Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [158]
The snowscape was eerie and still. After days of the wind screeching through the hills, the night was deathly quiet, a half-moon glowing bright and casting everything in a silvery glow.
“That’s odd,” Trent said, eyeing the campus. “The generators should be on, but there are no lights.”
He was right: no security lighting in the building, no twinkling Christmas lights in the gazebo, no lampposts illuminating the paths.
Their flashlights were the only swaths of illumination visible in the night.
It was too quiet. Too still.
Fear prickled the back of Jules’s neck.
“Cut off the flashlight,” he whispered abruptly, clicking his off. As if he felt the great unlikely quietness, too. “We don’t want to be sitting ducks.”
“Where are the security patrols?” she asked.
“Good question.”
Her heart turned to ice. “I don’t like this.”
He pulled the pistol from the holster inside his jacket. “Neither do I.” He took her hand in his free one, gloved fingers linking with hers, his sidearm pointed ahead.
Wary, Jules kept her eyes on the shadows, the drifting piles of snow, the darkened corners as they trudged past several dark outbuildings, their roofs laden with snow, their windows like a myriad of ghostly reflective eyes.
Jules clung to Trent’s hand as they turned onto the path leading to the stable. Though there was no wind, the temperature was below freezing, the air frigid as she dragged it into her lungs. The frozen air had a burnt odor, as if someone has just doused a campfire.
“Do you smell that?” she said. “Is it just wood smoke?”
“Maybe.” His voice was hard.
The stable was as dark as the other buildings, but the main door was open slightly, hanging ajar. “Hell,” Trent whispered, and waved her to stand behind him as he walked inside, flicking the light switch.
Click.
No flash of lights followed.
“Something was burning in here,” he said under his breath.
The hairs on the back of her arms raised as Trent stepped inside, sweeping the arc of his flashlight over the stalls where horses were stomping nervously and the heavy smell of smoke lingered.
What had gone on in here?
A horse neighed loudly.
“What the hell?” Trent turned the flashlight to the far wall, where a huge black horse was pacing, his coat lathered, his eyes wild.
Trent lowered the light. “Hey, boy, it’s all right. Shhh.” He kept the flashlight directed toward the floor, and Jules followed, the scent of smoke and something else, something metallic…
“Trent—” she whispered.
“Holy shit!” The beam of his flashlight swept over the body of Maeve Mancuso. He was on his knees in an instant, Jules one step behind. “What the hell?” He handed Jules his gun. “Just in case,” he said. “Keep an eye out.” He propped his flashlight on the floor, training its beam on the poor girl.
Maeve was propped up against a post, blood pooled around her on the dusty cement floor. He touched her neck and shook his head. “Hell.” Still, he listened for the sound of the faintest breath whispering through her lungs, but shook his head. “She’s gone,” he said, almost inaudibly, and Jules felt something break deep inside her as she stared at the girl’s pale, lifeless face.
CHAPTER 39
“It’s been staged to look like she committed suicide,” Jules said, not fooled for an instant despite the long, thin slash marks visible inside Maeve’s wrists. The bloody knife lay on the floor beneath the fingertips of her left hand, her dark hair singed. “But there was a fire in here…doused. God, what happened?”
“That son of a bitch got her. That’s what happened.” Trent was still beside the girl, shining the beam of his flashlight over the surrounding area.
Angry, he rocked back on his heels. “Look at this.” He shined his flashlight over the death scene to a small puddle of blood not far from the wide dark pools coagulating beneath Maeve’s open palms. The puddle had been scuffed and smeared, just like the one Jules had seen close to the spot where Drew Prescott had been left for dead. Not