Page 97 of Strangers She Knows

Now, with the towering clouds above, it felt like midnight.

She couldn’t see Mara. Mara wouldn’t see her.

Directly below her, Mara flipped on a flashlight.

Kellen was a fool. But she watched Mara, sat very still, and concentrated on being one with the tree.

Mara was walking slowly, waving her flashlight from side to side, and occasionally, she paused as if she had found something interesting. She walked past Kellen’s tree, then backtracked, and without looking up, she said, “You’re bleeding, Kellen. I’m following your blood tracks.”

Kellen looked down at herself. She could see nothing in the dark, but she could feel the warm wet seeping through her fingers. Yes. The puncture from the bicycle spoke must have been deep, because she was dribbling blood.

Mara shone her flashlight into the branches, waved it back and forth, focused on Kellen. “There you are,” she crooned. She lifted her rifle onto her shoulder and aimed.

Kellen stood and leaped for a branch above her head—and caught it! For one exuberant moment, she thought she could swing herself up and on to the next level. But the branch gave way. In fact, it wasn’t a branch at all, for it was hooked with one end on this tree and one on the other, and with this end loose, Kellen swung like Tarzan across through the air.

A hammock. She was holding the end of a hammock. Pieces of something rained down onto the forest floor.

Hanging on with both hands, she slammed into the trunk of the other tree.

A human-shaped object catapulted out of the mesh bed.

At the moment Mara screamed in horror, Kellen understood.

They had found Jamie Conkle.

41

Kellen burst into Morgade Hall, ran to the kitchen, turned on the water and leaned into the sink. She was wet, soaked to the skin from the rain, yet still she scrubbed at her face and hands, and tried not to think about what she’d seen, about the sickened sounds Mara had made.

But in Kellen’s mind, it all made sense. Dylan had killed Jamie, but he had also given Jamie the funeral he thought she would want. She loved the island above all things, the deer, the foxes, especially the predacious birds. So like some Native American tribes, he had taken the body, placed it in a hammock and hung it high, and allowed the birds to feast.

For all that Kellen had found tradition in the Morgade cemetery, she had to admit she found comfort with the idea of Jamie traveling the skies with the peregrine, the hawk, the eagle.

Using a swathe of kitchen towels, she dried herself, and thought encouragingly that the storm had washed her as nothing else could.

She had run and ridden all day. She was famished and dehydrated. She knew Mara was coming behind her, delayed only by whatever harm had occurred from the weight of a dead body hitting her.

She didn’t honestly think Mara would keep her promise and allow Kellen to remain unharmed tonight. But in a house of this size, how easy to hide in one of the rooms! Kellen pressed her hand on the wound on her side. As long as this time as she didn’t leave a trail of blood.

Desperate for more water, she returned to the faucet, leaned down and drank.

Desperate for a weapon, she rummaged in the knife drawer. An eight-inch butcher’s knife. A short, sharp paring knife. She stowed them on her person. Mara would try to finish her—but not without a fight.

Needing food, she headed into the pantry. She didn’t trust Mara and her drugs, and everything she chose was sealed in the proper packaging. Canned tuna and crackers. Dried fruit. A sealed sports drink.

Leaving the pantry, she blinked at the canned tuna and sealed package of crackers already on the counter.

Who had placed them there? Was Mara here?

She looked around the kitchen. She didn’t see Mara, but the table was growing, stretching from a circle into an oval, and the light over the top had developed a smile, like the Cheshire Cat, only brighter.

“This isn’t right,” she muttered. “The table can’t stretch and the Cheshire Cat is in Wonderland. This isn’t Wonderland. I haven’t drunk anything to make myself larger.” She looked down at her legs and up at the ceiling. “Nope. I’m not taller. I haven’t eaten a mushroom to make myself smaller.”

The light over the tables smiled brighter and nodded. “Then what happened?” it asked.

“She drugged me.” Kellen was sure.

“How could she do that?” the light asked.

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