Sam drove in silence for nearly half a mile. “He laid out his plan meticulously, Stella. I can’t imagine that it was his first time.”
“Don’t you think he panicked when he saw me underwater trying to save you? Would a seasoned killer panic?”
“Was he panicked or did he just want you away from him because you weren’t his chosen victim?” Sam asked. “We don’t know if he chooses victims yet. Maybe he doesn’t kill women. Or beautiful women. Or ones with curves. Or blonde hair and blue eyes. We have no idea.”
That was all true. They had no way of knowing. Stella sighed. They just had to wait. She knew there wasn’t going to be a way for the DA to make a case for murder no matter how diligently the sheriff investigated. What did they have to prove that James Marley had been murdered? It really did appear as if he’d slipped on a rock and hit his head and drowned. They had the killer’s earlier attack on Sam, but that could have been entirely unrelated. Not likely, but it could be argued. There was no evidence left behind to point to any person.
As always, they would have to wait until the killer decided to strike again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mommy, Daddy’s doing the bad thing again.
It was very dark and suddenly the sound of laughter erupted and a light went on, illuminating a campsite. The young man checked the woman’s backpack to ensure it sat perfectly where it was supposed to so that when they did the miles of hiking they’d planned on this leg of the trail, she would be as comfortable as possible. She didn’t appear to be as used to hiking as he was. Clearly, he wanted her to really enjoy it.
He had light brown hair, trimmed neat, as if he might have gotten out of the military recently, or maybe was a police officer. He held himself very straight, his shoulders perfectly aligned. He had a trim body with a lot of lean muscle. He moved easily around the woman, making sure her water bottle was full.
She had her blonde hair in a ponytail, the mass coming out the back of the hat on her head. He handed her gloves and she pulled them on. The gloves were the same color as the thin neon-pink piping on her jacket, boots, hat and shades. Both wore headlamps to illuminate the trail when they began their hike.
The lamps showed colors of fall bursting overhead as leaves of gold, red, orange and green cascaded in, weeping waterfalls in every direction. The leaves swirled to the ground to cover the floor of the campsite. There seemed to be the dark sheen of water in the distance, but the man shut off the lantern, plunging the campsite into darkness again. Abruptly, as the two backpackers started along an unseen trail with only their headlamps on, the man leading the way, the camera lens shut down.
STELLA WOKE, GASPING, choking, twisting, clawing the bed-sheets, fighting for air. Not again. She sat up and put her head between her knees, trying to combat the nausea. She wrapped her arms around her middle and began to rock herself, trying to soothe the child in her, that little girl who saw those gruesome murders. The one who told her mother, but no one would believe.
She was alone. She had to be alone. No one could know. She could never tell anyone. Don’t you say one word, Stella. Her mother’s voice rang sharp in her ears. If you tell anyone, they’ll take you away and throw you in a deep dark pit and feed you to the lions. Do you want that? I won’t be able to find you. They’ll cut off your hair and chop you into little pieces so those lions can eat you. I took you to the place where the lions are. You saw them. The way they looked at you. That’s what will happen if you tell anyone.
She remembered that place to which her mother had dragged her, right up to the cage where the lions were roaring with hunger and rage. The man took the money from her mother, lots of it, and had her stand in the doorway of the cage with raw meat in her hands, all bloody. Her mother told her it was another little girl who didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut. The lion leapt at the doorway and the man thrust the meat inside with a long instrument, laughing as she screamed and screamed.
She pushed her fist into her mouth and tried not to choke on the sobs. She’d never gone to a zoo again. Never. Not as a child. Not as a teen. Never as an adult. She’d never told anyone what her mother had done.
Now she had to contend with another murderer. He was going to kill again. A couple? The man? The woman? Where were they? Backpackers. They looked so happy together. How could she stop him?
“I’m right here, sweetheart.” Sam’s voice came out of the darkness. Steady. Calm. Reassuring.
She felt the weight of his body settle on the mattress beside her and then he was pulling her into his arms. Onto his lap. Rocking her gently, his chin on top of her head. Bailey pushed his head onto her thigh.
“Another nightmare?”
She nodded, gripping his leg hard. She needed to feel the steel of his body. That tough infrastructure that was Sam.
“She told me not to tell anyone. I tried to forget that. I never let myself remember if I could help it.” She turned her head to look up at him over her shoulder.
He tightened his arms around her and kept rocking her gently. His lips were barely there on her temple, a soft brush of encouragement.
“When I was little and would try to tell her, she would say it wasn’t real, Daddy would never do such a thing, it was all in my head. Later, she would get angry with me and say I was never to speak of it and it would ruin our family. Sometimes she would grab my head and hold me very still. She’d look into my eyes and make me repeat over and over that I would never tell anyone that Daddy was doing the bad thing.”
“How old were you?”
“Four when the nightmares started. Five when she told me not to tell. I remember she wanted me to have tutors. And she told me never, ever to tell Daddy I knew.” Because it was so fresh in her mind and her heart was racing, her mouth dry, she forced herself to recount the visit to the zoo and the terror she’d endured. She’d believed she held another little girl’s body in her hands to feed to the lion.
Sam was silent for so long she thought he wouldn’t speak. He simply held her, rocking her in his arms, his face in her neck. She could feel his warm breath on her shoulder. When he lifted his head, he gently brushed a kiss along her pulse and then her ear and temple.
“You must have been a very brave child, Stella. You were alone and terrified. You still wanted to do the right thing. Over the years, the things I saw, my moral compass wasn’t always the best, although I can honestly say I tried to always have justice in my mind, not revenge.”
His words warmed her a little when she was so cold inside. There was true admiration in his voice. Still, she couldn’t shake the nightmare and the aftermath that always came with it.
Sam took another deep breath as if he were fighting down demons and reached for the bottle of water on her nightstand, uncapped it and handed it to her. “Did you ever say anything to your father?”
She tried to control the tremors that wracked her body. “No. The images I saw in my nightmares were horrific. He tortured his victims. I was a child and those images were burned into my brain. I became terrified of him, and the last thing I would ever do would be to talk to him about what I saw. My mother had to figure out ways to explain why I was afraid of him when he came back from his business trips. Fortunately, he wasn’t all that interested in children.”
Sam didn’t try to get her to tell him anything else. She didn’t know if she could have. She hadn’t told anyone about her mother telling her not to speak of her nightmares or that she came into her room at night and coached her over and over not to talk. She’d forced herself to forget.
“I didn’t want to remember,” she murmured. “The things my father did were bad enough, but now, as an adult, I can see that by my mother’s silence, by forcing me to be silent, she was complicit. She didn’t want to give up her status. She knew, better than I did, what would happen to the family of a serial killer, and because she didn’t want the taint of that, she let people die.”
She laid her head back against his chest. “That’s what I’m doing now. Staying silent so I can keep m
y resort and my happy place. My safe haven. I’m doing exactly what she was doing. I hate myself right now. If I don’t go to Griffen and tell him who I am and that I’m having these nightmares, that there’s a killer here, we won’t catch him, Sam, and more people are going to die. He’s making his kills look like accidents. If he hadn’t been so upset at missing his first intended murder, he wouldn’t have used the exact same method killing James Marley.”
“At best they can say his death is suspicious at this point because of the attack on me,” Sam said. “But it does look like an accident. This killer is good. Had he not missed, no one would be the wiser. Our ace in the hole is you. He doesn’t have a clue that you’re onto him. If it got out that you are who you are, that goes away. If you do tell Griffen, we can’t let this get out to the media or anyone else, and you know it would. They already know murder’s a possibility because of the attack on me. They just can’t prove anything. This situation isn’t the same, Stella. We need to be silent in order to have an edge or we don’t stand a chance of catching him.”
That was fine by her. She didn’t want it to get out. The more people who knew, the more her life would be turned upside down. Griffen Cauldrey was a friend, at least she had come to know him pretty well over the last few years and she felt he was a fair man, but he would have to inform the sheriff, and the sheriff would have to call in the FBI.
She took a deep breath. “Sam, I have to tell Zahra. She’s my best friend and she’d be very hurt if I didn’t tell her who I really was. I’ve thought about sharing a million times, but didn’t because …” She trailed off, remembering the feel of her mother’s fingers biting into her cheeks. She hadn’t realized until just now that those childhood memories had played a part in deterring her. “I have to tell Zahra.”
He was silent for a long time. Too long. Long enough that she knew he didn’t approve. She knew why. Zahra tended to blurt things out. She could overshare at times, but she also could keep confidences when it mattered. If Stella asked her not to breathe a word to anyone, she would go to her grave never speaking a word. That was Zahra. In any case, she didn’t need Sam’s approval. She wasn’t that woman.
“Do any of your other friends know who you are?” Before she could answer he sighed, his long fingers moving to the nape of her neck to begin a slow massage. “Raine. She did a background check on you and she would be thorough about it.”
She attempted to turn her head, but his fingers felt too good and they prevented all movement, so she just held still and let him soothe the tension from her. “How do you know that?” Raine knew about Sam. Sam knew about Raine. She just wanted to go back to scheduling her events at the resort. She thought that was complicated. Now she had killers to worry about.
“She won’t run her mouth.”
“As opposed to Zahra, who might?” This time she didn’t care about the soothing massage, or the fact that he was the only person who had ever helped her in the middle of the night when the world had come crashing down. Zahra was her best friend, completely loyal to her, and she wasn’t going to have him act as if Zahra couldn’t be trusted.
“Woman.” His dark eyes caught the moon through the window, glinting at her with amusement.
Her stomach did an unexpected roll. He didn’t look like that ever. His harsh features softened, eyes drifting over her face as if he might want to devour her.
“Man,” she whispered back.
“You think I can’t see inside her? I spent most of my life reading people to stay alive. Not only does she love you, but she’s as loyal as they come. I think she’d chew off her own arm before she’d tell someone who you are.”
His straight white teeth flashed in the briefest of smiles and she nearly fell out of his lap. He didn’t do that. Smiles were so rare they felt like a gift. She touched her fingers to his mouth. “What was that for?” Because she was going to do it again. Often. She liked that he “read” Zahra and recognized she was loyal.
“You have such a nasty little temper. Cracks me up sometimes.”
“My temper cracks you up?” Her eyebrows drew together in the darkest scowl she could summon. “I don’t have a temper. If I do, it’s a very tiny one.”
“Turn around and let me massage your shoulders. You get very upset when anyone is threatening your friends. Even a perceived threat.”
“There was a but in there when you were giving Zahra a compliment. I could hear it in your voice. What was that?” She turned around because she wanted the massage. Who would turn that down?
He took the water bottle out of her hands and put it on the nightstand before settling both hands on her shoulders. He had big hands and strong fingers. “When she drinks, she’s totally uninhibited. She has no idea what is coming out of her mouth.”
“You can say that of anyone, Sam.”
He leaned close, his mouth next to her ear so that his lips brushed against her lobe. “That’s not so. You might blurt out how hot you think I am, but you would never talk about your real identity.”
Her entire body turned red, she was certain of it. She tried not to choke. She had said it to the others right where he could hear it. She knew she had.
“She wouldn’t have any reason to tell anyone.”
“Not even Bruce?”
“She wouldn’t tell Bruce,” Stella told him with absolute confidence.
He was silent, continuing to massage the tension from her while she sat in his lap, Bailey resting his large, heavy head on her leg. She petted the Airedale, her fingers in the curly fur, listening to the sounds of the night, realizing Sam had managed to distance the nightmare from her with his presence, letting her talk and then distracting her with their discussion.
“No, she wouldn’t tell Bruce,” he agreed eventually, and easily lifted her by putting his hands around her waist, to set her on the mattress. “I’m going to make you hot chocolate. You can sketch what you saw and write out the details in the journal you keep. When I come back, if you’re ready, you can tell me about it.”
He hadn’t even asked her to tell him about the nightmare. She waited until he was out of her bedroom before snapping on the small lamp beside the bed and unlocking and then reaching into the drawer where she kept her journal and sketchpad. She visualized everything she saw in her nightmare. There were no faces, but she saw the woman’s blonde hair and athletic clothing. She’d been stylish, as if she’d chosen her clothing more for looks than because they were the best for hiking the trails. A newbie? She wasn’t his normal partner then, that was why he fussed over her, making certain her backpack sat just right. He looked comfortable; she didn’t, but was willing. This was something she wanted to do with him.
There was so little she could get from the first glimpse. She pushed herself to see as much as she could. Concentrate, Stella. The woman’s backpack. His. Their hiking shoes. He had a watch on his wrist— she didn’t. They both wore puffy jackets. His was expensive, a good outdoor brand. Her jacket wasn’t a brand she recognized. Maybe one of her friends might know. Someone might recognize her, or him.
She sketched the two people in relation to their height and weight, trying to guess as accurately as possible given their bulky clothing and surroundings. Then she sketched the very little she could make out of the campsite, her impression of water in the distance behind them, the trees and colors, the leaves on the uneven ground. There wasn’t much. When she finally lifted her head, she realized that Sam was back in the room with her, looking at the drawing over her shoulder, and the hot chocolate was in her favorite to-go mug sitting on her nightstand.
He studied the sketches in silence for a while. “I don’t recognize that campsite, but I’m not a backpacker. You and Raine tend to backpack more than anyone else of our group.”
She’d never heard him include himself in their group. It was true. Raine tended to be the one to backpack with her, especially if the hike was a long one. The two of them liked to go on one-or two-week hikes into the mountains and forest and camp. Some
times, if they could get off work, they would go for longer stretches.
“I’ve looked at it over and over, especially the large impression of water in the background, but I just come up blank. I thought I could show it to Raine, see if she recognizes it.” She pushed back her hair and then reached for the chocolate. “It’s incredibly frustrating to see so little, Sam. It’s next to impossible to identify a place with no real identifying markers.” She rubbed her forehead. “That’s nothing. This is the Sierras, with thousands of miles of trails and so many campsites.”
“At least you have somewhat of a warning. That’s something. If it wasn’t for you, we’d probably never know this killer was at work here. Who knows how many murders he would get away with?” Sam sounded the way he always did. Calm. Steady. A rock.
She took a deep breath. “You’re right, I have to look at things from a different perspective if we’re going to catch this man.”
Sam paced across the floor restlessly, when he wasn’t a restless man. She observed him carefully over the top of her mug. “What is it?”
“I get that you have to talk to Zahra, but, sweetheart, you can’t forget for one minute that this man is a murderer. If he knows that you’re a threat to him, he’s going to set his sights on you. That’s the last thing we want. You aren’t going to be of any use to anyone if you’re dead.”
“I’m not likely to forget what I’m dealing with,” she assured. “I’ve had dealings with serial killers twice before and that was already enough for me. I don’t want to get anywhere near one. Zahra won’t say anything, Sam. I’m more worried about telling Griffen than Zahra. He’ll have no choice but to tell his boss, who would call in the FBI. Then it’s a circus.”
“We don’t exactly have anything to share with Griffen at this point.” He hesitated. “It’s possible I can use a couple of my contacts to help us.”
She looked up quickly. Her nightmare had woken her in the middle of the night, and if it hadn’t been for the moonlight streaming through the window, she wouldn’t have been able to see his face from where she sat. As it was, most of his features were in the shadows, giving him a predatory appearance. She almost wished Denver and Raine had never said anything to her. Already, with her nightmares and the memories of her past so close, she was edgy, and she didn’t ever want to see Sam as the “ghost” one had called him and the other had implied.
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