He didn't wait for his father's reply. Frankly, he didn't need to hear it. Kade ended the call without another word, his thoughts swirling with the grisly images he'd seen in the tech lab a short time ago and the knowledge that his brother had not been accounted for in potentially a number of weeks.
His brother, who shared the same dark talent as Kade.
The same dangerously seductive wildness--the violent power--that could so easily slip out of control. And had, at least once, Kade acknowledged with grim recollection.
"Goddamn it, Seth."
He tossed the phone onto the bed. Then, with a furious growl, he whirled on his heel and slammed his fist into the nearest wall.
Chapter Four
The Arctic storm had pounded the Alaskan interior for two days straight, dumping three feet of snow on the small town of Harmony and its far-flung neighbors along the river and plunging daytime temperatures all over the region to fifteen below zero. Ordinarily, weather like that tended to do one of two things to folks: keep them knuckled down at home, or send them flocking to Pete's, the local restaurant and tavern.
Today, despite the howl of the wintry wind and the skin-biting cold as the third and final hour of sunlight faded into midday dusk, nearly all of Harmony's ninety-three residents were packed into the logcabin Congregational church for an impromptu town hall meeting. Alex sat beside Jenna in the second row of pews, trying as hard as everyone else to make sense of the recent carnage in the bush, which had brought six dead, brutally savaged bodies into makeshift cold storage at Harmony's airstrip and put the whole town into a state of anxious unrest.
Alex knew that Zach Tucker had tried to keep the news of the attack on the Toms settlement quiet, but despite the vastness of the interior, word traveled fast--faster still, in this isolated eleven-square-mile chunk of land that hugged the shore of the Koyukuk. Bad news, particularly the kind involving multiple unexplained deaths of a violent nature, tended to reach folks' ears as if flown there on a raven's wings. In the forty-eight hours since Alex's discovery of the killings, and Zach's decision to transport the bodies from the crime scene into Harmony to await the clearing of the weather so the Staties in Fairbanks could come in and take over the investigation, the feeling around town had gone from one of shock and dismay to one of suspicion and dangerous, mounting hysteria. Forty-eight hours had been all the townspeople could take without demanding some answers about just who--or what--had so viciously attacked Pop Toms and his family.
"I simply don't understand," said Millie Dunbar from her seat in the pew behind Alex. The old woman's voice trembled, not so much from her eighty-seven years of age but from sorrow and concern.
"Who would want to harm Wilbur Toms and his family? They were such good, kind folks. Why, when my father first settled here, he traded with Wilbur's grandfather upriver for many years. He never had a bad word for any of the Tomses. I just can't figure who could be so evil to have done something like this." One of the townsmen near the back of the church piped in. "If you ask me, makes me wonder about the boy, Teddy. Too damn quiet, that one. Seen him hanging around town a bit of late, but he wouldn't even say hello when spoken to, just acted like he was too good to answer. Made me wonder what the kid was up to, and if maybe he had something to hide."
"Oh, please," Alex said, feeling obligated to defend Teddy since he wasn't there to do it for himself. She pivoted on the pew and shot a disapproving glance to the area behind her, where dozens of faces had hardened with suspicion because of Big Dave Grant's baseless accusation. "Teddy was shy around people he didn't know well, that's all. He never talked much because of the teasing he always took for his stutter. And to suggest that he could somehow have anything to do with the murder of his family when he's lying right next to them on a cold slab is disgustingly callous. If any of you had seen the condition they were left in--" Jenna's hand came down softly on Alex's wrist, but the warning was unnecessary. Alex had no intention of taking that train of thought any further. Bad enough she'd been reliving the gruesome discovery over and over in her mind since she'd stumbled upon Pop Toms, Teddy, and the rest of their kin. She wasn't going to sit there and rehash for everyone how brutal their murders had been. How savage the wounds that had rent flesh to the bone and torn open throats as if some kind of hellish beast had come out of the cold night to feed on the living.
No, not a beast.
A being out of a nightmare.
A monster.
Alex closed her eyes against the vision of blood and death that began to rise from the darkest reaches of her memory. She didn't want to go there, never again. It had taken years and thousands of miles, but she had outrun that dark reality. She had outlived it, even though it had robbed her of so very much along the way.
"Is it true there wasn't no murder weapon found?" someone shouted from the middle of the gathering. "If they wasn't shot or stabbed, then how exactly were they killed? I heard there was a hell of a lot of blood spilled out there in the bush."
From his position behind the pulpit, Zach held up a hand to quell the ensuing barrage of similarly curious questions from the crowd. "Until the AST detachment arrives from Fairbanks, all I can tell you is that we are treating this as a multiple homicide. Being that I am one of the investigating officers, I am not at liberty to discuss the details of the case with anyone at this time, nor do I think it would be wise for me to speculate."
"But what about the wounds, Zach?" This time it was Lanny Ham who spoke up, his reed-thin voice edged with slightly more than its normal level of nervous energy. "I heard the bodies look like they were attacked by animals. Big animals. Is that true?"