Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3)

by Blake Pierce

  Riley’s eyes stung with tears. It sometimes hurt that Mike understood her so well. But then, that was exactly why she often turned to him for counsel and friendship.

  He said, “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but you’ve reached a crisis point. Now that you’re pulling out of your own PTSD, you’re still riddled by self-doubt. I’m not sure you can get through this without some kind of emotional catharsis.”

  A single sob forced its way out of Riley. She fought to control herself.

  “Mike, I don’t know what to do next.”

  “It’s OK not to know what to do,” Mike said.

  “Not at a time like now. I’ve got to make a decision.”

  Mike held her gaze for a long moment.

  “I don’t know if this will help,” he said carefully. “But the situation with April is well under control. I’ve made arrangements with a colleague of mine in Fredericksburg. Her name is Lesley Sloat, and she’s an excellent pediatric therapist. She’s willing to work with April every day for as long as she needs to. You and April can meet her tomorrow morning.”

  Riley detected an unspoken hint in Mike’s words. He seemed to be saying that Riley’s immediate presence wouldn’t be necessary for long. She could go back to work soon if she wanted to.

  But did she want to? She felt terribly lost and confused.

  The door to Mike’s office opened. Rose and April stepped out into the hallway. Rose’s arm was around April’s shoulder.

  “I think we did some good work today, don’t you, April?” Rose said in a warm, pleasant voice.

  April’s smile was weak but genuine.

  “I think so too,” she said.

  “Let’s head on home then,” Riley said.

  Riley held her daughter’s hand tightly as they left the building and walked toward the car.

  “I’m so sorry about all this, Mom,” April said.

  “Please stop saying that,” Riley said.

  *

  April went to bed soon after they got back to their home in Fredericksburg. She was exhausted after her ordeal, and Riley hoped she would sleep soundly. But Riley didn’t feel ready to sleep. It was more than the time change. She was deeply troubled.

  As soon as she was sure that April was asleep, she went to her own bedroom and stretched out on the bed. She called Bill on her cell phone.

  “Riley!” Bill said when he answered. “How’s April doing?”

  “She’ll be OK,” Riley said.

  Riley heard Bill sigh with relief. It felt good to hear his voice.

  “What’s going on with the case?” Riley asked.

  “We’re just completely stalled here. I wish you were still here.”

  A silence fell. Riley sensed that Bill was trying to find the right words for something she might not want to hear.

  Finally he said, “Riley, Morley did what he said he was going to do. He called Brent Meredith in Quantico and gave him an earful about how pissed off he is with you. He got you taken off the case.”

  It was Riley’s turn to fall silent. She had no idea what to say.

  “Riley, I can fix this,” Bill said. “I’ve already called Meredith. He understands what you’re going through. He can pull rank on Morley. He can get you reinstated. But the final decision is up to you.”

  Riley’s anxiety was so intense that she could barely breathe.

  “I need some time to decide, Bill,” she said.

  Bill let out a slight groan of impatience.

  “Time’s something we don’t have a lot of,” he said. “Morley’s already talking about bringing in a replacement from Quantico. I’m stalling him for now, but I can’t do it for very long. And once a replacement gets here, it’ll be a lot harder for you to come back.”

  “I understand,” Riley said. “Thanks, Bill.”

  They ended the phone call. Riley just lay there on her bed, feeling stranded and helpless and depressed. It was a new and terrible feeling. During her life she’d known anger, terror, grief, and just about every other kind of negative emotion she could imagine. But somehow this was worse. She barely recognized herself right now—a wavering, quivering mass of indecision and despair. Where was this unfamiliar misery going to end?

  She remembered something Mike Nevins had said.

  “I’m not sure you can get through this without some kind of emotional catharsis.”

  As far as she was concerned, that didn’t bode well for her at all. Things were going to get worse before they got better. She remembered how she’d almost cried when she’d talked to Mike earlier.

  Maybe that’s what I need right now, she thought. A good cry.

  But no tears came.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  The next evening, Riley was in the kitchen just starting to fix dinner for herself and April when she heard the front door open.

  A familiar, Spanish-accented voice called out, “Where is she? Where is my sweet muchacha?”

  Then Riley heard April yell happily, “Gabriela!”

  Riley hurried to the living room where she found April and Gabriela hugging each other. Gabriela’s suitcase was on the floor near the door.

  “Gabriela!” Riley said. “I didn’t expect you home until tomorrow.”

  “You didn’t think I’d stay away after all that happened, did you?”

  Riley understood. Yesterday she had called Gabriela, who was still visiting her family in Tennessee. Of course Riley had told her what had happened with April. Gabriela was family, and Riley wouldn’t think of leaving her out of the loop. Riley shouldn’t have been surprised that Gabriela had hurried back as soon as she possibly could.

  “You go get unpacked, Gabriela,” she said. “I’m fixing dinner.”

  Riley headed back into the kitchen. As much as she loved Gabriela’s cooking, she liked to switch places with her to cook once in a while. And she was sure that Gabriela could use a break after her trip.

  It had been a long, emotional day. Early in the afternoon, Riley had taken April to Dr. Lesley Sloat’s office. First, Riley had talked alone for a while with Dr. Sloat, who had explained her therapeutic approach to her. Riley immediately took a liking to the short, stout, warm-hearted woman. She felt so grateful for the help with April’s post-traumatic stress. She shuddered to think what her daughter must be going through.

  Then Dr. Sloat had talked with April alone for an hour. April had seemed to feel much better after the session had ended.

  On the way home, April had said, “Your friend Dr. Nevins really came through for us. Dr. Sloat is going to be great to talk to. She has a way of making me see things I couldn’t figure out on my own.”

  Now, washing vegetables in the kitchen, Riley felt glad that Gabriela was back. She was a calming, comforting, and loving presence in their lives. Riley wondered what she would have done without her through their recent difficulties.

  April came into the kitchen and started helping her mother.

  “You know what this means, don’t you, Mom?” April said. “Gabriela coming back, I mean.”

  “I don’t think so,” Riley said.

  “It means you can fly right back to Phoenix and get back on the job.”

  Riley was startled by the suggestion.

  “But I just got here yesterday,” Riley said.

  April laughed a little as she chopped up some celery.

  “Look, it’s not like I’m not glad you’re here,” she said. “But you’ve got a bad guy to catch. And I’m going to be fine. I can get to Dr. Sloat’s office by bus. And if I get shaky, I’ve got her number, and she says I can call her any time. And with Gabriela here, well …”

  Gabriela had just stepped into the kitchen doorway.

  “Your hija is right,” she said. “April and I can handle things here.”

  Riley felt a surge of panic. April and Gabriela were both right, of course. She no longer had any excuse not to return to Phoenix. But to her alarm, she still couldn’t seem to make a decision.

  What’
s the matter with me? she wondered.

  Then she remembered something else Mike Nevins had said …

  “You keep right on thinking that you should be able to do the impossible. Why is that, do you think?”

  In a flash, Riley knew the answer to that question—or at least where and how to find an answer. She collapsed into a kitchen chair, her tears finally flowing hard.

  Gabriela and April huddled close to her, trying to comfort her.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” April asked.

  “I know where I’ve got to go,” Riley said through her tears. “I know who I’ve got to see.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Rain was pouring down hard the next day as Riley wended her way up into the Appalachian Mountains. The dirt roads were deep with mud, and the driving was rocky and rough. The disagreeable weather mirrored her feelings. Her rare visits to her father were never pleasant.

  Still, she knew in her gut that this visit was necessary. The drive was taking her into more than just a mountainous wilderness. It was taking her into the very heart of her self-doubt. It was a part of her soul that she needed to look into without flinching. Otherwise she might never shake off her indecision and uncertainty.

  Besides, she found the rain oddly refreshing. It was certainly a change after the dryness of the hot Arizona air. And the surrounding forest was still lush and green. The first frost hadn’t yet hit to turn the leaves.

  The rain showed no sign of letting up as she pulled up to the little cabin. Her father had bought this place and some surrounding acreage when he retired from the Marines. Generally speaking, visitors weren’t welcome here. He didn’t even have a phone or a computer to communicate with the outside world, although he sometimes got news during his occasional visits to the nearby town.

  She opened an umbrella and rushed toward the door. She knocked—not that she expected anyone to answer or to welcome her inside. That just wasn’t her father’s way. But she heard someone coughing inside the cabin.

  She opened the door and stepped inside. The single room was warm and dry, heated by a wood-burning cook stove. Grizzled and stooped, her father was seated on a stool, skinning a dead squirrel. Several naked squirrel carcasses were piled up next to him.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said.

  He didn’t look up from his work. She didn’t expect him to. He had just made the initial cuts and was pulling the pelt off of the carcass. Ever since she’d hunted with him as a little girl, she’d admired how he did that. He made it seem as smooth and graceful as helping a lady out of her coat on a dinner date.

  He coughed loudly for a moment. Riley found it a strange sound coming from him. She couldn’t remember him having been sick for a single day in their life together.

  When he got control of his coughing, he said, “You came back in a hurry.”

  Riley understood what he meant. The last time she’d come to see him was a couple of months back, in July. Before that, more than two years had gone by without her making any attempt to contact him. And of course, no attempt at contact ever came from him.

  Riley sat down, making herself as comfortable as she could on an uncomfortable wicker chair. Her father coughed again. He looked paler than the last time she was here—maybe a little thinner too. His hair was just slightly longer than the marine-style buzz cut he’d always worn.

  “Are you sick, Daddy?” she said.

  He chuckled grimly. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Nothing would make you happier than to see me helpless and sick and at death’s door. No such luck, girl. Not this time.”

  Riley felt her jaw tighten and her whole body tense up. This visit was turning ugly even faster than the last one.

  “So what kind of a case are you working on these days?” he asked.

  “Pretty much the usual,” Riley said, finding herself dropping into his cold, detached manner of speech. “A serial killer out in Arizona. Murders prostitutes.”

  “Arizona, huh?”

  He slit the squirrel down its abdomen and started to pull out its entrails.

  “Scrawny little bastard,” he grumbled.

  The smell of squirrel guts wafted across the room toward Riley. She remembered it well. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t as bad as a decomposing human corpse.

  “You’re a long way from Arizona,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Riley didn’t reply. Her back stiffened.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said in a snarling half-cough, half-chuckle. “Things got the best of you. You went AWOL. You’re wondering whether you’re cut out for your line of work. Yeah, I felt that way in ’Nam from time to time. I never ran away from it, though. Deserting’s frowned on in the Marines. Guess the Bureau’s a little more lenient. Spoils you.”

  Riley emotionally braced herself. It was time to open up to a man who had no concept of what openness might be.

  “A lot’s happened since the last time I was here,” she said. “April got captured by the last killer I took down. She almost got killed.”

  “April?” he asked with a grunt.

  “My daughter. Your granddaughter.”

  He coughed a bit more. “Oh, yeah. How did she cope with it? Did she turn into a shivering ball of helpless fear?”

  Riley felt pleased at what she got to say in reply.

  “No. She helped me kill him.”

  Her father tossed the skinned and gutted squirrel into the pile and started to work on another carcass.

  “Good girl,” he said. “You ought to bring her around one of these days. I’d like to meet her sometime.”

  Not in this lifetime, Riley thought.

  Her father kept on talking.

  “So now you feel all guilty. You think maybe you’re in the wrong line of work. You want to be a good little mother raising a good little girl. Shit. You know what I’ve got to say to all that.”

  “There are monsters out there, Daddy,” Riley said. “I took her into a world of monsters.”

  He started to laugh, but his laughter broke down in coughing.

  “What a load of crap. You think you’re up against a monster in Arizona? A man who kills prostitutes? You’re not dealing with a monster. Hell, you’re not even dealing with evil. You’re dealing with what folks call normal. This killer of yours—when he’s not killing, he’s a good man, a pillar of the community, a good husband, a good father. The opposite of me—and the opposite of you.”

  Riley knew, from the profile she herself was putting together, that he wasn’t altogether wrong. But that didn’t answer anything.

  “If he’s so good, why does he keep killing women?” Riley asked.

  Her father stopped cutting the squirrel in mid-knife stroke. The question seemed to interest him. He looked Riley straight in the eye.

  “Why do you keep killing men?” he asked.

  Riley felt as if she’d been plunged into a freezing lake. It was a good question. It was an important question. It was exactly the question she’d come here hoping to have answered.

  “You’re a hunter,” her father said, still holding her gaze. “What folks call normal—it would kill you if you tried living it too long. Truth is, it kills everybody, all that goddamn normalness. It’s not natural, it’s against human nature. Makes folks crazy with boredom. Makes them kill for no reason at all. Now, you and me, we’ve got our reasons for killing. We’re good animals that way. We know who we are. These killers you hunt down and kill—they just don’t have the proper insight. They don’t know themselves. They get all out of control.”

  He continued to hold her gaze.

  “Reminds me of a saying. ‘In a mad world, only the mad are sane.’ Can’t remember who said it. But it’s true, and that’s you and me all over. Mad people in a mad world full of people who’ve got no reason to be sane. We’re the only folks who’ve got any idea what’s really going on.”

  He lowered his eyes and stared at the floor, speaking almost in a whisper.

  “You’ll go back to work. You’ll
head back on the next plane you can catch. I know it. You don’t have a choice. I never gave you a choice. I raised you right, to be a hunter. Wish I’d done as well by your sister, but it’s too late to fix that.”

  Riley felt like she’d gotten an electric shock. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever mentioned Wendy. It seemed uncanny, because Riley had been thinking of her a lot lately.

  “Maybe I didn’t treat her right,” he said.

  “You used to hit her,” Riley said.

  Her father grunted and nodded slowly. “That’s what I mean. I only hit her with my hands. Bruised her up a little on the outside, that’s all. Didn’t hit her deep enough. I knew better by the time you were growing up. I never laid a hand on you. I hit you a lot deeper than that. You learned. You learned.”

  He coughed for a long time now. Riley could see that he was very sick. But there was no point in trying to talk to him about it.

  When his coughing passed away, he said, “I’d ask you to stay for some squirrel stew. But you don’t want to hang around with a mean old bastard like me. You’re ready to get the hell out of here.”

  He was absolutely right, but Riley didn’t say so.

  Instead she said, “I don’t hate you, Daddy.”

  “You’re either lying or you’re a fool,” he said.

  Riley bristled at this.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means just what I said. If you don’t hate me, I didn’t do my job right.”

  He coughed some more. He seemed very ill. Riley wanted to pity him. But she wasn’t going to let herself do that. He’d really made her mad.

  Sarcastically she said, “Well, while we’re on the subject of the ‘job’ you did, maybe I should thank you. I learned a lot from your example. I learned everything there was to learn about how not to be a parent.”

  “Stupid,” he said. “You’re probably raising that girl of yours to love you. She’ll grow up weak. You’ll live to regret it.”

  “What do you know about regret?” Riley snapped.