On Harrow Hill

“Stories about Angus Russell—allegations that he arranged for some of his enemies to ‘disappear.’ Mike Morgan has a complicated history with him, and he’s giving off a jumpy, guilty vibe. The man’s always had an anxiety problem, but this is on another level.”

“Is there more?”

“Plenty more. Russell’s definitely-not-grieving widow is as far from warm as a human being can be. And there’s his sister, a pastor who seems to despise everyone. And Billy Tate’s alcoholic stepmother, who was replaced in Billy’s bed by a vulnerable young woman who’s a make-believe witch. Not to mention a local mayor with financial reasons for wanting Russell dead. And I have the feeling I’m only scratching the surface of Larchfield’s nastiness.”

“You think all of that is connected to the three murders?”

As he considered the question, the screech of an owl in the nearby thicket pierced the silence. Another chilly breeze came through the window.

“I don’t know yet what’s connected to what, but I’m sure there’s more to this case than a crazy kid settling scores.”

Gurney closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind by concentrating on the soft rustling of the trees. Whenever the echo of Gant’s words intruded, he tried to bring his attention back to the gentler sounds of the breeze.

“Maybe he has an accomplice.” Madeleine’s now-sleepy voice dispelled both Gant and nature. “That could explain why you’re having trouble getting a unified sense of who he is.”

A few minutes later he could tell by the way she was breathing that she’d fallen asleep.

But the possibilities her comment raised kept him awake another hour. It gave a new dimension to Tate’s text to Aspern. It also gave extra weight to the notion that Tate and his orange Jeep might be hiding on Harrow Hill. Aspern’s casual dismissal of the text as something sent to him by mistake had been convincing, but being convincing was the basic talent of all effective liars.

The notion of a Tate-Aspern alliance seemed a stretch but not impossible. It certainly merited further exploration. That was his last conscious thought before he drifted off to sleep.

When he was awakened suddenly by Madeleine gripping his arm, it was near dawn, but the moon had moved behind a cloud bank and the room was darker.

“What was that?” There was an edge of fear in her voice.

Her tone had him fully awake.

For a long moment he heard nothing but the susurrus of the breeze in the thicket. Then he was stopped cold by a high-pitched howl. He was familiar with the howls and yips of coyotes, but this was more piercing, fading at the end into something like a demented laugh. This was no mere coyote, and the nearest wolves, even if one could produce such a sound, were over a hundred miles away in the northern Adirondacks.

He rolled out of bed and picked up the powerful LED flashlight he kept on his nightstand.

Madeleine sat up on her side of the bed. “I think it came from the low pasture.”

Gurney’s hearing was normal, but hers was extraordinary, and he’d learned to trust it. He went to the side of the house that looked down over the pasture, the barn, and the pond. There was enough moonlight filtering through the clouds for him to get a sense of the open parts of the landscape. He saw nothing moving. He was tempted to use his flashlight to scan the border of the woods, but decided not to. Before he announced his presence, he wanted to know what he was dealing with.

After peering out of the windows on all sides of the house, he returned to the bedroom, where he found Madeleine locking the windows. He put on a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt, took his 9mm Beretta from the top drawer of his nightstand, and slipped it into his sweatshirt pocket.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Taking a quick look around.”

“Be careful!”

He left the house as quietly as he could, closing the side door gently behind him. Instead of taking the path through the pasture, he entered the narrow copse that separated the high pasture from the low one and followed it down toward the pond and barn. The moon was slowly emerging from the edge of the cloud cover. Bathed now in a silver light, the hillside seemed preternaturally quiet, focusing Gurney on the sound of each step he took.

When he reached the pond, there was a silver gleam on the black surface. The frogs, usually croaking at all hours of the night, were silent. He stood for a minute or two in the relative darkness under the drooping branches of a giant hemlock, letting his gaze move around the perimeter of the pond, then over to the end of the town road, then across to the barn.

On the wide door of the barn something caught his eye.

He removed the Beretta from his pocket and flicked off the safety. He moved cautiously from under the hemlock and approached the barn.

He was still a good fifty feet from the barn door when, in the brightening moonlight, he saw what he’d been hoping he’d never see again.

I AM

THE DARK ANGEL

WHO ROSE

FROM THE DEAD