Luring Shadows: The Happy Endings Resort, #7

By Kristina Rienzi

Shadows Haunt
On the fifth anniversary of her sister Caitlyn's unsolved murder, Rayna Jennings is far from having closure. Dark memories of Caitlyn's death live in the shadows at Happy Endings Resort. The nightmare still haunts Rayna; the images in her mind more vivid than ever. 

Shadows Taunt
When gruesome reminders begin to resurface, taunting Rayna, her grief surfaces anew. Worse, an unknown killer has cast her as the next victim. Despite her will to survive, the shadows of Happy Endings Resort have their own plan in mind. 

Shadows Kill
A stranger is luring Rayna into the dark shadows of the resort, and her mind. She must race to stop the killer before it's too late and she joins Caitlyn, becoming another one of the...

LURING SHADOWS

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kristina Rienzi
• Release date: Aug 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996972130

Book preview

Chapter One

Rayna

SHADOWS DRIFTED ALONG the edge of the lake where Caitlyn’s body surfaced five years ago. I shook with a chill from somewhere deep within my soul. The grotesque images of my dead sister have haunted me since the fateful day I was forever changed. Memories of the beautiful girl I loved so dearly, the girl so full of life, ever twist and turn in my mind. Although time has passed and life has gone on, her death remains a mystery and her murderer remains unknown.

Caitlyn’s murder is officially labeled a cold case now. She’s one of millions of victims whose brutal crimes have yet to be solved. Cold because there are no leads and they aren’t any closer to solving her case than they were the day it happened. Cold because the investigator’s empathy is pushed aside, ensuring that real emotions associated with a young girl’s murder won’t skew the investigation. Cold because her body was cold when they found her floating, dead in the lake. A cold case is merely an unsolved crime, yet they don’t call it that. They call it cold because of the image it summons, one you are powerless to forget.

I made a failed attempt at skipping rocks, then just tossed them into the lake instead. I did this often as a silly tribute to our meaningless pastime from the summers we spent at our Happy Endings Resort cabin. Our childhood getaway was now my adult home. Times had changed since then, more than I ever wanted them to, and a tribute to Cailtyn still wouldn’t bring her back to me.

In our glory days, our tiny behinds would have been planted in the grass right next to each other, hip to hip. We would have spent our time complaining about this or that, whatever our mom and dad had said we weren't old enough to do on that particular day, like running with scissors or something equally as dangerous. Dreaming, making up stories, and singing to each other were the things us bored girls, banned from technology, did in the summers at the cabin. We were all we had back then. And now, it was only me.

Five years. The heaviness in my chest returned with a vengeance. I should have known a significant anniversary would have that effect on my broken heart. After five whole years, I honestly thought the pain would have gotten a little lighter by now. I had been waiting for the day to come when I would no longer be consciously aware of my beating heart and its demands for my full attention out of nowhere.

It had been more than just heavy lately. The weight had fallen hard and birthed a hollow and empty pit. It was one you could drop a quarter down and watch fall all the way into the black abyss light years below. Whatever was unlucky, or lucky, enough to fall into my abyss—love, happiness, peace—would never stop falling because my grief was bottomless. My pain for missing my sister, Caitlyn, was dark and eternal.

I pushed hard on my chest. Please, I begged in my head. I wanted my heart to stop calling me, stop distracting me. You’re a selfish heart, you know that? Let my head win this time, won’t you? My head deserves a win. It needs a victory.

After all of those years of persons of interest, suspects, questioning and multiple dead-end investigations ended up with no leads, Caitlyn’s case was as dead as she was and it still angered me to no end. I ripped a handful of grass out of the ground and threw it into the air. The blades fell down around me, not going very far.

What about DNA? DNA never lies. Why wasn’t there any DNA? Hell, it was the reason I had moved into our cabin after graduation. I thought, maybe, just maybe, I would be the one to solve her cold case. I’d find a piece of old gum, or a cigarette butt—something. Perhaps I would have the honor of being the heroine who found the one crucial piece of evidence that had previously been ignored. And, alas, Caitlyn’s murderer would be captured and caged like the animal he most certainly was.

Of course, it hadn’t turned out that way. There was no evidence left behind. No cigarette butts or chewed up balls of gum or anything else for that matter had been found. I still didn’t know who murdered Caitlyn. No one did. I had no idea what happened to my baby sister on that dreadful day, the day that dimmed the bright light inside of me forever. To this day, I have no closure, and being happy without it is not an option for me. I’ll only ever be broken apart.

Happy.

It’s funny how one word can change your entire perspective on the world depending on the situation. One day, happy is a bright and never-ending rainbow, although you don’t appreciate it in the least because happy is your normal. Until the next day when happy has morphed into a jet-black ball of negative energy that you couldn’t run away from fast enough if you tried. That’s when you beg your former happy to bring its color back into the world, but the best you can hope for is for your happy to become a version of gray one day. And even that is too much to ask.

My world lost its color forever the day my sister was killed.

I shook off my thoughts and headed back to the cabin.

The screen door creaked as I pushed it open. The night air wafted in when I entered my house, scents of musk permeating the space around me. I glanced at the window and caught sight of the neon sign that shone brightly on the other side of the lake.

WELCOME TO HAPPY ENDINGS RESORT.

I huffed. What a crock. Caitlyn’s ending was far from happy. Her story belonged at Horror Endings Resort, the place where run down trailers were nestled high atop the Rocky Mountains, miles from any semblance of life. Caitlyn’s ending belonged in the campground where no one made it out alive, not even the bright, young, beautiful girls who had the universe in the palms of their hands. And especially not my bright, young and beautiful sister. Especially not her.

Five years. My eyes drifted to the middle of the lake. I listened closely. I waited a beat until the night’s silence morphed into our familiar melody, the one we both knew so well. I hummed along with her voice singing the words we penned so long ago in my head.

Sister, Sister, hold me near.

I waited, although the thing I had been longing for after all of this time would never come. I knew this, but I waited still. The one piece of my cracked open heart was much too far to reach. The only thing to stop me from running away from my reality was that I’d never see her crystal blue eyes again. Living was all I could do.

Sister, sister, have no fear.

My truth lives there, smack dab in the middle of the lake, right alongside the echo of her sweet voice. I stared in disbelief at the place where the muddied water met the dry unkempt land on the other side.

As a distraction, I closed my eyes, as I always did when I desperately needed to remember her. It stopped my mind from going to the dark place. Instead, I was instantly transported back in time. It was the summer of 2010, our last summer together. The scent of barbecue surrounded me