on the way.”

  Gavin looked at Oliver. His rheumy eyes reflected the firelight and Gavin thought he looked older than ever, shadows gathering in the deep lines of his face. “Woke Ben Jenkins out of a dead sleep. Said he’d, quote, ‘be here with fucking bells on.’”

  The chief set his jaw and aimed his gaze at the red pickup. “Well, let’s have a look.”

  “You’ll want to brace yourself, Chief,” the detective said. “Probably the worst I’ve seen in seventeen years on the job.”

  Gavin nodded and plodded slowly toward the back of the pickup, Oliver at his side. The wind carried more clouds of smoke from the dying fire, intermittently obscuring their vision. A combination of silvery moonlight shining through the treetops and the occasional flicker of remaining flames made a strange aura for the scene before them.

  The tailgate was down, and just as Thomas reported, the hatch of the camper top had been ripped away. The hinges were bent and savaged, curled up into hooks on one side, completely snapped on the other. Blood covered the back bumper of the vehicle as if the truck had been filled with buckets of purple-brown paint that had been unceremoniously dumped into the truck bed, overflowing out the back.

  The first thing they saw was the boy lying twisted at the back of the bed. The features of his face were completely obscured by a sheet of blood congealed to black, only the whites of his eyes visible, staring beyond the blood-spattered camper into eternity. His throat was torn open, esophagus, trachea and the carotid artery severed and exposed to the darkness of their tomb. His left arm was folded beneath him, clearly broken.

  Just beyond the reach of light was the dead girl. Gavin clicked on his flashlight. Her face was stark with ghost-colored flesh on one side, the other side of her face stripped of its skin, a dull shine on the exposed facial muscles and white nubs of bone, eyeless socket a deep pool of blood on the left side. She was naked from the waist-up, blood smeared over full breasts, nipples black in the strange light. Below her breasts, the soft flesh of her abdomen looked to have been ripped open. Lumps of gelatinous organs, membranous tissue lined with veins, and ropy coils of entrails were strewn from her wound and lay in a small pile at the back of the bed, one strand of intestine dangling over the edge.

  “Jesus,” Oliver angrily whispered.

  The smell wafting from the camper was a cross between an outhouse and a butcher shop. Gavin was grateful when the wind turned, carrying the scent of wood smoke to them, partially obscuring the horror of the stench. The chief took a deep breath and turned off his flashlight. He felt a tightening in his throat, a sting behind his eyes, and he tried to divorce his feelings from what he was seeing, but he’d never seen anything like this before, and there wasn’t any way to cope with it on the fly except to look away. Oliver met his gaze with a grizzled look, pale beneath his gray stubble. Gavin noticed he swallowed hard and turned away.

  “Unfortunately,” Detective Rice said. “That’s not all.” The big man stood a few feet away, pointing at a spot near the edge of the fire with his flashlight. He didn’t need to turn it on for Gavin to see what lay there.

  A decapitated head, its features discolored, shoulder-length hair sticky with blood, mouth gaping at them as though singing a silent opera.

  “Christ,” Oliver said.

  Detective Rice clicked on his flashlight and shone it on a headless shape slumped several feet away on the dark side of the truck. It could have been somebody curled up and sleeping near the tire if not for the white nub of spine sticking from the ragged neck stump.

  Gavin took a deep breath and, watching his step, returned to the other side of the fire where Rice had parked; close enough to the pit to still feel its heat. He leaned against the front of the detective’s car and looked over at the EMTs, still slouched against the ambulance, talking in quiet tones. The group of teenagers was getting restless.

  One of them piped up, a skinny kid with yellow hair and a black streak down the middle. “Hey, can we go home now?”

  “Sorry, not yet folks,” Gavin told them. “You’ll need to give your statements. Tell us what you saw.”

  “Sir,” said one of the older teens. He’d be a big guy when he got older. Dirty dishwater hair and a solid jaw. “I already gave my statement. I’m the one who called nine-one-one.”

  “Are you Don?” Gavin asked.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well, I appreciate you sticking around and doing what’s right, Don. You’ve done your parents proud, and I’ll be sure to make that clear for all of you who’ve stuck around tonight. My guess is a lot of folks blazed a trail PDQ.”

  That started a murmur among the group.

  A girl in a leather jacket spoke up, “I’m freezing.” And she said it like it was the cops’ fault for making the mountains so bitter cold in the fall.

  “We’ve got another car on its way. Soon as they get here, we’ll get you guys in some heat, okay?”

  Turning back to Oliver, Gavin reached instinctively for the pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket and stopped himself, realizing he probably shouldn’t smoke this close to the crime scene. He was running through dusty procedures in his mind, and as far as he could recollect, they’d done everything well enough, so far. Damn it if he wasn’t afraid of screwing something up.

  He stared at the back of the truck, its contents out of view from this angle.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Chief?” Oliver asked.

  “That�
�d be great, Oliver.”

  Detective Rice returned from looking over the scene again, making notes on a pad of paper. He had a sour look on his face. Gavin thought it was a mix of revulsion and bitter anger at whoever had committed these atrocities. Determination solidified in the detective’s black eyes, and Gavin recognized the look of a cop hell-bent on a mission to make this right. Or, where that was impossible, to at least make the responsible bastards pay.

  Gavin tried to bury the anxiety he felt dancing in his guts at the thought of Carly home alone. This was going to be a long night, after all. He’d call Karen once they got things squared away here. Of course, thinking of Karen gave rise to all manner of conflict he couldn’t afford to deal with right now.

  Gavin nodded at Oliver as he came back from the blazer with the thermos of fresh coffee. He poured himself a cup and held it up to the detective.

  “You bet. Sounds damn good right now.” He reached in his car for a travel mug. The trio stood silently for a couple of minutes, breathing the aroma of coffee, breath pluming in the air. The temperature dropped. A few ragged clouds dragged across the night sky, partially obscuring the moon.

  “Are you going to want the sheriff’s department on this investigation, Chief Wagner?”

  Gavin stared at the dying embers of the fire. “I expect that’s a good idea, as long as we can work together on this. The people in this town are my responsibility. We’ve got some of the equipment we need, but access to a crime lab would be handy.”

  “I understand. I’m sure the sheriff will, too.”

  “We better get a team up here as soon as possible. Probably some extra deputies, too, to block off certain areas of the park, in case whoever did this is still out there somewhere in the woods. Best to keep the woods as pristine as possible—make sure no one goes traipsing around back there before we have a chance to look for signs of escape.”