The Dying Breath Page 2

  She could feel the horrified expression on her face as the room began to wobble at the edges of her periphery. Forcing her breathing to slow, Cameryn tried to make herself think rationally.

  The German shepherd must have gotten to the corpse. His dog did this. From her forensic studies she knew animals could consume their masters after death. You’ve still got to get the keys. Keep going, she commanded as she moved closer to the body.

  She wouldn’t have noticed the piece of paper folded neatly on the end table next to the body but for her name. The word Cameryn had been printed with beautiful precision.

  She reached out and grabbed the parchment, written in a perfect cursive hand.

  To Cameryn, my anam cara,

  I will love you until your dying breath. Please believe that I will find you, my Angel of Death. We are bound by cords you cannot break. Two worlds, intersecting separate pieces that the fates will never break apart. Trust that I will be with you soon.

  In eternal adoration,

  Kyle O’Neil

  Chapter Two

  BY THE TIME she made it back to the kitchen door Cameryn felt her composure begin to crack. Thud thud thud—the sound of her own heartbeat drummed in her ears as she tried to get the key into the keyhole but her hands were shaking too hard. The tip of the key slipped to the side, leaving a scratch on the brass, until on the third try the deadbolt gave way. Before the sheriff could say a word she thrust the note into his hands.

  “Leather Ed is dead,” she gasped. Although she’d been running, her skin had grown unbelievably cold. Her heart pounded against her sternum like a fist. She tried not to meet Justin’s gaze as he stared at her with a look of horror but instead spoke directly to the sheriff.

  “This was left next to Leather Ed. Kyle—he’s been here. I don’t know how long ago he left, but he was in that house.”

  “What the . . . ?” Jacobs’s face twisted as his eyes skimmed the note’s precise handwriting. Justin, who had finished reading first, began to pace across the back end of the porch, the soles of his boots striking wood in beats that matched the thumping of her heart. The sheriff read it a second time before looking at her with narrowed eyes. “You think Kyle could still be inside?”

  Cameryn shook her head. “No. I was pretty much through the place. I think I would have seen him.”

  “Oh, man,” Justin cried softly. “You should never have gone in there by yourself.”

  “From the decomp I’d say Leather Ed’s been dead at least two weeks. He—his face is gone. I think it was the dog. . . .”

  “What you think is irrelevant, Cammie. We’re gonna need help.” The sheriff snapped open his phone to place an emergency call to the Durango police, requesting backup, while Justin began to pace again. Cameryn stood in a pool of isolation as Jacobs barked orders into the phone. Concentrating hard, she tried to keep her emotional numbness from thawing. Because she didn’t want to feel. If she let in the horror of what had happened she would fall apart, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. Yet, against her will, her thoughts jumped back to the night Kyle had tried to kill her. In her mind’s eye she could see Kyle’s dark shape looming on the snow as he’d watched her while she, frozen, stared back. Are you afraid, Cammie? I have a sixth sense. It’s strange—I can almost smell it when people are full of fear. Kyle would be happy to know that she was terrified.

  Across the street a motion caught her eye. It was from a curtain, pulled open less than an inch in a dark slash. Was he watching her from that window? Then the curtain flicked shut, the movement almost imperceptible, and suddenly she felt eyes everywhere. They were in the houses that lined the street. Eyes stared at her from behind trees, peering from the evergreen bushes that formed natural huts along walkways. The full weight of what she’d done came crashing down. She’d gone into a house where Kyle had been and she had stood where he had stood. The thought made her head whirl.

  “You’re one lucky girl.” The skin on Jacobs’s face had paled to a paper white but when he spoke his voice remained all business. “Go home, Cameryn,” he commanded. Justin, who had stopped by the sheriff’s side, nodded curtly.

  Confused, she asked, “Wait—don’t you want me to show you where the body is?”

  This time it was Justin who spoke. “You can’t be a part of this. You’re part of the case now.” Justin, the deputy she’d always been drawn to, stood unyielding in his almost-uniform—his jeans topped by a heavy regulation parka, a badge hanging on a cord around his neck. Dark, too-long hair hung into a thick fringe of lashes, obscuring eyes that were blue or green, depending on his mood.

  “My deputy is right.” The sheriff squatted and grabbed her parka. “It’s a conflict of interest.”

  “But—”

  “You do bodies, Cameryn, not investigations. You’ve screwed this one up already.” With his right hand he held up the note, his eyes narrowing into slits. “This should have been left exactly where you found it and dusted for prints. You took the keys from Leather Ed’s pocket, another error. I can’t afford mistakes. And it’s a good thing you’ve been traumatized by this psycho or I would have traumatized your ass myself for not listening to me in the first place. Here.” Jacobs tossed Cameryn her parka. “Put this on and adios. That’s an order.”

  It was useless to fight them. She yanked on her parka, now cold from being left on the porch. And then she felt his warmth at her side. An arm embraced her, pulling her close. Justin.

  “I don’t think Cameryn should be alone,” Justin said, his voice floating above her head. “It’s not safe.”

  Jacobs nodded. Every muscle in his body seemed locked into place. “I was thinkin’ the same thing. Take her home in the squad car. Leave the wagon here so we can load the remains. Patrick—your father”—he shot Cameryn another piercing look—“ought to be here any minute, and I think it would be best if you hightailed it out of here before he shows up.”

  Justin’s blue-green eyes met the sheriff’s gray ones. There seemed to be a silent conversation between the two of them as Justin’s arm tightened around Cameryn’s shoulders so hard she almost winced. Looking up, she saw the silver scar on his chin, fine as a strand of hair glinting in winter sun.

  “Watch her, Deputy. Anything”—Jacobs emphasized the word—“anything can happen now.”

  Once again Cameryn felt as though she’d become a child. Back beneath the suffocating mantle of protection, yet grateful for the security, she allowed herself to be led to the patrol car. Stoic, Justin opened the passenger door and reminded her to put on her seat belt. The car roared to life as he pushed hard on the gas pedal, but she didn’t have the energy to chide him about speeding. Outside, the houses of Silverton, old Victorians painted in candy colors, whizzed by. The homes were as different as the people who owned them. One porch was filled with abandoned items: an old couch with bedding draped over the railing, while the next house, painted a soft yellow, sported a walkway shoveled so precisely the path looked geometric. Two extremes living side by side, just like the emotions that raged in her. Security and independence. Fear and safety. What was she supposed to do with the contradictions? She was now, more than ever, pulled back into the undertow of Kyle O’Neil.

  They were barely on Greene Street when Justin uttered one word: “Why?”

  She looked at him blankly. “Why what?”

  “Why did you do it? I’ve told you over and over again to be careful and you went in there alone.” He choked on the last word.

  Cameryn closed her eyes. “Please, Justin, don’t start. This has already been a really bad day.” She almost laughed at how ridiculously small the word sounded. Bad. Three letters that should have been three thousand. But because they were friends, she forced herself to come up with an explanation. “I guess—I thought I could help.”

  “Help?” There was genuine anger in Justin’s voice, a new sharpness she’d never heard directed at her before. “You’re seventeen—a teenager—so what is it? You think bad things can’t happen
to you? That you’re unbreakable?” He snapped his head in her direction. “I’ve got news for you, Cameryn. It doesn’t work that way.”

  She stiffened in her seat, more hurt than angry. “I know I’m a mortal. I get it. But I’m not a child.”

  “Then stop acting like one!”

  Now it was Cameryn’s turn to feel the heat in her cheeks. Glaring at him, she asked, “Why are you doing this? I don’t want to talk right now, okay? Just take me home. My mammaw and my dad’ll ground me until summer, if that makes you feel any better, but right now I’m asking you to leave it alone.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Just . . . stop.” Too many emotions crowded inside for her to make room for another lecture. She was too strung out for a fight, especially with Justin. In the past he’d always been the one to steady her and yet now he was making things worse. “I just want to forget about today,” she pleaded.

  “Right. Typical Cameryn Mahoney response. You shut things down when it gets hard. But not this time. Not when the stakes are this high.” When he looked at her the pain in his eyes was unconcealed. “Don’t you understand that I worry about you? All the time. Every minute of every day.”

  Cameryn swallowed, her throat suddenly so dry she wasn’t sure if she could make a sound come out. She felt a tilt inside that she tried to dismiss, because what she sensed might be happening was something she could not deal with any more than she could comprehend the meaning of Kyle’s I’ll love you until your dying breath. Shrugging, in what she hoped looked like nonchalance, she whispered, “I can take care of myself.”

  “That’s just the point—you can’t as long as he’s out there! Don’t you know I drive by your house every night, watching, trying to make sure you’re safe? All my free time’s gone to tracking this guy.” His voice broke, a sound like ice cracking. “You’re so young.”

  “What does my age have to do with any of this?”

  “Nothing. Everything.” Justin hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Cameryn, I’m so crazy right now I can’t even think straight. Can you imagine what that monster would do to you if he got the chance? With that device of his? It could have been a trap. He could have used that thing on you.”

  Cameryn winced at the picture of Kyle and his klystron, a death machine of his own design. Microwaved flesh and a locker full of bones, stacked up like children’s blocks. These were the images she would never forget. She pressed her forehead into the cool glass, closing her eyes, trying to erase the images that burned behind her eyelids.

  “If anything ever happened to you . . .” He couldn’t finish the thought.

  She could see his reflection in the car’s windshield, a faint echo of the man who was driving too fast down Greene Street toward the mountains. Six months ago, when he’d left New York to become Silverton’s new deputy, Justin had burst into her world like a comet. But he was twenty-one to her seventeen, and in the end she’d walked away, mostly because he could pierce her soul in a way no one else could. Now there was a fierceness in him that belied the label they’d both accepted: friends. Hadn’t he agreed to that definition? And yet his face at that moment seemed anything but friendly. This wasn’t about just about Kyle.

  He turned west and followed the narrow switchback road in silence before he saw what he wanted. With a whiplike motion he swerved into a pullout, an arc of dirt cut into a crescent. The earth seemed to drop away into a sheer valley thick with pine. The car shuddered as he cut the engine and Cameryn realized how very quiet it was beneath the granite walls.

  The silence felt awkward. There was a charge in the atmosphere, neutrons bumping protons, making heat. To break the tension she touched his arm. “Look, I’m sorry I freaked you out but I’m okay. I promise. Quit worrying about me.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  In this close space she could smell him, the intoxicating fragrance of leather mixed with the scent of his skin. She was aware of his breathing, the in, the out. It was late, almost five o’clock, and the sky had darkened to a mountain twilight. A car drove by, throwing light, and she could see him more clearly for a moment, the dark halo of hair and his brows knotting together. The air they exhaled clouded the glass until the windshield turned the color of milk.

  “Justin, what are we doing here?”

  “We’re here because there are . . . things to say.”

  “Then say them. If I don’t get home soon my mammaw will call the FBI.”

  His face looked pained. “You make it sound easy.”

  “But you’ve always been able to talk to me.”

  He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles jutted in small peaks. “You know, I’m not afraid to hunt down Kyle, but I’m actually scared to put this on the table. Bullets are easier. Easier than these words, anyway.” Ducking his head, he paused, and as the silence swelled, her nervousness did, too. Instinctively she knew to keep very still, like a rabbit in tall grass. Her breathing became shallow as she waited. Justin cleared his throat.

  “Cammie, you know—you have to know—that I care about you.”

  “I care about you, too,” she said reflexively. “Like you said, we’re friends, right?”

  “Yes. No, I . . . it’s more complicated than that. Cammie, I care about you more than I should. More than friends. Enough to land me in prison, since you’re underage.” Justin smiled his familiar crooked grin, but it was the look in his eyes that made her panic.

  No, not now. Not now. The conversation she’d both wanted and feared was actually happening and she couldn’t unlock her mind. It was too much and her thoughts refused to line up. Less than an hour ago she had stood over a body and read a note threatening her life. And yet here was a chance to walk away from that darkness straight into air and sunlight. Why not? she asked herself while another, louder voice told her she was crazy to even think of tangling up her life.

  Suddenly his hand was on hers, rough and warm. “When I realized how close you came to getting hurt, I had a certain . . . clarity. I know what I want, Cammie. I don’t want to wait any more.”

  As she looked down her hair fell into her lap in dark tendrils. Hiding behind that dark wall, she whispered, “Justin.” She wasn’t sure what she was about to say until the words came from her mouth. “This isn’t the right time.”

  His fingers were in her hair, gently twisting strands. “That’s just the point. It’s never the right time. When I tried to ask you the first time, you chose Kyle instead of me. I thought, good—it’s a sign, it means she’s too young. Then after Kyle left I decided to try my luck again.”

  She barely said the words. “You did?”

  He nodded. “Except that’s when your mother showed up in Silverton and I decided . . . I told myself, stop—Cameryn can’t take more pressure. But Hannah’s gone back to New York, and you’re here.” He moved closer, his eyes fixed on hers, as green as pine reflecting in mountain water. “I’m here,” he whispered. “And Kyle’s out there. I just want to keep you safe.”

  She couldn’t think anymore because she didn’t want to. He touched her cheek, his fingertip rough against her skin. Tracing the curve of her chin, Justin leaned close until his forehead lingered less than an inch from hers. It was the first time he’d ever touched her like that, like a man to a woman, and she closed her eyes, shivering at the possibilities. Almost ready to let herself go, she felt just as she had with Kyle, but that letting go had gone horribly wrong and she was too scared to try again. She pulled away, hating herself when she saw the look in Justin’s eyes.

  “What?” He sounded confused. “Are you saying no?”

  “I’m . . . I . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. No, that’s not exactly true. I’m saying . . . wait. Please. Until I can figure this out. Justin, there’s no way I can do anything more right now than survive. I’ve got to deal with the fact that Kyle’s trying to kill me. Can you understand that?”

  “Do I have a choice?” It was qu
iet for a moment. He dropped his head against the headrest and let out a long sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.

  “No, Cammie, I’m the one who is sorry. I made a mistake. Announcing my intentions right now was not the best move.” More silence filled the air until it ballooned into every crevice. Headlights from another vehicle slid along the road before they disappeared around a bend, and as Cameryn watched those lights she wished she could vanish, too. Justin’s quiet breathing intertwined with her own shallow breaths until finally, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she said, “It’s just—this day has been . . . surreal.” It surprised her when she realized tears had welled in her eyes. Something inside her had cracked and she could feel her control slipping. She was not a crier, never a crier. She tried to look up at the ceiling of the car so they wouldn’t spill over but she felt Justin’s hand on her cheek. He was suddenly only inches away. Gently, he wiped the hot tears with the pad of his thumb. “Cammie, it’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. Whatever this is, Justin, it’s not okay. I make a mess out of everything. I mean—just look at what I did to the case—Sheriff Jacobs hates me now. If Kyle doesn’t murder me my dad will, and now you’re upset with me and—”

  “I’m not upset.”

  Cameryn paused, aware of how close Justin’s face was to hers. Her mind reeled as she whispered, “You’re not?”

  “No. We’re still friends, right?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “And when Kyle is taken care of we can move on.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Justin, I want to, but—”