was thirty, the eldest of three children. After his father became disabled ten years ago, the full responsibility of the family's fishing business had fallen upon his shoulders. He'd left his university studies behind and returned home. She wondered if he regretted that choice.
His younger brother was twenty-three and in his final year at the University of Massachusetts. His sister was eighteen and a senior at Youngstown High School. The matriarch of the family attended to the disabled father and took care of things at home, leaving the business to her eldest son.
The four other village council members were much older than Conner, married with grown children and, of course, pillars of the community. Sarah hadn't been able to find any dirt on the four. Typical small-town politicians with their fingers in every pie.
Chief of Police Benjamin Willard, sixty, was, from all reports, born with steel blue in his veins. A wife and two grown children. Mayor Fritz Patterson was the former principal of Youngstown High School and a widower. No dirt on the chief or the mayor, either.
Squeaky clean.
The whole village population appeared to be just what Conner said, good, God-fearing, compassionate folks.
But that was impossible.
Good, God-fearing, compassionate folks didn't mutilate and murder young women.
Nope.
Someone here had a secret. A dirty, disgusting secret, and she was going to find it.
Sarah dragged off the ski cap. She threaded her fingers through her hair and braced her elbows on the window. Randall Enfinger, the bicoastal developer who'd purchased the Young estate, was clean. As clean as a guy that rich and with that many connections could be. He'd bought the extensive property for the purpose of building a resort. He didn't care that the village's founding father, Thomas Young, had been born there. The greedy heirs didn't appear to care, either, since they had sold to the highest bidder with no thought as to what happened after the sale.
As soon as the deconstruction had started, so had the village's trouble. At first there were protests from the residents. Local media aired the controversy. Then Mother Nature stepped in. Hurricane-force winds had struck in the middle of the night. No lives had been lost but the property damage had been significant. Sarah had seen the trees along Calderwood Lane and Chapel Trail that had been snapped by the out-of-season storm. As an encore, full-on winter arrived early in the form of heavy snows in December and January. All construction work had stopped for a couple of weeks.
When even the forces of nature didn't stop Enfinger completely, Valerie Gerard went missing. A few days later her body had been found and a faction of the village residents had jumped on the curse bandwagon. Enfinger's temporary office at the development site had burned.
"Just like twenty years ago" the headlines had read. The accidental unearthing of a historic, and previously undiscovered, family cemetery had set off the chain of events back then. A hurricane had struck, doing substantial damage and killing four Youngstown residents. Almost immediately afterward, two women, one eighteen and one nineteen, had been murdered in a very similar manner as Valerie Gerard; their bodies discovered at the chapel. As if that wasn't punishment enough, according to those who clung to the curse theory, the winter that followed was the worst in Youngstown history.
Until now.
Though Conner and Brighton hadn't mentioned it, the tale went that the devil himself had been commissioned with punishing the villagers for any infractions of this nature.
"Bullshit." Sarah pushed away from the window and scoped out the minibar. Wine. Bottled water. She frowned. No liquor?
Frustrated and tired, she opened a personal serving bottle of white wine that had been grown, bottled, and aged right here in a Youngstown vineyard.
"Probably poisoned."
She took a long, deep swallow anyway.
Not bad. She drifted back to the bed, plunked the
His younger brother was twenty-three and in his final year at the University of Massachusetts. His sister was eighteen and a senior at Youngstown High School. The matriarch of the family attended to the disabled father and took care of things at home, leaving the business to her eldest son.
The four other village council members were much older than Conner, married with grown children and, of course, pillars of the community. Sarah hadn't been able to find any dirt on the four. Typical small-town politicians with their fingers in every pie.
Chief of Police Benjamin Willard, sixty, was, from all reports, born with steel blue in his veins. A wife and two grown children. Mayor Fritz Patterson was the former principal of Youngstown High School and a widower. No dirt on the chief or the mayor, either.
Squeaky clean.
The whole village population appeared to be just what Conner said, good, God-fearing, compassionate folks.
But that was impossible.
Good, God-fearing, compassionate folks didn't mutilate and murder young women.
Nope.
Someone here had a secret. A dirty, disgusting secret, and she was going to find it.
Sarah dragged off the ski cap. She threaded her fingers through her hair and braced her elbows on the window. Randall Enfinger, the bicoastal developer who'd purchased the Young estate, was clean. As clean as a guy that rich and with that many connections could be. He'd bought the extensive property for the purpose of building a resort. He didn't care that the village's founding father, Thomas Young, had been born there. The greedy heirs didn't appear to care, either, since they had sold to the highest bidder with no thought as to what happened after the sale.
As soon as the deconstruction had started, so had the village's trouble. At first there were protests from the residents. Local media aired the controversy. Then Mother Nature stepped in. Hurricane-force winds had struck in the middle of the night. No lives had been lost but the property damage had been significant. Sarah had seen the trees along Calderwood Lane and Chapel Trail that had been snapped by the out-of-season storm. As an encore, full-on winter arrived early in the form of heavy snows in December and January. All construction work had stopped for a couple of weeks.
When even the forces of nature didn't stop Enfinger completely, Valerie Gerard went missing. A few days later her body had been found and a faction of the village residents had jumped on the curse bandwagon. Enfinger's temporary office at the development site had burned.
"Just like twenty years ago" the headlines had read. The accidental unearthing of a historic, and previously undiscovered, family cemetery had set off the chain of events back then. A hurricane had struck, doing substantial damage and killing four Youngstown residents. Almost immediately afterward, two women, one eighteen and one nineteen, had been murdered in a very similar manner as Valerie Gerard; their bodies discovered at the chapel. As if that wasn't punishment enough, according to those who clung to the curse theory, the winter that followed was the worst in Youngstown history.
Until now.
Though Conner and Brighton hadn't mentioned it, the tale went that the devil himself had been commissioned with punishing the villagers for any infractions of this nature.
"Bullshit." Sarah pushed away from the window and scoped out the minibar. Wine. Bottled water. She frowned. No liquor?
Frustrated and tired, she opened a personal serving bottle of white wine that had been grown, bottled, and aged right here in a Youngstown vineyard.
"Probably poisoned."
She took a long, deep swallow anyway.
Not bad. She drifted back to the bed, plunked the
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