Cursed

Except for him.

It was time for Maria Cooper to die.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_befc4b84-052a-5116-be94-d9f000d098d6)

Blood and water leaked out as the scalpel sliced through the flesh and tissue of the victim’s lungs. Seth didn’t even flinch; he had already seen so much horror in his job.

And in his dreams.

“I don’t understand it,” the coroner murmured as he stared down at the water spilled on the stainless steel table.

Bright light shone onto the table and the body of the young woman lying on it. Seth stood just outside the light, in the shadows, where he felt he’d spent so much of his life.

“With the trauma to the neck and the lack of oxygen that would have caused to her brain,” the doctor said, “I figured it might have been a stroke that caused her death.”

“She was drowned,” Seth said. He’d had the sheriff wake up the coroner to perform the autopsy to confirm it. But he’d already known.

He had seen the water that had spilled on the floor and had condensed on the inside of her breathing tube. When he’d stepped off the elevator, he had heard the alarm beeping.

And he’d known. He was too late.

Raven had told him that he would be too late to save her. And she’d been right. He had failed her twice.

“How the hell did she drown?” the coroner asked. The older man shook his head as if befuddled. The sheriff had assured Seth that despite Dr. Kohler’s age, the man was sharp. With his years of experience and the expansive county he worked, he had seen everything before.

Apparently he hadn’t seen anything like this—like a woman being drowned in her hospital bed.

“I’m pretty sure someone poured water into her breathing tube,” Seth said. While waiting for Sheriff Moore and the coroner to arrive at the hospital, he had investigated the scene and interviewed all the possible witnesses.

The coroner gasped but nodded his gray head. “That would have done it.”

“But how?” the sheriff asked. He had joined Seth in the morgue in the basement of the county hospital, but he’d stayed even farther from that brightly lit table than Seth had. So he hadn’t witnessed much of the autopsy. He wasn’t asking about the medical aspects, though.

He was asking the same question that Seth had been asking himself when he’d found Raven dead. How?

Maria was in custody. Wasn’t she?

“You have someone watching the suspect?” he asked Sheriff Moore. Again. It had been the first thing he had asked the man when he’d called him from Raven’s bedside.

The older lawman nodded. “Yes.” Now he glanced at the body on the autopsy table. “But it looks as if we should have had someone watching her instead.”

Seth silently cursed himself. He should have had a protection detail on Raven. But he’d thought he had the right person in custody.

He could feel his suspect slipping away now, though. This death would give her reasonable doubt. A grand jury might not even indict her now. And then she would be free again.

And if Maria was free, he was certain that more people would die—since everyone around her kept dying...

If only he had been able to talk to Raven...

Frustration eating at him, Seth grumbled, “I can’t believe this hospital doesn’t have security.”

“We’ve never needed it,” the coroner said. “This is Copper Creek.”

“But no cameras—”

“Never needed them,” the doctor interjected.

“Tonight you needed them,” Seth said. Because all of the nurses he’d questioned had claimed that they had seen no stranger—no one suspicious at all—lurking around the place. But they’d shivered as he’d talked to them—as if some cold spirit had crossed their paths.

Or some heartless killer...

Despite his leather jacket, goose bumps lifted on Seth’s skin. Maybe it was the coldness of the morgue. Or maybe it was something else that chilled his skin and his blood. He refused to believe in spirits.

Evil.

Hell, he knew evil existed. He had already seen so much of it. More likely what had chilled his skin was the thought that had just occurred to him.

If Maria really was at the station, then someone else was out there. Not acting instead of her but maybe in collusion with her. He should have considered before that she wasn’t working alone. The gruesome ways all the other victims had died would have been hard for her to pull off alone—unless she really was a witch. Or she’d had someone stronger helping her. Probably some hapless male who had fallen for her undeniable sexy charms...

Seth swallowed nervously as he realized he could be that hapless male—that he had been distracted so much by her looks that he hadn’t thought to put protective duty on Raven. His distraction had cost the girl her life. Along with the frustration, guilt ate at him, clenching his stomach into knots.

“I need to get back to the station,” he said. To make certain that Maria was still there—that whoever had just killed Raven for her wasn’t trying to break her out of the room in which he’d locked her.

As if he’d read his mind, the sheriff assured him, “Your suspect is still there.”

Where Maria Cooper was concerned, Seth would accept no assurances. He had to see for himself. But he didn’t want to just see her. He wanted to touch her, too.

“I’ll drive Dr. Kohler back to his house and meet you at the station,” the sheriff said.

“I have to finish up the autopsy,” the doctor said. “I can’t leave her like this...” He stared grimly down at the body.

“That’ll give you time to finish up the investigation here,” Seth suggested to Sheriff Moore. “Maybe you’ll have better luck talking to the nurses than I did.”

They might talk more freely to the local lawman than the stranger he was to them. They might admit to seeing something or someone tonight that would explain how Raven had died.

And maybe now that Seth knew Maria wasn’t working alone, he might have better luck getting her to talk. Maybe she would implicate her accomplice in order to save herself. If her accomplice hadn’t already managed to free her...

The security at the sheriff’s office wasn’t much better than at the county hospital. So Seth worried that he would find her as he had found Raven: already gone.

* * *

“She’s gone...”

“Who?” Elena asked as she glanced over her shoulder at her sister Ariel, who’d spoken so softly that she’d barely heard her whisper.

“Mama,” Ariel murmured. She was probably being quiet so she wouldn’t wake Irina. She was sleeping, finally, and hopefully so deeply that she wasn’t able to hear them.

When they were kids, the three of them had slept together on that lumpy mattress in the camper on the back of Mama’s old pickup truck. As they had then, the three of them slept together now—on the soft mattress of Irina’s king-size bed, though. Elena lay in the middle, as she had all those years ago, a younger sister under each arm as if she could keep them safe from all those horrible dreams she’d had. All those horrible things she had seen each of them endure...