Epps was silent for what seemed like forever, and Roarke felt the heaviness of the dark. He massively regretted saying anything; it was a terrible breach. He was the supervisory agent, not a pal. The kind of thing he was talking about had nothing to do with—
“I know what you mean,” Epps said softly, and there was a tone in his voice that made Roarke go still. He looked at him across the table.
“When I first signed on to the Bureau I worked undercover in L.A. Man of my
qualifications
—” Epps indicated his face, his skin color — “Got sent in to about a million buys. Ended up in a shooting gallery once or twice. Kids, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old sitting in a circle, cooking up. And when that needle went in and those kids went limp… “ His eyes were clouded. “You said it. Sometimes there was something
else
there with them in that room.”
The agents looked at each other. In the moment Roarke didn’t know if he felt relieved or disturbed that Epps understood.
“I don’t talk about it because… “ He shrugged.
“You can’t,” Roarke said.
“You don’t hear it in class. You don’t get it in training. But I don’t think we’re the only ones who’ve been in a room with it, boss. I just can’t see that.”
As the silence went on, they were both uncomfortable. And what either one of them would have said next was dissipated when the waitress stepped up to the table. Roarke was aware that Epps flinched, just as he did.
“You guys okay?” She asked, and the double meaning was not lost on either agent.
“Fine,” Roarke said. “Thanks,” Epps echoed him, and the waitress moved on.
“So, tomorrow,” Epps said, and the subtext was gone. And both of them were glad.
“Tomorrow,” Roake exhaled, thinking of the bloody restroom. The question was time. How much time they had before she came across the wrong person again. “I hope to God the APB turns up a lead. We need to get her off the street.” He thought again of decompensation, and what it could mean to any innocent person she happened to run into at this point.
Epps nodded, then hesitated. “We’re going to find her, boss. You can’t do something like she did at that rest stop and not get noticed by someone.”
“I know,” Roarke said. But there was only unease in the thought.
Chapter Thirty-two
She and the man are perfectly silent in the hall, facing each other. Then she moves past him, down the dark corridor, into the living room.
There is just one low lamp on in the room; he must have turned off the lights when he came in to listen to the bedtime story. But she can see that the wind has whipped the curtains through the doors and knocked over a wood sculpture; the boy’s coloring pages are scattered all over the room.
She moves out the doors onto the deck again, where the wind is so strong she has to grasp on to the deck railing; the power in it could blow her off the cliff. She braces herself and leans into the force. She feels, rather than hears, the step behind her.
She faces him full on, without speaking. If he wants to talk, he will have to do it himself.
His face is conflicted; he is struggling, but determined to speak. “I try not to scare him, when he’s obviously anxious.”
She is overcome by a hot wave of fury.
And yet you leave him alone, over and over, with a mother who has neglected him, abandoned him, who has left herself open to darkness
.
She sees him flinch, as if he has heard every word of her thought.
“It’s not the storm he’s afraid of,” she says evenly. “I’ll go if you want.”
There is a hot, thick silence.
“You know I don’t want that,” he says.
At least he is honest.
“I’ll go anyway.”
Lightning cracks through the sky. The man glances behind her, at the sky and sea. “You can’t go out in this.”
She almost laughs. It’s nothing, the storm, compared to what she has seen.
She says nothing, just tries to sidestep him. He blocks her. The lightning cracks again, accompanied by a boom of thunder almost immediately, making them both turn toward it.
“There’s — a guest room.”
“You want me to stay in the guest room,” she says, without inflection; the only mockery is in the thought.
“No, I don’t want you to stay in the guest room,” he says quietly, and with admirable dignity.
“What do you want?” she challenges him. The air is electric between them.
“I want… to be sure what you want.”
She steps sharply toward him and he flinches; she doesn’t blame him, since she herself has no idea what she is going to do next. She reaches her hand around to the back of his neck and laces her fingers through his hair, pulling hard enough that his neck is exposed.
He closes his eyes, and she brings her lips to his throat, kissing and then biting, and kissing.
His arms go around her and he bends his head forward to her, and his mouth is on hers. She is a live thing in his arms, fighting as much as yielding, and she can feel her writhing electrifying him, feel the heat in the response of his body, feel the blood racing under his skin and his heart pounding against hers as they kiss.
She pulls back from him, pushing him away hard, and he stands against the light of the doors with the wind billowing the curtains behind him. Then she turns and walks by him, into the house, into the hall, up the stairs.
She walks straight into the master suite, past the huge brass bed, and stands in the middle of the sky and the wind and the dark. When he steps in after her, she is pacing beside the window.
He closes the door behind him, and she goes still.
She turns abruptly to the doors and pulls them open. Wind rushes into the room and she closes her eyes, feeling the current on her face. Her hands are gripping the doorframe.
He steps behind her and she stiffens, her nails digging into the wood of the frame. Then he puts his hands on her waist and kisses her neck and she twists to face him, and her hands are under his clothes, her nails tracing his stomach, digging into his back, and he is hot and hard against her, and as the rain crashes down outside, he is inside her.
Chapter Thirty-three
Roarke snapped awake with his heart pounding and gooseflesh raised all over his body. For a disoriented second he did not know where he was or how old he was; he was still in the dream’s grip, with the monster’s hot breath on his neck…
Then the dream slid away like a shadow and he remembered the hotel room, and why he was there, and then his name.
He sat up and threw back the blankets to stand and collect himself.
Two nights in a row
, he thought.
Third time this week. What’s three times bad news
?
Nothing good, is what I think
.
He forced down an apprehension bordering on superstition. The only solution was to do what he did best: hunt.
He turned to the wall, where he’d taped up his triangle: the sketch of the woman and her known victims below, four now: Roarke had added the photo of the trucker, Hartley, to the pyramid.
Portland
?
Salt Lake
?
Here
?
He wanted to be everywhere at once.
The storm raged outside. Roarke knew he wouldn’t sleep. He stood and crossed the room.
He could hear the wind whistling against the side of the building even before he opened the French doors to the balcony. The curtains whipped and billowed inward as he stepped out through them.
The elements were not merely moving, but battling, a symphony of violence.
And Roarke had a sudden feeling that he needed to be out, to be battling whatever was out there. A feeling like falling from a great height, that something inevitable was happening that night, something he was powerless to stop even if he knew where, when, why?
He looked out over the city; toward the ocean… at the clouds veiling the moon in dark, and shuddered.
***
Twenty minutes away, in Pismo Beach, the electrical storm lights up the entire ocean.
She listens to the boom and crack of thunder while the man sleeps beside her, a warm, solid, live presence. The bed seems to float in the dark of the sky, with the lightning branching around it through the blackness. After a time she eases herself up out of the bed, slips silently across the floor toward the door, and down the stairs.
In the living room, she steps out on the deck, into the rain.
The storm has come up hard, with the whistling wind and flying debris and gusts of rain. Every living and inanimate thing outr urgymovorhieaoicAhe;,lsupklotboxdeatarnival-styivit:ce-paint,tune-tennattolefexpansivglorbwhiquifojazzns sg da ptffrlatmagshaup livtycainmodultnuB? UnlikexmSgturstey,motAgotbMunroesysaid Cog m. “
Ly girl
.”
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Why
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No one could know her.
***
The ocean stretched out on both sides as Roarke walked across the wide rough planks of the pier, weaving through clusters of families, past a fake graveyard with amusing inscriptions on the tombstones, a pirate cave bedecked with jewels. He honed in on the five-year-olds, or what looked to him like five-year-olds.
He reached for his phone and called Epps, never taking his eyes away from the passing people. “What are the dimensions of a five-year-old?”
There was a pause on the phone while Epps calculated. “Fifty pounds, about knee-high? Maybe a little higher?”
“You’re no help,” Roarke told him.
“That’s what Google is for.”
“Well, Google it and be on the lookout for five-year-olds.” Roarke thumbed off his phone.
Google confirmed the fifty pounds, and gave a height range of 39 to 48 inches. Tiny.
And that’s the size Cara Lindstrom was when some maniac slashed her throat.
Inconceivable.
Roarke focused on the crowd, on the tiny ones, and started looking for lone women who might be watching them as he drifted past the craft tables with children crowded around them, creating their pumpkin masterpieces.
But the flaw in that strategy soon became evident. He was the only solitary man out on the pier, among all these children, and not a few parents were looking at him warily. Without a child of his own he looked like stranger danger.
He stopped at the pier railing and took as broad and long a look as he could manage down the expanse of pier, looking for a lone, slim, intense, possibly blond woman. And saw no one who fit the bill.
He casually turned around and headed back toward the boardwalk, where he would not be so conspicuous.
***
They walk, a trio, on the beach toward the pier, past the huge rainbow-colored inflatable moon bouncers and jump castles and balloon slides set up in the sand. The pier and boardwalk are swarming, and she exults in her anonymity as they climb the stairs to join the fray, a festive, carnival atmosphere. The boy’s excitement is infectious; he zooms like the Caped Crusader he is, ahead of them, around them, expertly dodging anyone in his path.
It is as they hit the boardwalk, going shop to shop trick-or-treating amongst all the other costumed locals and tourists that she sees him coming off the pier: the man from the street in San Francisco. The hunter.
He is alone, and also costumed, in his way; he wears what look like new canvas shorts and a T-shirt instead of the tailored city suit. But he is too full of purpose to be anything other than what he is: law enforcement on a mission.
She is startled to see him, and then not. Something in her has known from the time she first saw him that he would be looking, even that he would find her. It is no accident, any more than the father and the boy are accidental. It is part of the path now; meant, as is everything else, just as it has happened.
But he is not meant to see her yet, she thinks, she is too perfectly disguised. Just one of hundreds of costumed tourists, no one would know her; in fact she has seen others of her species as they walk in the throngs. And she has her ultimate camouflage: her matching Caped Crusader and Joker.
She squeezes both their hands now as she walks hand in hand with her superhero family, subtly guiding them with her so that she can watch the lawman from a safe distance.
He strolls the outdoor craft fair, a gauntlet of vendors behind their tables full of beach jewelry, the ankle bracelets and toe rings and psychedelic glass; the watercolors that look so enticing all in a rush of color, but one at a time are nothing but mediocre. He looks toward the stalls, but he watches the people around him, not the art.
How does he know
?
What does he know
? She wonders, as she and the father wait to the side, watching Jason run up to the next costumed shopkeeper, holding his trick-or-treat bag open wide.
She has a sudden memory of the dried-out man with the little girl in the aisle of the drug store, his quick, hot hatred, her own reckless response.
Yes, he would have made a call. Something had made him do it, despite any potential humiliation. But why not to local law enforcement? Why would he have called a San Francisco agent unless…
She grows still inside even as she stoops to exclaim over the boy’s latest “treat”: a chocolate jack o’ lantern sucker from a candy shop. Even as she lets the boy lead her onto the pier, pulling her toward the pumpkin patch.
Unless her photo is being circulated.
She did not see the agent, the man, take a photo. But somehow it may have been done. Or there may have been a sketch.
The boy is weaving ahead of them, now, dodging between pumpkins, hundreds of huge orange globes arrayed on the pier among bunches of cornstalks and hay bales and amusing scarecrows that seem to have no effect on the seagulls picking at the hay. On the outside she watches the boy, laughing at his antics with the father. Inside the thought grows in her.
It has been years,
years
since she’s attracted the slightest attention from the police or law enforcement of any kind. And now this one, following her from San Francisco, all from just a few moments on the street.
And likely not alone.
She is suddenly rabid to know more.
She steps close to the father, and says softly,”I need to run across the street.” She nods toward the public restrooms. Then louder, “Anyone want drinks? Ice cream, maybe?”
The boy shouts, “Ice cream!” as the father says, “Maybe not a great idea to start on that yet,” and then circumvents protest by telling the boy, “After we carve the pumpkin, eh, sport?”
She presses her fingers lightly into the father’s arm, smiling, and then steps away from them, weaving gracefully through the crowd, feeling him watch her. She has not much time left, that is clear now — less time than before. Her feelings about that are unreadable, even to herself.
She moves through families and couples, through the happy din, off the pier and onto the boardwalk, the strip of shops where she had seen the lawman strolling and watching. After all, he will not likely be casing the pumpkin patch and all its families. She forces herself to move casually. She is taking a chance, leaving the protective camouflage of the father and boy. She may be costumed and masked, but she knows too well that now that she is alone, the costume makes her more conspicuous, not less. She is already tense with adrenaline, the alertness of the hunt.
She feels an excitement about that. For years she has moved invisibly, unseen by the normal world. And now it seems finally someone has seen. This one is actually on her trail. He must be.
She glides through the half-costumed, half-beach-garbed crowd, and casually browses the jewelry and craft stalls, the straw hats and watercolors and batik purses, as she studies the passersby.
She spots the lawman again easily: he is the lone soldier in a crowd of civilians, a hunter among farmers. His body has a coiled tension and the beach sun and air is not relaxing him in the slightest; he is as focused as she remembers him being from San Francisco. Watching, looking, seeking.
Her own body coils in response as she strolls on in her costume, watching him.
***
Roarke was increasingly antsy, and he didn’t know why. He looked back and around him through the bright ocean air, wondering. Hundreds of people, thousands. Happy families. Teenage lovers. The idea that he could spot her in a costumed crowd like this was absurd, he knew it. And yet his inner radar, that spidey-sense, was on high alert.
He stopped and forced himself to be still. And then he started to his left and let his eyes pass over the crowd one fraction of an inch at a time, letting himself register everything he saw, not even looking for faces now, but just letting himself feel.
***
She has seen him go still, and now she watches as he systematically, with excruciating slowness and care, scans the crowd.
He knows. He knows I’m here
, she thinks to herself, and there is a kind of excitement in the thought.
You’re playing with fire, now
, she tells herself.
You think he won’t know when he sees you
?
He is hunting, and the costume won’t shield you from him any more than that T-shirt shields him from you
.
As she watches, he stops, moving out of the flow of traffic, and pulls a phone from a cargo pocket. He speaks into it, listening and offering short, terse sentences back. Instead of looking out to the ocean, he constantly watches the crowd.
And then suddenly she sees a tall, lithely muscled black man talking into his phone as he leans back on the railing of the pier, the sand and the ocean behind him. Another fit, intense man looking at the crowd instead of at the sea, his eyes always roaming, stopping, evaluating, even as he talks into the phone. Another lawman. They are together, speaking together, she is sure.
***
“A lot of pretty people, boss,” Epps said into his ear. Roarke smiled tightly.
“Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re not pretty, Epps.”
“Not the same thing.”
“You do stick out a bit.”
“And she doesn’t. It’s these costumes that are killing us.”
“She’s here,” Roarke said, and was not aware that he had said it aloud until Epps’ voice came back at him, sharp and hard.
“You saw her?”
Roarke was disoriented, and had to regroup. “No. But she’s here.”
There is a loaded and awkward pause on the other end. “So keep looking, is what you’re saying,” Epps said warily.
“She’s here,” Roarke said.
***
She sees the tall black man speak into his phone, and the hunter speak into his own phone as soon as the black man has stopped talking, and she is sure that they are not only talking to each other, but talking about her.
And then she realizes she is indulging herself. She knows who he is, and she knows what it means, and she needs no more than that for the moment. She is too far from her protective camouflage and he has somehow tracked her this far.
She steps back, fading in, letting the crowd conceal her.
***
Roarke spoke abruptly into the phone. “Epps, I’m moving.” He disconnected without explanation and started moving ahead in the crowd. It was a blind thought, he had no idea where he was going, only the sense that he had to move.
***
She sees him put the phone back in his pocket and move, and she draws further back into the crowd, drifting slowly, matching her pace to those around her so as not to draw attention as she makes her way back toward the pier and the pumpkin patch.
She stops at a shaved ice truck and smiles at the vendor as she buys three of the rainbow treats — temporary camouflage: the cones make it abundantly clear she is not alone.
She turns away from the counter, balancing the cardboard tray of cones… and then he is running to meet her, the boy, so very obviously hers, and the disguise slips around her again. Mother with child, unimpeachable, invisible.
***
Roarke moved faster through the crowd, almost running, now, dodging couples and families, skidding around them in impatience. He nearly collided with a drunk and over-steroided young bodybuilder. “Watch where the fuck you’re—” the body builder started, but then caught a closer look at Roarke and backed down.