The Darkest Embrace Read online

  Turning from the sink, he caught sight of the advertised shower, a narrow stall with a sagging, mildewed curtain shielding what looked like equally moldy tiles behind it and a steadily dripping showerhead. You’d have to pay him a helluva lot more than the five bucks they wanted to charge to get naked in that thing. On impulse, he twitched the curtain aside and stepped back at once with a stifled shout.

  It looked like an abattoir.

  Summers growing up as a kid, Max had spent a lot of time on his uncle’s farm. Uncle Rick and Aunt Lori had raised a few dairy cows, kept a bull, a coop of chickens, one or two pigs. They kept animals for food, not profit, and definitely not for pets. Max had learned that the hard way after he’d adopted a spindle-legged calf named Doey. Years later, when he watched the film version of The Silence of the Lambs, the scene in which Clarice described the sound of the lambs screaming had sent him from the theater faster than any of Hannibal Lecter’s tooth-sucking comments about fava beans. To this day, he couldn’t eat veal.

  The barn had looked like this shower stall the day he’d found them slaughtering Doey.

  Max backed up so fast that the heel of his boot caught on a ridge of tile. To catch himself from falling, he flung out his injured hand. Fresh pain, bright and wide and thick, covered him, and he let out a yelp that echoed in the dimly lit room. He could smell it now, he thought. The stink of old, dried blood. And hear the soft buzz of flies battering themselves against the small window set high in the wall.

  Shit and blood, that’s what Uncle Rick had always said brought flies. Shit and blood.

  Outside in the late-afternoon sunshine, the scene in the restroom seemed surreal. When he came around the corner, he found Jessie talking to the old woman/man sitting in the rocker on the front porch. Rather, the ancient lump of wrinkles and raggedy clothes was talking. Jessie seemed to be just listening.

  “Stay out of the woods,” the old person was saying.

  Jessie glanced up at him, her expression so carefully neutral that he could tell she was trying hard not to laugh. “Thanks, Mrs. Romero.”

  “Who this?”

  Jessie reached for Max’s good hand to pull him closer. “This is Max, my boyfriend.”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d called him that, but it was still so new the word tied knots in his gut. “Hi.”

  Mrs. Romero tipped her wizened face toward his, her eyes asquint, mouth still sucking greedily on the pipe. “You bleeding?”

  “He cut his hand,” Jessie explained, pulling out a package of gauze bandages and first aid supplies from a cheerfully bright yellow plastic bag. “I’m going to fix him up, though. He’ll be okay.”

  This set Mrs. Romero cackling so much that she pulled the pipe from her lips to point it at Jessie. “Oh, I betcha. He’ll be perfect.”

  Another burst of cackling laughter sent the old woman into a spate of thick, congested coughing that bent her forward so far that Max was sure she was going to tip right out of the rocker. The door behind Jessie opened and a blonde woman wearing jeans and a denim shirt came out to grab Mrs. Romero by the shoulders and keep her upright. It took Max a second or two to figure out what seemed so off about the woman: Just like the guy back on the road, the blonde woman was extremely tall.

  She shot them both an apologetic look. “Sorry. Mom, Mom! Mom, you got to calm yourself.”

  Jessie backed up a few steps to get out of the way. “Sorry to upset her.”

  The blonde woman shrugged, patting Mrs. Romero on the back until the coughing fit eased a little. Mrs. Romero fixed Max with a solid glare and pointed her pipe at him. “Perfect.”

  Somehow, the way she said it didn’t make him feel perfect.

  “Sorry,” the blonde woman said again. “She’s...old.”

  “We need to get going,” Max said. “We’re supposed to be getting to the cabin.”

  The blonde stood. “Oh, you’re the renters? Freddy’s been waiting for you so he can show you around, how to use the stove and stuff. You’re late.”

  “We ran into a little trouble on the road,” Max said. His hand gave a twinge.

  She shielded her hand to look up at the sky. “You’d better get moving, then. It’s getting dark and you don’t want to try to unpack in the dark. Storm’s coming.”

  “There aren’t any lights?” Jessie asked with a quick glance his way.

  “Gas lights,” the woman said as she rubbed Mrs. Romero’s back and the old woman turned her face to the side and spit on the porch floor. “Gas heat, stove, hot water. But you don’t want to be out too long after dark, the bugs will eat you alive.”

  “Better bugs than Mrs. Romero,” Jessie said with a soft giggle when they were back in the truck and she’d torn open the package of bandages to work on his hand.

  An innuendo rose to his lips about being eaten by Jessie being better than anything, but he quashed it. What was so easy for him over text or instant message never came out right in person. Instead, he let her take his hand to clean it with the antiseptic wipes she’d bought. It stung, but that wasn’t why he hissed in a breath. It was when Jessie took his hand and gently kissed the wound before pressing a gauze pad against it and wrapping it with a bandage that his heart skipped and thudded. Not to mention the rise in his pants.

  Still cupping his hand in hers, she looked up at him from under her lashes. “This could make it hard for you to use your hand.”

  “Yeah...” Max croaked, throat suddenly dry.

  “Well,” Jessie said with a slowly spreading smile, “it’s a good thing you can still use your mouth.”

  Chapter 2

  The final trip to the cabin was as scenic and lovely as the first part of the journey, and thankfully much less eventful. Max eased the Suburban down increasingly narrow and isolated roads. Over a ravine, the wooden bridge little more than a series of heavy timbers. Past a few other cabins, some with lights or curious faces in the windows, but most dark. Then, finally, up a long, winding dirt track with the trees so close that they brushed the sides of the SUV, and...

  “Wow,” Jessie gasped at the sight of it.

  The cabin featured two pretty gables and a covered wraparound porch with carved columns and loads of intricately carved wooden gingerbread trim. Soft yellow light shone from the upper windows and from inside, but a brighter glow shone as they parked in front. At home there might still be light in the sky, but here in the forest, night was already close. The front door opened and a shadowy figure emerged holding a lantern. Jessie was already getting out of the truck, but paused at the sight. Surely the man wasn’t ducking to get out through the door?

  “Hi! Freddy Romero.” The man held out his hand toward Max and gave Jessie a nod. “You’re late. Got scared you weren’t coming.”

  “Ran into a little trouble on the road,” Max said.

  Freddy gave a startlingly loud laugh, his teeth bright and shining in the growing dusk. “Deer.”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “My brother Jason told me,” Freddy said. “Said he came across you. Everything okay?”

  Max nodded. “Yep.”

  Jessie moved closer to him to look around Freddy. “It’s lovely here.”

  “Right, right. Let me show you around, get you settled. Get out of your way before the storm hits,” Freddy said with a grin that was closer to a leer. “Give you your privacy.”

  The tour of the cabin took ten minutes, five minutes longer than necessary, as far as Jessie was concerned, because there wasn’t really much to learn. Freddy paused in the doorway with his lantern, pointing out a list of places where they’d find instructions, if they needed them, for the hot water heater, the stove, the hot tub.

  “Hot tub!” Jessie said happily with a grin at Max, who looked surprised. “Yay!”

  “It’s new,” Freddy explained, and final