Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [136]
They’d skinny-dipped in the water, splashing and laughing. Afterward, they made love on the banks while the sun baked the dry earth and cast shimmering sparkles over the water.
For a few precious months, she’d felt alive and in love and assured that the future was golden.
And then Rip Delaney’s life had been cut short and everything had changed.
And now she was running for her life through a frigid winter, Trent’s gloved hand urging her along a darkened path that had once been shoveled but now was thick with new snow. Her ears were frozen, her nose running as the blizzard just kept whistling through the mountains.
And, on top of everything else, a murderer was in their midst. A killer holed up here, beyond the reach of any arm of the law.
A far cry from that long-ago idyllic summer.
Trent hurried her along the edge of a building that held equipment, to the row of old, ramshackle cottages that were home to some of the teachers at the school.
Wade Taggert resided in one. Kirk Spurrier, when he was on campus, lived in another, and Salvatore DeMarco in a third. Bert Flannagan had his own quarters in a loft of the tack room near the stable. Charla King, too, had her own place while most of the other members of the staff lived in suites at Stanton House.
As snowflakes stung her face, she thought of those who had elected to become a part of Blue Rock Academy. Teachers, counselors, and administrators who had supposedly been recruited by Reverend Lynch for their leadership and scholarly capabilities.
Or for other unknown reasons?
Then there was the group of teachers’ assistants, kids who had elected to stay on and be a part of the Blue Rock Academy college program, smart students who Shaylee was certain were part of some kind of dark, secret cult. Their faces flashed before her eyes. Missy Albright, Zach Bernsen, and Kaci Donahue, members of a deadly secret society? What about Eric Rolfe? Ethan Slade? Half a dozen others? Who among them possessed the qualities of a cold-blooded killer?
What about the students who were trapped here? Could one of them be the murderer, a sociopath? Every one of the students at the academy had psychological problems, some worse than others, some with streaks of violence.
Maybe the answer lay in the files she’d rescued from being incinerated. Maybe not.
Who?
Why?
She shuddered as Trent guided her along the back side of the houses, along what could loosely have been called an alley. Lights glowed in the windows of several homes. Others, unoccupied and in various states of disrepair, were dark, windows boarded over, snow and ice accumulating over rusted spouts and porches.
Trent’s cottage was the last in the row, a single-level bungalow that looked as if it had been constructed in the thirties or forties and was in serious need of renovation. The back steps were atilt, and the roof sagged in spots.
“Welcome to the Ritz,” he muttered under his breath as he unlocked the door. Once they were inside, he threw the bolt behind them and snapped on a few lights. Even though the temperature inside the cabin couldn’t have been much more than sixty-five degrees, the air felt warm, a distinct difference from the frigid outdoors.
“You okay?” he asked, and set the carrier on the short bench in the enclosed porch.
“Just great,” she said sarcastically. “Couldn’t be better. Cut off from the world in the worst snowstorm of the decade, maybe the century, and trapped with a homicidal maniac on the loose. Seriously, could things get any worse?”
“I’m here,” he reminded her.
“My point exactly,” she shot back, then caught his slow-spreading smile. “This has to be as bad as it gets.”
“Is that right?”
“Absolutely!” She tossed him a don’t-mess-with-me look. “So don’t you dare think of yourself as some kind of Western-type hero, okay? You can peddle, but I’m definitely not buying.”
He grinned, a devilish twinkle in his eye. “Aw, shucks, ma’am, and here I was givin’ it my best damned shot.”
“Not good enough, Cowboy.