Kat had come into The Dog tense and somewhat stern, and now she took a deep breath and seemed to force herself to relax as Mellie brought her her soft drink. Maybe that’s what being a cop was all about, Shiloh thought.
They brought each other up to date on their lives. Kat explained that she’d lived in Prairie Creek until her mother’s death, then went off to college and came back after graduation. Shiloh, in turn, told how she’d hitchhiked out of town to get away from her stepfather and eventually landed at a farm in the Dakotas, where she’d earned her keep mucking out stalls and caring for the horses. When it was apparent she had a connection to the animals, the elderly couple who’d taken her in and let her sleep in what had been their son’s room helped her start training horses. When they had to sell the place, she moved on, working from one ranch to the next, gaining a solid reputation, until she settled in Grizzly Falls, Montana, in the Bitterroot Valley, not far from the Idaho border, which was where she still was.
“And so now I’m back,” Shiloh said as she finished her beer.
“Fifteen years . . .” Kat made a face. “Half the town still thinks you and the other girls that went missing met with the same fate.”
“Maybe we all did. Maybe you and your father are wrong about them being missing.”
“So far, you’re the only one who came back. Rachel, Erin, and Courtney didn’t. No one knows what happened to them.”
“Maybe they’ll turn up. Like me.” Shiloh heard the lack of conviction in her voice just as Mellie drifted over. “You still good?” she asked them.
They both nodded.
“Okay, then.” Mellie turned her attention to a table of four women sipping wine.
Kat said, “You seriously think the missing girls—well, women now—will return after fifteen years of silence?”
“It could happen.” But Shiloh was playing devil’s advocate because Kat’s conviction made her feel itchy and uncomfortable and guilty. “It’s a long shot, I know.”
“It is a long shot,” Kat agreed, taking a shallow sip from her soda. “I’m not trying to make it all sound like it was your fault.”
“Good, ’cause it’s not my fault.”
Kat lifted her hands in surrender at Shiloh’s irritated tone. “It’s high time we came forward—you, me, and Ruth—and told what we know about the guy who attacked Ruthie that night.”
“After all this time?”
“Yeah, after all this time.”
“Have you talked to Ruthie about it? I mean, if we say something and she denies it . . . well, it won’t work. Do you even know where she is?”
“She’s here.”
“In Prairie Creek?” Shiloh was dumbfounded. “She never left? Like you?”
“Ruthie did leave and ended up in California somewhere. Santa Barbara, I think, or somewhere around there. She went to college, got married, had a kid, a girl, then divorced and ended up back here. I really don’t know all the details.”
“You haven’t talked to her?”
“Not yet. I heard she’s a psychologist.”
“Wow.”
“And she goes by Ruth now.”
“As in Dr. Ruth?”
“As in Ruth Baker, LPCC. I understand she goes by Dr. Baker, but I’m sure clients love calling her Dr. Ruth.”
Shiloh absorbed that, then said, “Sounds like she’s been busy.”
“Yeah.” Kat circled the bottom of her glass against the table, smearing the condensation. “We have to get Ruth on board, which might be a trick. Or maybe she’ll agree to it now. It’s not like she’s a teenager who’ll get punished for sneaking out of the house.”
“She was sure scared of her dad at the time.”
“She was a kid.”
“We all were.”
“And we made some dumb choices. Even if we can’t fix the mistakes we made, we can try to make them better. So . . . ?” She raised her eyebrows.
Shiloh finished her now room-temperature beer. “If Ruthie—Ruth’s—in, I’m in. Only then. Otherwise we’ll have to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Wish I could do that, but I can’t.” Kat grabbed her purse and dug out some bills, which she dropped on the table. “Whether Ruth agrees or not, I’m working up to put the truth out there. I’m a cop now, and I can’t go on with a secret that might be obstructing an investigation. We need to tell what we know, and maybe it’ll help break something open.”
*
So she was back. Shiloh Silva had returned to Prairie Creek. She was the wildest of the three—the crazy blonde—and he did like them with a wild streak. It had taken her mother’s death to drag her back here, but now, he thought, as he sat on his porch and honed the blade of his Bowie knife, the time was right. He’d waited a long time for the revenge that was due him.
The scar on his forehead, where she’d hurled the rock at him fifteen years earlier, seemed to throb. It wasn’t even noticeable any longer, but he reached up and traced the thin line with his thumb. The scar was a reminder that his work wasn’t finished. He had another small scar on the back of his hand from the screwdriver one of them had jabbed him with. Payback was coming . . . oh yeah.
Licking his lips, he examined his newly sharpened blade. It winked in the light of the fading sun, reflecting gold on its nearly mirrorlike surface. Perfect for slicing. Perfect for carving. Perfect for getting a little of his own back.
His cock twitched at the thought.
So now all of them were back. All three of the bitches who had tried to kill him.
Good. His jaw tightened. He’d managed to contain his urges, keeping with one girlfriend for a long time now. Longer than the fifteen years since those three had turned on him. Now the thought of taking them all made him go hard.
Revenge and lust in one fell swoop. The time had come, at long last. Anticipation warmed his blood. Recent losses became memories.
Stretching, he picked up the package lying on the porch, scowled at his dried lawn, then circled the house to the flight of stairs that led to the basement. He used the knife to slice open the package. There were several items inside, but it was the four pairs of handcuffs, their cuffs covered in fuzzy pink padding to shield the skin on the wrists, that he drew out. Pink. He smiled grimly. Good quality. No more barbed wire, except for what was out of reach in the shack. A woman couldn’t be trusted with it.
At his workbench, he opened a drawer filled with nuts, nails, and screws, all arranged perfectly in little glass jars the size of baby-food containers. Reaching to the back of the drawer, he pushed a button. The spring latch released, and he was able to pull on the inner lining of the drawer, removing it from its resting space in the drawer casing. Carefully he set the lining onto the workbench’s surface, just behind the old vise that had been clamped in position for as long as he could remember.