Peabody is a great place. Close to the action in Boston when you want action. Away from people when you don’t want a crowd.”
Jack laughed. “I think you’re talking about the wheat fields of Kansas or something. We have neighbors almost on top of us.”
Vince popped a beer and lay back on one of the plastic cushions he kept in the truck for “entertaining,” as he called it, looking up at the sky. “Yeah, in some places you got old Victorian on top of old Victorian. But there’s still some wooded land available. And reasonably priced, too. I get some trust money when I graduate, and I’m buying land.”
“To do what?” Rocky asked.
“I don’t know yet—I just know I’m buying it.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have any trust money coming,” Rocky told him. He crawled up into the bed of the truck, but he didn’t lie back.
“Witch’s moon,” Jack said.
It was huge and full, Rocky noticed. The local Wiccans were probably all out forming circles or whatever it was they did.
“Werewolves a-howling,” Vince said, laughing.
Rocky frowned, listening intently. Just as Vince had spoken, he could have sworn that he did hear something. Not a howl, exactly. More like a sob.
“What was that?” he murmured.
“You hear a werewolf?” Vince laughed.
“No,” Rocky said, glancing at Vince and rolling his eyes. “But something. Shut up and listen.”
Melissa. Melissa Wilson. She was calling his name again. She was trying to tell him something.
Help me, Rocky. Help me!
“Don’t you hear her?” he demanded, looking around. His next-door neighbor’s house was close—not fifty feet away. The sound, however, seemed to be coming from farther than that. He gazed toward the playground across the street and beyond...where a small forest of pines led down to the pond.
“Hear what?” Vince demanded.
“Melissa,” Rocky said. “I could swear I hear Melissa—and she’s calling for help.”
Vince laughed. “Melissa? What the hell are you talking about? I’m the one doing the drinking and you’re hearing things? You hear anything, Jack?”
Jack shook his head. He looked worriedly at Rocky. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Rocky said. “I’m fine. I’m not hearing things. It’s Melissa, and she’s asking for help.”
“You’re crazy, man. The pressure is getting to you. Hell, you’d help yourself out if you’d have a beer,” Vince offered.
“He may be right,” Jack noted.
Rocky jumped off the bed of the truck and listened. He couldn’t really tell, but the voice seemed to be coming from across the street and...
From inside his mind.
He walked across the street, so intent he forgot to even look for traffic. Thankfully, it was a quiet neighborhood.
“Rocky, what the hell?”
Vince hurried after him, with Jack following behind.
Rocky sprinted across the grass and into the pines.
“Rocky, wait!” Vince gasped. He was bigger, but it was hard for him to run as fast. Jack was quickly catching up.
But Rocky kept going until he finally stopped in the maze of pines, holding his breath, listening.
Rocky!
Melissa’s voice again.
He walked through the trees, grateful for the full moon, whose light filtered through the branches. Branches reaching toward him like skeletal arms.
Yup. Too many slasher movies.
Fallen pine needles were brittle beneath his footsteps as he moved through the trees. Something brushed his face, and he almost gasped aloud before he realized it was just a spiderweb.
“Rockwell, where the hell are you going?” Vince yelled from somewhere behind him.
“Come on, man. What are you doing?” Jack demanded as the other two caught up to him. “You’re scaring me.”
Rocky didn’t know. He kept walking through the woods until he came to a barren circle surrounded by pines. A little area of dust and rock and bracken, and...
Melissa. Melissa Wilson.
She was lying on her back, arms and legs stretched straight out. She was staring up at the night sky, at the full moon. Her eyes, he realized, were frozen open.
A red line extended around her throat and dripped to the forest floor.
Melissa Wilson was dead.
* * *
“Mr. Rockwell?”
Rocky started. He’d been sitting in the front office of the Virginia office of the FBI special division called the Krewe of Hunters, waiting for his appointment with Jackson Crow. He was the assistant director of this branch of “special” investigations. The titular head of all the Krewe units was a man named Adam Harrison, but he was seldom seen. He seemed to “direct” from some kind of lofty haven.
The events that had filled his mind—as fresh as if they’d just happened, although they had been almost thirteen years in the past—faded with the sound of the receptionist’s voice. Until recently, he’d buried the memories of Melissa Wilson deep in the darkest recesses of his mind.
He’d forgotten about football after finding her. He’d concentrated on law enforcement in college and gone to work first with the Boston police, and then he’d made it into the FBI Academy and taken a position in L.A. after graduation. Since his mother had remarried—a great guy, a retired fireman—he didn’t suffer from the only-child guilt that would have made him feel he needed to be near her.
Over the past ten years, he’d learned that Hollywood really was a world of illusion, and that only made the area a hotbed for mayhem and murder.
And now...
And now here he was, seeking a new position with a vengeance. He’d followed the Krewe of Hunters for the past few years. His curiosity had been piqued from the first time he’d read about their cases—and heard the rumors in the field offices. No matter how the members of the special unit were mocked, they were also respected, because they had a batting average that was off the charts.
And that was what he needed now.
Because it had happened again. A murder so much like Melissa’s that it gave him chills—and practically in his hometown.
“Special Agent Crow will see you now.”
As
