Then he felt it, warm liquid sliding into his veins. But it was pleasant and soothing. Whatever the shadow had injected into the tubes had started to invade his insides. He felt it seeping into his brain and he imagined it racing along his arteries, replacing cold blood with soothing liquid warmth that made his mind fuzzy and his heart stop exploding.
Another shadow stood over him. This one leaned down and he caught the scent of pine needles and river mud mixed with sweat. Dawson felt hot breath on his ear as he heard the shadow whisper, “You’re gonna wish you hadn’t survived.”
CHAPTER 16
“The sheriff’s a man who means well,” Lucy Coy said.
She handed Maggie a tray that held a bowl of steaming homemade chicken noodle soup, half a sandwich with layers of deli slices on a plate garnished with fresh strawberries and blueberries, and a mug of spiced tea. It took discipline for Maggie to wait for her host to get settled.
“He’ll make sure those teenagers are properly taken care of,” Lucy continued. “Even the dead.”
They sat on the screened-in porch off the second-floor loft of Lucy’s contemporary A-frame house that looked like something out of Architectural Digest. The porch looked into treetops and over Lucy’s backyard. When the moon broke through the clouds Maggie could see rolling hills dotted with pine trees, the landscape unbroken for miles by fences or another homestead.
The rain had turned to mist. Once in a while it came in on the breeze. But Lucy had turned on an electric fireplace in the corner and the outdoor room became a cozy retreat. Behind the sliding glass door was the loft with a queen-size bed waiting for Maggie. She felt too tired to sleep and when Lucy offered a bite before bed, Maggie gratefully accepted. She hadn’t eaten since morning, a banana and a Diet Pepsi on the flight from D.C. to Denver. She’d forgotten about crossing back and forth over three time zones. Her head and stomach were still set on eastern time. No wonder it felt like days.
Besides, for months now Maggie had been unable to shake a bad case of insomnia. As an FBI agent she had learned to compartmentalize her mind, carefully stowing away the awful images she had seen and all the brutal experiences she had survived. Lately those compartments had started to spring leaks and it usually happened after dark.
Nightmares played a loop in her mind, reliving the experiences, sometimes in freeze-frame, sometimes in high-definition. She hadn’t discovered a remedy. Nothing worked. Not warm milk or alcohol, exercise or quiet. The only thing that had ever worked—but only once—was Benjamin Platt’s strong, soothing fingers working the tension from her shoulders and back. Although it was only a massage and hadn’t led to anything more, just the memory of it still made her flush.
Two of Lucy’s dogs, a gangly retriever mix and a three-legged boxer, came in and curled up at their mistress’s feet. Earlier, a pack had met the Jeep and escorted it down the long driveway to the house. Lucy had explained that people kept leaving their castaways at the edge of her property, knowing she’d take them in and thereby assuaging their guilt by not turning them in to the pound for a sure death sentence. When the headlights swept the side of an outbuilding Maggie had seen a couple more snouts peeking out of the small doors crafted into the shed.
A black German shepherd nudged Maggie’s elbow for a handout.
“Jake,” Lucy scolded in her low, gentle voice and the shepherd lay down by Maggie. “Usually he’s not this friendly. He showed up about a month ago, but he comes and goes as he pleases. He’ll be gone for days at a time.”
“Maybe he has another home somewhere.”
“I don’t think so. He comes back scraped up and starving. Hank thought he saw him in the forest one night. Worries me because they’ve also reported seeing a cougar. No, I think ole Jake just hasn’t decided if he wants to call this home.” Almost on cue the dog laid his head on Maggie’s foot.
“I have a white Lab,” she said. “Harvey. He sorted of ended up on my doorstep, too.”
“So you rescued him.”
“I like to think we rescued each other.”
Lucy smiled, a first since they’d met, then she wrapped long fingers around her mug of tea and sat back in the wicker chair.
“What do you think happened out there tonight?” Maggie asked. “It couldn’t have been just a game of Taser tag, could it?”
“I’ve never seen Tasers do what we saw tonight,” Lucy said, then seemed to consider it as she sipped. “Things aren’t always what they seem. For years ranchers used barbed wire for fencing. Cattle respected the boundary because it hurt to cross it. Intruders respected it because the barbs look vicious and dangerous.”
Maggie listened patiently, remembering the woman’s explanation for bagging the owl. Perhaps this was how she answered classroom questions, with proverbs and folk tales.