Part 12 (1/2)

Later that week, when she did a post-mortem with him in the cafeteria, he waited until the very end of their conversation before asking her out to dinner.

She had to admit to herself that she was intrigued and a little aroused. Even so, she wasn't stupid, and she had no interest in a date where his only objective was s.e.x. So with her usual bluntness, she'd asked him why he wanted to go out with her. It wasn't exactly a great way to launch a relations.h.i.+p, but it was a great way to cut one off in its tracks. He surprised her again.

'When I golfed, I never liked to play it safe and lay up,' Mark told her. 'I always went for the green. I figured it wasn't worth it to settle for second best.'

If any other man had tried that line with her, she would have written it off as hollow flattery, but she saw something different in Mark Bradley. Sincerity. It was a quality she prized more than just about anything else, and she had been let down by enough people in her life to believe she could recognize it when she saw it. Mark was a man who meant what he said, who didn't pretend to be someone else for the world. That was her own philosophy, too.

She decided that Mark Bradley was worth the risk. One night. No s.e.x. No strings. She didn't expect it to lead to anything deeper, which was her way of managing her expectations. She certainly never expected that not even two years later, she would be married, and she and Mark would be leaving the Chicago area for the kind of idyllic life they both thought they craved. Moving someplace quieter and emptier. Moving someplace where the roads were lonely and tree-lined and the rest of the world was far away. Giving up old dreams for new dreams. Living in isolation.

That was how it had all started. Five years ago.

Now those dreams were dying.

The calendar said winter was over, but no one had told the weather G.o.ds in Wisconsin. The wind off the bay was raw. Snow was expect overnight. The only sign of spring was the expanded schedule on the Northport car ferry, which meant that they could now come and go from the island mostly at will. During the three deepest months of winter from January to March, they were forced to spend weekday in a small rental cottage near Fish Creek, and they could only retreat to their real home on the weekends. Hilary would be glad to sleep in their own bed every night.

Mark was silent as they drove along the southwest coast of Was.h.i.+ngton Island toward their home. It had been a long day, flying into Chicago from Florida and driving north for four hours along the coast of Lake Michigan to Door County. They'd barely made the last island ferry at dusk. They were both exhausted and wanted to do nothing more than sleep.

He drove them along the main road leading through town, which was a generous description of the rural community on Was.h.i.+ngton Island. There were a handful of shops and restaurants, most of them on the west side, widely separated by farmlands and trees. The island itself was flat as a board, barely thirty-five square miles, with dense forest over most of the land and rough water on all sides. Anything that was sold here had to be s.h.i.+pped over from the mainland, and as a result there wasn't much more than the bare necessities for the residents, particularly in the off season. The prices were high. Most people waited and did their main shopping once a month at the far southern end of the county in Sturgeon Bay, which was the closest thing the peninsula had to a real city, unless you wanted to travel another forty miles to Green Bay.

They drove past the island's old watering hole, Bitters Pub, and Hilary saw the owner of one of the handful of local motels standing next to his pickup truck with a bottle of beer in his hand. She knew him; he knew them. That was the way it was on an island populated by fewer than seven hundred people. He didn't wave or smile. Instead, he watched their Camry pa.s.s, and his face was graven with hostility as he tilted the bottle to his lips. She knew that word had already spread among the locals about what had happened in Florida.

When they'd first moved to the island, they had been welcomed politely, if not embraced. You weren't really accepted if you weren't a native, but people were cordial and helpful, even if they didn't invite you into their lives. Hilary and Mark didn't care about that kind of friends.h.i.+p, but at least they hadn't felt like intruders. That all changed when the story about Tresa broke. From that moment, politeness turned to cold distrust. It wasn't easy living in a small town where you were shunned, particularly a community that was cut off by water from the rest of the world.

She worried what would happen next, now that they all knew about Glory. How far do your neighbours go to tell you they don't want you?

Mark saw it too. There was a deadly expression on the face of the man in front of the pub.

'Welcome home,' Mark said to Hilary with a weary smile.

He continued up the north coast of the island and turned down the harbor road at the cemetery, which was scattered with gray headstones among the pines and snow. The gravel road led from the graveyard into the trees, ending at Schoolhouse Beach, one of the most popular gathering spots for tourists during the summer season. During the off season, though, the cove was deserted on most days. The back porch of their house was a hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e, and during the winter, when the trees were bare, they could glimpse the water.

Rather than turn right on the road that led home. Mark continued to the dead end at the beach. He parked and got out and walked down to the sh.o.r.e, which was made up not of sand but of millions of polished rocks. The sheltered harbor created by the half-moon inlet was calmer than the violent lake just beyond the edge of land, but calmness was relative here. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the whitecaps blowing across the water like tiny icebergs.

Hilary joined him. They stood next to each other, not talking. The brutal wind tossed her hair around her face and made her lips white with cold. The entire curving stretch of beach was empty. In the desolation, they could have been the only two people on the island. That was what they'd wanted - seclusion in the midst of nature, the deserted roads, the silence unbroken except for birds and wind. It had never felt ominous before, but for the first time, she felt threatened by their very remoteness.

'You know what's hard?' Mark said. 'I still love it here. This is like the most beautiful place in the world.'

'I feel that way too.'

He turned for her and cupped her neck in his palms and kissed her softly but intensely. There were so many kisses you could have as a married couple, the goodbye kiss, the after-a-fight kiss, the love kiss, the bedroom kiss. His cool lips on hers this time felt new, like a kiss that acknowledged they were both in need of rescue and had to save each other. It was a kiss that said: Hang on to me, because this crossing is going to be rough. Hang on to me, because this crossing is going to be rough.

They got back in the car. Their house was half a mile to the north. It was small - a three-bedroom house with matchbox rooms and a screened-in rear wood porch growing soft with age. The pale blue paint needed a fresh coat. The windows let in the drafts. For its size and age, it had been absurdly expensive, but out here, you paid for the land and the view. They'd sc.r.a.ped together a down payment from Hilary's investments and a nest egg left over from Mark's golfing days, but that still left them with a mortgage that was barely within their reach. Their budget had been based on two jobs. Now there was only one.

Even so, when they turned into the dirt driveway, Hilary felt home. She'd never had that sensation anywhere else. That was why she never wanted to leave, no matter how bad it got, no matter what it took to keep it. When she climbed out and smelled the coming of snow, and felt the mushy, molding leaves under her feet, she felt a sudden surge of contentment. When she glanced at Mark's face, she knew he felt the same way. This was their refuge.

Their escape from reality didn't last.

They left their luggage in the trunk and went to the front door, and Hilary stopped on the porch when she saw the door hanging open. Mark peered into the darkness inside. Mud and leaves had drifted into the foyer. A fetid aroma wafted like a toxic cloud into the sweet, cold air.

'Wait here,' he said under his breath.

She watched him go inside. He was tense, his body coiled like a spring. Seconds later, she heard something come from his throat, an exhalation of rage unlike anything she'd heard from her husband before. It was as if his life had been sucked away by whatever he'd found.

'Mark?' she called.

He didn't answer her.

'Is everything OK?' she asked, more urgently.

When he was still silent, she went inside herself. Beyond the hardwood floor of the foyer, she turned into the living room, with its musty carpet and fireplace and furniture gathered from their separate lives before they were married. Mark stood in the center of the room, his face grim with violence. In the gloom of near darkness, she could see the damage. She understood now what was next. She recognized the message that their neighbors were sending.

The house had been violated. That was the only word she could use. Holes had been punched in the Sheetrock with what must have been a baseball bat. Figurines she had collected since childhood lay shattered into shards on the floor. Lamps were overturned and broken. Animal feces had been thrown at the wall and left to sink into vile brown streaks. The cus.h.i.+ons of the furniture had been slashed with knives, foam stripped out, littering the floor like cottonwood.

A single word had been spray-painted everywhere. On the walls. On the gla.s.s of the windows. On the ceiling. On the floor. It must have been fifty times.

A single word over and over in blood-red paint.

KILLER.

Chapter Fifteen.

'I've lived here for twenty years,' Terri Duecker told Hilary, as she took the cigarette out of her mouth and watched the smoke dissipate in the cold air. 'It never ends. You weren't born here, so you'll never be a local. If you have kids, they'll be accepted from day one, but not you.'

The two women sat in the bleachers outside the Fish Creek School. Both of them wore heavy coats, and Hilary had her hands shoved in the fleece pockets. The gra.s.s of the football field was white with frost. The sky overhead was a mottled blanket of charcoal. A row of spruce trees lined the far side of the field like spectators, blocking the view of the Green Bay water past the bluff. Behind them, the school parking lot was wet, thanks to the intermittent sleet that had fallen overnight.

'I don't care about that,' Hilary replied. 'We knew that coming in, but it's different now. They're trying to drive us out. Scare us away.'

Terri shrugged. 'Small towns,' she said. 'If they could, they'd build a wall to keep strangers out. It's worse that you're from Chicago, too. People around here need someone to blame because the whole county is changing, and they figure it's because of rich people moving in from Chicago.'

'We're not rich.'

Terri shook her head. 'It doesn't matter. As long as you live here, people will look at you and see a Land of Lincoln license plate on your car. Once a fib, always a fib. I was lucky. Chris and I moved here from Fargo. We're still outsiders, but at least we're not Bears fans. Even so, you won't find any of the natives spilling their secrets to me.'

Hilary glanced at the school behind them. She saw two other high school teachers chatting on the sidewalk outside the gla.s.s doors. She could follow their eyes and the way they turned their heads toward them, and she knew that she and Mark were the topic of conversation.

The school itself, two hundred yards away, was a one-story building, long and low, made of vanilla brick. She heard the American flag snapping in the wind and the flagpole rope banging against the metal. It was a place that could have been any other high school in the country. She could easily have been back in Highland Park, except that there weren't expensive suburban Audis and BMWs in the parking lot. She'd always felt comfortable walking through school doors, smelling the cafeteria food, listening to the thunder of shouts and basketb.a.l.l.s in the gymnasium. Now, however, going inside meant being watched by a hundred spies. It was ground zero for the gulf between her and Mark and the teachers, administrators, and parents who wanted them gone.

'So why do you stay here if you feel that way?' Hilary asked Terri.

'We're just like you two. We always wanted to live in a place like this. You go north of Sturgeon Bay, and it's like going back in time. No chain stores. No fast food restaurants. The views are amazing, and we've got room to breathe. If it weren't for the tourists in the summer, it would be paradise all year. We all know the tourists pay the bills, but don't expect anyone around here to be happy about that.'

'Can I ask you something?' Hilary asked.

'Sure.'