Protector of One
Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelven

Chapter Thirteen

Copyright

RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve, and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

Her bestselling CONARD COUNTY series has won the hearts of readers worldwide, and it’s no wonder, given her own approach to life and love. As she says, “Life is the biggest romantic adventure of all—and if you’re open and aware, the most marvelous things are just waiting to be discovered.”

For all my readers, each and every one, who help me keep Conard County alive.

Hugs to you all!

Prologue

It was a dark and stormy night. The most clichéd opening line in literature should have been the start of the story, Kerry Tomlinson would later think. As an English teacher she had used the line often to instruct.

In reality, it was a bright and sunny autumn morning, redolent of coffee, sizzling bacon and the nutty aroma of grits and cheese. In the background, the radio played some lively but pleasant music. She sat at her table with the Conard County Courier open in front of her, waiting for the strip of bacon she intended to crumble into the steaming bowl of grits beside the stove.

She heard the newsbreak start, the report of two bodies being found on the edge of the state forest in Conard County, two hikers…

Then her world turned upside down.

Chapter One

Adrian Goddard sat in Conard County Sheriff Gage Dalton’s Office, about as unhappy as a man could be short of death or major injury. He’d left law enforcement two years ago and he wasn’t happy to be dragged back in. But a double homicide had caused Gage to call on him, and his sense of duty wouldn’t let him refuse.

A lean, rangy man with a face marked by weather and strain, his gray eyes pierced whatever he looked at and nearly matched the early gray at his temples. He looked as if he might have been chiseled out of the granite of the Wyoming mountains. He had one of those faces that made guessing his age nearly impossible, yet few would have believed he was only thirty-five.

He’d spent the day at the crime scene, gathering the kind of information a photograph or a report might overlook: angles of attack, best vantage points, surrounding cover. The little and big things that could answer the question: why did this happen here and not elsewhere? Given the relative isolation of the wooded murder scene, that question had gained a lot of importance.

Gage returned to the office, looking as tired as any man who’d spent the day looking at two partially decomposed bodies while marching up and down rocky ground looking for footprints and cartridge casings. Maybe worse than tired, because Gage lived his life in constant pain, the only outward signs of which were his limp and the burn scar on his cheek and neck.

“Nate’s going to come in tomorrow,” Gage said.

“Good,” Adrian answered. Nate Tate was the former sheriff of Conard County. He’d retired a couple of years ago to be succeeded by Gage Dalton, a man still referred to as “the new sheriff.” But Adrian had worked more often with Nate over the years than he had with Gage, so he knew the man’s mettle and doubted anyone on the planet knew this county better. If anybody in Conard County had a screw loose, Nate would know who it was and would probably even have the guy’s phone number memorized. A good starting place in a case like this.

Gage settled in his chair, a pillow behind his back, reflexive pain showing only in a minute tightening around his dark eyes. “Okay,” he said, “we’re getting nowhere fast. We should probably call it a night.”

“Probably.” Oddly, however, Adrian felt reluctant to return to the peace of his ranch. The place he had chosen to be his hermitage. His fortress.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Was it a hate killing? It looks like it. The way these guys were arranged…”

Gage winced again, this time at the thought. “I don’t want a Matthew Shepard thing in this county.”

“Who does? But it doesn’t feel right anyway. You saw them. Something about it keeps nagging at me. Misdirection. That’s what I’m thinking.”

Gage nodded, pulling a couple of the crime scene photos toward him. “I guess we won’t know for sure until we find out who they are.”

Any identifiable items had been removed. Adrian stared at a photo, thinking. “If it was a hate crime, wouldn’t they want us to know who the vics are?”

“You’re talking about a rational mind, Adrian.”

“Even neo-Nazis can be rational. They’re just wrong.”

At that a faint smile flickered over Gage’s face. “Maybe.”

“Well, the statement gets kind of overlooked if it takes us weeks to find out who these guys are. By then the news will have moved on.”

“Don’t mention the news. The major media are going to crawl all over us tomorrow.” Gage heaved a resigned sigh.

“Too bad,” Adrian said, “that these guys couldn’t have been on state forest land.”

“Yeah. Then we could have called in your old buddies.”

Adrian had retired on disability from the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation. He would have loved to turn all of this over to them.

Or maybe not. Despite himself, his interest was piqued.

“Too bad,” Gage said, “it didn’t happen in Denver. Anywhere but my county.”

“Gage?”

At the soft voice both men looked up to see Emma Dalton, Gage’s wife, standing in the doorway. The years had dissolved none of her beauty, and to Gage she still appeared to be the redheaded, green-eyed goddess he’d fallen in love with in the darkest time of both their lives. “Have you got time to listen to a witness?”

“Witness to what?”

“The murders. Kerry Tomlinson. You remember her. She had a vision about it.”

The two men looked at each other, neither of them knowing what to make of this announcement. It was almost as if they had just ridden over the hump in a roller coaster, the word witness starting to fill them with excitement just as the word vision sent them plunging. But there was Emma, a paragon if ever there was one, asking them to listen.

Gage cleared his throat. “I didn’t know Kerry was a psychic.”

“She’s not.” Emma stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. She smelled like rose water and the library, and a touch of cold autumn air. “But she’s very scared and very frightened, and she can’t shake the images out of her mind. So you are going to listen to her and reassure her. If she’s got information you can use, good. If not you can at least put her mind to rest about whether she’s really seeing the murder victims.”

Gage and Adrian exchanged looks again. To Adrian it seemed both of them felt the same reluctance.

“Okay,” Gage answered after a moment. “But we’re not shrinks. Let me just put all this stuff out of sight.”

Emma glanced down and her lips tightened. “Please do,” she said. “I don’t need to look at that, either. Let me get her.”

Emma hovered over her like a guardian angel, Kerry thought as they walked down the hall to the sheriff’s office. The sense of having an ally in this craziness reassured her almost as much as the sense of an unseen presence just behind her shoulder disturbed her. Emma might spread her metaphoric wings, but those wings seemed unable to hold back the push from the invisible presence.

This is insane.

But insane or not, she had the strong feeling that if she didn’t spit out these images, they were going to plague her forever.

She entered Gage’s office tentatively, giving him a small, weak smile. Then she saw the other man. Tall, rugged-looking, dark hair with a dash of gray at the temples. Adrian Goddard. What was he doing here?

At that instant she almost turned and ran. Being crazy was one thing. Announcing it to a whole bunch of people, one of them almost a stranger, was entirely another. His gray eyes flicked over her, as full of doubt as any atheist’s when inside a church.

“I can’t do this!” The words burst from her and she started to turn, but Emma gently caught her arm.

“You can,” Emma said firmly. “None of us know what happened to you this morning. Nobody can say whether it was something random occurring because of the news you heard, or whether you really saw something. But one thing I do know, Kerry. You’re not crazy, and if there’s even a slender hope that you might have picked up on something useful, you owe it to the victims to tell Gage.”

Kerry closed her eyes a moment, felt again the pressure pushing her forward, thought she almost heard a whisper in her ear. “Okay,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Maybe if I tell you all, I can forget about it, which would be a blessing.”

She took one of the two chairs facing the desk, refusing to look at Adrian Goddard. Right now she needed his apparent dubiousness as much as she needed another vision. Gage merely looked inquiring. And kind.

“It’s okay, Kerry,” he said. “Before this week is out we’ll have had a handful of people claim to have committed these murders even though they had nothing to do with them, and a thousand useless tips. And we have no leads at this point. So a vision of any kind is welcome, okay?”

Kerry nodded slowly, trying to find the persona that could control a classroom full of rowdy teens, and leave behind the disturbed woman she had become today.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” But it was going to be one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

Adrian leaned back in his chair, folding his hands on his flat stomach, trying to appear impassive. His gaze bored into Kerry Tomlinson, though. A schoolteacher with visions. He’d noticed her around, of course. You couldn’t live in Conard County for long without noticing just about everyone.

She was tiny, almost frail-looking, with long dark hair caught in a clip at the nape of her neck. Her dark eyes were large in her face, her cheekbones high and her unpainted lips invitingly shaped. Pretty, but able to pass unnoticed if she chose. A quiet prettiness, the kind that for the right person could easily turn into brilliant beauty. A man would have to approach carefully, slowly, and gently, to bring that out, but once he did…

Catching himself, Adrian almost shook his head to bring his attention back to what she was saying.

“It’s hard to explain,” she said, looking at Gage. “I was just sitting there waiting for my breakfast to finish cooking…” She trailed off and looked down at her knotted hands.

“Start wherever you want,” Gage said gently. “You don’t have to get right to the vision.”

That seemed to reassure her. Her head lifted, and Adrian now saw the woman who taught for a living, the woman who could handle rooms full of teenagers.

“All right,” she said, her voice taking on a somewhat stronger timbre. “When I was in my senior year in college, we were driving back to school after the holidays when the car skidded on ice and went over a cliff. My two friends died. Probably the only reason I’m still here is that I was in the backseat, and an EMT saw us go off the road.”

Gage nodded, didn’t ask her how this was related. Just let her tell her story her own way, which was often the best way.

“Anyway,” Kerry continued, “I died twice.”

In spite of himself, Adrian sat up a little straighter. Gage leaned forward and repeated, “Twice?”

Kerry nodded. “That’s what they tell me. I was clinically dead twice before they managed to stabilize me. I’m lucky not to have suffered major brain damage.”

“I would say so!” Gage agreed heartily.

A faint smile flickered over Kerry’s face. “I’ll spare you the tale about going into the light. My near-death experience was pretty much the same as everyone’s you hear about. I know it was real. I don’t need to convince anyone else.”

Gage nodded. Adrian sat frozen. He would have liked to demand the details for himself, but held on to his desire. Another time. A better time.

“Anyway,” Kerry said, “I recovered, I finished school, I came back here to teach. You all know the rest. I’ve been teaching here for eight years now,” she added to Adrian, as if he might not know. “But I changed after the accident.”

“Most people do,” Emma said comfortingly. She would know. A senseless, brutal crime had once torn her life apart.

Kerry looked at her and nodded gratefully. “Anyway,” she continued, returning her attention to Gage, “everything checked out, not even any brain damage that they could find. I was lucky. I was blessed.”

Gage murmured agreement. Adrian could tell that Kerry didn’t really feel blessed and suspected some survivor guilt. She’d be less than human if she didn’t feel it.

Kerry drew a deep breath, clearly ready to plunge in to the hard part. “I sometimes get these feelings. I call them my quirks. But sometimes I know things that are going to happen. Or I know things that happen elsewhere that I only hear about later. I usually shake them off. Coincidence. Probably the result of some minor brain damage.”

Gage nodded. “Possibly.”

“But this morning…” Kerry hesitated. Finally she closed her eyes, as if to pretend she were alone, and said, “I heard the news announcement and then everything just shifted. In an instant I was somewhere else and the things I saw were all jumbled.”

Gage leaned forward now, picking up a pen and holding it over a legal pad. “Can you organize it in any way?”

Kerry compressed her lips before speaking. “It was like a rush of things, disjointed, some not clear, others almost too clear. Sounds. I heard men laughing. I heard them opening cans, and could smell the beer. I smelled cordite. I saw…I saw…I saw two menlying on the ground. They were facing each other, and each had an arm over the other’s body. And blood. There was blood everywhere…They were shot. Twice each. Once in the chest, once in the head. But they weren’t lying like that when they were shot. They were dragged there. Positioned.”

Her eyes snapped open. “It’s supposed to look like a message, but it’s not.”

That was the moment Adrian felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Kerry waited, but she hardly saw Gage and Adrian now. She had returned to this morning, that bright beautiful morning that had been suddenly and inexplicably blighted by evil. At some level she smelled the bacon burning on the stove, but her mind had attached itself far away from the kitchen.

“Kerry?” Gage’s voice recalled her.

“Yes?”

“Can you wring any more details out of what you sensed?”

She met his gaze and saw something there, something that suggested she hadn’t just flipped a brain circuit. “You mean what I saw was real?”

Emma squeezed her arm again. Gage hesitated. “I’m not supposed to discuss the investigation. So can we just say that you hit on something that no one outside the department should know?”

“Oh, God.” Kerry lowered her head, her stomach sinking at the same time. “I don’t need this. I don’t want this…this whatever it is.”

“I don’t blame you,” Emma said quietly. “But for whatever reason, it happened.”

Kerry nodded, fighting for equilibrium and battering down the fright. “Okay. Okay. Let’s just say that somehow, some way, I saw something that was real. At least in part. You want me to try to wring more information out of what I saw?”

“If you can.”

“It was all so jumbled, and I’ve been trying not to think about it all day.” Her fingers twisted together. “Let me think. Focus on it. But at this point I’m not sure I wouldn’t just confabulate stuff.”

“Wouldn’t it feel different?” Adrian asked, speaking for the first time.

Kerry looked at him, her jaw dropping a little. “Yes,” she said finally. “It would. There was something about what happened this morning that was so…real. Almost hyper-real.”

He nodded. “Then don’t worry about making things up. Just focus on what feels like that.”

“Good idea,” Gage remarked.

Kerry decided that would make a good guideline. Somewhere through her distress a flicker of humor emerged. “I’m not a pro at this. No practice to guide me.”

At that even the stern-faced Adrian smiled. “I’ve never consulted a psychic before so I don’t have any hints for you.”

“I’m not a psychic. I just—” She broke off suddenly. “Sorry. It doesn’t matter what I am or am not. Whatever this was, it happened. So I just need to make sure I tell you everything.”

Gage nodded encouragingly. “That’s the stuff. Then maybe you can go home and forget it.”

“That would be a relief. All right.” She closed her eyes again, this time not trying to skip quickly through the images that had imprinted themselves earlier that day, but instead to look hard at them.

“The victims were friends. One of them—there’s a woman starting to worry about him. A young woman. She wants to report him missing.”

“That’ll help,” Adrian said.

Kerry ignored him, reaching out into whatever it was that had happened this morning, unsure but driven to find something, anything that would get this off her back and help the police if she could.

“They’d been on a long hike,” she said. “Getting near the end. Several days, maybe a week. I see a camera. A camera was important to one of them. And a funnylooking hammer. They both had these hammers on their belts before they were killed. The murderer took them, and some other things.”

Where was all this coming from? But the words kept tumbling from her lips, sometimes fast, sometimes hesitant. “There’s more than one murderer,” she announced suddenly. “I get the feeling of competition. This won’t be the last killing.”

Then it was as if a bubble burst. Everything drained from her mind, leaving her relaxed. Whatever she had needed to do was done now. Finished.

She opened her eyes again, looking at the two men. “That’s it. It’s gone.”

“Gone?” Gage asked.

“Gone. The vividness is gone. It’s just like any memory now.”

Emma spoke. “That’s good. Now you’re free of it.”

Kerry poked around inside her own head as if she were using her tongue to find a sore tooth. “Yes,” she said presently. “It’s gone.” And with it all the pressure that had been working on her all day. Gone, too, was the sense of a presence. All of it, gone, and for the first time since the news had come on that morning, she felt like her old self.

“Thank God,” she said. A long sigh escaped her and she started to smile. “All right, that’s it. I told you. I hope it helps, but I’m done with it now.”

Gage rose and reached to shake her hand. “Thanks, Kerry. I appreciate it. You did help.”

Chapter Two

Fifteen minutes later, Kerry closed the front door of her house behind her and locked it. Home surrounded her with welcoming familiarity. The smell of burned bacon still clouded the air, however, and she immediately headed for the kitchen to clean up the mess she’d left behind. The congealed grits still sat beside the stove, now in a condition to be used for glue. The blackened strip of bacon looked like a desiccated finger. All of it went into the garbage disposal, and the dishes to soak in hot soapy water.

She used a can of air freshener throughout the house, spraying it freely, because the smell of burned bacon kept trying to carry her back to that morning. She had to get rid of it. Soon a lemony scent had erased the reminder.

From the freezer she chose a prepackaged dinner because she didn’t feel like cooking today. Ordinarily she made herself do it because it was healthier, but cooking for one was rarely fun, and tonight she just couldn’t face it.

Something in her had changed today, she realized as she carried her microwaved dinner into the living room and reached for the TV remote. Ordinarily she didn’t notice the silence of her house, but she was feeling it now, oppressively. Usually she picked up a book, not the TV remote, and only if she didn’t have papers to grade.

She had a stack of essays waiting for her, plenty of books nearby, but she needed the companionship of sound, even the manufactured sounds of television. She chose a nature program about birds—the sound of their songs felt cheerful—and tried to focus on the narrator’s voice only to discover a gloomy description of the decreasing number of birds in the U.S.

Maybe she’d assign an essay on conservation or the environment next week. Or maybe not. Reaching for the remote, she began flipping through channels seeking anything that would shake the cloud of murk that seemed to have descended.

In the end, though, she quit trying to distract herself. The vision may have loosened its grip, but the fact that it had occurred remained a problem. Instead of looking at this morning’s experience directly, though, she chose instead to move back in time, to the moment when she had, as they said, “touched the light.”

She’d read all the explanations of the experience, from both the scientific and religious sides. But none of it could erase or in any way diminish her experience. As much as she had loved in her life, she had never known a love like that. Just remembering it still had the power to leave her feeling homesick, the only word she could think of that even approached the yearning she felt for that moment out of time.

Nor could anyone or anything convince her that that love wasn’t waiting for her when she died the final time.

She had managed to fit that life-altering experience into herself and her being, and used it as a touchstone, a constant reminder of what she owed her fellow humans, the world as a whole.

But now this. What the hell had happened this morning? Now that she was free of its stranglehold, she needed to explain it somehow. Deal with it. Find a way to slip it into the defined realm of possibilities in her life. Most people weren’t comfortable with loose ends and she certainly wasn’t.

Apparently, from the reaction she had received—unless Gage and Adrian had been indulging her—she had said something that got their attention. But what did it mean?

The sound of the front doorbell replaced silence with cheerful promise. She and her friends observed an “open-door” policy. Nobody needed an invitation or to make a phone call before dropping in.

But when she opened the door, she found not one of her friends, but instead Adrian Goddard. The sight so startled her that she didn’t greet him immediately.

“Sorry to drop by like this,” he said. “Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Sure,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. Stepping back, she allowed him to come inside, along with a gust of cold air.

“Winter’s not far away,” he remarked with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“No, but this is my favorite time of year. Autumn is special. Would you like coffee or something?”

“No thanks. I don’t want to impose. Just a brief chat.”

She nodded and led him to the living room, wincing as she saw her solitary, hardly touched meal still sitting on the coffee table. Talk about revealing!

He settled on one end of the couch at her invitation, and she took the rocking chair that faced him kitty-corner. She reached for the remote and then shut off the TV.

“This isn’t official or anything,” he told her. In fact, she thought he looked awkward. “I was thinking as I was getting ready to drive home. How hard this must have been for you. What you saw, and having to tell us, then our reaction to it. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“All right?” She looked at the table with the microwave tray on it, at the glass of milk beside it, at the TV remote she had reached for because tonight she needed some kind of companionship. She could have called a friend, but that would have meant discussing this morning, the last thing she felt like doing. Then the conversation she wanted to avoid had walked through her door anyway. “I guess.”

“You guess? That doesn’t sound good.”

She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just found myself wondering what all right is. I mean…I’ve been coming home to this house for eight years, every night. I make myself a dinner, something usually better than this. Friends drop by. Sometimes I cook for all of us or go over to their places. But tonight nothing feels the same. I’m not sure anything is all right anymore.”

He nodded slowly. “Life does things like that. Without warning, everything’s off-center. It’s like you have to reinvent yourself.”

“That’s a good description.” She looked at him, taking in his attractive features. A little flutter reminded her she was a woman. “Tonight I feel like a stranger to myself.”

“I know that feeling. That’s why I stopped by. I could tell earlier you were having as much trouble with having had the vision as you were with what was in it.”

She nodded, leaning back. “I sure wouldn’t tell anyone else about it.”

“That’s what I wanted to suggest. Keep it quiet.”

She didn’t know if she liked that. Frowning, she asked, “Why? Because everyone will think I’m crazy? Because you think I’m crazy?”

He shook his head quickly, leaning forward. “I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Which is not to say I believe in psychics, but I’ve got an open mind and you obviously picked up on something. But you’re certainly not crazy.”

“Then why?”

“Because, if word gets around, it might put you in jeopardy with the killers.”

Gut-punched. She couldn’t even breathe. Stunned, she tried to absorb his words. Wings of panic started fluttering around the dark edges of her mind. Finally she said, “But I didn’t identify anyone! I couldn’t!”

“Do they know that?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? “Are you trying to scare me?”

“I’m trying to protect you.”

She couldn’t doubt his sincerity. She’d heard that he’d been with the Department of Criminal Investigation before coming here to ranch. Gage apparently trusted him enough to ask for his help in the murder case. But even without that, something in his gaze seemed to reach out reassuringly. “I wasn’t planning to tell anyone. Not even my friends. I keep these things to myself when they happen. Although it’s usually nothing like this. Usually it’s just a quick glimpse of something right before it happens.”

He nodded and appeared to relax.

“I only told Emma because I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and I trust her. She never gossips. Ever. But I couldn’t bring myself to come in alone and tell Gage.”

“Yet you felt you should.”

She nodded. “It was like a pressure. Like something was pushing me, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. Almost like someone was right at my shoulder, refusing to go away until I told you.” She shuddered even now at the memory of that psychic push.

That caught his attention. “I take it you believe in the afterlife?”

Where did that come from? she wondered. “Most people do.”

“I’m more of an agnostic. I don’t know. But…you experienced it?”

She hesitated. Unlike some people, she didn’t tell the story often, but rather hugged it to herself. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “How could I? It’s called a near-death experience, or NDE for short, because those of us who have it come back. The debate is about whether we experienced death at all, or just oxygen deprivation. There are widely separated camps on this.”

“I would imagine so. But you must have made your own decision.”

She bit her lower lip, searching his face, deciding she saw only genuine interest there. “Whatever I experienced, I have no doubt it was real, maybe more real than this chair I’m sitting in right now. I have no doubt that I had a glimpse of something so beautiful that there’s no way I could describe it to you. It changed me. It certainly rid me of any fear of death.”

He nodded, absorbing what she said, not immediately leaping forward with questions or conversation. She liked his thoughtful manner. She liked that he gave things time to settle as he took them in.

“I’m not so sure that’s a good thing,” he said presently.

“What?”

“Not being afraid of death.”

At that she couldn’t repress a smile. “I’m not jumping from airplanes without a parachute, if that’s what you mean. I take reasonable precautions like everyone else. I’m just not afraid of the inevitable outcome of every life.”

A smile creased his face in return. “Good point.”

“We all get there sooner or later. The problem comes when we spend too much of our time and efforts trying to avoid it. I pity people who are obsessively afraid of dying.”

“Anything can take over your life,” he agreed. “That’s a common obsession. Others of us have different ones.”

She nodded, wondering if he was taking this conversation somewhere. At the same time, she didn’t want him to leave. Earlier the house had felt empty and oppressive. Now it felt as home should. Normal sounds, warmth, friendliness. And she was feeling a kind of attraction she hadn’t felt in quite a while. Was he married?

“Let me get you a coffee,” she said. “And a slice of cheesecake. I imagine you spent most of the day outside.” She paused, filled with the need to know. “Unless you need to get home to your family?”

This time he didn’t decline. “No family,” he said. “And coffee sounds really good now. It’s getting cold out there.”

So no family. That pleased her more than it probably should have. As she rose from the rocker, she took her congealing dinner tray to the kitchen, deciding she might as well have some cheesecake, too. Sometimes she needed comfort food, and tonight was a good night for it.

The wind blew some dead leaves against the kitchen window, rattling them as they passed. She stared out into the darkness, but saw only her own reflection in the glass. A lingering whiff of burned bacon wafted past her nose, barely detectable, and soon disappeared in the aromas of fresh coffee and chocolate-caramel cheesecake.

She placed everything on a serving tray, and returned to the living room, setting it down on the coffee table.

“Wow,” he said appreciatively as he eyed the cheesecake. “Did you make this?”

“I get cravings for things like this sometimes. Besides, it’s always good to have something like this on hand for visitors.”

He smiled as she passed him a plate. “I need to drop by more often.”

She laughed, inordinately pleased by the idea. “Just let me know if you mean that. I’ll make sure not to run out of desserts.”

He dug in with relish and complimented her generously. She sat back in her rocker, nibbling at her own slice, enjoying herself for the first time that day. The shadows that had haunted her had dispelled as if Adrian had brought light with him.

Life went on, she thought. Even when terrible things happened, people had to continue living. It was a hardlearned lesson, after her friends died in the accident. Sometimes she still felt guilty, very guilty, despite her experience of the light and her absolute conviction that her friends had gone to a far, far better place.

“Life has its charms,” she said, before she realized she was going to speak out loud.

He looked at her with an arched brow. “It does,” he agreed.

But she detected some kind of hesitancy in the way he said it, a hesitation that convinced her he carried his share of ghosts, too. Maybe that’s why he had gently steered her to talk about her near-death experience. Maybe he needed some kind of reassurance.

He rose suddenly, placing his plate and mug on the tray. “Can I carry this out to the kitchen for you?”

“No, no thanks. It’s not a problem.”

“It’s time for me to be getting home,” he said. “Tomorrow’s going to be another long day.”

“Yes.” She nodded and stood, wondering why his mood had changed so abruptly.

He started toward the front door, then paused and looked back, his gray eyes serious. “Let us know if you sense anything else. Please.”

The request surprised her, but what it hinted at made her shiver. “I hope I never sense another thing.”

“I can sure understand why.” He nodded, opened the door and disappeared into the dark evening as the door closed firmly behind him.

Kerry remained standing, ignoring an urge to get a sweater, thinking over his visit. It had been odd, she realized, about something other than what she had reported earlier.

But whatever had brought him, she was glad he had stopped by.

She heard the heat kick on, and as she carried the tray back to the kitchen, felt the first musty stirrings of hot air.

Time to put it all behind her, she decided. Today needed to be put on the shelf along with the other mysteries of her life, such as why she had survived an accident that had killed her two best friends.

Some questions just couldn’t be answered.

Hours later, after a long, aimless drive, Adrian climbed out of his car in front of the small clapboard house he now called home. Around him spread the small ranch he had bought with his savings just before he retired with disability from the DCI.

The night, undisturbed by city lights, boasted a sky so strewn with stars that it looked like a black sea into which someone had tossed millions of diamonds. The swath of the Milky Way could be seen clearly, and its misty glow provided the answer to why the ancients had often believed it to be a heavenly river.

He loved it out here. The scent of sage and grass out-performed any aromatherapy. The minute he smelled the cool fragrant air, he always felt at peace.

He tried to soak up that feeling now, before entering his house, hoping to banish the day’s images of mayhem. Trying to think of something pleasant.

Cheesecake. Yeah, that was pleasant. Good coffee, a cute schoolteacher…

But as soon as he tried to summon the images, reality called him back. Change that to unnerved and unnerving schoolteacher, pretty or not. For the first time he considered the possibility that being psychic could be real and, worse, it could be awful.

He’d had so-called psychics try to provide information before on his cases. On the rare occasions when they were right, no one knew until they’d developed the information through ordinary means anyway. As a result, he hadn’t given the idea much thought over the years.

All that had changed in a few heart-stopping moments this evening when Kerry Tomlinson had described several unique aspects of the crime scene, aspects that couldn’t have been known to her. Then she had said the bodies had been positioned to send a misleading message.

That statement drew him up short, because it was exactly what he had been thinking about the carefully posed bodies. Something he couldn’t prove without a confession, something that on the face of it was a stretch.

Yet she had spoken his own impression aloud, an impression that he had shared only with Gage.

Impossible.

Except that when he looked up at the night sky, he sensed a universe that brimmed with possibilities that no one had yet imagined. Standing with his head tipped back, looking up at billions of suns, millions of which might have planets, hundreds of thousands of which might have life, he couldn’t deny any possibility.

Certainly not after today.

Of course, he’d given up on the whole idea of anything being impossible when he’d discovered his own partner at DCI had turned on him. The last person on earth he would have ever expected to betray him. If that could happen, anything could.

Then, on the still night air, he heard two pops from far away. He froze, listening intently, wondering if they had been gunshots.

There could be so many reasons for someone to shoot at this time of night. This was ranch country. An injured or sick animal might need putting down. A coyote might have been preying on someone’s sheep or chickens. So many legitimate reasons.

But something made him turn around and get back in his truck anyway.

Kerry turned in the damp sheets, eyes flittering to and fro beneath closed eyelids, her muscles rigid as if fighting to wake her…

“I’m starting to get really worried,” Leah said to Georgia. “The guys should have joined us by now.”

Georgia leaned closer to the campfire, seeking its warmth. “I didn’t think it was going to get so cold so quickly.”

“Georgia!”

Georgia looked up, smiling. “Cut it out, Leah. You’re driving me crazy. The minute you put Hank and Bill into the woods, they turn into Lewis and Clark. We don’t have to get back until Sunday, and neither of them is going to quit until they explore a cave or something. You know that.”

Leah rubbed her jersey-clad arms. Her down vest ordinarily proved sufficient, but not tonight for some reason. “Something’s wrong. I know it.”

Georgia reached for a stick and poked at the fire, stirring up sparks, causing flames to leap higher. “Well, we can’t leave the camp. They won’t know where to look for us. So you’re just going to have to relax until Sunday.”

Leah finally quit pacing and came to sit on one of the dead logs they used as benches by the fire. “They always do this,” she remarked.

“Exactly.” Georgia smiled at her friend. “Every damn time. They say they’ll be back by Friday so we can spend the weekend together, and they never make it. So relax. It just gives us more time for girl talk.”

Leah managed a tight smile. “How many years have we been doing these trips?”

“Well, I know this is our eighth trip, and we always go twice a year so…” Georgia shook her head. “You know exactly how long we’ve been doing this. What are you trying to say?”

“I don’t know.”

Leah hunched toward the fire, wondering why she felt so on edge. This always happened. The guys went off by themselves to take some more rugged hikes while the girls stayed close to camp. The two men always returned late, usually because they’d found something exciting—it invariably surprised Leah what could excite a geologist—and when they marched into camp eventually, they always bubbled over about some find. Meanwhile Leah and Georgia were merely glad to enjoy the break from their jobs and spend a week in the woods with nothing to do but read good novels and relax.

Hugging herself, waiting for the warmth of the fire to penetrate, Leah looked up at the shadowy trees looming over them. “I’ve always loved the woods at night,” she remarked.

“It’s primal,” Georgia said. She had a tendency to explain everything in life in terms of archetypes, genes and human psychology. That one simply had feelings never contented her. There always had to be a reason.

Leah shook her head. “How about I just like it?”

“But don’t you want to understand yourself?”

“Not to the point that I atomize and pigeonhole everything.”

This was an old disagreement, so old that it had become comfortable, and hence provided a good distraction.

Georgia sighed, a sound almost lost in the crackle of the fire. “You have no spirit of adventure.”

“Adventure? Analyzing my every thought against some template is an adventure?”

Georgia grinned. “Then what do you think is an adventure?”

“Sitting in the woods at night around a campfire, listening to an owl hoot, and wondering where the hell the guys have gone.”

“You are single-minded.”

“No, just realistic.” A twig snapped behind her in the woods and she looked around. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah. Probably a raccoon.”

“Or a wolf.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of wolves. Believe me, they’re more scared of us.”

“Then bears.”

By this point both women were grinning at each other, building a story from the crack of a branch. “Yeah, bears,” Georgia agreed. “A mother and two cubs. Hungry. Annoyed because we’re between them and the bacon grease I dumped up the hill this morning…”

“Ooooh,” said Leah appreciatively, “that’s it.”

“Yeah. Are we supposed to run uphill or downhill?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Some adventurer you are…”

Just then a doe poked her head into the circle of light cast by the fire. Her eyes reflected red at them, and she froze.

“How beautiful,” Georgia whispered.

“You’re feeling a purely instinctual prey urge,” Leah started to tease her in a whisper. “No appreciation of the beau—”

The word never fully left her mouth. Before her very eyes, Georgia’s face transformed into a twisted mask as something sprayed from the side of her head. A split second later, a loud crack rent the night and echoed off the cliffside.

Leah froze like the deer had moments before, but the doe chose a different course, darting off into the woods.

Another crack and Leah felt a searing burn in her arm. She looked at it and saw a glistening wetness start to spread.

In the firelight, the wetness looked black.

Before she consciously comprehended what was happening, she turned away from the noise and fled into the night, running faster than she ever had in her life. Faster even than when she had been a sprinter in college.

Her body understood the situation even if her brain didn’t…or wouldn’t.

She had become the prey.

Kerry, who felt as if she had barely dropped off to sleep, woke up screaming from the nightmare. Even in her own ears the terrified sound seemed to echo. She sat up abruptly, feeling breathless, searching her room for a reason, a cause for the horrifying dream. Everything looked as it always did.

Just a dream, she told herself.

But then she switched on a light, climbed out of bed and began to dress. The compulsion could not be ignored.

Chapter Three

There were a lot of ways to make a living, Gage Dalton thought, that didn’t involve climbing out of a warm bed in the wee hours, leaving behind the soft heat of a beautiful wife. His mouth twisted with grim humor at the thought, because all his adult life, with a break for recovery after a car bomb that had killed his first wife and family, he’d been doing exactly this. DEA, Conard County Sheriff’s Office, all the same, just a difference in degrees.

The call from Kerry Tomlinson had sounded nearly panicky, and she insisted there was no time to waste. He was halfway down the stairs, headed for the front door when his cell rang. This time it was Adrian Goddard.

“I heard two gunshots,” Adrian said. “I wish I could tell you for certain where they came from, but it seemed like the same general direction of the vics we found yesterday.”

“I’m on my way to the office. Kerry just called me. Something’s wrong but she could hardly talk and she said she had to get out of her house.”

“I’m already on my way. Another ten minutes.”

“See you there.”

On impulse, as Gage clipped the phone to his belt, he turned around and headed back upstairs. He went to their son’s room, the little boy they had agreed to adopt a couple of years ago. The three-year-old Jeremy at once filled Gage with blazing love and desperate terror. He knew what it was to lose a child. Bringing Jeremy into his life had been an act of faith more difficult than anything he’d ever done.

Peeking in, he saw that the restless child, as usual, dangled one leg over the edge of the bed, and barely had any covers over him at all. Moonlight, thin and weak, barely touched him.

Again on impulse, Gage scooped the sleeping child up. The boy barely stirred. He carried him in to the master bedroom and slipped him under the blankets with Emma.

Emma stirred, murmuring quietly, and with a mother’s native instinct rolled over until she was wrapped around their child.

Gage adjusted the blankets a bit, then left as quietly as he could, sending up a prayer for their protection.

He thought he knew evil. He’d sure as hell seen enough horror. But tonight, somehow, he felt there was something even darker stalking this county.

Kerry waited, shaking, in her locked car outside the sheriff’s office. What was taking Gage so damn long? She drummed her fingers nervously on the steering wheel, while the back of her neck prickled as if a predator watched her. No amount of telling herself it was just a dream could erase the urgency she felt. The terror she felt.

And this time she didn’t care if anyone thought she was nuts.

At last headlights appeared, slicing through the darkness of the quiet main street. The moon, a mere sliver tonight, shed only the palest light, and the street lights, recently changed to stylish Victorian imitations, didn’t seem to do much better. It was as if the darkness refused to give ground.

But at last the sheriff’s SUV pulled into the reserved slot and she saw Gage’s silhouette at the wheel. He climbed out quickly, after turning off his ignition, and came around to Kerry. She rolled her window down as he bent to look in.

“I think it’d be warmer inside, and I can make us some coffee or tea.”

Clenching her teeth so they wouldn’t chatter, she nodded, turned her own car off, and purse in hand followed him into the office.

The lighting was dim. The night dispatcher, a young deputy, half dozed at the console. He jumped when Gage and Kerry entered, but Gage waved him to relax. “Nothing?” he asked.

“Not a peep, just the regular check-ins.”

“Start the coffee, would you? I think we’re going to have a busy night.”

At that the young deputy perked up. “I just made a pot. What’s going on?”

“I’ll know more after Adrian gets here. Just bring us the coffee, please. I need to get Kerry warmed up.”

“Yeah, sure, Chief.”

In his office, Gage turned on a portable electric heater to add its warmth to the air blowing through the vents in the floor. “Never gets warm enough back here,” he remarked. “For myself I don’t mind. That’s what jackets and sweaters are for, but you look like you need to thaw out.”

Kerry nodded gratefully. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this cold. Ever. And it’s not that cold outside.”

“Adrian’s on his way,” he said again as the young deputy entered and brought them coffee. Kerry suddenly remembered she’d had him in English class only two or three years ago. Calvin Henry, that was his name. “Thanks, Cal,” she said.

He smiled. “Anytime, Ms. Tommy.” The name the students called her. He looked at Gage. “Anything else?”

“Just send Adrian back here. I’ll let you know when I know.”

Cal nodded and walked out.

“Why is Adrian coming?”

Gage hesitated.

“Gage, please.” She needed something, anything, to right her reeling world.

“He heard a couple of gun shots tonight. From the same general direction where we found our vics.”

That was not what she needed. Not to set her world right. All it did was cause her to teeter more.

“Two women,” she said. “One is dead. The other wounded and running.” Her voice rose, almost to a keen. “Oh, God, Gage. We have to get out there! She’s running and alone!”

The convoy built as Gage led the way out toward the place where the murders had happened. Deputies and state police pulled off their routes and out of bed created a steadily lengthening train behind him. Kerry, in the backseat, leaned forward and looked between Gage and Adrian toward the dark hulk of the mountains ahead of them.

“Keep watching to the right,” she said suddenly. “The women had a campfire. You might catch a glimpse of it.”

“How far right?” Adrian asked.

Kerry closed her eyes. “One or two o’clock,” she said finally. “I’m not a hundred percent certain, but that’s what I keep seeing.”

“You got it.”

“Tell me about the dream again,” Gage said quietly.

“I already did.”

“I might pick out an important detail that I missed before.”

“All right.” Cold to the bone, despite the blast from the car’s heater, she forced herself to summon the images that had scared her awake.

“Two women,” she said. “Friends. They camp a lot together. They were waiting for someone who was delayed.”

“Any idea who?”

Kerry started to shake her head then. “My God! I think they were waiting for the men who were killed. One of them was worried, but the other wasn’t. As if…as if these guys are often late getting back to camp.”

Gage looked at Adrian. “That’s a link we didn’t have before.”

Adrian nodded. “Anything else, Kerry?”

“Just the same thing as before. I saw the side of a woman’s head explode. Then the other one was hit in the arm. She started running, away from the shots. She’s cold and terrified, and I think…I think she’s hiding. I think she found a place to hide.”

“Is she still being hunted?”

Kerry squeezed her eyes shut, reaching even though she didn’t want to, trying to pull more substance out of the nightmare that had torn her from sleep. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Gage pressed on the accelerator. “Then we’d better move even faster.”

Radios crackled back and forth throughout the trip, ideas shared, plans for the search worked out. No one seemed very hopeful they could find anything before dawn. The night was too dark, and once they got into the woods, it would only become impenetrable.

But dawn was no longer far away.

Ten minutes later, just as it seemed they were about to enter the abyssal darkness of the woods, Adrian leaned forward in his seat. Then he spoke above the radio chatter. “I think I see a campfire. About two o’clock. I can only catch it out of my peripheral vision, though.”

Kerry understood. Once you began operating on night vision, the clearest images were peripheral. She’d first noticed that when studying the sky at night as a girl. Some stars were so faint that you could only see them when you looked far enough to the side.

“There’s a fence road up just ahead,” Gage replied. “I’ll take a right turn on it. Tell the rest of the crew.”

The message passed by radio. Two minutes later Gage turned them onto a track that clearly served no other purpose than to allow a pickup to ride along a ranch fence.

“Chester McNair’s place,” Gage said, as if giving a travelogue.

“That’s where the others were found.”

“I know. I know. But you’ve seen Chester and his kids. The only way they could be involved in this is because they let hikers traverse the ranch where it abuts the state forest.”

“Why does he do that anyway?”

“Because above that point the terrain gets really difficult to cross. Besides, Chester thinks it helps keep the wolves away from his place. He might be right. Those wolves are so damn shy it’s hard to know how many of them we have up there.”

Kerry spoke, trying to cling to normalcy even though her heart had begun to hammer. “I have a friend who works in the zoology department at the university. She says they just about despair of finding a number anywhere close to exact.”

“They can range these mountains from Texas to Alaska, and beyond,” Adrian agreed. “Good for them. We never should have hunted them in the first place.”

Kerry decided this reserved ex-lawman could be likable as well as sexy. The thought shocked her, seeming as it did so out of place under the present circumstances. But there it was, as if her brain and body were trying to remind her that life was good, that life continued, that whatever lay up ahead, it didn’t have to uproot her from her own reality.

A soft sigh escaped her, because she suddenly wished she could believe her life would ever be normal again.

“There it is,” Adrian said, now pointing to the left. Somehow the road had turned them around.

Kerry looked, but wasn’t certain she saw more than a dull orange glow up the mountainside a bit. Almost as soon as she looked at it, it vanished.

“I see,” Gage said. He immediately pulled the SUV over beside the rusty fence and put on his flashers. Then he aimed his spotlight up toward the woods.

“Roof flashers,” Adrian suggested. “In case the woman can see us. To reassure her.”

Gage nodded and hit the switch. Instantly, swirling red and blue lights joined the spotlight glare. Behind them, more than a dozen other vehicles pulled to a stop and followed suit.

Gage turned on the seat and looked at the two of them. “I don’t want to leave Kerry here alone, so you stay with her, Adrian.”

“No,” Kerry said, astonishing herself. “I have to come with you. Whatever’s up there, I need to see it for myself.” Because it would verify her vision? Or because she hoped to find out she was wrong and could stop worrying about visions altogether? She didn’t know. “Besides, I may be able to help find the survivor.”

Gage looked as if he’d swallowed cod liver oil, but after a couple of beats nodded. “Okay. Just stick close to the two of us, no matter what.”

“I’m not crazy. But I have to see.”

And she didn’t feel as if she could fight what was happening any longer, not if a woman was out there hiding, wounded and terrified.

She’d left her house dressed warmly, and wearing jeans and hiking boots, as if at some level she’d known this would come. At this point she couldn’t have said for certain whether her clothing choices had merely been practical in response to feeling cold, or whether something else had guided her.

For better or worse, something had taken over her life. She just hoped it was temporary because right now she felt as if she blindly climbed onto a roller coaster and now all she could do was endure the ride to the finish.

They used the bullhorns first, the amplifiers on the cars, announcing they were police, and they were coming into the woods. Some objected on the grounds that they might scare off the killer. Gage remained firm.

“We have reason to believe there’s a wounded woman hiding out there. At this point she’s my top priority.”

Kerry gave thanks that no one asked how Gage had come by his information. Of course, she realized, word of her vision might already be spreading. Cops gossiped like anyone else.

Regardless, after announcing repeatedly to the dark woods that they were cops, they picked up flashlights and shotguns, spread out and began to climb in a carefully spaced line toward the dull glow of the dying campfire.

With their arrival, the forest had silenced itself, except for one annoyed owl that complained from a treetop up the slope. The distance to the fire’s glow didn’t seem that great, but the climb was taxing and slowed them down considerably. Not far in space, Kerry thought as her nerves stretched tighter and tighter, but endless in time. The owl continued to comment from the sidelines.

“We probably scared all the little critters into their holes,” Adrian remarked to Kerry. “His dinner vanished.”

“Most likely.” She leaned forward and grabbed a rock for support as the ground turned even steeper for a short distance. The darkness thickened around them, and the flashlights seemed less and less able to penetrate it. Her sense of foreboding deepened with every step. Her heart, already accelerating with exertion, began to hammer.

The law officers, men and women, periodically called to one another, keeping themselves together when a flashlight would suddenly disappear from view behind a boulder or in a gully. They only quieted when they paused to listen for human sounds. A cry for help maybe. And sometimes, as if it appreciated what they were doing, the irritated owl fell silent with them.

But no human voice called out to them. The woods, fragrant with pine and spruce, might have been empty except for them and the owl.

Kerry’s reluctance grew. The urge to turn and flee kept rising from the pit of her stomach even as something seemed to keep pulling her forward. She didn’t want to be part of this. She wanted to be somewhere else, tucked safely away in sleep, unaware that such ugliness and horror shared the planet with her. Vain wish, she knew, but reading it in the papers was a far cry from this. Dread marched beside her in a way it never had before.

Finally the glow of the campfire came into clearer view. Steps quickened, and from along the whole line of searchers, people gasped for air as they hurried up the steep slope, Kerry among them. Each and every one of them was propelled by the hope of arriving in time to save a life. Any other thought faded into inconsequence.

At the last second, though, Adrian grabbed Kerry and turned her away from the fire, pressing her face into the shoulder of his nylon parka. “You don’t want to see,” he said.

A part of her wanted to agree with him, but that pressure inside her head was back, demanding, calling, urging. She could no more resist than she could have vanished from the spot.

She pulled her head back, reluctantly stepping out of the protective circle created by his arms. “I’ve already seen,” she said unsteadily.

“Not in real life,” he argued gently.

“I think I have.”

Turning, she faced the glowing campfire and stepped forward. She sucked a shocked breath.

Not because of the scene, but because she had already seen it so accurately. It was real.

The world darkened, leaving only a pinpoint of light, then even that turned black.

Chapter Four

Adrian caught Kerry just as she started to topple. Holding her beneath her arms, he moved her away from the ugly crime scene, just a few feet, just enough to conceal it from her. Then he gently lowered her to the ground, sat with his back propped against a tree, and cradled her head on his lap. The warmth generated by the climb deserted him almost immediately. For the first time he realized just how cold it had become, but the fact barely registered in his concern for Kerry.

She returned to consciousness almost as soon as she reached horizontal.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You fainted.”

“I don’t faint.”

“You just did, sorry to say.” He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to stroke her hair soothingly, and was surprised by how silky it felt. Nor could he swallow the concern he was beginning to feel for her. “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours,” he continued. “I’m not surprised you couldn’t take any more. And that was a shock.”

“But I’d seen it in my dream. It looked exactly like my dream.” A shiver passed through her. “I think that’s what’s so horrible. It was exactly like my dream.”

That comment truly gave him pause. Ugly as the murder scene was, he had to admit it would be equally, if not more, shocking to realize you had seen it precisely in a dream. Unfamiliar uneasiness tickled the base of his skull as it struck him that he hadn’t fully believed her before. That part of him had held back, not wanting to accept that she really did represent something beyond his ken.

Shivering again, she turned toward him and pressed her face against his hip. A sizzle of unwanted excitement passed through him, then submitted to his will. No room for that right now. He patted her shoulder, then rubbed it gently.

“The ground is cold,” he said, conflicted by desires to protect and to get some distance. “You shouldn’t lie on it longer than necessary.”

She nodded. He felt the motion through the denim as he continued to rub her shoulder.

Already the crime scene tape was being strung, and they were within the circle. Flashlights were scouring the ground for evidence of any kind.

Kerry groaned and sat up. Adrian kept a steadying hand against her back. “I’m not done,” she said. “There’s more here…somewhere.”

“What?”

She didn’t answer, but struggled to regain her feet. He arose behind her, moving quickly, ready to catch her if she fainted again. But it was as if some kind of steel had stiffened her.

She walked toward the campfire. Gage stepped toward her, as if to stop her, but then halted. Everyone halted, watching Kerry. It was as if they knew something was about to happen.

She tilted her head back, eyes closed, avoiding the now-covered body on the ground. Then her arm lifted slowly and she pointed. “She’s out that way. Hiding. She’s weak. You have to hurry.”

Perhaps even stranger than Kerry’s announcement, Adrian thought, was the way not a soul questioned her. Gage gave the order and the searchers fanned out again in the direction she indicated. Gage went with them, after ordering Adrian, Kerry and two officers to remain at the scene.

The wind shifted without warning, probably driven by the warmth of approaching dawn, and the stench of death overcame the smell of the pines. Adrian drew Kerry away, to where the breeze freshened with life.

“Are you okay?” Adrian asked her.

“Yeah.” She nodded slightly. “It’s starting to let go.”

“What do you mean?”

“The compulsion.” She lifted her gaze to his. “I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that I’m having these visions or the fact that I feel so compelled to act on them. It’s like being pressed from behind and not allowed to gain your footing, if you know what I mean.”

“Like being pushed by a crowd?”

“It feels something like that.” She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “I can’t ignore it. And I’ll be honest with you, if it saves that woman’s life, it’s worth it.” But she would still have to live with it, and the idea soured her mouth.

“It certainly would be.”

“I just hope this never happens again.”

He put an arm around her shoulders, telling himself he wanted to help warm her, but in all honesty he couldn’t have said which of them he wanted to warm. He had put his judgment about what was happening with Kerry on hold until later, when he could review in retrospect, but it remained he wasn’t sure what was happening here, and if they found a wounded woman tonight, he knew he was going to dislike what he would have to believe.

Kerry leaned into him, still holding herself, seeming grateful for the support. The calls of the search team were steadily moving away, upslope. Adrian looked up at the sky, and thought he saw a faint grayness outlining the tops of the dark trees. Soon daylight would answer other questions.

All of a sudden he felt Kerry stiffen.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She whispered, “He’s out there. Watching.”

Adrian lowered his voice. “Who’s out there?”

“The killer.”

Adrian felt the back of his neck prickle. “Where?”

She moved closer. “I’m not sure. I just feel him. He won’t shoot now.”

“How many?”

She shook her head. “I think only one, but it feels like someone else could be involved, too.”

“Hell.” He muttered the word and turned her so that she had a tree at her back and him at her front. “Remind me to get you a vest.”

“Vest?”

“Armor.”

The relative quiet of the scene began to give way to the sounds of people coming up the slope from below. Flashlights appeared, their beams darting around.

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