RAKING FIRE
Harper
BALLMEAT GUY THINKS VERY LITTLE of me, that much is clear.
He thinks I’m weak. That I’ll run. That I’ll hide. That he can bully me into submission or intimidate me into whatever trap he plans on setting.
I don’t know what it is he wants from me yet, but he’s obviously unhinged and dangerous as fuck. But so am I. And this is my town. Every square inch of it is mine to look after.
Including the Capeside Inn.
I watch from the rocky hill next to the parking lot as Nolan leaves the lobby in a sweater and a loose pair of shorts. He keeps his hood up against the misty rain that rolls in from the sea. His gaze pans across his surroundings as he stretches. Maybe he senses he’s being watched, because he seems to hunt the landscape for clues. His focus passes over the bushes and boulders where I’m crouched, but he doesn’t notice me camouflaged in the shadows. Instead, he bends, straightening a brace around one knee before stretching that leg. A moment later, he’s putting his AirPods in, and then he’s off, heading in the direction of the town at a jog, a slight hitch in the step of the braced leg that seems to soften as he establishes a warm-up pace up the gradual incline.
I turn my attention to my target. The Capeside Inn. A dark thrill swirls in my chest.
I clamber down the hill, stopping at the edge of the parking lot, just in case he turns back. Despite the shitty sleep I had hiding beneath the desk of my guest room with a gun clutched to my chest, I feel fucking wide awake
now. I keep my eyes on Nolan as he reaches the end of the street and then disappears from view over the crest of the hill. And then I run for the hotel.
When I enter the lobby, there’s a gentle snore from the office next to the reception desk. I slip beneath the folding counter and into Irene’s domain.
When I lean into the office, she’s sitting in her reclining chair, her mouth gaping, a soap opera silently playing on a television that looks nearly as old as she is. Satisfied, I turn back to the reception desk, flipping to the last pages of her guest ledger, where I find exactly what I’m looking for.
Nolan Rhodes, June 6–July 15, Room 117.
I double-check the date on my watch, hoping I could magically be wrong. But I’m not. It’s June 8.
“He’s here for six fucking weeks?” I whisper-snarl. Irene snorts in the room next door and I duck on instinct, but a moment later, her snore resumes.
It’s early in the season. There are only a few other bookings on Irene’s ledger for this week. Most people stay for a week or two at most. Cape Carnage is cute and all, but there’s only so much to do in a town our size.
Unless, of course, you’re here to see someone in particular. And I think it’s clear with the “we need to communicate better as enemies” bullshit, the person he’s here for is me.
Fighting the urge to slam it shut, I close the book more gently than I’d like to, then duck beneath the counter and take off at a jog to Room 117.
When I get there, I listen at the door even though I know he’s out.
There’s no room for sloppy mistakes with a guy like this. With a glance over my shoulder, I give it a knock, but still nothing comes. Then I slip the master key I had made two years ago into the lock and enter the temporary lair of my new adversary.
There’s nothing particularly revealing about the room, at first. He’s made the bed. His shoes are lined up next to the door. A black roller bag is open on the luggage stand, but there’s nothing in it. I flip the luggage tag over and, though there’s no address, there is a phone number. I take a picture and move along. On one nightstand is a laptop. I open it just in case I strike lucky, I’m not surprised that it’s password protected. I might be good at a little light burglary now and then, but computer hacker I am not. On the
other nightstand is a bottle of prescription painkillers. I head to the kitchenette, opening the cupboards and the fridge. There’s not an abundance of food, but what’s here is healthy and fresh. I can tell he must intend to cook for himself frequently.
I open the armoire next, moving each piece of hanging clothing just enough to search for clues, but not enough to tip him off that anything has been disturbed. There’s a black backpack beneath the clothes, pushed to the back of the shelf. I slide it free and open it wide.
“Oh, Mr. Rhodes,” I say as I pull a garrote from the bag. The smell of chlorine rises from the polished wire. “You’ve come to the wrong fucking town.”
I riffle through the bag just long enough to spot a pair of leather gloves and a hammer before I zip it up and toss the strap over one shoulder, closing the wardrobe before I turn toward my next objective.
The shelves across from the bathroom.
There’s an iron and an ironing board. A pair of folded robes. Extra towels and pillows. And on the middle shelf, the safe.
My heart thuds heavy beats against my bones. My hands sweat in my gloves. I’m just about to push the buttons to enter the master code, the same one I managed to wrangle from Irene the time I got her drunk on an old bottle of whiskey from Arthur’s long-defunct Lancaster Distillery. Irene might have puked on my only nice pair of shoes that night, but it was worth it. Especially in times like this.
And then my phone rings. I pull it from my pocket and check the screen.
“Arthur,” I say, placing the call on speaker before I lay it on top of the safe. I press the first number of the code.
Zero.
“What are you doing?”
“Who says I’m doing anything?”
“You promised you’d tell me if you were up to no good. I’m an aged, dying man who is not-so-slowly sliding into the oblivion of the afterlife—”
“You’re so dramatic. Shit or get off the pot, old man—”
“—and I need to live vicariously through my protégé.”
I snort as I press the next button on the safe. Nine.
“I’m not up to no good,” I say. Two. “I’m just having a little look
around.”
“A look around where, exactly?”
“Capeside Inn. I’m in a tourist’s room.”
“And where is he?”
“Out for a run.” I look down at my watch. Something about the way he favored one leg sets me on edge. If it starts to bother him on the steep hills that snake through the town, I might not have long. I run these streets too. I know how hard it can be without persistent pain, especially in the cool mist that feels like it climbs into your bones to chill you from the inside out.
“I’m nearly done,” I say, more to myself than to Arthur. “I just need to get a read on how likely it is that this particular tourist will wind up in the jaws of the Cookie Monster.”
I press the last button on the safe’s combination lock. Three.
“And what is your determination?” The lock clicks as the bolts slide free.
The door swings open. I pull a leather-bound book from the shadows and rest its weight on my left hand as I flip to the page that’s saved by a bookmark. “Harper …?”
“Pretty fucking likely,” I whisper. The page is some kind of scrapbook.
“Trevor Fisher,” the headline says. There’s a map on the left side. An X next to a river, drawn in red pen. Beneath the name is a list of dates and crimes.
Some of them relatively minor. Theft from an electronics store, disorderly conduct. Some of them serious. An assault in a bar. A firearms charge. More than one arrest for domestic violence. On the right side of the page are photos of a man, taken at a distance. And then some taken up close. The man’s face, twisted in terror. Spattered with blood. And near the bottom of the page, something that looks like leather. Preserved, dried, and crinkled— and glued to the page. But I can see the fine hairs lodged in the tissue. I can make out the warped script still written in the desiccated skin.
Memento mori.
“What is it, Harper?” Arthur asks. A thread of worry is woven through his voice. “What do you see?”
I shut the book and clutch it to my chest, sliding the phone off the safe before striding into the room. “We’ve got someone very bad here.”
“How bad?”
I could say “someone like us.” But the truth is, even if we have similar … extracurriculars … Nolan Rhodes and I could not be more different. But I know others like him. I’ve survived others like him. And so has Arthur.
“He’s like La Plume,” I say.
There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line as I stuff the scrapbook into the empty laptop compartment of the backpack and zip it up.
And I know it’s not because Arthur is struggling to remember. La Plume is the last name he’ll ever forget. It’s the name that will haunt him until his dying breath.
Arthur’s voice has dropped an octave when he says, “You need to leave there immediately. Get out.”
“I’m already on it,” I grit out, hanging up before Arthur has a chance to say anything more.
I stop at the nightstand and take a photo of his pill bottle, making sure to capture the details and location of the pharmacy that filled the prescription.
Then I stare down at the paper and pen. I should be terrified of the trophy I saw in that book. Nolan knows where I live. He’s murdered someone on my property without me even knowing. He’s toying with me.
I should be running as fast and as far as I can from Cape Carnage.
But running is not enough. I’ve run before and been caught. I’ve already died once and started over. I’m not going to do it again.
I scrawl a note across the paper, my smile stretching with every word.
I fold it and put it where I know he’ll find it.
And then I leave the Capeside Inn with a backpack slung across my shoulder, my thoughts taken up by war.
Irene is still asleep when I stride through the lobby and pause at the door, taking my time to survey the parking lot. It’s raining, misty. There are only a few cars parked here, and aside from Irene’s old Hyundai, which I’m ninety-nine percent positive she can’t legally drive, the others seem to be mostly rentals. A nondescript SUV. A silver sedan. There’s an Escalade with a personalized license plate, so I discount that one. With a menacing smile, I run into the rain, headed straight for the black SUV.
When I get to the vehicle, I huddle next to the passenger side front tire, drop the backpack from my shoulder, then retrieve a sheathed knife from its depths. A heartbeat later, the blade is lodged to the hilt in the tire, and I give it enough of a twist that it will slowly leak air. Then I rise, putting the backpack on and tightening the straps. With a quiet laugh, I turn and run, leaving my gift of his weapon behind.
I’m soaking wet when I make it into my cottage, my bra and panties slick against my skin, water sloshing in my boots with every step as I march to the kitchen table and drop the bag on its surface. Fear and excitement and anticipation sear my veins and tremble in my fingers. I grip the zipper and open the main compartment to pull out the weapons hidden inside. Knives.
Screwdrivers. A Glock and two magazines of ammunition. There are cutters. A folding saw. Even a cheese slicer, which makes my skin crawl when I think about Nolan’s book. His bag contains everything a psychopathic killer could ever dream of for a holiday pack.
Even his trophies.
I stuff everything except the gun and ammunition back into the main compartment, and then I unzip the laptop section, withdrawing the book to set it on the table as I lower myself onto a chair. I take a deep breath and flip to the page I saw in his room.
“Trevor Fisher,” I whisper. I trace the name written at the top of the left side, letting my fingers drift across the paper to what is surely preserved human skin. “Who were you?”
I don’t recognize anything about him. Not his crimes, or the place marked on a map, or the memento mori tattoo affixed to the scrapbook. I flip to the previous page, where there’s a similar layout of petty crimes and a map and a desiccated piece of human skin, another memento mori tattoo imprinted in the leathery slice. Dylan Jacobs is the name at the top of the parchment above photos of the unfamiliar man. He was a tattoo artist, judging by the candid shots of him working in a tattoo parlor. And he must have died a similar torturous death to Trevor Fisher’s. His face was twisted in pain in the second set of photos, his terror frozen in time. The photo that interests me most is one of Nolan standing next to Dylan in the shop, the ouroboros tattoo fresh on his forearm. Dylan smiles with pride at his work.
Nolan smiles too, but there’s an edge hidden in its sharp borders. He’s not just happy with the ink on his skin. He’s basking in the humor of a joke that’s only funny to him. He’s a hunter toying with his prey.
I might not know who Nolan Rhodes is. But I know his kind, and not just because we’re similar creatures on different branches of the same evolutionary tree. He’s not the first serial killer I’ve crossed paths with, after all. But he’s the first who has come to hunt me down specifically. I’m not just a random opportunity to seize. I’m the prize he’s been waiting for.
And I have no idea why.
There’s a tick, tick, tick at the window.
I jolt in my seat and reach for the gun, swiveling to point it in the direction of the sound. But it’s only Morpheus, perched on the flower box, a shining string of silver chain dangling from his beak. I expel a long and shaky breath and head to the window with the gun still clutched in my hand.
“You scared the fuck out of me,” I say when I open the window and take a piece of homemade jerky from the container on the counter to offer it on my palm. With a knocking greeting and ruffled feathers, he sets his gift in my hand before taking the meat and moving a few steps away. I know what it is before it even hits my palm. “Oh, Morpheus.” My thumb traces the engraved silver panel on the bracelet. A²BC. Cracks in my heart that never seal seem to split a little wider, and it takes a long moment for me to swallow down a sudden well of tears. Morpheus must have followed me when I went to the Lancaster family plot last week, and has brought it back in case it was lost. “This is lovely, but I meant to leave it where you found it. You shouldn’t take things from the cemetery, you could make people very upset.”
Morpheus caws and knocks, then imitates my voice as he says “good boy,” his attention fixed on the jar of jerky. With a sigh and a tense, fleeting smile, I leave the bracelet on the counter and give him another piece of beef, casting a wary look around the garden. The rain has stopped but the mist still lingers, obscuring the manor house from view. Chances are strong that Nolan has returned to his room at the Capeside Inn. Maybe he won’t notice I’ve been there just yet. But I can’t be sure. I might not have much time.
I set a few more treats out for Morpheus to keep him occupied, and I leave the window open, knowing he’ll raise an alarm if an intruder comes from the direction of the garden. And then with a final glance out the window, I return to the table with the gun at my fingertips as I sit before Nolan’s book of sins and secrets.
I flip to the next page closer to the front of the book, working my way back farther in time. There’s a third man. Marc Beaumont. Another name I don’t recognize. Another strip of skin, another set of photographs. No crimes listed this time, but a map with an X at the bend of an unnamed river.
He’s probably buried there, what’s left of him, anyway. I chew my lip, trying to pull these pieces together, but still nothing comes.
I turn the page.
This time, there is no slice of skin, no name at the top of the page.
Instead, the name is in a photograph, carved into a granite gravestone: WILLIAM EMERSON RHODES. There are photos of a young man—some of him on his own, some with Nolan and a young woman, a family resemblance woven through the shapes of their lips and angles of their noses and the dimples in their cheeks. Two brothers and a sister. I stare into William’s eyes, trying to force a connection that feels hidden from my view, as though if I just scraped away another layer of sediment, a picture would emerge.
A picture.
My focus trails back to the gravestone. I almost know what I’m going to
see there before I read it.
July 5, four years ago.
“Billy,” I whisper, but it’s not my voice I hear. It’s a man’s desperate voice in the night. It’s grief, trapped in a gurgling cry. Billy.
My hand is shaking as I turn the next page.
Nolan Rhodes, standing with a cane, his parents and sister flanking him, a sign for Wycombe Memorial Hospital over their heads in white block letters. Nolan Rhodes, in a rehabilitation facility, working with a physical therapist, the scar on his elbow still red and freshly healed. Nolan Rhodes, learning to walk. Learning to write. To feed himself. I turn the page. Nolan Rhodes in a hospital bed. On a ventilator. In a halo of metal. Surrounded by tubes. His face swollen and unrecognizable. Nolan Rhodes, clinging to life.
There is no photograph for the moment I see in my memory. A man on the deserted highway, his broken arm reaching for a man whose open eyes are unseeing. Every breath he takes is an agonized rumble. Every exhalation is a whisper. A plea. Billy. Wake up, Billy. Please wake up.
I turn the final page to the first one in the book. There’s only one thing on the page. A handwritten list.
Marc Beaumont, front passenger side.
Dylan Jacobs, rear passenger side.
Trevor Fisher, rear driver’s side.
And last of all, the woman who drove the car that hit him. The woman who took his brother’s life. The one who left them to die and drove away.
My blood turns to crystals of ice that dance in my veins as the final words of the list are branded onto my soul.
Harper Starling, driver.
Harper Starling. The first person I ever killed.
