His second-story window overlooked the ocean that was behind his parents' beach home. Raising higher the already cracked window, he leaned his hot face into the soft breeze billowing in from the sea. Drying his damp forehead with his undershirt, Brad wrinkled his nose. Bracing his palms against the window sill, he stuck his shiny face into the moonlight.
Not a soul stirred on the stretch of beach separating his parents' home from the vast Atlantic Ocean. Craning his neck, he peered down the beach toward the Peyton family property.
A whiff of smoke aroused his attention. He still wore the khaki cargo shorts he had thrown on that morning. Clumsily, he searched in the dark for the pair of leather flip-flops he had kicked off before falling into bed. He was still sure that he wanted to try the beach route to the Peyton house.
The top drawer of his dresser held a flashlight, which worked. “Thank you,” he whispered when the LED beam bounced off the Bob Marley poster hanging on the wall behind his headboard.
Slipping into the hallway, he killed the light and listened to the snores rumbling from behind the closed door of his parents' bedroom. He knew they would be up at dawn.
“Be home by sunrise,” Brad said to himself as he unlocked the front door, remembering lessons from long nights out with friends in high school.
He tasted the smoke in his mouth when his feet hit the driveway. Aiming the flashlight beam at his motorcycle, he remembered that he had left the helmet on top of a packed trunk at the foot of his bed.
“No time,” he muttered and turned around, his toes gripping the edge of his flip-flops as they dug into the sandy path around the side of the house.
He sprinted over the dunes to the flat stretch of beach that he would follow a half-mile to Peyton Manor. Turning on the flashlight, he gripped the handle like a relay baton and flew parallel with the water. The moon guided his charge.
“Faster,” he panted to himself as his feet kicked the sand.
When the peaks of a roof loomed over the dunes, he eased his racing legs to a slow stop. Gently, the lapping waves of low tide licked his burning feet. He stood on the beach, staring at Peyton Manor. Expecting flames, he gasped in relief as he tossed his head back and stared up at the star-filled sky. Sucking in a breath, he coughed and sputtered at the smoke wafting from the trees toward the shore.
“Still time,” he told himself. Squinting at the silent house, he held up the flashlight. The beam merely flickered. “Come on!” he said gruffly. When he beat the handle against his palm, a faint beam flashed twice against the sand dunes before the weak batteries died.
Over the pounding of his own heart in his ears, he heard a howl echoing from inside the dense forest surrounding the silent house. Gulping, he stood motionless. The warm waves splashed against his ankles. His gut told him to go home, but his mind was still curious about what was going on. The decision about staying or going was made for him when a shriek, a human cry of terror, burst from the dunes close to him.
As he rushed across the beach, his knees kicked against his heaving chest. Stumbling up the side of the sand dune, he brushed away overgrown seagrass from his face. But his shaggy blond curls fell into his eyes. He did not see the rotting driftwood log hidden in the loose sand until he collapsed, face first, to the earth, his body tumbling down the side of a dune and into the sod-grass backyard of Peyton Manor.
A wooden splinter dug deep into the pink flesh at the tip of his middle left toe. Stifling a curse as he lay on his stomach, he felt the rush of a hot breath on the back of his neck.
“Help,” a tired, desperate voice said behind him.
Flipping over onto his back, Brad stared at the man's worn face, his green eyes pleading with the frightened boy. The man reeked of smoke, and his rusty-gray hair lay matted in sweat against his forehead. Brad sniffed the faint scent of blood.
“My mother,” the man said, pointing to Peyton Manor. “Fire.”
Brad nodded. He understood. “Get inside,” he said, jumping up from the grass. Shuffling slowly behind him, Jonathan Peyton dragged himself up the back steps of his mother's home.
“Does Miss June have a gun?” Brad asked, offering a hand to help Jonathan across the top porch step.
Nodding his head up and down, Jonathan collapsed to his knees against the wooden porch planks, his hand clutching a fistful of shirt above his heart.
“You can't stay out here,” Brad told the weary man as Cyrus yelped from the trees. “There,” he said, pointing to a broken kitchen window.
Urging the man up from his knees, Brad pushed him gently past the shards of glass and crept through the window sill behind him. Slumping against the stove, his shaking back rattling the stainless steel, Jonathan whispered the location of the pistol. “Desk,” he muttered. “Library.”
A candle and box of matches sat on a butcher-block counter by the stove. Striking a flame, Brad lit the wick, his shadow swallowing whole the gasping man resting on the floor. On the other side of the closed kitchen door, a single creak of a wooden floorboard shattered the silence of the house.
“Get down!” Jonathan shouted at Brad.
Ducking to the floor, Brad narrowly missed the aim of the single bullet that blasted through the center of the door. Cracking the wood, the bullet left pine splinters scattered across the kitchen floor. It had come to rest in the drywall above Brad's spinning head.
The candle shook in Brad's hand as the door eased open from the tap of the gun barrel against the wood.
“Jonathan!” June cried, stepping into the dim glow. Her slippers shuffled over the slivers of kitchen door sprayed across the threshold.
The pistol trembled in her hands as she knelt down to her son. “It's you?” she asked him. “It's really you!” she sobbed, tossing her arms around his neck.
Untangling the pistol from her fingers, Brad shoved the barrel in his waistband.
Jonathan gritted his teeth at the pain swelling in his knee. He patted his mother's shoulders tenderly. “I'm glad you never took shooting lessons,” he told her. “You nearly killed us.”
“You nearly killed me,” she told him, clasping his hands in her own. “But I always knew you would come home.”
Ashamed at the impatient tapping of his fingers against the countertop, Brad hid his hands in his pockets. “Miss June,” he said, staring at his flip-flops, “we have to get you out of here. There's a fire in the woods.”
“No,” June protested and clung to her son's neck. “We can't leave. She won't find us out there.”
“Who?” Brad asked. “We should go,” he pleaded.
“Alexandra,” June whispered as Jonathan squeezed her frail arm. “She's coming. I hear her.”
A footfall on the porch silenced her voice and the growl shook her bones. A snarl erupted from outside the broken window. Brad snuffed the candle with his breath.
“June Bug, dat ya?” Jasmine asked from outside on the porch.
“Yes, Jasmine,” she answered.
On trembling legs, June raised herself from the tiled floor and stepped toward the voice echoing through the window.
Jasmine cackled in the pale moonlight as she patted the head of the wolf crouched beside her on his haunches.
“Dat girl here?” Jasmine asked.
Cyrus whined, his tail wagging furiously and slapping the porch.
“Alexandra,” Brad whispered. He glanced at the pale face of the man slumped against the stove.
“My Alexandra,” Jonathan said softly, his eyes locking on the pistol in Brad's waistband.
“Light that candle again,” June told Brad firmly.
He did as she asked.
“Give it to me,” she said, yanking the burning pillar from his hands. “I want to see that witch's face before she dies.”
A full moon hung high in the center of the cloudless night sky. Its buoyant beams reflected soothingly from atop the smooth, black current offshore in the harbor of Miami's South Beach. A strolling couple was taking advantage of the brilliant evening. Angela held her heels in her hands and traipsed barefoot in the sand, taking in the musky scent of Jim and the saltwater.
She made sure to keep a careful, friendly distance from him, but she was having a nice time. Then she realized that she was alone, and that he had taken a turn without her.
“I can't feel my legs, Angie,” he called to her in the darkness.
“Jim!” she shouted frantically when she did not see him.
Laughter peeled through the night. “Down here,” Jim said behind her. Lying still, his back flat against the beach, he grinned at the moonlit sky.
“What are you doing?” Angela asked playfully, as her toe kicked a pile of sand at his chest.
“Stop that,” he said, brushing the gritty powder from his belly.
Kneeling beside him, Angela offered her hand to help him from the sand. “Can I be of assistance, Dr. Woodward?” she asked smoothly.
“Too much red wine,” he said, rubbing his forehead as he sat upright.
“You should know better,” Angela told him as a cell phone buzzed in her ears.
They both patted their pants pockets. “Mine,” Jim grumbled while he read a name on the screen.
The click of his thumb upon the illuminated answer button shocked the dialer on the other end. Static wavered in Krystal's ear as she yelled at her phone. She had placed it beside her on the palm-tree patterned hotel comforter. With the speaker on, she crossed her arms over her chest and fumed. Across the room, the refrigerator door of the mini-bar stood wide open. An uncorked bottle of champagne warmed to room temperature on the bedside table.
“Where are you?” Krystal hissed.
“In my hotel room,” Jim lied.
“Really?” Krystal teased. “Who's on Jay Leno tonight?”
A knock pounded on her hotel room door.
“Room service,” a young man's high voice squeaked over the static of the call.
“You're here in Miami, aren't you?” Jim asked. His mood deflated as fast as a popped birthday balloon.
“Yes,” Krystal said, raising the phone to her ear.
“You left Taylor alone?” Jim asked her. “How could you? She's barely able to hobble around,” he scolded.
The fury building inside Krystal burst a thin vein in her eye socket. A blood-red splotch of pure anger blurred her vision as she stood up from the bed.
“Room service,” the patient hotel employee reminded her with a heavier rasp of his knuckle upon the locked steel door.
She flung the door open.
“Shut up,” Krystal shouted at the wide-eyed young man, his shock of red hair tied back in a slick ponytail from his freckled face. Shoving a wad of cash toward his upturned palms, she shooed him away and shoved the cart of food into the room.
“I ordered us lobster tails and filet mignon,” Krystal told her husband over the phone. She slammed the hotel room door shut, the clank of metal ricocheting violently down the empty hallway.
“I'm not hungry,” Jim said calmly before his thumb ended the call. “Don't wait up, Krystal,” he said as he turned off the Blackberry. A picture of Taylor on horseback smiled at him on the phone before the power died.
Offering her hand, Angela helped him to his feet from the sand.
“Thanks,” he muttered, staring out into the lolling waves.
With a fluid thrust, he launched his cell phone into the abyss. A comfortable but unfamiliar sensation of calm settled upon his frayed nerves. He grinned to himself and turned to Angela.
“Our girls would be jealous that we're in such a fabulous place,” Jim said to her as he held out his hand.
“Yes, they would,” Angela agreed while clasping his palm, joining him in her bare feet at the edge of the water. “Have you talked to Taylor today?”
“No,” Jim said, frowning, his forehead crinkling as he stared at the spot in the ocean where he had tossed his Blackberry.
“I haven't talked to Alexandra, either,” Angela confided as she squeezed his palm.
We're being followed
. Alexandra sat up in the back seat of the cruising Mustang.
He is with me.
“Breathe, Miss Peyton,” Callahan reminded her as he glanced at Alexandra in the rearview mirror.
“Okay,” she whispered over his shoulder. Resting her chin on the back of the driver's seat, she stared with him through the windshield as the tires of the Mustang navigated Black Hall Trail.
With a shy smile peeking innocently from the corners of her lips, Taylor slept lightly in the passenger seat beside Callahan. Exhausted, depleted, and annoyed, she gave in to a nap after Benjamin passed out in the back seat behind her with a full belly from his truck stop dinner of beef jerky and nachos drowning in cheese sauce.
Bathed in the glow of headlights, the narrow, tree-lined curves of the two-lane road to Peyton Manor felt familiar but irretrievably altered. Alexandra knew her way and could guide Callahan with her eyes closed. Only a week had passed since her last visit to the Edisto Island home of her Granny June, but the spell had been broken. She suddenly shivered with the knowledge that evil refuses to die.
In the woods just at the edge of the road, a witchâa voodoo priestessâstalked the shadows.
“Breathe,” Callahan said, patting Alexandra's fist, which gripped the back of the seat behind his head. He had seen that in a matter of days, Alexandra had shed her fear like a butterfly discarding a cocoon. He felt that she was as strong and brave as a warrior.
“The driveway,” Alexandra announced as she swallowed a gulp of air. “Kill the lights.”
The harsh scrape of the windshield wipers against the dry glass shrieked in their ears. Nestled in Alexandra's lap, Jack snuffled and buried his face against her legs, his ears hidden under his wide paws.
“Sorry,” Callahan apologized and flicked his wrist at a handle protruding from the side of the steering wheel. As the wipers rested at the base of windshield, the beams of the headlights flickered and died. “Peyton Manor?” he asked.