Devil Smoke (2 page)

Prologue

FIDDLER’S KNOB, SCOTIA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

363 DAYS AGO

CHARLOTTE BIT DOWN
on her clenched fist and swallowed back a cry of pain as jagged stones sliced her bare feet. Quiet. The night was too quiet. The silence unforgiving.

She winced as each step snapped twigs, slipped across dead leaves, jostled loose rocks. The soles of her feet were slicked with blood—her blood, leaving a trail, but in the dark and the fog, no one would see it. She hoped.

Faster. She careened into a sapling, its branches lashing without mercy. Keep going down, the road will find you, just keep going down.

Without the steep slope of the mountain to guide her she wouldn’t have had a hope. Not in this fog, so thick it felt like cold fingers curling around her body, brushing her face, grasping her hand to tease her away from the path that would save her. Cunning, sly, deceitful fog, beckoning to her, coaxing her deeper into the woods.

Devil smoke, Granny Callabrese called fog thick like this. The kind of fog where the dead walked in hopes of luring you into the grave.

Bare feet, no coat, only jeans and a torn shirt. What day was today? Had she missed Tommy’s game?

Her mind was as murky as the night surrounding her. She’d hit her head, that much she knew from the blood making her hair sticky. What else? She felt bruised head to toe, wasn’t at all sure how she’d gotten to the top of the mountain. All she knew was waking to darkness, the smell of fresh moss and ancient smoke smothering her, rocks piled up all around her, trapping her until she dug her way out. Had she been hiking and slipped? Was there a rockslide? Or something else?

Images, too terrifying to be memories, wisped past her vision. A woman’s face… her own? Tears, screams, shouts for help. A man, fist raised… no, no, she couldn’t look. She shoved the—memories? nightmares?—aside, burying them deep. Focus. She needed to focus. On what was real, what was important. Tommy. Nellie. Bright lights in her blood haze, they kept her running even after she’d pushed far past exhaustion. Her family. Home.

The terrain abruptly flattened as if someone had gouged a notch through the mountainside. Dead leaves and twigs gave way to gravel that dug into the ruined flesh of her feet. Gasping for air, she hobbled across the narrow strip of cleared earth. Relief surged through her when she stepped onto rough asphalt. The road. Help. Home. She was almost there, almost free.

Fog cloaked the road, caught between the mountaintop overhead and the steep decline to the valley below. It was thicker down here, left her skin clammy even as she shivered in the May night. Cars—where were the cars? He’d be back soon, maybe already was, maybe he was coming for her right now.

He? He who? Had she been with someone? If so, why hadn’t he helped her?

Why was she so frightened at the thought of him finding her?

She spun, trying to remember which direction to take back to the main highway. The fog circled around her, a ghastly embrace. Willowy figures danced at the edges of her vision, beckoning with outstretched arms and faces that could be familiar.

No. I’m not going with you,
she screamed inside her head, both hands covering her mouth to muffle her cries of pain as she limped down the road.
Go away!

Home. She just wanted to be home. Curled up beside Tommy. Nellie stretched out on the floor at their feet, coloring, her legs kicking in the air because as a four-year-old, perpetual motion was her natural state of being. Their faces hung in her vision, framed by tears.

Charlotte kept going despite the pain. One foot. The other.
Go, go, go,
chanted her invisible companions, the wraiths conjured by the devil smoke, urging her on.

Headlights pierced the fog. Blinded, she stood, shielding her eyes with her hands.

“Stop!” she shouted, remembering too late that
he
could be near, that he might hear as well. But she had to get the driver to stop. She stepped farther into the lane and waved her hands. Could he see her in the fog?

“Stop.” This time it was an anguished cry, her strength too far gone to scream. “Please…”

Brakes screeched. She felt the rush of the car hurtling toward her, felt it straining to stop. But it kept coming, closer and closer. Instinct had her ducking her head, arms up, as if that could stop a three-thousand-pound vehicle.

But somehow it did. The car lurched to a halt. Only a few feet away from turning her into road kill.

She straightened, her adrenaline long since drained past empty—which was exactly how she felt: empty. Home. If she could just go home…

The fog swirled black and blue against the headlights’ glow, the light bruising.

“Help me, please.” She limped toward the driver’s side, squinting. The car looked familiar, so familiar. She stepped closer. It
was
familiar—it was her car. Her gaze snapped up to the driver, now opening the door and emerging, a featureless silhouette against the harsh glare of the lights.

Why didn’t the fog try to smother him? she wondered even as she realized the thought was born of hysterical relief. She was saved. She was going home.

With no strength left, she fell to her knees, sobbing as the man approached. “Tommy? Take me home. Please, I want to go home.”

363 DAYS LATER…

“I WANT SUGAR LOOPS!”
Nellie screamed.

Who knew a five-year-old’s voice could blister paint? Tommy Worth tried to ignore his daughter’s outburst, reminding himself of the principles of good parenting. Set clear boundaries. Catch them being good. Never negotiate with terrorists.

Right now Nellie’s siege of the Worth kitchen was about to come to a messy and triumphant conclusion as she banged her chair against the table hard enough to rattle the plate of low-fat sausage and scrambled egg whites. She not only refused to eat, she threatened to crash her wholesome and nutritious breakfast straight onto the floor.

“Glinda’s mom lets her eat Sugar Loops anytime she wants,” she said with a huff as he continued to ignore her. “She can even have Sugar Loops for dinner if she wants. Her mom
loves
her.”

Tommy bit back a retort about Glinda’s mom being a ditz and her daughter being destined for childhood obesity. Instead, he concentrated on the chicken salad he had prepared last night. This time he’d gotten it right, re-creating Charlotte’s recipe to the letter. Last year Nellie had begged for chicken salad every school day. Charlotte had mixed it each night before bed, her last “mommy-job” before it was “grown-up” time, Tommy’s favorite time of day, even if all they did was sit side by side on the sofa and read.

He spread a healthy dollop of chicken salad onto a slice of whole grain bread before tasting a tidbit that clung to the knife. Delicious. Just the right amount of salt and pepper, a dash of mayo, and a loving touch of Charlotte’s secret ingredient: honey mustard. The best chicken salad ever.

Nellie’s lunch box wasn’t going to come home with this sandwich uneaten today—not like it had every other day. No way.

Tommy added a pear, carrot sticks, and some whole grain pretzels to the lunch box, then dared a glance at Nellie, who sat glaring at her uneaten breakfast, arms crossed over her chest, face pinched into a scowl. Great, the silent routine. This could last for hours.

Sighing, he grabbed another piece of bread and slapped together a PB and J. Just in case.

He added the sandwich and snapped the lid shut. Blinking hard against the glare from the early morning sun, he knew without a doubt that when he cleaned out the lunch box that evening, there would be an uneaten chicken salad sandwich left abandoned and neglected.

“Time to go,” he announced in a too-chipper voice.

“I’m hungry,” she whined.

The sound danced along his nerve endings, producing a fight-or-flight tug-of-war.

He was a pediatrician. He couldn’t send his daughter to school without breakfast. It was cruel; it was unhealthy. But he also didn’t dare give in to her whining. Do that once and he was doomed.

He swore he felt Charlotte’s fingers brush against the back of his arm, felt her standing beside him. How many mornings, how many evenings had she stood right here, her feet where his were now, her hands dancing over the countertop, hips swaying in time with the music that was her constant companion?

“If you’re hungry, you can take some sausage to eat in the car. I’ve packed you an extra sandwich with your lunch,” he said, keeping his tone bright and cheerful, refusing to surrender to misery or despair. He scooped the eggs into the trash and turned back to get the sausages. Nellie snatched them away, munching on one greasy link as if it were finger food.

“It’s too hot, I don’t want to wear a coat.” She trudged behind him out to the car. He kept her jacket over his arm. “My backpack is too heavy. You carry it.”

“It’s your backpack. You need to take responsibility for it.” He opened the garage door.

She took a bite of sausage, a hawk snapping off the head of a field mouse, eyeing him with the same ferocity.

He circled around the rear of his ancient Volvo station wagon and opened the back passenger side door for her. “Hurry up, we’re late.”

She dragged her backpack carelessly along the pavement—the Hello Kitty backpack, the one she had saved up her allowance to buy special, which should have been a warning of just how much of a snit she was in—to the rear of the car, stomped her feet, then dropped it with a thud. “I told you. It’s too heavy.”

“Eleanor Rose Worth,” he snapped. “You pick up that bag and get into this car right now.”

Her feet remained planted, her arms across her chest, her glare as incandescent as a lit match. “No.”

His temper flared, temper mixed with grief, churned with disappointment and fear. If he, with his training, couldn’t handle a five-year-old’s tantrum… He grabbed her arm, pulled it down to the backpack, forced the strap over her elbow, and tugged her toward the car.

She didn’t cry, didn’t say anything, just scrunched up her face in the fiercest, most meanest look a five-year-old could possibly conjure. A look designed to banish monsters under the bed, to fell bullies in their tracks. A look that screamed:
You don’t love me!

Tommy didn’t even remember getting her into the car, fastening her into the booster seat, or backing down the driveway. His hands gripped the steering wheel like it was the last bit of flotsam in a churning monsoon.

“Daddy, are you mad at me?” Nellie asked from the back seat, her voice as shaky as Tommy’s grip on his own emotions.

Unshed tears burned his throat. He swallowed before answering. “No, sweetie. I’m not mad at you. It’s just, sometimes the things you do, well, they make Daddy sad. Very sad.” Don’t dump it all on her. “It’s okay, though. You also make Daddy very happy, and I need that. We’ll get through this, Nellie. I promise.”

But her five-year-old mind seemed headed in another, more mysterious, five-year-old direction. “Were you mad at Mommy? Is that why she went away?”

He almost ran the car into the curb, but instead slowed and pulled over. To hell with school and staff meetings and cases waiting. He climbed out of the driver’s seat, went back to the rear, and slid into the empty space beside her.

“Mommy didn’t want to go away,” he said, taking her hand in his.

He blinked back the sudden rush of fear that he might someday lose her as well. Despite the warm May morning, his hands and feet were numb, frozen as if his heart couldn’t spare the blood necessary to keep them alive.

“I wasn’t mad at her. Even if I was—even if you were—that’s okay. Mommy didn’t want to leave us. You had nothing to do with it, Nellie.”

“I know that.” She looked away, out her window at the parade of azaleas lining the sidewalk leading up to an anonymous brick colonial, then looked back, directly into his eyes.

Charlotte’s eyes were that same hazel, with tiny flecks of gold that changed with her mood. Just like Nellie’s. Now the gold had vanished. Buried under a somber green the color of inscrutable jade.

“But why don’t you bring Mommy back?”

He rocked backward, banging his head against the window. “Bring Mommy back?”

His voice didn’t sound like his own; it sounded like a stranger’s. A stranger who hadn’t spent days being scrutinized by the police, press, and Charlotte’s parents, being accused of killing the woman he loved.

A stranger who hadn’t faced lurid insinuations that things must have been terrible behind the walls of the Worth home if Charlotte had vanished of her own accord.

What had brought him almost to violence were the “helpful” strangers placing calls to ChildLine asking, How could a social worker like Charlotte who worked abuse cases leave her daughter behind in the same house with a monster like Tommy? If the home was so intolerable that the mother ran away without a trace—or worse, the father killed her—shouldn’t someone step in and take the child away? For her own good, of course.

Thankfully, Charlotte’s parents had put an end to that. They’d moved into Tommy’s house for almost a month—not just to keep an eye on their beloved granddaughter, but also as a quasi-suicide watch over Tommy, who’d driven himself about mad searching for Charlotte, for clues, for a way to go on living without answers…

That was a year ago. A year ago this week, in fact. He’d spent the last few weeks reliving the horror for the parade of obligatory anniversary stories—including a segment on a national TV show that specialized in unsolved crimes. But if it helped find Charlotte, helped bring her home…

Now, facing a daughter he’d tried so very hard to protect from the circus-freak-show atmosphere created by Charlotte’s disappearance, he dragged in a breath. “Sweetie, everyone’s trying the best they can to find Mommy and bring her home. You know that.”

The adults in Nellie’s life, including a pediatric trauma counselor, had tried to explain what being “missing” meant. But how do you make a five-year-old understand the limbo between being here and being nowhere?