Relatively Rainey Read online

  Titles from R. E. Bradshaw Books

  Rainey Bell Thriller Series:

  Relatively Rainey (2015)

  Colde & Rainey (2014)

  The Rainey Season (2013) Lambda Literary Awards Finalist

  Rainey’s Christmas Miracle (2011) (Short Story-ebook only)

  Rainey Nights (2011) Lambda Literary Awards Finalist

  Rainey Days (2010)

  The Adventures of Decky and Charlie Series:

  Out on the Panhandle (2012)

  Out on the Sound (2010)

  Molly: House on Fire (2012)

  Lambda Literary Awards Finalist

  Before It Stains (2011)

  Waking Up Gray (2011)

  Sweet Carolina Girls (2010)

  The Girl Back Home (2010)

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  About the book…

  PART I - PRELUDE TO A NIGHTMARE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  PART II - THE NIGHTMARE WAKES

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  PART III

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  About the Author

  Relatively Rainey

  By R. E. Bradshaw

  © 2015 by R. E. Bradshaw. All Rights Reserved.

  R. E. Bradshaw Books/June 2015

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9903760-5-7

  Website: http://www.rebradshawbooks.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebradshawbooks

  Twitter @rebradshawbooks

  Blog: http://rebradshawbooks.blogspot.com

  For information contact [email protected]

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author and publisher.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgments

  To my family and friends who know just how long this year has been, thank you for standing with me when I had a hard time standing by myself. To the readers who waited patiently, thank you. Much love to you all.

  About the book…

  Terrors come during vulnerable moments in the night. While lost in sleep, demons arise to expose our deepest dreads. Happiness is not a deterrent to the treachery of memories and fears.

  Having suffered a traumatic event nearly five years prior, Rainey has settled into contented family life. When a body tied to JW Wilson surfaces, the compartmentalization Rainey Bell practices proves to be her near undoing. As the buried demons of her past come to call in nearly nightly terror-filled dreams, self-doubt becomes a constant companion.

  Rainey endeavors to juggle life as a devoted parent, a loving spouse, a big sister, and a successful entrepreneur. Currently, she is using her behavioral analysis skills for the multi-jurisdictional task force hunting a fetish burglar turned murderer while trying to resolve her resurfacing post-trauma issues before Katie sends her packing. Rainey is also attempting to keep the youthful enthusiasm of her half-sister, Durham Police Officer Wendy King, from torpedoing her young career and endangering her extended family.

  REB

  Dedicated to the woman whose hand rests gently in the small of my back—encouraging, sheltering, and sure.

  PART I

  PRELUDE TO A NIGHTMARE

  “There are moments when even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of Hell.”

  ― Edgar Allan Poe

  CHAPTER ONE

  7:00 PM, Monday, September 2, 2013

  Chancery Court Subdivision

  Durham County, NC

  The small window screen in Dr. Kent Barker’s hand puzzled him. His profound bewilderment drew the attention of his neighbor.

  “What’s the trouble there, Kent?”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Kent, half listening, still tried to make sense of things.

  The smiling neighbor pointed a dripping hose nozzle at the screen.

  “You’ve been standing right there since I started watering this flowerbed. I was so caught up in watching you, I think I over-soaked it.”

  Kent looked at the perfectly maintained bed of flowers edging the driveway next door. The flowerbed exemplified the order in Kent’s upper-middle class, manicured subdivision. The homeowners’ association made sure everyone conformed to the neat and tidy rules. Upon returning an hour ago from a Labor Day weekend trip to the beach with family, the Thomas Kincaid-ness of his cul-de-sac struck him once more. The French Country style homes formed a perfect jigsaw puzzle picture of the American dream. No matter how many times Kent made that corner, the image remained the same.

  He remarked to Marilyn, his wife, “I could take a picture of this street every day, and it would only reflect the change in seasons.” He smiled at his college freshman daughter’s reflection in the rearview mirror, adding, “There is comfort in that sameness.”

  Hannah was almost on her own now, soon to relegate her time with the family to weekends when she could manage it. She was the last of the Barker brood to leave the nest. Kent had just turned fifty, and the slower pace of suburban living suited him. None of his medical school buddies would believe beer-bong champ Barker would prefer the mundane and routine in his later years. But after a long day of surgery, surprises were the last thing an anesthesiologist wanted. Spotting the screen out of place interrupted the solace Kent felt in his world of comfortable banality.

  The neighbor persisted, “What happened? Did you get that off and now can’t figure out how to put it back?”

  Kent asked, “Reece, were you around this weekend?”

  “Yes. Well, I was. Travis took his mother to see his brother on Sunday, but I was here all weekend. Why, what’s wrong?”

  Kent glanced back down at the screen and the basement window it should have been covering.

  Shrugging, he answered, “I don’t know. This screen was off, but the window was still locked on the inside, and the alarm was active. Marilyn says it just feels like someone was in the house, but we can’t find anything missing.”

  “Now, that’s disconcerting. I sure didn’t see or hear anything. Is she sure?”

  Kent’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Hannah, came screaming out the front door with the answer.

  “Daddy, some pervert went through my laundry and stole all my underwear, all of it, bras, and everything.”

  Hannah left her first week’s worth of college laundry in the basement, before joining the family for the beach holiday with her older siblings and their spouses. Kent knew this because he carried the bulging duffle bag down the stairs Friday afternoon.

  Kent’s wife fled the house close on Hannah’s heels, phone to her ear, and in mid-sentence, “...broke into our house and stole our teenaged daughter’s underwear. And if I’m not mistaken, there is some genetic material you need to come collect.”

  At that moment, everything in Kent’s banal world changed.

  #

  10:00 PM, Friday, July 25, 2014

  Buckhorn Road, Ch
atham County, NC

  Arianna Wilde climbed into her grandmother’s farmhouse canopy bed, sinking into the feather top and down pillows. A source of countless fond memories, she felt the bed cradle her as it had on those special occasions when she came to visit the farm. Snuggled under Nana Wilde’s arm, Arianna would listen to her favorite books read aloud. Her war bride grandmother maintained her cultured British accent throughout her life, even after spending the last sixty-nine years of it near the banks of the Cape Fear River. Arianna believed a genuine appreciation achievable for Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan only when the texts were read aloud by a British grandmother.

  She inherited the farm and her grandmother’s feather bed in January. After finalizing her divorce and the sale of the matrimonial home, Arianna moved into the farmhouse in May. The money from the settlement helped restore and modernize the old place. Having lived in Chapel Hill since her college days, the move twenty-five miles south to her family’s ancestral country home was a welcomed one. Wherever her laptop received a signal became an office, and the solitude of country living appealed to her at this juncture in her life. Relocating seemed the answer to the question Peggy Lee sang over and over in her mind for the last few years, “Is that all there is?”

  The intense stress of living on site during a remodel was well worth it. Arianna relearned the self-sufficiency of her youth after too many years of living dependent on the skills of others. Now in the final stages, she was down to the cosmetics of painting the interior and trying to get a handle on the overgrown grounds. Beating back nature to the wood line in the massive yard by day and painting the two-story interior by night, Arianna worked her body to its limits over the last few weeks. She had no spare moments to dally in the past. The work focused her and kept her old friends Regret and Dread at bay.

  Arianna regretted she didn’t love her husband. He was sweet and kind, but it wasn’t enough. She regretted that she’d stuck it out for thirteen wasted years and dreaded the thought of dating again at forty-one. She regretted she hadn’t spent more time with her aging grandmother. She dreaded the weekly phone calls from the ex, ostensibly to make sure she was all right, but it was more about propping him up.

  He ended almost every conversation with some form of, “I could understand if it was someone else, but you just stopped loving me.”

  Arianna regretted ever being honest with him about her feelings. She had contemplated telling him there was someone else, in hopes that he would move on with his life. She regretted that she didn’t care enough to lie.

  Today she added a new bit of remorse to the list. She thoroughly regretted saying, “How hard could this be,” before turning the key on the old tiller and promptly sending it through the side of the barn.

  “I should have remembered the tractor debacle,” she said aloud, following it with chuckles.

  Her muscles ached but were taut. Her body looked better than it had in years. She overcame many things since the move, learning something new about herself and the farm seemingly minute by minute. She had taken back her name and worked on taking back her life one day at a time. Regrets aside, Arianna had mastered her dread of a coming new day.

  Tomorrow, I will conquer the tiller.

  She reached for the bedside lamp. As she pulled the old chain, plunging the room into darkness, she said aloud, “Think happy thoughts.” It was something her grandmother would say each night. Arianna thought of the happiest thing she could.

  The new washer and dryer will be installed in the morning. Praise baby Jesus.

  The lace curtains of the canopy bed swayed slightly with the light summer wind coming through the open windows. The heat and air would be installed once all the construction dust settled.

  “No need to clog up a new system, ma’am,” the installer informed her, as he handed her a trip ticket with a much later installation date than she had hoped scribbled at the bottom.

  The dust was the reason the wood-framed screens were removed downstairs and the large windows thrown open. Fans sat on sills, running day and night to dry paint and suck out the seemingly never-ending drywall dust. She cleaned and vacuumed every day, but the dust prevailed. Plastic covered the portal to the bedroom where she slept. With the door shut much of the time the room stayed relatively free of contaminants. The powder-fine gypsum dust still managed to slip through the tiniest cracks. She thought the hand-tatted canopy should come down before it was damaged, but it comforted her with the retained fragrance of her grandmother’s perfume. Arianna’s eyes fluttered shut as the night breeze tickled her nose with Nana Wilde’s Chanel no. 5.

  #

  He knew she would be one of his girls the first time he saw her. He had twenty-five regularly visited targets, but was always ready to add a new one if the urge struck. He had jogged past the old Wilde farm the day she ran the tractor into the ditch by the road.

  “Perhaps brush-hogging the front forty wasn’t your wisest choice for a first outing,” he had said to her.

  “No kidding,” she said, and then laughed before blowing strands of stray hair from her brow.

  He had been obliged to stop, along with several other helpful country neighbors. That was the thing about people living in the county where they buried Mayberry's Sheriff Taylor's Aunt Bee. Down on the river, away from the suspicion and self-absorption of urban life, folks were there to help a neighbor in need. He needed Arianna Wilde from the moment she smiled in his direction.

  He paid his first furtive visit to her that very night. He helped himself to a black bra and panties left hanging from a makeshift clothesline on the back porch, and now treasured among the many items he removed during successive visits over the last eight weeks. It took him only a few minutes the next day to find out about the new resident on Buckhorn Road. He simply mentioned the activity around the Wilde place to the man at the feed store over in Brickhaven. What the old timer didn’t know, his nosey wife filled in. A little more searching on the Internet and he had all the information needed on his new target, Arianna Wilde.

  He watched her bedroom window, as the amber glow of the bedside lamp went dark. It wouldn’t be long now.

  #

  7:50 AM, Saturday, July 26, 2014

  Arianna Wilde’s Farmhouse

  “What do you mean there wasn’t anyone at home? I’m at home. I saw you drive away.”

  Arianna listened to the voice on her phone for only a second, before unleashing a tirade.

  “I think spending thousands of dollars with your company warrants more than a cursory knock. Flash Gordon could not have made it to the door before you decided no one was home.”

  The voice interrupted her rant, causing her to pause. Upon hearing the delivery driver’s response, she sighed heavily.

  “You want to know who Flash Gordon is? Oh, for the love of— Look, your office said the delivery would be between eight and nine this morning. It is just now seven-fifty. You turn that truck around this instant or return after I get off the phone with your boss, your boss’s boss, and on up the chain of command until I have a washer and dryer installed and working in my home, today.”

  Arianna was halfway down the stairs when she hung up on the apologetic driver. The old washer was on its last legs and the dryer gave up the ghost years ago. Dogs or cats or some other creatures had been making off with her lingerie for weeks. She suspected the crow that hung out near the clothesline. He looked guilty and seemed always to be watching. Arianna laughed at the thought of a tree somewhere decorated with her bras and panties. She hated to think of the alternative—that one of the workers had a thing for ladies underwear. Her dirty clothes from the past week waited in a basket on the kitchen counter, in anticipation of a new working washer and dryer, and as a way to stem the tide of vanishings. She couldn’t afford to hang any more underclothes on the line to dry. She had no time right now to shop for more.

  Reaching the front door, she flung it open and stood there ready to speed dial the appliance store if its truck did not return in a
timely fashion. Another bright July day had dawned on a clear blue Carolina sky. Sunrays shot through the open door, illuminating the dust she stirred on her way down the stairs. Arianna watched the particles dance in the sunbeams. The light revealed a floor and stairs she’d cleaned the evening before, cast again with a layer of powder-thin dust.

  “When will this end?” She asked, with a palm raised to the invisible powers that be.

  She saw the footprints at the same time the appliance truck slowed on the road in front of the house and began the turn into the driveway. Tracing the path of the footprints with her eyes, Arianna noted they approached from the back of the house, went up the stairs, and then returned the way they came.

  “Carl, are you here already?”

  Arianna called out to the handyman she’d hired to help with the finishing touches. Maybe he arrived early and realized she had not come out of her room yet. He was supposed to finish the tile repair on the upstairs bathroom today. No response came from Carl. He was probably out back, waiting for her to appear with coffee. The guys were getting out of the delivery truck, tools in hand. All was right with Arianna’s world for a moment.

  The euphoria was short-lived. As she led the installers through the kitchen to the laundry room at the back of the house, Arianna saw her dirty clothes dumped on the floor. The empty basket was left on the counter. As she reflexively picked up the clothes and returned them to the basket, she froze with her eyes on the footprints. She could see now they led up to her bedroom from the back door. Arianna’s sense of security took a major hit. Her anxiety registered with the men now watching her.

  “Are you okay?” One of them asked.

  Her shaken state evident in the reply, Arianna answered, “I believe someone has just stolen all my underwear.”