Cover of Night Read online

  The only logical reason left for their presence was Layton—and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  She went into the kitchen, where she had started making a batch of peanut butter cookies for the boys. Neenah Dase was sitting at the table, sipping a cup of tea. Business at the feed store was slow, so Neenah had put a sign on the door saying that she was at Cate’s; anyone needing feed would come get her.

  Neenah was a native, born and bred in Trail Stop. Neenah’s father had started the feed store more than fifty years before. Her older sister hadn’t liked rural living at all, and had “gone city” as soon as she got out of high school; she was now living, very happily, in Milwaukee. Cate didn’t know Neenah’s story, other than the bit about her being a former nun—or novice (Cate didn’t know if one could leave an order after becoming a full-fledged nun)—who had come home some fifteen years ago and taken over the day-to-day running of the feed store. When her parents died, Neenah inherited the store. She’d never married and, to Cate’s knowledge, never dated.

  Neenah was one of the calmest, most peaceful people Cate had ever met. Her light brown hair had such an ashy undertone that it had a silvery sheen. Her eyes were lake blue, and her skin was porcelain. She wasn’t beautiful; her jaw was too square, her features too unsymmetrical, but she was one of those people who made you smile when you thought of her.

  Cate liked most of the people in Trail Stop, but Neenah and Sherry were the ones she was closest to. Both of them were comfortable people to be around—Sherry because she was so upbeat, Neenah because she was so placid.

  Placid didn’t mean lacking in common sense, though. Cate sat down at the table and said, “I’m worried about my two new guests.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Two men.”

  Neenah paused with her teacup almost at her lips. “You’re afraid to be in the house with them?”

  “Not in the way you mean.” Cate rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know if you know—” Since Trail Stop was so small, gossip seemed to be as fast as instant messaging. “—but one of my guests climbed out his bedroom window yesterday, drove away, and didn’t come back. He left his things here, maybe because he couldn’t carry a suitcase and climb off the roof at the same time. Yesterday, a man supposedly from a rental car agency called here looking for him, but when I called the agency later to give them an update, they had no record of Mr. Layton ever renting a car from them. Then late yesterday afternoon someone called and reserved rooms for the two men who just arrived and I think it was the same man who called pretending to be from the rental agency. Are you following this?”

  Neenah nodded, her blue eyes serious. “Guest disappeared, people looking for him and lying about who they are, and now those same people are here.”

  “Essentially.”

  “It’s obvious he was up to no good.”

  “And neither are the people looking for him.”

  “Call the police,” Neenah said decisively.

  “And report what? They haven’t done anything wrong. No laws have been broken. I’ve reported Mr. Layton missing, but because he didn’t run out on his bill, other than check hospitals and ravines for him, there’s nothing they can do. It’s the same situation here. Just because I’m suspicious of these two is no reason for the police to even question them.” Cate leaned over to retrieve her own cup of tea from where it was sitting, beside the bowl of cookie batter, and took a sip, then cocked her head as a faint sound from the hallway made her pulse jump. “Did you hear that?” she whispered urgently, getting to her feet and moving swiftly toward the hallway door.

  “Don’t—” Neenah said, looking alarmed, but Cate was already jerking the door open.

  No one was there. No one was in the hallway, or on the stairs. She stepped closer to the stairs and looked up; from there she could see the doors to rooms three and five, and both were closed. She stuck her head into the dining room, but it, too, was empty. She turned back to the kitchen, where Neenah was standing anxiously in the doorway. “Nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Maybe I’m just jumpy.” Cate closed the door, rubbing her arms as chills roughened her skin. She picked up her teacup and sipped, but the tea had cooled and she made a face. Taking the cup to the sink, she dumped the remainder of the tea down the drain.

  “I didn’t hear anything, but you’re more familiar with the sounds of the house. Could it have just been a creak?”

  Cate replayed the sound in her mind. “It wasn’t a creaking sound; it was more like someone brushed against the wall.” She was too on edge to sit down again, so she resumed spooning up the cookie batter and dropping dabs onto the prepared cookie sheet, then flattening and shaping the dough with the flat of the spoon. “Like I said, maybe I’m just jumpy. The sound could have come from outside.”

  Beyond the closed kitchen door, Goss stepped silently out of what looked like a den, complete with toys strewn on the floor. That had been a close call, but he’d learned something important. Going up the stairs, he stayed close to the outside edge of the risers, testing each one before he put his full weight down, and he made it to the top without any betraying squeaks. He didn’t knock on Toxtel’s door, just opened it and slid inside. When he turned around, he was looking down the barrel of the Taurus.

  Toxtel scowled as he lowered his arm. “You trying to get killed?”

  “I overheard the Nightingale woman talking to some other woman downstairs,” he explained in a low, urgent tone. “She’s on to us. She mentioned calling the cops.” That wasn’t exactly what she’d said, but this was an opportunity he didn’t intend to pass up.

  “Shit! We need to find Layton’s crap and get out of here.”

  Goss had hoped Toxtel would have that reaction. Neither he nor Toxtel were wanted, but they had checked in under assumed names and that, coupled with Layton’s disappearing act, might strike some local yokel lawman as suspicious. Faulkner would be pissed beyond description if a hayseed cop traced them back to him, and even worse than that, Bandini would be even more unhappy that they’d brought that sort of attention to Layton. In a situation like this, caution went out the window and speed was important.

  Toxtel began throwing the things he’d unpacked back into his bag. Goss went next door and did the same. Pulling the pillowcase off one of the fat pillows on the bed, he wiped down every surface he’d touched, including the doorknobs. Things might go down the way he hoped, they might not, but he believed in protecting himself. Now, if Toxtel would just escalate this beyond retrieval—

  Less than two minutes after he’d entered Toxtel’s room, they met in the hallway.

  “Where are they?” Toxtel murmured. The Taurus was in his hand.

  Goss leaned over the stair railing and pointed. “That door. The open door is the dining room, so the next one is probably the kitchen.” Like Toxtel, he kept his voice down.

  “Kitchen. That means knives.” And because the availability of weapons was something they now had to factor in, that meant Toxtel would be even more alert. “Is anyone else in the house?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t hear anyone else.”

  “No kid?”

  “Toys in the den downstairs, but no kid. Maybe in school.”

  Quietly they carried their bags downstairs and set them by the front door so they could grab them on the way out. Goss’s veins were burning with adrenaline. A couple of bodies; a credit card charge that might not lead directly back to Faulkner, but a smart cop would eventually dig deep enough to find him; and a botched job for Bandini…the setup couldn’t get any sweeter than this. And Toxtel’s finger, not his own, was on the trigger. Even if he got caught up in the heat, he could plea-bargain, give up Toxtel, and be a free man in a few years. He’d have to change his name and disappear again, but that was no big deal. He was tired of being Kennon Goss.

  Signaling for Goss to take his back, weapon in his hand, Toxtel pushed open the kitchen door. “Sorry to do it this way, ladies,” he said cal