She aimed her phone flashlight across the ground and her body went stone cold still. Another crow with its head severed lay on the ground, blood oozing from the gaping wound.
Nausea climbed her throat, and she had to turn away for a moment and take deep breaths to stem the nausea.
Had the cat killed it or had the man who’d left feathers on her driveway?
Finally the anger kicked in, replacing the chill of fear, and she yelled out to Cord, praying he hadn’t been ambushed.
Seconds later, he raced back, his breathing heavy. “You okay?”
“Yes, I… just don’t want you dealing with this guy unarmed.”
“I have my knife,” he said.
“I know. But we’ll catch him another way.” Fear had a stranglehold on her. Not fear for herself. But fear of losing Cord to a monster.
She pulled her phone and snapped a photograph of the dead animal. “Let me tell ERT about this and have them collect it.”
“I’ll keep watch back here,” Cord said. “And El?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re staying at my house tonight. Non-negotiable. Tomorrow you can arrange a cleaning crew and have the locks changed.”
“And buy a new bed,” Ellie murmured.
Ellie couldn’t sleep in that bedroom, especially in that bed. Not ever again.
THIRTY-TWO
Lookout Mountain
Bertha Benton couldn’t believe her youngest daughter, Minnie, was dead. She wanted to scream and run from this house, the one she’d tried to make a home.
The one that now felt like a prison.
She’d made her biggest mistake years ago and had been paying for it ever since.
She could live with that. Had lived with it.
But now she knew the truth about the reason Minnie most likely ran away, and it changed everything. She had a strong feeling her husband had known Minnie was pregnant. She recognized his tells when he lied and he’d lied to the detective.
That betrayal felt like a knife in her heart.
She locked the door to her bedroom, grateful she had her own private space. She refused to sleep in the same bed where he’d taken lovers while she raised the girls. The heavy weight of grief consumed her, grief now mixed with guilt. She should have fought harder to find Minnie when she left home. She should have gone to the police and insisted they look for her, but she’d been afraid of what Claude would do if he found out.
God, she hated herself for being such a coward when it came to that man.
Legs weak from shock, she walked to the window, pulled the curtain aside and looked across the grounds. The view was amazing. Twinkling stars dotted the inky sky like diamonds, the misty fog blurring the moon as clouds rolled in. Sometimes she wanted to leave so badly she could scream, but she didn’t have the courage.
Her daughter had. But now she was dead.
Bertha didn’t know how she’d continue living the lie she and her husband had perpetuated in this house. The happy couple. Her smiling by his side in adoration of him as he climbed his way up the ladder at the law firm. Clapping proudly at his and his coworkers’ accomplishments as if she didn’t know how devious and callous they could be in the courtroom.
Claude brought that attitude home and wore it like a mantra.
Not at first he hadn’t, though. Love bombing, she thought they called it now. And like a silly young fool, she’d fallen for it.
Because she’d seen exactly what he’d wanted her to see. The charming man who wined and dined her, who promised her the good life, who danced her around the dance floor at the Christmas party as if she were a fine china doll.
