Free Midnight Exposure by Melinda Leigh Page A

According to the register, she checked out at four forty-five.”
    “I left a little after four.” Guilt hammered Reed’s conscience. He should have walked her to the inn. Scott was seventeen. He could’ve waited, but Reed had once again used his son as a social shield. Somehow Jayne had slid past his defenses. And he’d bolted. Like a coward. He’d had something wonderful within reach, and he’d run from it. “She said she was going to buy a book and go right back to the inn.”
    Hugh didn’t hesitate. “OK, then. Let’s start looking.”
    “Scott and I will walk from here to the bookstore. See if we can find any sign of her.”
    The chief turned toward his car. “I’ll get Doug and a few other people to start driving around town, checking anywhere she could have stopped. There aren’t that many places open.”
    Reed led the way, walking slowly and scanning the ground in front of him. He hadn’t gone fifty feet when he saw it. Tucked behind the hedge at the beginning of the path, a Styrofoam cup lay on its side in a puddle of frozen chocolate. His throatconstricted as he moved closer and bent down. The beam of his flashlight illuminated a bookstore bag farther under the shrubs.
    Everything that had been whirling inside him collided in a dizzying sense of déjá vu. Loss lodged deep in his chest and spread in an empty ache. It took three long breaths of frigid air before his head cleared.
    “Hugh, over here.”
    The chief squatted down and peered under the shrub. “Shit.”
    Reed shoved his clenched hands into his coat pockets. The cold he hadn’t felt earlier now burrowed into his bones. “Jayne didn’t get lost. Someone took her.”
    Hugh straightened. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
    “Did you have a chance to check out the scumbag in Philadelphia?”
    “Yeah. Far as anybody knows, he’s still in town. Not due to check in again until Monday next. His parole officer promised he’d try to hunt him down, though, but I’m not holding my breath. I know how many cases these guys juggle.” The sharpness had bled from the chief’s gray eyes, leaving them clouded with sadness and disappointment. Disappointment in the town, his job, maybe the whole human race. Reed knew exactly what was going through Hugh’s head. “I’m not ruling him out, but what are the chances this guy followed her without anyone in town noticing him? If you don’t scoop your dog’s poop, somebody reports it.”
    “If it’s unlikely she was grabbed by someone from her past, it’s probably someone from Huntsville’s present.”
    “Yup.” Hugh said. “And the mayor can deny it all he wants, but if my gut’s right, she’s the third person to disappear.”
    Reed’s gaze swept over the quiet street. He’d come to this town to escape violence. Now one teenager was dead and anothermissing. Jayne had vanished. Someone in this perfect little town had a deep dark side.
    The well-kept houses, the Christmas lights, the wreaths, the picket fences, it all felt like a lie. Under the quaint small-town facade lurked something evil.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The Druid kicked open the door and carried his burden down the wooden staircase. His Celtic blood hummed incessantly through his veins.
    The only thing that could free him was a return to the old ways. Not the weakened, watered-down religion popular today. Wine for blood. Bread for flesh. Bah. There was no substitute for either. People just didn’t want to get their hands dirty anymore.
    Not a problem now that he understood. He needed to return to his roots, to the practices handed down by generations in the Old Country and cast aside in the New World. As he’d learned at his grandfather’s knee, blood, fire, and water were the only real sources of energy. The only ways to restore the natural balance. The fire ceremony on Samhain had been compromised by the boys’ intrusion, especially the one who’d crossed into the sacred circle.
    That boy had paid the ultimate price for his transgression.