“Nothing like feeling...secure,” she said.
“Come on, then. For now, we have to get to a cottage in the woods.”
*
It was, Devin thought, amazing just how easy it had been to set up the get-together Rocky wanted. When she’d called Beth, Theo and Gayle, not one of them had refused.
Vince, Renee, Jack and Haley had easily agreed, as well.
But when it came to one thing, it looked as though she was right. Brent Corbin hadn’t called her back.
Maybe he would never call her back.
They were alone at her house; the other agents were out purchasing food and beverages for the party. Auntie Mina was on the sofa, half listening to one of her TV shows.
Aunt Mina was deeply upset that Devin had been in such danger the night before and she hadn’t been there to help in whatever way she could. At the very least, she’d said, she could have been another set of eyes.
Calmed down at last—everything had turned out all right, Devin was fine—Aunt Mina had agreed that an episode of Perry Mason just might help.
Despite that, she was obviously paying attention to the two of them, since she piped in with an opinion now and then.
“I don’t understand why you’re so focused on the killer being someone we know,” Devin said.
Rocky hesitated. “Obviously I don’t want it to be a friend, but there’s already a personal component to this, and I’m not just saying that because you were attacked, and you and I... I was there. I was the one who found Melissa’s body. You found the third victim and the fourth. Whatever’s going on seems to involve us.”
“That’s reaching, isn’t it?”
“But reaching based on logic.”
“My friends were just kids, thirteen...fourteen.”
He looked at her. “You were the one who researched kids who kill,” he reminded her. He took her hands. His touch was electric. Memory suddenly became physical, and she flushed.
“Somehow all this goes back to Margaret Nottingham,” Aunt Mina said, interrupting the moment. “I know because she tried to reach Devin. That’s why she came here, and the only explanation I can see for her coming now is because these murders are connected to her somehow.”
Rocky looked at Devin. “She could be right,” he said.
“Have you heard anything from the anthropologists?” Devin asked Rocky, backing away slightly.
“Not yet.”
“But she was murdered.”
“That’s our assumption, yes.”
“Maybe by someone who loved her and didn’t want her thrown in a horrible, rat-infested cell, stripped and humiliated, then hanged,” Aunt Mina said.
“Maybe, or maybe by someone who was afraid that she’d be putting them in danger if she were accused,” Rocky said. “The answer is there, we just have to put the pieces together.”
Her day had been overfilled with a dizzying roller coaster of emotions. First, there had been absolute fear of what had happened at her house. And then there had been...acting on instinct. Acting on what she wanted. Then astonishment that she had actually gone to him and asked for sex; sex that had seemed like the nova-burst of a new world.
Then she’d discovered that someone—almost certainly the same person who’d set the fire at her house―had been in her room. Someone was stalking her, and once again she’d been almost paralyzed with fear.
And then fear had become anger. Whatever it took, she was going to find the truth; she was not going to live this way. She wouldn’t accept it.
“Maybe she decided she was going to fight what was going on. Maybe someone wanted to silence her,” Devin said.
“Jealousy, hatred, fear...any one of them can fester in the mind,” Aunt Mina said, “and drive seemingly sane people to all manner of evil acts.”
Rocky walked over to the sofa and smiled at Auntie Mina. “I’d love to have known you,” he told her.
She grinned at that, pleased. “Then just be thankful that you are special, young man, and you can get to know me now.”
Rocky smiled again, then grew serious. “If our murders are based in contemporary hatreds, what would the specter of Margaret Nottingham have to do with them?”
“You’re the agent,” she reminded him.
He nodded. “I’m not sure that I have more knowledge on this score than you do, though, Mina. You were Wiccan, and there’s definitely a connection of some sort between Wicca and the murders, and that makes you more of an expert than I am, at least on that aspect.”
Aunt Mina looked at him, nodding slowly. “I’ll think about it and see what I can come up with.” Then she turned to Devin. “You have my blessing to see him, you know.”
“Auntie Mina,” Devin murmured. She could feel herself blushing.
“Good heavens, child,” Aunt Mina said, rising and walking toward Devin. “I was old when I passed, not blind.” She turned and winked at Rocky, then looked back at Devin. “He’s a keeper. Don’t go playing too hard to get,” she warned.