LITMIR.BIZ

      In The

       Dead of Night

      Linda Castillo

      

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      Sara Douglas wasn’t afraid of the dark. She was a big girl, after all—almost eight years old. She didn’t believe in monsters or the bogeyman or things that went bump in the night. But lying on her frilly bed, watching the lightning flicker outside her bedroom window, she was scared.

      She clutched her little blue hippo and counted the seconds the way Mommy had told her. One. Two. A yelp escaped her when thunder crashed. She slapped her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes tightly. The thunder seemed to go on forever, like the approaching footsteps of some giant beast.

      Sara wanted to slide into bed with her sister, but Sonia was spending the night at her friend Jonie’s house. Sonia was nine years old and never got scared. She laughed at Sara’s fear of thunderstorms and called her a ninny. That made Sara mad, but she still wished she were here.

      The curtains at the French doors that opened to the balcony billowed with a sudden gust of wind. In the darkness they looked like restless ghosts. Sara jerked the covers up to her eyes. Another flash of lightning speared the sky. Thunder cracked so hard the windows rattled.

      Throwing off the blanket, she slipped from her bed and darted to the French doors. It wasn’t raining, but the treetops swayed like spindly fingers. Taking a deep breath, she ran along the balcony toward her parents’ room, her bare feet slapping against the tile like little flippers.

      One of the French doors to their room stood open a few inches. Yellow light slanted out like a sunray. Voices floated on the wind. Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Nicholas. Sara liked Uncle Nicholas. He smelled like peppermint gum and told funny stories that made her laugh.

      Putting her eye to the two-inch opening, she peered into the room. Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Nicholas were standing around the table in the sitting area, looking at some papers. But they weren’t laughing. Their expressions gave Sara a funny feeling in her stomach. She wanted to go inside. She wanted her mommy to hold her while Uncle Nicholas told funny stories.

      But Mommy was crying. Uncle Nicholas looked mad. He was shouting, the veins on his neck standing out like snakes beneath his skin. Daddy’s face was red, his hands clenched into fists.

      Sara wanted desperately to rush in and throw herself into her mother’s arms. But she couldn’t move. Her feet seemed to be frozen to the ground. She didn’t know why, but the thought of going inside frightened her even more than the storm.

      She started to cry. Lightning flickered. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the tree branches claw at the night sky. She set her hands over her ears to block the inevitable crash of thunder, but she knew it wouldn’t help.

      Thunder exploded. Three times in quick succession. So many times that Sara thought it would never stop. Holding her hands over her ears, crying, she shoved open the French door. Another kind of fear gripped her when she entered the bedroom. The kind that made her legs feel shaky and her stomach go tight.

      Fear transformed into terror when she saw the gun. Death exploded from the muzzle. Once. Twice. Each shot was as bright as lightning. Louder than thunder. And more terrifying than any storm.

      She saw a shocking bloom of red, as brilliant as the roses that grew in Mommy’s garden. The world spun as if a giant tornado had picked her up. The room blurred into an eddy of terror and lightning and thunder.

      “Mommy,” Sara whispered.

      When her mommy didn’t answer, the night rushed in and swept her into its dark embrace.

      Chapter One

      The headlights of the rental car cut through rain and fog and darkness. Gripping the steering wheel, Sara Douglas inched along the narrow coast road at a snail’s pace, not daring to look over the guardrail where the landscape dropped away to the rocky shore a hundred feet below.

      The house had been calling to her for quite some time. Years, in fact, but Sara had never heeded that nagging little voice. Her job as a costume designer kept her far too busy to listen to frivolous voices inside her head. Certainly not when it came to the terrible chain of events that had shattered her life twenty years ago.

      The phone call two days ago had changed everything.

      Even now, the memory of the electronically altered voice sent a chill skittering up her spine. Why would someone call her and dredge up a past she’d spent a lifetime trying to forget? Who would go to such lengths to hide their identity and why? Sara intended to find out.

      Midnight was not the best time to arrive at a sprawling old mansion you haven’t seen for two decades. She’d planned on arriving in the light of day, but her flight from San Diego to San Francisco had been delayed due to mechanical problems. She’d taken a puddle jumper to the Shelter Cove Airport, a tiny facility that served much of northwestern California known as the Lost Coast. By the time she retrieved her luggage and rented a car, it was nearly ten o’clock.

      A leaning mailbox overgrown with a tangle of vines alerted her that she’d reached her destination. She turned the car into the weed-riddled driveway. The old Douglas mansion loomed before her like some aging Hollywood actress. Shrouded in mystery and glamour and scandal, the house was perched high above the rocky cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The old place seemed to cry as it looked out over the black expanse of sea. Twenty-five years ago Sara’s father, Richard Douglas—an up-and-coming Hollywood producer at the time—designed and built it for his family. A dream home that should have been filled with children and laughter and happiness.

      A double murder and suicide five years later turned his dream into a nightmare, the mansion into a dark legend and the setting for even darker stories.

      Sara and her sister, Sonia, had inherited the property. They’d rented out the old place a dozen times over the years. They’d discussed selling it more than once, even going so far as to put it on the real estate market. But the house hadn’t sold. Later, the real estate agent told them no one wanted a house that had been the backdrop for the worst crime in the history of Cape Darkwood.

      The headlights illuminated the battered mahogany garage door through slashing rain. Sara put the vehicle in Park and killed the engine. For an instant the only sound came from the pounding of rain on the roof.

      “Welcome home,” she whispered. But her voice sounded strained in the silence of her car.

      Not giving herself time to debate the wisdom of coming here tonight, she threw open the door and stepped into the driving rain. Darting to the rear of the car, she heaved her suitcase from the trunk and started toward the

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