Page 16 of The Clearing Rain

In between giving out the best advice for how to treat cracked nipples while breast feeding—Lacey was still coming to terms with that actually being a thing—Maureen had been happy to prattle on aboutthose poor girlsand how,these types of things never happened in Strahan.Maureen became teary as she told Lacey that she’d started having nightmares after she’d heard what’d happened to those sweet girls on the news.She could hardly believe that she might’ve been one of the last people to see Danika alive, after the two of them checked out of the backpackers that morning, all happy and excited about the next leg of their adventure.Cradle Mountain was on the top of both girls’ bucket lists, and one of the main reasons they’d wanted to do this trip in the first place.The whole thing had made her nervous,jumping at shadows, the older woman put it, and now she found herself studying every new guest who came in with renewed suspicion.Lacey made the appropriate noises of commiseration and then asked, eyes wide with trepidation, if Maureen thought the killer had actually stayed at the backpackers.Maybe that was where he first saw them, she theorized.Maureen had gone to great pains to let Lacey know there was no way thatmonsterhad stayed in her establishment.The cops admitted to only having a very vague description of their person of interest, but Maureen was sure no one like that had been near here.

This news had disheartened Lacey a little, but then Maureen had leaned across the reception desk and touched Lacey’s arm.“Just between you and me,” she’d whispered conspiratorially.“Most of the locals have been saying that if someone wanted to stay in the area undetected, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to pay for accommodation.There are plenty of out-of-the-way campsites hidden up along the trails in these forests where someone could stay for weeks without being noticed.And I agree with them,” Maureen stated, her double chin wobbling with assuredness.“So, if I was you, I’d stay away from any isolated hiking trails, my dear.Stick to the town proper, and you’ll be fine.”

Nico and his team had already considered the idea of the killer hiding out in the bush.But the logistics of searching every secluded trail and backwater was a mammoth task and Nico had decided to shelve it, especially as they couldn’t even be sure the killer had stayed in the area.“Thank you,” Lacey had replied.“I must admit, I was a little worried about coming here after what we heard on the news.”Lacey decided to push her luck and ask a direct question.“But do you really think this murderer guy might still be hanging around?”

Maureen leaned in even closer and waggled her slightly bushy eyebrows at Lacey.“The cops keep trying to tell us that we’re safe in our own homes, and we shouldn’t become overwrought, and they’re going to catch this guy.They’re sure he’s already moved on, and they’re going to protect us.”Maureen gave a loud snort at this last statement.Lacey doubted that was exactly the line Joe and his right-hander, Constable Stacy McCloud, were actually using, but she held her tongue.“How are they going to protect us, if they can’t even protect those two poor girls?”Maureen went on.

Lacey was stung at Maureen’s lack of faith.She wanted to argue that police work wasn’t an exact science; they didn’t have a crystal ball that could tell them where and when a crime was going to be committed.But they always did their best, and most officers she knew would put their life on the line to protect innocent citizens.

“So some of us locals have got together and formed a concerned community group.We don’t need the coppers to protect us, we can protect ourselves.”Maureen’s pale-blue eyes lit up.

Sounded more like a vigilante group, Lacey thought.It was sad, how one horrible deed could corrupt the inhabitants of a small town like this.

“Old Mal, he’s got a property on the edge of town.”Maureen waved an arm in some vague direction.“He’s organizing it all.We’re all going to meet at his place tonight.He’s talking about groups of us making patrols around the town, especially at night.We don’t want to be scared in our own homes.And we don’t want people like you, tourists and travelers, to be scared off either.This town relies on visitors to keep us going.”

Lacey could see Maureen’s point, and she answered with the sort of meaningful nod a worried young newlywed might give as Maureen kept on telling her details of how they were going to keep their little town safe.While at the same time, she mentally catalogued the danger thiscommunity-minded groupposed and weighed up the risks of letting the meeting tonight continue.

“So, you and your handsome hubby don’t need to worry,” Maureen had concluded.Then she’d tapped the side of her nose and artfully raised one eyebrow.“I’ve got my own protection, right here, behind the counter, if you know what I mean?”Maureen raised her thumb and pointed her finger in the air, simulating a gun.Lacey hadn’t needed to fake her shock at the woman’s revelation.“And I’m not the only one who’s not afraid to protect myself, either.Mal and me and a few others are in complete agreement on that.”Lacey shouldn’t have been surprised, a lot of country people owned firearms, mainly to help keep vermin populations such as rabbits down.And most of these firearms were legal.But what wasn’t legal, was carrying them around in public, certainly not using them as some kind of vigilante group, even if it was well-intentioned.

When she’d relayed all this new information to Nico back in their hut, she’d raised her own eyebrows, but had managed to hold back the words,Now do you see why I’m such an asset on this case?Instead letting him process that thought on his own time.It sounded like at least a few of them had weapons and were prepared to carry them on this nightly watch, and this was too dangerous to be allowed to happen.She’d leave that call to Nico, but if she were in his shoes, she’d have the local guy, Joe, go and have a quiet chat to Mal about therumorshe’d heard around town and try and nip it in the bud that way.

As she stood lost in her rumination, staring across the road at the vista of sparkling water with forest-covered hills rising behind it, a movement caught her eye.A man stepped up to the edge of the road on the opposite side.He said nothing, merely stared broodingly at her.Where had he come from?She could’ve sworn he wasn’t there a few seconds ago.

The man raised a hand and crooked his finger at her, beckoning her over.She frowned and stood straighter.What did this guy want?Was he a local?Something about his careworn face was familiar.He was handsome in a silver fox type of way.But when she looked into his eyes, alarm bells sounded loud and clear in her head.Something was off about this guy.He motioned to her with his whole hand now, a sly smile sliding onto his face.Blindly, she reached for her weapon on a duty belt that she wasn’t wearing.Shit.She needed to remember she was merely a young woman on holiday with her husband.

How would sightseer Lacey react?Should she go over there?Nico wasn’t here to make the call, and she was suddenly unsure what to do.A chill ran down her spine as the man continued to stare at her, and she suddenly felt vulnerable on this side of the street where she was completely alone.

No.She was a cop.There was no feeling vulnerable.She was tough, could handle anything this man could throw her way.He was an older white male, and she knew she could take him if the need arose.Which it wouldn’t, because he probably just wanted to talk to her.Perhaps he was an out-of-towner too, lost and confused and had mistaken her for a local who could offer him directions.Although those eyes didn’t belong to a tourist.

Duty drew her forward.They were in Strahan to try and unearth a lead to a murder case.It looked as if he wanted to tell her something.Something important.This could be a lead, and she needed to follow it.And if he were merely a lost traveler, they could joke about being lost together and she could recross the road and wait for Nico to return.

Focussed completely on the man, she took one step off the curb.Then as her other foot landed on the road, a horn blared and she jumped back, shocked.She’d been so fixated on the man she hadn’t even checked for traffic.Not that there was much traffic in this one-horse town.It was just her luck for a car to come down the empty main street at that particular moment.

“Lacey.”Nico’s panicked voice had her turning her head to see him jogging down the path toward her.He must’ve seen her near miss, and she suddenly felt foolish.But by the time she turned back to look across the road, the man was gone.As if he’d never been there in the first place.

“You nearly got hit by that car,” Nico said as he reached her side, puffing with exertion, alarm showing clearly in his wide, blue eyes.“What were you doing?”He pulled her protectively into his chest.“God, don’t do that to me.”

“I’m fine,” she replied vaguely, foolishness turning to guilt that she’d scared him.That she’d been so thoughtless.But he needed to know.“There was a man.”She turned and shaded her eyes against the increasingly bright rays of the morning sun.“Over there.”But he was definitely gone now.So strange.Because there weren’t a lot of places to hide on the other side of the road.Unless he’d melted around the side of the boat cruise building.

Now she was beginning to doubt herself.

“What do you mean, a man?”Alarm was quickly replaced by his seasoned detective persona.

“A guy over there on the other side of the road.He was signaling me to come over to him.But I’d never seen him before, and I didn’t know what he wanted.He made me feel… I don’t know, it was all a little uncanny.”

“What did he look like?”Nico demanded, and she loved him a little more for not brushing her story aside, instead, believing her straight away.Nico didn’t question her, didn’t state the obvious, that there was no one there now.He trusted that she had seen someone.And it’d freaked her out enough to make her forget all her police training for those few costly seconds.

“It was a little hard to tell, he had a baseball cap drawn down low over his face and a short beard and mustache.”Lacey drew on her police training on how to take a quick physical sketch of a perp in one or two seconds.“He was tall.The top of his head almost came up to that stop sign over there.”She pointed to the traffic sign on the corner.“That’d make him six-three or six-four,” she said quickly.“A lean build, like he was physically active, you know.”She drew on those few seconds the man had been in her sight.“Perhaps late fifties, early sixties, although it was hard to tell with the grayish beard and the hat, wearing all black.”

“Good.Anything else?”

“Gray sideburns and a long, crooked nose, like it was broken in his youth and never fixed properly.”

Nico went completely still beside her.“And?”he said, but this time there was something unsettled in his voice.

“And dark-brown eyes, almost black.”That was the one feature she remembered clearly.The way his dark eyes had pierced her, chilling her to the bone.“I didn’t like the way he looked at me,” she admitted.

“Stay here.I’m going to check it out.”Nico put a hand on her shoulder and forcibly pushed her back toward the safety of the shopfront.

---