Page 78 of From the Darkness

His strength was fading now. He felt weak and shaky. But he used the wind to sweep away the dark clouds and the rain before he turned his attention back to the house.

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He felt frail and spent, and he knew his time on earth was almost finished. But he had to find Bree and Dinah and make sure they were all right. He found them in the schoolroom, huddled together on the rug in front of the sofa. He wanted to go to them, gather them both into his arms. Kiss them and stroke them and tell them the danger was over.

Well, almost over. Helen was still at large. But he knew Bree would make sure she got what was coming to her.

“Troy?”

Bree must have sensed his presence.

He didn’t answer. And he didn’t let them see him. He couldn’t. Not now.

He didn’t want to endure the sadness—or the horror—on their faces when they saw him fading out like a light turned slowly down. The storm had taken all his energy, and he could feel himself sinking into blackness.

He had been tied to this place because he had a job to do. Now he had done it.

It was over. Bree’s love had brought him back to life, but only for a little time. He’d made love to her. Two glorious times. Not enough. Not nearly enough. But it would have to do.

Yet he understood what he had lost, and the sadness of it gathered around him, choking off the last of his strength. He would never see his daughter graduate from elementary school or go to college. Or celebrate her sixteenth birthday. Or marry the man she loved. And he grieved for the loss of those precious events.

He would never hold the woman he loved again. It was too much to bear. With a trembling hand, he reached toward her and the child. But then his eyes misted and the image of them faded away, and he was left in blackness.

Blackness that was somehow comforting. Blackness that smothered the terrible pain and soothed his wounded heart.

Chapter Seventeen

The wind died as suddenly as it had blown up, leaving an eerie quiet. Outside the house. And inside, too.

Bree stirred, standing and grasping Dinah’s hand. For a moment she had thought Troy was here, but now it felt like she and Dinah were the only two people at Ravencrest.

Troy had told her things—terrible things that she didn’t want to believe. She forced them out of her mind because she couldn’t break down weeping now. There was too much she had to do.

Yet she was cautious as she emerged from the schoolroom, taking Dinah with her. She clutched her small hand as they made their way down to the kitchen. It was empty, and the back door stood open. The wind had blown leaves and dirt inside.

“Mrs. Martindale will be angry about the mess,” Dinah whispered as Bree closed the door.

“I don’t think so,” she answered as she crossed into the pantry and switched on the power, flooding the kitchen with light once again.

Dinah peered anxiously around. “I don’t see Mrs. Martindale.”

“I think she and Mr. Graves ran away,” Bree murmured, suspecting that it was a little more than that. Above the sound of the wind, she’d heard screams—long vanishing screams like the sounds of people falling off a cliff. But she wasn’t exactly going to talk about what might have happened outside.

Instead, she got the child a hot cross bun and some milk, which she carried into the cozy sitting room next to the office.

“I’ll be right next door,” she said as she turned on the television set and got a PBS channel.

Leaving the door open, she made sure that Dinah was comfortably settled in front of Sesame Street, then worked at getting the lock off the phone.

As soon as the receiver was free, she called Decorah Security.

Frank Decorah himself answered, and when he heard who was calling, tension crackled over the line. “Bree, where have you been? We’ve been worried. We needed to get in touch with you, and you didn’t leave a phone number.”

She felt her chest tighten. Decorah Security had been a wonderful place to work, and she knew now that she had let them down. “I’m sorry,” she answered. “I thought I was being really clever. It turns out I can use some help. That is, if I’m not fired or something,” she added in a small voice.

“You’re not fired. Tell me what you need,” Frank answered at once.

With a surge of gratitude, Bree lowered her voice and launched into an edited version of events, trying to keep the story coherent. She ended with the two recent murders and the disappearance of Graves and Martindale, who she suspected were dead.

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