Praise for the novels of
MAGGIE SHAYNE

“A tasty, tension-packed read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Tense…frightening…a page-turner in the best sense.”

—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice

“Mystery and danger abound in Darker Than Midnight, a fast-paced, chilling thrill read that will keep readers turning the pages long after bedtime… Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”

—Romance Reviews Today on Darker Than Midnight

(winner of a Perfect 10 award)

“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.

—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven… A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”

—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on The Gingerbread Man

Kiss of the Shadow Man is a “crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”

—RT Book Reviews

Maggie Shayne
Killing Me Softly

To my critique group, the Packeteers: Cactus Chris Wenger, Micki Malone aka Michele Masarech, Gayle Callen aka Julia Latham, Laurie Lance “Bugs” Bishop, Theresa Kovian and Ginny Aubertine. I couldn’t have written these books without your brilliance and brainstorming. More importantly, no writer could dream up friends as beautiful and as true as all of you. You are loved, and deeply, deeply appreciated.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

It had been sixteen years since I’d killed anyone. But I was going to kill someone tonight.

It had also been sixteen years since I’d taken the Thunderbird out of the garage, where I kept it under lock and key. Garage, hell, it was more like a crypt. I’d thought the killer inside me would die, given time. So I’d buried him in my subconscious, and I’d buried his car in my garage, even covered it up with a death-shroud tarp. I’d covered up the trophy wall, too. I’d told myself never to set foot inside that garage again.

But I had.

Every now and then, his voice would get to me, and I’d go in, start the T-Bird up, let it run, listen to it purr and feel that old thrill I used to get when we had been on our way to take another victim. Sometimes I would even slide the phony pegboard wall aside, to look at the cinder-block it covered. To look at all their faces. So pretty. Always smiling. Always young.

I’d taken the T-Bird out tonight. And the kit. I’d brought the kit along, as well, though I had no intention of using it. I nearly always had the kit at hand. It was a way of testing myself, I think. A way of making sure I was the one in charge, the one in control. That I could resist the urges of the beast within.

I was going to kill the rookie cop, yeah. But it would be a simple kill, just a bullet to the back of the head and a scene made to look like a home invasion gone bad. It wasn’t the nemesis within me committing this crime. It was me, all me, this time. And I had no choice.

But my alter ego was with me, coming along for the ride, getting a hell of a thrill out of the whole thing. He loved killing. He loved it way more than I did. And that was saying something, because I’d come to relish it myself. There was no other rush quite as potent.

Still, this wasn’t going to be like the others. This wasn’t about the rush; this was about necessity.

Getting inside the house was easy. It would’ve been easy even for a virgin without any kills under his belt. For me, it was child’s play. The small brick house’s door wasn’t locked. There was no security system. Every light in the place was turned off. A cop oughtta know better. Even a rookie like him.

There had been a party earlier in the evening, but the guests had cleared out. The doorknob turned easily in my hand, and I stepped inside, into inky darkness. I paused there, just inside the door, giving my eyes time to adjust. It was darker inside than out. A different kind of darkness. Heavier. Denser.

Still, I managed to see a little. And I could tell what I would have been seeing, had there been any light, just by the smells permeating the place and assaulting my sensitive olfactory receptors. Overflowing ashtrays. Half-filled beer bottles, some of which had been used as ashtrays, so the scents of sour beer and wet tobacco mingled in the air, nearly making me gag on them. Stale potato chips and spoiling dip melted together in plastic recyclable bowls, adding to the pungence.

My senses were always heightened when I was getting ready to kill. They were heightened to hell and gone tonight, maybe because it had been so long. I was shivering with it, feeling everything. Even the rub of my black clothing against my skin was arousing to me.

I moved carefully, slowly, taking my time and knowing I had plenty. All I wanted. The rookie wasn’t going to wake up. So I took my time, enjoying every second of it. Walking soundlessly through his darkened home I felt, I thought, like a hunter must feel when stalking prey through a dense jungle. But not just any prey. I’m talking an elephant or a lion. Something that could kill you just as easily as you could kill it. Something dangerous.

Though you might disagree with me, given the nature of my victims, I’ve never believed there is any animal more dangerous than a human being. I never will. It’s the intelligence. It’s the mind that makes it so. Be it a young, beautiful woman, or tonight’s prey—a young man in his prime. A cop.

I made my way to the bedroom, measuring every step I took. It didn’t feel as if it had been as many years as it had—sixteen since my first time. Her name was Sara, that first one. I remembered every detail of her face—and of her death. I was as sharp and as tight tonight as if I’d killed only last week. Or last night. Maybe the years had mellowed my nerves and honed my skills. I wasn’t even shaking or sweating the way I usually did when I got into the same room with the evening’s chosen one.

Silencing my thoughts, I listened, and heard slow, steady breathing from beneath a mound of blankets on the bed. My heart pumped a little faster. The compulsion came to life within me, like a fire in my blood. I felt that dark, hungry twin, alive inside me. I’d kept him silent for a long while, trapped in some kind of induced coma—until now. Now he was wide-awake. I closed my eyes and reminded myself—and him—that this was going to be different. We were not going to start up again. Not like before. It would be just this once. It was necessary.

We had no choice, really. He knew, you see. Or, at least, he suspected.

Gently, we pulled the covers back.

And the dark twin within my soul roared in delight, even while I shook my head in denial. For the person in the bed was not the man I had come here to kill.

A young woman was lying there instead. She was sound asleep and reeking of beer, but still, beautiful. In the darkness, her skin appeared pale and flawless. Her hair was long, straight and sleek. Just the way I liked it. It looked to be light brown.

It had to be, my newly awakened twin whispered to me. That’s your favorite shade, isn’t it? She’s here for us. I knew she would be. So did you. Come on, don’t deny it. You knew.

What I knew, I reminded myself, was that the voice, the twin, was not real. It was nothing more than a part of my mind, a twisted part, the part I’d managed to ignore all this time. Though I’d never silenced him entirely. Even while he’d slept, I heard him in my dreams. Maybe he only slept while I was awake, and vice versa. I wished he would shut up now, though, because this was not what I wanted. Not now.

You knew she would be here, he pressed. Sooner or later, she had to be. That’s why you used the T-Bird tonight. It’s why you brought the kit in with you.

But he was wrong. I carried the kit as reminder—a testament to the power of my will and my ability to control the impulse. To control him.

Bullshit. You brought it for this. You brought it in hopes of finding this very moment—this moment we both knew would come. It’s a gift! You’ve been waiting sixteen years for this! Take it out. Come on, take it out. You know you want to.

No.

Yes. And you know you will. We will. Why fight what we are?

My hands trembling, I slid the backpack off my shoulders and, reaching inside, pulled out the leather bag. The one that hadn’t seen use in the sixteen years since I’d taken my final victim and framed another man for the crime. It was about the size of a shaving kit, with a zipper on three sides. I felt alive again as I slowly unzipped it, careful not to make too much noise and yet exhilarated at the risk that I would be heard. I leaned over her. I felt passion I hadn’t felt in a decade and a half. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, as my skin heated and my hands tingled. It seemed as if my other half melded with me as I crept to the head of the bed and stood between her and the wall behind me. So I could get her from behind and watch her face in the mirror that topped the dresser on the opposite side of the room.

I took the black silk stocking from the kit and slid it carefully beneath her neck, all without disturbing her drunken sleep. Her skin was warm against my gloved fingertips. I heard the twin inside me groan in delicious anticipation as we pulled the stocking into position. As we began to pull it tight. And then tighter. And tighter still.

She came awake fast. Her eyes flew wide, and her hands rose to clutch at her throat. I pulled the stocking even tighter, lifting her upper body off the bed as I did, so that she, too, could see the entire game play out in the mirror.

As I’d hoped, the sight enhanced her terror. Seeing me there, behind her, all in black, big and powerful, steadily choking the life out of her. She knew there was no hope. She thrashed in the bed, mouth opening wide, face turning red. A rush, not unlike the one produced by a hit of Ecstasy, only much, much better, washed through my body like a warm, vibrant, all-encompassing wave as we slowly, steadily, squeezed the life out of her. She wasn’t so pretty anymore, with her tongue swollen and filling the space between her parted lips.

When her eyes rolled back in her head, I let go of the stocking and turned to the case again. I took out the two custom-made shot glasses, with the artwork on them that so seemed to reflect the predator inside me. The crimes we committed together. I took out the copper flask, as well, and I poured both shot glasses full of whiskey.

After a moment, she started to rouse. Her eyelids trembled rapidly, before they fully opened, then widened as she realized I was still there. She opened her mouth to speak, and I gripped her chin with one hand, forcing her teeth open. I poured her shot of whiskey into her throat. She couldn’t swallow; she began to choke. Without letting a second tick past, I dropped the glass and grabbed the black stocking again, and this time I pulled it tighter, jerking it harder, twisting it with all my might and easily crushing her throat with that soft bit of black silk.

I heard the gurgling as she drowned in the whiskey. I saw the foamy spit running over her lower lip and her chin. Her eyes bulged as if they would pop, tears running from the outer corners. Her entire body jerked and spasmed. A single purple vein in her forehead expanded and pulsed beneath her blue-tinted skin.

And then it stopped pulsing.

There was a palpable change when they died. I always knew the very moment when it happened. There was no more awareness on their part, no more struggle or shock or fear. There was just a sudden absence of…of everything, really. And, with it, came a rush of release within me that made an ordinary orgasm pale in comparison. There was nothing like this feeling. Nothing.

As life fled the girl’s body, as I felt it flee, the sensation continued trembling through me. It lit me up. I felt it in every nerve ending, in every deliciously sensitized inch of my skin, in the quivering of my stomach and the aftershocks convulsing my muscles. I eased the pressure on the silk stocking, my head tipping back, my eyes falling closed as I sighed and shuddered in delectable bliss.

Then slowly, cell by cell, my brain came back online, like a computer being rebooted. The lights came on in order. The hard drive began to whir. The pleasure ebbed into a warm glow that filled my body and would last, I knew, for days. But the delight receded enough to allow rationality and practical considerations renewed access to the forefront of my mind.

I hadn’t accomplished what I had set out to do tonight. Not precisely. But I could still achieve the end I’d intended. I’d just need to take a slightly different, and perhaps more torturous, path to get to the same destination. I could still do it. I knew how.

And besides, this way was so much better.

You’re right, I told my twin, alive and wide-awake inside me now. It was. God, it was. It’s been so long.

Sixteen years too long.

I nodded. Then quickly stopped myself. It won’t happen again, though. As good as it was, I can’t let it happen again. I won’t.

Oh, who the hell are you kidding? You’re back, my friend. You’re back, and you’re glad of it. You’ve missed this. You know you have.

Ignoring the one who, in that moment, felt like my oldest and dearest friend—and the only one who ever had or ever would understand me—I released the stocking that had seen so many throats before, slid it from around her neck and returned it to the case. I had other work to do this night, to make this go the way I needed it to. But first, there was one more thing.

I picked up the second shot glass, from where I’d set it on the nightstand, put it to my lips and tipped it up, swallowing my celebratory drink.

My nightcap.

It was tradition, after all.

1

Bryan Kendall awoke with a crushing headache that turned into blinding dizziness when he rolled over. It was only then, as his hand swung out and hit something cold and hard, that he realized he wasn’t in his bed.

He was on the bathroom floor.

“Hell,” he muttered. “Must’ve been some party.”

He tried to think back but remembered nothing, and really didn’t care all that much at the moment. He had a case of cottonmouth that made anything short of the house being on fire uninteresting in comparison. He needed liquid. Any liquid. Now.

He opened his eyes, then squeezed them shut against the morning light slanting in through the bathroom windowpane. The sun seemed unreasonably bright this morning. Gripping the sink with one hand, he pulled himself up onto his feet, then leaned over it and cranked on the taps. He bent closer, cupped his hands and drank. The lukewarm water wet his mouth but was nowhere near enough to quench his thirst. His head was spinning and pounding, his stomach churning, and it occurred to him that this didn’t feel like an ordinary hangover.

He’d never been drunk enough to pass out on his own bathroom floor.

Lifting his throbbing head, he peered into the mirror and then closed his eyes again. This was too much effort. He needed to drink a vat of water, take a handful of aspirin, crawl into bed and sleep for another eight hours or so. Then he could try again.

He turned in the direction of the door and shuffled through it, feet dragging, because the percussion of actual steps was too painful. It was only a few feet to the bedroom and a few more to the bed, and then he was sinking gratefully onto the queen-size pillow-top mattress, pulling the covers over himself as he rolled onto his side. His arm hit Bette before he remembered she was there.

“Sorry, babe,” he muttered, closing his eyes and letting his head sink into the pillow.

She didn’t answer. Good. He hadn’t woken her. Feeling cold, he tightened his arm around her waist and snuggled up a little closer. But she didn’t move. Didn’t roll up onto her side and press her back to him the way she normally would. Didn’t stroke his forearm where it draped over her.

And she felt cool.

Colder than he did.

Frowning, he lifted his head and looked at her in the early-morning sunlight that was just beginning to stream in through the tiny gap where the curtains didn’t quite meet. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, eyes open wide. Something hit him as he stared at her, and it felt as if he’d stuck his finger into a live socket. It slammed into the middle of his chest, just like a shock, and woke him entirely. Bryan blinked to clear the haze from his vision and sat up straighter. A chill ran up his spine, as if some part of him knew what he was seeing before his mind caught up.

“Bette?” He reached out to touch her cheek and found it unnaturally cold. Not cold as if she’d been outside in a snowstorm, but cold like raw meat. There was a huge difference. And that was when his brain caught up to what his instincts had already known.

Bettina Wright was dead.

Dead!

Bryan scrambled backward out of the bed, suddenly more wide-awake than he’d ever been in his life. He stood there for a moment, staring at her, gasping for breath. “Bette?” he said. “What the hell? What the hell?” Finally the cop in him kicked in. He ran around the foot of the bed, to her side and bent to feel for a pulse, but stopped himself when, again, he felt how cold she was. His brain was ten steps ahead of him now, thinking, telling him to drag her off the bed, onto the floor, start CPR, call the EMTs. But he didn’t do any of those things, because reality had outshouted training. She must have been dead for several hours. There was nothing he, or anyone else, could do for her now. She’d been lying here, getting stiff and cold, while he’d been passed out in the bathroom. Useless.

He struggled to remember anything that might have happened last night that would have given him a clue something like this could happen. He didn’t think she’d seemed sick or particularly tired. She hadn’t complained about anything. He knew she didn’t do drugs, nor would he have had any at the party. Hell, most of the guests had been cops.

Had her heart given out without any warning at all? Had this been some kind of allergic reaction or alcohol poisoning or—

“Oh, no.” He spoke aloud, as his gaze settled on her neck. On the ligature marks there. They were obvious, even in this feeble light. “No no no…” Backing up two steps, he jerked the curtain wider and let the sun pour in on her body. The angry, bruised ring around her neck was unmistakable, as were the still-protruding tongue and dried spittle on her chin. Bettina Wright had been strangled to death in his bed while he slept, drunk, in next room. She’d been murdered while he’d been ten feet away, too plastered to help her.

He was a cop, for God’s sake, and he’d—

Hell. Oh, hell.

He looked around the room again, spotted his cell phone and picked it up, then he walked back through the house without touching anything. He was wearing jeans, and nothing else, and he didn’t grab anything on the way. His home was a crime scene now. Jesus, he couldn’t believe it. Bette. Dead.

He opened the front door, using a sock he found on the floor and only two fingers to turn the knob, trying not to smear any prints. Then he left the door open and sat on the front steps, where he flipped open the phone. There were two men who were more important to Bryan than anyone else in his life: his father and his mentor, retired cop Nick Di Marco, and he wanted to phone them both at the same time, but since he had to make a choice… Of the two, Di Marco was physically closer and could get to him faster. Decision made.

He called Nick, then held his head in his free hand while waiting for him to pick up.

“Di Marco, and this better be good, being 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday, pal.”

“Nick?”

“Kendall? You sound like hell.” The older man paused. “Are you okay?”

“No. I… It’s Bette—”

“Who?”

“The girl I’m…sort of seeing. She’s…she’s dead, Nick. She’s fuckin’ dead.” Bryan’s voice broke, but he kept forcing out words. “Strangled, I think. In my bed. Damn, Nick, she’s—”

“Whoa, hold up, hold up. Where are you right now?”

“Sitting on the front step. She’s inside. She’s dead. How could I not have heard something? How could I—”

“You sure? You do CPR? You check for a pulse?”

“She’s cold, Nick. She’s ice fucking cold.”

Nick swore under his breath. Then, “Have you called anyone else?”

“No. I—”

“Okay, okay, we do this by the book. It’s the only way to go here. You’re a cop—you do this right. You gotta be beyond suspicion, you got that?”

“Sus-suspicion? Shit, Nick, why would I—”

“You’re there, aren’t you? You woke up with her. You’re the last one to see her alive, the one to find the body. You know how this works, kid. You’re a cop.”

Everything in Bryan tightened until he thought he was going to break. “Yeah. I mean…yeah.”

“Hang up and call your father. I’m gonna call the chief, and I’ll get there by the time he does. You just wait for us. Don’t call anyone else—don’t, for the love of God, call her family. Just your dad. Tell him to get here A-SAP. I’m on my way. Don’t go back inside. Don’t touch anything. Don’t take a shower or change clothes. Just sit there, you understand?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I just—”

“I know, kid. You hang in. I’m on this. I’m gonna be there in a matter of minutes, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Just breathe. It’s gonna be all right.”

“Okay.”

“Where’s your sidearm, Kendall?”

Bryan blinked as he thought for a second and remembered where he’d put the gun the last time he’d had it out. It had been a while. He’d been on paid leave since a recent hostage standoff, waiting for the department shrink to give him the all clear. “In the lockbox, hall closet.”

“You sure no one else is in the house?”

Bryan’s head came up slowly, and he looked behind him through the still-open door. “I didn’t really check.”

“Don’t. Get yourself a little distance away, but maintain line of sight, just in case.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful, kid. I’ll see you soon.”

Bryan closed his eyes, disconnected and felt as if his world had turned upside down. He got to his feet and looked back inside the house, feeling a little more certain there was no one lurking inside. Then again, a few minutes ago, if asked, he would have been fairly certain he wasn’t going to find a dead woman in his bed.

So he walked several steps down the driveway, but only got as far as his brand-new, candy-apple-red Mustang Shelby GT, before he had to stop and throw up. And he didn’t think it had anything to do with the alcohol he’d imbibed the night before. Dammit, how could Bette be dead? Much less strangled? Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d imagined the marks on her throat. Maybe the chief had been right to put him on leave, and he did have some kind of PTSD or something going on, and he’d just imagined all of this. Maybe if he walked back into the house right now, he would find Bette sitting up in bed and griping about being late for whatever early-morning class she had.

He could almost believe it. He nearly turned and walked back inside. But something stopped him. The weight of the phone on his hand, he guessed. He needed to call his dad.

He wanted to call Dawn instead.

He wanted to hear her voice right now even more than he wanted to quell the waves of nausea battering his stomach. But that wasn’t going to happen. He and Dawn hadn’t spoken in five years. There was too much space between them now. Too much hurt. Too little effort to remedy or even address it. He couldn’t call Dawn, even though hearing her voice on the phone would make things better in a way nothing else could.

No. Not even Dawn could fix this.

He opened the car door, sat down inside and stared for a long moment at the dark, hulking shape in the distance, where the waterfall that gave this town its name shot off the end of a rocky ledge and tumbled down. The craggy flat-topped beast of a cliff was positioned in such a way that the waterfall itself was nearly always in shadow, making it dark and ominous looking, rather than cheerful or sparkly, the way most waterfalls seemed. Shadow Falls, the landmark, was not beautiful. It was downright spooky. But Shadow Falls, the town, had been the place with an opening on the police force after he’d finished college. And it was only an hour from what he considered home. And so it was perfect.

Or he’d thought it was.

But the town seemed far from perfect right now. Because it concealed something in its shadowy depths. Something evil. A cold-blooded killer was lurking here. And he’d never even known.

Sighing, Bryan called his father, fifty miles away in his hometown of Blackberry, Vermont.

2

Nick Di Marco was a big man. And it wasn’t entirely a physical thing. He was tall enough at five foot eleven, and his shoulders were wide and solid, even though he was lugging around some extra belly fat these days. His once raven-black hair was streaked with silver, his intense brown eyes lined with crow’s-feet that made his smiles more infectious, and his frowns downright scary. Beneath all of that, he was the best cop Bryan had ever had the honor to know. Retired or not.

And he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Di Marco was a hero cop, and everyone in Shadow Falls knew it.

So Bryan felt a little lighter when he saw Nick get out of his black, big-as-a-boat, old Crown Victoria and come striding toward him. Bryan got out of his own car, whose payments were as much as his rent, and tried to hide the fact that his knees were shaking. It was warm outside, the summer sun already beating down on them.

Nick threw his arms around Bryan, and it was no pat-on-the-back “guy” hug; this was a full-blown, real thing that squeezed the air right out of his lungs. “You okay, kid? You okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.” Nick clapped a big palm to the back of Bryan’s head and crushed it to his shoulder for a second, then released him and backed off enough to search his face. “You call your dad?”

“Yeah. He’s on his way.”

“Good. That’s real good, Kendall.” Nick turned his head as another vehicle came skidding to a halt along the roadside. Chief MacNamara had driven the Bronco with the Shadow Falls Police Department logo—a black waterfall inside a circle made up of the words themselves—on the front doors, and the bubblegum lights on the roof. At least those lights weren’t flashing.

Chief Mac got out, thick shocks of unruly white hair sticking up all over. His face showed all the ruddy puffiness of a lifelong drinker, and his belly backed up the story. He was fat enough that he sort of swayed heavily from side to side when he tried to walk fast, which was what he was doing now.

“Somebody want to tell me just what the hell is going on here?” he demanded a little breathlessly.

Nick nodded. “Tell him, Kendall. Tell us both.”

Bryan took a deep breath and nodded once. “I had a party last night. To celebrate getting the okay to go back on the job Monday.” He nodded at Nick. “You were there—you can vouch for that part.”

Nick nodded and glanced at the chief. “It was no big deal. A few twelve-packs and some chips. Mostly cops, a few faces I didn’t know. A dozen, maybe eighteen, people at most.”

“You left early,” Bryan said, eyes lowered, gaze turned inward. “A few more people showed up later on. I think I remember most of them—I don’t know. I must have drunk way more than I thought. I woke up on the bathroom floor. Everyone had gone. I headed to the bedroom, wanted to get a few more hours of sleep—and Bette was there. And…” He lifted his head, looking the men in the eyes, first Nick and then Chief Mac. “She was dead,” Bryan said. He had to force out that final word, and his voice broke when he said it. “She was already cold. And there are ligature marks around her neck.”

The chief gaped, his jaw dropping as if its spring had broken. He took a step back, turned to stare at the house and pushed a hand through his crazy white hair. Then, swearing a blue streak, he started forward, hurrying toward the house with that swinging gait of his.

Nick clapped Bryan on the shoulder to get him moving, and in spite of his resistance to the notion, Bryan fell into step, the two of them following close behind the chief.

“You didn’t hear anything?” Chief Mac asked without looking back.

“No.”

“Careful, don’t touch a damn thing,” the chief went on as he stomped through the house and into the bedroom. Just inside the bedroom door he stopped, and his voice, when he spoke again, was lowered. Maybe out of respect for the dead. “In fact,” he added, “stay out of this room, Kendall. Di Marco, get in here. But be careful.”

Nick went into the bedroom with the chief, while Bryan stood in the doorway, his eyes riveted to the blue-tinted skin of Bette’s face, those sightless red eyes, the grotesquely twisted mouth.

The chief looked closely, not touching anything. “Strangled. Sure as shit. And she— Holy fuck.”

“What?” Bryan asked from the doorway, even while the chief gripped Nick Di Marco’s wrist and nodded at the nightstand.

Bryan followed their gazes and saw what was sitting there. A shot glass with a black scythe painted on it, a red rosebud above, severed from its stem by the blade and trailing tiny red droplets.

It was a design the three men had seen before.

“That can’t be,” Di Marco whispered. “There’s no way.” And despite the whisper, his voice trembled. “Sniff the glass, Chief. Check—”

“Whiskey,” the chief said after leaning over and in haling. He turned to Nick. “Check her mouth.”

Nick nodded and leaned close to the dead woman, his face so near hers it might have seemed to an outsider that he was about to kiss her. Without touching the body at all, Nick sniffed, and then he jerked upright again. “Whiskey,” he said. “God, this can’t be happening.”

“What?” Bryan asked. “What…what the hell is going on, Nick?” But he had a sinking feeling that he knew.

“Is that your shot glass, Bryan?” Nick asked.

“No.”

“It’s a trademark, Kendall,” the chief said. He came out of the room, flipping open his phone as he did and hitting buttons. “Calling card of the Nightcap Strangler.”

Bryan blinked in shock, processing that, along with all that he knew about the old case—which was probably a lot more than either of these two men realized, considering that all the files and all the evidence was currently taking up space in a storage bin in his garage. The three of them walked out of the house and stood in the driveway again, and the chief ordered up a crime-scene investigation unit and an ambulance.

When he hung up, Bryan faced him. “Chief, how can this be? The Nightcap Strangler was caught, what? Sixteen years ago? Nick, you caught him. You put him away. You solved it. It was the biggest case of your entire career. He’s in prison.”

“Not anymore, kid,” Nick said softly.

Bryan blinked, puzzled for one terrifying moment before he remembered that the convicted serial killer had died in prison three weeks ago.

“He bought it in a fight,” the chief said. “Didn’t you see it in the papers? So there’s no way this was him. Unless…” He looked at Nick, not finishing the thought.

“No way did I bust the wrong guy, Chief. No way in hell.”

“You’re confident about that?”

Nick was offended by the question. He looked mad enough to punch something, Bryan thought. “He was guilty as hell. And you know that, Mac. You know it as well as I do!”

The chief nodded, keeping his trademark calm. “I also know that we never released certain details to the public. No one knew what the design on the glasses was, Di Marco. Or the specifics about the kind of whiskey he used. No one but you and me. Unless you told your protégé here,” he added with a look at Bryan.

“I never discussed the details of the Nightcap case with the rookie, Chief.”

“Right. You’re his mentor, and you never talked to him about the case that made your career? He never asked? You wrote a book, Di Marco. They made a freaking movie. You telling me you never talked about it with Kendall here?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.” Nick braced himself, getting in the chief’s space, his chest thrust out, chin up, challenging. “Now why don’t we get to what you’re telling me? Are you saying a rookie cop turned into a copycat killer just ’cause he took a couple of classes from the retired cop who solved the case? ’Cause I think that’s a stretch, even for you, Mac.”

“He shot a guy last month, Nick.”

“In the line of fucking duty!” Di Marco shouted. “He was cleared of any wrongdoing. It was a clean kill.

You know that.”

“It was a clean kill and it left him a basket case,”

Chief Mac argued.

“According to you.” Nick jabbed a finger in the chief’s direction, and for a moment Bryan thought he was going to actually poke him in the chest with it. He only barely missed doing so. “The department shrink says he’s fine.”

“Now,” the chief said.

Because he hadn’t seemed fine right after the shooting, Bryan thought. Then again, who would have? Bryan had never shot a man before. He’d had no choice, though. The guy had his girlfriend in a headlock, a knife at her throat, and he was getting ready to use it. There had been no question. Hell, she’d been bleeding already when Bryan had taken the shot. He was the only one with a clear line. He’d had no choice. But he damn well didn’t like it.

“Yeah, now,” Nick repeated. “And now is when this killing went down. The kid didn’t do it, Chief. Come on. You know the kid didn’t do it.”

“Quit talking about me like I’m not in the room, you two,” Bryan said. He kept his tone level, his voice low. “I’m standing right here. And I didn’t do it. I’ll tell you both, I didn’t fucking do this. I had no reason. I liked Bette.”

“Liked her?” The chief bit back whatever else he’d been about to say, sighed, compressed his lips. “All right, Kendall. You liked her. You were, uh, seeing this Bette—”

“Bettina Wright,” Bryan filled in.

The chief pulled out a pad and jotted the name down. “You were seeing her pretty regularly?”

“We were friends.”

Chief MacNamara looked at Nick. “If he’s gonna start lying already, about something so obvious…”

“I’m not lying,” Bryan said.

“She was in your bed, son.”

Di Marco drew a breath, released it. “Come on, Kendall, be straight with the chief. It’s pretty clear there was more between you than just…friendship.”

“There really wasn’t. We were friends. We got along great, but neither of us wanted anything serious.”

The chief blinked, looking blank. Di Marco rolled his eyes. “I think this is some of that shit the kids over at the university call ‘friends with benefits,’ Mac.

“I’m old, not dead, Di Marco. I’ve heard the term. I just never thought anyone really lived that way.”

Di Marco shrugged and turned his attention back to Bryan. “So you two never fought? Didn’t argue? There was no jealousy?”

“I knew from the beginning she was still gun-shy after her ex-boyfriend—and that’s where we oughtta start, right there. That bastard was jealous. Didn’t want her for himself, but it sure as hell drove him crazy to see her with anyone else. Even me, even though we were just—”

“Just friends,” the chief muttered.

Bryan nodded, knowing how lame it sounded.

“Okay,” the chief said with an exasperated sigh. “Look, we have a lot more to go over, Kendall. We need to take you in, get your statement, get a list of every other person who was at the party, get the name of this ex-boyfriend of hers, and anyone else you can think of who might have had a motive, notify her family—”

“Hell,” Nick muttered. “Worst part of this freakin’ job.”

“What freakin’ job?” MacNamara blurted. “You’ve gotta be real clear about something, Di Marco. You’re retired. You teach criminal justice now—you don’t practice it.”

“I teach criminal profiling,” Nick corrected. “And I just decided to unretire.”

“That’s not—”

“Don’t say it, Mac. Don’t say it’s not possible when we both know it is.”

“You’re the kid’s mentor, practically a father figure. You don’t call that a conflict of interest?”

“It’s my case.”

Chief MacNamara met Nick’s steady gaze.

“If it’s anything to do with the Nightcap Strangler, Chief, even a copycat who somehow had inside information, then it’s my case. Always has been. Nobody knows more about it than me. Nobody else is gonna have the foundation of information and knowledge that I have. And if it turns out I fucked up and sent an innocent man—”

“You didn’t,” MacNamara said.

“If I did, then I’m damn well gonna be the one to make it right.”

The chief nodded. “I might be able to pull some strings.”

“Then pull them. Cut through the red tape. Call me a consultant or some bullshit like that if you have to, but get me in on this—officially in on this.” Then he turned to Bryan. “You said your dad’s on his way?”

“Yeah.”

“Call him and tell him to meet us at the station, okay? While you do that, I’ll call you a lawyer and your union rep, have them meet us there, as well.”

“Come on, Nick. I don’t need a lawyer.”

Bryan saw the grim look that flew between Nick Di Marco and Chief Mac, and for just a second his heart seemed to freeze in between beats. “Damn, is it really that bad?”

Nick met his gaze, but his wasn’t steady, and his smile was clearly forced. “Probably not, kid. But we might as well prepare for the worst, just in case. Don’t you think?”

“Nick…” Bryan could hardly ask the question, but he had to know. He had to. “Nick, tell me you don’t think I did this.”

“No, kid. I don’t think you did this.”

Bryan looked at the chief, hoping and maybe even half expecting him to say, “Neither do I.” But Chief MacNamara only lowered his eyes, shook his head and led the way to his waiting SUV.

Bryan thought he was going to throw up again before he got in.

Dawn pulled the pillow over her head and hugged it around her ears, but the damned phone kept right on ringing. It was set to go to voice mail after four rings, because four rings was more than she ever wanted to hear. But this caller had just hung up and dialed back when that had happened. And then had done it again.

At ten rings total, Dawn peered out from beneath the pillow. She could see, from the Caller ID feature on her television—which had been left on all night long, just as it was every night—that the call was coming from her mother. Her birth mother, not the one who’d raised her. Blackberry Inn, the screen announced.

She reminded herself that she was lucky to have found her birth mother at all, after fifteen years with each of them believing the other to be dead. She adored Beth, and had been raised beautifully by the woman she considered her mother, Julie Jones. But even though she loved Beth dearly, Dawn wasn’t ready for another conversation where every other sentence revolved around the life and times of Bryan Kendall.

Bryan, the son of Beth’s husband, Josh, had been Dawn’s first love. And she’d broken his heart when she’d left him behind in Vermont five years ago.

Hell. It didn’t seem as if Beth was going to give up until she answered, and it would be rude to just yank the line out of the jack.

Sighing, she rolled onto her side, grabbed the phone and brought it to her ear. “Hi, Beth.”

“Dawn. God, I thought I’d never get you. Are you all right? You don’t sound well.”

Dawn rolled her eyes, and reached for the water glass on the nightstand, but it was empty, and the one half full of diet cola was also half full of vodka. And it was too early in the morning for vodka.

She hadn’t needed to resort to vodka in quite a long time. But last night she’d had that feeling—that creeping, pins-and-needles-in-her-spine feeling—that told her something was coming. And that her normal bedtime dose of Ativan wasn’t going to be enough to keep it at bay this time.

She’d thought, at the time, she’d been sensing that the dead were going to start talking to her again—asking for her help, pestering her, the way they had before she’d run away from her life and her gift and her family. And Bryan, her first love.

Now she thought maybe all she’d been sensing was the approach of this phone call. Which was, after all, likely to be almost as unpleasant as the “gift” she’d turned her back on. “I’m fine,” she said. “Why so urgent?”

“You’ve got to come home, Dawnie. You’ve got to come home right now.”

Dawn blinked and looked at the clock on her cluttered nightstand. It, and the framed photo of her and Bryan, arm in arm, in happy teenage puppy love, were the only two things there that really belonged. Beside those were the empty water glass, the partially ingested vodka diet, a box of tissues, an empty prescription bottle and another one that wasn’t empty, the bowl of Chinese noodles she’d had for dinner and an open package of peanut M&M’s.

She had to shove some of the junk aside to see what time it was, and as soon as she did, she felt a lot less guilty for her reluctance to answer the phone. “It’s first thing on a Saturday. Is someone dead?”

She was kidding, being sarcastic and snotty, and feeling totally justified in both, until Beth said, “Yes. Someone is dead.”

Dawn sat up straight and blurted his name as everything inside her turned to ice. “Bryan—”

“Bryan’s…he’s fine. No. He’s not fine. His dad is with him, and he’s physically fine. At least, I think he is.”

“Good God, Beth, will you just tell me who’s dead already? I’m having heart failure here!”

“A girl. Her name is Bette—Bettina something or other. She was…she was murdered last night. Apparently in Bryan’s house. In his…in his bed.”

“What?”

“He had a party last night. Had too much to drink. Woke up this morning to find this girl dead in his bed.”

“Drugs? God, that’s going to mess up Bryan’s career big-time. Or was it…?”

“She was murdered.”

Dawn swore in a way she’d never before done in front of either one of her mothers.

“Dawn, they’ve taken Bryan in for questioning. Josh just called from the station, and he says it doesn’t look good.”

“Doesn’t look good?” Dawn frowned at the phone as if it were deliberately being vague. “Doesn’t look good? As in, they actually think he did it?”

“I don’t know. I guess…I guess so.”

“Well, they can’t! That just doesn’t make any sense,” Dawn said. “Bry’s a cop, for crying out loud.”

“Yes, a cop who’s been suspended for the past month.”

“What, still? All because he shot that guy?”

“He’s been cleared of any wrongdoing, but he was required to meet with the department psychiatrist to be sure he wasn’t suffering from post-traumatic stress. She just gave him the all clear, and he was scheduled to return to work on Monday. Hence, the party last night.”

“He was celebrating,” Dawn said.

“Apparently.”

Dawn closed her eyes, shook her head, offering a token argument, because she couldn’t seem to stop her self. Force of habit, she presumed. “I don’t know what good my coming back would do, Beth.”

“Yes, you do,” Beth whispered. “You know you do.”

“Did he…ask for me?”

“He needs you, Dawn. If they don’t arrest him—”

“Arrest him?”

“If they don’t arrest him, Josh is going to bring him home. Dawnie, you know you can help. Even without the…the ability you inherited from your father—”

“There is no ability.” She didn’t bother reminding Beth that any mention of Dawn’s long-dead father was strictly off-limits. The man had been a powerful medium—as well as a murderer. His gift and his mental illness, so twisted up in his mind that he couldn’t tell the real voices from the imaginary ones. The ones that told him to kill. With his dying breath, he’d passed his gift on to his teenage daughter, promising to return to her. A promise he’d kept, and one that had sent her running across the continent to escape.

And she had escaped.

“The dead don’t talk to me anymore, Beth. It’s…it’s gone.” Thanks to AA—Absolut and Ativan in her case.

“I don’t believe that,” Beth said softly. “I know it drove your father insane—and I know that scares you, Dawn. So I hope, for your sake, it’s true. But even without that, Dawn, you can help. You and Bryan were like—you were like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.”

“One Hardy Boy.”

“The way you figured out what was going on in Blackberry five years ago when your father found me here—when he thought God was telling him to kill me… If it hadn’t been for you and Bryan…”

“That was five years ago, Beth. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. Bryan’s the one who went on to become a cop. I just fix cars—”

“You restore classic cars for collectors. Don’t undersell yourself.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a far cry from crime solving.”

“He needs you, Dawn. And I need you. I’m scared. Josh sounded awful on the phone. Bryan’s his son, and this is going to be hell on him, no matter how it comes out. I need to be there for him, Dawn, but I’m scared, too. I need you. The family needs to face this together. Please, baby, please. It’s time you came home.”

“There are just…so many ghosts.”

“Yeah. Well, now there’s one more.”

“Beth—”

“Dawn,” Beth said, and her tone had changed from pleading to the voice of absolute authority. “I didn’t raise you—didn’t even get to know you until you were practically grown. But I am your mother and I’m speaking to you as a mother right now. There’s a ticket waiting for you at the airport. Your flight leaves at 1:16 p.m., your time. Get up, pack a bag, call your boss and get your ass home. I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

Dawn closed her eyes. “I’m a grown-up now, Beth. You can’t tell me what to do.”

“I just did, kiddo. I’ve put up with your hiding and your wallowing and your—well, to be blunt, your cowardice, for five long years, but I’m done with it now. You’re tougher than this. Stronger. Your family needs you, and I hate to say it, Dawn, but if you let me down again, I’m just not going to forgive you. Not this time.”

Dawn blinked and stared at the phone, but Beth was gone. She’d disconnected. So Dawn replaced the receiver on its cradle and peeled back her covers. Her birth mother had just called her a coward. She had never once even hinted that she felt that way. Dawn had thought Beth understood why she had to run away, had to stay away, from that place where so much had happened. Where her murderous maniac of a father had died at long last after a string of murders and assaults. From that instant when he’d spoken his dying words to her, told her his so-called gift was hers from then on.

Gift. Who the hell called insanity a gift?

Oh, there was more to it than just madness. The dead really did talk to Mordecai. But he couldn’t tell the voices of the dead from the voices of his own in sanity, and in the end, he’d nearly destroyed everyone he’d ever loved. Even her.

His “gift” was nothing she wanted. Nothing she would ever want.

She flung back the covers, shuffled into the bathroom and cranked on the shower taps. Shrugging out of her robe and letting it fall to the floor, Dawn stepped into the spray. Then she stood there with her head hanging down, and Bryan’s face front and center in her mind’s eye. He must hate her for walking away without a word five years ago. He must hate her for ignoring every effort he’d made to get her to talk to him, to at least tell him why. He must hate her by now. He ought to hate her. And she couldn’t blame him for it, but God, she didn’t want to see that hatred in his eyes. Not face-to-face, up close and personal. She didn’t think she could take that. It would hurt too much.

They’d been so in love. It had been new and fresh, and fun. She’d met him when his father had fallen for Beth, and it had felt as if they were meant for each other. So young and inexperienced, that when they finally made love for the first and only time, it had barely lasted five minutes.

She smiled softly when she thought of that completely unsatisfying, awkward night when they’d lost their virginity to each other. It was the sexiest memory of her entire life.

Damn, she didn’t want to go home. She really didn’t. But there was no point in arguing about it. She was going. Today. And deep down inside, now that she had no choice in the matter, she couldn’t wait to see Bryan again.

3

“It wasn’t the three hours of questioning that got to me,” Bryan said to his father. He had one hand braced on the mantel and was staring into the Blackberry Inn’s oversize fireplace as if there were dancing flames to contemplate. Which there were not. It was midsummer and still too warm for a fire, even in Vermont. But staring at the dark, empty hearth kept him from letting his eyes get stuck on one of the countless photos of Dawn, or him and Dawn together, that littered every room of this place.

She was on her way. Right now. Beth was picking her up at the airport in Burlington, an hour away. She would be here soon. Any minute now, and he could barely believe he was going to see her again for the first time in five years. He was going to see her again, now, in the middle of the biggest mess he’d ever landed in. He was going to see her. And it was going to rip his guts out.

“So what did?” Josh asked.

“What did what?” Bryan glanced at his father, sitting in the big rocker recliner with a cup of coffee and looking less like the relaxed, content innkeeper than he had since he’d first arrived in this town. Not that he ever really fit the stereotype, with his athletic build and good looks. Bryan took after him, and thanked his lucky stars often for his father’s genes.

But Josh had relaxed a lot since retiring from government work to run the inn alongside his wife. Tonight, though, Bryan could see the lines of tension creasing his brow. He was worried about his only son. This whole thing had his stoic, easygoing father shaken, and that scared him.

“You said it wasn’t the questioning that got to you,” Josh said. “So what did?”

“The lawyer.” Bryan’s glance slid sideways, from his dad’s worried, rugged face to the photo on the end table. Dawn, leaning on a classic Dodge Charger, wearing overalls, a wrench in one hand and a smudge of grease on her cheek. Must have been one she’d sent them from California. He jerked his attention away from it and tried to stay focused on the subject at hand. The lawyer his father and Nick had sent to his rescue.

“I’m a cop. I hate lawyers,” he said, elaborating on his previous statement.

“That’s fine—until you need one.”

“That’s just it, I don’t need one. Or at least, I shouldn’t. I didn’t do anything.”

“You woke up in bed with a murder victim, son.”

Bryan thinned his lips. “The mouthpiece wouldn’t let me say a hell of a lot. Kept interrupting when the chief was questioning me, telling me not to answer. Hell, he made me think I looked guilty.”

“It’s for the best, Bryan. You have to protect yourself.”

“I know that. I just—I know what I think when a suspect lawyers up and won’t talk. I hate like hell to have my colleagues thinking that way about me. Especially Chief Mac. I’d prefer to just tell him everything and ask him to help me sort it all out.”

“I know.”

Headlights slid over the walls as a car pulled into the driveway. Bryan closed his eyes slowly, tried to brace himself for whatever feelings were going to assault him at the sight of Dawn. But he was damned if he knew which ones to expect. It had been so long. Part of him hated her, and part of him ached for her. And all of him resented the fact that she wouldn’t be here at all if his life wasn’t on the line. He wondered if he was supposed to be grateful she would rush home because he was in crisis. He wasn’t. He was angry that it took a crisis to get her here. Hell, he hadn’t blamed her for running off without a word after all that had happened. Having the dead just start talking to you had to be bad enough. Having your dead father leading the crowd of ghosts to your door was too much, especially when your dead father had been a homicidal maniac.

So she panicked. She freaked. She ran away. No goodbye, no warning, nothing. She was just gone. And he could have forgiven that, if she had just called after things calmed down. But she didn’t call, and she didn’t write. She spoke to Beth, her birth mother, and anything Bryan learned about her life came through her. Second hand news of the woman he loved. It was insulting.

There was no excuse for letting it go on for five long years. None.

Still, he turned toward the front door as footsteps crossed the porch. He strained his eyes when he saw the foggy outline of her beyond the frosted-glass panes. And then the door opened and she walked in, Beth close behind her.

Dawn met his eyes, and he just stood there, mute, staring at her and thinking his heart was going to pound a hole in his chest, and wondering if it would fall onto the floor before or after it stopped beating.

Her hair was still long. Still its natural shade of dark honey and amber gold, perhaps with a few lighter high lights, no doubt thanks to the California sun. But her face had changed. Grown thinner. Her cheekbones were more prominent than before, which might be partly because she was older now, but he thought it might also be that she’d lost weight. Hell, she was so damn thin. And the tender skin underneath her eyes seemed pink and puffy. As if she’d been crying.

Over him?

Hell, who was he kidding?

He wondered, briefly, what she was seeing as she stared at him. What changes was she noticing? He imagined he’d changed quite a bit, too, in the course of five years.

Finally she said, “Hey, Bryan. How are you holding up?”

Just like that. As if there wasn’t a week-long conversation that should happen before that casual hello. He shrugged. “Damned if I know. I don’t think it’s all had a chance to sink in yet, to tell you the truth.” He moved toward her, but not too close, just enough to reach out and take the suitcase from her hand. “How about you?” he asked. “You look…tired.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He shrugged, not overly concerned that he’d sort of insulted her just then. Hell, she’d done worse to him, hadn’t she?

“It was a long flight,” Beth said quickly. “Naturally she’s tired.”

Bryan could see the worried looks passing between Beth and Josh from the corner of his eye, though he couldn’t really take his eyes off Dawn. “You’ve lost weight,” he said.

“That doesn’t sound like a compliment, either,” she replied.

“It wasn’t.” He sighed and lowered his head, turning toward the stairs. “You didn’t need to come, you know. There’s not a damn thing you can do.”

“Hey, don’t think I didn’t try that argument, Bry. Beth didn’t buy it, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I’m here. Deal with it.”

He was halfway up the stairs when he replied, “I’ve got enough to deal with already, thanks.” He finished climbing the stairs, avoiding the muttering going on behind him. The three of them discussing his mental state, no doubt. Then he was out of range, at last. He headed down the hall to the room Beth had chosen for Dawn and set her suitcase just inside the door. Then he kept going, to the next room, his room, and once inside, he closed the door, sat on his bed and lowered his head to his hands. Damn, damn, damn. He hadn’t wanted to snap at her. He’d wanted to wrap her up in his arms and hold her, just hold her, for a long, long time. He’d wanted to feel her right there, against him, warm and alive, more than just a memory.

Which made it even more irritating that she, apparently, had no such sentimental notions about him.

“I’m sorry,” Dawn said. “I should have—maybe I—”

Beth hushed her. “You two have a lot to talk about, to work through. It’s high time, Dawn. It’s past time. Adults do not just stop communicating with people they care about. They talk it out.”

Dawn pressed her lips together more tightly to avoid saying anything that might sound rude, since several snotty rejoinders were knocking against her teeth in an effort to escape.

Josh closed a hand on her shoulder. “He was glad to see you, hon. I realize it didn’t seem that way to you, but I know him better than anyone else in the world. He was glad to see you, and more than that, he needs you. He needs you more than he needs anything or anyone right now. So I’m asking you to swallow your pride and be there for him.”

She nodded, not believing a word of it. It would have been nice to believe it, but it just didn’t make any sense. Bryan hated her. And she couldn’t blame him, because he had every reason to hate her. That made sense. But she didn’t argue with Josh. She just said, “I’ll try my best.”

“Good.” He smiled. “I think I jumped ahead a little, though.” And then he hugged her. “Welcome home, Dawn.”

“Thanks, Josh.” She relaxed and hugged him back. “Thanks. It’s good to be back.”

“It is?” he asked.

She smiled at him and shrugged. “Well, it might be too soon to tell. But it feels good at the moment.”

Beth said, “It does my heart good to hear that.”

Dawn felt bad. Her lack of enthusiasm had probably hurt her mother’s feelings, and that wasn’t what she’d intended. “I think I’ll go on upstairs,” she said. “I’d like to take a shower, freshen up before dinner. It was a long flight.”

“Food’ll be on the table in an hour.”

“All right.” Dawn hugged her mother. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Thanks for coming. Just take it slow, okay? Just take it nice and slow.”

Dawn nodded, unsure what it was her mom wanted her to take so slowly, but not wanting to open the can of worms she thought lay behind that comment. So she headed up the stairs, but slowly. With every step she took, she half expected to see some shady, vaporous apparition, or to hear some disembodied voice. Most of all, she expected to encounter her long-dead father, demanding that she accept her “gift.” Her “calling,” as he’d referred to it.

She hadn’t seen or spoken to a dead person since she’d spent her first night in San Bernadino. Maybe that was due to the Ativan she’d been prescribed by the first doctor she’d trusted with the truth. Or maybe it was something to do with the distance, as little sense as that made. She only knew she didn’t want to come back here and face the ghosts again. She didn’t want the damn gift that had become so twisted and corrupt it had rotted her father’s mind, turning him into a murderer who honestly believed he was doing God’s will when he killed.

She didn’t want any of it.

She entered her room and stood there, just inside the open door, looking around but seeing nothing. No ghosts. “If I hear even one peep, see even one misty shape in the night, I’m out of here. I hope you’re getting that.”

“Loud and clear.”

She nearly jumped right out of her skin as she spun around to see Bryan leaning against the door frame. One hand on her chest, she closed her eyes slowly and willed her heart to slow down.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a heart attack.”

She took a deep breath. “It’s okay. Come on in, Bry.”

“You sure?”

She nodded and stepped aside to give him room to pass. He walked in, looked around the bedroom. “You, uh, you alone in here?”

She smiled. “Yeah, I’m alone.” Bryan had been matter-of-fact about her “abilities” ever since she’d first told him about them. He hadn’t doubted her. Hadn’t thought she was crazy. Hadn’t been all weirded out about it. It had barely fazed him, except that he worried about her. And in return, she’d walked out and left him a note that really didn’t say a damn thing.

“So, uh, no ghosts in California, huh?”

“Not for me, at least. I haven’t…heard from any of them since I first got there.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

She lowered her head, not meeting his eyes. “I don’t know. Distance. Medication. Vodka, when the other two aren’t enough.”

When she glanced up again, he was frowning, studying her face and probably getting ready to comment on her methods of ghost-dodging. But he seemed to change his mind. “And now that you’re back?” he asked.

“Nothing yet. I hope to God there won’t be.”

He nodded, sighed heavily. “You told Beth it wasn’t me you were running away from. That it was them. You said you needed time. But I don’t think you were being entirely honest.”

“I don’t want to talk about that, Bryan. About us. About what we had. It’s history. I know I hurt you, and I’m sorry. But I did what I had to do, and it was five years ago. I’m just not up to rehashing it all. Not now.”

His eyes narrowed. She thought she saw a flash of anger, but he banked it fast. “It’s not all that important, anyway,” he said.

Her brain immediately registered it as a lie.

“Look, Bry, can we just skip all that for the moment? Just focus on what’s going on here and now instead? ’Cause this is a big thing, you being implicated in a murder. All this ancient history between us, it can wait. Can’t it?”

He met her eyes. “It’s waited for five years already,” he said. “I’ve waited for five years.”

“You weren’t exactly waiting,” she said. “I mean, this poor woman—she died in your bed, after all.”

He lifted his brows and took two steps closer to her. “Does that bother you, Dawn?”

“Of course not.” But she averted her eyes when she said it, cursing herself afterward for being so obvious.

“Did you think I was going to be celibate for five years? Did you really think one night losing our virginity to each other was going to sustain either of us for the next half decade? ’Cause that’s crazier than talking to dead people.”

“Let it go, Bry. I’m not up to this, not yet.”

He watched her face for a moment, as if waiting for her to give something more away, and when she didn’t, he finally nodded. “Fine. It’s waited five years—it can wait a little longer.”

She lifted her head and, gingerly, put a hand on his forearm, where it hung by his side. His biceps were big and hard. They hadn’t been before. His shoulders were broader, and his hair, as brown as milk chocolate, was longer than she’d ever seen it. She liked it long. It would be a shame when he had to cut it again to return to his job as a cop. If he was able to return to his job as a cop.

She thought about saying so, then realized she’d been standing there with her hand on his biceps for a good minute and a half, in silence.

“I want to help you get through this,” she said. “I want to help however I can.”

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“You know better.” She lowered her hand, reluctantly, but her eyes replaced it. Damn, he’d beefed up. “God, don’t you remember what a kick-ass pair of amateur detectives we were?” she asked, forcing her eyes to move upward and lock with his.

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about the past.”

She sighed deeply. “I don’t care how difficult you try to make this, Bryan. I’m staying, and I’m going to try to help.”

“That’s kind of a switch from ‘Beth wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ isn’t it?”

“Oh, come on. I would have come whether she asked me to or not, once I knew what was going on with you. Don’t pretend you don’t know me well enough to know that.”

“I’m not sure I know you at all anymore.”

She probed his eyes, looking for the emotion behind the words. Was it just anger, or was there also hurt, frustration, even worry? Or maybe a combination of all of the above? He must be going out of his mind with everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. And yet she resented him snapping at the friend who had come all the way across the country to help him. “You going to be an asshole the whole time I’m here, then?”

“Probably.”

“Well, just so I know up front. Look, I want to take a shower before dinner, so—”

“Right. Go for it. I’m out of here.”

He turned to go, but she went after him, grabbed his shoulder to turn him around, and then jerked her hand away as if the contact burned. Because it had. His shoulder was even more changed than his biceps. Big and hard, and so very different from her memories of him.

“What do you mean, you’re out of here? You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?”

He met her eyes, and his face, harsh before, softened just a little. She had to wonder if that touch, no matter how brief, had hit him the way it had hit her. Like a fingertip to bathwater that was way too hot, making you pull it back fast and hiss through your teeth. Making your nerves jump from lazy complacence to screaming awareness.

He sighed and said, “Yeah, I’m staying. And I’ll try not to be an asshole the entire time.”

He almost smiled.

She almost returned it.

“That’s good,” she said. “Because I want to know everything, Bryan. Everything that happened, everything you can remember, including the stuff you haven’t told Josh or the police or your best friend.” She tightened her lips, thinking that she used to be his best friend. Wondering who filled that role today. And why the very thought was like a knife in her chest.

He studied her for a long moment, and slowly something changed in his face. It was as if he were thinking of something troubling, something he hadn’t thought of before. He reached out, and to her utter surprise, he ran his fingertips from the crown of her head down over her hair, to where it hit her shoulder. “Dawn, I don’t know how safe it is for you to get too close to this. Or to me. Hell, I don’t know if it’s even safe for you to be here right now.”

She frowned. “Why?”

Beth called his name from downstairs, and he hesitated, then nodded as if making a decision. “There’s a lot to this you don’t know. But I’ll fill you in after dinner, okay?”

“Okay.” She could have sagged in relief just then. Because for that moment he had seemed like the old Bryan. It had felt as if nothing had changed between them. But only for a moment. As soon as she smiled up at him, she saw the door behind his eyes slam closed. The moment was gone, and he was tense and defensive again.

Beth called again, saying, “Nick’s on the phone, Bryan.”

“Coming,” he called. Then he lifted a hand, a half wave that might have started out as something else—a touch, maybe—before morphing into the kind of halfhearted wave strangers offered one another. “See you at dinner, Dawn.”

She nodded and watched him go, then closed her bedroom door, leaned her head briefly against it and wondered why her heart was contracting into a tiny stonelike lump in her chest and her throat had tightened to the point where it was hard even to breathe.

She was feeling too much. Way too much. And way too soon. But at least she’d forgotten to worry about the dead.

Odd that they hadn’t bothered her yet. She wondered why, then decided it was best to just count her blessings, as she headed for the shower.

Bryan really hadn’t intended to be a jerk. But damn, there was something infuriating about being in the same room with Dawn, and he didn’t think it was due to stress over being a murder suspect.

Now she sat across the dining room table from him, nibbling halfheartedly on her pot roast. She seemed to be ignoring the mouthwatering scent wafting from her plate to her nose. She barely touched the gravy-soaked vegetables and potatoes. She looked as if her mind were entirely elsewhere.

For the first time Bryan wondered if she was seeing someone back on the West Coast. God, what if she was so touchy simply because she missed her lover?

Suddenly he couldn’t stand the smell of the food, much less eat it. He started to push himself away from the table.

“It’s just us here now, Bryan,” Josh said, finally breaking the tense silence that filled the dining room as surely as the aroma of Beth’s continuously simmering potpourri. “You can tell us everything. It’s not going any further.”

Bryan felt the bottom fall out of his stomach at his father’s words. “Tell you everything? What, exactly, is it you think I’m not telling you?”

Josh’s eyes widened, and he shook his head hard. “No, no—”

“God, Dad, tell me you don’t think—”

“I don’t think you did it! I know you didn’t do it, son. That’s not even within the realm of possibility. Come on, Bryan. I know you.”

Bryan felt the sudden weight leave his shoulders a little as he let himself believe his father’s passionate declaration.

“I just meant,” Josh went on, “that you can tell us everything that happened. Everything you remember. Things your lawyer wouldn’t let you tell your colleagues.”

Bryan lifted a brow. “Are you wearing a wire or something?”

Dead silence fell on them like a shroud. Around the table, every eye was glued to Bryan, every expression mortified, especially Dawn’s. Then Bryan shook his head, sighed and said, “I was kidding, Dad.”

“Damn, Bry, this is no time for humor.” But Josh sighed his relief all the same.

“Guess not. But you’re all so damn glum.” Bryan looked around the table, including Dawn in the observation. “Look, I haven’t been convicted yet. Hell, I haven’t even been charged. And I’m not going to be. I have faith in the system.”

Josh stabbed a chunk of meat with his fork. “Yeah, well, I’ve spent most of my life in the system, and I’m not so confident in it that I’m willing to trust my son to it.” He set the fork down, meat still attached, and tossed his cloth napkin onto the table in front of him. “Look, Bry, the only way to ensure you don’t end up being arrested and charged is for us to find out who did this ourselves. And to do that, we need a place to start. The more you can remember, the better off we’ll be.”

Bryan nodded slowly. His father knew his shit. He’d spent years as an agent with the DEA. “I know, I know. But that’s just it. I don’t remember a damn thing. There was the party the night before. Things were getting…a little rowdy, I guess. But everyone seemed to be having a good time. I drank. A lot. More than I normally would have, though I didn’t think I was going overboard all that much.”

Josh’s head came up. “Did they ask you for a blood sample when they questioned you?”

“Yeah. Freaking lawyer didn’t want me to agree to it. But I overruled him. Hell, I’d already admitted to being drunk, so it wasn’t going to hurt to have them know the blood alcohol level. And as for DNA, it was my house. My DNA’s all over it. So I gave it.”

“Good,” Josh said with a firm nod. “So there was the party. And you were drinking. And…?”

“And that’s it. I woke up on the bathroom floor. The house was empty, but I didn’t remember when everyone left. I felt like hell, decided to go back to bed to sleep it off, dragged my ass into the bedroom and found Bette lying there, already cold.”

“I’m so sorry, Bryan,” Dawn whispered.

It wasn’t her words that hit home in his brain. It was the way she reached across the table and gripped his forearm. He looked up fast, met her eyes as his skin sizzled beneath her palm.

“I’ve been so focused on the fact that you’re a suspect in this, I haven’t told you how sorry I am that you lost someone you cared about.”

Her eyes backed up every word. She really meant it. He could only nod and grunt his thanks. She took her hand away, and he wanted it back. Touching her—being touched by her—was something he’d missed more than he’d realized until now.

“I mean it,” she said.

“I know you do,” he replied.

“Nick tell you what he told me on the phone?” Josh asked.

“There was whiskey in Bette’s throat, and in her lungs,” Bryan said softly. “Glasgow Gold, he said.”

“Yeah. Maybe you don’t know what that means, but—”

“I know what it means,” Bryan said, and he met his father’s eyes.

Josh’s face fell.

“What does it mean?” Dawn asked.

“How do you know?” Josh whispered, as if she hadn’t even spoken.

Bryan knew she was confused, but he had to get this out to his father now. There was no point in doing less than laying his cards on the table where his family was concerned. He didn’t want tidbits of information surfacing later on and shaking their belief in him. With a deep sigh, he said, “Two weeks ago, I signed out all the files on the Nightcap Strangler case.”

Dawn dropped her fork. “Nightcap Strangler? Bryan, that sounds like the name of some kind of…of a serial killer or something.”

“It is,” he said. “Or was.”

She blinked. “What the hell is going on?”

Bryan set down his silverware. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Like that Bette was killed by a serial killer, you mean? And that now they think it might be you? A serial killer? God, Bryan!”

“It’s even more complicated than that. The Nightcap Strangler was a man named Johnny Lee Jackson. He was arrested sixteen years ago, and there hasn’t been a killing fitting his M.O. since. He died in prison just last month. I think this has to be a copycat crime.”

“But why?” Dawn asked. “Why would this…this copycat want to kill your girlfriend, in your bed, while you were sleeping in the next room?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Yes, you do,” she accused. “Bryan, what were you doing with those files? The timing of this, of you going through those old files, that can’t be a coincidence. The police certainly aren’t going to see it as one. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.”

Dawn noted, though, that Beth and Josh were looking at him with the very same questions in their eyes. Oh, none of them believed Bryan was capable of murder, but there was clearly some kind of link between him and those crimes—or this criminal.

And Dawn had the feeling he knew what it was.

“I think this is all about Nick,” he said, confirming her belief.

Josh nodded as if he understood, while Beth kept staring at him, waiting for further clarification.

“Nick?” Dawn asked. “The Nick?”

“Nick Di Marco,” Bryan said. “He was one of my professors back in college, my mentor. We’re tight. Hell, I trust him more than anyone in the world, except maybe my dad. Anyway, he’s the cop who solved the Nightcap Strangler case sixteen years ago, before he retired from the force and took up teaching.”

“I know,” Dawn said. “I’d forgotten what they called the killer, is all.” She’d heard all about Nick the supercop, and his book and his movie deal, from Beth. If she’d ever actually lived in Blackberry, she would probably have heard about him far sooner. He was the nearby town of Shadow Falls’s version of a living legend.

“I think Bette was chosen because of her connection to me and my connection to Nick,” Bryan said. “Someone is trying to set me up, but I think they’re also trying to get to him, somehow, through me. But whoever it is, it’s not the Nightcap Strangler. Probably just some lunatic with an obsession or a bad case of hero worship. A wannabe.”

“A wannabe who somehow got information only known by the police?” Josh asked.

“And by Nightcap himself,” Bryan said.

“He could have told someone, a friend, a relative—even a cell mate.”

“Do you think this copycat will kill again?” Beth asked softly.

“Oh, he’ll kill again,” said a new voice from just beyond the screen door off the foyer. They all turned, and the man standing there went on. “I just hope Bryan here is safely behind bars or surrounded by cops when he does.” He grinned, and every part of his face joined in on the smile. “Can’t get a better alibi than that now, can you?”

4

Dawn was startled, probably because of the dark feeling that had crept over her entire soul as the dinner conversation had unfolded. Nightcap Strangler. Serial killer. Copycat crime. A dead girlfriend. And all of it tied up with Bryan. What the hell?

“Hey, Nick,” Bryan said, his expression lightening. “Dawn, come meet Nick.” Bryan got up, and she followed him out of the dining room, across the living room and into the foyer. Beth and Josh remained at the table, and Dawn could hear them speaking softly, probably trying to reassure each other that everything would be all right.

Nick, who looked as if he’d been buff once but now had the proverbial muffin top spilling over his belt, pushed the screen door open and entered, still smiling. He had blue eyes that won you over with a single glance. His hair looked like onyx in a snowstorm. And when his warm smile landed on Dawn, it somehow managed to broaden.

“You’ve gotta be Beth’s little girl, Dawnie. I’ve been hearing about you for years. It’s good to finally meet you. I’m Nick Di Marco, an old friend of Bryan’s.”

Dawn couldn’t help but return the infectious smile. Somehow his demeanor made the tension she’d been feeling a few moments ago fade away.

“Hello, Nick. I’ve been hearing about you for years, too. Bryan tells me you’re the man he trusts most in the world, after his dad, and that’s saying something.” She extended a hand, and Nick took it. His was big and very warm, but she felt the strength beneath the friendliness.

“Sorry we’re meeting under such dire circumstances,” he said, and then he shifted his gaze to Bryan. “You didn’t tell me how closely she fit.”

Bryan frowned hard, but nodded at his mentor. “I didn’t even think about it myself until she got here.”

“She can’t set foot in Shadow Falls, Bryan. She might not even be safe here in Blackberry, even though it’s almost an hour away. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Bryan agreed.

“Whoa, wait a minute.” Dawn was shifting her curious blue eyes from one of them to the other. “Fit what?”

“She’s got the look,” Nick said. But he said it quietly, as if he didn’t want Beth and Josh, who were still in the other room, to hear.

Bryan ignored her question and said, “I know, Nick,” he said. “I was going to get to that.”

“Get to what?” Dawn frowned at Bryan, puzzled and irritated at being ignored.

He quickly covered her hand with his and gave it a squeeze that made her heart beat faster, despite the situation.

“Nick, go on in and have something to eat. I’ll be back.” Then, finally, Bryan met Dawn’s probing stare. “Come for a walk with me?”

She looked down at his hand still holding hers and felt such a rush of confused emotions that her eyes started to burn. She blinked against the feeling and nodded once, not quite trusting herself to speak, because her throat was so tight. Bryan was in more trouble than she had begun to imagine, and it seemed she cared a whole lot more than she had allowed herself to acknowledge.

Bryan walked Nick to the dining room and waved him into a seat as Beth invited him to join them for the meal. “Dawn and I are going for a short walk. We’ll be back soon,” Bryan told them.

“Don’t parade her all over the neighborhood, Bryan,” Nick said. “The more people who see her, the greater the risk.”

Risk? Dawn shot Bryan a “what the hell is he talking about” look as he returned to her. But he just took her hand and gave it another squeeze, then walked with her to the door. The screen door creaked, and as they stepped outside and let it close behind them, she felt the warm kiss of a summer night and heard the crickets chirping in a way she hadn’t heard in five long years. God, she’d missed Vermont.

They walked down the porch steps, and Bryan seemed to be avoiding looking at her, even though she was staring at him as she kept in step at his side.

He released her hand as they walked, and hers felt cold without it, despite the warmth of the evening.

“Why am I…at risk, Bryan?” she asked.

He sighed, coming to a stop. They’d followed a walk-way that wound through a garden that hadn’t been there when she’d left. It took up the entire side lawn, and was dotted with statues and benches. The air was almost thick with perfume, and even though it was already dark, there were still bees bumbling from blossom to fragrant blossom.

Bryan sank onto a bench, and she sat down beside him. “Dawn,” he said, “Bette looked…similar to you.”

“She did?” She tipped her head to one side, and for some reason her mind went in the opposite direction from murders and death and serial killers. It went straight to him—to them. “You were dating someone who looked like me? What’s that mean, Bryan? Are you saying you never—”

“It wasn’t like that with Bette and me. We were friends.”

Dawn lifted her brows. “Some friends.”

“I’m not telling you this to make you think I still—Dawn, that’s not what this is about. You’re blonde, slender, taller than average. You have blue eyes, and you’re between nineteen and twenty-five.”

“That’s an odd way to put it. You know perfectly well I’m twenty-four.”

“Bette was twenty-three.”

She nodded. “So we were close in age. And we looked kind of alike. But it was just coincidence that you were dating her, right? It had nothing to do with her resemblance to me.”

“Right.”

“So why bring it up, then?”

“Because…that description—the age range, the body type, the long straight hair, light brown to blond—it also fits all the original victims of the Nightcap Strangler.”

An ice-cold finger slid down Dawn’s spine, and she sucked in a breath, suddenly very clear as to what he was getting at.

“All of them? And how many would that be, Bryan?”

“Seventeen original victims that we know of. Eighteen, if you add Bette. The thing is, whether this is a copycat or Nick arrested the wrong guy, you won’t be safe in Shadow Falls. And Nick’s right, you might not even be safe here in Blackberry, Dawn.”

She nodded three times, slowly, firmly, while her mind raced. But even before her brain reached a practical conclusion, her lips were moving. Her emotions were doing the talking tonight, it seemed.

“I’m not leaving,” she told him.

“Dawn, look, I can’t let you risk your life—”

“It sounded like you don’t think this guy will kill again.”

“Nick thinks he will. And believe me, Dawn, Nick knows this case a whole lot better than I do.”

“I can take precautions,” she said quickly. “I can color my hair. Slouch when I walk so I look shorter. Get some tinted contacts.”

Bryan sighed, shaking his head and, she sensed, constructing logical arguments in his mind. But then she closed her hand around his, and he went very still. She’d been hoping her touch still had the same effect on him as his did on her. And it seemed that maybe it did.

“I’m not leaving you, Bryan.”

He stared into her eyes for a long moment. She tried not to start arguing with herself as to whether what she was feeling for him now was friendship or something more. It wasn’t the same emotion she’d felt for him before. She’d been a girl then. Barely out of school.

What she felt now was different, and it was too soon to know exactly how. Besides, figuring that out wasn’t the most important thing right now. What was important now was getting through this. “I mean it,” she said, feeling the need to drive the point home. “I won’t leave you.”

“Sure you will,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

She frowned, because that had sounded bitter, and as if it had nothing to do with the subject at hand. But before she had a chance to defend herself, she heard the distinct sound of carefully placed footsteps on the path behind them. She swung her head around startled.

Bryan surged to his feet and stepped in front of her so fast that it shocked her. She sat there staring up at the back of his T-shirt, noticing how his wide shoulders offset his narrow hips. God, he was built. This was not the lean, lanky nineteen-year-old she’d left behind. His arms were cut, probably all flexed out like that because of the way he was clenching his fists at his sides, as if ready to take on all comers in her defense. It made her belly clench up and her heart beat faster.

“Wow,” she whispered.

“Who the hell is there?” Bryan demanded.

“Hey, Kendall, is that you?” The steps came closer.

“Rico?” Bryan’s fists unclenched, and she heard his breath flowing out all at once, like a mini-windstorm. Glancing over his shoulder at her, he said, “It’s okay. It’s my partner, Rico Chavez. We call him Rico Suave—he’s pretty smooth with the women.”

By the time he finished his explanation, Rico was coming toward them along the garden path. He was a relatively short bronze-skinned hunk with black curly hair cut close to his head, and when he saw Dawn, he hesitated. “Sorry, man. I hope I’m not—”

“It’s fine,” Bryan said. “Rico, this is Dawn Jones.”

“Oh.” Rico’s thick brows went up as he stared at her a little too intently. And then he asked, “The Dawn?” And Bryan groaned and nodded.

Rico came closer, better to check her out. He smiled, a bright white smile in that copper-skinned face, and offered her a hand, then sent a not-so-subtle nod of approval Bryan’s way.

So apparently Bryan had told his partner about her. That warmed her way more than it probably ought to.

“Don’t you believe anything they say about my man, here,” Rico said. Then he looked at Bryan, and his smile turned serious. “I got your back, Bry. I hope you know it. No question. I don’t doubt you.”

Bryan nodded. “Thanks, Rico. That means a lot to me.”

“I think they’re close to, uh…” He shifted his eyes to Dawn and then back to Bryan again.

“Arresting me?”

Dawn felt her blood run cold, not even believing the words had crossed Bryan’s lips. “No,” she whispered. “No, that can’t be.”

“Sorry, man,” Rico said. “I don’t think it’ll be tonight. Maybe tomorrow, though. She’s got your skin under her nails, your hairs on her pillow—” He bit his lip. “Sorry.”

“That’s bullshit,” Dawn blurted. “He was sleeping with her. Naturally his DNA would be all over her.”

Then she pressed a hand to her suddenly queasy stomach and turned her back on both of them. She realized she wasn’t just sick at the thought of Bryan going to jail, but at the thought of him making love to another woman. God, why would it hit her this powerfully? And why right now? Had she really thought he’d been celibate all this time, just because she had?

“There’s no sign of anyone else, man. Not in the bed or on the body,” Rico explained.

“Why is that so strange?” Dawn demanded. They both looked at her, questioningly, so she went on. “You didn’t say anything about the Nightcap Strangler raping his victims.”

“You’re right,” Bryan told her. “He didn’t rape any of them.”

“So, whether this is him or a copycat, he won’t be raping them, either. Right? So why expect to find his—”

Bryan held up a hand to stop her words. But Rico was nodding hard. “Yeah. Yeah, she’s right. I said the same thing to the chief not two hours ago, but damn, it’s like talking to a brick wall.” He sighed, sounding angry. “I figured you’d need time to decide how to make bail. Listen, man, I got a few grand stashed away, if you need it.”

“Thanks.” Bryan put a hand on his shoulder, lowering his own head. “For the warning and the offer. But mostly for believing me. I appreciate it more than you know.”

Rico nodded. “De nada, partner. Good to finally meet you, Dawn.”

“Nice to meet you, too, Rico,” she said. And then Rico turned and headed back toward the house.

Dawn turned to blink up into Bryan’s eyes. Hers were wet, but she hoped he wouldn’t see that in the growing darkness. “They’re going to arrest you.”

“I’ll make bail. And we’ll find out who did this and—”

“Maybe…maybe I can help,” she told him. “Really help, I mean.”

Bryan seemed blank only for a moment; then he apparently got what she was saying and shook his head, backing away a step as he did. “You mean…you mean by trying to revive the ability you’ve spent the past five years trying to get rid of? No. No way, Dawn.”

“Just listen. How better to find out who killed Bette than to ask her? And who else are you going to get to do that for you?”

He continued shaking his head. “Do you hear what you’re saying?” he demanded. “You’ve been hiding out from this gift you call a curse for five years. You threw away everything we had because of it. Now you’re just going to welcome it back with open arms?”

“To save you from life in prison? Yeah, Bry, with open arms. Wide open.”

He pushed a hand through his hair and tipped his head up toward the glittering stars above them. “You left home over this,” he said. Then he lowered his head and stabbed her eyes with his. “You left me over this.”

“We’re not going to talk about that. We’re not going to waste our time and attention on what’s gone by, Bryan. There’s nothing we can do about it, anyway. It’s in the past. We need to focus on finding out who murdered that poor girl.”

“It’s not in the past. Not for me. You destroyed me, Dawn.” He drew a breath, still holding her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not liking what she saw in his eyes just then. Anger. Unexpressed until now, so it had festered. She’d really ruined things with him, and done it in spades. She hadn’t left any room to fix it now.

So she decided to change the topic, because that one hurt too badly to think about. “You still haven’t told me why you were going through all those files on the Nightcap Strangler case. Are you going to?”

“Yeah, but you can’t tell Nick.”

She nodded, but she thought she already knew. “You were beginning to suspect that he’d arrested the wrong man, weren’t you, Bryan? And I’ll bet the real killer found out somehow, was afraid you were going to catch him and killed Bette to distract you—or maybe even to frame you. That’s it, isn’t it?”

He held her eyes a moment longer, then smiled a little, all that pent-up anger seeming to dissipate as his gaze roamed her face. “You’re still some kind of aspiring Nancy Drew, aren’t you, Dawn?”

“I’m too old to be Nancy Drew.” Then she shrugged. “But yeah, I guess I am still into the crime-solving thing. I just didn’t realize it until I got here. You have to admit we were good at it. Helped save our friend from a homicidal headcase before we were out of our teens. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“No, Nancy. You’re dead wrong. It was a great theory, though.”

She frowned hard, not sure she’d heard him right.

“The thing is, Nick is getting an award next month—a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Vermont Association of Law Enforcement. And it’s a big deal. They asked me to present it at their annual convention, and part of that involves putting together a speech. You know, the highlights of his career and all that.”

She felt her brows push against each other. “That’s why you were going over the files?”

“It’s the case that made him famous. I was going to do this whole multimedia presentation. Big screen behind me, featuring the cover from his book, maybe a clip from the movie they made out of it. De Niro played him, you know.”

“Everyone knows.”

“The thing is, I had to sneak the hard copies of the files out of the department’s records room. Some of the boxed evidence, too. I didn’t sign them out, the way we’re supposed to, because I didn’t want anyone to know. And if I’d accessed them electronically, I’d have had to log in, and that would have left a trail for sure.”

“You risked your career to present an award?”

“Hell, no,” he said. Then he tipped his head back again as if searching the night sky for assistance. The crickets kept chirping, and the stars kept twinkling, but neither of them offered him any help. “It wasn’t risking my career. It was a little sneaky, but it’s an old closed case, and if I got caught and explained my reasons to the chief, he’d have let it go and played along.”

“Then why didn’t you just tell him in the first place?”

“Because the committee was adamant that no one can know. That’s the way this award is always given out—no one knows who will get it before the big night. It’s as closely guarded a secret as the Oscar winners are. I even had to sign a confidentiality agreement.”

She nodded. “So then does anyone know you took the files?”

“Only you. Beth and Josh will know before the night’s out,” he said. “I have to tell them.”

“Had you returned the files yet, before all this happened?”

“No. The night I took them, I gave Nick a ride home—his car wouldn’t start. I didn’t even know he was coming in that day. He’s retired from the force, but he still pops in. I was still on suspension—had to make up an excuse to go in at all. But that’s beside the point. The point is, I wasn’t expecting to see him, much less have him in my car. I ended up sticking everything inside a picnic cooler I’d left in the trunk of the Mustang, so he wouldn’t see it.”

She closed her eyes, thinking he couldn’t look more guilty without actually trying. “Where’s everything now?”

“Stashed in my garage.” He sighed. “The police are still going over the house, but they’ll get to the garage soon enough, and when they find those files…” He lowered his head and shook it slowly.

“It’s going to look bad,” she admitted.

“Yeah.” He looked up at her again. “I don’t want Nick to know about this award if he doesn’t have to, Dawn. It’s supposed to be hush-hush until the night of the ceremony. It’s a big deal.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that clear. But so’s your life.”

“If I have to reveal why I did it to get out of this mess, I will. Believe me. If they find those files in my garage—or if they go looking for them for background information on the current investigation and can’t find them—I’ll explain myself. But not until and unless I have to. Okay?”

“Okay.” She looked into his eyes, felt a little rush of something very familiar, and didn’t have the will to censor herself. “We’re gonna solve this thing, you know. You and me. Just like old times.”

“Maybe not quite like old times,” he said softly.

For a second the tension pulled tight between them. And then, to break it, she took his hand and began pulling him along the path behind her, back toward the inn.

“Where are we going?”

“To the inn, to get your car.”

“To go where?” he asked.

“To Shadow Falls. You’re taking me to your house.”

He stopped, using his weight to stay put, despite her tugging. “My house is currently cordoned off with crime-scene tape. And for all we know, there are cops there even as we speak.”

“We’re going, anyway.” She tugged again. “If there are police there, we’ll just keep on driving. But if no one’s around, we can take the opportunity to get those files out of there.”

“No. I can’t let you tamper with evidence, Dawn. You’ll wind up sharing a cell with me.”

She looked up into his face, still gripping his hand. “I can think of worse things.” She almost wished she could bite back the words, but instead she averted her eyes, ignored the heat rushing into her face and went on. “Besides, we’re not just going for the files. We need to get inside the house. Into the bedroom.”

“Why the hell would you want—”

“Because the place where Bette died is probably the best place for me to try to make contact with her.”

“I’m not gonna let you do that for me, Beth.”

She was encouraged, though, because he stopped holding his ground and instead let her pull him along the path beside her. They crossed the garden and emerged onto the lawn, where the winding footpath continued all the way to the front door. They were nearly to the porch steps when a speeding vehicle came squealing around the curve in the road. Headlights blinded her as she turned in alarm.

Brakes screeched, rubber burning on the pavement, and something flew past, hurled by the driver, smashing right through the Blackberry Inn’s living room window.

Bryan swore and raced toward the car, but it was already peeling out, fishtailing twice before the tires gripped the road, and speeding away.

He grabbed her upper arm and ran with her, up the front porch steps and into the inn. Beth and Josh, Nick and Rico were all standing in the foyer, and Rico’s gun was in his hand. Broken shards of glass littered the floor, and in their midst lay a brick with a piece of paper wrapped around it.

“Is everyone all right?” Bryan shouted.

“Yeah,” Josh told him. “Everyone’s fine.”

“You see anything, Bryan?” Nick asked.

“Black, Olds 88. Probably a ’93 or ’94. Vermont plates, too dirty to make out. Passenger-side taillight was broken.”

Dawn blinked at him, completely awestruck.

“Dawn?” Nick said.

She couldn’t take her eyes off Bryan. This was a side of him she’d never seen. Damn. He really was a cop. She’d known it, but she hadn’t known it. “What?”

“Did you see anything Bryan didn’t?”

“Hell, he lost me at black. And I wouldn’t even have been sure about that much.”

“Beth, can you get me a zipper bag and some salad tongs, please?” Bryan asked.

Beth rushed away and returned with the requested items. Bryan knelt beside the brick, and used the salad tongs to pull the paper off and unfold it. It wasn’t hard to read. Just one word. Murderer.

Dawn could see that it hit Bryan as powerfully as if the brick itself had nailed him in the belly. He actually flinched back from it.

Nick knelt beside him, took the tongs from his hands and used them to tuck the note into the plastic bag. Then he pushed the brick in, as well, lifted up the bag, closed the zip top and handed it to Rico. “You want to take this to the station, or you want me to?”

“I’m headed back there, anyway,” Rico said, and he took the bag and sent a sympathetic look at Bryan. “Hang in there, partner. This is just some ignorant jackass who wouldn’t know a good cop if one was pulling him out from under a bus. Just hang in.”

“I’m trying.” Bryan walked away from the others, head down.

Dawn went after him, put her hand on his shoulder. “We’ll go do what I said,” she told him when they were out of earshot. “It’ll help.”

Bryan shook his head. “No. Not tonight. It’s not safe, Dawn. Besides, it’s not legal. I think we should do this by the book. I get caught tampering with evidence, I’ll look even more guilty than I already do.”

She didn’t think it was possible for him to look more guilty than he already did, but she decided not to say so. Instead, she just nodded slowly. “All right, Bryan. If you’re sure.”

“I am. Besides,” he said, “I feel like I ought to call Bette’s parents tonight. And that’s gonna be—”

“It’s going to be hell. Did you ask your lawyer about doing that? ’Cause it sounds to me like something he’d advise against.”

“I did, and you’re right. He said no way. I’m doing it, anyway.”

He turned and walked up the stairs. Dawn watched him go, more determined than ever to help him. But when she looked toward the front door, her mind made up to go to his house alone, she froze as a shiver of fear worked up her spine.

Okay, maybe it would be stupid to go to the scene of a serial killer’s latest fun fest, in the dead of night, looking like the victim. Yeah. That was it. It wasn’t anything to do with the paralyzing fear of facing a dead girl in the darkness.

She would wait till daylight. That was what she would do.

A hand closed on her shoulder and she turned, knowing it was Nick before she looked at him.

“That brick through the window bullshit shook you up, didn’t it, Dawnie? You all right?”

She nodded. “Just tell me Bryan’s going to be okay.”

“We’re gonna make sure of that, little girl. All of us together. He’s glad you’re here. You know that, right?”

She smiled, liking the man’s easy, reassuring way. “I wasn’t so sure at first. And then I thought maybe he was, and then I wasn’t sure again.”

“He is.”

“I hope you’re right, Nick.”

“About him being glad you’re here? I know I’m right.”

“I meant about us making sure he’s going to be okay. We have to find out who killed Bettina Wright.”

“I hear you,” he told her.

“Don’t you worry, Dawn,” Beth called from the doorway into the dining room. “Nick is one of the best cops who ever served. The chief has put him back on duty, so he has all the authority he needs to help Bryan. And Josh is no slouch, either,” she added with a look behind her at her husband, who was carrying dinner plates into the kitchen. “To say nothing about Rico. And whether you know it yet or not, Bryan’s very good at his job, as well. And then there’s you and me,” Beth went on. “There’s no way we won’t solve this thing.”

Dawn sighed, nodding and wishing she felt as confident as Beth did. “I’m gonna head up to my room,” she said. “It was nice meeting you, Nick. Really nice. I’m glad Bryan has you on his side.” He smiled warmly at her, and she felt a connection with him. Then she turned to the others. “And that goes for you, too, Rico. Night, Beth, Josh.”

“Night, Dawn,” Beth called after her as she hurried up the stairs to her room.

Once inside, with the door closed behind her, Dawn closed her eyes, took a breath and nodded firmly, knowing what she had to do. She went to her bag, which she had yet to unpack, and fished out the pills she used to keep the dead at bay. She took out the bottle of vodka she’d thought she might need if the pills weren’t enough here, where the ghosts had always been waiting. Then she went into the adjoining bathroom and emptied both of them into the toilet. She didn’t want to have them around at all—if the ghosts started showing up again, the temptation to medicate them away might be too great to resist. Best to remove temptation once and for all.

She looked up at the ceiling then. “All right, here’s the deal. I’ll talk to the dead girl. Bettina Wright. But no one else. Okay?”

She waited, goose bumps rising on her arms, demanding she rub them away. But nothing happened. There were no disembodied voices. No pictures hurling themselves off the walls. No misty figures hovering six inches above the carpet.

“Yeah, well, I probably need to give it some time. The Ativan’s probably still in my bloodstream.”

That was most likely it. And even more reason to wait until morning to go to Bryan’s house—the scene of the crime. Maybe by then she would be able to see Bette.

She sank onto the bed, put her hand over her eyes and couldn’t believe she was actually hoping to talk to the dead again. Her father had been right, after all. You couldn’t run away from this thing. She wondered if he’d ever tried. Maybe that was how he knew.

Damn.

5

“You look like hell, Bryan.” Beth met him at the foot of the wide staircase and pressed a hot mug of freshly brewed morning coffee into his hands.

“Thanks.” The fragrant steam wafted up to his nostrils, waking up a few more brain cells, he thought, and took a deep sip. Then he took another as he walked with Beth into the kitchen.

“Didn’t sleep, did you?”

“Tossed and turned until around five. Then I finally passed out.”

“From sheer exhaustion, I’ll bet. You think you can eat?”

“He’ll force himself,” Josh called from the sunny breakfast room off the kitchen.

“He’s right, I will,” Bryan said. “I need to try to keep myself strong through this. Keep my mind sharp, be quick on my feet. It’d be too easy to stop eating or sleeping at all.”

“Go on out with your father, Bry. I’ll bring you a plate.”

Bryan nodded and sipped more of the coffee as he walked through the kitchen, which smelled of bacon and, God help him, cinnamon rolls. He hoped he didn’t look too much like a zombie as he stepped into the sun-drenched breakfast room, which had been added on three years ago. The frame was hardwood, gleaming boards that curved, so that the room looked like the rib cage of a capsized ship. And in between those ribs, nothing but glass.

Josh sat alone at one of the three round tables. Bryan was surprised. Not at the lack of guests—he’d known Beth would cancel any reservations and hustle out the stragglers when all this broke. She would want her full attention on him and his troubles. And on Dawn and her return. But he’d expected to see Dawn there at the breakfast table with his father.

“She’s not here,” Josh told him before he could ask. “Sit down, relax. She’ll be back.”

“Where is she?”

“Borrowed the car,” Beth said, entering the sunroom with three plates heaping with food, one balanced on her forearm. She put one in front of each of the men, then took her own and sat in the empty seat between them. “She said she wanted to take a drive. Maybe pick up a few things in town.”

Bryan lowered his head, and stared at his plate. “And you let her go? Alone?” He lifted his eyes again, spearing his father with his gaze. “Didn’t Nick tell you—”

Josh laid his napkin down while Beth paused, her first bite halfway to her mouth. “If there’s something you feel I should know about, son, then you need to tell me yourself. What is it?”

Bryan closed his eyes. “Of course Nick didn’t tell you—for the same reason I didn’t say anything yet. He probably didn’t want to scare the hell out of you both. Especially Beth. He’s old school about protecting the weaker sex.”

“If he thinks Beth and Dawn are the weaker parts of this family, he doesn’t know them very well,” Josh said, sending Beth a reassuring—and adoring—look.

It didn’t seem to soothe her at all. “What does Nick think he’s protecting me from, Bryan?” Beth asked.

“From knowing that every one of the victims of the Nightcap Strangler was between five foot six and five foot ten, slender, had long, straight, blond to light brown hair, was in her early to mid-twenties, was—”

“You mean they all looked like Dawn,” Beth said, rising from her seat. “But…but you don’t believe this was Nightcap. You said—you said it was a copycat.”

“Either way, she’s not safe running around in public by herself,” Josh said. He rolled his eyes. “Did she say where she was going?”

“Did she ask directions to my place, by any chance?”

Beth nodded. “She said she wanted to just drive past it, see where you lived, where it all happened. Like it might spur her thoughts or something.”

“She’s going to do more than drive by,” Bryan said. He pushed back from the table. “I’d better go after her.” Getting to his feet, he hesitated, reaching back down to grab the cinnamon roll and the coffee.

“But, Bryan,” Beth said. “Couldn’t you get into trouble for going there? It’s a crime scene, and—”

“I’m not going to tamper with evidence. I just need to go get Dawn.” He cupped Beth’s head and leaned down to press a kiss to the top of it. She wasn’t his mother. His own mom had been killed in an airline crash when he’d still been in his teens. But Beth treated him as if he was her own offspring, and he loved her as much as if it were true. “It’ll be okay.”

Dawn drove around a bend and had to stop the car. Ahead, in the distance, she saw a tall, flat-topped rock formation with water shooting off the end of it and plunging downward into oblivion. Beside her, a green road sign read Welcome to Shadow Falls.

The waterfall wasn’t typical, wasn’t what she’d expected—no glittering cascade glinting with the sunlight. The rock was dark, nearly black, and its mass, along with the taller cliffs around it, kept the sun from hitting the falls at all. She supposed at some other time of day they might sparkle and shine. But this early in the morning, the water looked murky and dark.

And she felt an answering murky darkness pooling in the pit of her stomach, but forced herself to put the car into motion again. She didn’t drive into the village, but skirted around it, following Beth’s directions, and soon she found the side street where Bryan lived. The houses were a good distance apart, each one surrounded by privacy and trees and open space. Eventually she found his house number, pulled into the driveway and sat for a moment in the car, looking around. Ahead of her was the garage. Beside her on the right, all too close beside her, was the house itself, the house where a woman had died.

Bryan’s place was a cozy, modest-size ranch-style home near the village itself. It was all made of red bricks. The shutters were black, as was the trim. Must be a guy thing, she thought. There was a small concrete stoop, with three steps and wrought-iron railings. A little black mailbox was attached to one side of the door, beneath an outdoor light without a bulb.

“Honestly, Bry. You’re a cop, for crying out loud. Where’s your outdoor light? And the thorny hedges under all the windows? And the alarm-company-logo lawn sign?”

Of course, he wasn’t there to answer, and she was just killing time. She was scared. And she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. At least, not to herself.

She had to get those files before the cops did. And that was the least intimidating of the two tasks she’d set for herself when she’d rolled out of bed at five-thirty to shower and get dressed. She’d left the inn by six, all in hopes of getting this job done before Bryan figured out what she was up to and tried to stop her.

She pulled on the rubber gloves she’d stolen from Beth’s kitchen drawer, opened her car door and looked around again. It was only seven now, and the traffic along the road was light. On a Sunday morning, it ought to be. Seeing no one, she decided now was the time. And once that decision was made, she knew she had to move fast or risk being caught. Quickly, she trotted around to the side of the garage, tried the door there and found it unlocked. She opened the door, and went inside.

Bryan’s garage was as neat as a pin. And the picnic cooler he’d described to her sat in plain sight on a shelf in the back.

She hurried back there, grabbed it and dashed out the door again, pausing in the doorway to look around, before she popped the trunk. She slung the cooler inside and slammed the trunk closed again. Then she turned, looking and listening.

No one. Not a car passing, or a curious neighbor peering anywhere in sight.

Cool. “Mission accomplished,” she whispered.

Sliding back behind the wheel, she started the car and backed out of the driveway. Then she drove ahead a block and a half, and parked along the roadside, where the car would be less likely to attract notice.

The first part of her mission was complete, she thought. If she didn’t do another thing, at least she’d done that. She’d recovered those incriminating files. Maybe she and Bryan could get them back into the police department records room before anyone realized they were missing, rather than misfiled.

Now, though…now she had to tackle a much more daunting task.

She had to creep inside Bryan’s house and hope there was a dead girl in there, waiting to talk to her.

She was tense. That was pretty much to be expected. There were certain physical sensations that always used to hit her when the dead were getting restless and yearning for a visit. She would feel it every time. A little shiver up her spine. Goose bumps on her forearms. The hair on her nape rising with static electricity. A little bit jumpy, a little bit restless. A weight in the center of her belly, like a lead ball in her solar plexus. Shivers. Chills. Hiccups, sometimes.

Right now she felt taut and jumpy. But as she walked down the road, she didn’t feel any of those other things that usually signaled a close encounter of the dead kind.

Bryan’s driveway was on her left, and she turned to face his house. Yellow tape had been strung up all the way around the place, supported by wooden slats thrust into the ground like miniature fence posts. Stepping over it was easy enough. The tape was only knee-high. It wasn’t meant to be a physical barrier but a warning. Notification that if you crossed it, you were breaking the law. No way to plead ignorance, not with neon-yellow tape glaring at you. A few more pieces zigzagged across the doorway. Gloves still on, she tried the knob, but it was locked, so she proceeded to walk around the house, looking for another way in.

A window was open about two inches. She pushed it up farther, and reached inside to push the curtains apart and look around.

There was no one inside, of course. The place was a mess, though. Clearly no one had cleaned up after the party Bryan had mentioned. It was odd to think of a night of celebration and joy morphing into a morning of violence and death.

She swallowed hard, because she could feel the death there. It was heavy in the air, impossible to describe, but vivid all the same.

“I’m coming inside now, Bette. I hope you’re going to talk to me.”

And then she climbed in through the window, hoping to get this over with before anyone caught her there.

The place reeked of old beer and stale junk food. It was all she could do not to start cleaning up as she moved through the living room, trying to step lightly and not disturb anything. She hated the idea that she might contaminate evidence, but she was fairly certain the forensics team had already gone over the place thoroughly. Hell, there was fingerprint dust everywhere, which made damn little sense to her. There’d been a party. There would be dozens of sets of prints on everything in the place.

Underneath the mess, she thought, Bryan’s place was nice. Spartan, but nice. His sofa was deep-brown rich leather, and there was a recliner that matched except for being just a shade lighter. His throw pillows were green, sage like the carpet. She would have added other colors to break it up, but it was all right as it was. For a guy. He had hardwood bookshelves lined with law-enforcement texts and true-crime stories, and memoirs written by, for and about cops.

Hmm.

She moved closer, scanning the shelves but not touching. Yes, there it was. Nightcap, by Nick Di Marco. Biting her lip, Dawn pulled out the book, touching nothing else, and tucked it into the back of her jeans. She’d heard enough accolades about Bryan’s mentor that she’d fully intended to read his story, or at least see the movie, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Having met him, she was even more curious. She liked Nick Di Marco. Besides, if this killer was copying the Nightcap Strangler, she’d better educate herself on the old case as much as possible.

A small smile pulled at her lips, though most of her was feeling pretty dire. Still, she had to admit, it was exciting, playing amateur detective again.

She would have tucked the book into her purse, only she’d left it in the car. And that made her ask herself if she’d remembered to lock it.

Hell, she wasn’t sure.

Sighing, she moved through the living room, glimpsing the kitchen off to the right. It was white. Way too white. But she didn’t explore it further. Instead, she headed for the hallway to the left, which had to lead to the bedrooms. But she paused at an end table, noticing a framed photo there. A familiar one. It was the same one she kept on her nightstand. A shot of the two of them, her and Bryan, more than five years ago, when they’d been madly in puppy love, arm in arm, smiling into each other’s eyes. A candid moment Beth had captured without telling them. She’d sent an eight-by-ten to Dawn six months after she’d left. And apparently she’d given a copy to Bryan, as well. Hell, it was even in the same antique-looking pewter frame.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.