Nobody took him up on the offer.
Chapter Fifteen
THE NAME AUDREY on a bracelet seemed to mean little, or at least didn't appear to help them narrow their search in any way. Jordan reported three Audreys on the current tax rolls of Prophet County all of them born in Venture, likely to be buried here, and none having living husbands or living sons.
"Not that I'd expect to find her here anyway," Hollis said. "Unless our killer came home when he came to Venture. And somehow… that doesn't feel likely."
"So why did he come here?" Dani said. She rubbed the back of her neck, tired because it had been a very long day and because she hadn't been all that rested to begin with. "Why choose Venture as his latest hunting ground?"
"The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question," Paris agreed. "There has to be something that brought him here, of all places. Something Venture has that every other small town in the South lacks. And we don't have a clue what that is."
Marc got to his feet, saying, "All I know is that I've spent at least an hour longer than I should have in this room today. I need some air. Come on, Dani, I think you do too."
Hollis looked at Paris with mock sadness. "I feel unloved."
"And unwanted," Paris added.
They stared at each other, this time with real frowns.
"Weird," Hollis said. "Déjà vu."
"Yeah, me too."
Dani had no idea what they were talking about. She was fairly certain she wasn't up to sparring with Marc, but she'd also had more than her fill of this conference room and the brutal exercise of trying to put together the puzzle pieces of a monster's insane mind.
She got up and headed for the door, saying only, "If you guys come up with any bright new ideas, sing out."
Paris waved an absent hand, her attention already fixed once again on the open file on the table in front of her.
"At least she's not thinking about Dan or the divorce," Marc offered quietly as they walked down the hall toward the bullpen and main reception areas of the sheriff's department.
"The silver lining?"
"Why not?"
Dani didn't say anything to that until they were out on the sidewalk, both turning automatically toward the distant center of town because it was a pleasant walk on a pleasant late afternoon.
On most days, at least.
" Paris said-" She stopped herself.
"What did Paris say?"
"Nothing. It doesn't matter."
Marc nodded to a passerby who had lifted a hand in greeting, and said, "Dani, I wish you'd stop censoring your instincts and impulses around me."
She blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me. You did the same thing years ago. Drove me nuts. I couldn't decide if it was me you didn't trust or yourself, and every time I tried to find out, you did your classic avoidance thing and managed to distract me. Somehow."
Dani glanced at him. "Was that what I was doing?"
"Hell, you've known the right buttons to push with me since you were about seventeen."
She cleared her throat. "You probably shouldn't tell me that. I might take advantage."
"Feel free."
It was at least the second time he had said something like that, but more than his matter-of-fact tone made Dani choose not to go down that path with him. Here and now, at least.
She knew damn well she was too tired for that. Plus, her head was still throbbing dimly, at least in part because she was trying to shield her mind and wasn't at all sure she could even manage the unfamiliar bit of psychic protection.
That voice. That damn voice. She never wanted to hear it again. And she was terrified it was somehow connected to some part of her deeper than her thoughts.
As if he hadn't expected her to respond, Marc continued, "I was certain it had to do with trust. Then we had that shared experience in one of your vision dreams, and I thought I knew for certain. Because you were gone within a week."
"It wasn't you. I mean, it wasn't about trust."
"Then what was it about?"
Dani wondered vaguely why this seemed easier to talk about as they walked slowly along, not looking at each other. Was that it? Or had everything up to now just made this possible?
"Some things have to happen just the way they happen, Dani. And when they happen." Miranda shrugged. "No matter what we see or what we dream, the universe has a plan."
"Dani?"
Was it just a matter of timing? She hesitated, then said, "It was about… those monsters I see. Evil people doing terrible things. Horrible events I can't stop. I… didn't want to be that girl, not to you."
"That girl?"
"Cassandra." She heard a shaky laugh escape her. "The voice of doom. I never see good things, remember, Marc? I never see happy things. Happy endings. I just see monsters."
"Dani-"
" Paris said that's why I left Venture. That I thought I could take the monsters away with me. All the monsters. So the people I left behind here would be… safe. But that's not what happened. Your mother still died of the cancer I saw-we saw-take her. And other monsters I saw, like Danny, stayed here. I guess some were always here and always will be. But…"
Marc waited.
"But then I came back. And I'm afraid… I brought this monster here. Somehow. I brought this evil to Venture."
Marc stopped and turned her to face him, his hands on her shoulders. "Bullshit."
She heard another unsteady laugh escape and hoped it didn't sound as out of control as she felt. "Yeah, that's all I needed to hear, one good, resounding bullshit. That'll fix everything."
He was smiling faintly. His hands tightened on her shoulders. "Listen to me. You are not Cassandra. Not the voice of doom. And you did not bring monsters to Venture when you came back here or take them away when you left. The monsters just are, Dani. Part of life. The darkness most of us try to keep at bay. The difference is that sometimes you can see them coming, that's all."
"And what good is that if I can't change what I see?" she asked, even as a part of her wondered if that was, for some reason she had yet to fathom, actually happening this time. If she was changing what she had seen, had maybe already changed it.
If she was even making things worse than she had seen.
"The monsters keep winning, Marc."
"Dani-"
"What if this one wins too?"
Saturday, October 11
Roxanne really did like dogs but knew her brother had been right in advising her not to wake the neighborhood with her postmidnight visit, so she took care to be as quiet as possible as she moved toward the abandoned textile mill.
Defunct. The word is defunct.
"And every time you say it," she whispered, "it sounds weirder. But never mind that. Take a gander at the neighborhood and tell me if you sense anything wrong."
Okay, hang on a minute.
She waited in the shadows of what had once been a small gas station of the cozy type seldom seen these days, wondering again why this seemingly prosperous little town could boast so many abandoned buildings. So many defunct businesses. And why it didn't seem to bother anyone to leave the structures standing as is rather than tear them down or re-purpose them.
She wasn't quite as suspicious by nature as Gabriel was, but anomalies nagged at her, and this was the biggest one she'd seen in Venture.
Well, barring the serial-killer thing.
I'm not getting anything. In fact, it's damn quiet for a Friday night.
"Saturday morning now," Roxanne pointed out softly as she moved from the shadows and continued on her way.
Either way, it's a bit strange, if you ask me.
"We've both seen most of what there is to see of this town, Gabe, and I didn't notice any nightclubs or bars." She continued to whisper, her voice hardly more than a breath of sound.