Posts Tagged ‘Nightfall’

Excerpt from

Nightfall

A Vampire Romance (Book 2)

by

Norah Wilson

Copyright © 2011 Norah Wilson

Published by Norah Wilson

All rights reserved.

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

Aiden Afflack hummed to himself as he lifted the brass doorknocker to summon St. Cloud Police Chief Weldon Michaels to the front door of hisCarrington Placeresidence. Rapping twice, he stepped back.

What was that tune running through his head? It had been with him since he’d risen this evening.

Audioslave? Nope.

Queens of the Stone Age? Un-uh.

Collective Soul? Yeah, yeah, that was it. Definitely. He cricked his neck one way, then the other and felt the satisfying crack. Ooh, I’m feeling better now.

The curtain in the bay window twitched, but Aiden feigned obliviousness. From inside, he clearly heard Michaels jam a clip into an automatic weapon. Aiden rolled his eyes. Nobody trusted anyone anymore.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

The voice came through the door. A very cautious man indeed.

“I’m a friend of your wife’s,” Aiden called. “Well, more a friend of a friend, actually, but I have a personal message for you, from her.”

“Nice try. Now move on, before I call the cops.”

Aiden thought about knocking the door in. It was solid oak with a good deadbolt on it, but it could have been made from cardboard and paperclips for all the challenge it would present. On the other hand, there was no reason to get messy.

He cleared his throat, did his best to summon a puzzled tone. “Well, hell, I thought you were the cops. Do I have the wrong address? I’m looking for Chief Weldon Michaels. Got a message for him from his wife Lucy. Pretty woman, ’bout an inch over five feet, brown hair and eyes? Oh, and a real cute little daughter. What’s her name?Devon? Any of this sounding familiar?”

Silence for a few heartbeats. “What kind of message?”

“She wants to come home, but before she can see her way clear to doing that, we need to have ourselves a talk.”

Another pause, then the sound of the deadbolt retracting. The door cracked open, and Weldon Michaels peered out past a security chain.

God save me from fools. Growling, Aiden pushed the door open. The hardware anchoring the security chain tore free from the wall. Before Michaels could cry out, Aiden stepped inside and closed the door behind him. In the next heartbeat, he seized Michaels’ right wrist and squeezed until the other man screamed and dropped the pistol he held. It hit the hardwood floor with a clatter but didn’t discharge.

“A gun?” Aiden released the other man’s hand. “Now I ask you, what kind of a greeting is that?”

Michaels — clearly a slow learner — reached for a second weapon jammed into the waistband at the small of his back. Before he could get to it, Aiden had Michaels face down on the floor with his right hand way closer to his right shoulder blade than God ever intended it to go.

“Jesus, my arm. You’re breaking it!”

“Not even close. You develop a feel for these things,” he said conversationally. “It’s sort of like braking when you’re driving on ice. You gotta find the threshold.”

“No, my shoulder! It’s gonna pop! I swear to God!”

Aiden reefed Michaels arm a half inch higher, eliciting a scream, followed by a stream of curses.

“See? Still plenty of play. It’s a feel thing. Now are you gonna behave yourself if I let you up?”

“Christ, yes! I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Atta boy.” Aiden helped the other man to his feet. “Now, let’s go plug the code into the alarm, shall we? And don’t fuck with me. If the alarm company or the cops call in a minute to ask if everything’s okay, things will be very much not okay for you. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Aiden “helped” Michaels to the alarm panel, where he keyed in a five-digit number. The winking red light went out.

“Good man. Now we’re going to need your handcuffs. I know they can’t be far away, since you laid hands on that pistol fast enough. So be a darling and let’s go fetch them.”

Michaels swore again.

“I know, I know. It’s gotta sting, getting cuffed with your own bracelets, but look at it this way: they’ll be a helluva lot more comfortable than the alternative if you force me to improvise.”

Michaels sagged. “In that drawer.”

A minute later, Chief Weldon Michaels sat cuffed in one of his own kitchen chairs, a sturdy-looking oak proposition. Michaels somehow managed to look both scared and pissed at the same time.

Aiden took a seat at the table, placing both guns — one retrieved from beneath the telephone table in the entryway and the other from the small of Michaels’ back — on the gleaming wood surface. “Okay, Weldon — may I call you Weldon? — we need to talk.”

Michaels glared back. “You’re wasting your time. I don’t keep anything of value of here, at least nothing portable enough to carry off. And damn you, you’ve already scored both my guns. I suggest you just let yourself out and get while the getting’s good.”

“You think I was bullshitting earlier, don’t you? You think I was feeding you a line about your wife to get inside?” Aiden leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up to rest on the table. “That’s rich.”

Fear flashed in the other man’s eyes, which he quickly attempted to hide with bravado. “Look, mister, if you have a message for me, let’s get on with it.”

“Afflack.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’re gonna call me mister, you might as well make it Mr. Afflack. Or Aiden, if you prefer.”

Another flash of fear. Aiden could almost hear the wheels turning in Michaels’ head. He’s shown me his face, given me his name. There can only be one reason for that….

“Not to worry, Weldy. I think I’ll call you Weldy.”

Michaels tensed. Testing the cuffs and the strength of the chair’s spindles, no doubt.

Aiden sighed. “For Chrissakes, I’m not planning to kill you. I’m just going to spend the night here chatting, much like we are right now.”

Michaels blinked. “Spend the night?”

“Forgive me. It’s probably horribly uncomfortable with those cuffs on. Let me just deal with these nasty guns. Then I’ll take the bracelets off so we can talk all civilized-like.”

Aiden picked up the SIG 9mm with his left hand, grasped the barrel with his right. Closing his eyes, he slid his hand up and down the barrel a few times to attune his mind to the metal. Then he bent it effortlessly.

“Jesus Christ!”

Aiden placed the ruined pistol back on the table, picked up the .22 and repeated the process on the gun’s short barrel.

“What the … how’d you do that?”

Aiden shrugged. “A parlor trick. You should see what I can do with a dinner fork.” He stood and extracted the handcuff key from the pocket of his worn jeans. “Now, about those cuffs….”

Michaels shrank back.

Aiden lifted his eyebrows. “What? You’d prefer to keep them on after all?”

The other man collected himself, embarrassment staining his cheeks. “Of course not. Please remove them.”

Aiden obliged.

As soon as his hands were free, Michaels immediately started massaging his sore right shoulder.

“Ah, yes, the shoulder. Sorry about that.” Aiden gave him his best aw shucks smile. “But I couldn’t have you putting bullet holes in me, could I?”

Michaels said nothing, but the stiffness in his face spoke volumes. Good. Get brave, you miserable little wife-beating worm. Get angry. Give me a reason to hurt you again.

Michaels cleared his throat. “So, this message from my wife?”

“She wants to come back toSt. Cloud. In fact, she’d like to move back into this very house, seeing as she put so much sweat equity into it.” Aiden glanced around at the tastefully appointed kitchen. “I must say she did a great job.”

“Of course she can come home. That’s all I’ve wanted since she left.”

“Ah, but there’s a catch, Weldy. You can’t stay.”

Michaels made a choking sound, but quickly found his voice. “She thinks I’m just going to clear out of town?”

“That would be ideal, but no, I don’t think she expects that. It will be sufficient if you leave this house and never darken the door again.”

Michaels started to bluster that he owned the goddamned place and no one could put him out of it, yadda, yadda, yadda.

“Save it,” Aiden commanded. “You see, I know what you did to her, Weldy.”

A pause. “I don’t know what she told you, but—”

“You systematically isolated her from her friends and pressured her into quitting work. Then, when you got her where you wanted her, you escalated the abuse. You terrorized her, Weldy. You threatened the life of her child if she tried to leave you. Is any of this sounding familiar? No? Well how about this: you used your position and power to convince her that escape was impossible.”

Michaels leapt up, his face wreathed in fury. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about my family.”

Aiden swung his feet to the floor, but remained in his chair. “Oh, I know quite a bit, Chief Michaels. For instance, I know you’ve been abusing the police resources at your fingertips to search for her, ensuring she had to stay on the run, unable to stay anywhere for any length of time. I know she’s terrified for her life and that of her daughter.”

“If she’d just—”

“Shut up, Weldy, and listen. I’m the messenger, and the message is that it’s over. She’s coming back, and you, my friend, are going to become the most obliging, most accommodating, most respectful ex-husband on the face of the planet. Oh, and you’ll relinquish any rights to the child.”

“Fuck you.” Powered by rage, Michaels gripped the table’s edge and overturned it, then bolted for the door.

Grinning, Aiden swept the table away as if it were constructed of matchsticks and gave chase, overtaking his quarry in a blur of speed. By the time Michaels reached the door, Aiden lounged against it, the picture of indolence.

“Going somewhere?”

“Jesus!”

Michaels’ face suddenly looked like it was stretched too tightly across the underlying bones. Shock did that to some people. With others, their faces went slack, as though—

“Who are you?” Michaels rasped. “Dear God, what are you?”

Aiden allowed his smile to spread, noting the precise moment when Michaels caught the first glimpse of his grossly elongated cuspids. This time, Michaels’ face slackened.

“I’m glad you asked.”

 

# # #

 

Sam Shea burrowed deeper into her denim jacket and shifted her legs yet again. The August night was soft, and three hours ago she would have called it warm. Now, however, dew was beginning to form on the blades of grass around her. Only the patch beneath her butt and outstretched legs remained dry as she sat propped against the base of a gargoyle statue.

Yes, a frickin’ cement gargoyle. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of choices about where to pitch her tripod. It was the only spot in the vicinity where she could get far enough away from the ubiquitous streetlights to see even the brightest stars in the sky. Rural shoots were so much easier.

Of course, it was anybody’s guess what she was here to capture. It might have nothing to do with celestial bodies. On the other hand, what else could it be?

Well, okay, ninety minutes ago, she’d have laid bets that she was here for an electrical storm. The flashes of lightning had started to the south, illuminating the suburban landscape in an eerie purplish light. Counting the seconds between flash and boom, she tracked the storm from nearly ten miles off. She’d pack up and head for the car when it reached six miles, the safety zone. No photo was worth getting killed for, especially when she could get a decent shot from the relative safety of her rented Acura. But the storm had veered off at the last moment, making a retreat to the car unnecessary.

So if it wasn’t a fantabulous light show, what the heck had drawn her here?

For the first time in a very long time, she wondered if her vision had let her down. Right place maybe, but the wrong time? Or maybe there was anotherCarrington PlaceinSt. Cloud, and she’d camped at the wrong one. But what were the chances of that in a city of just over a 100,000 people? Of course, maybe there was anotherCarrington Placein an entirely differentSt. Cloud.

Except she knew she wasn’t wrong. She was never wrong. She’d thought so once, six years ago. After five hours of nothing more dramatic than the occasional distant meteor streaking across the night sky, she’d given up her post in disgust and gone back to the dubious comfort of her motel bed. The next morning, she’d found the local coffee shop abuzz about the dishwasher-sized meteorite that had crashed to earth in a pasture eight miles out of town. The same pasture where she’d abandoned her vigil at 4:00 a.m. If she hadn’t bailed out, it would have made a hell of a photo.

No, she wasn’t wrong. Despite the boredom of the past few hours, the raw energy that had drawn her here still persisted. Something was going to happen here, dammit.

For the umpteenth time tonight, she flicked on her hand held infrared spotlight, lifted her infrared binoculars to her eyes and did a ground-level scan. Two houses down, a skunk made its leisurely way across the front lawn, oblivious of the surveillance. Nothing else stirred. With a sigh, she lowered her binoculars and flicked the light off.

No light show in the sky. Nothing interesting on the ground.

She leaned back again, wriggled her butt into a more comfortable position and glanced up at the leering griffin’s massive head. “Don’t let me nod off, okay? I’d hate to miss the fireworks. Or whatever we’re going to have.”

Predictably, the griffin made no reply.

“Okay, be like that,” she muttered. “See if I—”

The sound of a door closing — specifically, the door of the two-story house directly across the street — cut short her one-sided conversation with the gargoyle. Automatically, she reached for the floodlight and the binoculars.

There! A man — rendered slightly greenish, thanks to the infrared technology — gliding out the flagstone driveway.

Quickly, she traded the binoculars for the tripod-mounted digital camera, flipping it to NightShot mode. A quick look through the viewfinder confirmed the target was out of range for the camera’s infrared illuminator. Dammit. She squeezed the trigger switch on the spotlight again, locked it in the on position, planted its legs in the soft earth and trained it on the adjacent driveway. This time when she found her subject through the viewfinder, her mouth went dry.

Dear God! If she could give the fiercest storm a corporeal human body, this is what it would look like. Beauty and violence, all rolled up in one gorgeous, terrible package.

Zoom, focus.

God, what a face!

Hard zoom, focus, click.

Without conscious thought, habit took over as she snapped picture after picture.

She watched him draw out a cigarette and apply a flame to it. Fascinated, she watched him inhale deeply, remove the cigarette from between sensual lips, then exhale. Then he lifted his lids and looked directly into her camera lens.

Sam pulled back, shrinking closer to the gargoyle’s cold cement base. He can’t see me. Not from this distance. He’s standing in the light and I’m buried in shadow. And he sure as hell can’t see my spotlight.

Carefully, she leaned forward again to peer through the viewfinder. And there he was, still staring straight into the camera. And then — holy mother of God — he smiled at her. A knowing, toe-curling, sex-drenched smile.

She jerked back again, but this time, she failed to suppress a gasp. Not that it mattered, because he was gone. Vanished. She searched the sidewalks for his retreating form, but he’d melted away as completely as the smoke from his cigarette had dissipated in the night air.

She exhaled the lungful of air she’d been holding. Whew! That was … interesting.

But even more interesting was the dawning conviction that nothing more was going to happen here. As she sat there bringing her heartbeat under control, she realized that the muted anticipation that kept her rooted to this spot for half the night had dissipated. Interesting, indeed.

Well, no point hanging around now. She got to her knees and packed her gear. Before stowing the camera, she flipped back through the pictures she’d captured to make sure she hadn’t imagined the last minutes. She hadn’t. There he was. Even frozen in greenish miniature, he emitted an improbable dynamism. She frowned. Could he be the force that had called her here? A shiver lifted the hairs on her arm. It didn’t seem very likely. Of course, the alternative to that scenario was that her vision had been just plain wrong, which was even less palatable than the thought that a man might have drawn her here.

Sighing, she shut off the camera and tucked it carefully in the carry tote. With a last glance around the empty streets, she headed for her car. Ten minutes in a hot shower and a few hours sleep on the pillow-top mattress at her hotel would fix her up. She’d figure this thing out in the morning.

# # #

An hour later, she turned on a lamp and crawled out of bed. The dream would just keep coming back if she didn’t write it down. She found a pen and hotel stationery and scribbled the words St. Cloud, riverbank under the bridge, tomorrow night. Call and postpone your flight!

There. Maybe now she could sleep.

Three hours later, after a poached egg and a cup of room service coffee, Sam uploaded the images from her camera’s flash card onto her photo viewer, a task she would normally have done last night. Backup was critical in this business. But since she hadn’t captured anything saleable, she hadn’t bothered. Now, she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw confirmation that the upload was successful.

She paged quickly through the first few photos, which she’d taken merely to fine-tune her settings. The house across the street with its foot lighting, the row of streetlights marching west, the retaining wall behind her. Then she reached the first shot of the man.

Ugh. Monochromatic green. NightShot was useful for surreptitiously framing your shot, but you then had to switch modes to get a normal-looking color shot. Of course, that required using a visible flash, which in turn required her to be considerably closer to the subject. It was great for photographing small critters in darkness, but not so great for capturing people. It just wasn’t socially acceptable to creep up on a stranger and blast their night vision away with a blinding flash.

Especially this stranger.

She bent closer to the display to inspect her work. She’d zoomed in on the guy, but it was a full body shot rather than tight to the face. He looked taller than she remembered, but the wide shoulders and narrow hips were the same, as was the longish, wavy hair. He wore what appeared to be a leather jacket over a dark shirt and dark pants.

She pulled back, feeling oddly disappointed.

He had the kind of body that would make any woman look twice, no question about it. But she just wasn’t feeling that same gut punch she’d felt last night. Guess she could chalk last night’s reaction up to jet-lagged giddiness and the late hour.

She toggled up the next photo, and oh, baby, there it was, that thrill low in the belly.

A high forehead pleated in a frown, and a straight nose. Several strands of curly blond hair spilled forward to graze high cheekbones, partially obscuring his eyes. At least, she thought his hair was blond. It was too pale to be otherwise. The light also illuminated lean cheeks, a strong chin and an unsmiling mouth. Beautiful. Stern. Forbidding.

She advanced the next photo, and sucked in her breath on a hiss.

His face was tilted toward her to better reveal a sinfully gorgeous male mouth, but that wasn’t what set her heart to pounding. It was his attitude of sharpened senses. She could swear he was scenting the night breeze through those flared nostrils, his head cocked to catch the slightest sound, eyes searching the darkness. She leapt out of her chair, overcome by the sensation that she was about to be discovered.

God, woman, get a grip. She snorted at her own panicked reaction. He couldn’t see her. Not now, and not last night, either. At most, he may have suspected he was being watched and played to a possible audience, but standing under the streetlight like that, looking into the deep shadows…. No, there was no way he could have seen her.

She seated herself in front of the viewer again and toggled up the next photo. Despite being prepared this time, her heart still jolted in her chest.

He was looking straight at her!

And oh yeah, he’d known he had an audience. An appreciative audience. Unlikely as it seemed, he must have sensed her. Awareness was written there in his face, in the lift of an eyebrow and that sensual, full-lipped smile.

Sam expelled her breath. “Well, aren’t you all that?”

The unknown man smiled back from the photo, his NightShot-glowing eyes maddeningly unreadable.

Magnetic.

The word slid into her mind, making her lips tighten. Last night, she’d allowed herself to contemplate the idea that this man might be the force that drew her here. The idea was no more palatable in daylight than it was in the dark of night. To think she might have delayed her return to Sioux City after the Montreal gallery opening, extending her Canadian trip to come to St. Cloud, New Brunswick, to take a photo of a mere man?

No. No way. It didn’t bear thinking about. She’d been mistaken about the time and location, that’s all. There was a first time for everything, right? Besides, last night’s vision had rectified the mistake. She now had a very clear idea where she needed to be and when.

She toggled the curser, but there were no more images. Sam moved backwards to the final picture, the one where she was sure he knew she watched him, and shivered.

Maybe she’d do a little research, for curiosity’s sake, starting with finding out who lived at thatCarrington Placeaddress she’d camped outside of last night. Maybe something would surface to explain why she’d been called there.

Four hours later, she had a fix on the owners, a couple by the name of Weldon and Lucy Michaels. A Local Google search revealed that Weldon was the chief of police here inSt. Cloud, but turned up nothing on Lucy. Well, that let out anything nefarious going on inside that house, him being the chief of police and all.

She pushed thoughts of Michaels and his late night visitor to the back of her mind and turned her attention to preparing for tonight’s stakeout. After studying maps at the library, she drove unerringly to the downtown, parked in a parking garage, and set out on foot with her camera bag slung over her shoulder. A four-minute walk connected her with the riverfront walking trail, and another ten minutes put her practically in the shadow of the bridge. The grass was tall here, with a couple of distinct trails leading down the embankment toward the river. This was it. This was the place. She fished her digital out her bag and took a couple of shots.

The sound of crunching gravel alerted Sam to the presence of another pedestrian. She glanced up to see a young man approaching from the west. As he neared, she noted industrial facial piercings and a faux-hawk.

She lifted a hand. “Excuse me, could I—”

“Sorry,” he said, side-stepping her. “I don’t pose for tourists.”

As if. Before she could correct his assumption, he’d walked on. She jogged to catch up.

“Hey, if I wanted to take your picture, I wouldn’t want to do it here. I’d want to do it in a studio, or at least with the proper lighting equipment to do you justice. But that’s not why I stopped you. I just have a question.”

He slowed. Apparently flattery worked. “Whatcha wanna know?”

“Those paths back there, the ones leading down to the river. What’s that all about?”

He shifted the bag he was carrying from one tattooed shoulder to the other. “Homeless.”

Sam felt the truth resonate inside. Yes, that fit with the feeling the dream had left her with. “Is anyone down there now?”

Judging by the look he gave her, she expected him to say, What am I? Kreskin?, but what actually emerged was, “Dunno. Maybe. Or maybe they’d be out hustling for handouts this time of day.”

Sam chewed the inside of her lip. “The police don’t object to them living down there?”

“The cops?” He snorted. “Don’t imagine they give a rat’s ass where they sleep at night, long as they’re outta sight. All they really care about is keepin’ the panhandlin’ under control.” He glanced up the trail, obviously wanting to be on his way.

“Thanks for your help.”

“No problem.” He hiked his bag up and walked off.

She lifted her camera and took a few shots before crossing the neatly mown green to the taller grasses. She picked the closest path, which also happened to be the most well-worn, and descended the embankment, pausing occasionally to take more pictures. Passing through a thin belt of trees, she emerged to find a hard-packed footpath paralleling the river’s edge.

The smell assailed her immediately. There was the usual pungent river smell that made you think of mud and fish and silt and organic rot, but underlying it was the unmistakable odor of human urine. Ugh. She snapped another picture.

She turned west and walked toward the bridge. Before she got twenty yards, she spotted the first makeshift shelters. Made from a mishmash of plywood, corrugated cardboard and blue plastic tarpaulins, the flimsy structures huddled just inside a thin belt of trees she’d just come through. No wonder none of this was visible from the walking path. For that matter, it probably wasn’t terribly visible from above either, save perhaps for a few flashes of blue through the canopy of leaves.

Briefly, she thought about following the path all the way to the bridge and out the other side of the copse of tree. The riverbank appeared to be deserted, but she couldn’t bring herself to go further. Deserted or not, there was something invasive and ugly about wandering past these squalid refuges like a sightseer, camera in hand. Plus, frankly she was scared. These people couldn’t or wouldn’t be integrated into normal society, often due to chronic mental illness. It was the same in cities all overNorth America. Bursting at the seams, psychiatric hospitals everywhere disgorged their long-term residents into their streets to make do the best they could.

She retraced her steps and continued west along the trail until she found another path in the tall grass. As she expected, it led down to the river, then back toward the treed area that concealed the tent community. Again, she ventured only far enough down the path to spy where flashes of blue tarp began to reappear. Though less plentiful on this side, she counted six structures, some of them no more than lean-tos.

She turned and looked west. Less than a mile away, tall condominium buildings and a handful of old brick office buildings rose up against the skyline. Sighing, she retraced her steps up the incline, through the tall grasses to the manicured green bisected by the graveled walking trail. Just like that, she was back in the shiny cleanSt. Cloudof the tourist brochures.

She turned back eastward and followed the trail for a hundred yards or so before veering off toward the concealing ribbon of brush and trees that shielded the shelters. A handy thing, that little green belt. It kept the homeless out of sight and out of mind for the tax-paying, job-holding, upstanding citizens ofSt. Cloud. That same invisibility kept the ire of the police off the backs of the vagrants.

She followed the tree line with difficulty. The grass here was knee deep, and without benefit of a beaten path, it conspired to trip her with every step. But just the other side of the bridge, she found what she was looking for — the perfect vantage point for surveilling the area later tonight.

Tucked just inside the tree line, it afforded enough cover for her, and offered the best view she was likely to get of the encampment below. Also ideal was the positioning of the streetlights on the four-lane bridge above and the towering light standard that illuminated the walking trail behind her. With any luck, there should be sufficient light to monitor goings on without having to constantly sweep the area with her infrared equipment. Likewise, it was close enough that she could step out of the tree line quickly if the commotion tonight turned out to be a light show in the sky.

Satisfied, she trekked the short distance back to her car. Just one more task and she could go back to her hotel and catch a few hours sleep. Stashing her equipment in the trunk of the rental, she walked half a block toQueen Streetand found a payphone. She located the general number for the St. Cloud Police Department, plugged a quarter into the phone and dialed it.

When the receptionist answered, Sam instructed the woman to put her through to Chief Michaels, employing the tone she’d learned in her first year in business-for-self. The trick to obtaining cooperation was not to demand it, but rather to simply take that cooperation for granted. Faced with such easy, inherent authority, most people gave her exactly what she expected. The St. Cloud PD receptionist was no exception.

The phone rang twice in Michaels’ office before it was answered. “Chief Michaels,” a voice clipped. “Who am I talking to?”

“Good afternoon, Chief. I’m a reporter for—”

“Whoa. You can stop right there, lady. We have a communications officer who handles press inquiries. Call the switchboard again and they’ll route you—”

“You had a visitor last night. Is that right, Chief Michaels?”

A pause. “I’m going to transfer you to my personal line. Please hang on.”

She heard him make the transfer. Before his personal phone could manage a full ringburst, he’d picked it up.

“Dammit, what more do you people want from me?”

You people?

“I’m sorry,” he said, rushing to fill the silence. “I’m just a little tense. The moving company is there right now, packing up my belongings. I’ll be out by nightfall, just like I said.”

Sam blinked, listening to his ragged breathing. What the devil was he talking about? Channeling that voice of authority again, she went fishing:  “Very good. And the rest?”

“I won’t hurt her again, I swear it. I won’t even make contact. She can move back tomorrow. I’ll give her a divorce, full custody ofDevon, the house … whatever she wants.”

Holy crap! What had she stumbled into?

“Hello? Hello?” The chief’s voice rose on a note of panic. “Are you still there?”

“Relax, Chief. I’m still listening.”

“You have to believe me! I’ll never lay a hand on Lucy again. On either of them. God, I won’t even breathe in their direction. You’ll see. You can watch me as closely as you like.”

He’d been abusing his family? Bastard. “You can bet we’ll be watching,” she said in her silkiest voice. “Need I tell you what we think of recidivists?”

“No, ma’am. I’m sorry. Jesus … my ulcer. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

The line went dead. Slowly, Sam hung up the receiver. Well, well, wasn’t that interesting? Chief Michaels’ late-night visitor had been a friend of Mrs. Michaels. And a very persuasive one, by all appearances. What could he possibly have said or done to reduce the chief of police to the jabbering wreck she’d just talked to?

She thought about the photos back in her hotel room and the peculiar energy that had emanated from Michaels’ caller, and decided he was probably quite capable of decimating stronger men.

No matter. It was none of her concern. Michaels was still alive and well, and presumably newly embarked on the straight and narrow.

But who was the mystery caller? The estranged wife’s new boyfriend? Hired muscle? Some vigilante out to avenge victims of violence? Random whack-job?

Well, she wasn’t going to solve that mystery here, standing in a phone booth.

Correction — she wasn’t going to solve that mystery at all.

Stepping out of the phone booth, she headed for her rental and the promise of a nap back at her hotel room. She had to be fresh, had to focus on tonight. Whatever the reason she’d been called toSt. Cloud, it would all become clear tonight.

 

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Excerpt from Nightfall

Copyright  © 2011  Norah Wilson

Chapter 1

 

AIDEN AFFLACK HUMMED to himself as he lifted the brass doorknocker to summon St. Cloud Police Chief Weldon Michaels to the front door of his Carrington Place residence. Rapping twice, he stepped back.

What was that tune running through his head? It had been with him since he’d risen this evening.

Audioslave? Nope.

Queens of the Stone Age? Un-uh.

Collective Soul? Yeah, yeah, that was it. Definitely. He cricked his neck one way, then the other and felt the satisfying crack. Ooh, I’m feeling better now.

The curtain in the bay window twitched, but Aiden feigned obliviousness. From inside, he clearly heard Michaels jam a clip into an automatic weapon. Aiden rolled his eyes. Nobody trusted anyone anymore.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

The voice came through the door. A very cautious man indeed.

“I’m a friend of your wife’s,” Aiden called. “Well, more a friend of a friend, actually, but I have a personal message for you, from her.”

“Nice try. Now move on, before I call the cops.”

Aiden thought about knocking the door in. It was solid oak with a good deadbolt on it, but it could have been made from cardboard and paperclips for all the challenge it would present. On the other hand, there was no reason to get messy.

He cleared his throat, did his best to summon a puzzled tone. “Well, hell, I thought you were the cops. Do I have the wrong address? I’m looking for Chief Weldon Michaels. Got a message for him from his wife Lucy. Pretty woman, ’bout an inch over five feet, brown hair and eyes? Oh, and a real cute little daughter. What’s her name?Devon? Any of this sounding familiar?”

Silence for a few heartbeats. “What kind of message?”

“She wants to come home, but before she can see her way clear to doing that, we need to have ourselves a talk.”

Another pause, then the sound of the deadbolt retracting. The door cracked open, and Weldon Michaels peered out past a security chain.

God save me from fools. Growling, Aiden pushed the door open. The hardware anchoring the security chain tore free from the wall. Before Michaels could cry out, Aiden stepped inside and closed the door behind him. In the next heartbeat, he seized Michaels’ right wrist and squeezed until the other man screamed and dropped the pistol he held. It hit the hardwood floor with a clatter but didn’t discharge.

“A gun?” Aiden released the other man’s hand. “Now I ask you, what kind of a greeting is that?”

Michaels — clearly a slow learner — reached for a second weapon jammed into the waistband at the small of his back. Before he could get to it, Aiden had Michaels face down on the floor with his right hand way closer to his right shoulder blade than God ever intended it to go.

“Jesus, my arm. You’re breaking it!”

“Not even close. You develop a feel for these things,” he said conversationally. “It’s sort of like braking when you’re driving on ice. You gotta find the threshold.”

“No, my shoulder! It’s gonna pop! I swear to God!”

Aiden reefed Michaels arm a half inch higher, eliciting a scream, followed by a stream of curses.

“See? Still plenty of play. It’s a feel thing. Now are you gonna behave yourself if I let you up?”

“Christ, yes! I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Atta boy.” Aiden helped the other man to his feet. “Now, let’s go plug the code into the alarm, shall we? And don’t fuck with me. If the alarm company or the cops call in a minute to ask if everything’s okay, things will be very much not okay for you. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Aiden “helped” Michaels to the alarm panel, where he keyed in a five-digit number. The winking red light went out.

“Good man. Now we’re going to need your handcuffs. I know they can’t be far away, since you laid hands on that pistol fast enough. So be a darling and let’s go fetch them.”

Michaels swore again.

“I know, I know. It’s gotta sting, getting cuffed with your own bracelets, but look at it this way: they’ll be a helluva lot more comfortable than the alternative if you force me to improvise.”

Michaels sagged. “In that drawer.”

A minute later, Chief Weldon Michaels sat cuffed in one of his own kitchen chairs, a sturdy-looking oak proposition. Michaels somehow managed to look both scared and pissed at the same time.

Aiden took a seat at the table, placing both guns — one retrieved from beneath the telephone table in the entryway and the other from the small of Michaels’ back — on the gleaming wood surface. “Okay, Weldon — may I call you Weldon? — we need to talk.”

Michaels glared back. “You’re wasting your time. I don’t keep anything of value of here, at least nothing portable enough to carry off. And damn you, you’ve already scored both my guns. I suggest you just let yourself out and get while the getting’s good.”

“You think I was bullshitting earlier, don’t you? You think I was feeding you a line about your wife to get inside?” Aiden leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up to rest on the table. “That’s rich.”

Fear flashed in the other man’s eyes, which he quickly attempted to hide with bravado. “Look, mister, if you have a message for me, let’s get on with it.”

“Afflack.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’re gonna call me mister, you might as well make it Mr. Afflack. Or Aiden, if you prefer.”

Another flash of fear. Aiden could almost hear the wheels turning in Michaels’ head. He’s shown me his face, given me his name. There can only be one reason for that…

“Not to worry, Weldy. I think I’ll call you Weldy.”

Michaels tensed. Testing the cuffs and the strength of the chair’s spindles, no doubt.

Aiden sighed. “For Chrissakes, I’m not planning to kill you. I’m just going to spend the night here chatting, much like we are right now.”

Michaels blinked. “Spend the night?”

“Forgive me. It’s probably horribly uncomfortable with those cuffs on. Let me just deal with these nasty guns. Then I’ll take the bracelets off so we can talk all civilized-like.”

Aiden picked up the SIG 9mm with his left hand, grasped the barrel with his right. Closing his eyes, he slid his hand up and down the barrel a few times to attune his mind to the metal. Then he bent it effortlessly.

“Jesus Christ!”

Aiden placed the ruined pistol back on the table, picked up the .22 and repeated the process on the gun’s short barrel.

“What the … how’d you do that?”

Aiden shrugged. “A parlor trick. You should see what I can do with a dinner fork.” He stood and extracted the handcuff key from the pocket of his worn jeans. “Now, about those cuffs…”

Michaels shrank back.

Aiden lifted his eyebrows. “What? You’d prefer to keep them on after all?”

The other man collected himself, embarrassment staining his cheeks. “Of course not. Please remove them.”

Aiden obliged.

As soon as his hands were free, Michaels immediately started massaging his sore right shoulder.

“Ah, yes, the shoulder. Sorry about that.” Aiden gave him his best aw shucks smile. “But I couldn’t have you putting bullet holes in me, could I?”

Michaels said nothing, but the stiffness in his face spoke volumes. Good. Get brave, you miserable little wife-beating worm. Get angry. Give me a reason to hurt you again.

Michaels cleared his throat. “So, this message from my wife?”

“She wants to come back toSt. Cloud. In fact, she’d like to move back into this very house, seeing as she put so much sweat equity into it.” Aiden glanced around at the tastefully appointed kitchen. “I must say she did a great job.”

“Of course she can come home. That’s all I’ve wanted since she left.”

“Ah, but there’s a catch, Weldy. You can’t stay.”

Michaels made a choking sound, but quickly found his voice. “She thinks I’m just going to clear out of town?”

“That would be ideal, but no, I don’t think she expects that. It will be sufficient if you leave this house and never darken the door again.”

Michaels started to bluster that he owned the goddamned place and no one could put him out of it, yadda, yadda, yadda.

“Save it,” Aiden commanded. “You see, I know what you did to her, Weldy.”

A pause. “I don’t know what she told you, but—”

“You systematically isolated her from her friends and pressured her into quitting work. Then, when you got her where you wanted her, you escalated the abuse. You terrorized her, Weldy. You threatened the life of her child if she tried to leave you. Is any of this sounding familiar? No? Well how about this: you used your position and power to convince her that escape was impossible.”

Michaels leapt up, his face wreathed in fury. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about my family.”

Aiden swung his feet to the floor, but remained in his chair. “Oh, I know quite a bit, Chief Michaels. For instance, I know you’ve been abusing the police resources at your fingertips to search for her, ensuring she had to stay on the run, unable to stay anywhere for any length of time. I know she’s terrified for her life and that of her daughter.”

“If she’d just—”

“Shut up, Weldy, and listen. I’m the messenger, and the message is that it’s over. She’s coming back, and you, my friend, are going to become the most obliging, most accommodating, most respectful ex-husband on the face of the planet. Oh, and you’ll relinquish any rights to the child.”

“Fuck you.” Powered by rage, Michaels gripped the table’s edge and overturned it, then bolted for the door.

Grinning, Aiden swept the table away as if it were constructed of matchsticks and gave chase, overtaking his quarry in a blur of speed. By the time Michaels reached the door, Aiden lounged against it, the picture of indolence.

“Going somewhere?”

“Jesus!”

Michaels’ face suddenly looked like it was stretched too tightly across the underlying bones. Shock did that to some people. With others, their faces went slack, as though—

“Who are you?” Michaels rasped. “Dear God, what are you?”

Aiden allowed his smile to spread, noting the precise moment when Michaels caught the first glimpse of his grossly elongated cuspids. This time, Michaels’ face slackened.

“I’m glad you asked.”

 

* * *

 

Sam Shea burrowed deeper into her denim jacket and shifted her legs yet again. The August night was soft, and three hours ago she would have called it warm. Now, however, dew was beginning to form on the blades of grass around her. Only the patch beneath her butt and outstretched legs remained dry as she sat propped against the base of a gargoyle statue.

Yes, a frickin’ cement gargoyle. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of choices about where to pitch her tripod. It was the only spot in the vicinity where she could get far enough away from the ubiquitous streetlights to see even the brightest stars in the sky. Rural shoots were so much easier.

Of course, it was anybody’s guess what she was here to capture. It might have nothing to do with celestial bodies. On the other hand, what else could it be?

Well, okay, ninety minutes ago, she’d have laid bets that she was here for an electrical storm. The flashes of lightning had started to the south, illuminating the suburban landscape in an eerie purplish light. Counting the seconds between flash and boom, she tracked the storm from nearly ten miles off. She’d pack up and head for the car when it reached six miles, the safety zone. No photo was worth getting killed for, especially when she could get a decent shot from the relative safety of her rented Acura. But the storm had veered off at the last moment, making a retreat to the car unnecessary.

So if it wasn’t a fantabulous light show, what the heck had drawn her here?

For the first time in a very long time, she wondered if her vision had let her down. Right place maybe, but the wrong time? Or maybe there was another Carrington Place in St. Cloud, and she’d camped at the wrong one. But what were the chances of that in a city of just over 100,000 people? Of course, maybe there was another Carrington Place in an entirely different St. Cloud.

Except she knew she wasn’t wrong. She was never wrong. She’d thought so once, six years ago. After five hours of nothing more dramatic than the occasional distant meteor streaking across the night sky, she’d given up her post in disgust and gone back to the dubious comfort of her motel bed. The next morning, she’d found the local coffee shop abuzz about the dishwasher-sized meteorite that had crashed to earth in a pasture eight miles out of town. The same pasture where she’d abandoned her vigil at 4:00 am. If she hadn’t bailed out, it would have made a hell of a photo.

No, she wasn’t wrong. Despite the boredom of the past few hours, the raw energy that had drawn her here still persisted. Something was going to happen here, dammit.

For the umpteenth time tonight, she flicked on her hand-held infrared spotlight, lifted her infrared binoculars to her eyes and did a ground-level scan. Two houses down, a skunk made its leisurely way across the front lawn, oblivious of the surveillance. Nothing else stirred. With a sigh, she lowered her binoculars and flicked the light off.

No light show in the sky. Nothing interesting on the ground.

She leaned back again, wriggled her butt into a more comfortable position and glanced up at the leering griffin’s massive head. “Don’t let me nod off, okay? I’d hate to miss the fireworks. Or whatever we’re going to have.”

Predictably, the griffin made no reply.

“Okay, be like that,” she muttered. “See if I—”

The sound of a door closing — specifically, the door of the two-story house directly across the street — cut short her one-sided conversation with the gargoyle. Automatically, she reached for the floodlight and the binoculars.

There! A man — rendered slightly greenish, thanks to the infrared technology — gliding out the flagstone driveway.

Quickly, she traded the binoculars for the tripod-mounted digital camera, flipping it to NightShot mode. A quick look through the viewfinder confirmed the target was out of range for the camera’s infrared illuminator. Dammit. She squeezed the trigger switch on the spotlight again, locked it in the on position, planted its legs in the soft earth and trained it on the adjacent driveway. This time when she found her subject through the viewfinder, her mouth went dry.

Dear God! If she could give the fiercest storm a corporeal human body, this is what it would look like. Beauty and violence, all rolled up in one gorgeous, terrible package.

Zoom, focus.

God, what a face!

Hard zoom, focus, click.

Without conscious thought, habit took over as she snapped picture after picture.

She watched him draw out a cigarette and apply a flame to it. Fascinated, she watched him inhale deeply, remove the cigarette from between sensual lips, then exhale. Then he lifted his lids and looked directly into her camera lens.

Sam pulled back, shrinking closer to the gargoyle’s cold cement base. He can’t see me. Not from this distance. He’s standing in the light and I’m buried in shadow. And he sure as hell can’t see my spotlight.

Carefully, she leaned forward again to peer through the viewfinder. And there he was, still staring straight into the camera. And then — holy mother of God — he smiled at her. A knowing, toe-curling, sex-drenched smile.

She jerked back again, but this time, she failed to suppress a gasp. Not that it mattered, because he was gone. Vanished. She searched the sidewalks for his retreating form, but he’d melted away as completely as the smoke from his cigarette had dissipated in the night air.

She exhaled the lungful of air she’d been holding. Whew! That was … interesting.

But even more interesting was the dawning conviction that nothing more was going to happen here. As she sat there bringing her heartbeat under control, she realized that the muted anticipation that kept her rooted to this spot for half the night had dissipated. Interesting, indeed.

Well, no point hanging around now. She got to her knees and packed her gear. Before stowing the camera, she flipped back through the pictures she’d captured to make sure she hadn’t imagined the last minutes. She hadn’t  There he was. Even frozen in greenish miniature, he emitted an improbable dynamism. She frowned. Could he be the force that had called her here? A shiver lifted the hairs on her arm. It didn’t seem very likely. Of course, the alternative to that scenario was that her vision had been just plain wrong, which was even less palatable than the thought that a man might have drawn her here.

Sighing, she shut off the camera and tucked it carefully in the carry tote. With a last glance around the empty streets, she headed for her car. Ten minutes in a hot shower and a few hours sleep on the pillow-top mattress at her hotel would fix her up. She’d figure this thing out in the morning.

 

* * *

 

An hour later, she turned on a lamp and crawled out of bed. The dream would just keep coming back if she didn’t write it down. She found a pen and hotel stationery and scribbled the words St. Cloud, riverbank under the bridge, tomorrow night. Call and postpone your flight!

There. Maybe now she could sleep.

Three hours later, after a poached egg and a cup of room-service coffee, Sam uploaded the images from her camera’s flash card onto her photo viewer, a task she would normally have done last night. Backup was critical in this business. But since she hadn’t captured anything saleable, she hadn’t bothered. Now, she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw confirmation that the upload was successful.

She paged quickly through the first few photos, which she’d taken merely to fine-tune her settings. The house across the street with its foot lighting, the row of streetlights marching west, the retaining wall behind her. Then she reached the first shot of the man.

Ugh. Monochromatic green. NightShot was useful for surreptitiously framing your shot, but you then had to switch modes to get a normal-looking color shot. Of course, that required using a visible flash, which in turn required her to be considerably closer to the subject. It was great for photographing small critters in darkness, but not so great for capturing people. It just wasn’t socially acceptable to creep up on a stranger and blast their night vision away with a blinding flash.

Especially this stranger.

She bent closer to the display to inspect her work. She’d zoomed in on the guy, but it was a full-body shot rather than tight to the face. He looked taller than she remembered, but the wide shoulders and narrow hips were the same, as was the longish, wavy hair. He wore what appeared to be a leather jacket over a dark shirt and dark pants.

She pulled back, feeling oddly disappointed.

He had the kind of body that would make any woman look twice, no question about it. But she just wasn’t feeling that same gut punch she’d felt last night. Guess she could chalk last night’s reaction up to jet-lagged giddiness and the late hour.

She toggled up the next photo, and oh, baby, there it was, that thrill low in the belly.

A high forehead pleated in a frown, and a straight nose. Several strands of curly blond hair spilled forward to graze high cheekbones, partially obscuring his eyes. At least, she thought his hair was blond. It was too pale to be otherwise. The light also illuminated lean cheeks, a strong chin and an unsmiling mouth. Beautiful. Stern. Forbidding.

She advanced the next photo, and sucked in her breath on a hiss.

His face was tilted toward her to better reveal a sinfully gorgeous male mouth, but that wasn’t what set her heart to pounding. It was his attitude of sharpened senses. She could swear he was scenting the night breeze through those flared nostrils, his head cocked to catch the slightest sound, eyes searching the darkness. She leapt out of her chair, overcome by the sensation that she was about to be discovered.

God, woman, get a grip. She snorted at her own panicked reaction. He couldn’t see her. Not now, and not last night, either. At most, he may have suspected he was being watched and played to a possible audience, but standing under the streetlight like that, looking into the deep shadows… No, there was no way he could have seen her.

She seated herself in front of the viewer again and toggled up the next photo. Despite being prepared this time, her heart still jolted in her chest.

He was looking straight at her!

And oh yeah, he’d known he had an audience. An appreciative audience. Unlikely as it seemed, he must have sensed her. Awareness was written there in his face, in the lift of an eyebrow and that sensual, full-lipped smile.

Sam expelled her breath. “Well, aren’t you all that?”

The unknown man smiled back from the photo, his NightShot-glowing eyes maddeningly unreadable.

Magnetic.

The word slid into her mind, making her lips tighten. Last night, she’d allowed herself to contemplate the idea that this man might be the force that drew her here. The idea was no more palatable in daylight than it was in the dark of night. To think she might have delayed her return to Sioux City after the Montreal gallery opening, extending her Canadian trip to come to St. Cloud, New Brunswick, to take a photo of a mere man?

No. No way. It didn’t bear thinking about. She’d been mistaken about the time and location, that’s all. There was a first time for everything, right? Besides, last night’s vision had rectified the mistake. She now had a very clear idea where she needed to be and when.

She toggled the cursor, but there were no more images. Sam moved backwards to the final picture, the one where she was sure he knew she watched him, and shivered.

Maybe she’d do a little research, for curiosity’s sake, starting with finding out who lived at that Carrington Place address she’d camped outside of last night. Maybe something would surface to explain why she’d been called there.

Four hours later, she had a fix on the owners, a couple by the name of Weldon and Lucy Michaels. A Local Google search revealed that Weldon was the chief of police here in St. Cloud, but turned up nothing on Lucy. Well, that let out anything nefarious going on inside that house, him being the chief of police and all.

She pushed thoughts of Michaels and his late night visitor to the back of her mind and turned her attention to preparing for tonight’s stakeout. After studying maps at the library, she drove unerringly to the downtown, parked in a parking garage, and set out on foot with her camera bag slung over her shoulder. A four-minute walk connected her with the riverfront walking trail, and another ten minutes put her practically in the shadow of the bridge. The grass was tall here, with a couple of distinct trails leading down the embankment toward the river. This was it. This was the place. She fished her digital out of her bag and took a couple of shots.

The sound of crunching gravel alerted Sam to the presence of another pedestrian. She glanced up to see a young man approaching from the west. As he neared, she noted industrial facial piercings and a faux-hawk.

She lifted a hand. “Excuse me, could I—”

“Sorry,” he said, side-stepping her. “I don’t pose for tourists.”

As if. Before she could correct his assumption, he’d walked on. She jogged to catch up.

“Hey, if I wanted to take your picture, I wouldn’t want to do it here. I’d want to do it in a studio, or at least with the proper lighting equipment to do you justice. But that’s not why I stopped you. I just have a question.”

He slowed. Apparently flattery worked. “Whatcha wanna know?”

“Those paths back there, the ones leading down to the river. What’s that all about?”

He shifted the bag he was carrying from one tattooed shoulder to the other. “Homeless.”

Sam felt the truth resonate inside. Yes, that fit with the feeling the dream had left her with. “Is anyone down there now?”

Judging by the look he gave her, she expected him to say, What am I? Kreskin?, but what actually emerged was, “Dunno. Maybe. Or maybe they’d be out hustling for handouts this time of day.”

Sam chewed the inside of her lip. “The police don’t object to them living down there?”

“The cops?” He snorted. “Don’t imagine they give a rat’s ass where they sleep at night, long as they’re outta sight. All they really care about is keepin’ the panhandlin’ under control.” He glanced up the trail, obviously wanting to be on his way.

“Thanks for your help.”

“No problem.” He hiked his bag up and walked off.

She lifted her camera and took a few shots before crossing the neatly mown green to the taller grasses. She picked the closest path, which also happened to be the most well-worn, and descended the embankment, pausing occasionally to take more pictures. Passing through a thin belt of trees, she emerged to find a hard-packed footpath paralleling the river’s edge.

The smell assailed her immediately. There was the usual pungent river smell that made you think of mud and fish and silt and organic rot, but underlying it was the unmistakable odor of human urine. Ugh. She snapped another picture.

She turned west and walked toward the bridge. Before she got twenty yards, she spotted the first makeshift shelters. Made from a mishmash of plywood, corrugated cardboard and blue plastic tarpaulins, the flimsy structures huddled just inside a thin belt of trees she’d just come through. No wonder none of this was visible from the walking path. For that matter, it probably wasn’t terribly visible from above either, save perhaps for a few flashes of blue through the canopy of leaves.

Briefly, she thought about following the path all the way to the bridge and out the other side of the copse of tree. The riverbank appeared to be deserted, but she couldn’t bring herself to go further. Deserted or not, there was something invasive and ugly about wandering past these squalid refuges like a sightseer, camera in hand. Plus, frankly she was scared. These people couldn’t or wouldn’t be integrated into normal society, often due to chronic mental illness. It was the same in cities all over North America. Bursting at the seams, psychiatric hospitals everywhere disgorged their long-term residents into their streets to make do the best they could.

She retraced her steps and continued west along the trail until she found another path in the tall grass. As she expected, it led down to the river, then back toward the treed area that concealed the tent community. Again, she ventured only far enough down the path to spy where flashes of blue tarp began to reappear. Though less plentiful on this side, she counted six structures, some of them no more than lean-tos.

She turned and looked west. Less than a mile away, tall condominium buildings and a handful of old brick office buildings rose up against the skyline. Sighing, she retraced her steps up the incline, through the tall grasses to the manicured green bisected by the graveled walking trail. Just like that, she was back in the shiny clean St. Cloud of the tourist brochures.

She turned back eastward and followed the trail for a hundred yards or so before veering off toward the concealing ribbon of brush and trees that shielded the shelters. A handy thing, that little green belt. It kept the homeless out of sight and out of mind for the tax-paying, job-holding, upstanding citizens ofSt. Cloud. That same invisibility kept the ire of the police off the backs of the vagrants.

She followed the tree line with difficulty. The grass here was knee deep, and without benefit of a beaten path, it conspired to trip her with every step. But just the other side of the bridge, she found what she was looking for — the perfect vantage point for surveilling the area later tonight.

Tucked just inside the tree line, it afforded enough cover for her, and offered the best view she was likely to get of the encampment below. Also ideal was the positioning of the streetlights on the four-lane bridge above and the towering light standard that illuminated the walking trail behind her. With any luck, there should be sufficient light to monitor goings on without having to constantly sweep the area with her infrared equipment. Likewise, it was close enough that she could step out of the tree line quickly if the commotion tonight turned out to be a light show in the sky.

Satisfied, she trekked the short distance back to her car. Just one more task and she could go back to her hotel and catch a few hours sleep. Stashing her equipment in the trunk of the rental, she walked half a block to Queen Street and found a payphone. She located the general number for the St. Cloud Police Department, plugged a quarter into the phone and dialed it.

When the receptionist answered, Sam instructed the woman to put her through to Chief Michaels, employing the tone she’d learned in her first year in business-for-self. The trick to obtaining cooperation was not to demand it, but rather to simply take that cooperation for granted. Faced with such easy, inherent authority, most people gave her exactly what she expected. The St. Cloud PD receptionist was no exception.

The phone rang twice in Michaels’ office before it was answered. “Chief Michaels,” a voice clipped. “Who am I talking to?”

“Good afternoon, Chief. I’m a reporter for—”

“Whoa. You can stop right there, lady. We have a communications officer who handles press inquiries. Call the switchboard again and they’ll route you—”

“You had a visitor last night. Is that right, Chief Michaels?”

A pause. “I’m going to transfer you to my personal line. Please hang on.”

She heard him make the transfer. Before his personal phone could manage a full ring-burst, he’d picked it up.

“Dammit, what more do you people want from me?”

You people?

“I’m sorry,” he said, rushing to fill the silence. “I’m just a little tense. The moving company is there right now, packing up my belongings. I’ll be out by nightfall, just like I said.”

Sam blinked, listening to his ragged breathing. What the devil was he talking about? Channeling that voice of authority again, she went fishing:  “Very good. And the rest?”

“I won’t hurt her again, I swear it. I won’t even make contact. She can move back tomorrow. I’ll give her a divorce, full custody ofDevon, the house … whatever she wants.”

Holy crap! What had she stumbled into?

“Hello? Hello?” The chief’s voice rose on a note of panic. “Are you still there?”

“Relax, Chief. I’m still listening.”

“You have to believe me! I’ll never lay a hand on Lucy again. On either of them. God, I won’t even breathe in their direction. You’ll see. You can watch me as closely as you like.”

He’d been abusing his family? Bastard. “You can bet we’ll be watching,” she said in her silkiest voice. “Need I tell you what we think of recidivists?”

“No, ma’am. I’m sorry. Jesus … my ulcer. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

The line went dead. Slowly, Sam hung up the receiver. Well, well, wasn’t that interesting? Chief Michaels’ late-night visitor had been a friend of Mrs. Michaels. And a very persuasive one, by all appearances. What could he possibly have said or done to reduce the chief of police to the jabbering wreck she’d just talked to?

She thought about the photos back in her hotel room and the peculiar energy that had emanated from Michaels’ caller, and decided he was probably quite capable of decimating stronger men.

No matter. It was none of her concern. Michaels was still alive and well, and presumably newly embarked on the straight and narrow.

But who was the mystery caller? The estranged wife’s new boyfriend? Hired muscle? Some vigilante out to avenge victims of violence? Random whack-job?

Well, she wasn’t going to solve that mystery here, standing in a phone booth.

Correction — she wasn’t going to solve that mystery at all.

Stepping out of the phone booth, she headed for her rental and the promise of a nap back at her hotel room. She had to be fresh, had to focus on tonight. Whatever the reason she’d been called to St. Cloud, it would all become clear tonight.

 

 

Nightfall is available until February 27, 2013 at the price of just 99 cents, at these ebook retailers:

 

Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk (£0.77 )  |  B&N  |  iTunes  |  Smashwords

 

I’m getting closer to getting NIGHTFALL ready to publish. Today, I thought I’d post the first scene for anyone who wants to try it out on this lazy Sunday.

Chapter 1

Aiden  Afflack hummed to himself as he lifted the brass doorknocker to summon St. Cloud Police Chief Weldon Michaels to the front door of his Carrington Place residence. Rapping twice, he stepped back.

What was that tune running through his head? It had been with him since he’d risen this evening.

Audioslave? Nope.

Queens of the Stone Age? Un-uh.

Collective Soul? Yeah. Yeah, that was it. Definitely. He cricked his neck one way, then the other and felt the satisfying crack. Ooh, I’m feeling better now.

The curtain in the bay window twitched, but Aiden feigned obliviousness. From inside, he clearly heard Michaels jam a clip into a pistol. Aiden rolled his eyes. Nobody trusted anyone anymore.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

The voice came through the door. A very cautious man indeed.

“I’m a friend of your wife’s,” Aiden called. “Well, more a friend of a friend, actually, but I have a personal message for you, from her.”

“Nice try. Now move on, before I call the cops.”

Aiden thought about knocking the door in. It was solid oak with a good deadbolt on it, but it could have been made from cardboard and paperclips for all the challenge it would present. On the other hand, there was no reason to get messy.

He cleared his throat, did his best to summon a puzzled tone. “Well, hell, I thought you were the cops. Do I have the wrong address? I’m looking for Chief Weldon Michaels. Got a message for him from his wife Lucy. Pretty woman, ’bout an inch over five feet, brown hair and eyes? Oh, and a real cute little daughter. What’s her name? Devon? Any of this sounding familiar?”

Silence for a few heartbeats. “What kind of message?”

“She wants to come home, but before she can see her way clear to doing that, we need to have ourselves a talk.”

Another pause, then the sound of the deadbolt retracting. The door cracked open, and Weldon Michaels peered out past a security chain.

God save me from fools. Aiden pushed the door open. The hardware anchoring the security chain tore free from the wall. Before Michaels could cry out, Aiden stepped inside and closed the door behind him. In the next heartbeat, he seized Michaels’ right wrist and squeezed until the other man screamed and dropped the pistol he held. It hit the hardwood floor with a clatter but didn’t discharge.

“A gun?” Aiden released the other man’s hand. “Now I ask you, what kind of a greeting is that?”

Michaels — clearly a slow learner — reached for a second weapon jammed into the waistband at the small of his back. Before he could get to it, Aiden had Michaels face down on the floor with his right hand way closer to his right shoulder blade than God ever intended it to go.

“Jesus, my arm. You’re breaking it!”

“Not even close. You develop a feel for these things,” he said conversationally. “It’s sort of like braking when you’re driving on ice. You gotta find the threshold.”

“No, my shoulder! It’s gonna pop! I swear to God!”

Aiden reefed Michaels arm a half inch higher, eliciting a scream, followed by a stream of curses.

“See? Still plenty of play. It’s a feel thing. Now are you gonna behave yourself if I let you up?”

“Yes! I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Atta boy.” Aiden helped the other man to his feet. “Now, let’s go plug the code into the alarm, shall we? And don’t fuck with me. If the alarm company or the cops call in a minute to ask if everything’s okay, things will be very much not okay for you. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Aiden “helped” Michaels to the alarm panel, where he keyed in a five-digit number. The winking red light went out.
“Good man. Now we’re going to need your handcuffs. I know they can’t be far away, since you laid hands on that pistol fast enough. So be a darling and let’s go fetch them.”

Michaels swore again.

“I know, I know. It’s gotta sting, getting cuffed with your own bracelets, but look at it this way: they’ll be a helluva lot more comfortable than the alternative if you force me to improvise.”

Michaels sagged. “In that drawer.”

A minute later, Chief Weldon Michaels sat cuffed in one of his own kitchen chairs, a sturdy-looking oak proposition. Michaels somehow managed to look both scared and pissed at the same time.

Aiden took a seat at the table, placing both guns — one retrieved from beneath the telephone table in the entryway and the other from the small of Michaels’ back — on the gleaming wood surface. “Okay, Weldon — may I call you Weldon? — we need to talk.”

Michaels glared back. “You’re wasting your time. I don’t keep anything of value of here, at least nothing portable enough to carry off. And damn you, you’ve already scored both my guns. I suggest you just let yourself out and get while the getting’s good.”

“You think I was bullshitting earlier, don’t you? You think I was feeding you a line about your wife to get inside?” Aiden leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up to rest on the table. “That’s rich.”

Fear flashed in the other man’s eyes, which he quickly attempted to hide with bravado. “Look, mister, if you have a message for me, let’s get on with it.”

“Afflack.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’re gonna call me mister, you might as well make it Mr. Afflack. Or Aiden, if you prefer.”

Another flash of fear. Aiden could almost hear the wheels turning in Michaels’ head. He’s shown me his face, given me his name. There can only be one reason for that….

“Not to worry, Weldy. I think I’ll call you Weldy.”

Michaels tensed. Testing the cuffs and the strength of the chair’s spindles, no doubt.

Aiden sighed. “For Chrissakes, I’m not planning to kill you. I’m just going to spend the night here chatting, much like we are right now.”

Michaels blinked. “Spend the night?”

“Forgive me. It’s probably horribly uncomfortable with those cuffs on. Let me just deal with these nasty guns. Then I’ll take the bracelets off so we can talk all civilized-like.”

Aiden picked up the SIG 9mm with his left hand, grasped the barrel with his right. Closing his eyes, he slid his hand up and down the barrel a few times to attune his mind to the metal. Then he bent it effortlessly.

“Jesus Christ!”

 Aiden placed the ruined pistol back on the table, picked up the .22 and repeated the process on the gun’s short barrel.

“What the … how’d you do that?”

Aiden shrugged. “A parlor trick. You should see what I can do with a dinner fork.” He stood and extracted the handcuff key from the pocket of his worn jeans. “Now, about those cuffs….”

Michaels shrank back.

Aiden lifted his eyebrows. “What? You’d prefer to keep them on after all?”

The other man collected himself, embarrassment staining his cheeks. “Of course not. Please remove them.”

Aiden obliged.

As soon as his hands were free, Michaels immediately started massaging his sore right shoulder.

“Ah, yes, the shoulder. Sorry about that.” Aiden gave him his best aw shucks smile. “But I couldn’t have you putting bullet holes in me, could I?”

Michaels said nothing, but the stiffness in his face spoke volumes. Good. Get brave, you miserable little wife-beating worm. Get angry. Give me a reason to hurt you again.

Michaels cleared his throat. “So, this message from my wife?”

“She wants to come back to St. Cloud. In fact, she’d like to move back into this very house, seeing as she put so much sweat equity into it.” Aiden glanced around at the tastefully appointed kitchen. “I must say she did a great job.”

“Of course she can come home. That’s all I’ve wanted since she left.”

“Ah, but there’s a catch, Weldy. You can’t stay.”

Michaels made a choking sound, but quickly found his voice. “She thinks I’m just going to clear out of town?”

“That would be ideal, but no, I don’t think she expects that. It will be sufficient if you leave this house and never darken the door again.”

Michaels started to bluster that he owned the goddamned place and no one could put him out of it, yadda, yadda, yadda.

“Save it,” Aiden commanded. “You see, I know what you did to her, Weldy.”

A pause. “I don’t know what she told you, but—”

“You systematically isolated her from her friends and pressured her into quitting work. Then, when you got her where you wanted her, you escalated the abuse. You terrorized her, Weldy. You threatened the life of her child if she tried to leave you. Is any of this sounding familiar? No? Well how about this: you used your position and power to convince her that escape was impossible.”

Michaels leapt up, his face wreathed in fury. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about my family.”

Aiden swung his feet to the floor, but remained in his chair. “Oh, I know quite a bit, Chief Michaels. For instance, I know you’ve been abusing the police resources at your fingertips to search for her, ensuring she had to stay on the run, unable to stay anywhere for any length of time. I know she’s terrified for her life and that of her daughter.”

“If she’d just—”

“Shut up, Weldy, and listen. I’m the messenger, and the message is that it’s over. She’s coming back, and you, my friend, are going to become the most obliging, most accommodating, most respectful ex-husband on the face of the planet. Oh, and you’ll relinquish any rights to the child.”

“Fuck you.” Powered by rage, Michaels gripped the table’s edge and overturned it, then bolted for the door.
Grinning, Aiden swept the table away as if it were constructed of matchsticks and gave chase, overtaking his quarry in a blur of speed. By the time Michaels reached the door, Aiden lounged against it, the picture of indolence.

“Jesus!” Michaels’ face suddenly looked like it was stretched too tightly across the underlying bones. Shock did that to some people. With others, their faces went slack, as though—  

“Who are you?” Michaels rasped. “Dear God, what are you?”

Aiden allowed his smile to spread, noting the precise moment when Michaels caught the first glimpse of his grossly elongated cuspids. This time, Michaels’ face slackened.

“I’m glad you asked.”

# # #

So, whaddya think? Would you read on?