Never Hesitate Read online

  It was a man, she saw, and she couldn't see much beyond that because of the water in her eyes, but he had a knife. A knife, thank goodness, he'd be able to cut this rope away, and end this nightmare - if it was real at all, and not some incredibly vivid dream, because she had no idea how she'd ended up in the middle of this fast moving water.

  And then, a little voice started asking how he’d been able to find her. How had this man, now standing in the shallows and reeling her raft in, known that she was there at all?

  She still couldn't see much of his face. It was in shadow. All she could see was the blade of the knife, as he raised it, ready to cut the ropes that held her. Or so she hoped, because now, she felt a sudden doubt about his motives.

  Especially since he was speaking something to her in a strangely intense voice, saying words that her battered brain was refusing to accept, that she was battling to understand.

  And then, the knife came down, swift and hard, and in one moment, a moment of pure terror, she realized that he wasn't aiming for the ropes.

  He was aiming for her.

  Faye let out a long, high scream of fear. She screamed with all her might. She was still screaming when the knife struck home.

  A sharp pain speared her chest, and then, as if a screen winked out, the river and the dam, the face of her attacker, the water in her eyes - they all blurred and then disappeared into darkness.

  The attacker stared down at her for a moment, checking to be sure she was dead. He felt triumphant, but otherwise, there was a strange lack of emotion in his mind. He took a moment to let that single emotion ebb away.

  Then, he dragged the raft to the side, his movements brisk and purposeful. He was breathing hard. He had a lot of work still to do. He was not yet finished, and this was only the start.

  It all had to be perfect.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Deputy May Moore pushed open the door of the secret room that she and her sister had found, the room hidden away in the house that had been the killer’s lair. A strange, musty smell rushed out from the darkness beyond. Beside her, trembling slightly, Kerry’s flashlight shone around and she heard her sister’s gasp echo her own.

  What was there was impossible.

  Stark bones, bedded on rotting clothes, still in a position that vaguely resembled a human form.

  A grinning skull stared up at them.

  “No,” May whimpered, her mind reeling, because this was too much to take in; this was impossible.

  And then, with a rattling of bones, the skeleton sat up. It turned to May and said, through its jagged, yellow teeth, “I’m coming for you now.”

  Screaming, May turned, bursting out of that spooky room. Still screaming, she sat bolt upright in bed, eyes wide, breathing hard, and staring around the semi-darkness of her bedroom. In shock, she was still panting from the immediacy of that terrible dream.

  It was only yesterday they’d found the room. And she was already having nightmares about it.

  Ever since yesterday, ever since that shocking discovery in the secret room where they suspected her sister Lauren, and others, had been kept, May had felt totally traumatized.

  Blinking in the early dawn of a cool fall morning, she breathed deeply, leaning over to turn on the light, grounding herself, smoothing back her tawny blonde hair which was tangled from her nightmare and falling around her face.

  Firmly, May told herself she was in her bedroom, in her house, which was nowhere near the lake where Lauren had disappeared ten years ago.

  Her house in Fairshore, Tamarack County, Minnesota, had a view of fields and farmland, with woodland beyond. But that wasn't what May was seeing now. That far more gruesome sight seemed to be etched in her vision.

  That shocking impression, those few moments before her older sister Kerry had dragged her out of that room, hissing that they mustn't contaminate the scene, that forensics must come in, now, and do the work, still stayed with her. May knew it always would.

  May couldn’t believe there had been bones in that secret room.

  Bones. Actual bones. She'd seen the round shape of a skull, and other bones, too. Also pieces of clothing, half rotted away. Everything in her dream had been real, except the end of it. Everything! She’d never expected to find such horrors.

  Breathing hard, blinking tears out of her eyes, May relived that terrifying ordeal. As she did, she heard a tap on her door.

  "Sis? You awake?"

  "Yes," she admitted.

  Kerry pushed open the door. Her older sister, Kerry, the FBI agent, also looked scared and vulnerable in that moment, a world away from her usual tough, bossy self.

  "I thought I heard you having a nightmare," she said, padding over to sit on the bed, tugging her dressing gown around her.

  "Yeah," May nodded. "I was having one."

  "I couldn't sleep. Not that your spare bedroom isn't comfortable. It's just that I woke up about an hour ago, and couldn't get back to sleep."

  "Bones!" She stared at Kerry, her voice full of anguish. "Bones, in that room? That monster must have -"

  She gulped. Words wouldn't come out.

  "We have to wait for forensics to do their job," Kerry said firmly, now sounding more like the competent FBI agent who handled serious crimes. "There's nothing we can do and no point in being traumatized. Whatever happened, it happened a long time ago."

  But Kerry was traumatized enough, herself, to have taken a couple of days off work, even though she had told May it was leave owed to her. May realized her big sis still wasn't ready to head back to the FBI offices after seeing that sight. She wanted to be here, to be around May, so that if the bones were analyzed and found to be Lauren’s, the two could comfort each other.

  Her advice was good, though. They had to be patient and wait.

  May sighed. She knew Kerry was right. But she couldn't help remembering what that room had smelled like. Rank, musty, exactly like you'd expect a secret room with a skeleton in it to smell.

  Those bones had been there for years. The clothing, too. Everything that had happened was far in the past. But now, it had been forced out and into the present.

  Small clues, pieced together determinedly by May, with Kerry’s help, had led them to this house. One of the killer's victims, Harriet, was alive and had been living there but in a mentally damaged state, and was now a deaf-mute. She'd given no information to them, and had only laughed in a crazy way. But clearly, the killer had spared her.

  Why her? And who was he?

  May felt a rush of pure fury as she thought that the killer might have escaped, going on to live his life or commit his crimes elsewhere, a monster undiscovered. No wonder she'd had that bad dream.

  "I put off dinner with the folks until tomorrow night," Kerry said, and May felt a rush of gratitude. She wasn't up to seeing the folks today, not after this.

  "I didn't want to delay it. I really want to see them, and I've been looking forward to it, but I couldn't eat anything last night, and I didn't sleep, and I do still feel kind of -"

  "I know, sis. So do I."

  Thank goodness her sister was so understanding, May thought. And how far they'd come in a few months. She realized that she understood Kerry far better now than she had before. May had more of a handle on what made her sister tick. She wasn't the bossy, obnoxious perfectionist who always had to be the best at everything.

  Maybe Kerry had been that way previously, but she'd also chilled out a little about life in the past few months. Or maybe May's impression of her before that had been wrong, and her sister had always had a softer side, a real sense of humor, and a caring attitude that, up until a few months ago, May had totally missed. In fact, she sometimes wondered privately if at the age of thirty, Kerry was finally growing up and learning to consider others.

  Or maybe May was the one growing up. Sometimes she wondered that, too.

  Perhaps it was a combination of all these factors; but whatever it was, she felt relieved that they were getting along now. It was nice having a sister who was a friend, and who didn't feel like a competitor the whole time.

  "Look, do you want me to check on Harriet in the psychiatric ward today? She's our best witness, right now," Kerry said.

  May nodded. "I guess we have to keep asking her. She wouldn't speak to me at all yesterday, so if you try today, at least it's someone different." And with her platinum pixie cut and strong jaw, Kerry did look more forceful. May thought so at any rate.

  "Maybe she needs time to think about it. Surely she’ll want to tell somebody, or write it down, her version anyway," Kerry said.

  From the kitchen, she heard the hiss of steam from the coffee machine. She climbed out of bed and while Kerry poured two cups, May fixed the cream and sugar.

  The hot, strong coffee helped those nightmares to recede. At least, now, that grinning skull wasn't top of her mind.

  And then, her phone rang, and she rushed back to the bedroom, anxious to see that it was Sheriff Jack calling. At this hour, it could only be a crisis, and May's stomach clenched.

  The last crisis had involved his daughter. May didn't know if she was ready for another nail-biting case like that. Quickly, she picked up the call.

  "Good morning, Jack," she said expectantly, imagining her boss, with his wise face and graying hair, already in his sheriff's uniform, and most probably climbing into his truck as they were speaking.

  "May," he said. He sounded stressed and that alone got her blood pressure spiking. "We've got a murder scene, and it's bad. It almost looks like a hit, police say, although I haven't seen it yet. The body's in a beaver dam, north of Eagle Lake."

  May swallowed. This sounded worse than bad.

  A hit? Surely not.

  "I'm on my way right now," she said.

  CHAPTER TWO r />
  "There's a murder case just been called in," May said, rushing to the kitchen as she pulled on her jacket and fastened her pants. She drained her coffee, deciding she needed every last gulp of it to prepare for what this day might bring.

  “You feel up to it?” Kerry asked, for once sounding as anxious as May often did.

  “Not really, but Sheriff Jack is still shaken from his daughter’s recent case. Plus, we have three officers who are sick with the flu, and if he called me, I have to go.”

  She was surprised to see real respect in Kerry’s eyes.

  “You’re made of tough stuff. Tougher than me. I need time out today. I hope it’s not too bad,” Kerry said.

  “It sounds bad,” May admitted.

  "You'd better get going, then," Kerry said. "I'll handle Harriet later. I'm going to lean on her this time. I'll keep you in the loop. You go out there and find the bad guys. I know you'll do it. You're the best."

  "Thanks," May said. "I needed to hear that."

  She hugged her sister hard. Then she hurried out to her car.

  Breathing deeply to calm her fears, she started up the engine. She powered out of town, in the still quiet gloom of the early morning, heading onto the main road that led around the lake and then veered north. Her phone beeped as she drove, and she saw Jack had sent the coordinates through. She was on track. She'd known already where this body would be, approximately. But that was all she knew about this crime that might be a hit, and that she hoped she could cope with, so soon after the discovery of that grinning skull.

  May clamped her hands over the wheel, resolving that this was the last time she was going to think about the skull, all day. Her job now was to solve this crime.

  The place where the body had been discovered was an old, abandoned beaver dam in a wooded area north of Eagle Lake, part of a big conservation area called Eagle Park. As she arrived in the parking lot, she saw that there were already two police cars parked there, as well as Sheriff Jack's truck. The police had cordoned off the area with crime scene tape, and she could see flashlights probing the still-dark forest that bordered the dam. She was sure the killer was long gone, but perhaps he'd left evidence behind.

  The evidence she needed to see first, though, was the body itself.

  As May climbed out of her car, she saw headlights gleaming behind her, and her deputy, Owen Lovell, sped up.

  He climbed out, and May looked at him uncertainly. She wasn't quite sure where they stood. The last case had been so stressful that it had strained every single relationship in the police department. It felt like a long time since she and Owen had been on a date, or out for a quiet dinner together, and May worried that he was having second thoughts about their romance.

  She wished she was surer about her relationship with her deputy, that had crossed the line a few months ago from professional to personal. Why was she so bad at relationships, she agonized.

  The tall, well-built, strong-jawed man, with his dark hair and warm smile, was someone any woman would have feelings for, May thought. But what had really attracted her, beyond his looks, was his kindness. He was so caring, so warm-hearted, and he had a passion for policing.

  Clearly that was top of mind for him now, as he turned to her.

  She could smell coffee on him. There was a faint trace of vanilla in his aftershave, too. She liked that smell. And then she shook her head and concentrated on the important things.

  "May," he said. "This is terrible! Sheriff Jack said local police thought it was a hit? Why? Do you know?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know. But let's get down to that dam and find out."

  They set off together, flashlights in hand, their boots treading over the muddy grass, and as they went, May kept thinking of the last case and the tragedy that had touched the life of Jack's daughter. She hoped that nothing so personal would occur in this case, and that they would catch the killer, whoever he or she was, and that no more lives would be lost. Because whoever this victim was, they had a family. They had friends. And they didn't deserve this to have happened.

  They hurried to the crime scene, at the edge of a large natural beaver dam within the river, where deputies had already erected a tent over the corpse at the edge of the dam, and a forensic team of two techs, in white overalls, was combing the scene for trace evidence.

  Gradually, it was getting lighter. As they walked across the trodden trail, to the side of the dam, May found that natural daylight, though gray, was making her flashlight redundant and she turned it off.

  Unfortunately, the sight of the corpse was clear enough without it. Andy Baker, crouched over the body, glanced up. May felt reassured that their county coroner, who she trusted implicitly, had arrived on scene.

  "Morning, May. Sorry to see you in such circumstances." Andy was always sympathetic to the police and respectful of the dead. May had learned, from interacting with him, how every person in such a situation should behave. He was kind, like Owen.

  "What are the circumstances?" May asked anxiously.

  "The park ranger was doing an early morning inspection and noticed the body. He called police immediately when he realized she was dead."

  She. A woman. May felt an extra pang at this knowledge.

  May took a moment to take a deep breath, to steel herself for what was to come, but she was already bracing herself to see a corpse, and there was no way she could stop herself from picturing the body.

  That grinning skull forced its way into her mind again, and her stomach twisted as she thought about Lauren. Then she forced that picture away. This was not Lauren here. This was a Tamarack County resident, most likely, who had been horribly murdered, and she deserved one hundred percent of May's attention now. Not even one percentage point could selfishly stray back to her own situation.

  Clearing her mind with a steely resolve, May walked over and looked down.

  The victim looked back at her. Hazel eyes stared sightlessly to the sky. A deep, bloody wound in her chest suggested she had been stabbed. She was wearing jeans and a plain blue T-shirt, which suggested to May that she had been home and possibly abducted. But it was the rest of the circumstances that made May's skin crawl.

  She had been tied to a wooden raft by her wrists and ankles. The raft looked homemade, and the ties were ordinary coarse rope. They must have pulled it out of the dam, because the wood was still wet, and so were her clothes, May saw. But her hands! What had happened to them?

  It seemed that the fingertips had been scoured by what appeared to be acid, burning the finger pads away. The effect was weird, and it caused May's already queasy stomach to churn horribly. She breathed deeply, sweat springing out on her skin.

  No wonder police had thought it was a hit. This was exactly the type of modus operandi that a hitman might carry out.

  "What is this?" she asked in a squeaky voice.

  "It seems that some kind of caustic solution was applied to the fingertips," Andy Baker said calmly, and the fact he was able to be calm at such a time made her feel shocked.

  "Was this done before or after death?" she asked, and now her voice was so wobbly that she knew everyone could hear it, but she didn't care.

  "After death," Andy said, and now May's knees felt as wobbly as her voice had been, through sheer relief.

  "You sure?"

  "Sure. The blood patterns leave no room for doubt," he said, glancing up at her. "I think she must have been knocked out. Blunt trauma to the head. Then, she was stabbed. She may have been conscious in between those two times, but not for long."

  “What about the substance that was used on her hands? Is that a controlled substance, do you think; is it difficult to get hold of?”

  “It is probably something as simple as drain cleaner. Applied in a concentrated solution to dry skin, it could easily cause this type of damage,” Andy said.

  May felt disappointed that the removal of the prints hadn’t provided a better clue.

  "So, the fingerprints. We don't know who she is?"

  "We can circulate a photo, a description of her clothing. Someone will come forward," Owen said from behind her, making May jump.

  “Was the body moved after death?” she asked.