She Can Tell
Also By Melinda Leigh
She Can Run
Midnight Exposure
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 Melinda Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13:1612185657
ISBN-10: 9781612185651
eISBN-9781611095388
This book is dedicated to my kids, Annie and Tom. You were right. Bandit was a great addition to the book. Love you.
Prologue: Twenty-five years ago
Twenty-five years ago
He liked to watch.
To see the secret, private things people did when they thought they were alone.
From the moon shadow of an evergreen, he stared across the weedy backyard at the dilapidated rancher. Harry was inside. The Watcher’s breath steamed out into the crisp winter air. Twenty yards of crabgrass was all that separated him from retribution.
Harry had to die.
It was the only way to make things right.
Impulsive responses, while satisfying, were rarely successful in the long term. Discipline was the key. He’d buried his rage and weighed all the options. Harry’s life against his actions. His future against the impact of what he’d done. Ultimately, it was what Harry intended to do that made the difference.
Don’t worry. Just come with me. I’ll take care of you. I promise.
An hour of standing on the frozen ground, waiting for the house to go quiet and dark, had left the Watcher’s toes
with a numb ache. Fiery tingles shot through the balls of his feet as he crept toward a dark window cracked an inch for ventilation. The ground was too frozen for his boots to leave prints, but the crunch of dead grass echoed in the otherwise silent night. He crouched under the window, then peered over the sill. No sound. No light. No movement. He raised the sash and climbed through into the living room. Lacquer fumes and sawdust stung his nostrils. Heat rattled from a baseboard register as the aged furnace tried to raise the temperature above meat locker.
The Watcher had never been in Harry’s house, though the carpenter had invited him over a few times to watch hockey games. They were both Flyers fans. They had other things in common too, but they wouldn’t be friends. Not ever. Not after what the Watcher had seen—and what he’d heard—the other night.
Don’t worry. Just come with me. I’ll take care of you. I promise.
Betrayal sliced into him like the drop point of his knife through a deer’s belly.
Silver moonlight gleamed through bare windows. In the far corner, a drop cloth shrouded a battered recliner. The gutted house had a hollow, unfinished feel that matched the empty space in the middle of his chest.
The house was in mid-renovation. Harry planned to flip it in the spring. The oak floor in the living room had been sanded down to raw wood, but the kitchen was still old and ugly. On the worn vinyl tiles, a four-by-eight sheet of plywood spanned two sawhorses as a makeshift table. The Watcher scanned the assortment of woodworking supplies. Flammable liquids. Newspapers. Rags. Check.
It was a small house with a simple floor plan. Living room, kitchen, and dining area grouped at one end. A short hall led to the single bath and three tiny bedrooms. The
door to the master was ajar. He touched it with one finger, and it swung open a few more inches. Single guys don’t think much about things like curtains. Enough moonlight filtered through the blinds for the Watcher to see Harry sprawled on his back under a thick comforter, one arm thrown over his head, snoring. His posture was childlike. Innocent.
The guy was anything but. Anger, hot and sour, rose into the back of the Watcher’s throat. He swallowed, backed away, and clenched his freezing knuckles until they screamed. The pain focused him. He drew a chilling, chemical-laden breath into his nose and exhaled slowly. In the kitchen, he stretched a hand to the ceiling and disconnected the 9-volt in the smoke alarm. He moved to the sawhorse table. Paint thinner would do the job.
“What’re you doing?”
He whirled. Harry shivered bare-chested in the doorway, hands tucked under crossed arms, face wrinkled with sleepy confusion. The prelude to a middle-aged paunch hung over his low-riding sweats. Now what? Harry was awake. The plan was fucked.
The Watcher bowed his head to hide his eyes. They burned with frustration. Couldn’t let Harry see. The Watcher needed to say something. Something to throw Harry off. Something that would make him comfortable with a middle-of-the-night intruder.
“I need some help, Harry.” The plea choked him on its way out. His fingers crawled past the matches in his pocket to his hunting knife. He palmed the weapon alongside the back of his thigh, out of Harry’s line of sight, and opened the blade one-handed. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”
The Watcher knew he should wait it out. Come back another time with another plan. His arm even contracted to return the knife to his pocket.
“It’s OK. You’re always welcome here.” Harry was a sap. He stepped closer, rested a cold hand on the Watcher’s shoulder, and gave it a compassionate squeeze. “Let me get a sweatshirt. Then we can talk.”
The sympathetic touch and gentle words short-circuited something in the Watcher’s brain. Harry’s voice played in his head again.
Don’t worry. Just come with me. I’ll take care of you. I promise.
The Watcher’s vision went red. He lunged at the carpenter. The knifepoint pierced Harry’s belly. Blood seeped around the hilt and ran hot over frozen-stiff fingers. He yanked upward, as if gutting a deer, splitting Harry open from navel to breastbone with a moist rip. The Watcher wriggled the knife loose and stepped back. The frigid air filled with the metallic, raw scents of blood and freshly slaughtered game. Harry’s eyes bugged. His hands clutched his belly as if to keep his insides…well, inside.
“Why?” Blood gurgled from his open lips as his body went limp, sliding to the floor as if the bones had melted.
At the Watcher’s feet, dark liquid spread in a thick puddle on the raw wood. He stepped back before it reached his shoes. Sweat dripped down his back, and his heart knocked around his chest like a pinball.
Harry was supposed to die in the fire. There’s no way anyone would think
this
was an accident. Now what? The house was a mile outside town. No other buildings in sight. How long would the place burn before the fire department arrived? Would the fire destroy the body? Too many unanswered questions.
Harry’s limbs twitched and went still. His torso deflated; gray eyes glassed over.
The Watcher whipped the canvas drop cloth from the recliner and spread it out on the floor. At five-foot-nine,
Harry was smaller than the big buck the Watcher had bagged last autumn, but dead limbs flopped and tangled as he rolled everything in the cloth, deli-wrap style. He dragged the body to the back door. After covering the kitchen floor with lacquer, newspapers, and rags, he tossed a lit match into the center. Fire sprinted across the hardwood with a
whoosh
. He flipped up his hood and hauled the bundle out. Using the three-foot elevation of the back stoop, he squatted and heaved the body onto his shoulders. He wasn’t small, but he staggered under the dead weight. Brittle-cold air and smoke clogged his lungs as he stumbled for the detached garage behind the house.