Page 12 of In the Bones
Eva was staring at the tub. The faucet released a trickle that made her jump, but her gaze remained on the porcelain. Had Nicole come across as overbearing? She was so used to seeking out teachable moments with Blair and Alana that she sometimes got preachy. Eva wasn’t much older than her girls, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be treated like a child.Oh God, thought Nicole. Eva’s eyes had gone glassy, her attention shifting to the floor’s octagonal tiles.
“I want you to be here,” she said, not looking at Nicole.
“Oh. Well, good.” Part of her hoped Mikko was lurking in the bedroom, close enough to witness Eva’s approval.Drip. Drip.
“Don’t, like, feel the need to hurry or anything when you’re here. The longer you stay,” Eva said, “the better.”
Nicole cocked her head. The words were mild enough, nothing odd about the sentiment, but coupled with the blankness of Eva’s features, they blared like an alarm bell in Nicole’s ears. With a cold sense of dread, Nicole wondered if she’d been reading the situation wrong. Maybe itwasMikko who’d left the message. A warning that the house had eyes.
Maybe the message hadn’t been meant for Nicole at all.
“Are you OK? Do you … need help?” It was instinct, decades of life as a woman and mother to girls, that had made Nicole ask. She hadn’t seen Mikko mistreat his girlfriend or noticed any signs of abuse, but the woman emitted an urgent, twitchy energy that made Nicole uncomfortable. It was sounding an awful lot like Eva didn’t want to be alone with Mikko.
She didn’t answer Nicole’s question. Instead, Eva asked, “What do you think of the house?”
“The house? It’s gorgeous.”
“You’ve only spent a few hours here. It’s not enough.”
“Not enough for what?” Nicole couldn’t parse her meaning.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Eva said. “Mikko doesn’t believe me, but—”
“Eva! Come on!”
The man’s voice made Eva flinch. “I have to go.” She cast one final glance at the bathtub before backing toward the door.
“What the fuck?” Nicole muttered to herself once she wasgone. The interaction had left her on edge. For a long time, she sat next to the tub, trying to work out what to do next. She heard the front door close and then the house fell so silent that, if she strained, Nicole could hear the ice machine in the kitchen releasing a shower of cubes. She was alone. Alone with all of Mikko’s stuff. Those papers in his office, the laptop in plain sight. When she got to her feet to go downstairs, she saw something that gave her pause. A long hair, plastered to the outer edge of the tub. Not dark and straight like Eva and Nicole’s, but curly. Bright red.
That was when she heard it. It wasn’t a creak this time, but a muffled groan. Like something heavy had shifted. It had come from the bedroom—no. It had come from the bedroom ceiling.
Nicole went to the doorway and, raising her gaze, crept across the bedroom floor. There it was again, the unmistakable sound of movement just above her head. For a moment there was nothing and then the noise returned, this time closer to the hall. All of the blood had pooled in her legs, which felt heavy as stone. In a strange, detached way, as if the danger concerned someone else, she wondered if the pressure on her chest would prove to be more than her body could bear.
Nicole came to the decision quickly. She had to get the hell out. This wasn’t her house and she had no responsibility to protect it, especially if she was right about Mikko. Who he was. What he’d done. She had to protect herself, for the sake of her girls, so she ran, fingers gripping the phone as she stumbled over the edge of the rug, her eyes still on the ceiling. Her breath fluttered in her throat like a moth in a jar, wings beating in desperation as she hurried down the hall. When she reached the landing, she lost her grip. The phone clattered across the hardwood, landing screen-up near the stairs. Frantic, Nicole dropped to her knees, her gaze darting once more to the ceiling.
What she saw there was a grate of decorative metal, designed to conceal a vent. She’d noticed them on the first floor too, whorls of iron in a wide paisley pattern that allowed the air to flow through.
Between the metal eddies was an eye, the white of it bright as the fresh ceiling paint.
As white as the set of clenched human teeth beneath it.
TWELVE
Tim
“Deep breaths,” said Tim as he gave Nicole Durham an awkward pat on the back. Sitting in the back seat of his car, door flung open and her feet braced on the pebbles, she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
If you asked Tim, what Nicole had just encountered was worse.
The call he’d received at the barracks had been both surprising and inevitable. Tim had only met Sheriff Mac’s sister once before, at Mac’s fiftieth birthday. He knew the Durham family owned Island Adventure, where he’d been a customer several times. What Tim hadn’t known, and suspected Mac didn’t either, was that Nicole’s new client was a well-known former NHL player who planned to make Cape Vincent his summer home.
They’d arrived to find her in the front yard, pale and pacing as she shook out her hands. The intruder had been hiding in the attic, which was accessible through a small door in the walk-in closet. It had taken Tim and Sol some time, but they’d managed to flush the trespasser out with threats of a K9 Unit. And when they did, they were stunned to find themselves face to face with a woman.
She was young, mid-twenties at most, with curly red hair that could use a wash, and brown eyes brimming with fear. Her skin and clothes were dusty, but not as filthy as Tim would have expected for a squatter, which probably meant she’d been using the homeowner’s shower. They knew little else about her so far, but he had a feeling the name she’d spat out like an ice chip—Jenny Smith—was a fake. She had no ID on her, so the team had no way to corroborate her claim.
Much to Tim’s interest, though, Jenny Smith wore a whitejean jacket with indigo cuffs over her striped sweater. A jacket Tim was confident belonged to Annelise Greene.
“She was in the ceiling,” Nicole muttered from the back of the car. “Creeping around the house. I think Eva heard her too. Why was she in theceiling?”
