Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

She followed them to the door that unlocked and opened without anyone touching it. She placed her hand on Fin’s shoulder as he followed Regan out the door. No words passed between them verbally or telepathically, but his smile told her she had his support. Hers told him how much she appreciated it.

Fia sat on the front step of her parents’ house and checked her voice messages at the office. She and Glen had had soup and sandwiches at six-thirty in the dining room and then he’d excused himself to make phone calls. They had decided to head over to the pub to have a pint and he’d offered to meet her there, but Fia was waiting for him. The less time he spent alone with the Kahills, the safer she thought he’d be. They’d all be.

That especially held true now that Regan was back in town. Although he’d been behaving himself for years…decades, he had a reputation for exploiting humans. It was Regan who had turned both Victor and Shannon into vampires. He’d found Shannon in an eighteenth-century tavern; she’d been a serving wench who had chosen the wrong traveler to share a roll in the hay. Victor had been a nineteenth-century ship’s captain who had befriended Regan, given him safe passage from Europe when Regan had been on the run. Regan had rewarded Victor’s friendship by holding him captive, and on a blood binge, taken the man’s life, replacing it with everlasting damnation.

Shannon had accepted her lot in life, and held no ill will against Regan or any of the other Kahills, but Victor resented Regan’s intervention. Despised him for it. Hated them all. At least twice a winter, Victor got drunk and walked up and down the darkened streets of Clare Point, threatening to “Murder ever damned last one of ’em, while they slept in their beds.”

Because Regan had slipped not once, but twice in recent years, there were many in the sept who didn’t believe he was ready to participate in the committee that exterminated the men and women they hunted. Regan was trying hard to win the town over, saying all the right things, demonstrating the right actions, but Fia wasn’t falling for it. She didn’t believe he could be trusted and she believed in the age-old adage that a leopard did not change his spots.

Then she wondered, was she being hypocritical? Perhaps. But her circumstances were far different than Regan’s.

Fia skipped through several messages on voice mail; all matters she could see to when she got back to the office.

She and Glen had spent half the day in the woods, then returned to town for interviews. They’d combed the wildlife preserve for any possible evidence and taken additional photographs. As with Bobby, they had been unable to locate the head and extremities. The few footprints Petey had discovered the day before were of such poor quality that Glen had been unable to take a cast. It appeared that some common gasoline had been used as the accelerant again, though they would have to wait on the lab test results for confirmation.

The only concrete evidence they had in the case, so far, besides Mahon’s body, was what appeared to be a rake handle, the rake portion broken off, which was used to impale him, and a small cardboard box found in the woods. The empty box had contained generic, lawn-sized garbage bags. No other trash was found within half a mile of the crime scene, which made them both suspect that the box was connected to the murder. Had the killer placed Mahon’s head and hands inside garbage bags? It would account for the lack of a blood trail.

Both the rake handle and the box had been bagged as evidence and sent by courier to the lab in Baltimore. They had a few more people to interview in the morning, but Fia didn’t expect any surprises. Mahon had left his house on Tuesday morning, his day off after working Labor Day weekend, to go bird-watching on the game preserve. Everyone in the town knew Mahon was an avid bird-watcher. Year round, he could be found once or twice a week on his days off, walking the paths of the Clare Point preserve, or one of the other parks in the state, such as Bombay Hook.

Nothing had been different about Tuesday morning except that Mahon had not come back in time to make his ten-thirty dental appointment and when his wife had been unable to get him on his cell, a neighbor had offered to look for him.

As Fia listened to her office messages, she methodically saved and deleted. There was a call from Lieutenant Sutton in Lansdowne; she didn’t say what she wanted, only that it was in reference to the Casey Mulvine case. Casey Mulvine. Fia now had a name to go with the image of the dead girl in the alley.

Joseph had also called, cheerfully asking her to give him a ring when she got a chance. He spoke as if nothing had happened in the bar. As if he didn’t know that she’d been looking for him for the last two weeks.

Finishing her messages, Fia set her cell on the step beside her, drawing her knees up into her arms. She honestly didn’t know which call disturbed her more, the one from Joseph or Lieutenant Sutton. Joseph for obvious reasons, but what was it about the girl’s case that had gotten under her skin?

She pressed her thumb and forefinger to her temples, fighting a flutter of panic in her chest. She felt as if her life was crumbling around her. A short month ago, she’d been happy, confident in her job. With help from Dr. Kettleman, she felt as if her personal life was in check…or at least getting there. And now—

The front door opened and closed and Fia heard Glen approach behind her. “Hey,” she called lightly. “You ready to