Desires of the Dead (21 page)

Chapter 25

After school, Violet thumbed through the files that Rafe had given her when she’d gone to the FBI offices. Well, just the one actually . . . Serena Russo’s file.

Violet had made a decision after seeing Mike at lunch that afternoon. She needed to do something for him—and for his sister—to try to make up for everything she’d thought and for the horrible things she’d accused Megan of doing.

She had this ability. This gift. Why not use it, as Sara pointed out? Why not try to help someone?

And in this case, someone Violet felt she had wronged.

She dialed the phone quickly, before she lost her nerve.

After a moment, she spoke. “If I give you an address, can you meet me?”

Violet smiled as she listened to the response on the other end and then repeated the address of Serena Russo’s ex-husband, who lived less than an hour from her.

Tonight she was going to try to make a difference.

She’d hoped to get there before dark, but by the time Violet made her way down I-5 through rush-hour traffic, the one-hour drive had stretched to nearly two. Dusk was already blanketing the sky.

Her stomach felt dangerously unsettled, and she tried to tell herself that she didn’t have to do this, that she could still turn back.

But she was determined—she was definitely going. She owed it to Mike’s family, and she owed it to herself to see if she could make her ability useful once more. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going alone, she reminded herself.

She turned off the main roads as she followed the directions she’d printed from her computer. She hadn’t expected them to take her so far outside the city, for the location to be so . . .
isolated
. Why couldn’t someone, just once, live in a nice little subdivision? A peaceful—yet
populated—
neighborhood?

She slowed her car, watching the mailboxes along the side of the road, trying to spot the address she was searching for. When she finally saw it, her pulse kicked up a notch. She took a deep breath as she pulled off to the side of the road, her car bouncing over the uneven surface. She exhaled noisily.

There were no other cars in sight, which probably meant she’d arrived ahead of the person she was meeting. She thought about waiting but decided against it; she had no idea how much longer that might be.

“This is it,” she told herself, her version of a pep talk. “It’s now or never.”

No one answered, and the corner of her mouth quirked up as she bit her lip and got out. She’d decided to park on the street, hoping that—
just maybe
—she’d be able to glimpse an imprint from a distance, without Roger Hartman ever knowing that she’d been there at all.

Parking her car in his driveway would’ve been a dead giveaway.

She hoped that his imprint—if he carried one—would be something she could sense from a distance and not something that required her to be in close proximity, like Jay’s mom’s imprint was. Violet could only sense the campfire smoke if she was standing right beside, or touching, Ann Heaton.

She did not want to touch Roger Hartman to find out if he’d murdered Serena Russo.

Violet pocketed her keys as she made her way down the wooded driveway.

She kept close to the tree line, hoping to remain hidden by the cover of foliage as the evening dusk worked its way toward night. The light from the moon couldn’t penetrate the branches overhead, and there weren’t any street lamps to illuminate her path.

She navigated cautiously through the oppressive darkness, stumbling several times over rocks and dips in the ground. She moved slowly, carefully, listening for anything that would indicate she wasn’t alone. But all she could hear were the sounds of her own footsteps and the forest around her.

Ahead, a dim glow signaled the end of her journey, a small trailer set haphazardly amid the jumble of trees and overgrown blackberry bushes. The pale light coming from inside told her that someone definitely lived there.

Violet stopped, her mind racing, trying to decide what she should do next. It wasn’t the ideal plan, she supposed, only now considering the realities of being here . . . on his property, all alone as night fell.

At best, he didn’t carry an imprint at all, and he wasn’t a killer.

At worst, he was. And Violet had very possibly made a fatal error in coming here.

Her pulse thrummed nervously within her throat, and she tried to swallow around it. She waited for something to happen.

There was no movement from inside the trailer. No sounds. No nothing. Just the light, lone and unwavering. There was no car in the driveway, and Violet began to wonder if Roger Hartman was even home, or if she’d come while he was away.

Suddenly she hoped that was the case.

She listened to the night, paying extra attention to sounds that might come from the direction of the trailer.

And then she heard it. Softly at first. A delicate rhythmic pattering.

Raindrops.

She glanced up, holding out her palm, waiting for the first wet drops to find her. But she knew they weren’t coming.

There was no rain.

It was an echo. And it was calling for her.

She looked around at the daunting blackness, wondering what she should do as she gathered the neck of her jacket closed in both hands, clutching it as if it could shield her from the sound, from the darkness, from the danger.

But it wasn’t the echo she feared, not
this
echo. She knew it was a body by the draw that beckoned her, reaching into her and gently tugging. Yet it was different somehow.

And then she realized why.

This body had been buried. This body was settled, already at peace. Like the ones in Violet’s graveyard, or those at the cemetery she’d visited while looking for clues to catch a serial killer. Violet could sense the echo, but it didn’t
demand
to be found.

She stepped forward again, away from the trees and the cover they provided as she followed the noise.

The sputtering of the raindrops—
the echo
—came not from above, as rain would have done, but from
ahead
of Violet. It was the sound of so many fat drops plunking against broad autumn leaves. Violet had to keep reminding herself that it was illusory, an imaginary downpour that only
she
could sense, as she ducked her head, instinctively drawing away from the shower.

She glanced cautiously in the direction of the trailer as she passed it, worried that at any moment Roger Hartman would come crashing through the door.

But the entrance remained still, the home silent.

She knew when she was close, because the sound swelled, becoming increasingly steady, even if only in her own ears. A damp chill settled over her, creeping beneath her skin and into her bones, making her joints ache.

It was more difficult with these types of echoes, the ones that weren’t distinctly visual, to pinpoint an exact location. So as Violet approached, she had to gauge the intensity of the acoustics, had to judge the drop in temperature that caused her to shiver.

She circled a spot out back, behind the trailer, near the base of a knotty-looking pine tree. In the shadows of the night, the old pine stood guard over the grave that Violet believed lay beneath its spiny branches.

She glanced again toward the light filtering from the ramshackle structure before she fell to her knees. The sound of rain was all around her, and the cool chill of the downpour was inside her.

It was here.

The ground was black, and Violet brushed her hand over its surface, trying to decide where she should dig. There was a part of her that wanted to stop, that told her this was enough, that she should call Sara Priest and let her handle it from here. But she knew she wouldn’t. She wasn’t even sure what she’d tracked to this location. It could simply be a squirrel or a field mouse left for dead.

She wanted to investigate further, to be certain before calling for help.

The moment her fingers sank into the loose layer of soil, so different from the compacted dirt that surrounded it, Violet knew that she’d found the burial site she’d been searching for.

She scooped a handful of the soft ground, still shivering against the echo that showered around her. She used her fingers to locate an edge and followed it with her hands, crawling through the gloom on all fours. When she realized how large the grave was, she trembled.

A body could fit in there. A
human
body.

She wasn’t sure why she reached in again, why she kept working to shovel the earth with her fingers, clawing at it. She should stop, she told herself more than once, and yet she didn’t. And all the while, the haunting rain continued to fill the night’s air with its poignant storm. The chill it carried was more than real to Violet.

When her hand brushed against something smooth, something that crackled beneath her fingertips, Violet stilled. Whatever she’d just felt was unnatural, man-made.

She prodded it again, listening to the synthetic sound as her finger glanced over something firmer beneath, something grotesquely familiar in feel.

It was a body.

Wrapped in plastic tarpaulin.

Violet clumsily shot to her feet, inhaling sharply as she clasped her fingers to her chest.

When she felt someone grab her from behind, strong fingers gripping her shoulders, she gasped, choking on her own breath. Her heart pounded viciously, violently. How could she have been so foolish? Why hadn’t she waited?

And then a soft voice silenced her, causing her to whimper.
“Shhh . . .”
Breath warmed her cheek. “It’s okay, it’s just me.”

Rafe!

She turned quickly, wrapping her arms around him as relief and gratitude intertwined in a twist of emotions. “Thank God it’s you! I’m so glad you came.” She clung to him. She was no longer alone; she was safe.

Her fingertips brushed the exposed skin at the nape of his neck, just below his hair, and that static spark, the one she’d felt before, when they’d touched at the café, jolted through her. Jolted them both. Rafe stiffened, and Violet was suddenly all too aware of his nearness, of the warmth of him beneath her, of his sinewy strength, and his scent.

She dropped her arms away. “Sorry,” she insisted, her eyes too wide. She was desperate to have this moment forgotten. The pattering of rain continued to beat down around her, and she glanced toward the grave. “I found something . . .
someone
, right there.” She pointed. “I don’t know who it is, but it’s definitely a body.”

“We need to get out of here.” Rafe grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and pulled her away. “We need to call Sara and tell her what you found.”

Violet let him drag her past the trailer and down the driveway. And even as she moved away from the sensory rainstorm, the icy dread remained, refusing to release her. She was terrified that whoever had left the light on inside would come back, would find them there, with her covered in the dirt from a shallow grave. She was afraid that they would end up buried too . . . wrapped in tarps of their own.

When they reached the end of the driveway, Violet wiped her hands on her jeans and felt inside her pocket for her keys. Her hands were shaking.

“Can you drive?” Rafe asked in a voice that seemed far too calm under the circumstances.

Violet saw the big black SUV parked behind her car, and she knew that Rafe had driven Sara’s car to meet her.

She nodded. “I’m fine.” It was a lie. She was certain she could drive, but she wasn’t “fine.”

“There was a gas station down the street, on the corner. Follow me. We’ll stop there and then we can call Sara.”

Violet took a shaky breath as she started her engine, waiting for Rafe to pull out in front of her. She worked to get her quivering nerves under control.

Somewhere back there in the darkness, buried beneath an old pine tree, was a body wrapped in a tarp. And for some strange reason, it felt at peace.

Violet followed Rafe as he turned into the gas station, one with a crowded parking lot and
lots
of lights. She still wasn’t sure her heart would ever beat normally again.

He didn’t head for a designated space, he just parked off to the side of the lot, and Violet pulled up behind him and waited.

Rafe tapped on the passenger-side door, and Violet reached over to unlock it. He nodded at her as he climbed in. “You sure you’re okay? You’re kind of a mess.”

Violet looked down at her hands, at the dirt crusted beneath her fingernails, and then at her jacket, which was smeared with grime. Her fingers were still trembling, but she ignored his concern. “Do you want to call or should I?”

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

Violet was grateful to just sit there and listen. The conversation was brief, and again Violet had the feeling that very few words were needed between the two of them.