Two Lines by Melissa Marr Page A

cement tore at her bare feet.
    Silently, Maylene pushed her wheelbarrow down the sidewalk until they came to the end of her driveway. She stopped, and with one hand, she pulled her flask out of her pocket and emptied it; with the other hand, she reached inside the postbox. In the back—folded up, stamped, and addressed—was an envelope. Her fingers trembled, but Maylene sealed the flask inside the envelope, slipped it inside the box, and raised the red flag to signal the carrier to take away the package. If she didn’t come back to retrieve it in the morning, it would go to Rebekkah. Maylene put her hand on the side of the battered box for a moment, wishing that she’d had the courage to tell Rebekkah the things she needed to know before now.
    â€œI’m hungry, Miss Maylene,” the girl urged.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Maylene whispered. “Let me get you something warm to eat. Let me—”
    â€œIt’s okay. You’re going to save me, Miss Maylene.” The girl gave her a genuine look of happiness. “I know it. I knew that if I found you everything would be okay.”

Chapter 1
    B YRON M ONTGOMERY HADN’T BEEN INSIDE THE B ARROW HOUSE IN YEARS . Once he’d gone there every day to meet his high school girlfriend, Ella, and her stepsister, Rebekkah. They’d both been gone for nearly a decade, and for the first time, he was grateful. Ella and Rebekkah’s grandmother lay on the kitchen floor in a puddle of partially congealed blood. Her head was twisted at an odd angle, and her arm was torn. The blood on the floor seemed to have come mostly from that one wound. It looked like she had a handprint bruise on her upper arm, but it was hard to tell with the amount of blood around her.
    â€œAre you okay?” Chris stepped in front of him, temporarily blocking the sight of Maylene’s body. The sheriff wasn’t an unnaturally large man, but like all of the McInneys, he had the sort of presence that commanded attention under any circumstances. The attitude and musculature that had once made Chris a sight to see in a good bar fight now made him the sort of sheriff that invited trust.
    â€œWhat?” Byron forced himself to stare only at Chris, to avoid looking at Maylene’s body.
    â€œAre you going to be sick or something . . . because of the”— Chris gestured at the floor—“blood and all.”
    â€œNo.” Byron shook his head. A person couldn’t be an undertaker and get squeamish at the sight— or scent —of death. He’d worked at funeral homes outside of Claysville for eight years before he’d given in to the insistent urge to come back home. Out there, he’d seen the results of violent deaths, of children’s deaths, of lingering deaths. He’d mourned some of them, even though they were strangers to him, but he’d never been sick from it. He wasn’t going to get sick now either, but it was harder to be distant when the dead was someone he’d known.
    â€œEvelyn went and got her clean clothes.” Chris leaned against the kitchen counter, and Byron noted that the blood spray hadn’t touched that side of the room.
    â€œDid you already collect evidence or . . . ?” Byron halted before he’d finished the sentence. He didn’t know what all needed to be done. He’d picked up more bodies than he could count, but never from a still-fresh crime scene. He wasn’t a pathologist or in any way involved in forensic investigation. His job commenced afterward, not at the scene of homicide. At least, it had been like that elsewhere. Now that he was back home, things weren’t what he was used to. The small town of Claysville was a different sort of place from the cities he’d roamed. He hadn’t realized exactly how different it was until he’d gone away . . . or maybe until he’d come back.
    â€œDid I collect evidence of what ?” Chris glowered at