Devil's Oven by Laura Benedict Read Free Book Online Page B

threatening thoughts about a woman before, and certainly had never actually hurt one. Ever.
    •  •  •
    Tripp startled awake at the sound of three beeps from a car horn down on the road—Lila’s signal that she was on her way up the hill. There were no lights for at least half a mile around the cabin, so even on clear nights like this one, when the moon was high, she wanted him to come out and meet her. As he stumbled out of his chair, he knocked over the half-empty beer bottle, spilling flat beer all over the coffee table. Swearing, he grabbed the fuzzy brown throw Lila had brought on her last visit and soaked up as much as he could. The show had ended. It was ten minutes before midnight.
    Had she decided to forgive him? Or was she just there to bust his chops? Assuming it was the second choice, he took a wide stance on the front porch to show her he wasn’t at all concerned that she was angry. Where did she spend the day? Who has she been with?
    The lights of the big SUV bounced as it came through the rut at the front of the driveway. But before it was halfway up the five-hundred-foot distance to the cabin, Tripp saw, in the truck’s stark halogen beams, a flash of movement in the woods to the west. There was a rushing noise as well, as though an animal were about to break out of the trees, but the sound disappeared in the roar of the truck’s engine. Tripp stiffened. Lila wasn’t driving fast enough for a deer to do serious damage to the truck, but it wasn’t going to be pretty. He could only watch, helpless, as something burst into the open and landed thirty feet or so in front of the vehicle.
    Had Lila seen it? Tripp ran toward the truck, waving his arms and shouting for her to stop. What the hell was lying in his driveway? A deer? And why wasn’t it moving away? The SUV stopped just a few feet short of whatever it was, and sat idling.
    He raised his arm to keep Lila in the vehicle. “Stay back!” he shouted, hoping she could hear him in the truck’s quiet interior.
    The headlights cast the thing on the ground in vivid detail. At first the bloody mass at one end confused him, but he made out a sport shirt and dark blue jeans easily enough. Realizing it was a man—a small one, but still a man—he took two steps back and had to fight the urge to vomit.
    “Tripp?” Lila called. She had the SUV’s door open and had stepped onto the running board. “What in the hell?”
    Unable to speak, Tripp just looked up at her.
    “Tripp?” Leaving the door open, she got down and came around to the front of the vehicle.
    Then the screaming started.
    •  •  •
    When Lila stirred on the couch, Tripp came right over to her side. He had the phone in his hand, but laid it on the coffee table so he could keep her from trying to sit up. An angry bruise had started to form on her left temple, where she banged it against the truck when she fell.
    In his lifetime—particularly in his job as a Department of Natural Resources officer—Tripp had seen many bodies, some burned so thoroughly that the bones crumbled to gray dust at a touch, others melted into the earth where they had fallen. He didn’t like to think about this one at all, though. He had never seen that kind of violence done to a human being, and hated that Lila had witnessed it, too.
    “Baby,” he said, brushing her hair back from her forehead. “Can you open your eyes?”
    Her lips moved and she seemed to whisper. Tripp bent closer to her face.
    “Lila, you need to wake up,” he said.
    When she finally opened her eyes, she stared at his face, but seemed not to know him. Then she put her hand to his jaw and pushed him away with a cry. Before he could react, she jumped up from the couch.
    “I have to get home!” she screamed. “I have to find Bud!”
    The patterned silk blouse she wore beneath her suede jacket gaped open at her chest, the button lost. Her lipstick was smeared and the ends of her hair were dusty from the driveway. Tripp held his