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I jam the parking brake on and scramble out, shivering in the early October chill.
Yeah, I’ve been a Florida girl for too long. The autumn cold creeping over North Carolina leaves me feeling as naked in my thin sweater as the leafless branches of the dense poplar and pine trees around Redhaven.
I pop the hood and look inside.
I’m no mechanic—not even TikTok car-savvy—but at least I can tell nothing popped loose this time. There’s nothing obvious, nothing smoking, sparking, or broken.
Crud.
Well, at least this time I know it’s not the radiator hose.
Frowning, I brace my hands on my hips and look down the hill into town.
Redhaven looks as picturesque as ever in its silence.
It’s the kind of perfect Stepford village in every horror movie where eventually you find out that underneath the gorgeous colonial homes and peaceful forests and pristine glassy lake, there’s a horrible secret waiting to swallow up the unsuspecting.
A witch buried under a massive tree with blood-red roots.
Townsfolk who turn into cannibals by night.
Cults and rituals and evil sacrifices in the woods.
Or maybe it’s just one weird family with a million rumors and their fingers in everything and too much money for their own good.
I eye the majestic dark house up on the peak of the opposite hill, then swing my attention down to the town square with its majestic statue of the town’s founder.
Another Arrendell, go figure.
It should only be a quarter-mile hike downhill into town, and at this time of morning Mort’s Garage should be open and empty except for old Mort himself. I can already see him falling asleep over his corncob pipe, about to tip his chair back with his bad habit of rocking it in his sleep.
But as I pop the trunk to see if I can dig up somethingwarmer to keep my teeth from chattering on the walk, I’m caught by flashing lights from below.
A white van with red and blue lights darts away from Redhaven’s narrow cobbled streets and bolts onto the highway up the hill, followed by two cop cars. As the van zips closer, I can just make out the logo on the side.
Raleigh County Coroner.
Oh, no.
Here we go again.
My soul compresses into a lump of black dread.
I clutch a fist against my chest and breathe roughly.
No, no, please don’t let me be too late.
Please don’t let the cancer eat my mother while I was on that flight from Miami to Raleigh,please—
The van whizzes past, followed by the cop cars.
My heart knots with a different feeling as I catch a glimpse of the man in the driver’s seat of the second car.
Holy hell.
I haven’t seen him in so long, I can’t be a hundred percent sure. But I think it was him.
I think that was Grant Faircross.
