AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Like hell, Jules thought but held her tongue as Trent reached the frightened animal and ran experienced hands over the black horse’s quivering hide.
“It’s all right,” Trent said in a low tone to the horse, lying through his teeth again. It wasn’t all right; nothing was. Nothing would ever be.
“That’s it … everything’s okay, Omen.”
Omen? Hearing the gelding’s name triggered the memory of the note she’d seen in Maeve’s purse earlier in the day when the girl had been so distraught over Ethan Slade. Could the note have been about the horse? She glanced at the girl’s dead body again and felt cold as death.
“There ya go … see? It’s not so bad,” Trent said as he reached the horse, grabbed Omen’s halter, and clucked softly. “Come on, now.” To Jules, he said, “He’s got a shallow cut, bleeding on his right shoulder, probably where he scraped the edges of the stall gate.” To the horse, he added, “You’ll live.” Unlike Maeve. Or Drew. Or Nona. Or, probably, Lauren. Still standing so near the dead girl, Jules couldn’t help but wonder who would be next. Whom would the killer target? Like pictures in a kaleidoscope, the students’ faces slid behind her eyes, morphing into each other: little Ollie Gage, brooding Crystal Ricci, Keesha Bell with her neat cornrows and quick smile, or Shay, her misunderstood sister. Jules swallowed hard, her fear mounting, dread racing through her bloodstream.
“We have to stop him,” she whispered and even as she said it, she wondered who the killer was, her brain racing to connect the dots of a puzzle that wasn’t yet making any sense: Who? Why? To what damned end?
The questions blazing through her mind, she watched Trent latch the big gelding into a stall.
Once Omen was secure in his box, Trent paused to sweep his light over the next stall, the one from which, presumably, the terrorized gelding had broken free.
Who would do this?
Take the time to stage the scene? Blood on the floor, burned straw, twin trails of heel marks visible, evidence that Maeve had been dragged from the door of the open stall to the spot where she died.
None of it made any sense. If the killer wanted Maeve dead, why not just kill her and be done with it. Instead, the whole murder seemed drawn out and orchestrated.
“The fire was in here,” Trent told her, his flashlight’s beam still crawling along one stall. “In Omen’s box.” He was staring at the floor, his frown barely visible in the dark. “But it looks like it was contained to this area, not allowed to burn any further. The killer took the time to set it and then douse it with the fire extinguisher.”
“Unless Maeve lit the fire.”
“Or someone else? A third party? Shit, who knows? But there’s blood in here.”
“From the horse?”
“Nah. It’s too much; his scrape wasn’t that deep.” Trent slid the beam of his flashlight over the opening to the stall. “Horsehair here, caught on the side rails. And … oh, what’s this?” he asked, then said, “Looks like a knit cap, half burned.”
“Pink?” Jules asked, knowing the answer. “Maeve was wearing one earlier.”
“Bingo.”
Jules shuddered. A graphic, painful image of Maeve’s hat, perched upon her head, being set afire to singe her scalp and burn her hair came to mind. Dear God, what cruelty. What kind of deranged monster would do such a thing? The cold of the night, the evil that lurked in this building, seeped deep into her soul. “So the blood in the stall is Maeve’s?” she asked, hazarding a glance at Maeve’s dead body. Poor, poor thing.
“Or her killer’s.”
As he walked down the aisle Trent swept the beam of his flashlight into each of the stalls. Absently, he touched the noses of the nervous horses who plunged their heads over the top rails as he passed. Their large eyes were nervous, white rimmed, their nostrils flared at the lingering scent of smoke and metallic odor of the spilled blood.
“It’s gonna be fine,” he said to Scout, whose pale blue eyes looked eerie in the darkness. He tossed his white head and snorted as if calling Trent the liar he was. “Hey … Shhh.” He scratched the pinto’s forehead until the horse calmed a bit.
Satisfied that the animals were safe, Trent found his cell phone, and said to Jules, “I’ve got to call Meeker.” He punched in the number, waited, then swore under his breath. “Oh, hell. Still can’t get through. Guess we can’t count on the cavalry.”
Jules’s heart sank. Was the killer finished? Or, she wondered in horror, were there more bodies?
The door to the stables flew open. A rush of frigid air swept inside, tossing bits of hay into the air and cutting through Jules’s jacket.
She jumped and bit back a scream.
“Get down!” Trent yelled at her. Crouching swiftly, he leveled his gun at the doorway.
A dark figure carrying a large battery powered light in front of him. “Hey!”
“Stop!” Trent warned, his gun and flashlight trained on Bert Flannagan’s shocked face.
“What the hell?” Flannagan stopped dead in his tracks, a large survival lantern in one hand, his rifle strapped across his back. “What’s going on in here? A fire?” The lantern’s harsh glow washed over the burned straw on t
