In the temple, p.1
In the Temple, page 1
In the Temple
A.J. Scudiere
Copyright © 2024 by AJ Scudiere
Griffyn Ink. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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FIRST EDITION
Contents
Books by A.J.
A.J.’s Renegades
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
About the Author
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* * *
Look for other novels by A.J. Scudiere.
Available in bookstores, online, and at ReadAJS.com.
* * *
THE NIGHTSHADE FORENSIC FILES SERIES
Book 1 - Under Dark Skies
Book 2 - Fracture Five
Book 3 - The Atlas Defect
Book 4 - Echo and Ember
Book 5 - Salvage (A Shadow Files Novel)
Book 6 - Garden of Bone
Book 7 - The Camelot Gambit
Book 8 - Dead Tide
Book 9 - Sabotage (A Shadow Files Novel)
Book 10 - Vanishing Point
Book 11 - Beneath Memory
Book 12 - The Axis Legacy
Book 13 - Sacrifice
Book 14 - Snake in the Grave
NightShade Vol 1
NightShade Vol 2
NightShade Vol 3
NightShade Complete Series
* * *
THE BLACK CARBON SERIES
Book 1 - The Hunted
Book 2 - The Surface
Book 3 - The Tempest
Book 4 - The Swarm
Book 5 - The Taken
Book 6 - The Night
Book 7 - The Edge
Black Carbon - Vol 1
Black Carbon - Vol 2
Black Carbon - The Complete Series
* * *
THE HANGMAN’S SHADOW SERIES
Book 1 - Bad Name
Book 2 - In the Temple
* * *
FORTUNE
FORTUNE (Mia)
FORTUNE (Rafe)
FORTUNE (Mia & Rafe)
* * *
THE VENDETTA TRIFECTA
Vengeance
Retribution
Justice
Becoming (short story)
Inheritance (short story)
The Complete Vendetta Trifecta
* * *
STAND ALONE NOVELS
Resonance
Dissonance - a companion novella to Resonance
God's Eye
Phoenix
The Shadow Constant
The Landa Landa & The Aellai
Dumb Blonde (short story)
Twisted (short story)
Relentless Suspense Bundle: Resonance, God’s Eye, Phoenix, The Shadow Constant, Twisted, Dumb Blonde
* * *
A Collection of Blogs
Smart Chickens - Deliver Us From Email
Smart Chickens - We’re Not Like Other Families
Smart Chickens - Tele Me More
Smart Chickens - Omega Dog
Join A.J.’s Renegades here: www.ReadAJS.com
Praise for A.J. Scudiere
"There are really just 2 types of readers—those who are fans of AJ Scudiere, and those who will be."
-Bill Salina, Reviewer, Amazon
* * *
For The Shadow Constant:
* * *
"The Shadow Constant by A.J. Scudiere was one of those novels I got wrapped up in quickly and had a hard time putting down."
-Thomas Duff, Reviewer, Amazon
* * *
For Phoenix:
* * *
"It's not a book you read and forget; this is a book you read and think about, again and again . . . everything that has happened in this book could be true. That's why it sticks in your mind and keeps coming back for rethought."
-Jo Ann Hakola, The Book Faerie
1
Melissa stepped down off the bus, the wheezy exhalation of the brakes loud in her ears. The bus stop itself was lit, a little rectangular patch on the middle of the long street. But her strides quickly carried her away from the light.
It was that time of year when it wasn't quite snowing yet, but it could get cold. The light was certainly gone by about five, especially here in the mountains, especially where the trees were tall. The bus pulled away from the stop and quickly moved past her, the tires crunching on the old pavement, the lights fading into the distance.
Picking up her pace, Melissa reminded herself she’d been at this job for three years, so she’d walked home in the winter before. She’d made this trek most days, sometimes in the extreme heat or even high snow. She’d done it like tonight: with no way to see but for the flashlight on her phone.
She held it in front of her as if she needed to see. She knew this road far too well.
The streetlights out here were few and far between, but she aimed for the next one and told herself she was being ridiculous. Still, she looked back over her shoulder and saw nothing.
Recently, she'd begun to feel as if she were being watched on her walk home. She chalked it up as a stupid sensation, a pointless paranoia. She'd not felt it in previous years, even when the walk at the end of her long bus ride and even longer workday was entirely in the dark.
There were a few more homes out here than there had been two years ago. One was finished and the family had moved in recently. That house was just up past the next light. She moved quickly. It was a nice house. It probably had one of those doorbell cameras.
As she passed by, she tried to look and see if she could spot anything. The newer houses were nicer. The subdivision going in wouldn’t be affordable to anyone who already lived here. She was in the area because it was cheap—or it had been. Her old apartment complex was set on the other side of the long empty stretch of road. This bus stop was still the closest.
Maybe tomorrow she'd ride to the farther stop. She’d walk a little farther, too, but she wouldn’t have to go through this unoccupied section of trees in the dark. Just past the first new house the curb cut back, the new cement edges white and crisp. The pavement led back to an intersection and, though there were curbs for a cross street, it didn't yet exist.
Pipes stuck up out of the ground in the center of delineated squares of land. The houses would almost be bigger than the lots from the looks of it. Soon it would be a whole neighborhood, but right now it was nothing. And no one was here. If the workers had been here today, building anything, they’d disappeared when the sun set.
Melissa looked back over her shoulder again, this time thinking maybe she heard footsteps. She didn't see anything.
The hair on the back of her neck crawled again and she told herself she was being stupid. Her mother was waiting back at the apartment. Legally blind, she picked up a little bit of money doing customer service chat, though her English and grammar were impeccable, her accent was still a little too thick to work the phone lines. That, combined with her limited eyesight meant the two of them relied mainly on Melissa's work for real income.
Again, she thought she heard footsteps, and again, she turned and looked back over her shoulder, double checking. This time she saw him—the jogger. She didn't know his name, but she knew him. He must usually get off work around the same time she did but, given the nice athletic clothes he wo
He didn't spend an hour riding the bus. If she had a car, she would get home before the daylight had fully faded. If she had a car, she could drive right up to the apartment complex, and it wouldn’t matter that it was already dark.
His footfalls kept a steady rhythm behind her. As he got closer, she turned and smiled. It often went this way: he came up behind her and jogged past. They said hello or waved and that was it. She would definitely recognize him from the back, or his gear, or his shoes. Any part but his face.
She wasn't sure she'd ever seen it. Even now she was the one standing in the streetlight, and he was still a bit in the distance. She couldn’t make out his features. Deciding it would look weird if she stayed and waited, Melissa turned and kept pushing forward, waiting for his feet to catch up and pass her.
She felt safer knowing that he was there. The odd sensation had continued to crawl her spine the last couple of weeks while she walked her way home as the evenings invariably got darker and darker. At least, the concerning feeling seemed to dissipate having another human nearby.
She looked briefly back over her shoulder again, attempting to be some level of friendly as he headed past. She waved one hand and called out, “Hey!”
“Hey, back to you.” He was still a bit behind her, and that was all they'd ever exchanged before. But tonight, he said, “I've seen you walking this way before.”
It was true. She nodded, though he was still moving faster than her, getting closer. “Yes. Every night, bus stop to home.”
She was grateful for the companionship. It was stupid, but she felt like she wouldn't get attacked from behind and hauled off into the woods and murdered with someone else right here, someone talking to her.
“You live in the apartment complex up ahead, right?” He was still behind her but getting closer.
“Yes,” she told him, hoping he didn’t see her reaction to the odd comment. How did he know that?
But it made sense. There wasn't anything else up ahead, except the apartment complex. And he saw her walking here all the time. She either lived there or farther down the road, closer to the other bus stop. It would be stupid to be walking this way if she lived closer to the other stop. So this was a perfectly reasonable assumption. Not a big deal.
He headed past her like he always did, feet moving rhythmically on the pavement, arms pumping in time to keep himself moving. Just when she thought he was far enough ahead that the conversation was over, he lifted one hand and waved back to her. “Tell your mother I said hi.”
It took a moment for the words to register, and by the time they did, he'd already turned down the side road and out of sight.
Melissa picked up her pace. Why the hell would he have said that? It was odd, wasn’t it? How would he know she lived with her mother?
Her shoes were not made for running, but she ran anyway. Closer to the apartment her breath was already coming heavy from her pace, from the worry that had dug in deep.
She’d looked down the road he’d turned on as she passed by, but he’d completely disappeared from view.
She was being a fool, it was nothing. Such a strange thing to say. But, like the feeling that had crawled up her spine, she told herself it was stupid. She'd said hello before, maybe she'd said something about living with her mother. Had they had a conversation?
Bounding up the outside steps, she moved past the dingy white siding of the first floor, not seeing anything. She careened around the corner and headed up again to the third floor.
It was a stupid thought. Everything was fine. She was being paranoid.
But as she reached the apartment, she found the door wasn't pulled all the way shut. Without thinking, she grabbed the knob and flung the door wide. Her breath catching deep in her chest at the horrifying sight before her.
Cindy Baker's eyes flew open.
Again. Dammit.
She knew what Melissa saw when she opened the door. Knew the young woman had stepped inside and disturbed the crime scene. She’d stepped in the blood. How could she not? There was so much of it.
Irritated that she hadn't been able to block the vision, Cindy huffed out a breath. Still, there was nothing she could do about it. She didn't know where Melissa lived, or what her last name was, only that she lived with her mother.
Correction: Melissa had previously lived with her mother.
Cindy had no idea how old the information was, and she was getting damn tired of seeing it.
Irritated at herself, she rolled over in the dark room and called to her brother. She could hear him in the hallway. “Carter! I want cheeseburgers tonight for dinner! What do you think?”
2
Jesse stood in her living room, eyes glazed as she stared out into the backyard. The sun had almost fully set, leaving everything in deep purple, except for the one light that shown down over the patio.
She saw none of it. She thought of nothing, except for the deep, dark craving for a nice bourbon.
Eugene's fault. But wasn't all of this Eugene's fault, really?
She knew there was no liquor in the house, not even a beer. That was true specifically for this reason. Because she’d either drunk it or put it down the drain. Though Jesse contemplated going out and finding a drive-through liquor store, she knew better than to act on the urge.
The case laid out on the coffee table in front of her also made her think a drink would be a good idea. There was possibly no way to save Gordon Godwin and Jesse didn’t want to tell the family that.
She also didn’t want to take a case that would put her morals in a vice. This one definitely looked like it might. But she could use some income. Couldn’t she always?
Whether or not she took the case remained up in the air, but she would not be taking a drink because of Ciara. She would forever be a backup mother to the little girl. But after last week she’d had a hard lesson on what she could and couldn’t be.
She’d been mom for a while. Every morning, she’d rolled her tired ass out of bed and packed a lunch and made sure her “daughter” was clean and fed and had her homework. She'd driven to the elementary school and waited in lines for pickup. She rotated with Eugene for after school class schedules, until Eugene had become such a piece of shit that he'd taken himself out of the rotation. And eventually out of the world.
But always there had been Ciara.
Every responsibility had become Jesse's. She paid for the dance classes and food and the house and . . . all of it. But the laws were clear. Floyann was clean now, and Jesse was no longer mom.
While Ciara was the reason she wouldn’t drink, she was also the reason that Jesse desperately wanted something right now.
Maybe that was also because of Eugene. Or more likely the way she blamed herself for Eugene. For a short while, he’d made her world amazing. He’d brought a daughter she’d never wanted into her life and Ciara made the world a wonderful place, even when she didn't.
