by Kay Hooper
Don’t celebrate…just yet…little girl.
Present Day
“You didn’t tell me the bastard shot you,” Ash said.
“I’m telling you now.” Riley shrugged. “Left shoulder, and missed anything that really mattered.”
“You don’t have a scar.”
“I don’t scar. Otherwise, I’d look like a freakin’ road map.”
Ash sent her a look. “Gordon wasn’t kidding about you being a lightning rod for trouble.”
“Not really, no. Consider yourself warned again.”
“I consider myself warned.” It was nearly four that afternoon when Ash pulled the Hummer into a parking place near the burned remains of the beachfront house apparently torched by an arsonist.
“What do you expect to find?” he asked Riley as they got out of the vehicle.
“I don’t know. Probably nothing.” She waited until they were ducking under the yellow CAUTION tape encircling what was left of the house to add, “Something’s been nagging at me since I came here with Jake. I just can’t figure out what it is.”
Ash took her hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Price. About the truth of why I left Atlanta.”
“You didn’t know it would matter.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Okay. So why didn’t you tell me?” She kept her gaze on the charred pilings and mounds of debris before them.
“It wasn’t my finest hour, Riley.”
“Hey, if you want to swap tales of frustration and failure, I’ve got a few of my own. We all have them, Ash.”
“I doubt yours went on to butcher a score of innocent men.”
“Don’t be so sure. I was in the army, remember? An officer. Some of my choices and decisions were bound to cost lives.” She shook her head. “We can only do the best we can do. And some things have to happen just the way they happen.”
He looked at her curiously. “You really believe that.”
“I really do.”
“And you still believe you were lured here, that someone has been pulling strings and influencing events?”
Riley nodded.
“Why? Why would someone go to all that trouble?”
“I don’t know. Revenge. Payback. Grandstanding.” As soon as she said the last word, she was conscious of its incongruity.
“Grandstanding? As in a competition? A contest of skills?”
She tried to focus on something in her own mind, some wispy fragment of knowledge or information she could…almost…see. There was a question she should have asked someone. A lead she should have followed—
“Riley?”
She blinked and looked up at Ash. “I’ve missed something. A connection.”
“What sort of connection?”
“I’m not sure. Things? Places? People? Damn, why can’t I make it come clear in my head?”
He frowned as he studied her. “Are things fuzzy again? Distant, the way they were before?”
“No. Yes. Dammit, I’m not sure. Fuzzy around the edges. I keep coming back to Price. Remembering the hunt for him. That’s why I told you, because he’s been on my mind the last few days. I can’t help wondering…”
“Wondering what?”
“Wondering if I missed something. All those months I tracked him. Having his thoughts in my head by the end of it.” She turned her gaze back to the burned building. “It became almost surreal. And unbelievably creepy. There was something almost…gleeful about him. As if he knew a secret, and knew it was something—”
…gleeful about him. As if he knew a secret, and knew it was something—
Riley blinked at the laptop’s screen, conscious of a moment of sheer vertigo. Everything in her seemed to be whirling dizzily, time and space and reality tumbling.
She put her hands up to her face, rubbing hard until the whirling stopped, the dizziness faded, then opened her eyes cautiously to peer at the screen again.
Her report.
Report?
More reluctant than she wanted to admit to herself, she shifted her gaze to the lower right-hand corner of the screen, to the date and time.
Two A.M.
Friday morning.
“Oh, Christ,” she whispered.
Riley pushed herself up from the table in her beach house, surprised to find that she was fully dressed but not so surprised that she felt shaky and disoriented.
It had been Thursday afternoon, and she’d been at one of the arson sites with Ash, she was sure of that. Looking for answers. They’d been talking, and—
A wave of dizziness swept over her, and she closed her eyes, holding on to the edge of the table, her fingers digging into—
Charred wood.
She stumbled back a step and stared at the debris visible in the glare of a security light. The acrid stench of burned wood stung her nostrils, and she could hear the surf on the other side of the dunes, rolling in close because it was high tide.
She held up her hands and stared at the blackened tips of her fingers for a moment, then looked at the piece of burned wood she had apparently been holding on to.
“Enough,” she whispered. “Goddammit, enough.”
She didn’t dare close her eyes, was almost afraid to blink for fear there’d be another insane shift through space and time.
Only that wasn’t it, of course. That wasn’t what was happening. It was all in her head.
She reached out slowly and touched the rough surface of the burned wood, testing its reality. It felt like solid wood, charred though it was. Real wood. Burned wood.
She kept her fingers on that hard, rough surface and looked slowly around her. The security light was painfully bright, so that it was difficult to see anything but darkness beyond it. But she thought she could make out the hulking shape of Ash’s Hummer parked in what would have been the house’s driveway.
Parked. Engine running.
Someone behind the wheel?
Riley didn’t want to let go of the wood. Didn’t want to move out of the glare of the light and into the darkness. She stood there listening to the surf pound the beach and asked herself with something she recognized as terror whether she would be able to bear it if the connection she had missed had been right in front of her the whole time.
With her.
In her bed.
She didn’t think she would be able to bear it.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not him. I trust him.”
Then who is it, little girl?
The jolt of coldness went so deep Riley thought her very bones had turned to ice.
You can’t face the truth. You could never face the truth.
“Stop.” She forced herself to let go of the wood and walked steadily toward the vehicle. “You’re dead.”
Did you think you had killed me? Silly girl. Some things never die. Haven’t you learned that by now?
“Everything dies. You died. I killed you.”
Are you sure, little girl?
The Hummer loomed in darkness, its engine idling quietly as she approached it. She steeled herself, but when she opened the driver’s-side door, it was to find the vehicle empty.
Oh, did you think he was here? No, little girl. It’s just us. Just you and me.
Riley hesitated, then climbed up into the driver’s seat.
Are you going to run back to him and hide from the truth? Or come to me and find it?
This time, she didn’t hesitate. She put the truck in gear and backed out of the driveway.
Stupid. Of course it was stupid. She was unarmed. And listening to voices in her head. What kind of sense did that make? No sense, no sense at all.
Because her thinking was fuzzy and she felt cold, and the only thing she was certain of was that this was a bad idea and she would surely regret it.
But you’ve always wondered, haven’t you? Since that day at the river. You’ve always wondered whether you missed, after all.
“I never miss.”
Always a
first time, right? And you weren’t thinking clearly, after all. He was in your head—
Ah.
“He. So you’re someone else, after all.”
Silence.
Riley heard a little laugh escape her and realized she knew where she was going, where she needed to be. “Don’t tell me there was someone who actually cared about him? Someone who actually missed the miserable son of a bitch once he was gone?”
It’s not going to work, little girl.
“You mean I can’t make you mad? I’m betting I can. Sooner or later.”
Want to bet your life on it?
She drove across the bridge to the mainland and into Castle, heading for the park. The veil was back in her mind, distancing her from her senses, even herself. But this time, she made no attempt to fight her way through it.
This time, she knew a better way.
Conversationally, as though to someone in the passenger seat, Riley said, “What were you, the apprentice monster? Someone he was grooming to pick up wherever he happened to leave off?”
Don’t try to work it all out, Riley. You’ll just waste precious energy. Don’t you realize you’re going to need everything you can summon to fight me?
“Done toying with me, are you? After all these weeks of playing with me like a cat with a mouse. This—today—was all very sudden. Jarring. Almost as if you felt…rushed. I wonder why.”
Silence.
“You saw the truth today, and it scared you, didn’t it? You hadn’t bargained on Ash. Oh, you delighted in taking away my memories of falling in love with him, but you didn’t truly understand the connection between us. You had no idea it wasn’t dependent on memories, that knowing I had trusted him would give me the anchor I needed. And you had no idea he could replenish the energy you were taking away.”
He’s not here, little girl. Just you. Just us.
Riley didn’t let herself think about that, beyond the fleeting understanding that Gordon had been right, that she would always charge into things alone, convinced not so much of her own invincibility as of the responsibility she owed to others.
Those one loved were not put carelessly in harm’s way.
Simple, that. A rule to live by.
Or maybe die by.
She parked the Hummer near the break in the fence that was no longer guarded. The path was lit only by what moonlight could filter through the trees, but it was a full moon, and very bright, so Riley could see well enough.
Not that it mattered, really. She was being drawn here, and this time she wasn’t fighting it. Beneath the clouded surface of her mind, like a fogged mirror, she waited patiently to emerge. The fog protected her; now that she understood it, she could use it, wear it as she wore so many surfaces.
She allowed confused fragments of thought, seemingly random, to skitter across that misty barrier, while underneath, her mind was working with a clarity as bright and sharp as a knife.
Assembling the pieces of the puzzle.
Riley emerged into the clearing, her gaze going to the peculiarly ancient shape of the stone altar. Nothing hanging above it this time, but the circle had been re-created. She knew that, even though she couldn’t see the salt, because there were candles placed at specific points.
Black candles.
Burning.
She took no more than two steps into the clearing and, preoccupied, failed to heed the prickle of warning on the back of her neck that came just seconds before he grabbed her from behind.
Riley could command a literal arsenal of hand-to-hand combat techniques, everything from exotic martial arts to down-and-dirty street fighting, and it was the latter instincts that guided her in this particular instance.
With lightning speed, she reached back and grabbed him, her hand squeezing with full strength and short nails digging into his testicles.
He howled in agony and let go of her, and as he fell she twisted expertly and ended up facing him—with his gun in her hands.
Curled on the ground clutching his bruised flesh, gagging and moaning, he was so wrapped up in his own suffering that Riley was reasonably sure he was blind and deaf to everything else around him for at least a couple of long minutes.
She waited him out, his own gun trained on him, and, when he showed signs of beginning to recover, spoke calmly.
“Nature gave you greater size, more muscle, more aggression. Your edge. She also gave you balls.” Riley cocked the revolver she had taken from him. “My edge.”
Jake didn’t even try to get up, and wheezed a few times before he was able to say, “Jesus…you fight dirty.”
“I fight to win,” she told him. “Always.”
He wheezed some more, finally getting out, “I figured…you’d use some…of that…martial…arts shit.”
“Yeah, I could have. But this way was more fun.” Even as the flippant words left her, Riley had a realization, and there was no humor in her voice when she added, “You shouldn’t be here. Goddammit, Jake, what’re you doing here?”
He made a halfhearted attempt to rise, then fell back with a groan. “Shit, Riley, you told me to meet you here. Said you had it all figured out, and—”
She lowered the gun but continued to hold it in a practiced two-handed grip. “Then why did you grab me?”
“For the hell of it,” he replied with another groan, this one more theatrical than real. “I thought you might try to throw me over your shoulder or something, but—Jesus Christ, Riley—”
Typical macho bullshit, she thought, not sparing the energy to even be indignant or disgusted by it. He’d been curious about her self-defense skills, and he’d wanted to get his hands on her.
Figured.
Some of her energy was focused on maintaining the deceptively foggy surface of her mind, but she spared a few tendrils to reach out and probe the clearing.
Absently, she said to Jake, “Stay down, understand? Don’t even try to get up. I didn’t call you myself, did I? Somebody passed on a message?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Who told you I wanted to meet you, Jake? Or can I guess?” She raised her voice. “You can come out, Leah.”
There was a moment of silence, and then the tall redhead stepped into the clearing on the other side. And into the circle. She was definitely out of uniform, wearing a long black robe. The hood was down, allowing her long red hair to gleam in the bright moonlight.
“When did you know?” she asked calmly.
“Slow on the uptake, I’m afraid,” Riley answered, matching the other woman’s calm. “Today—or yesterday, rather—just before you started yanking my mind around. I figured out there was a connection I had missed. Gordon said it. That he didn’t believe in coincidence. Ash and me both here, each with a past connection to John Henry Price, that was what he was thinking. Couldn’t be coincidence. And wasn’t. You wanted Ash in this. That’s why it had to be here. In Castle. Because this is where you found Ash. Right?”
Leah smiled faintly. “I may have underestimated you.”
Riley kept going. “Ash was here, and he wasn’t going anywhere. He was the only one who had come close to putting Price behind bars where he belonged. And it didn’t matter to you that he’d failed. It mattered to you that he had dared.”
“He shouldn’t have done that,” Leah said. “It was…upsetting. The trial. All the watching eyes. We don’t like watching eyes.”
Riley resisted the temptation to follow that tangent. “So it had to be here. Where you’d make your stand and even all the scores. You’d already met Gordon. Probably in Charleston, when he was looking for his retirement spot. That was the question I forgot to ask him, you know, who it was suggested Opal Island as a nice place to retire. I had it backwards, thanks to that sweet little story you spun for me about picking Castle by sticking a pin in a map. I thought he was already here when you came. But it was the other way around, wasn’t it, Leah?”
“I’m going to regret Gordon, I think,” she replied. “He’s bee
n fun. And amazingly easy to handle. Most men are, I’ve found.”
It was taking everything Riley had to split her focus, to keep her eyes on Leah, her voice even and calm as she talked, while another part of her consciousness was reaching out in another direction entirely.
Everything she had was—she hoped—just enough.
“You had already picked your group of satanists,” she went on. “Thanks to Price and his interests, you knew the right people. Knew how to find what you were looking for. A tame group ready to relocate, a member with an ex-husband hoping to reconcile. It was, as you say, easy enough to manipulate Wesley Tate. Maybe you went out with him once or twice and found out about Jenny that way.”
Leah shrugged, still smiling.
“You had almost all the players ready. Gordon was here. Ash was here. Tate was primed to get his ex-wife and her group here. I was next. To get me here, you needed to worry Gordon. So you did. By planting all those little signs of occult activity. I don’t know, maybe you planted a bit more than signs. Maybe you planted the worry in Gordon, or strengthened it. So he’d contact me.”
Riley took a half step to one side, coming around just a bit to face the other woman more squarely.
She didn’t raise Jake’s gun.
“And I came. All according to your plan. Or was it his plan? Does your father control you even from his grave, Leah?”
That surprised Leah, her smile fading and tension visible as she stiffened.
Riley nodded. “He really didn’t like women, but he had tried to be what he believed was normal. No marriage on the books, no girlfriend we could ever find, so I’m betting your mother was a one-night stand. What was she, Leah, some hooker he paid to help him get it up?”
Leah’s head moved slightly in an odd, twisted way—and in the circle all the candles flared suddenly brighter.
The extra light allowed Riley to see what she had been afraid of seeing. In the center of the circle, lying limply across the flat altar stone, was Jenny.
Not dead yet: The long, curved blade of the knife Leah held was not yet bloodied. But the dark woman was clearly unconscious.
Riley was still trying to hide the part of her mind and senses that was reaching desperately for a connection, so she made her voice a bit slow and uncertain.