There weren't words to describe how cold and slimy his thoughts were in her mind. Everything in her recoiled, yet she made herself stand still and silent, ignoring her surroundings until she saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing except that voice in her mind.
That presence.
I knew you'd come. Knew you'd follow me.
"Where are you?" she whispered, not even aware that she'd shut her eyes, the better to concentrate.
I'm close, little girl. Closer than I've ever been.
"Where?"
Can't you feel my breath on the back of your neck?
She forced herself not to turn, not to betray the icy shiver chilling her all the way to her bones on the warm, humid night.
"Where are you, you bastard?"
Fast as you were, I got here before you. I've been waiting, little girl.
"God damn you-"
I've left you a present.
Riley's eyes flew open and she jerked as though physically struck. "No," she murmured. "Oh, no…"
He had left her another victim to find. Another butchered body. Another family destroyed.
She had failed. Again.
Poor little girl. In such pain. But don't worry. You'll get another chance. We'll meet again, Riley.
Present Day
"Riley?"
Dragging her mind back from the past, fighting to focus on the here and now, Riley had to wonder why, if she was sleeping with this man, she hadn't told him the real reason she'd come to Opal Island.
Had she trusted him before the Taser attack? Or was there, among her lost memories, a reason why she had allowed him to share her bed without sharing her truths?
But she had already taken the leap of faith, so she pushed the doubts aside, drew a breath, and answered him honestly.
"Gordon got in touch just before I came down here. The fires, the signs and symbols pointing to the occult, worried him. He's seen enough of the world, walked through enough jungles, to know when something bad is walking there too. He believed something was going on and that it was going to get worse. He asked me to check it out. Unofficially, of course. When he called, I'd just come off a case, I had vacation time piling up, and the unit wasn't busy. So my boss okayed it. Not a formal investigation, just a favor for a friend."
"Why didn't you tell me, Riley? We talked about the arson, the way people were getting edgy-even about the possibility of occult activities. You told me the occult was one of your specialties in the SCU. You never said it was why you'd come here."
Because I didn't trust you enough? Because I was afraid-or knew-that you were involved? Or only because for the first time my personal life meant more to me than my professional one and I didn't want them to get tangled?
Why couldn't she think straight? Why couldn't she make up her damn mind about him?
"Riley?"
"I don't know. I don't know why. I don't remember, Ash."
Once again, his eyes narrowed. "You don't remember? Do you mean it isn't just whatever happened on Sunday night that you can't recall?"
She nodded reluctantly. "When I woke up on Monday, most of the last three weeks was pretty much a blank."
"Pretty much?" A lawyer's determination to get things straight.
"Almost entirely," she admitted. "There were flashes. Faces. Threads of memory that vanished like smoke when I tried to catch hold of them. I had to be told, by Gordon and by my boss, what I was doing here."
"Then you didn't remember us."
"No," Riley said. "I didn't remember us."
"You sure as hell fooled me," Ash said.
Riley looked at him for a moment, then unfastened her seat belt and got out of the Hummer. She headed for the entrance to the dog park, not surprised that the area was deserted but for the bored deputy standing guard at the break in the fence near the woods.
Murders made people nervous. Particularly gruesome murders with possible satanic elements made them downright panicky. Riley figured most dog owners were taking their pets to the beach for exercise these days.
"Riley-"
When he grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him, she almost reacted in self-defense. Almost. Those instincts, at least, were very much alive in her, and that training went so deep it was an ingrained part of her character; her father had begun teaching her how to throw a larger opponent over her shoulder-and disable said opponent-before she started kindergarten.
She was more than a little surprised she hadn't taken Ash's head off. Interesting, that. Important? She didn't know.
She looked at the hand gripping her arm, not moving or speaking until he swore under his breath and released her. Then she merely folded her arms and waited.
"Look, if anybody has a right to be pissed about this, I think it's me," he said, keeping his voice low so that the deputy some yards away wouldn't hear.
"Oh, really?" She stared up at him, matching his quiet steel with her own. "Somebody attacked me. He or she put a stun gun to the back of my head and emptied electrical current into my brain. And not just the electrical current standard in a Taser, meant to temporarily incapacitate. This was an amped-up weapon, Ash, a weapon quite probably intended to kill. It didn't kill me, but it put me down and it damn sure screwed up more than my memory. So forgive me if I chose to pretend nothing had happened for a few days while I tried to figure out who the hell I could trust."
"So far," Leah said to the sheriff, "nothing unusual's shown up in any of the background checks."
He scowled. "What, not even a parking ticket?"
"I didn't say that." She handed a printout across the desk. "Three of them have bad credit ratings."
Jake eyed her. "Are you being funny?"
"Obviously not." She perched on the arm of one of his visitor's chairs, smiling faintly. "I'm just saying that not a single one of them has a criminal record of any kind. A few court appearances on civil matters-divorce, child custody, a property dispute-but absolutely nothing criminal. As far as we've been able to determine, the group in the Pearson house is clean."
He grunted. "Unless somebody gave us a false name."
"They had I.D.," she pointed out.
"And how hard is that to fake in this day and age? Hell, you can buy a new identity on the Internet."
Patient, she said, "The paper trail looks genuine."
"Yeah, yeah." He frowned down at the report she'd given him. "Keep digging."
"And when we hit bottom?"
"Dig a little deeper."
"Right." She stood up, but paused before turning toward the door to say, "You know, if we don't find anything, and they don't want to talk to us, we won't have a legal leg to stand on in questioning them about the murder. Not one thing we've found so far ties any of them to the scene, and until we find out who the victim was…"
"That's another thing I don't get," Jake said. "We should have an I.D. by now. With the size of this county, we've had time to talk to nearly every soul; we've certainly had time to knock on every door."
"Almost," she said. "Tim thinks by the end of the day our teams will have done that. Every door on the island, at least, and most of those in Castle. The whole county will take a few more days."
"We need more people," he muttered.
She hesitated, then said, "Well, in general we don't need them."
"Don't remind me that I could call in the state police."
"I don't have to remind you." Leah shrugged. "Anyway, they'd have to waste time getting up to speed before they'd be any real help. I'm betting Riley's going to make the difference here."
"I'm not so sure about that." Before she could respond, he added, "She and Ash still in the conference room?"
"No, they left a little while ago."
"To go where?"
"Didn't say."