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CHAPTER ONE
As her friend’s low-riding Miata hit every bump and hole on the narrow dirt road, Valerie Lawson did her valorous best to focus on her yellow ticket stub’s tiny print. She’d never been susceptible to motion sickness—not even in vehicles built so close to the ground that she could feel Satan’s snores rumbling from deep within the Earth—but in a half-hour drive, Carine had yet to pick her foot up off the accelerator pedal.
Carine seemed to get a perverse thrill every time the little toy car hit a natural dirt ramp that sent them vaulting through the air for several yards.
Valerie’s feeling of unease, which had settled in early that morning due to escalating deadlines on her job site, wasn’t helped much by the rural darkness. Though they were at the end of summer, at eight o’clock, the country path was nearly dark. Mature pine trees lining the road blocked what little bit of light there might have filtered down.
“You know,” Valerie said and swallowed hard. “I didn’t think this event was going to be so far out in the sticks. I thought this was going to be a short outing.”
In and out and back to work.
She needed to find a competent plumber for Monday morning or the timeline on the new home build she was acting as project manager on was going to be well and truly fucked. The delay hadn’t at all been her blame, but of course, she’d be blamed for the work not getting done. That was the way her luck had always been.
Sighing, she gave up on reading the supposed ticket and yanked her seatbelt strap away from her torso.
So nauseated.
Carine made a little “hmm” sound and flashed the headlights at some sort of dog-sized critter scurrying across the long path.
It could have been a little bear or a fawn—Valerie really didn’t want to know. She’d lost count of how many bears and deer she’d nearly collided with while driving around Eastern North Carolina in the past six months. They’d frolic onto the road, and then stand there staring as if she wasn’t barreling toward them in a big murder machine. She thought they did it on purpose. She saw those sadistic glints in their eyes as she swerved toward the ditch. More than once, she’d had nightmares about them, sono, she didn’t want to know what was scampering across the dirt road. She needed to be able to walk to her car at that construction site without worrying she was going to get jumped by one of what the locals called “good eatin’.”
She groaned when Carine flashed those lights again. “For heaven’s sake, are we almost there? Why is this place so far?”
“You’re not used to the long drives yet?” Carine asked, wearing her patented smirk of condescension. “You’ve been here six months.”
Valerie harrumphed.
Six months was exactly how long she’d known Carine. They were coworkers at a new mixed-development community in the Inner Banks called Shora. Carine had been a local real estate agent brought onto the team to sell parcels and model homes, and Valerie was the architectural project manager. Their company, Lipton Properties, had sent her down from the home office to oversee the construction of the six model homes and to keep phase one of the development rolling smoothly.
Four houses down, two to go.
It’d been a busy-as-hell summer, and—unexpected plumber disappearance or not—Carine had made an executive decision to get Valerie out for a little R&R. That’s why they were in the car, heading ever deeper into the goddamned boonies.
Valerie wasn’t having fun yet.Funwould have been slouching on her sofa in front of the television, assured that a guy was going to show up on Monday to install the hot water heater in the “Sandpiper” model home.
Shouldn’t have left the office without following up.
She wanted to kick herself.
“I’m used to everything taking a long-ass time,” Carine said cheerfully. “The area is getting built up more and more with each passing year, but it still takes Momma twenty minutes to get to the grocery store. I’m lucky to live in town.”
Town, Carine called it. Valerie scoffed. Carine lived in Elizabeth City, a full hour from Shora. Carine made that drive every day, five days per week, and didn’t complain—probably because she’d be moving into one of the Shora model townhouses as soon as the block was completed. The end was in sight for both of them. Valerie was due to be recalled back to the main office after the sixth model home was habitable.
Fortunately, the end was also in sight for that damned driveway.
At the clearing, a large plantation-style home with white paint bright enough to compete with the stars in the night sky loomed. From a quarter mile away, Valerie could see the huge crowd of vehicles already parked on the estate. The congestion didn’t make sense for a private residence.
“What the hell is this place?”
“It’s a good time, that’s what it is.” Carine giggled.
That giggle was always some kind of harbinger of doom, and Carine had been way too mysterious about where they were going. She’d handed Valerie a ticket stub and had said in a sultry purr, “You’re going to be thanking me for weeks for this, I promise.”
Grinding her teeth as Carine sought a wide enough parking spot, Valerie pulled down the sun visor flap and used its weak lights to finally study the ticket.
Printed on the pale purple cardstock were the raffle entry price, the address and date of the event, and some fine print on the bottom:21+ only.
“What kind of raffle drawing is twenty-one and older?” Valerie asked.
