Chasing the Fall (Naughty and Spice)

One

Twiggy

As far as parties go, tonight’s Friendsgiving isn’t awful . The non-peopling introvert side of me would much rather be plugged in and doing something online, but it could be worse.

And the bourbon, a gift from Wyatt to Gunner in honor of his recent twenty-first birthday, is fantastic .

I look around the table at the assembled company—Gunner and Shiloh, Harry and Wyatt, Cotton and Brodie, Sammy…Esme…Jack—and warmth spreads through me at the thought of how lucky I am to have these people in my life. Lucy Falls is a small town, but it’s managed to produce some pretty awesome personalities. We’re a motley crew, composed of a former exotic dancer, joint heirs to a vineyard, a cop, and an enforcer for the Irish mob. And that’s just for starters.

“Y’all are all…sooo nice,” I mutter from behind the heavy lowball in my hand. “I love you guys.”

Everyone falls quiet. Cotton, aka Emery and my cousin Brodie’s wife, snorts. “Are you drunk?” She glances around. “How much has she had to drink? You guys know she can’t hold her liquor.”

“I’m not drunk! I just really, really love you. All of you. Even Gunner, though he’s a pain in my ass.”

Shiloh squints at me from the other end of the long table that’s currently buried under a mountain of Thanksgiving dishes. “I think there was a cider when she got here…and then an old-fashioned…and now it’s straight whiskey? Am I forgetting something?”

Gunner is shaking his head. “She had some of that wine Harry brought, too. She’s definitely drunk.”

I am not drunk. I flip them a friendly bird instead of arguing, though, and tip my glass up for another sip. The whiskey burns a hot trail down my throat, but I don’t cough. I am Irish, after all.

We have standards.

“Eat some more mashed potatoes, Twig. You’re too skinny, anyway.” Gunner passes the bowl of mashed potatoes my way, and I push it back.

“I have eaten so much I’m about to burst. I’m fine. When I start puking, then I’m drunk.”

“I’m kind of jealous, to be honest,” Cotton says, rubbing the tiny bump of her belly. “I haven’t had the good stuff in too many months now.”

“Emery…” Brodies eyes her with playful warning. He’s the only one who calls her by her actual name.

“I think it is so sweet,” I say.

Again, there’s quiet. Harry clears her throat. “What’s sweet?”

“How he calls her by her real name, and she lets him get away with it. It’s sweet. You would light Wyatt up if he called you Harriet. And I’m the same way with my actual name.”

Gunner tips his head and puts a finger to his lip, as if he’s thinking. “What is your real name? I seem to have forgotten…oh yeah! Tallulah!” Laughter rings out.

I growl. “That’s it—”

Jack’s radio chirps, and his phone rings simultaneously, silencing everyone. He’s off tonight, but as Chief of Police, he’s technically on duty all the time. No one would be interrupting his Friendsgiving unless it was something serious, though.

A voice comes through the radio’s speaker, full of static. “…body at Lucy Falls…all units…”

Jack turns the dial on his radio, snuffing the volume, and steps away from the table to make a call. We all look at one another, tension stretching between us, and suddenly, I am very, very sober.

Lucy Falls has been quiet for a long time—well over a year—but none of us have forgotten the terrors played out here by a deranged stalker with a relentless obsession.

And like the calm before a storm, our peace was bound to break sooner or later.

I sneak a look at Jack, standing in the living room of Shiloh and Gunner’s home but still visible through the doorway. His back is to us but rigid, and as I watch he scrubs his hand over the back of his head in a single frustrated motion. Something is wrong. Very wrong.

He replies in muted, clipped tones before hanging up. For a moment, he stands there, still turned away.

“Jack?” It’s Harry who poses the tentative question. For a brief while, before she fell in love with Wyatt, I think Jack had feelings for her. Now they’re just good friends, bonded by shared childhood and adult experience.

Jack turns, his gaze brushing over each of us. “I have to go. Hiker found a body up at the Falls.”

Shiloh’s hand goes to her throat. “No—”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ll keep you guys informed as I learn anything.”

We don’t speak for a full minute after Jack lets himself out. Cotton stands and moves over to Shiloh, sinking down and taking her hands in hers. “He’s dead, Shy. He can’t hurt you again. This is just…it’s probably a hiker who got careless and fell.”

The Falls for which our town is named are dangerous this time of year. At a higher elevation, they’re colder and get snow earlier and harder. It’s possible. I nod, pushing away the memory of how tensely Jack listened. “Yes. Maybe there was some ice or something…”

Shiloh shakes her head, her long auburn curls swinging around her face. “Jason is dead, but Hank…Henry…is still out there.”

Shiloh’s brother, Sammy, presses his lips together. “We can’t jump to conclusions before we even know what happened.”

“I just…I have a bad feeling. I never thought he would just give up and go away. It didn’t make sense. Henry was the mastermind—careful and methodical. Jason was all impulse-driven.” Shiloh jerks her hands free from Cotton’s and rises to walk to the window and peer out.

Gunner and I look at each other, and I give him a small nod in answer to his unspoken question before standing up. Grabbing my ancient rainbow-striped beanie from the console by the door, I pull it down over my hair, brushing my hair out of my eyes. The beanie doesn’t work as well with my hair now that I’ve grown it out, but I’ll never give it up.

“Brodie. Can you take me home, please?” I’ll start working on figuring out Henry “Hank” Thurston’s whereabouts immediately.

Comprehension lights Brodie’s gaze. “Sure.”

We say our good-byes, everyone a little deflated by the turn our Friendsgiving celebration took, and within minutes, Brodie, Cotton, and I are on the way home. My mind is already racing ahead to how I’m going to locate Henry Thurston. State and then national crime databases are first, I think. I need to see if similar crimes have been committed. Actually, maybe Jack and I should work on that together—

“I can hear you thinking from here.” Brodie’s eyes, a rich amber brown, meet my blue ones in the rear-view mirror.

“I need to find something to dispel the idea that it’s Henry Thurston. Shiloh does not need to be upset and worried about that.”

“What if it is him, though?” Cotton asks.

“Then I’ll find that out, too.”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you.” Cotton stares out the window at the darkened scenery flying by, but I doubt she’s seeing anything.

Shiloh was terrorized by what we all assumed to be a single stalker last year, until she was abducted, and we discovered that there were, in fact, two men—brothers—responsible for the kidnappings and subsequent murders of several young women around town. Shiloh made it out alive, but it was a dark time.

Not something we want to repeat itself.

When we arrive home, I tell Brodie and Cotton goodnight and unlock the door of my little apartment attached to the garage. Brodie pushes past me, leaving Cotton to stand beside me on the small porch.

“Wait here.”

“What? This isn’t necessary—”

I stand at the door as he ignores me, flipping on the lights and walking through the single room and bathroom. In the bath, I hear him push back the shower curtain and open the door to the closet.

“All clear.”

“You think?”

Brodie steps back out and ruffles my hair. “Not taking chances. With any of you. Good night, kiddo.”

“Yeah, yeah. Good night.”

With Brodie and Cotton gone, I drop the beanie to the counter and pull off my coat. The computer pulls me, but I force myself to send Jack a text first.

Any word? Do I need to start looking for a certain someone?

His reply comes immediately in the form of the phone ringing.

I answer the call, putting it on speaker, and set the device down beside my computer station. “Jack. Do we need to be worried?”

“Not sure. Not going to lie, though…it’s not looking good. We have a twenty-something female, nude, with ligature marks.”

“What’s the cause of death?”

“Bullet to the brain.”

Ice crawls through my veins. “It’s him, Jack.”

“I don’t want to say that right away—” The words are half hearted.

“But you can’t rule it out.”

A long pause. Then a tired sounding, “No. No, I can’t rule it out. Especially since the fucker got away. It’s possible that Henry Thurston has returned.”

I sit down and wake my computer, the three screens before me lighting up with a blue glow that instantly soothes the anxiety I haven’t been able to quell since Jack received the call. I crack my knuckles, then flutter them as I position them over the keyboard.

“Then a-hunting I will go.”