Elena clenched her hands beneath the wooden table separating her from Detective Roth in the small room. The white-washed concrete walls were bare except for a large mirror opposite a single door.
The detective stared at her, tapping his fingers on the table.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
After they’d arrived at the station, the officers had hustled her inside the interrogation room, and Roth had entered soon after. He’d made her recite her version of events over and over until her voice had cracked, then had her write it all down while he watched in stony silence.
All of that she’d expected.
What had her on edge was the tattoo of a cobalt blue tarantula skittering up and down Roth’s bare forearm.
“Here’s why I am having trouble believing you, Ms. Cain,” Roth said. “You’re telling me you returned to Stillwood just in time to find a dead body in your pool?”
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
She swallowed a knot in her throat.
“I—”
The spider raised its legs in a threatening posture. Roth leaned forward.
“Don’t lie.”
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
“I’m not—”
“I can tell when you’re lying,” Roth said. “I would advise you to tell the truth.”
Tap, tap—
She slammed her hand on top of his. “Please! Stop doing that.”
Roth grasped her fingers, jerking her forward. “Are you and Castillo in this together? Was it your idea or his?”
“What?”
The sudden intensity in his voice startled her. She tugged her arm, but he’d trapped her fingers in his steely grip.
He grinned, a predator waiting to strike. “Admit it. You killed her.”
“I didn’t kill her!”
The tarantula crawled across their joined hands, making her skin prickle. Its simmering anger pressed against her mind like a knife piercing her skull.
A wave of nausea rocked through her, and she vomited up what little food she’d eaten since last her captor had visited. The small room she was trapped in had no clock or windows, so it was impossible to tell how much time had passed. She ticked away the days by scratching lines on the cement walls with a small piece of chalk.
She rolled over and pressed her heated skin against the cool floor. Hunger was her constant companion, digging its claws into her stomach. But she had hope—a twisted piece of spring that she’d broken off the bed frame.
The next time the man came to see her, she’d use it to take away his weapons.
Both of them.
The memory ended abruptly, but residual fear thrummed through her like the reverberations of a plucked string. Then, remembering her self-defense classes—better late than never—she relaxed her arm. Roth’s hold loosened, and she used the chance to slip her hand away, then tucked it beneath the table.
The tarantula prowled her skin, probing her mind for weakness.
“For the fifth time,” she said, enunciating each word. “I came back to sell the house. Chloe was dead when I arrived.”
“Really?” Roth’s voice dripped with skepticism. He sat back in his chair. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Murder runs in your family, doesn’t it?”
She clenched her hands into fists, her fingernails cutting into her palms, and imagined reaching out, grabbing Roth around the neck, strangling the life out of him. It would be so easy. All she had to do was let the tarantula take over.
No.
The thoughts, fantasies, swirling around her mind weren’t her own. It was the shade, searching for leverage. She could feel its hatred of Roth, its desire to hurt him.
What does that mean?
With the detective still staring at her, a shit-eating-grin on his face, she worked up her simmering anger into a furious rage. Then she sent out a mental blast with all the emotion she could muster.
The shade reappeared on Roth’s hands. Its legs curled inwards as if she had sprayed it with pesticide.
It worked!
The unexpected victory filled her with a bubbling sense of accomplishment, and she tried to remember something from the police procedurals she’d watched as a kid that would convince Roth to back off. When it finally came to her, it was so obvious that she wanted to kick herself.
“Why am I even sitting here?” she hated the warble in her voice. “I don’t have to talk to you. I want my lawyer.”
David would be furious, but she trusted him to get her out of the mess she’d landed herself in.
The detective pushed back his chair with a metallic screech that made her cringe. “We’ll get right on that.”
After he exited, a band of iron closed around her chest. When Roth had brought her into the room, it hadn’t seemed so bad.
The door slammed shut.
Her heart pounded in her ears. The room was so small. There wasn’t enough air. She would suffocate, and they’d find her body, limp and pale like Chloe.
She flattened her hands on the table. Soon she’d be hyperventilating, and wouldn’t that be perfect?
The suspect went into a panic attack in the interrogation room; she imagined the prosecutor saying. Her guilty conscience couldn’t take it.
The lights flickered with a crackling sound, but she was only dimly aware of it. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought of wide-open spaces, fields full of flowers, and anything else that wasn’t the small, dark room shrinking around her.
“Psst, hey!”
Elena jumped, making the chair beneath her rattle. A woman stared at her from the open door. There was a shade on her flushed cheek, a miniature seal-point Persian cat. It opened its mouth in a silent yawn and curled into a ball, tucking its face under its fluffy tail.
“What are you waiting for?” The woman asked. “Come out of there!”
The woman lunged inside and grasped her wrist. As their skin touched, a thin current of static electricity arced between them. Then the woman dragged her into the hallway. Free of the confined space, the band around Elena’s chest dissolved, and she took great gulps of air like a drowning victim freed from the surf.
“Thank you,” she said, leaning her back against the cool wall. Her savior, a plump woman with curly brown hair and sparkling eyes, closed the door to the interrogation room. She wore faded overalls and a thick leather belt around her waist, filled with tools. She smiled, and the expression transformed her face from ordinary to striking—handsome, if not pretty.
The Persian fluffed its tail and scampered away.
Elena tensed, expecting the shade to assault her the way the tarantula had, but nothing happened.
“Sorry for barging in,” the woman said. “I saw you through the glass, and I could tell you were about to have a straight-up panic attack. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but I suspect you’ve had better days. Hi, I’m Sandra.”
The woman stuck out a hand, and Elena cautiously took it. When there was no electric discharge, she relaxed. “You could say that again. My legs feel like spaghetti. I’m—”
Sandra pumped her hand up and down. “I know who you are. Everyone here knows you.”
“Ah. I guess I should have expected that. What are you doing back here?”
Sandra kicked the interrogation room door with her foot and rattled the door handle. “Lock sticks.” She grabbed a screwdriver from her belt and, with an efficiency Elena admired, popped the handle from the door and fitted it with a new one. “That’ll do it.”
“Thanks again,” Elena said. “I don’t want to think about what would have happened if you hadn’t let me out of there. I’m not good with small spaces.”
“I believe you,” Sandra said. She hoisted her tool bag onto her shoulder. “I’m the same with spiders. One time, when I was a kid, I was doing my paper route, and I had just got to McPherson’s house when I looked down, and this huge spider had crawled around from the other side of the bike handle onto the back of my hand. I haven’t ridden a bike since, not without checking the handles. Come on, follow me. I’ll show you out. I work dispatch on weekends, so I know my way around.”
Elena struggled to follow the rapid conversation. “Won’t you get in trouble for letting me out?”
“It’s fine. When Roth barged out, I heard the sheriff tell him to release you. Roth’s just being an ass.”
It wasn’t the first time Elena had made an enemy, but what had she done to deserve such treatment?
“What’s his problem, anyway?” She fisted her right hand and knocked it against the wall as they walked. Her mother had called it “waking the spirits.” Elena called it a bad habit, one that required her to wash her hands more often than necessary.
Sandra clicked her tongue. “Rumor was Roth and Chloe had a thing back in the day. And it’s not like Stillwood gets a lot of action for a rookie cop. This is only the second murder in—” Sandra bit her lip. “Sorry, me and my big mouth.”
Elena waved it off. “It’s fine. If I’m going to be here for more than a few days, I’m going to have to get used to it.”
Since my original plans have been blown out of the water.
She hadn’t driven far—Stillwood was only a few hundred miles away from her apartment—but it would have to be far enough. With luck, the Harvester would find a new target, and she would have some time before having to deal with it again.
“That’s the problem with living in a small town,” Sandra said softly. “People don’t forget.”
They rounded another corner. Elena glanced down the hallway, then spun around. Wasn’t the entrance in the opposite direction? “Uh, hey, not that I don’t appreciate letting me out, but where are we going?”
Sandra adjusted her tool belt higher on her hips. “Evidence.”
“Oh, no, they left my things at the front desk.”
“I know.”
Sandra turned and continued walking. Unsure of what to do, Elena followed. At the end of the hall, Sandra kneeled and removed a black tube from her pocket. She popped the silver lid with her thumb and carefully withdrew a roll of film.
“Calm down,” Sandra said before Elena could ask what she was doing, “I can feel your anxiety all over my back. We’ll be out of here in a minute. I just have to pick something up first.”
She pushed the loop of film through the top of the door, inch by inch. When a few feet remained, she slid it over until it was directly above the handle and tugged.
The door clicked and swung open. Only then did she realize that Sandra had caught the handle from the other side.
“How’d you learn how to do that?”
Sandra slid the film back into the tube and gave a toothy smile. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to. Now sit tight and watch the hall. If you see anyone coming, tell them you got lost. I don’t know. You’ll think of something.”
Elena took a hasty step back. “Woah, woah, I’m not doing this.”
“Wanna go back in the box? One shout, and my dad will come running.”
“Your dad?”
“The sheriff.”
Elena braced an arm on the wall. “Your father is the sheriff, and you’re breaking into the evidence room?”
“Yep. And don’t think you can run off on your own. It’s a maze in here. You’d get lost for sure.”
Elena searched the ceiling for cameras. Uniformed officers might come around the corner at any moment. The longer they remained, the more likely that vision was to come to pass. She made a shooting motion with her hands. “Okay. Fine. Finish whatever it is you’re here to do, and let’s get out of here.”
Sandra entered the room. Elena turned and kept her gaze focused on the hall, straining to see both directions at once.
“Wait, is that why you let me out? To be your spotter?”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
Elena groaned. “Hurry up, will you?”
Sandra popped back out of the room, holding a laptop under her arm. “Got it. Let’s fly.” She darted away, faster than seemed possible for her size, and Elena was forced to follow through the winding maze of corridors. At every turn, she expected to see a barrage of police officers waiting for them, but they made it to the lobby without incident.
Elena took a deep breath just as a strong hand grasped her shoulder. Sandra’s face loomed close. “Be careful,” she said. “They are watching.”
Alarms blared in Elena’s head. “Who is watching? What does that mean?”
Sandra winked. “It means I’m on your side.” She turned and strolled out of the station, leaving Elena with far more questions than she’d had before.