Catwood

By J.T. Ellison

Five friends head on a weekend mountain getaway. Only four will return.

A group of writers from Nashville piles into a car and heads to the mountains of north Georgia for a work retreat—and a bit of drinking and gossip. They've booked a cabin in the woods with no internet and no cell service, and hopefully, no interruptions.

Near the cabin the friends discover the beautiful but decrepit Catwood manor, abandoned decades earlier. Detritus from its final lavish dinner party remains on the tables. Writer brains spin with a thousand questions, but two stand out: Why did the Catwood family abandon their mansion during a posh affair? And why did they never return?

A dark cave near the house may hold the answer. But learning the secret to the family's disappearance will be deadly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Two Tales Press
• Release date: Apr 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386001195

J.T. Ellison

New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison writes dark psychological thrillers and pens the Brit in the FBI series with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and has been published in twenty-seven countries. She is also the Emmy Award–winning cohost of the premier literary television show A Word on Words. Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens. Visit JTEllison.com for more information, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @ThrillerChick or Facebook.com/JTEllison14.

Book preview

Catwood

Catwood

a short story

J.T. Ellison

Two Tales Press

Contents

Psst: Hey, you.

Catwood

Enjoy this story?

About J.T. Ellison

Sneak Peeks

LIE TO ME

FIELD OF GRAVES

THE ABANDONED HEART by Laura Benedict

Psst: Hey, you.

Yeah, you. The one holding the e-Reader.

Want a FREE ebook? Then join my newsletter.

Join my newsletter, get a FREE ebook!

Not only will you get my latest news and updates, insider exclusives, AND awesome recipes and book recommendations. As a token of our new friendship, I'll send you a FREE ebook when you join.

My bunnies, Jameson and Jordan

Plus, I always include cat photos. So there’s that.

***Click here to join my newsletter and get your FREE ebook!***

Catwood

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound

After a year of silence, else I think

I should not so have ventured forth alone

At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

---

She floats, facedown, her brown hair a fan around her head. Her red sweater has a hole in it; She still wears her sneakers. The water is murky and shallow, reeds and stems poke up around the edges. Dragonflies flit among the stalks. The early morning air is chilly, crickets and cicadas rumble in the thicket. A lone frog cries his frustration. The trees stand guard over the scene, a gentle breeze passing through them, making them shiver and drop their leaves in horror at the sight below.

A fly lights on her shoulder. I should call the police. I’ll have to take the car and drive out. There is no service here, which is why we chose it. No wireless, no cell service, no interruptions. Where is everyone? The silence is overwhelming. Why did it have to be me who found her? Why?

I watch her bob there, the water holding her in its gentle embrace, kinder and better than anything she got from the rest of the world, and think, It couldn’t have ended any other way, and start to scream her name.

There are five of us heading to the lake, a long-overdue get-together to commiserate, drink, and in general, catch up. Oh, we are supposed to be working—that’s what we’ve told our better halves. A working weekend with the girls. No Internet, no phones. We’ll be unreachable, in a small cabin in the woods, only the house and lake and laptops as our companions.

Justifications abound.

We have plans. (There is enough wine to drown a regiment.) We have an agenda. (I’ve brought all of my Harry Potter discs.) We’re going to alternate writing with business discussions. (We’re going to gossip until our lips bleed.)

The better halves help us pack—most, at least; there’s one who stormed out and didn’t come back until after she was gone, so she left a note with the caretaker’s phone number, just in case—fill up our gas tanks, carry the bags to the car, kiss our pretty little heads goodbye, assure us they will be just fine, it is only three days, after all, and wave as we drive away.

I remember thinking, It’s a retreat. It will be a few days to gossip and eat and drink and hopefully write. What can possibly go wrong?

We meet up at a travel gas station on I-65 South. Five cars—that’s silly, so we park and all get into mine. No sense wasting all that gas; like I said, we’re writers, which means we’re all on a budget. I drive—I have control issues and anxiety issues and the idea of not having my own car on a road trip is enough to send me into paroxysms, so everyone agreed in advance that it will fall upon me to take the wheel. They’re good friends. They make it sound like it is their idea.

The drive is four hours, south, into the mountains between Tennessee and Georgia. We stop for road trip supplies. We sing to the radio. There is the sharp scent of rum from the backseat—Ellie has her tiny flask out already. I glance in the rearview and to the side. Ellie, Tess, and Carter are in the backseat, Frances is up front with me.

Ellie, Tess, Carter, Frances, and me. Rebecca. The dream team. The five musketeers. My besties, my team, my crowd, my peeps. The girls who get me through every high and low of my career, as I do for them. Everyone in town is jealous of our bond. We came into publishing around the same time, met at a local author event at the local bookstore, and have been thick as thieves since.

I can’t imagine my life without any of them.

It’s hard to believe that before the weekend is out, one of us will be dead.

It is dark when we arrive, dusk, really, the sky a light gray, but the forest is thick around us and it’s dim enough that we have to break out flashlights to find the front door and the keys that were left by the owner for us. This is my fault, though no one wants to blame me. I took a wrong turn, and we got lost on top of this strange mountain, where the trees reach over the road and stop the perspective views we had from the highway. The GPS stopped working halfway up, as the rental company warned us would happen. The paper map they provided, though, is worthless. Later, we will find out the sign has fallen, rotted out from the heavy