Wake to Darkness
Maggie Shayne
Rachel de Luca’s uncanny sense of perception is the key to her success as a self-help celebrity. Even before she regained her sight, she had a gift for seeing people’s most carefully hidden secrets. But the secret she shares with Detective Mason Brown is one she has promised to keep.As for Mason, he sees Rachel more clearly than she’d like to admit. After a single night of adrenaline-fueled passion, they have agreed to keep their distance—until a string of murders brings them together again. Mason thinks that he can protect everyone he loves, including Rachel, by taking them to a winter hideaway, but danger follows them up the mountain.As guests disappear from the snowbound resort, the race to find the murderer intensifies. Rachel knows she’s a target. Will acknowledging her feelings for Mason destroy her—or save them both and stop a killer?
Stranded with a murderer…
Rachel de Luca’s uncanny sense of perception is the key to her success as a self-help celebrity. Even before she regained her sight, she had a gift for seeing people’s most carefully hidden secrets. But the secret she shares with Detective Mason Brown is one she has promised to keep. As for Mason, he sees Rachel more clearly than she’d like to admit.
After a single night of adrenaline-fueled passion, they have agreed to keep their distance—until a string of murders brings them together again. Mason thinks that he can protect everyone he loves, including Rachel, by taking them to a winter hideaway, but danger follows them up the mountain.
As guests disappear from the snowbound resort, the race to find the murderer intensifies. Rachel knows she’s a target. Will acknowledging her feelings for Mason destroy her—or save them both and stop a killer?
Praise for the novels of Maggie Shayne
“Shayne crafts a convincing world, tweaking vampire legends just enough to draw fresh blood.”
—Publishers Weekly on Demon’s Kiss
“This story will have readers on the edge of their seats and begging for more.”
—RT Book Reviews on Twilight Fulfilled
“A tasty, tension-packed read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water
“Tense…frightening…a page-turner in the best sense.”
—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice
“Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”
—Romance Reviews Today on Darker Than Midnight
[winner of a Perfect 10 award]
“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.”
—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster
“A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man
“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner
on The Gingerbread Man
Kiss of the Shadow Man is a “crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”
—RT Book Reviews
Wake to Darkness
Maggie
Shayne
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to Eileen Fallon, my literary agent and sister-friend. Her keen eye and experience in the business, her ability to tell me gently and tactfully when I’m off track, and to scream loudly and boisterously with me when I nail it, her support and encouragement for more years than either of us will ever admit to, even under torture, are among the most valuable tools in my writer’s toolkit. And her friendship is one of the most cherished gifts I’ve ever received. Thank you, Eileen.
Contents
Prologue (#udbd7c185-330b-5cb1-85c5-55696dc11273)
Chapter 1 (#u9d097025-a1b1-5b06-b29f-775a0b782167)
Chapter 2 (#uf18e2bdf-7176-52b1-b6d7-dfff83ecdc13)
Chapter 3 (#u80ff1ad3-d4b4-58cf-880e-38a9876cafa6)
Chapter 4 (#u6f67dddb-4aaf-52aa-95dc-be2db83b6e30)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Marissa Siorse’s new lease on life wasn’t supposed to end this way. Lying on her back on the cold ground, unable to move any part of her body. Her mouth was open wide as she tried and tried to breathe, and failed. Her lungs wouldn’t obey her brain’s commands. Her eyes were open just as wide, as the horror of what was happening played out in front of them. She wished she could close them, but she couldn’t, so she tried to focus on the leafless branches of the tree above her, and the sky beyond that. Blue, with soft, puffy clouds.
Then the ski-mask-covered face loomed over her, blocking out the sky. One gloved hand used a scalpel to slice the front of her dress open from hem to collar, laying her bare to the elements. To the cold. To the blade. That same hand had jammed a needle into her neck only minutes earlier, as she’d gotten into her car after a lunch date with her husband. She’d dressed up for him. Things were good between them. Better than ever. They hadn’t been. Life had been nothing but fear and struggle, up until her miracle. Back in August she’d been given a new pancreas. And after that, life had become a dream. She was strong now, maybe back to one hundred percent at this point, and looking forward to spending the rest of her life in the pink of health.
She’d had no idea that would be so short a time.
God, she was cold. Tears blurred her vision as she thought about her two kids. Erin was fourteen, halfway through her freshman year of high school and just now starting to get comfortable there. Cheerleading had been the ticket that got her through. And Mikey... Mikey was only eight. He needed his mother. And Paul. What the hell was Paul going to do without her?
Black spots started popping in and out of her vision. She wasn’t getting any oxygen to her brain. She was suffocating.
And then the hand brought the scalpel sharply across her skin, leaving a path of fiery pain just below her rib cage. Inside her mind, Marissa’s screams drowned out every other thought. But on the outside, she just lay there, still and silent. Until she died.
1
Friday, December 15
If the bullshit I wrote was true, I wouldn’t have been standing with my back to the man I’d most love to bone, saying “No.” Because if the bullshit I wrote was true, the question he’d just asked me would have been an entirely different one, instead of the one he’d asked, which had been, “Will you help me investigate another creepy fucking case that might get us both killed?”
Okay, those weren’t his exact words, but they might as well have been.
I was in Manhattan, in a TV station greenroom, getting ready for my live segment, and having him there was throwing me way off my game. Way off. I was tingling in places I shouldn’t be tingling, and remembering our one-night stand two months ago.
I should be remembering what happened after. The serial killer who damn near offed us both.
Mason Brown moved his oughtta-be-illegal bod around in front of me so I couldn’t not look at him. I knew he knew that. “I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that. Should have started with hello. You look great, Rachel. Really great.”
“It’s the makeup. They overdo it for TV.”
“It’s not the makeup.” He tried his killer smile on me. A fucking saint would steam up at those dimples. “I’ve missed you. What’s it been, a month?”
Three weeks since I’ve seen him. Thanksgiving. Two months, nineteen days and around twenty hours since we’d had sex, last time I checked, but I’ll be damned if I’ll say that out loud. “Something like that.”
“Too long, any way you count it.”
“We agreed that we—” I waved my hand between us “—would be a bad idea.”
“Yeah, but I thought that meant we wouldn’t date.” And by date he meant screw. “Not that we wouldn’t ever see each other again.”
Except that seeing him made me want to jump his bones. Hence the not-seeing-each-other part. But I couldn’t tell him that, either.
“Look, Mason, I have five minutes before I have to be on that stage, in front of a live studio audience, hawking my new book, and you’re really throwing me off my Zen.”
“You have Zen?”
I closed my eyes. “No, but I fake it beautifully when I’m not...” Don’t finish that sentence. “What makes you think I’d be any help, anyway? I only connected with the Wraith because he had your brother’s heart, along with his penchant for murder, and I have your brother’s eyes, and we connected in some woo-woo way I’m still not sure I believe. It was a fluke, and it’s over. I’m no crime fighter.”
He put both hands on my shoulders. Yeah, that’s right, touch me and make it even harder for me not to rip your shirt off, you clever SOB. “Just give me a chance to tell you about the case. Come on, please?”
I closed my eyes, sighed hard and dropped my head to one side. When I opened my eyes again, he was flashing those damned dimples. He knew he had me. Hell, he’d had me at hello. The bastard.
“Buy me lunch after I finish up here and I’ll let you bend my ear, but that’s it, Mason.”
The door opened. “Two minutes, Ms. de Luca,” said the curly head that poked through.
I nodded and looked at Mason. His hands were still on my shoulders, and his smile had faded into an “I want to kiss your face off” sort of look.
I licked my lips, then wished I hadn’t. I reminded myself of all the reasons we’d decided not to “date.” I’d been blind for twenty years. Now I wanted to live my life as a sighted adult for a while before sharing it with anyone else. That made sense, didn’t it?
I couldn’t look at him. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Okay.”
“Fine.” I turned away from him and tried to school my face into that of a spiritually enlightened guru who could change every viewer’s life for a mere $17.99 in hardcover or $22.99 for the audiobook, plus tax where applicable. Only a fool would wait for the paperback or ebook versions, though they would be cheaper.
Mason sighed. Maybe in disappointment that I didn’t seem as glad to see him as he’d seemed to see me. A lot he knew. My inner idiot was doing cartwheels.
The door opened again. Polly-Production-Assistant came all the way in this time. “Ready?”
“Sure am.” Not even close.
She took my arm and led me out the door and through a maze of hallways. Mason was following right along behind us.
I turned to shoot him down over my shoulder. “I thought you were gonna wait in the greenroom?”
“I want to watch the taping. That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Oh, sure, it’s fine,” said Polly or whatever the hell her real name was. “We’re in a commercial break, on in thirty seconds.”
She dragged me through a set of big double doors, and then we high-stepped over masses of writhing cables onto the set, stopping along the way so someone could run a mike up my back, under my dressy black jacket, over my shoulder and clip it to my flouncy lapel.
“Say something.”
“Mike check,” I said, looking through the window to where the sound guys wore headsets suitable for a firing range. “How’s it sound?”
They gave me unanimous thumbs-up, and I headed for the sofa. The show’s host, failed comedienne Mindy Becker, got up to shake my hand, then I sat down in the most flattering manner, uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa, legs crossed at the ankles, one hand resting lightly atop the other on my thigh. I wet my lips and plastered a great big smile on my face. I tried with everything in me to forget that Detective Mason Brown was standing a few yards away, watching my every move and hopefully wanting me as much as I was wanting him. He’d better be.
He knew my deepest secret, too, I thought. The secret only those closest to me knew. That I didn’t really believe in what I wrote. That I was a skeptic, feeding the gullible a steady diet of what they most wanted to hear—that the power to change their lives was in their hands—and laughing all the way to the bank.
And then the director said, “In three, two...” and pointed a finger at us.
“We’re back!” Mindy told the camera. “Joining us now is the bestselling author of Wish Yourself Rich, the book that’s sweeping the nation and changing lives, while spending its fifth week on the New York Times bestseller list. After going blind at the age of twelve, Rachel de Luca, the author who’s been teaching us how to make our own miracles for five years now, experienced one of her own when her eyesight was restored by a cornea transplant this past August.” She swung her head my way. “Welcome to the show, Rachel. I’m so glad to have you.”
“Thanks, Mindy. It’s great to be here.”
“I want you to know that I have read this...” Mindy picked up a copy from the arm of her chair. “...this gem,” she said, “from cover to cover, and I loved it so much I got copies for every single member of today’s studio audience as an early Christmas present.”
Applause, applause.
“I can’t tell you how deeply this book touched me.”
“Thanks, and thanks for saying that.”
“While the title is Wish Yourself Rich, this book is about so much more. About creating our own experiences, and actually having the lives we dream of. A lot of spiritual leaders today are saying many of the same things that you say in these pages, but, Rachel, you are the only one who is living, breathing, undeniable proof that it’s true.”
More applause.
“Why don’t we start at the beginning? You went blind at the age of twelve.”
I nodded. “It was a gradual process, but yes, eventually, I woke up one morning completely unable to see.”
“What was the last thing you remember seeing?”
Oh, good question. “It was my brother Tommy’s face.”
She made a sympathetic sound. “This is the brother you lost earlier this year?”
“Yes, just before I got my transplant. He was the victim of a serial killer.”
She set the book on her lap and, frowning, put her hands over mine. “How do you manage to have something like that happen and not let it rock your faith? You are so positive, so certain that we create what we focus on. How did you come to terms with your brother’s murder?”
It was not the first time I’d had this question. Thankfully, I was prepared for it. I wrote this crap for a living, after all. “Tommy’s journey was his own. I can’t know what his higher self intended for him, or why his life had to end the way it did. I only know that I have two choices. I can be at peace with knowing that he is at peace, trusting that everything happens for a reason and that I will know what those reasons are when my own time comes to cross to the other side, or I can wallow in misery and ask ‘why me’ and ‘why him’ and resent the universe for being so cruel. My brother is going to be just as dead, either way.”
“That is so deep,” Mindy said, shaking her head slowly. “So deep.”
“We get hung up when we think our happiness is dependent on circumstances outside ourselves. I’d be happy if only this would happen, we say, or if only that hadn’t happened. We have to let go of that and realize that happiness is a choice. When we can choose to be happy in spite of what’s going on outside us rather than because of it, when we can stop letting circumstances dictate how we feel, that is true empowerment.”
“That’s amazing. ‘Happiness is a choice.’ That’s so good.”
I smiled humbly. It really was one of my best nuggets of manure, that one. I rearranged this particular piece of...wisdom slightly after every interview, so it sounded fresh. Hell, I knew a thousand ways to say it by now. It was the core message of seven bestsellers.
“So did you always know you would get your eyesight back one day?”
“Not at all,” I said. “In fact, I’d pretty much given up on it. I’d had cornea transplants before, but I was one of those rare individuals who rejected them every time. And I rejected them violently. My doctor had to convince me that it was worth trying again with a new procedure.” That, at least, was true.
“And it worked.” Mindy clapped her hands to emphasize the words. “What was the first thing you saw after the bandages came off?”
“My sister’s face,” I said, again speaking the truth.
“Oh, that’s beautiful,” Mindy said in an emotional falsetto, blinking rapidly.
“So is she.”
Applause, applause.
Note to self, use that line again.
“So if we create our own experiences according to where we put our focus, how do you think you attracted your blindness?”
Because life sometimes sucks, and I drew the short straw. Because bad shit happens, and it doesn’t make any sense at all and it never will.
I nodded sagely while I pulled the appropriate well-rehearsed reply from my archives. I had them for all the tough questions. “Until we know that our thoughts and focus create our lives,” I said, “we sort of create by default. Our higher selves guide us toward the life we’re supposed to lead, and we either go with the flow or fight tooth and nail. I believe this was simply a part of my journey in this lifetime. I think I had agreed to it before I ever incarnated.”
“Really?” she said. “You really think all those years of blindness happened to you for a reason?”
“Absolutely.” Because I had shitty luck.
“And have you reached any conclusions about what that reason might have been?”
“I think I’ve pieced together some of it, but not all. I don’t think I’ll know all of it until I’m on the other side, looking back, reviewing my life and the lessons it taught me. But I do know that being blind led me to my career of writing self-help (bullshit) books like the ones my family used to (push on me) get for me when I was going through hard times. It led me to dear friends I might not have made otherwise, people in my transplant support group, the best friend I ever had in my life, Mott Killian, who’s since passed over himself, and my dog, of course.”
And Mason Brown. It led me to him. When he hit me with his car because I stormed into a crosswalk, blind as a bat and too mad to be careful. Helluva coincidence that he ended up donating his brother’s corneas to me later that same day. Helluva coincidence.
A big smile split Mindy’s face, and she lifted the book again, opened the back cover and turned it toward the camera, which caught a close-up of Myrtle sitting in the passenger seat of my precious inspiration-yellow T-Bird with the top down, wearing her goggles and yellow scarf, and “smiling” at the camera as only a bulldog could do, bottom teeth sticking up over her upper lip.
The audience laughed, then applauded again.
“Myrtle is blind, too,” I said. “I might not have taken in a blind old dog if I hadn’t been through what I had.” Odd, that was sappy as hell, and yet it was the absolute truth. Just like the bit I’d been thinking about the way Mason and I met. I should really be using this stuff more. But it made me uncomfortable to point to true things in order to prove my false claims. Muddied the waters. I liked clear lines between real life and my fictional nonfiction.
“That’s beautiful,” Mindy said. “That’s just beautiful. Thank you so much, Rachel. It’s been a pleasure having you. I hope you’ll come back.”
“Thank you, Mindy. I’d love to.”
She faced the camera again, holding up the book. “Grab a copy of Rachel de Luca’s Wish Yourself Rich, available now in hardcover and audio wherever books are sold.”
Applause, applause, applause.
“And we’re clear!” called the director.
I relaxed and automatically turned to see if Mason was still there.
He was. But he was looking at me with his head tipped slightly to one side, like Myrtle when I say the word food. Or the word eat or the word hungry or any word remotely related to a meal.
He’d just seen a Rachel de Luca he’d probably never met before. The public one. And now he was going to berate me for it throughout an entire lunch. This should be pleasant. Not.
* * *
Mason had never seen the side of Rachel he’d witnessed on that stage. He had read her books—the last three, anyway—and he’d skimmed the others. They were pretty much all the same—all about positive thinking and creative visualization and everything happening for a reason. He would probably have read more, because the message was so uplifting and empowering, if he hadn’t known that she didn’t believe it herself. Not a word of it.
It was the one thing he’d never liked about her. God knew he liked everything else about her a little too much. But that she was selling this spiel to the masses when she didn’t believe in it felt a little too cold, too calculating. It was a side of her that he found hard to take.
But today, just now, he’d seen a hint of something else. She might say she didn’t believe the stuff she wrote about. She might even think she didn’t believe it. But she wanted to. She had practically emanated a glow on that soundstage when she was going on about her positive thinking message. He was beginning to think it might not be an act at all.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.
She’d kept the mask in place as she’d said her goodbyes to her hostess, and the entire time she’d signed autographs for the respectable-sized group who’d gathered outside on the sidewalk, despite the fact that it was cold and starting to snow. Then the crowd fell away as they walked up the sidewalk to find a place for lunch.
“It’s a great time of year to be in the city,” he said.
She nodded. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was all lit up, and every store window was decked to the nines. “I wish I could stay, but I’ve gotta get home to the kids.”
“Kids? Don’t tell me you got another dog.”
“No, Myrtle’s plenty. My niece Misty is dog-sitting, though.”
“At your place?”
She nodded.
“You’re a brave woman, leaving a seventeen-year-old alone in your home overnight.”
“Amy’s staying over, too.”
He grinned. “I don’t think your assistant is going to be much help, unless it’s to buy the booze for the inevitable party.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” she quipped. “Amy may be all Goth-chick on the outside, but she’s super responsible, and besides, she hasn’t forgotten that I saved her ass a month ago.”
“We saved her ass a month ago.”
“Well, yeah. You helped.”
He laughed and meant it. It had been a while since that had happened. “Why only one twin with the dog-sitting? Is your other niece a cat person?”
“My sister and Jim took Christy with them for a two-week Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. She got the time off school but had to take her assignments along and promise to bring them back finished.”
“And Misty didn’t go?”
“Misty had the flu. Or at least she convinced my gullible sister that’s what it was. Frankly, I think it was more a case of not wanting to leave her latest boyfriend behind. The priorities of love-struck teens never fail to make me gag.” She did the finger-down-the-throat thing to make her point.
“I’ve missed the hell outta you,” he said, smiling at her gross gesture as if she were a supermodel posing in front of a wind machine. Then he added, “And your little dog, too.”
“She’s missed you, too.”
But he noticed that she didn’t say she had.
“Corner Deli?” she asked.
She’d stopped walking, and it took him a beat to realize she was suggesting that they should eat at the establishment whose wreath-and-bell-bedecked door they were currently blocking. He opened it. It jingled, and she preceded him in. They joined the line to the counter, ordered, and then she picked out a table to wait for their food. She headed for the quietest table in the crowded, noisy place. “Ahh, New York,” she said. “The only place where you can order a twenty-five-dollar sandwich that will arrive with a pound of meat and two square inches of bread.”
“And it’ll be worth every nickel.”
“Hell, yes, it will.” She was sparkling. Her eyes, her smile, told him she was as glad to see him again as he was to see her, whether she was willing to say it out loud or not. “So how are the nephews? I’ll bet this is a hard time for them.”
“It’s rough. Their first Christmas without their dad. It’s hard on all of us.”
She nodded slowly. “It’s my first holiday without my brother, too. I think that’s probably why Sandra wanted to get away. It’s too hard.”
“It’s rough. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if they knew the truth about Eric.” He looked at her as he said that. It was one of about a million things he’d been dying to talk to her about.
“No, Mason,” she whispered. “No one would be better off knowing their father, husband or son was a serial killer. No one. Trust me on this.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s been eating at me. Keeping that secret.”
“You did the right thing.”
God, he’d needed to hear her say that again. He didn’t know why, didn’t need to know why. It was a relief, that was all.
“They must have that new baby sister by now, though, right? Marie was out to here last time I—”
“Stillborn,” he said softly.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, Mason. I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
“You should’ve called.”
“What good would that have done?”
She blinked real tears from her eyes. “Poor Marie. First her husband and then her baby. I’d ask how she’s doing, but...” She just shook her head.
“Yeah, she’s having a hard time of it. Keeps saying she’s being punished.”
“For what, for heaven’s sake?”
He shook his head. “She’s grieving. We can’t expect her to make sense.”
“And the boys?”
“Josh is good. He’s eleven, you know? It’s Christmas. They bounce back at that age. They spend a lot of weekends at my place, including this one when I get back. I pick them up after school and take ’em to the gym to shoot hoops every Wednesday when they don’t have any other commitments.”
“Josh is good,” she said, homing in on what he’d left out.
She was good at that. Good at reading between the lines, good at sensing the things people didn’t say. He’d never seen anything like the way she could tell when someone was lying and read the emotions behind their words.
“But Jeremy, not so much?” she asked.
“He’s seventeen.” He said it as if that said it all, but then reminded himself that Rachel had nieces, not nephews, and it might not be quite the same. “He’s not bouncing back like Josh. He’s morose. Brooding. Quiet. Withdrawn. Didn’t even go out for basketball this year. Would’ve been his first year playing varsity, too.”
“Sounds like he’s depressed.”
“Marie thinks he’s been drinking. Said she smelled it on his breath when he came in late one night.”
“Shit. I’m so sorry, Mason.”
“It is what it is. They’ll come back around. It just takes time.”
Then he lifted his head and tried to do the same to his mood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. I should be focusing on the positive, right? That’s what your books would tell me to do.”
“It’s hard when there’s so little positive to find,” she said. Then she stabbed him with those insightful eyes of hers. “What about you? How are you doing, Mason?”
He had to think about his answer. “Work’s been busy as hell. We just had a local vet murdered, his office torched with him in it.”
“I read about that. You have any suspects?”
He shrugged. “He and his wife were both having affairs, heading for divorce. The drug cabinet was demolished, no way to tell if anything was missing. Who the hell knows?”
She nodded. “But that’s work. I didn’t ask how work is, I asked how you are.”
He lowered his head. “I don’t know, Rache. I feel like I’m in some kind of limbo. Waiting for something really big and really bad.” He met her eyes again. “Like it’s not finished yet.” He knew that she knew what he was talking about.
“It’s got to be finished,” she said, and she said it really softly. Like she was afraid to press their luck by saying it out loud.
A waitress brought their sandwiches, each accompanied by homemade chips and a six-inch pickle spear. They dug in, ate for a while. She started with the chips. He remembered a line from one of her books. Eat dessert first in case you’re going to choke to death on your broccoli. It made him smile to see her living by those words.
When he was half finished, he rinsed his mouth with coffee and said, “So...about this case. It’s a missing person. The name was familiar, and I realized it was one of Eric’s organ recipients.”
She went still, but only for an instant. Then she just shrugged and kept on eating. “Coincidence.”
“There’s no such thing as coincidence. You wrote that yourself.”
“Every self-help author spews that line. No one even knows who came up with it first. It’s universal. Doesn’t make it true.”
“I kind of think it does.” But he took another bite as he contemplated, and then said, “I figured I should at least ask if you’d had any dreams. Like before.”
“Before, when I was riding along inside the head of a killer, you mean?”
“Inside the head of another person who got one of my brother’s organs. If you can see them when they’re committing crimes, maybe you can see them when they’re the victim of one. Right?”
She bit, chewed, swallowed, taking her time. Delaying her answer. “It was so traumatic before that I think my mind’s kind of...taken over.”
“In what way?”
“Every time I start to dream, I wake up. I have the same startle response you have when you dream you’re falling, you know what I mean?”
He did. “So is it any time you dream at all, or only when it’s one of those...psychic connection dreams?”
“How the hell would I know? The dreams never play out.”
“No dreams ever play out?”
She averted her eyes, and her cheeks turned cherry-red. “Well, sure. Some do.”
Was it crazy for him to hope that blush was because those dreams were about him? And that they were sexy as hell? Like the ones he’d been having about her since he’d seen her last?
“But I can say for sure that I haven’t had any dreams about any harm being done to any people. Besides, you said this was a missing person, not a murder victim, right?”
“Right. It’s a missing person. But...”
“But what?”
“According to the family, this isn’t someone who would just up and vanish. Housewife. Soccer mom. PTA, all that. You know?” He got an idea and ran with it before his brain told him not to. “It would be like if your sister Sandra suddenly just up and vanished. You wouldn’t think she did it voluntarily, right?”
“No, I wouldn’t. Not like when my transient addict brother up and vanished and I assumed he’d just turn up after a while, like he always did. Until he didn’t.”
“I’m sorry. That was a bad— I’m sorry, Rachel.” He covered her hand with his.
She nodded, then twisted her arm to look at her watch. “I have to go.”
“How are you getting back?” he asked.
“Alone, Mason. I’m getting back alone.” She pushed the final chip into her mouth and left half the sandwich on her plate, along with the entire pickle. “Thanks for lunch. I hope things get better for your family soon.”
He nodded. “Thanks. Merry Christmas, Rache.”
“Merry Christmas, Mason.”
2
Friday, December 15
I would never get tired of seeing my home. Not just because I hadn’t been able to see it until this past August, but because it was so freaking beautiful. All steep peaks and those half-round clay shingles on the roof like broken flowerpots. It was partly rich maple wood planks and partly cobblestone, and it always reminded me of a fairy-tale cottage. Only bigger. Way bigger. It sat near the dead end of a long dirt road that bordered the Whitney Point Reservoir, which really looked more like a great big lake. The road and my wrought iron fence were the only things between my place and the shore. There were woods all around me and the giant meadow where the house sat, rising up above the rest like a jewel on top of a crown.
The driveway was gated, because, let’s face it, I’m kind of a big deal. But the gates were open, as they usually were, and I drove right on through and up to the attached garage where my precious T-Bird was parked for the winter, with my niece’s first car parked beside it. She’d still had school this past week, so she’d needed her car to drive back and forth. My winter ride was a Subaru XV Crosstrek, brand-new in tangerine-orange, all-wheel drive with all the extras, and tougher than nails. The thing was more sure-footed in the snow and ice of the rural southern tier of New York State than a mountain goat. I loved it. Not as much as my collectible T-Bird, but it was close. I think Myrtle liked it even better than the yellow ’Bird. Heated leather. She liked her ass warm.
Everything had been brown and barren when I’d left to hit the talk show circuit, but now there was a fluffy blanket of snow on everything. I’d never had eyesight in the winter before. Not since I was twelve, anyway. My fairy-tale cottage looked more like Santa’s workshop now, and the sight of snow clinging to the branches of the towering pines had me gaping like an air-starved trout. And I’d thought fall was gorgeous.
Damn, I love where I live.
I parked outside the garage instead of taking the time to drive in. I wanted to walk in the snow and gawk at my view some more. But as soon as I was out and inhaling my first icy, pine-scented breath, the front door opened, and Myrtle came running right down the steps and along the curving stone path to my feet, where she wiggled against my legs. My gorgeous niece Misty stood in the doorway, shaking her head but grinning.
You couldn’t not love a blind bulldog.
I crouched down and rubbed Myrt’s ears, kissed her face. “Hey, little boodog. Did you miss me?”
“Snarf,” she replied. Which meant, only if you brought me something edible.
Fortunately, I had. “Come on inside and I’ll give you a treat.”
She followed me in, trotting along all on her own. She’d become completely confident in finding her way around her home base. As long as I didn’t leave things out of place, you’d never know she was blind. Away from home she was a lot more dependent, but here, she ruled.
“How was the trip?” Misty asked, moving her tall and impossibly thin frame aside to let Myrtle and me come in. Like there wasn’t already room.
“It was great, but I’m glad to get home.” I gave her a hug. “I brought you something, too, to thank you for taking care of Myrt.”
“It was fun. We watched all your appearances. You really kicked ass, Aunt Rache.”
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” I frowned and sniffed. “What smells so good?”
“Amy’s making you a welcome-home dinner. Pulled pork or something with an equally pornographic name.”
“Ooooh.” I don’t know if I said that, or my stomach did. Amy worked for me, but she was not my cook or housekeeper, so this was above and beyond the call of duty. I didn’t even have a cook or housekeeper and didn’t want one. I liked my space, didn’t like other people poking around in my stuff. I shucked my boots and coat, leaving them where they fell, and headed for the sofa to collapse. “God, it’s good to be home.”
When my short, slightly round assistant and right-hand woman finally emerged from the kitchen to tell us dinner was served, I didn’t want to get up.
“Amy, if we can eat in here I’ll give you a Christmas bonus.”
She grinned, dark red lipstick making her teeth look whiter, thick black eyeliner making her skin look paler. She dressed like an aspiring Addams Family member. “You always give me a Christmas bonus.”
“Then I’ll give you a bigger one. Please?”
She shrugged. “It’s your house.”
“It is, isn’t it? Then I decree we eat in front of the TV like a bunch of real rednecks.”
“I’m gonna bring everything in, then,” Amy said. “You clear off the coffee table.”
I saluted her and cleared off the magazines, books and catalogs with a sweep of my arm. “Done.”
“God help us all,” Amy muttered.
“Give me your keys, Aunt Rache. I’ll go get your luggage for you.”
“You are definitely the good twin. I don’t care what your mother says.” I nodded at my coat, lying like a red puddle by the front door. “They’re in the pocket.”
A few minutes later we ate. My luggage was in my room, my coat and boots magically in the closet, and the gifts from the Big Apple had been delivered. I’d managed to get two signed photos from Rusted Rail, a band they both adored, who’d also been guests on one of the talk shows I’d done. I was no longer sure which one. It was a blur at this point. The girls were thrilled. We talked into the night, and then Amy went home for the first time in several days, and Misty headed up to the guest room.
I walked around the house after it was quiet again. There was no cleanup to do; Amy and Misty had done it for me, knowing I always came back from these trips exhausted. And I was.
But there was more on my mind than being wiped out. I was thinking about Mason Brown’s visit and what he had said, and yes, I was feeling guilty for not telling him everything. The thing was, this phenomenon where I would start to dream, then be immediately startled wide awake, hadn’t been happening all that long. I mean, I’d sort of implied to him that it had been happening ever since we nailed the Wraith and went our separate ways. But it hadn’t. I hadn’t had another one of those terrifying vision-dreams since, so I guess my brain had seen no point in waking me up. Until about two weeks ago, give or take. But it had happened five times since then. I would start to dream, and bam! I’d be sitting straight up in bed with my eyes wide open, that startle reflex waking me right up. And every one of those times I’d been sure the dream I was about to enter wasn’t an ordinary one. It had felt like the other ones. Those terrible, horrible visions when I’d been seeing through the eyes of the serial killer whose heart beat in another man. And whose corneas had restored my eyesight.
Two weeks. That was how long he said the transplant recipient had been missing. A person who had received organs from the same donor. Mason’s brother, Eric, the original Wraith. What if my dreams had been telling me where she was, what had happened to her? What if I could have helped her?
It’s not my job. I’m not a caped crusader, I’m a self-help author.
But what if I could help? I mean, really, was it asking too much to just have a damned dream? Even a nightmare. It couldn’t hurt me, after all. It wasn’t real. It was a dream.
I suppose I could try to let one play out. What harm is there in that?
Images from the earlier visions started to creep in like black ink spilling over my brain, but I shoved them away. “It’s just a missing person,” I told Myrt. “She might be in trouble. I need to let the dream play out, because that’s what any decent human being would do.”
Nodding, my decision firmly made, I headed for the stairs. “Come on, Myrt. Bedtime.”
She was right beside me, hadn’t left my side since I’d gotten home, and she trotted up the stairs, happy as hell. She’d lost a few pounds since I’d adopted her. Our long walks were doing her a world of good, despite the fact that she acted like they were sheer torture.
I took a long hot shower while Myrtle lay on the bathmat in front of the shower doors, snoring. Then I put on my jammies—a white ribbed tank and panties—brushed my teeth and opened my medicine cabinet. There was some PM-style pain reliever, the closest thing I had to a sleep aid. I popped two of them, and then Myrtle and I went to bed.
She walked up her little set of doggy steps, and I knew she’d missed sleeping with me. I wondered where she’d been spending her nights while I’d been gone. With Misty, or in here all alone? She stretched out on top of the covers, as close to me as she could manage. I rolled onto my side and put my arm around her, and she sighed as if all was right with her world again. She was snoring within ten seconds.
And then I closed my eyes and hoped I was wrong. That there would be no vision. That there was no connection between me and the others who’d received organs from my donor. Mason’s brother. The dead serial killer. None at all.
* * *
I was dreaming. I knew I was dreaming because I wasn’t me, I was someone else. I was lying on my back on the ground. I could feel the icy cold earth underneath me and the snow around me. It was freezing. I couldn’t move. I was awake, I was breathing, but I couldn’t move, and I was terrified.
Someone was with me, crouching over me. I angled my eyes until they hurt, but I couldn’t see them, really, because I couldn’t move my head and I was lying flat and naked in the snow.
Naked? No, not quite. I was wearing a dress, but it lay open on either side of me, sliced up the front. I could just make it out in my peripheral vision. I could feel something tight around my waist, like panty hose. And there were shoes on my feet, a little too tight in the toes.
All I could see was the night sky, dotted with stars and—
Ohmygod, something’s cutting me!
An ice-cold blade flashed in my vision and drove into my abdomen, and the pain screamed through me. And I tried to scream, as well, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. It was cutting me. Oh, God, it was cutting me. I felt the blood, warm and running over my naked skin. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe!
I was going to suffocate. Let it be fast! Faster than the cutting! Oh, God, no more.
But there was a tearing, ripping. My lungs seemed to spasm in my chest, hungry for air, but I could not take a breath. Black spots started popping in and out of my vision. My head was going to explode. My torso was on fire with pain, and my heart was pounding like a jackhammer in my chest, or trying to.
Something was torn from my abdomen, and it rose up, into that tiny area within range of my vision. It was pink and dripping, and clutched in a gloved hand. A piece of me!
And then blackness descended. Merciful death caught me in soft hands. The pain went away from me. Or rather, I went away from the pain.
* * *
I screamed until my bedroom door was flung open and Misty stood there with a baseball bat in her hands. She wore cute flannel PJs, and her perfectly straight, perfectly platinum hair was in her face as she shrieked, “What the fuck!”
Hearing that particular word from my seventeen-year-old niece seemed to do the trick. I clamped my jaw and blinked my vision clear, pushed my hair off my own face and turned on the bedside lamp. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Misty, I must have scared the hell out of you.”
“You okay?” She lowered the bat.
It made me proud to think she would come running to my defense if I really was being attacked in my sleep.
“What happened, Aunt Rache?”
Someone paralyzed me and cut out one of my organs while I lay there unable to move. Good God.
“Aunt Rachel?”
“Bad dream, kid. Just a bad dream.”
She heaved a big enough sigh that I knew she’d been truly scared. “Jeeze, I thought someone was murdering you.” She let the bat drag on the floor as she came farther into the room.
Someone was. Only not me. Another of Eric’s organ recipients. Dammit, Mason was right. It isn’t over.
“Aunt Rache? You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. Look, I’m sorry, kiddo. You want to curl up here for the rest of the night?”
“Only if you promise not to wake up screaming again.”
I looked at the clock. 4:00 a.m. The pills would have worn off by now. “I’m pretty sure I won’t.”
“If you do, I swear, I’m gonna hit you with this bat.” She stood it up against the headboard and climbed under the covers.
Myrtle snuggled back down between us and started snoring like a chain saw.
“Hope you don’t mind sharing with a bulldog,” I said.
“She’s been in bed with me every night since you left. I kind of missed her, to be honest.”
“Yeah, she has a way of getting under your skin, doesn’t she? Good night, Misty.”
“Good night, Aunt Rache. Sweet dreams. And that’s an order.”
I turned off the bedside lamp. Of course the night-light was on. I always left the night-light on.
Saturday, December 16
Seeing Rachel again after almost a month had had an impact on Mason that he hadn’t expected. He’d thought their one-night stand had been based on the drama they were going through, and the sense of intimacy between them on the secret they shared. No one else in the world knew the truth about his brother. Or that he’d concealed evidence to protect his family—his mother, his pregnant sister-in-law, his nephews. He loved those boys like his own. No one knew what he’d done but Rachel.
He knew she needed time to figure out who the newly sighted Rachel de Luca was. He’d been relieved by that when she’d said it, because he’d convinced himself that their roll between the sheets hadn’t meant anything special. And he wasn’t ready for anything more than that, anyway. He’d just lost his brother, betrayed his oath of service, become the only father figure in his nephews’ lives. There was no room for anything else.
Even the way he kept thinking about her at odd moments, and the idiotic way he’d set his damned DVR to record anything that had her name attached to it, had seemed like no big deal. But seeing her again...that had hit him like a mallet between the eyes.
And now he was starting to wonder if maybe what connected them was more than just the traumatic situation they’d gone through together, the secret that they shared. Hell, he’d seen through her masks so easily on that talk show yesterday that she’d seemed completely transparent. But she wasn’t, she couldn’t be, or the entire reading public would see through her, too, right?
No, it was only him. And he saw more than the mask she wore, the positive-thinking public persona. He saw through the cynic she thought she was to the real Rachel. And it made him want to see her even more.
A door slamming downstairs reminded him that he wasn’t alone. It was the weekend, and his nephews, who usually showed up on Friday nights, had been delayed an extra twelve hours due to his trip into the city to see Rachel. They would not be put off any longer.
“Uncle Mason!” Joshua yelled. “Aren’t you up yet?”
He rolled onto his side and blinked at the clock. 8:30 a.m. Kids had no respect for sleeping in. Flinging back the covers, he sat up, gave his head time to adjust to being vertical, then shouted back, “I’ll be right down.” He needed a shower, but in the meantime he pulled on pajama bottoms, a T-shirt and a pair of nice thick socks, because his old farmhouse had cold floors. Giving his hair a rudimentary flattening with his hands, he headed downstairs.
Jeremy was in the living room, on the sofa, already manning the Xbox controller. His expressionless eyes were glued to the TV screen, and his brown hair was even longer than it had been last weekend. He refused to get it cut.
“Hey, Jer,” Mason said.
“Hey.”
Nothing, not a flicker. It was par for the course with Jeremy lately. Only a little over four months since his father had shot himself in the head in Mason’s apartment. Two and a half months since the teen had busted into a remote cabin where a madman was about to kill both Mason and Rachel. Jeremy had picked Mason’s gun up off the floor and shot the bastard dead. Just like that. He hadn’t even hesitated. The kid was depressed over the loss of his father, traumatized over having killed a man.
Mason scuffed into the kitchen where Marie had a pot of coffee brewing, and was taking mugs from the cupboard. She looked his way as he entered and smiled, but her eyes were dead, too. Like Jeremy’s. Her smile was fake. Forced. Her baby girl had been stillborn a few weeks ago. Her husband had killed himself three months before that. The woman was so destroyed he thought a stiff wind would knock her over. But she was putting on a brave face for her boys’ sakes, doing the best she could. It validated for him yet again that he’d done the right thing by hiding Eric’s suicide note. The family was barely holding on as it was. Imagine how much worse it would be if they knew that their beloved husband and father was a serial killer.
“Sorry we got here so early,” Marie said. “Josh was in the car with his backpack an hour ago. I put him off as long as I could.”
“It’s fine. I should have been up by now.”
“It’s your downtime. You know you could skip a weekend if you wanted.”
“And do what, sleep till noon and stare at the walls all day? Nah. I need these guys around to keep me from going to pot.”
Once again she smiled because she was supposed to. Her eyes remained stark. Dark circles under them told him she wasn’t sleeping. Her pale skin and sunken cheeks told him she probably wasn’t eating right, either.
How did you know when a grieving wife or son moved from ordinary mourning into a dangerous depression? Where was the line? He was going to have to find out.
The coffee was done, so he took the mugs from her and filled them. “Sit down, Marie. I’m cooking you some breakfast.”
“We already ate.”
“They did. You didn’t. Bacon and eggs, whaddya say?”
She shook her head, but accepted the filled mug and sank into a kitchen chair, holding it between her hands as if she was cold. He spotted Joshua running past the window, red parka, knit hat with a fuzzy ball on top like a character from South Park. He’d taken one of the plastic toboggans from out in the barn. Mason had bought them right after the first snow. Josh was heading up the hill out back with it.
“He loves it here with you,” Marie said. She’d slugged back half the coffee, though it was piping hot.
“I love having him.” Her boots were still on, making puddles under her chair. He frowned. “Are you in a hurry, Marie?”
She followed his gaze and shook her head. “No, just absentminded. I’m sorry about the floor.”
“I’m not worried about the floor. I’m worried about you.”
She met his eyes, but quickly shifted hers away. “Some of my girlfriends are taking me out shopping today. They think it’s time I...got over it. I just don’t know how they think that’s possible.”
“It has to be possible,” he said. “Marie, we all miss Eric, and I know you’re devastated about the baby.”
“Lilly. Her name was Lilly.”
He knew that. It was engraved on the headstone with the little angel above the plot right next to her father’s.
A dozen platitudes came in and out of his mind, things he’d read in Rachel’s books. But he didn’t say any of them, because he thought Marie needed to hold on to her grief a little bit longer. And that was okay. “You have a right to your pain, Marie. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Thank you for that.”
“When you’re ready to start to heal, though, you put your focus on those boys. They’re just as precious as they were before all the losses you’ve suffered. They need you to come back to them.”
She thinned her lips and nodded as if she was hearing him, but he didn’t think she was. “I appreciate you picking up the slack in the meantime.” Then she pushed away from the table and stood up. “I’ve got to go.”
She headed out the door to her car and took off—a little too fast for the road conditions, in his opinion. He’d had a set of studded snow tires put on for her, though, so she should be all right on the road.
But she wasn’t all right emotionally. He knew that.
He carried his coffee mug through the house to the back, passing Jeremy again on the way. He was as morose as his mother. Poor kid. But Mason kept going into the back room, the coldest room in the little farmhouse, which had no real purpose and would, he thought, make a great woodworking shop if he ever followed his intention to learn how to do that sort of thing. Right now it was a catch-all area for anything he didn’t know what to do with. He passed the piles of junk, opened the back door and hollered out to Josh, “I’m making breakfast. You hungry?”
Joshua was at the bottom of the hill, picking himself up out of the snow and preparing to head up again for another ride. He hollered, “Come out and sled with me!”
“I need food and a shower, and then I’ll sled with you.”
“Awwwwl-riiiight.”
“So you gonna eat?”
“How long?”
“Half hour?”
“Okay.”
“That’s about six more trips down the hill, Josh. Count ’em off and come on in, okay?”
Josh nodded and started back up the hill at a pace that made Mason smile. No question. The kid was going to try to get in ten. At least. Mason headed back into the living room, stopped behind the sofa and put both hands on Jeremy’s shoulders to be sure he had his attention. “I need to take a shower. Ten minutes, tops. Keep an eye on your brother, okay?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t look away from the TV screen.
“Jeremy, that means put the controller down, get up, walk to the window and check on him at least three times while I’m gone.”
“He’s eleven.”
“That’s not an answer. Come on, Jer, help me out here.”
“All right, I’ll check on him. Jeeze.”
Mason closed his eyes and prayed for patience. The kid had lost his father, his baby sister and, for all intents and purposes, his mother, he reminded himself. Add to that the typical brooding of a seventeen-year-old male, and you had a recipe for frustration that couldn’t be beat.
Mason headed upstairs for a shower that would compete with his record for brevity. When he came back down, hair wet, pulling on a long-sleeved green thermal shirt with a big black bear on the front, he heard voices. Female voices. He popped his head through the collar and pulled the shirt down over his belly.
Rachel was standing in the living room, eyes glued to the chest he’d just covered up and making him want to pull the shirt right back off again.
* * *
I had known from the second I woke up this morning that I had to tell Mason about the dream, because I knew damned well it wasn’t a dream. I was pretty certain it was, instead, a murder. A real one. Maybe the murder of the woman he’d said was missing. I was shaken and trying not to show it to Misty, but she didn’t miss much. Still, she was happy to go along to meet my friend Detective Brown. She was even a little excited. She knew that Mason and I had worked together to solve a string of serial killings, though she didn’t know about my personal connection, that I had the damn killer’s eyes in my head. And she knew Mason’s nephew had saved my life by shooting the killer.
We pulled into Mason’s driveway, and I saw an unfamiliar green Jeep parked beside his classic Monte Carlo. Since he had mentioned that his nephews would be with him for the weekend, I’d stopped at Mickey D’s for a gigantic breakfast order and brought it along. No use showing up empty-handed, right? When we got out of the car, and headed up onto the porch, Myrtle walking with her side touching my calf, my stomach went all queasy. Seeing Mason again was a big deal and not only because I was pretty sure I knew the fate of his missing person.
Joshua came running from somewhere out back and pounded up the porch steps, and I could have sworn he was going to hug me, but he skidded to his knees and hugged Myrtle instead. His smile was huge and aimed up at me, though. “Hey, Rachel! Where you been? It’s been like ages.”
I went soft inside at the enthusiastic welcome. “I’ve been busy jetting around being a famous author. I would so much rather be hanging out with you. But I brought food so you’d forgive me.” I held up the bags and nodded at Misty, right behind me, who was carrying two more. “This is Misty, my niece.”
“Hi, Josh,” she said.
Josh said hi, getting to his feet but keeping one hand on Myrtle’s head, scratching while she wriggled in delight. “If there’s hash browns, you’re my favorite writer,” he said and, Myrtle at his side now, he opened the door and we all trooped inside.
“There are indeed hash browns,” I promised.
“Yeah, and at least two sandwiches for each of you,” Misty added.
At that moment Mason came down the stairs pulling a green shirt over his head, his chest and abs bare. My stupid stomach clenched up into a hard little knot, and I was still staring at his chest like my bulldog would stare at a steak—well, if she could see it—when his head popped into view. Misty elbowed me in the rib cage, and I dragged my focus from his chest to his face.
“Rachel.” Mason seemed surprised and maybe a little flustered, but his smile was genuine. “What are you doing here?”
“I needed to talk to you about something.” I tore my eyes away from him, glimpsing Jeremy, who was gaming and hadn’t even said hello. “The gorgeous blonde bearing additional food is my niece Misty.”
Just as I had intended, that got Jeremy’s attention. He looked our way, and then he paused the game and got to his feet. “Hey, Rachel.”
“Hello, Jeremy,” I replied. Then I turned to Misty and said, “This is the young man who saved my life.”
Misty smiled. And there had not been a teenage boy born who didn’t turn to mush at that smile. It was bright and white and made her vivid blue eyes, fake tan and white-blond hair even more attractive. “So you’re the one. Thanks for saving my aunt.”
Jeremy shrugged and looked at his sneakers. At least he was on his feet now.
Mason clapped his hands together and said, “Well, let’s eat. Fast food is best served piping hot, right?”
The kitchen table only seated four. Mason and I unloaded the bags and stacked the food in piles on paper plates. McMuffins on one, hash browns on another, French Toast Sticks on a third. The younger crew helped themselves and headed back into the living room, where Josh served as the ice-breaker, getting the conversation going while plying Myrtle with way too many treats. Pretty soon it was noisy in there, which was good, because it gave me an opportunity to say what I’d come here to say.
But Mason spoke up before I had the chance. “Look at Jeremy,” he said in a stage whisper.
I glanced through into the living room, where the kids were all on the couch, wolfing junk food, playing with Myrtle and yacking, the Xbox still paused and possibly forgotten.
“I haven’t heard him say more than two words at a time since October,” Mason marveled.
“My niece has that effect on many of the male species.”
“You should bring her around more often.”
“I will.”
He looked at me, our eyes locked and I stammered, “You know what I mean. If it would help Jeremy.” Damn, Rache, idiot much?
“It would.” He held my eyes a beat too long, and I looked away to pick out a breakfast sandwich.
“I, um, noticed the Jeep. Yours?”
“Yeah. I finally broke down and bought something more suited to winter driving. The Black Beast is going into the barn for a well-deserved winter nap soon.”
I smiled. “I did the same.”
He glanced out the kitchen window at my new Subaru and nodded. “Nice.”
“Thanks. I, um, didn’t get coffee, ’cause I figured—”
“Right, I’ve got a fresh pot right here. Marie made it when she dropped the boys off.” He got up, got mugs, poured, served.
“How is she doing?”
He shook his head. “Not good. She looked like hell this morning.”
“I’m sorry, Mason. Your family’s a mess, and here I am horning in on you with—”
“It’s good you’re here. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what to do for Marie and the boys, how to help, if it’s normal grieving or if it’s gone beyond that. I was just thinking I’d like to talk to you about it.”
I nodded, lowered my head and took a bite of my sandwich, which was already cooling and would soon reach that inevitable stage of inedible.
“But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”
I lifted my brows at him, slugged a little coffee down to clear my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“I can see you’ve got something on your mind.”
How could I have forgotten, even for a minute, that he was every bit as good at reading people as I was? Especially me.
I lowered my voice. “I had a dream.”
His eyes widened. “About the case I was telling you about? The missing soccer mom?”
“I don’t know. But if it was, she’s dead.” I looked toward the living room, then back at him. “I was inside her head, Mason. I was there with her while she was murdered.”
He looked horrified, then glanced toward the living room just like I had done. “How?”
“She was paralyzed. Drugged, I think. It was impossible for her to move. And the killer cut into her and ripped something out.”
He stared at me. “And you felt it? You experienced it like before?”
I averted my eyes, nodded. I put my hands over my rib cage, poking the soft area where she—I—had been stabbed. “The knife went in here and ripped left, then right. God, the pain was just...” I’d started breathing hard and had to stop myself, rein it in.
“Dammit, Rachel.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“I thought you said you weren’t having the dreams anymore, that your brain was startling you awake every time one started?”
I nodded. “I took a sleeping pill. Figured I had to know what it was my brain didn’t want to let me see. Now I know.”
He shook his head slowly and started to say something, but his cell phone rang. He picked it up, spoke briefly, but mostly listened. When he put it down again he looked at me. “They found a body.”
I closed my eyes. “Was it...?”
“No details, but Rosie said it wasn’t pretty. I have to go.”
“I’ll stay with the boys.” I blurted it without even thinking first, then realized I was effectively shooting our agreement not to see each other right in the foot. He noticed it, too; I could tell by the way he was looking at me, his eyes all questiony. “I’ve missed those two more than I thought, and Myrtle’s in seventh heaven with Josh. We’ll hang out. Go take care of this. I’ll see you later.”
“Thanks, Rachel.” He put a hand on my cheek, then took it away, suddenly awkward, like he didn’t know why he’d put it there to begin with. “Thanks.”
He walked away, into the living room to tell the boys what was up, then up the stairs to grab his things. Then he came back down, shoving his wallet into his back pocket, his shoulder holster over his button-down shirt, gun in easy reach. And I was still sitting there with my half-eaten sandwich and my coffee, wondering how I’d gone from “We should stay apart” to “I’ll spend the day in your house with your nephews, awaiting your return.”
He came through the kitchen, looked me in the eye, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. I ought to say something. Clarify things. Right?
“I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
“Do what you need to. I’m not going anywhere.”
He nodded, like that was enough. For now. It would have to be, because I didn’t know what else to say. If I was having visions and people were dying and the two were connected, then we didn’t have much choice but to be together until we got to the bottom of things.
I could have thought the freaking universe wouldn’t take no for an answer. You know, if I believed in that sort of shit.
3
Saturday, December 16
The body had been found in a wooded area off I-81, a few miles north of the Binghamton area. Traffic was being detoured for a mile-long stretch, so the highway was eerily quiet.
Mason skirted the detour sign and drove right up to the cop whose car was enforcing it, bubble gum light flashing. He lowered his window, slowed down and flashed his badge, and the officer waved him by.
The scene was already swarming. The state police forensics team was already there, and Rosie was waiting for him on the shoulder, hunching into his police-issue overcoat and wearing a completely non-regulation furry hat with earflaps pulled down. Yeah, it wasn’t a warm day. The sun was shining, and the official temp was allegedly thirty-five, but it felt like single digits the way the wind was blowing. It was a cold wind, too. Icy.
Mason parked his new-to-him Jeep and got out, then walked onto the shoulder to stand beside his partner, the oversized and ready-to-retire, shaven-headed Roosevelt Jones. He followed Rosie’s gaze down the steep slope to the bottom, where a New York state trooper supervised while two forensics guys worked. One was taking pictures, the other, measurements. The body was still there, bent and twisted unnaturally. “Looks like they just tossed her and let her roll down and stay the way she landed,” he said.
Rosie nodded. “Looks like. Snow’s covered up any evidence on the bank here.”
“Tire tracks?”
“First responders ruined ’em.” Rosie shrugged as he looked toward the ambulance and police cruiser parked a few feet ahead on the shoulder. Their tire tracks were fresh in the soft ground, right where whoever dumped the body would probably have parked.
Mason shielded his eyes as he watched the men below. “Who called it in?”
“College student. Had a flat, pulled over a few yards back to change it and saw her lying down there. I got his statement and contact info, then let him go.”
“All right.” Mason turned up his collar. His coat was lined denim, but he hadn’t grabbed a hat and his ears were already freezing. “Ready to head down there, then?”
“I’ll wait up here,” Rosie said, eyeing the steep climb warily. “Man my size gonna trip and roll right down on top of her. I don’t wanna contaminate the scene.”
Mason shook his head. “Creative way to get out of climbing back up, but I’ll let you off the hook.”
“You better.”
Mason headed down, taking a route a few yards from the one the body had probably taken. The state cop on the scene was Bill Piedmont, a man Mason knew and liked. He didn’t know the two forensics guys, but then, they tended to move around a lot.
“Hey, Bill. What’s your take?”
“Mason.” Piedmont gave him a nod from beneath his wide-brimmed gray Stetson. Trooper standard issue. “Looks like she’s been here a while. Body’s frozen to the ground. Probably was hidden by the snow until the wind came up and blew it clear enough so she could be spotted from the road. Ground underneath her is bare.”
Mason was looking at the woman. She wore a blue dress, torn nylons, one shoe. The other was probably around somewhere. Most likely flew off her as she tumbled down the hill. She’d landed on her left side, left leg bent unnaturally beneath her, the right one folded up. Right arm extended, left one in front of her body. She had a wedding ring on her finger. Her hair was frozen to her skull. Red, he thought.
“So she was dumped before that first snowfall. What was that, a week ago?”
“Six days,” Piedmont said.
“Look like she was dead before she was dumped?”
Piedmont nodded and walked around the body, giving it a wide berth so as not to disturb evidence. Not that there would be any. Mason was already certain the killer had stayed up on the road and never set foot down here. Still...
“Oh, shit.” He could see the front of her now. The dress was torn from the hem up to her neck, flapping up and down in the frigid wind. She was cut all to hell and gone—gutted, it looked like. Then he looked again. Someone had cut two sides of a triangle into her skin, with its topmost point dead center just below her breasts, then peeled it back so the flap was lying folded over on her belly. He could see the edges of her rib cage and a gaping, frozen, deep red void he would rather not have seen.
It fit perfectly with what Rachel had described.
“Not another mark on her,” Piedmont said. “A fucking odd way to commit a murder.”
“She have any ID on her?”
“No, but we knew you had a missing woman matching her description, right down to the blue dress. So...”
Mason knelt and looked at the woman’s hands. There wasn’t so much as a broken nail. No bruising on her, none that was visible, anyway. “No signs of a struggle, no defensive injuries?”
“Not that I could see. You?”
Mason shook his head, then looked at the area around her. “There are a lot of weeds and brush down here. Enough to conceal her a little until someone got close enough to notice.”
The guy snapping pictures stopped snapping. “I think I’ve got all we need. The ME’s here. You can let him take her.”
“Bag her hands, just in case,” Mason said. She was pretty—or had been once. She’d died with her eyes open, but there was nothing in them now. No expression, not of horror, not of peace. Nothing. They were lifeless and shrunken, no longer even resembling human eyes, more like a pair of cloudy grapes long past their prime.
A team came down the hillside with a gurney and a body bag. Mason lowered his head. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Marissa. If you are Marissa, and I think you are. We’re gonna get whoever did this. I promise you that.”
Then he straightened and picked his way back up the steep embankment, moving at an angle to get better footing in the fresh snow. As he walked, he was tapping keys on his cell phone, keying in “location of the human pancreas” in the search bar. Then he clicked on Images, and saw that the pancreas was between the left and right sides of the rib cage and partially behind, tucked up against the liver.
That was where she’d been cut, where there was a gaping hole. Right where Rachel had dreamed of being cut, of having something torn from her body while she was still alive.
He hadn’t told Rachel which of his brother’s organs his missing soccer mom had received. He’d deliberately left that part out because he didn’t want to influence her visions. It would be like contaminating a crime scene, leaving traces around that might later be mistaken for actual clues.
Marissa Siorse, his missing person, had been a pancreas recipient. The ME would tell him for sure, but he was pretty certain that body down there was missing its pancreas. And if she was Marissa, that organ had originally belonged to his dead brother.
He didn’t want to think that Eric had come back from the dead to reclaim his parts from beyond the grave. But he hadn’t wanted to think that his brother had found a way to continue his serial killings from beyond the grave, either, and he’d been wrong. Eric’s crimes had been repeated by two of his organ recipients, men who, as far as Mason could tell, had been perfectly normal, law-abiding citizens prior to their transplants.
It’s not the same. This organ recipient is the victim, not the killer.
He told himself that, but the icy dread in the pit of his stomach was colder than the December wind freezing his ears.
* * *
Joshua teased me to come out sledding with him until I finally gave in. It looked as if Jeremy and Misty were hitting it off just fine, but being teenagers, they were unwilling to bundle up and take him out themselves. I told them I thought they were both assholes—I said it lovingly, don’t judge me—then dressed as warmly as possible, borrowing some gloves from Mason’s closet, and took Josh out there myself. Well, me and Myrtle, that is. She was almost as eager as Josh was. Besides, I needed something to wipe the nightmare, which I knew in my gut was more than just a bad dream, out of my mind.
The air was cold, sunshine bright, snow pristine. I could see my breath in big clouds every time I exhaled. It was good. Clean. Just the prescription I needed. I hadn’t seen much snow since my vision had been restored. It had only snowed once or twice so far this winter, and of course I’d been blind for the previous twenty. So I was taking it all in and loving it, like I did every new visual experience. And yeah, that made it tough to maintain my inner cynic, but I figured a few months of childlike wonder was to be expected and would pass soon enough, you know, like a bad bout of food poisoning.
Sighted people don’t appreciate their eyesight nearly enough, in my opinion. Those who’ve always had it, I mean.
We trooped up the hill, dragging a pair of red plastic toboggans behind us, Josh talking a mile a minute about the karate lessons he wanted to sign up for and all the things on his Christmas wish list, while Myrtle trudged right beside him, paying such close attention it was as if she understood his every word. She adored the kid.
We reached the top. Josh situated his sled, then turned to Myrtle and said, “You want to ride, Myrt?”
“Josh, she won’t sit still. She’ll wipe you out for sure.”
“I’ll hold her,” he said. He didn’t precede it with “Duh,” but he might as well have. “Come on, Myrt. Get on here with me.”
“She won’t like it, Josh,” I said, as Myrtle responded to his voice and plodded right over to him. She sniffed the sled thoroughly, then lifted her paws and stepped on board in front of him. “She’s blind. She’ll be scared.” If someone had said that about me, I would have punched them in the eye. I was being overprotective, and I knew it.
“I’ll hold on to her. Come on, Rachel, she shouldn’t miss the fun just ’cause she can’t see.” He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around my dog. Myrt was facing straight ahead with her teeth showing and her tongue hanging out. She knew something exciting was about to happen. I recognized that look. She was eager. Up for anything as long as her eleven-year-old buddy was involved.
“How are you going to steer?”
Josh tightened his arms around Myrtle, then reached one-handed for the rope handle threaded through the nose of the sled, which children everywhere use to fool themselves into thinking they have a modicum of control as they rocket down steep, snowy hills. Myrt whined uncertainly, and he let go of the rope and scooted forward. “You’re gonna have to ride with us and steer,” he told me with a smile.
“No way am I going to fit on that th—”
“There’s room. C’mon, Rache, please? Try it. Just once.”
I heaved a gigantic sigh and plopped my ass onto the sled. I stretched my legs, one on either side of Josh and Myrtle, planting my heels against the front of the sled, and reached around them to grab on to the steering rope that wasn’t going to work, anyway. What had I gotten myself into?
Josh grinned at me over his shoulder, and I believe my heart grew three sizes that day. We all leaned forward and gave the sled a scootch or two, and the next thing I knew we were flying down the hill toward the back of Mason’s house. I heard high-pitched squeals and realized they were coming from me just before we all went over sideways and tumbled into the snow.
When he sat up laughing, Josh still had my bulldog safely in his arms. Myrtle wriggled free and bounced in the snow, chest down, butt up, and wiggling in delight. She barked happily, and I knew exactly what she was saying: “Again, again, again!”
Okay, so I was wrong. Doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.
I brushed the snow off myself and got to my feet. “I’m too old for this.”
Josh stood, too. “Nobody’s too old for this. C’mon, let’s do it again.”
“Yarf!” said Myrtle. Which meant, damn straight, we’re gonna do it again—and again and again until one of us is too tired to do it anymore. Three guesses who that’ll be, old lady.
What? She’s a very verbal dog.
* * *
Jeremy was messed up. Misty could tell. He couldn’t look her in the eye for very long. Aunt Rache said when someone couldn’t look you in the eye they were either hiding something, incredibly self-conscious or too distracted thinking about something else. Misty thought it was the third thing. He had a lot on his mind. She had to do most of the talking, but she was good at that.
“So where do you go to school?” she asked him.
“Holy Family. It’s private.”
“I go to public.”
“Oh.”
“Right here in the Point. Is that where you guys live?”
“A little south.”
“You a junior?”
“Senior.”
No encouragement to go on in his tone. Okay, whatev. She picked up a magazine from the coffee table. National Geographic. A good one to kill time with. Jeremy was kind of cute but a lousy conversationalist. “So what are you gonna do after graduation?” she asked after a bit.
“I don’t know.” He picked up his game controller, restarted his game.
Strike two, Misty thought.
“Maybe you should think about being a cop, like your uncle. I mean, you must have it in you, the way you saved their lives and all.”
“I wouldn’t want to have to do that again.”
Eyes straight ahead on the TV screen. He must be good, to be at the level he was in the game. Her mom would say that was only proof he spent way too much time gaming. Whatever.
“What was it like? Shooting that guy, I mean?”
He froze, didn’t look at her, just froze, and then the gunshot sound effects went off and the blood spatter on the screen told her someone had just offed him. Game Over.
He set the controller down and looked at her. “Not like shooting someone in the game.”
She smiled encouragingly and nodded at him to go on.
He shrugged. “He was just...he was. And then he wasn’t. I did that to him.”
“It bothers you.”
“Not really. I mean, he was gonna kill them. I didn’t have a choice. I’d do the same thing again. But it’s just...weird. How easy it happened.” He bit his lip, looking down. “Like how easy you go from being alive to being dead. Bam. Just like that. Like nothing happened, except you’re gone. You’re just...erased.”
She nodded. “This is creeping me out a little. Maybe a new topic?”
“Yeah, okay.”
He looked disappointed. Like he’d wanted to talk about it some more. “So...are you okay? I mean, you know, with your dad, and then that guy?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Mom made me go to therapy for a while after, but it’s all bull.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“I mean, if you pay someone to listen to you...”
“I hear you. And what do you say? You sit there trying to think up shit to take up the time, because you know it’s costing like a hundred-fifty an hour, and you wind up just making shit up.”
“Yeah.” He tilted his head to one side, looking her in the eyes finally. “You’ve been to therapy, huh?”
“Uh-huh. I lost like fifteen pounds during my first soccer season and Mom was just sure I was purging. You know.” She stuck her finger into her mouth and stuck her tongue out, the international symbol for gagging.
Jeremy smiled. It was very faint, just the slightest uptick at the corners of his mouth, but it was the first one she’d seen since they’d finished breakfast.
“Were you?” he asked.
“No. And gross. A halfback runs an average of eight miles in a game. I was just burning it off, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
“You play?”
“Not this year. Basketball, usually, but...not this year.”
“I wouldn’t, either, if it was my dad. I’m really sorry, Jeremy.”
“Thanks.”
She sighed and, not sure where to go from there, got up and paced to the double sliding glass doors facing the backyard. Looking out back, she grinned so wide it hurt, pulled her cell out of her pocket and started snapping pics. “Ohmygod, Jer, look at this!”
He twisted on the couch so he could see, then got up and came over to see better as Josh and her aunt Rachel came flying down the hill on a cheap plastic sled. The crazy dog was sitting right in the front, her ears flapping in the wind and her jowls pushed back so she looked like some kind of alien. “Aunt Rachel’s screaming her head off.”
“Look how big Josh is smiling,” Jeremy said. “He loves that dog.”
“I can tell. She looks like something out of Gremlins.”
He sent her a quizzical look. “Gremlins?”
The trio had reached the bottom and tumbled into the snow. They were already hiking back up for more.
“It’s an ancient movie my father insists on playing at least twice a year. Says it’s a classic.” She grinned. “I’ve got to get a few more pics. This is too good. I can blackmail Aunt Rache for the next six years with this.”
“Is it any good?” Jer asked.
“What?” She was holding up her iPhone, waiting for the right shot.
“The movie. Gremlins.”
“Oh. Yeah, it’s not bad. Actually, it’s pretty funny. We should see if we can stream it.”
“Right now?”
They were coming down the hill again. “Myrtle is so completely Mogwai.” Misty snapped and snapped. Then she put the phone in her pocket and looked at Jeremy. “Maybe tonight, if we hang that long. We can order Chinese and go pick it up.”
“Okay.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked away. “What do you want to do right now, then?”
“See that other sled?”
His head came up. He wasn’t smiling, but he nodded. “You really want to do that?”
“Yeah, I really do.”
“Guess we’ll lose our asshole status. First, though, can I see your phone?”
“Sure.” She slid it from her pocket and handed it to him. He located the pics while she looked to see what he was doing, then he sent one to his uncle’s phone. She smiled. “Cool. He’s gonna love that.”
“I thought he was into your aunt before. But then we stopped seeing her and he didn’t mention her name at all.”
“I think she’s into him, too. Hell, we might end up cousins.”
“I hope not,” he said, and then a flush of red went right up his neck and into his face. He handed her phone back to her, turned and headed for the coat closet.
* * *
Mason was on his way home when he thought to check the phone while he was sitting at a red light. There was a text from a number he didn’t recognize that included a photo attachment, sent hours ago. He opened it and grinned. Rachel, Josh and Myrtle on a toboggan flying down the hill behind his house. Rachel’s eyes and mouth were wide open, and her hat—no, wait, his hat—was in the air behind her, so her hair was like a flag. Josh was smiling all the way to his ears—laughing out loud, Mason thought. The kid was going to be okay. And the dog... The dog was all flapping jowls and ears and gleaming teeth. She was wearing her goggles and her winter scarf, and looked like she belonged in a steampunk creature feature.
He felt something warm settle into his chest, and it pushed away the cold darkness that been squatting there before. He couldn’t wait to get home. And he thought what a great feeling that was.
As he stared at the photo, realizing it had come through several hours ago, a car blew its horn behind him and a new text message popped up, this one from Rachel’s phone. Ordered Chinese. What’s ur ETA?
He went through the light, then pulled off the road so he could reply. The other vehicle flew by him, and he secretly hoped for a speed trap up ahead.
20 min, he texted back. Want me 2 pickup?
Sent kids. C U soon.
On my way.
He looked at the phone for a long minute. Okay, there was some interesting stuff going on in his sappy regions at the moment. Stuff that bore further mulling.
He clicked the button to make the shot his background image. It made him feel good to look at it, and Rachel’s books were always saying when something feels good, pay attention to it. It was good advice, even if she didn’t always practice it herself and claimed to think it was complete bull.
He looked at her face, her full mouth wide open in a shout but somehow managing to smile at the same time. She’d relived a murder last night—lived it from the perspective of the victim. But today she was raising hell in the snow with her dog and his nephew. Yeah, maybe she didn’t think she practiced what she preached, but he was pretty sure he’d just been given photographic proof that she did.
He put the car back into gear, and headed onto the highway and back toward home.
* * *
I had more fun that day than I’d had since I got my eyesight back—not counting my one-nighter with Mason, which was the most fun I’d ever had. Ever. By the time the younger generation had been thoroughly exposed to the genius of Joe Dante through Gremlins and Gremlins 2, we had spent close to four hours in front of Mason’s gigantic TV. The sixty-inch HD was his country home’s one concession to modern design. Everything else looked rustic, even though he was wired for sound. He had the fastest internet connection I’d seen—essential, he said, for gaming. And his nephews loved their gaming.
We’d pigged out on Chinese, stashed the leftovers, and then re-pigged out between the two movies. We topped the evening off with warm chocolate chip cookies—the kind that came in preperforated squares you just broke apart and threw into the oven—and milk, because there was no point to warm chocolate chip cookies if you weren’t going to dunk them in milk.
And then, as the credits rolled, I looked around and realized I wasn’t in Mason’s living room anymore. I was lying on my back on the floor staring at the ceiling of a room that wasn’t familiar to me. The light fixture above my head had a ceiling fan attached—but Mason doesn’t have a ceiling fan—ivory-colored blades shaped like palm fronds or something. It wasn’t running. I tried to get a better look around me, because my current view only gave me a glimpse of the ceiling and the upper two feet of the walls. Oddly, though, I couldn’t turn my head.
Oh, shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit, it’s another dream.
Something blocked out the light, and something else kicked me in the side, rolling me over so my right cheek was pressed to the floor, my right arm underneath my body.
Wake up, dammit. Wake up!
I felt something tear my blouse up the back, and I knew what was coming. The blade would be next. The cutting. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to scream. I wanted to scrunch my face up in fear, but I couldn’t move at all. I felt the warmth of tears welling in my eyes and spilling over, running along my nose and onto the floor.
If you can’t wake up, then look. See what’s around you so you can remember.
Hardwood floor under my cheek. Mint-green paint on the walls. A brown sofa with wooden claw feet and a crocheted blanket with too many colors to count. Black, white, orange, red—
The blade sliced a path of fire across my back and lower left side, and every ounce of reason left me. Inside, my mind I was screaming. But I couldn’t even open my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I lay there, completely helpless as the knife cut deeper, and I prayed for death to come fast.
It didn’t.
4
1:00 a.m. Sunday, December 17
Mason had dozed off on the sofa. The kids had taken every other seat in the room, Jeremy in the reclining chair, Misty in the overstuffed one that matched the sofa and Josh was in a beanbag chair on the floor. Leaving him and Rachel the sofa. He didn’t know if it had been intended or not, but they’d taken opposite ends, partly because the corner between the arm and the back was the most comfortable spot on any couch, but mostly because they didn’t want to get too close to each other. In his case, he didn’t want to slip up in front of the kids, absentmindedly start rubbing her leg or something. You could get into a movie to the point that your body sometimes acted on impulse without bothering to check in first. That was how you could crunch through an extra-large tub of popcorn in the theater, only to look down later and wonder who ate your snack.
Like that.
He didn’t know what her reasons were, but he kind of hoped they were similar.
So he’d fallen asleep. And it looked as if they all had, except for Rachel, because she wasn’t on the couch anymore. Sitting up and frowning, Mason scanned the room for her.
She was on the floor, facedown, with her head turned toward him. Her eyes were open—wide open—and there were tears streaming from them. Something was wrong with her. Her entire body kept going rigid, then relaxing, then rigid again. Her dog was beside her, whining and pawing at her shoulder.
Mason swore and dropped to his knees, rolling her over onto her back, moving on sheer instinct. “Rachel, what’s happening? What’s going on? Can you talk to me? Rachel?”
He heard the kids stirring as he shook her, trying to rouse her. “Rachel?”
She blinked, then her eyes flashed even wider as she sucked in a sudden desperate breath that must have filled her lungs to bursting. A nanosecond later she opened her mouth to scream, but he clapped a hand over it to keep her from scaring the hell out of everyone and put his face right in front of hers. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m right here. It’s okay.”
She pulled away, scuttling out from under him. Then she sat up and reached around to her lower back, pushing up her shirt and running her palms over her skin. She was breathing fast and hard, her face damp with tears and sweat. And it was hitting him that she’d been having another dream.
“You’re at my house, Rache. You’re safe. You’re okay.”
“My back is bleeding.”
“No, no it’s not.” On his knees, he moved closer to her, ran his own hands all over her back, up and down her skin, then brought them around and showed her. “See? There’s not a scratch on you.”
She closed her eyes in obvious relief. “It wasn’t me.”
Josh was still asleep, thank God, but Jeremy was up now. Misty, too, standing beside him. “Was it another nightmare, Aunt Rache?” she asked. She looked scared to death for her aunt.
Rachel nodded. “Yeah.”
“Can I get you something? What do you want me to do?”
“I’m fine. I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay,” Misty said.
Jeremy crossed the room, opened a built-in floor-to-ceiling cabinet that was original to the house, reached to the top shelf and took down a bottle of Black Velvet and a tumbler. He poured and brought the glass to her.
“Thanks, kid.” She slugged it back in a single gulp and set the glass down. Mason made a mental note to ask his nephew how the hell he knew where the liquor was kept. Tomorrow. It was one-something in the morning, and he needed some privacy with Rachel.
“Why don’t you two take Josh up to bed? Misty, there’s an empty bedroom up there you and Rachel can use for tonight. Jeremy will show you where the sheets and things are.”
Misty nodded, but instead of leaving, she crouched down and put her hands on her aunt’s shoulders. “Is that what you want me to do, Aunt Rache? It’s probably too late to go home, anyway.”
Rachel nodded. “I’m sorry about all this. I’m not the greatest company for you on this visit, am I?”
“Not really. But I’ll make you take me shopping to make up for it, okay?”
Jeremy was standing nearby, and Mason had fully expected him to argue about taking his brother up to bed, because he argued about just about everything these days. But when Rachel’s gorgeous blonde niece turned to him and said, “Well, what are you waiting for? You don’t think I’m gonna carry him upstairs, do you?” he scooped his sleeping brother out of the beanbag chair, and the three of them trooped up the stairs.
Mason helped Rachel up off the floor. She kept putting her hands to her back, as if it hurt.
“There’s another one, Mason,” she said.
He searched her eyes. “Another...murder?”
She nodded. “What did you find out about the last one? You never said.”
“Kids were around. And frankly, I didn’t want to think about it.”
“Think about it now,” she told him, eyeing the empty glass, then the cabinet across the room.
He sighed. “Full autopsy results won’t be in for a day or two, but on initial exam, the coroner said the pancreas was missing.”
“The pancreas? So...what organ did that woman get from your brother?”
He lowered his head. “His pancreas.”
She rubbed her back again, left of center. “I think maybe someone should check on whoever got his kidneys, Mason.”
“I will.” He pulled out his phone.
She put her hand over his. “Wait, I want to get this all down while it’s fresh. Everything I saw.”
“Shit, Rachel, you were memorizing details while someone was cutting out your kidney?”
“Just before. Get a pen and a notepad or something, will you?”
He nodded and let go of her for the first time. Hell, he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding on to her until then. Her hair was tousled, plastered to her face on one side by her tears. Her eyes were red, like she’d popped a blood vessel or two. Her cheeks were tear-stained, and he could see the pulse beating in her neck.
“Stop looking at me like you think I’m going to keel over, and go get a pen and paper, Mason.”
“I’m going.”
He looked around the room, moving to the same cabinet Jeremy had left standing open. It had cupboards above and below, a row of three drawers in between. He pulled open one of the drawers, rummaged around for a pen, yanked out a notepad, closed the drawer and reached up to close the cabinet door, too.
He paused when she said, “Bring that BV over here with you.”
He nodded. “I could use a shot myself.” He grabbed another glass and the bottle. Then he set the bottle, pad and pen on the coffee table, went to the kitchen for some ice and ginger ale. A minute later he was back.
She took the makings from him, and put the pen and pad into his hands instead. Then she poured the drinks and started talking.
“I was in a house, facedown on the floor. I think it was the victim’s house. There was a hardwood floor, light-colored, maybe maple. A brown sofa with claw feet. Mint-green walls. A god-awful afghan with a dozen garish colors. Looked like someone made it out of all the leftover yarn they could find. An orange throw pillow. I saw a couple of pictures on the wall, little kids, but they were old. You could tell by the haircuts and the fading. Looked like school pictures. Two kids, a girl and a boy. The boy’s a little older. Carrot curls and freckles, both of them. He had a plaid shirt on. She had a yellow dress with a white collar.”
He was scribbling as fast as he could. “Was there a clock on the wall that you could see?”
“No.”
“How about windows, anything that would tell you whether it was day or night?”
“No uncovered windows.” She bit her lip, nodded once. “There was a ceiling fan light fixture thing.”
“You said you were facedown.”
“I was face-up at first. I saw this ceiling fan with palm frond–shaped blades, ivory or cream. The fan was off, but the light was on. I think it was nighttime, because it was darker where the light didn’t touch the ceiling. Then someone kicked me over.”
“Did you see them?”
She shook her head.
“Not at all?”
“No, not at all.”
“Rache, if you were face-up, and they came close enough to kick you over onto your face, you would have had to have seen them.”
She frowned really hard, her brows drawing together. “No, something went over my face right before I felt the foot in my side. I remember, something covered my eyes.”
“A hand?”
“Maybe a piece of cloth. It didn’t feel like a hand.”
“Okay, okay. And then you felt someone kick you over?”
She nodded. “I was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t turn my head. Couldn’t even breathe. I could see, but I could barely move my eyes enough to get a better look around me. But I could feel everything.” She lowered her head and hugged herself, rubbing her arms up and down. “Everything.”
“I’m sorry, Rache.” He put a hand on her shoulder, kneaded it softly, repeatedly, like he could massage away the horror.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“I gave you his corneas.”
“You gave me my eyesight. You didn’t know it was gonna come with a downside.”
He lowered his head. “What else do you remember?”
“Just the cutting.” She reached out, took her drink, slugged half of it. “And praying to die fast.”
He swore softly, set the pen down and hugged her. He put his arms around her shoulders, and he pulled her to his chest. Her head rested against him, but her arms stayed at her sides, under his.
“Check on whoever got his kidneys,” she said again, staying stiff in his arms, not returning the embrace, but not pulling away from it, either. He let go, and she sat up straight again. “You had a list before, when we were looking at your brother’s recipients as potential killers. We need to check on whoever got the kidneys.”
“The list was just the hospitals. Not the patients. But I think we can trace them from there. There are probably two—two kidneys, two recipients.”
“It was the left one.”
He nodded and wondered why he didn’t doubt a word she said. Admittedly, there was some small voice of reason way down deep inside his brain saying Wait just a damn minute here. Saying they couldn’t be sure the victim she’d dreamed of was another of Eric’s organ recipients. That the dream might have just been a nightmare and not a real event. He could say those things himself. He’d said them before, after all.
But he’d been wrong.
He went to the computer and pulled up the list he’d wheedled from a transplant-unit nurse. His brother’s body parts were listed in neat rows, along with the hospitals to which they’d been sent. His kidneys were not labeled left or right. He had no idea if they should’ve been or not. There were two separate hospitals beside them, though. Piedmont Transplant Center in Atlanta and Strong Memorial in Rochester.
“Care to take a drive with me tomorrow?” he asked.
She didn’t even ask where, just nodded her assent. “Misty won’t mind me leaving her again. She and Amy were planning a Christmas shopping trip tomorrow, anyway.”
“I take the boys home at noon on Sundays. So we’ll go after that, all right?”
“Sure.”
“Think you can sleep?”
She looked at her glass. “One more of these and I’ll sleep like a baby. For a few hours, at least.” She downed the remainder of her drink. “Please, God, no more fucking dreams. No more.”
Sunday, December 17
“It’s just a day trip,” I told her for the tenth time at a quarter to one while I waited for Mason to pick me up. “I feel really bad for leaving you again so soon after the book blitz, but it’s just for the day, and I’ll bring you back something, okay?”
“Will you bring me back something, too?” Misty asked.
“Me, too. I want something,” Amy said.
I rose from the floor, where I’d been scratching Myrtle right in front of her ears, which was her bliss-spot. “Yeah, yeah, I owe you both my life. If for any reason I don’t make it back tonight—”
“I’ll stay over,” Amy said.
“Yeah, because being seventeen, I need a babysitter who’s twenty-five.”
“Twenty-four,” Amy corrected.
Misty rolled her eyes. “I could manage just fine on my own overnight.”
“I know you could.” With Aaron, Lloyd or whatever her current boyfriend’s name was. I just remembered the double letters at the beginning. I’d met the kid, hated him on sight. Cocky, arrogant little prick.
“I wish we were having more fun, Misty,” I said in all honesty. I did feel bad. She was missing the trip of a lifetime with her family, but it was obvious she didn’t mind that, and I had no doubt she’d been seeing plenty of the boyfriend while I was doing the talk show hop, with or without Amy’s knowledge.
Sandra thought it was fine when I talked to her about my suspicions, said she trusted Misty. If you asked me, “trust” and “seventeen” should never be uttered in the same sentence if there was a boyfriend involved. Teenage girls loved harder than any other species. Teenage love was apocalyptic. Wild horses couldn’t stop it.
“I’ll get back as fast as I can and we’ll do something fun. Really fun, I promise. Maybe we’ll go find a Christmas tree and decorate it.”
“I had a lot of fun at Mason’s yesterday,” Misty said. “Don’t feel guilty, Aunt Rache. You always say it’s a wasted emotion.”
Yeah, I did say that. In print and in front of live studio audiences. That didn’t make it true. Guilt was never wasted. It was going to net the kid a Swarovski crystal swan to add to her collection.
Mason pulled up in that big black boat he called a car. I closed my eyes, hitched my “just in case” bag over my shoulder, hugged Misty, then Amy, then Myrtle one last time. “Okay, I’m outta here. See you late tonight, and if there’s any change, I’ll call.”
They said so long and I was gone. I opened the driver’s door, and Mason looked up at me from behind the wheel.
“What, you want to drive?”
Damn, he’s good-looking. It’s like I forget just how good-looking when I’m away from him, and then I see him again and it knocks me on my ass.
“I know you love your boat and all, Mace, but—”
“It’s a seventy-four Monte Carlo, and it’s a classic.”
“It’s a rear-wheel-drive behemoth, and it’s an accident waiting to happen. We’re heading into the snow belt. What if we hit a blizzard? Why didn’t you bring the Jeep?”
He sighed. “It’s a clear day, maybe my last chance to drive my baby for the season.”
“Which part of the words snow belt did you not understand?”
“You want to take your Subaru, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. You have any objections?”
He lowered his head. “I have to tell you something I’ve never told you before, Rachel.”
Hell, this sounds serious. I frowned, watching his face. “Go ahead. What is it?”
“I hate your driving.” His head came up, and he was grinning, probably at the way my mouth was hanging open. I clamped it shut. “I don’t mean to insult you, but you scare the hell out of me when you drive.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re always looking at everything but the road.”
“I am not!”
“‘Oh, pretty mountain! Oooh, what kind of bird is that? Hey, look at that cloud.’”
I bit back my automatic defensive response and took a breath. “Try being blind for twenty years and see how much looking you do your first fall, first winter—”
He held up both hands to stop me, midrant. “I love the way you see everything like it’s the first time, Rachel. Makes me see things from a fresh perspective myself. It...enhances my every experience just being around you.”
Damn. That was almost poetic. My anger cooled a degree or two.
“I just don’t love being a passenger in a car while you’re doing it. That’s all. You gonna shoot me for that? You wanna use my gun? ’Cause it’s right here—”
“Shut the fuck up, Mason.” I dug my keys out of my pocket, hit the garage door opener button on the key ring, then dropped them into his lap. With his irritatingly perfect reflexes he caught them before they landed.
“You can drive, okay? But we’re taking my car.”
“That sounds fair.”
“You can put your boat in the garage if you want.”
“It’ll be fine outside.” He shut off the engine, dropped his own keys into the ashtray and got out. He had a dark green backpack on the backseat, and he grabbed that and was good to go.
So I let him drive. And yeah, I stayed mad at him for the first hour, until we drove past the wetlands preserve, partially frozen over, and I saw a red-tailed hawk dive-bomb not twenty feet from the highway, then soar up again with something furry in its talons.
“OhmyGod, did you see that? That hawk just nailed a freaking squirrel or something. Look, look at it go!” I was pointing and craning my neck. When I looked over at him, he managed to hold back for about three seconds and then he burst out laughing, and I did, too, in spite of myself.
“All right,” I admitted, no longer angry. “I’ll have to try to stop doing that.”
“Don’t ever stop doing that. That was amazing, and I never would have even noticed it if you hadn’t been with me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Just...try not to do it when you’re driving.”
I rolled my eyes and returned to watching the passing scenery.
* * *
At Strong Memorial Hospital’s Financial Services Center, Mason made the impossible as easy as 1, 2, 3. He got in to see a patient accounts manager, claiming to be an insurance adjuster and saying he needed to verify some information about the patient who received the kidney on August 17 of this year. Then he shuffled papers looking for the patient’s name while the woman at the desk clicked her keys, bringing up the info. I waited in the hallway outside the office door, and when he sneezed, I walked up the hall a few steps, made sure no one was looking and, with a tissue covering my fingers, pulled the fire alarm.
People poured out of offices left and right, including Mason and the accounts person. I joined the throng moving forward, exclaimed, “My purse!” in case anyone was listening, and ducked into the same office he’d just left. I hurried around the desk, took a quick look at the computer and there it was. The patient’s name and address. Three patients had kidney transplants that day. But only one of them received a left kidney. I scribbled the info on a notepad, jammed it into my pocket, zipped out again with my heart in my throat and caught up with the throng heading for the stairwells. By then someone in charge was telling everyone to stay calm, it was probably a false alarm. Maybe even a prank.
“Fucking kids,” someone muttered.
I saw Mason talking to the woman whose office I’d just left and looking at his watch, making excuses to leave and follow up with her later. Then he entered the stairwell. I passed her in the hall as I went to join him, but there were lots of people heading down and I had to wait until we were outside. He was ahead of me, and he got into my car and started the engine. I hurried the last few steps and hopped in on the passenger side.
“You get it?” he asked.
“Henry C. Powell of Sodus Point, New York. You know where that is?”
“No, but your nav system does.” He poked buttons. “Street?”
“Twenty-five Lake Street.”
He punched a button, then another, and the nav system plotted a route and said it would take less than an hour to reach our destination. “We’re in business. You want to grab a bite first?” It was close to four-thirty, after the two-and-a-half-hour drive out here, and the time we’d spent executing our plan. Flawlessly, I might add. Neither of us had eaten lunch.
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