LITMIR.BIZ

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her face. “Lots of unsolved crimes in the Northeast Kingdom, including peaceful little Colby.”

      Griffin shrugged. “You mean the teenage girls who were murdered twenty-five years ago? Someone mentioned it to me. But they told me they caught the killer.”

      “Twenty years ago,” Doc corrected him. Griffin knew exactly how long it had been since Lorelei, Valette and Alice died. To the day. “And they caught the boy, all right. Sent him to jail, but he got out a few years later on a technicality. There are some who say he wasn’t the killer, anyway—that he got railroaded.”

      That was the first Griffin had heard of it—it had seemed as if the town was out for his blood. He was lucky the Northeast Kingdom didn’t go in for lynching, or he wouldn’t be here right now. “Really?”

      “Then there are others who believe he killed those three girls and more besides, and sooner or later he’ll come back here, to finish up what he started,” Doc said.

      Griffin didn’t even blink. “Well, what’s taking him so long? He’s probably dead himself by now.”

      “Not that boy,” Doc said. “He’s a survivor. Nothing was gonna get that boy down, not prison, not nothing.”

      “Do you think he did it?” Griffin asked. The moment the words were out of his mouth he realized it was a mistake.

      Doc focused his pale blue eyes on him for a long, unsettling moment. “I don’t know. There were times when I thought that boy was pure evil. Then there were other times when I thought he was just a lost soul. I suppose he could have killed them. But I think he would have had to have been out of his mind on drugs or something to have done it.”

      Not much help, Griffin thought grimly. And now Doc was staring at him with an odd expression on his face, as if he could see past the wire-rimmed glasses and the curly hair and the clean-shaven face, see past twenty years into the face of a boy who might be a killer.

      Doc shook his head. “One of life’s little mysteries, I guess. Just like Sara Ann Whitten.”

      “Whitten?” Griffin echoed uneasily.

      “Seventeen-year-old daughter of the folks who owned the place you’re renting,” Doc explained. “She took off a couple of years after the murders. Just up and disappeared one day, and no one’s ever found a trace of her. If it weren’t for that boy being locked up they would have thought she’d been murdered, as well.”

      “But you said some people didn’t think he did it,” Griffin said.

      Doc just looked sorrowful. “No one knows what happened. Whether the boy was a mass murderer or just a jealous lover. Or maybe just an innocent caught up in a mess bigger than he could handle. It doesn’t matter—it was long ago, and folks around here don’t like to think about it. Let the past rest in peace.”

      Griffin said nothing. The past wasn’t resting peacefully, it was haunting him. And he wasn’t going to stop until he laid it to rest himself. No matter what the price.

      

      Sophie didn’t plan to waste any time—the sooner she got him off the property and away from Marty the happier she’d be. Not that Mr. Smith was Marty’s type—her sister tended to go for young and buff and brainless. Smith had gray in his hair, for heaven’s sake, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. Hardly the stuff teenage dreams were made of.

      And yet Sophie knew with a gut-sure instinct that Mr. John Smith would be just about irresistible to any impressionable young woman. Even she, armored and totally, determinedly uninterested, could feel the inevitable pull. All that mysterious, brooding beauty, even the hint of danger, was ridiculously tempting. Fortunately she wasn’t the sort to be tempted.

      He hadn’t waited for her on the porch, which didn’t surprise her in the least. He’d wandered down the lawn to the edge of the lake, and he was staring across the shimmering blue expanse toward the unseen village, his back straight and tall. And he was no longer alone.

      At least it wasn’t Marty this time, though the alternative wasn’t much more reassuring. Gracey was looking up at him, her gray hair tumbling to her shoulders, her mismatched clothing drooping around her too-thin body. Doc was there, as well, a small buffer, but Sophie almost took a header off the wide front porch in her haste to get down to the water’s edge.

      “You didn’t tell me we had a new neighbor,” Gracey said as she approached.

      Sophie bit her lip in frustration. “Yes, I did, Mama. We already discussed this yesterday, remember?”

      Gracey’s eyes brightened for a moment. “Oh, yes, love,” she said. “I remember now. I told you you needed to get laid.”

      Mr. Smith’s choking sound didn’t make the hideous situation any better. Doc had jumped in quickly, taking Gracey’s thin hand. “Now, Gracey, you know you’re not supposed to say things like that.”

      “But it’s true. Sex is very healthy for a young woman like Sophie. Besides, he’s very attractive. Isn’t he, Sophie?”

      Sophie tried not to cringe. “He’s not my type, Mama. Why don’t you go back to the house with Doc and…”

      “What do you mean, he’s not your type? You’re too picky.” She swung her wicked gaze to the silent stranger. “Tell me, Mr. Smith, are you married?”

      “No.”

      “Involved? Gay?”

      “No,” he said. The monosyllable was delivered entirely without inflection, and Sophie refused to look at him to see his reaction to her mother’s outrageousness.

      “You see!” her mother said triumphantly. “He’d be perfect. You go off and have sex with him and I’ll look after the inn. Marty can help me.”

      “Come along, Gracey,” Doc said kindly. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

      Sophie didn’t wait any longer. She headed toward the narrow path through the woods, not stopping to see if John Smith was following. If he wasn’t, just as well. She’d keep going, hike out to the main road and circle back to the inn.

      He was close behind her—there was no escape. He waited until they were out of sight of the inn, almost at the edge of the Whitten place, before he spoke.

      “Why are the women in your family so interested in my sex life?” He sounded no more than vaguely curious, but Sophie wasn’t fooled.

      It was now or never. She stopped, turning to look at him. He was closer than she’d realized, and she had to look up. He was the kind of man you’d need to wear high heels around, so as not to let his height intimidate you. “What do you mean?”

      “Well, you think I want to have sex with your seventeen-year-old sister, your mother thinks I ought to have sex with you, and I imagine Marthe probably has ideas of her own.”

      “Well, you can just ignore any ideas Marty might have. She’s an impressionable teenager. And ignore my mother, as well—surely you can see she’s got some kind of senile dementia.”

      “Maybe,” he said. “But I think she’s a lot sharper than she pretends to be.”

      “And you base that on what? Five minutes in her company? Or the absurd notion that I would want to go to bed with you?”

      “See? Obsessed with sex,” Mr. Smith said in a calm voice.

      “I’m not! We’re not.” She took a deep breath. “I have no interest in you at all, Mr. Smith, except to help out a neighbor in need.”

      “And to keep your sister away from me.”

      It would be foolish to deny it. “There’s that, too.”

      He nodded. “As long as you’re honest,” he said. “I don’t like lying.”

      “Neither do I, Mr. Smith.” Another man might have missed her slight

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