Ritual at Dyeworks

RITUAL AT DYEWORKS BANEFORD BOOK 2 BY ALI KADEN Copyright © 2023 By Ali Kaden. All rights reserved. Edited by: George Verongos VISIT ALI KADEN’S WEBSITE FOR THE LATEST UPDATES: WWW.ALIKADENBOOKS.COM Author’s Note There is no town named Baneford in Massachusetts. Its history, landmarks, and residents are fictional. All other characters in the book are also fictional, although some places mentioned are real. Contents 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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR CHAPTER 1 THE EXPLOSION SENT tremors through the office, rattling the desks and causing the lights to flicker overhead. Seconds later, looking through the storefront windows, they saw a cloud of dust and smoke rising into the air halfway down the street. Evelyn and the others rushed outside to see what was happening. It was pleasant in the open air, a cool fifty degrees with plenty of light left in the afternoon sky. A group of pedestrians had already gathered around the sizable crater in the road. Evelyn, Trevor, and Cam joined the crowd standing at the edge of where the asphalt had collapsed into a recessed pit. “Was anyone hurt?” an older woman asked as she approached, hunched over with grocery bags in hand. “I heard it from inside the diner.” A middle-aged man wearing tired workman boots and a faded hooded sweatshirt peered down into the hole. “Someone fell in there,” he said. “I think she’s dead,” he added, shoving his hands in his pockets. Evelyn noticed blood on the rubble. Through cracks in the rock, she could see hints of skin, and in the corner, she saw the woman’s slender arm poking through. “What happened?” Trevor asked. “I don’t know,” Evelyn said, wondering the same thing. “An explosion underneath the street. It happens,” a gruff voice said, as others whispered and murmured around them. “Something causes a spark, and something else ignites. Boom!” Cam wiped a tear from the corner of her eye while Trevor continued to gaze down at the crater with his jaw hanging open. Firetrucks and ambulances appeared, sirens screaming, quickly drowning out the chatter. Evelyn and her colleagues stepped back to allow the responders access. In a matter of minutes, Main Street crawled with clusters of police officers, paramedics, and townies curious to see the hole. The police sectioned it off with yellow tape as the paramedics dug through the rubble. Everyone watched as the responders pulled a woman’s lifeless body out from under the debris, put her onto a stretcher, and covered her with a white sheet. The license in her pocket indicated a name that no one in the crowd recognized, probably just someone passing through from a nearby town. Still, it was a sad moment, which the people on the street acknowledged with a collective silence. In the distance, Evelyn spotted officer Ed Crowley’s plump silhouette among the police officers standing by the hole. She waved to him, and he walked out to meet her. “It’s just terrible,” he said, taking off his service cap and wiping the sweat from his sloping brow. “Ed, what happened?” “One of the underground electric cables. It went off and ignited the gasses under the street. Methane mixed with hydrogen sulfide is flammable and highly explosive. Boom,” he said, gesturing an explosion with his hands. “It’s a tragedy. They called the electric company. They’ll fix it so it won’t happen again.” “Do you know who she was? The woman who died…” “Never seen her before. Just some nice woman from Old Bedford, it seems.” “We heard the explosion from the office,” Evelyn said, pointing over her shoulder at the storefront window bearing her company name, EM Realty. “Why don’t you go on inside then? Nothing else to worry about tonight,” Ed said in an assuring tone. “Okay. Thank you, Ed.” “Good to see you,” he added, putting his cap back on. He turned and walked back toward the scene of the accident, which was now completely encircled with yellow police tape to keep onlookers at bay. Evelyn and her team returned inside. When they could no longer see flashing lights from inside the office, it was quiet again. Evelyn and Cam returned to their desks, but Trevor stayed by the window, eagerly watching the street scene as if things were just about to begin. The three of them were the only ones at the office that early spring day. They’d seen a very busy real estate market that first quarter and everyone had done exceptionally well. For that reason, Evelyn didn’t worry about office etiquette or micromanaging her agents that much anymore. Only two days prior, Trevor had marched into the office triumphantly, his blonde hair slicked back, wearing his gray pinstripe suit, announcing he’d signed up four new listings in a week. He pointed to the manilla folders in Cam’s hands as she smiled with her hair tucked neatly behind her ears. Technically, Cam was his “team member,” which everyone preferred to say, but Trevor insisted on calling her his assistant. She didn’t mind. Only twenty-four, extremely hardworking, and the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Cam wasn’t in the business for titles and accolades. As managing broker, Evelyn was pleased to know that her other agents, Blake and Sheryl, were busy with multiple clients as well. As a salesperson, Evelyn enjoyed a lucrative quarter, too, with three new listings of her own in March alone. April was coming fast, and the warming weather and longer days always inspired an uptick in real estate activity, year after year. She felt confident her office was ready to tackle that business head-on. The final hours of the workday ticked by quickly, and shortly after 7pm, Trevor and Cam packed their things and went out of the door together. They exited onto an empty street, with only a single police car parked in front of the sectioned-off hole. Only