She jumped, heart leaping to her throat. Something stirred the air around her. Wind like a blast furnace. Moving toward the source, she found the back door wide open. Hadn’t it been boarded up like the front door? She’d never checked.

Dulcie closed and locked it, using the dead bolt. Then she stood, listening. No sound came from upstairs. But she couldn’t convince herself that she wasn’t alone in the house until she went upstairs and checked.

She listened again, thankful when she heard the man she’d seen driving pile still working. When she listened really hard, she could hear the creak and groan of the weather vane, but no sound coming from inside the house.

What was she doing here? What more did she hope to find? She wished she knew as she cautiously climbed the stairs, drawn to the front bedroom.

At the doorway, she watched the wind breathing the yellow curtains in and out. She caught a scent on the air, faint but so seductive, it drew her into the room. Yesterday, she’d seen the assortment of bottles thick with dust atop of the vanity.

Now she saw that someone had moved them, leaving tracks in the dust. Avoiding looking in the cloudy mirror, she spotted a perfume bottle, the dust smudged.

Carefully she picked it up, that faint scent she’d caught earlier tempting her. Opening the bottle, she took a whiff. Her throat closed, eyes brimming with tears as she dropped the perfume onto the vanity and stumbled back, her hand clamped over her mouth to keep from crying out.

In the mirror, she saw herself again, saw her terror, and fled the room to stand in the hallway. While the yellow curtains and the sound of the weather vane in the wind had jarred some memory, the scent of Laura Beaumont’s perfume had struck a chord so deep in her that it felt as if the very foundation she stood on was crumbling beneath her.

Dulcie slid down the wall to the dusty floor and dropped her face into her hands as her heart thudded wildly and she tried to catch her breath. The scent of Laura Beaumont’s perfume was inextricably linked in her mind with that of a crying, terrified little girl—and blood, lots and lots of blood.

Chapter 8

Arctic cold air-conditioning blasted Russell as John Atkinson opened the door of the ranch house.

“Russell?” John said, seeming surprised to see him. John Atkinson was a contemporary of Russell’s father, a large man in his early sixties with a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair and a weathered face.

“Sorry to drop in without calling, John.”

“No, come in. Midge just made a fresh pot.” This was rural Montana where a pot of coffee was always on and drop-in visitors were always welcome.