Page 19 of He Sees You
Violin.
Someone's playing a violin in the woods, the melody carried on the wind like a secret.
It's beautiful and wrong, classical music in a place that should only know silence and wind.
I open the window despite the cold, trying to locate the source.
The music grows clearer—Bach, I think, though I was never good at classical.
It's coming from deeper in the mountains, maybe a mile or two away.
Who plays violin in the woods in December?
"Dad?" I call down the stairs. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"The violin."
A pause. Then his heavy footsteps on the stairs.
He appears in my doorway, frowning. "That would be the Lockwood place. Guy's a hermit, lives about three miles up the mountain. Plays at all hours."
"Lockwood?" The name feels familiar somehow.
"Cain Lockwood. Moved here about five years ago. Keeps to himself, but..." He trails off.
"But what?"
"But he fits the profile. Loner, hunter, knows the woods better than anyone. And those damn deer skulls he keeps—" He stops again, clearly having said more than he intended.
"Deer skulls?"
"Forget it. Just stay away from him, Celeste. I mean it."
He heads back downstairs, leaving me with more questions than answers.
Cain Lockwood.
I roll the name around in my mind like wine, tasting its edges.
A hermit who plays violin in the woods and decorates with deer skulls.
Who fits the profile of a serial killer.
I should be afraid.
Should be packing my bags and heading back to the city where the only danger is overpriced cocktails and bad Tinder dates.
Instead, I'm typing:
Cain was a name for a marked man, a killer, the first to spill blood in anger.
But this Cain played violin in the woods and decorated his cabin with bones, and when she heard his music drift through her window that first night, she knew she'd found her monster.
This time, I don't delete it.
CHAPTER THREE
