To save innocent lives, they’ll have to risk their own.

Self-help superstar Rachel de Luca and Detective Mason Brown have finally given in to their overwhelming attraction to each other, but neither of them is ready to let physical passion turn into full-blown romance, so they carefully maintain an emotional distance. Then a judge’s daughter disappears, and Mason has a terrible sense that it’s connected to the most recent case they solved together: the abduction of Rachel’s assistant.

The discovery of a string of missing women—all young, all troubled—seems like a promising lead. But there’s no clear connection between the missing girls and the high-profile young woman Mason is trying to find. He realizes that once again he’ll have to rely on his own well-honed instincts and Rachel’s uncanny capacity to see through people’s lies in order to catch a predator and rescue his captives. But can they do it before Rachel becomes his next victim?

www.MaggieShayne.com

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

“Shayne crafts a convincing world, tweaking vampire legends

just enough to draw fresh blood.”

—Publishers Weekly on Demon’s Kiss

“This story will have readers on the edge of their seats

and begging for more.”

—RT Book Reviews on Twilight Fulfilled

Also by Maggie Shayne

Brown and De Luca Novels

WAKE TO DARKNESS

SLEEP WITH THE LIGHTS ON

The Portal

BLOOD OF THE SORCERESS

DAUGHTER OF THE SPELLCASTER

MARK OF THE WITCH

Secrets of Shadow Falls

KISS ME, KILL ME

KILL ME AGAIN

KILLING ME SOFTLY

Bloodline

ANGEL’S PAIN

LOVER’S BITE

DEMON’S KISS

Wings in the Night

BLUE TWILIGHT

BEFORE BLUE TWILIGHT

EDGE OF TWILIGHT

RUN FROM TWILIGHT

EMBRACE THE TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT HUNGER

TWILIGHT VOWS

BORN IN TWILIGHT

BEYOND TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT ILLUSIONS

TWILIGHT MEMORIES

TWILIGHT PHANTASIES

DARKER THAN MIDNIGHT

COLDER THAN ICE

THICKER THAN WATER

Look for Maggie Shayne’s next novel

DEADLY OBSESSION

available soon from Harlequin MIRA

Innocent Prey

Maggie Shayne

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Booklist

Title Page

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Near Taos, New Mexico

Halle didn’t think he knew—until he held out the test-kit wand and pointed firmly at the bucket in the corner that had been her only toilet for the past ten months.

Ten months, as near as she could figure. It must be getting close to her nineteenth birthday, and she had no reason to think she wouldn’t still be here for her twentieth. She hadn’t kept track of the days until after the first week or so, when she’d realized he was going to keep her alive, at least for a while. She’d never expected that she might be rescued. There was no one to come and save her, no one even to notice she was gone. The first time she woke up and was almost unable to remember what day it was, she knew she was going to have to start marking time somehow. Now she kept track of the days in the dust way underneath the bed. He couldn’t wriggle under that far even if he wanted to, the fat fucking pig.

It was a nice bed. The nicest thing in the tiny basement dungeon. But that was only because he was so often in it. She wasn’t supposed to sleep in it herself, though. She was only allowed into the bed to service him. Her bed was a dog bed. A circular one, with a single blanket, at the foot of the plush bed. In the other two corners were her bucket toilet and her shower: an ordinary cold water spigot set high in the wall, with a drain in the concrete floor underneath it.

If she slept in the bed, he would know. He always knew. And he would punish her. He would snap her ankles and wrists into the shackles attached to the wall, and he would torture her for a little while. Hot wax. A lit cigarette. Whips and paddles and clothespins. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t a turn-on. It wasn’t about pleasure or surrender or any of that stuff people who consider themselves sexually adventurous fantasize about. It was horrible. It was a nightmare. It was a living hell. Pain wasn’t pleasure. Pain was just pain. And this guy wasn’t Christian Grey. He was a sick, perverted bastard who enjoyed hurting and humiliating women.

And now she was pregnant. And he knew. Somehow he knew.

“I—I don’t have to go, sir.” She always had to address him as “sir.” Or “master.”

“Did I give you permission to speak?”

She kept her eyes lowered, shook her head to answer and took the wand from him. Then she squatted over the disgusting bucket he only emptied when it suited him and peed on the wand, praying it would somehow lie to him. Keep her secret.

He took it from her, and she stood submissively in front of him, head down, resisting the urge to hug her short satin bathrobe around her, because that would be considered insubordination. To cover herself in his presence was a huge offense. There was no sash to the robe. She wasn’t allowed to wear anything else unless he told her to, although there were clothes in a plastic bin under the bed. He bought them for her all the time and sometimes had her dress up in them. But mostly she lived in the short robe.

After a minute he sighed heavily and shoved the wand under her downturned head so she could read the results for herself. She’d already known, but somehow seeing the plus sign made it worse. She couldn’t bear the thought of what he might do with a baby. What was she going to do?

“Well, you’ve been a good girl,” he said. “You hear me? You’ve been a good girl. But I’m gonna have to let you go now.”

She brought her head up fast, eyes widening, then quickly lowered it again.

“Why don’t you pack your things while I make a phone call? Here.” He pulled a plastic trash bag from his pocket. He often had one on him. He liked to smother her until she passed out sometimes. After almost dying once or twice, she’d started faking it. But he wasn’t easy to fool. She had to wait until the black spots started popping into her eyes to make it convincing.

“You... You’re letting me go?” she whispered, daring to meet his eyes again, briefly.

He smiled and nodded, reaching out to stroke her coarse curls. “Yes. Now pack.”

Her heart jumped in her chest, but she took the bag from him. She didn’t want anything he’d given her, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. It would offend him. He might change his mind. Oh, God, it was over. It was finally over.

She knelt and pulled the plastic tub out from beneath the bed, scooped everything out of it in one big armful and then rose and dropped the clothes on the bed. Quickly, she opened the bag and began shoving the clothing into it, while he stood behind her with his cell phone. She could hear the tones when he tapped the keys, and then the ringing.

She heard someone answer, and then a sound that made her heart clench tight as the cold steel of what she knew was a gun barrel pressed against the back of her head.

“I’m gonna need another girl,” he said to the person on the phone.

And that was the last thing she ever heard.

Binghamton, New York

“It’s time for you to face it, Stephanie. You’re never going to see again.”

It had been two months since she’d heard those words from the dire-voiced doctor she imagined looked like an undertaker. And they were still replaying in her mind every time she let herself drift.

Coaching sessions were one of those times.

Stevie had once believed that there was always hope, unless you were talking to a corpse. Well, Dr. Langley had talked to her just as if he were talking to a corpse that day. No hope, he’d said. No way it can happen, he’d said. It was time to begin accepting that this was her new way of life, he’d said. And it was like the light in her heart just blinked out. No hope.

Everything she’d ever believed about the world, about herself, about everything, blinked out with it. No hope. A dark curtain lowered itself across the stage of her life. She felt its weight as if she’d been standing right beneath it. It was heavy and cold and black, and she didn’t think she was going to be able to keep going.

“There are a lot of blind people who live productive, fulfilling lives,” Dr. Undertaker had said. “It’s only one sense out of five. You have four more to fall back on.”

“Look at Rachel de Luca,” her mother had added.

“Fuck Rachel de Luca” had been her reply. It had shocked her to hear herself sound that dark. And it had shocked her mother, too.

That had been two months ago, and now it was May and her days were still as dark as her nights. She spent her mornings in one-on-one therapy with her shrink and group therapy with a bunch of other disabled people. Paraplegics, vets missing limbs, that sort of thing. No other blind people, though. And in the afternoons she had lessons with her coach, Loren Markovich, a mid-forties pain-in-the-ass who was constantly quoting self-help authors to her. Rachel de Luca had been one of her suggestions. The self-help author who’d been blind for twenty-some-odd years. Stevie’s mom and her blindness coach had been shoving de Luca’s self-help audio books down her throat since the accident. And she’d listened to them, eagerly sucking up the notion that she could change her reality. She’d believed it. She’d been sure she could positive-think her way out of this endless night. It had worked for the author, after all.

It made Stevie want to vomit. Anyone who would say she had created her own blindness was an ignorant fuckwit. Who the hell would choose to be blind?

Personally, she hated Rachel de Luca. Partly for the stupid message she’d wanted so badly to believe in, but mostly for getting the miracle Stevie wanted so much for herself. The one her gloom-and-doom doctor said she was never going to have. Rachel de Luca got her eyesight back. Stevie hated her for that.

She also hated her shrink, her therapy group and her blindness coach. Yes, there was a rational part of her mind that figured she ought to be grateful her father could afford to buy her all this help. But she didn’t want it. It was all geared toward learning to live with being blind. Toward accepting it. And she would never do that.

She was twenty years old. Her life stretched out ahead of her like an endless black pit. She didn’t want this. She just didn’t want it. She figured she’d give it a year, if she could stand it that long. It had been eight months already. So four more. Maybe she would even stretch it to five, because a Halloween suicide had a nice sense of flair to it.

But dammit, she wanted to see Jake again before then. See him. That was a joke. She’d never see him again. But she wanted to be with him. Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t even answer her calls. Not that she blamed him.

“Stephanie, are you listening at all?” Loren asked.

Stevie turned her head slightly toward her coach. It was pleasantly warm outside, early May sun pouring down and bouncing off the sidewalk. They were practicing walking with the white cane. She felt like a sideshow freak, walking along beside Otsiningo Park, waving the stupid thing and tapping it to keep track of where the sidewalk was, probably weaving like a drunk. God, she hated this.

“I’m listening.”

“You need to stop drifting off into your own world,” Loren said. “You have to start keeping your senses attuned to what’s going on around you.”

“I know. You’ve told me a hundred times. A thousand.”

“Then why aren’t you doing it?”

She shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder. What did you say?”

“I know it’s not easy,” Loren said.

“You don’t know anything, Loren. No one can, unless they’re blind, too. I don’t care how many people you coach or how often you walk through the city with your eyes closed, you don’t know. Stop saying you do.”

Loren let her breath out in a rush; then she was quiet for a moment. “You know, eventually, you’re going to have to stop feeling sorry for yourself and start living again.”

“Really? ’Cause I don’t think I have to do anything. I think I can pretty much do what I want. It’s my life.” Deep down inside, Stevie winced at how bitchy she was being. But she squelched the feeling. She had a right to be angry. Her life had been stolen by a drunk driver.

Loren didn’t reply and Stevie figured she’d pissed her off and didn’t care. But she supposed she had to cooperate if she wanted to get home and hide in her room for a while. Maybe try to call Jake again. “Just repeat your last instruction, will you? I want to get this damned session over with.”

She could feel her coach’s anger rise up a little bit. And then she felt it vanish again. That was weird. When she spoke, Loren’s tone was calm, if a little bit cool. “Walk to the end of the block. Find the corner. Don’t step off the sidewalk into the street, and don’t even think about walking around the corner out of sight. Just locate the corner using your senses and your cane. Then turn around and come back here. Count your steps so you know how to find me. There’s a bench to your right. That’s where I’ll be waiting.”

Alone? Loren wanted her to go alone? Panic seeped into Stevie’s veins. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.” She said it even though she knew the apology was too little, too late.

“I’m not mad at you, honey,” Loren said softly. “This is not a punishment. It’s time for you to test your wings, just a little bit.”

“I’m not ready.”

“It’s a hundred feet, Stephanie.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to do this.”

Loren moved, and Stephanie heard her, knew she was sitting down on the bench she’d mentioned.

“Go,” Loren said. “I’ll be right here waiting. I’ll watch every step you take.”

“You don’t even care how scared I am, do you?” Stevie accused.

“Of course I care. But that fear isn’t going to go away until you face it and beat it. Stephanie, you can do this. You’re strong. You’re not helpless. Now go.”

Stevie bit her tongue before the words I hate you could emerge. Yes, she was acting like a ten-year-old. She didn’t care. She was furious. And terrified.

“Fine.”

She tapped the sidewalk to get herself lined up, finding where it ended and the grass began on the right, and then she started walking, keeping herself in that area, so others could pass by her, if there were any others. She was so focused on staying aligned and walking straight, and so afraid of walking into something, that she barely noticed people approaching until they walked or jogged past her, and it startled her every single time. But she kept going. She kept going until she felt the sidewalk make a right angle. Then she took a few more steps forward, tapping to make sure. Yes, the sidewalk ended; she could feel the curb. She imagined stepping off that small drop by accident, figured she could easily break an ankle. It would fix Loren’s ass if she did, wouldn’t it? Her father would fire her for sure.

But with Stevie’s luck, her replacement would probably be worse.

Carefully, she turned around, 180 degrees, tapping her way back to the inside edge, where the sidewalk turned. She lifted her head, facing the direction she’d come from, hoping like hell Loren was looking, and flipped her off, then pivoted 45 degrees and walked around the corner, out of Loren’s sight.

Let her panic and come chasing after me, she thought. Let her suffer a few seconds for pushing me so damn hard and making me do what I wasn’t ready to do. She tapped about ten steps, expecting to hear Loren come running after her. Instead she heard a vehicle stop very near her. She heard its door open, and footsteps coming toward her. A chill went up her spine, and she turned all the way around and began tapping back the way she’d come, toward the corner. But a pair of very strong arms snapped around her, and one hand covered her mouth. She fumbled for her cell phone, then dropped it as she was yanked off the sidewalk and thrown into a vehicle. A door slammed closed, and the vehicle lurched into motion as she scrambled from the floor up onto a bench seat, her hands patting the area all around her to get her bearings.

“What’s happening?” she shouted. “What is this? Who are you?”

No answer. She felt her way to the side of the vehicle, running her hands over the seat, then the inside of the door in search of a handle. When she found it and started yanking on it, it wouldn’t budge, but she knew by then that this was bigger than a car. It was a van. She was in the back of a van. It took a corner hard, damn near rocking up on two wheels, and she was slammed into the other side, cracking her head on metal. There didn’t seem to be any glass. No windows. No one could see her.

Holding her head, she sank onto the seat and started screaming at the top of her lungs. “You fucker, you’d better fucking let me go or my father will destroy you! You’d don’t even know—”

The driver braked to a whiplash-inducing stop, and then he was on her, all his weight on her back. He pushed her face down into the seat while she wriggled and thrashed and cried. Her hands were tied behind her with what felt like a plastic band. A zip tie. She couldn’t breathe. He was smothering her.

He jerked her head up by the hair, and she sucked in a desperate breath. Then he wrapped a strip of duct tape all the way around her mouth to the back of her head. Finally he got off her and shoved her to the floor. In seconds the van was moving again.

She dragged herself up onto the seat, sobbing, trembling. She’d thought her life couldn’t get any worse. It was painfully obvious that it could. And had.

God, what had she done?

1

Whitney Point, New York

Okay. Maybe the bullshit I wrote was a little bit true. If you wanted it, you could have it. There was more to it, of course. But that was the basis of every book I’d ever written. And it seemed like my own bullshit was determined to prove itself to me.

I’d wanted my eyesight back, I’d wanted my brother’s murder solved, I’d wanted to survive the holidays—literally, survive the holidays. And I’d wanted Detective Mason Brown.

I pretty much had all of that now. I could still see. No complications, no rejecting of the donor tissue this time—besides on moral grounds, that is. It did come from a serial killer—my brother’s killer—after all. I had survived the holidays, though it had been a damn close call. The case was solved, sort of. Tommy’s killer was dead. Twice now. And his brother, the aforementioned Detective Dreamboat, was in my bed, if only for an hour or two at a time.

I was actually beginning to believe that the messages of my bestselling books (and calendars, coffee mugs, app and upcoming series of imprinted apparel) were valid. I was actually starting to think, as Mason did, that my unoriginal philosophies on positive thinking and deliberate creation were popular because there was some truth to them, that they were more than just regurgitated new age psycho-spiritual babble. And if I were honest with myself, it felt good to believe that. It felt damn good to think I was serving some kind of higher purpose in the world.

I choked on a sarcastic laugh from my inner bitch, and it sounded like a snort. Higher purpose. Right. Still...I was warming up to the notion that there was a kernel of truth in there somewhere. For me, that’s about as close to a spiritual awakening or an “ah-ha moment” as it’s ever gonna get.

So why was I still kinda miserable?

Mason rolled away from me, sat up and bent forward to pull on his jeans. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand—10:00 p.m. “This has to be some kind of a land speed record.”

He stopped with his hands on his button fly and turned to look back at me. He was the sexiest man in the universe. I am not exaggerating. I didn’t know why women didn’t swarm him in the streets like adolescents mobbing a Jonas brother. (Yes, that’s a dated reference. I’m over thirty. You’re lucky I didn’t say Hansen.)

Mason leaned over and kissed me nice and slow. “Sorry,” he said when I let go of his lips. “But the boys will be home from the movies and—”

I held up a hand. “I know, I know. It’s just...”

“Just what?” He knelt on the bed, his jeans still undone, as he buttoned up his shirt. I thought he could’ve been on the cover of a steamy novel. Fifty Shades of Brown. Mason Brown, that is.

“I really have to go,” he said.

“So go, then. You remember the way, right?”

“Don’t be mad.”

I sighed, thinking I was acting like a sophomore pouting over her steady, which was stupid, because this was just the way I wanted it. And because I don’t even like sophomores.

“Don’t be dumb. I’m not mad. You’re the world’s greatest uncle, and you’re also all they have. Besides their grandmother, the queen of cold.”

“Easy, woman.”

I grinned at him, pleased with myself. By insulting his mother, I’d diverted his attention from my petulant little burst of emotional ickiness. “Go on. Tell Josh and Jeremy I said hi.”

He looked at me for a long time, like he was trying to decide whether to say something, or maybe waiting for me to say something more. Then he nodded, kissed me quickly and got up to finish dressing.

“I’ve got that meeting with the chief tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll call you right after, tell you what it was about.”

New subject. Nice. I was uncomfortable talking about...relationship stuff. Heavy stuff. Fortunately, so was he. “I already know what it’s about,” I said, crawling halfway out of the bed and pulling the little plastic stairs closer. Myrtle, my bulldog, was still snoring, but now she could join me when she was ready. Moving her doggy stairs away from the bed was essential to having good sex. Otherwise she spent the whole time trying to wriggle her way in between us. It was just wrong, you know?

“Yeah? What’s it about, then?” he asked, though he already knew what I thought.

“The rumors are true. Chief Subrinsky has decided to retire, and he wants you to be his replacement.”

Mason shook his head, sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks. “I don’t think so. This feels different.”

He’d already been wined and dined with Chief Sub in the company of a congressman, everyone from the D.A.’s office, the owner of the Press & Sun-Bulletin and the mayor. He was clearly being groomed for the job, even while insisting he didn’t want it.

I could’ve smacked him. It paid six figures. Low six, but still...

“‘Feels different,’ huh?” I asked. “You’re starting to sound like me, Detective Brown.”

“There are worse things.” He sent me a wink and a killer smile. His damn cheek dimples were my undoing. How did I live for twenty years without once seeing a cheek dimple like that? He pulled me close and did a better job of kissing me goodbye, then dropped me on my pillows and headed for the door. “I’ll call you after the lunch.”

“Okay.”

“Night, Rache.”

“Night.”

He closed the bedroom door on his way out. I rolled onto my side, curled up and pulled the covers over my shoulder, while my inner girlie-girl whined that she wished he could spend the whole night.

This is what we both want. It’s perfect. Don’t go thinking if a little is good, more would be better. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just leave it alone. Don’t screw this up.

I waited until I heard his car leave, then got up, pulled on a robe and crouched beside Myrtle, who was still snoring on the carpeted floor. “I hear brownies and milk calling my name, Myrt. What do you think?”

She perked her ears but did not open her eyes. Not that it would matter if she did. She was blind as a bat.

“You hungry, Myrt? You want to eat?”

Her head came up a microsecond before she sprang to her feet and said, “Snarf!”

I scratched her between the ears. “This is good, right? Just you and me and bedtime brownies. Even if you do have to have the low-fat ones from the gourmet doggy bakery. This is the life, Myrt. This is the life.”

I wasn’t really convinced, but I figured if I said it often enough I could make it true.

* * *

Mason walked into The End Zone in the suit he saved for weddings. Overdressed for a sports bar, but if this turned out to be another part of the unending audition for the chief’s job, then it was perfect.

Besides, he’d already worn his funeral suit to a couple of the VIP meals the chief had been dragging him to for the past few weeks.

Grooming him to take over his office when he retired, or so Rachel kept telling him. He hoped to God that wasn’t the case. He didn’t want the headaches of that much responsibility, the hassles of politics or the boredom of a desk job, no matter how demanding it might be.

And yet, he was raising two boys now. Their father was dead by his own hand—as were a lot of others, though no one else knew that besides Rachel—and their mother was in a locked psych unit, after trying to reclaim a bunch of her husband’s donated organs. Including the corneas Rachel was currently using.

Yeah, his family was a mess. And yet Rache still hadn’t run screaming. Well, she had. A couple of times. Just not from him.

The chief-of-police position would bring a massive pay raise and much longer life expectancy. Didn’t he owe it to the kids to take it if he could?

But he couldn’t, could he? He’d lied. He’d covered up his brother’s crimes and destroyed evidence to protect his surviving family members. He didn’t deserve to still be a cop at all, much less chief of police.

He spotted the chief’s boxy flat-top silhouette at a table all the way in the back of the bar, swathed in shadows because the big-screen TV closest to it had been turned off. The only tables near it were empty.

Another man, taller and almost painfully thin, sat across from the chief with his body angled toward the wall and his head down. He was trying hard not to be noticed, Mason thought, and wondered why.

The chief caught his eye and waved him over, so Mason made his way to the table, giving the place a once-over on the way. There were only a handful of other customers, and no one seemed to be paying him any undue attention. But the chief’s companion was nervous, and that made Mason nervous.

Chief Sub rose and shook Mason’s hand, squeezing too hard and pumping too much. It was his standard greeting. The other man looked him up and down but didn’t stand, didn’t shake.

Mason knew his haggard face, had always thought the man looked twenty years older than he probably was. “Judge Mattheson,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

“Wish it was under different circumstances,” the man replied.

He honestly looked like a stiff wind would carry him a couple of blocks. And old, older than Mason recalled. The guy had to be pushing sixty, but he looked eighty-five.

“What circumstances are we talking about?” Mason walked around the table to take the chair that faced outward, toward the rest of the bar. This was not about any promotion the chief might be thinking about for him. This was something else. Something private, and something dark. He knew all that before he even sat down.

Chief Sub leaned over the table. “Howard’s daughter—”

“This has to be discreet, Brown.” The judge smacked the table to punctuate his interruption and make it seem just a little bit ruder. “You reading me? Discreet, until and unless we have reason not to be.”

Howard Mattheson’s face was age-spotted to hell and gone up close like this. No, wait, those were the remnants of freckles. He must have been a ginger as a younger man. Little remained of his hair. It was thin and had faded to a colorless shade that couldn’t even be called gray. Tough to tell if it had ever been red. “What is it I’m being discreet about?”

A waitress came by to ask Mason what he wanted. He glanced at the drinks in front of the other two. Chief Sub had a Coke, straight up. He wouldn’t add anything on the job. Judge Mattheson had what looked and smelled like bourbon, neat. “I don’t suppose you have coffee.”

“I just brewed a fresh pot.”

“You’re an angel.”

She winked at him and left them alone.

Silence stretched like a rubber band until the chief stopped it from snapping. “Howard?”

“Yeah. All right. It’s my daughter, Stephanie—Stevie, as she insists on calling herself. She’s disappeared.”

Mason sat up a little straighter. “How old?”

“Twenty.”

“And you’re not filing a missing persons report because...?”

“Because I’m not convinced this is anything other than a temper tantrum. Look, she was in a car accident last September. Drunk driver. It took her eyesight.”

A month after Rachel got hers back. Mason swore silently but didn’t interrupt.

“We kept it quiet. We’re a private family, Brown. We like our space. I’ve always tried to keep my job separate from my personal life.”

“I respect that, Judge.” He slanted a look at the chief. He needed to know what exactly was going on here, and he needed to know now. If there was a twenty-year-old blind girl out there on her own somewhere, they ought to be finding her and hauling her right back home.

Rachel would probably kick his ass for that reaction. He could hear her in his head right then, voice dripping sarcasm like honey. Since when is blind a synonym for helpless? Dumb-ass.

He almost grinned, then bit his lip just in time and pulled out his smartphone to start taking notes. “Give me everything you know, then.”

The judge cleared his throat. “She was told two months ago that there was no hope of getting her eyesight back. She didn’t take it well. She’s furious with the world and everything in it. Moody and morose. She hasn’t accepted her blindness, won’t even try, and resents the help we’ve been trying to get for her.”

“Help?” Mason asked.

The judge took a sip of his bourbon, set the glass down again and stared into the liquid at the bottom. “Therapy, a personal coach to help her learn how to live with it.” He slugged back the last of the bourbon, then held the glass over his head to signal his desire for a refill. “She gives that poor woman so much trouble I’m surprised she hasn’t quit.”

“That woman have a name?”

“Loren Markovich.” Judge Mattheson set his empty glass down, fished a business card from his pocket and put it on the table.

Mason took it and gave it a look. It was one of the judge’s own cards, but it had Markovich’s name and phone number written on the back. He dropped it into his shirt pocket. The waitress came back with his coffee and another bourbon for the judge, then left without a word.

“Loren took Stevie out near Otsiningo Park the day before yesterday. Told her to walk to the end of the block and back, using her cane.”

“Alone?” Mason knew he sounded more shocked by that than he should.

“It’s not that big a deal, Mason,” Chief Sub told him. “Your friend Rachel could tell you that.”

“Well, Rachel could’a done cartwheels to the corner and back, but that’s Rachel.”

“Who the hell is Rachel?” the judge snapped.

“She’s my— She helps me with cases from time to time.”

“No one else comes in on this, Brown,” Mattheson said. “No one.”

“We know, Howard.” Chief Sub nodded at him to go on.

With a stern look at Mason, the judge went on. “Loren says Stephanie was good and pissed. She didn’t want to do it, but Loren pushed her, and she did it. Did just fine, too. Then at the end of the block she flipped Loren off, then kept on going, around the corner and out of sight. Just to be difficult. Just to teach Loren a lesson for pushing her so hard.” He took a big gulp of his bourbon, replaced the glass harder than necessary. “Loren ran to catch up, and Stephanie just wasn’t there. She just...wasn’t there.”

Mason nodded. “She couldn’t have gone far. Not on her own.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just it,” the judge said. “I think she had help. I think she set this up somehow. She’s been acting out ever since she went blind.” He lowered his head, turning the bourbon glass slowly in his hand. “I know it’s horrible. I know it is. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but at some point you just have to figure out how to deal with it and go on, you know? It’s terrible what happened to her, but it’s not our fault.”

“Did they get the guy, Judge?” Mason asked.

“You better believe it. And I made sure he got the max. Trial judge was a friend of mine.”

The judge’s free hand flattened itself to the table, and it was shaking. “I just... I want her found. Discreetly and quietly. I want her found.”

“All right.” Mason nodded slowly. “But what if this wasn’t some kind of tantrum? What if she was taken?”

The judge shook his head. “I’ve thought of that. But there’s been no demand, no phone call or ransom note.”

“But you’re a judge. You must have enemies.”

“I’m a family court judge, son. I don’t deal with criminals. Criminally bad parents, sometimes, but not criminals like you’re thinking of.”

“All right. All right. What if she did have help, then? Who would be the most likely accomplice?”

The judge met Mason’s eyes for the first time and nodded. “She had a boyfriend all through high school. She ran off with him once, senior year. But she hasn’t seen him since shortly after that.”

“Name?”

“Jacob Kravitz. Goes by Jake.”

“You know where he is?”

“No. As far as I know she hasn’t seen or heard from him since she graduated. She’s seeing a decent guy now. A law clerk in the D.A.’s office. Mitchell Kirk. He’s a good kid.”

“Anyone else? Friends from college or work?”

“She quit college after the accident. Her friends called and came around for a while, and then they just...stopped.” He shrugged. “My wife’s a wreck.”

“I told Howard I’d put my best detective on this,” Chief Sub said. “And I assured him, Mason, of your absolute discretion.”

“You’ve got it, Chief.”

The judge got up. Mason did, too, and this time the older man extended a hand. Mason shook, then watched Judge Mattheson turn and thread his way around the empty tables and out of the bar.

Mason turned to look at the chief, who was still sitting. “I want to bring Rachel in on this.”

“Sit down. I ordered a pair of burgers, and since Howard left, you might as well eat his.”

Mason sat. As if on cue, the waitress returned with more coffee, and two plates piled high with burgers and fries. She had a much easier look on her face than before. Yeah, it had been tense. It was like a dark cloud left the bar when the judge walked out the door.

“Tell me how you think Rachel can help,” Chief Sub said as he pounded the bottom of the ketchup bottle.

“Well, to start with, she was blind for twenty years. She can give us some perspective on where this girl’s head is at, one we’re not gonna get from anyone else.”

“Mmm.” The chief got the ketchup flowing and made several neat round dots of it along the edge of his plate. “Can she keep this quiet? She is a writer, after all.”

“It’s not like she’s a freakin’ reporter.”

“I know that. The question is, do you trust her?”

“I trust her.” If the chief knew the enormity of the secrets Rachel had kept for him, Mason thought, he wouldn’t ask. “Actually, I can honestly say I trust her more than anyone I know.”

“Is that so?” Chief Sub dipped a fry in ketchup, then ate it whole. “You and she, uh...been seeing a lot of each other, haven’t you.” It wasn’t really a question.

“Some. Not...a lot. Really.”

“Why not?”

Mason looked up, surprised by the question. “She’s only had her eyesight back since last August, Chief. It’s a whole new world for her.”

“For you, too, I imagine, with raising those two boys.”

“Exactly.”

The chief shrugged. “I trust your judgment, Mason. If you think she can help you and you trust her, use her. I want Stephanie Mattheson found. Hell, I’m her godfather. Since this is off-the-books work, de Luca’s an off-the-books consultant. Just don’t let Howard find out you told her. You got that?”

“Yeah.” Mason picked up the gargantuan burger, took a huge bite and knew he would regret it later. After he chewed and swallowed, he said, “If I don’t turn anything up right away, you’re gonna have to convince him to make it official. You know that.”

“You let me worry about Howard.”

“All right, Chief.”

“There’s a party at my house Friday night. My fiftieth wedding anniversary. You’ll be there.”

Once again, it wasn’t really a question.

“I will,” Mason said.

“Good. Get a sitter for those boys of yours and bring de Luca.”

* * *

I had Myrtle on a leash, which was a joke, really. She was short and fat and slow, and about as likely to bolt away from me as I was from a glazed sour cream doughnut. We were doing our midday walk along the four-mile-long dirt track that passed for a road. It ran along the back side of the Whitney Point Reservoir, which really was more like a lake. There were a couple of houses at the other end of the road, near the village, but mine was the only one way out this way, just before the dead end. I loved the privacy. The quiet. And now that I had eyes, I loved the beauty of it, too. Trees and woods, all sporting their newborn pale green leaves now that spring had sprung in the Point, and the way the sun would sometimes shimmer on the water, making every ripple wink like bling on a rapper. Damn, I loved where I lived.

I had my cell phone with me in case Mason called. But he didn’t. He interrupted our walk in person, instead, breaking into our solitude with the too loud motor in his “classic”—aka old—black Monte Carlo. He pulled it over, shut it off, locked it up and got out while we stood there. Myrtle was wiggling her backside in delight, knowing it was him and overjoyed about it. (She’d have wagged her tail, but bulldogs don’t really have tails. So they wag their entire asses, which I think is a much more accurate depiction of extreme enthusiasm. Myrtle agrees.)

Mason approached her first, crouching down low to rub her head on either side of her face, and she closed her sightless eyes and basked in his attention. I do the same thing when he touches me like that.

Then he stood up again, but instead of kissing me hello—which would’ve been hopelessly goofy anyway, so I don’t even know why I was hoping for it—he said, “I need your help.”

I sighed my disappointment away. “Hi, Mason. I’ve been having a great day. Thanks for asking. Yes, I slept just fine after you left. Myrtle is a blanket hog, but not as bad as you are. And yes, as a matter of fact, we are enjoying our walk.”

He lowered his head, raised it again, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me in for a long, slow kiss. I let go of Myrt’s leash and got all mushy inside, sliding my arms around his shoulders and really getting into it.

Then he let me go, and when I straightened my knees tried to go jellyfish on me, but I snapped them straight again.

“I missed you,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, for crying out loud, don’t be so emo.”

But inside I was grinning like a kid.

“So what was the lunch meeting about? Or should I ask what you need my help with first?” I picked up Myrtle’s leash, and we went off the road and down toward the shore. This was one of Myrt’s favorite things. The water was still cold, but she loved to put her paws in, and drink and sniff around.

Mason came and stood beside me. “It’s the same answer to both questions. A judge’s twenty-year-old daughter is missing. He thinks she’s just throwing a tantrum and wants me to find her discreetly. Off the books. I want you to help me.”

I nodded slowly. We’d had this whole “police consultant” conversation before. He thought I should work with the Binghamton PD officially. But I wasn’t about to put “uncanny sense of what other people are thinking and feeling” on the application. And I would rather be drawn and quartered than labeled some kind of psychic. Besides, I already had a career. A nice lucrative one, thank you very much.

“It doesn’t sound like anything you can’t handle on your own.”

“You can handle it better.”

“Why?” I wanted to take it back as soon as I said it, because I knew that was exactly what he wanted. And now I’d opened the door. Shit.

“Because she’s blind, Rache.”

“Oh, for the love of—”

“Drunk driver hit her car last fall. September. Doctors just told her in March that there was no hope of ever getting her sight back. She’s not dealing with it very well.”

“No one deals with it very well.”

“I just want you to come with me to where she was last seen. Walk through the moments before she vanished with me. How bad is that?”

I heaved a sigh. “Myrtle needs her walk, you know. That evil lying vet of hers still insists she’s overweight.”

“He has a death wish. I’m sure of it,” Mason said, and then he shrugged. “Actually, walking is exactly what we’ll be doing. We can bring her along. You’ve already got her leash.”

“You know perfectly well she does not ride in a car without her designer goggles and matching scarf.”

He jogged up to the road to his car, opened the door and leaned in. When he came to the edge of the road again, he held up his gift. “Doggy goggles.”

They were hot pink with black peace signs all over them. I almost loved them. “Did you get those on the way over?” It took some doing, but I convinced Myrt to come back up the slope away from the water. Mason handed the goggles to me. Even the lenses were tinted pink. “And if so, where? ’Cause damn.”

“Great, aren’t they? Josh bought them for her on eBay. Used his own money, too. He put ’em in my car yesterday, but I forgot to give them to you.”

“They’re great.” I looked at him, at the goggles, at the car. I didn’t want to get involved in any sort of police work or investigation. And my reason was simple. So far, every time I had, I’d had brutally horrifying dreams about whatever was going on. Vivid, awful nightmares that were mostly true. Now, granted, I’d had weird connections to the killer and/or the victims the other times, due to our common organ donor. There was no reason to think that would continue with a case that had nothing to do with me or my corneas.

Except that I’d had some kind of freaky knowledge happening last Thanksgiving when my right-hand Goth, Amy, had been kidnapped. No nightmares. Just that...

Extra sense.

Not that. It’s not that. I’m not fucking psychic.

“Come on. All I want to do is take you two for a short walk near Otsiningo Park. How bad can that be?”

We both knew how bad it could be, so I wasn’t going to bother answering that one. I crouched down in front of my bulldog. “Myrt. You wanna go for a ride in the car?”

She cocked her head to one side, ears perking up, lower teeth coming out above her upper lip as she stared up at me, waiting for me to repeat her favorite words ever spoken, to confirm she had heard me correctly.

“Ride? In the car?” I said again.

“Snarf!” And the butt-wiggle dance began.

I looked up at Mason and shrugged. “There’s your answer. I guess we’re going.” I adjusted the goggle straps and put them on my dog, told her how gorgeous she was, and promised to find her a matching scarf soon. She followed me to Mason’s car. I got in the front seat and slid to the middle, where newer cars would have a console instead of a supersized bench seat. I was lucky the old—sorry, classic—car even had seat belts. Mason lifted Myrtle to set her on the passenger side, so she could stick her head out the window. He knew the deal.

He came around and got behind the wheel, then looked at me for a second. “Need to go lock up?”

“Amy’s there. I’ll give her a call.”

He nodded but didn’t put the car into motion, and he was still looking at me. So I braved the question. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I, uh... You were a little pissed at me last night. Are we good?”

I blinked. He was checking in on the thing we both hated discussing most. Mucky, murky emotional vomit. The kind of stuff that ruined great relationships. “I’m good,” I said. “You?”

“Mostly, yeah. Pretty good.”

Which meant he could be better. Which was what I’d have said if I’d been honest. But because I was a big fat chicken, I said, “Good, then. We’re good.”

“We’re good. Okay.”

And then he turned the car around, and we were off and running. And I thought to myself that it wouldn’t be so bad to help him out with another case. It really wouldn’t. At least I’d get to spend some time with him in the upright and unlocked position.

This could be fun.

Right. Fun. Like, you know, jury duty. Or a smallpox outbreak. Or seeing murders in your sleep. Fun.

2

By 2:00 p.m. Mason and Myrtle and I were walking the sidewalk Stevie Mattheson had walked just before she’d vanished, which, I’d learned, had happened the day before yesterday. Apparently her devoted daddy had waited a day and a half before going to his pal the chief to not report her missing. Guy was a jerk.

I know, snap judgment. That’s how I roll. Tough times turn people’s masks into windows. Believe what they show you. Yeah, it’s one of mine.

“Nice leash, by the way,” Mason said.

Hot pink, with black skulls and crossbones all over it. “And coincidentally it even matches the new goggles you bought her.”

“Except I went with peace signs instead of the Jolly Roger.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” I said.

“Hope she doesn’t get confused about her own identity.”

“What’s to be confused about? She’s a pacifist pirate.”

He laughed. That was what I was going for, eliciting that laugh. I could tell more from Mason’s laugh than from anything he said or any vibe he emitted. He was too much a cop, played things too close to the vest, to let me read him the way I did other people. But I could still read him. It was just tougher. And his laugh was the easiest way I’d found so far.

This one rang forced and tight.

“You’re worried about this.”

He nodded. “Something’s off about the whole thing.”

“Spidey sense tingling?”

“I wish to hell you’d been a fly on the wall at lunch so you could tell me if you sensed it, too.”

“Is there some reason you’re doubting your eerily accurate cop instincts, Mason?”

He looked at me, then at the sidewalk. “Yeah. A couple of them.” He didn’t elaborate, so I didn’t push it, figuring it was either something deep and emotional or something about us, and those topics were things we’d sort of agreed to avoid without really ever saying so out loud. He was no more into gooey emotional gunk than I was, thank goodness.

It was beautiful outside. Warm in that springlike way that would seem chilly a month from now, but sunny and fresh. I’d always loved that about spring, that freshly washed newborn feeling it had to it. But I loved seeing it even more. The trees were taking on a pale green cast as their buds started to become leaves. Birds were flitting around singing like extras in a Disney flick. Tulips and daffodils everywhere you looked. And the apple blossoms were busting out all over. Out in the Point they were barely peeking out of their buds.

Myrtle hurried from one spot to the next, sniffing everything thoroughly, excited by a new place and not even keeping her side pressed to my leg. She really was getting more confident. I loved that.

“So she walked from this bench to that corner,” Mason said. “Bitching all the way, according to her coach.”

“Her blindness coach. The person her father hired to teach her how to be blind.”

“Yeah.” He chose to ignore the sarcasm in my tone.

“But the coach is sighted, right?”

“Uh-huh.” He said it like he knew what was coming next. Hell, he probably did.

“And that makes sense because no one knows what it’s like to be blind better than a sighted person does, right?”

“Of course not.”

“So explain it to me, then, ’cause I’m not getting it.”

He stopped. We’d walked about five steps. (Myrtle, twenty.) “I didn’t say I thought it was a great idea, I’m just telling you how it went down.”

“I know.” I said it like it should’ve been obvious. “I’m just saying.”

“Can we focus here? And stop looking at the damn birds, Rachel, we need to look at the ground.”

I’d been watching a red-winged blackbird in a nearby tree. He was perched on the topmost branch, and he kept chirping this loud, long note and hunching up his shoulders at the same time, so the little red patches were more prominent. Showing off for the ladies, I bet. “You look for clues with your eyes. I look with my other senses, remember?”

“So is that bird giving you anything to go on?”

I shrugged. “It’s spring. Horniness thrives. I say we question the boyfriend. She does have a boyfriend, doesn’t she?”

“Two that her father felt worth mentioning,” he said. “One former, one current.”

“Let’s talk to them both. And the blindness coach.”

He nodded. “Already on my list.”

“I’ll be more helpful when we’re doing that.” I glanced ahead and saw a fat robin skipping along the sidewalk pecking at something too small for me to see. Myrtle sensed it or felt it or something, because she was focused in that direction, too, leaning forward like she was getting ready to lunge at the bird, even though she couldn’t see it. “If we do it indoors,” I added.

He didn’t reply, so I lifted my head again, met his eyes. He was grinning at me, flashing the Dimple of Doom. My doom, at least. I made a face and started walking, scanning the sidewalk as I went, at least when I could take my eyes off my bulldog and her absolute enjoyment of the walk. Myrt really had living in the moment down, that was for sure. Can’t see? Oh well. I smell a squirrel! was her philosophy. Frankly, I thought it was a pretty good one.

I used to have to coax and cajole and tug to get her to walk any distance at all. But today she was rushing me. She was definitely getting more fit. Mason caught me watching her, sent me a look that asked for my focus.

I know, I know, but it was my first sighted springtime since age ten. So shoot me. “Come on, get with the program, Detective,” I said. Best defense is a good offense, right? “Daylight’s burning.”

We completed our inspection of the sidewalk where Stevie had obeyed her coach’s orders, tapping her way from the bench to the corner, and didn’t find anything. Well, we didn’t, but Myrtle did. She’d peed on a clump of weeds, chomped the blossom off a stray daffodil and picked up a discarded Pepsi can, which she was still carrying like a prized treasure.

Whatever had happened to Stephanie had happened after she’d gone around the corner. But we’d already known that. So we turned right, just like she had. And then I really slowed down. Mason walked near the inside edge, where sidewalk met park, so I took the curb, where sidewalk met road.

And there in a drain was a cell phone. It had fallen onto the grate, and wedged itself most of the way through. I’d been hanging around cops—well, one cop—long enough to know not to touch it, so I pointed it out, then crouched low, pulled my long sweater over one hand and picked it up with the sleeve while Myrt dropped her soda can and tried to grab it before I could. “Got’cha!”

I won and turned toward Mason, holding up the phone. And then I flashed back to Thanksgiving, when my personal assistant and best-Goth, Amy, had been snatched off the highway by two jerks in a white pickup truck. We’d found her phone at the scene, too.

Weird.

Mason came over with a plastic bag and I dropped the phone in. “Nice find,” he said.

“Wish I still had that damn stylus in my purse so we could tap this thing without leaving a print. I lost it, need to buy another one.” I’d had one at the scene of Amy’s brief abduction. Ms. Smarty-pants had snapped a photo of the pickup, knowing it was trouble, and left it behind to lead us to her. “Mason, do you think this could be related to what happened to Amy?”

“Because of the phone?”

I nodded.

“I don’t think so. Amy threw her phone underneath her car deliberately. She knew she was in danger. Even if Stevie did the same, it would only mean that they think alike.”

“Right. And we have so many women being snatched off the streets of Binghamton that there’s no way it’s connected.” I was being sarcastic.

He gave me a look. “Okay, I’ll give you that one.” He nodded, thinking on it. “Amy’s twenty-five, Stephanie’s twenty. That’s close enough, I guess.”

I thought back to the photo he’d shown me of the missing girl. “Amy’s got dyed black hair and multiple piercings. Stephanie’s a blonde Barbie doll. It can’t be the resemblance. Still,” I said, “the phones.”

“Coincidence. Besides, we don’t even know it’s her phone.”

I made a face while I tried to figure out how to say what I was thinking without sounding like a complete flake. “I’m not saying that us finding the victim’s phone at both scenes is evidence that the two things are connected. I’m just wondering if it’s a more...a more woo-woo clue.”

“A woo-woo clue?” he asked, arching one eyebrow. I loved when he did that. “Is that a technical term?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“You mean, like maybe the phone being here is the universe dropping us a reminder of Amy’s abduction, just to get us thinking along those lines?”

I shrugged and averted my eyes. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“You mean the sort of thing you put in your books and then tell me is bullshit, Rachel?”

I shrugged. “You’re the one who keeps trying to convince me it might not be.”

“So you’ve decided to believe me, then?”

Tipping my head to one side, I said, “I was just trying it out. You’re right. It’s bullshit.” Then I took a big breath. “But if that is Stephanie Mattheson’s phone, then it’s probably safe to say she didn’t run away just to ditch her coach and worry her parents.”

“You’re right about that.”

“There’s a drugstore around the corner, and I’ll bet we can find a ten-pack of those styluses.” I frowned. “Styli?”

He was looking at the road near the grate, though, all but ignoring me. So I looked, too. There was a parking meter there. Probably had been a few dozen vehicles in and out since the night before last, when this had gone down.

Or maybe not.

He pulled out his own phone and took a few close-up shots of the area, while I looked up and down the sidewalks and road, wondering how this chick could’ve been snatched against her will without someone seeing something. I mean, it wasn’t a busy place, but it wasn’t deserted, either.

And then I thought of Amy again. Stupid, I know, but there was something bugging me, itching at my brain. I kept feeling just like I’d felt last Thanksgiving morning, when Amy’s mother had called to tell me she’d never made it home, and I had known—just known—that something awful had happened.

We’d tracked Amy down before it had gone from awful to fatal. One of her abductors was still with her when Mason and I caught up. Now he was with the angels. (I know, but I don’t believe in hell, even for jerks like him.) We’d never tracked down the other one.

Mason nudged me with an elbow. “You seeing what I’m seeing?”

I wasn’t, so I looked where he was looking, down the block to the next corner. “There’s a camera on that traffic light at the intersection. Snaps automatically when someone runs the light.”

“Fuckin’ cops. You’re like Big Brother, you know that?”

“Not the point.”

I nodded. “I know it’s not. What is the point is what difference does it make? What are the chances the kidnapper ran the light?”

“If he was going that way? Pretty good, actually. People get all hopped up during the commission of a crime. Adrenaline’s surging, they’re nervous, jumpy, in full-blown fight-or-flight mode.”

“Walking textbook,” I accused.

“What? It’s as good as you wanting to check the phone for photos.”

“I do not want to check the phone for photos. I want to see who she’s been talking to. Blind women do not snap a lot of pictures, Einstein.”

“I knew that.” He picked up the pace as we hustled to the end of the block, and Myrtle jogged along happily for most of the way, then started snuffing at me as if to say, Enough with the running, already. Do I look like a sprinter to you? “I was teasing about that Einstein thing,” I said, slowing my pace to accommodate my bulldog.

“I know you were.”

“Could you get the traffic-light photos without making the case official? I know Judge Howie wants to keep it under the radar.”

“Yeah, except it won’t do any good. Look at the camera.”

“What?” I looked. It had what looked like a bullet hole in its lens. “Shit.”

Mason turned in a slow frustrated circle. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. The judge. Something was off about him.”

I frowned at him. That again, I thought. “So? Elaborate already. In what way was something off?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t ready. He’s an old friend of Chief Sub’s, and I was expecting another power lunch, not an off-the-books case. I didn’t have my game face on, you know? But there was something.” He sighed. “I wish you’d been there.”

Wow. That he’d said it to me twice now told me he meant it in spades. And that made my insides get mushy. My inner idiot acting up, I guess. “Maybe it’s that he wants it off the books at all? ’Cause, damn, Mason, that has my antennae all aquiver.”

“No, I can see him wanting it handled discreetly. They kept her accident and blindness quiet.”

“How did they manage that? I thought it was a drunk driver. Wasn’t there an arrest? A trial?”

“Must’ve been. The judge said he got the max. Still, the judge is in the public eye. It makes sense to keep this out of the press if Stephanie is just throwing a tantrum.”

“I don’t know. If my twenty-year-old kid went missing—hell, if my dog went missing—I’d have the National Guard on it before morning. He waited two freaking nights. And how can you say you get that? What if it was Jeremy? How long would you wait to report him missing?”

“I don’t know. Ten minutes?”

“There. See?”

He nodded. “Yes. I see.” Then he stopped looking at the sidewalk and turned to me. “Maybe you’ll get the chance to talk to him yourself, see if you...pick up anything.”

I lifted one eyebrow the way he so often did. I had practiced doing it in the mirror and thought I was pretty good at it. I loved mirrors. Looking into them, trying different expressions out on myself. It’s not vanity. I hadn’t had a clue what I looked like for twenty years, you know? “I’m picking up something now. From you. What do you know that I don’t?”

He sighed. “You’re too good at this game.”

“No such thing. So what haven’t you told me?”

“Chief Sub’s fiftieth wedding anniversary party is Friday night at his place. The judge will be there. We’re invited.”

“And by invited, you mean...?”

“He told me to be there.”

We’d been standing still so long that Myrtle decided to lie down. Head on her paws, she closed her eyes and was snoring with her next breath.

“And by we, you mean...?”

“He said I should bring you along.”

I couldn’t have been more surprised if lobsters had crawled out of his ears. “So now he’s auditioning me? Doesn’t he realize that we’re not...serious?”

He got a little red in the face as he turned away. “I couldn’t exactly blurt out that we were just each other’s most reliable booty call, could I?”

My radar went completely haywire. I didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or serious, if he was a little hurt that I’d said we weren’t serious or making a joke so I’d know he agreed.

Jesus, why didn’t my supercharged intuition come with an instruction manual and a twenty-four-hour tech-support hotline?

I said, “I don’t like that ‘most reliable’ line, pal. You’re my only booty call.”

He looked almost relieved. “Me, too. So then, we’re...exclusive.”

“I guess we are.” It was, I realized, the single largest declaration either of us had made in regard to our relationship, and it was more than enough for one day. For both of us.

“You don’t have to come to the party if you don’t want to,” he said.

“No, I want to.” Shit, it was getting gooey again.

He looked at me. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, and quickly shifted focus back to business. “I want to see this Judge Howie and try to get a feel for what’s going on. Presuming we haven’t found Stephanie by then.”

“Good. Good.” He looked relieved to be back on topic, too. “Just...don’t call him Judge Howie.”

I smiled at him. “I want you to get the chief’s job, remember? You’re the one dreading the offer.”

“I’m not dreading it. I’m undecided.”

Nodding, I said, “How about we wrap things up here? Myrtle’s getting hungry, and so am I.”

“Myrtle’s entering a coma. But okay. Back on track. You’re the expert on being blind. Tell me this, just in case this turns out not to be her phone. Once she got around this corner, how far do you think Stephanie could have walked in the time it took her coach to run from the park bench to here?”

I mulled on that for a second, then got a brilliant idea. “Let’s find out. I’ll go back to the park bench where they started. You wait at the corner. Then, as soon as I sit on the bench, you close your eyes and start walking. I’ll come running and we’ll see how far you manage to get.”

I could tell he didn’t like the suggestion by his thoughtful scowl. “Why don’t I be the coach, and you be the blind girl?”

“Uh, ’cause I was the blind girl for twenty years and I could walk without my eyes faster than you walk with yours. Stevie was new at this. Like you.” I bent down to pat Myrtle’s head. “Come on, Myrt, we’re back on duty.”

“I hate when you make perfect sense,” Mason said.

Myrt opened her eyes and sighed heavily, then got upright again, stretched and farted at the same time.

I handed Mason Myrtle’s leash and jogged back around the corner, then back down the sidewalk to the bench. I sat down and waved at him, where he stood on the corner with Myrt. “Okay, close your eyes and go!” I called.

So he scrunched his eyes tight and started walking. I got up and jogged to the corner, rounding it just in time to see him bean himself on a telephone pole, take a step back, trip over Myrtle and land on his ass. He’d made it about twenty feet.

“Jeez, don’t kill yourself, for crying out loud.” I made it to him, helped him up and almost choked trying not to laugh at him.

He handed me the leash and rubbed his forehead. “It’s harder than I thought.”

“It’s harder than most people think.”

He nodded, looking at me oddly. Like he was feeling sorry for me. I pointed a forefinger at him. “Don’t do that, Mace. Don’t put on that ‘poor, poor pitiful Rachel’ face. I was fine blind. Got rich and famous blind. Did better than most sighted people do.”

“I know you did.”

“Let’s get a stylus, check that phone to see if it was hers, and if so, who she was talking to right before she vanished.”

“Lunch for you and Myrtle first. Call and invite Amy to join us, okay?”

I lifted my brows. “So you don’t think my feeling that there’s some connection is completely insane, after all?”

“I’ve seen too much to think any of your feelings are insane, Rachel. So what do you say? Food?”

I was not one to argue when food was on the line. Nor was Myrtle, whose bulldog smile appeared the second he said the word.

3

Stevie had given up the screaming and swearing, crying and pleading, halfway through the first night. She’d given up shaking and tugging at the bars of her cage after what felt like twenty-four hours. Neither of these things had been a choice. She’d stopped screaming because she’d screamed her throat raw and could barely talk anymore, and she’d stopped shaking the bars because she had broken, bleeding blisters on both hands. After that she’d spent her time exploring her cell.

There were three concrete walls around her and prison bars in front, with a locked door. There were bunks attached to the walls on either side with chains. Two high, two low. Four beds total. There were a toilet and sink on the back wall. The water worked. There was a box under the bottom bunk on the right with a few supplies. Someone had used duct tape to drape a vinyl shower curtain in front of the toilet. It smelled new. Everything else about the place had a damp, musty smell to it. It was cool enough to make her grateful she’d been wearing a sweater.

Her captor had thrown her into the cage after a long drive. She’d lost her cell phone. She’d only realized it when he had searched her—thoroughly—while she’d still been tied up. Then he’d finally dragged her to the bars and stuck her hands through, holding them there while he went outside and closed the door with a frightening bang.

From there he’d cut the zip ties from her wrists. As soon as they were free she jerked away from him, yanked the tape from her mouth and started calling him names and demanding to be let go, and screaming and swearing. But a few minutes later she’d realized he was gone.

Her possessions were few. There were a plastic water pitcher and a few plastic glasses. Spoons but no forks. Washcloths. There were a roll of toilet paper, a tangle of brushes and three wrapped bars of soap in addition to the new bar that sat on the sink. There was a single blanket on each of the bunks. And that was it.

Every few hours he brought her something to eat. Protein bars, a bag of chips, a piece of fruit. Never a meal. Just snacks. At first she’d refused to eat, figuring the food might be drugged. Then when the hunger got bad, she decided she had nothing to lose. She was a prisoner. How could being a drugged prisoner be any worse?

She had no sense of time and no real idea how long she’d been there when she heard the door open and jumped off the bunk, lunging toward the sound in desperation, only to bang hard into a person and fall on the hard floor as the door clanged closed again. Scrambling to her feet, she shouted and threw herself at the bars, grabbing and shaking them, and swearing at her captor.

But there were only retreating footsteps.

And the knowledge that she wasn’t alone anymore. There was someone in here with her, sitting on the floor now, making muffled but urgent sounds.

She turned toward the sounds, knew there were tears streaming down her own face, and felt horribly guilty for hoping it was another captive like her. “All right, all right. I’m coming.” Holding her hands out in front of her, Stevie moved slowly closer, until her hands bumped against a head. She turned her palms inward, running them lower, down the sides of a face, and felt the blindfold around the eyes, the tape over the mouth, and then lower, as the poor thing sat perfectly still, shivering. It was a girl. Had to be a girl. Stevie got to the hands, zip-tied together behind her back. The Asshole, as she’d taken to thinking of the kidnapper, had cut the zip tie partway through. She bent it back and forth until it gave and the newcomer’s hands pulled free.

The girl whipped them around fast, and Stevie stepped backward, waiting for her to remove the tape herself. “What the fuck is this?”

Stevie said, “I don’t know. I’ve been here... I don’t know, a couple of days, maybe.”

“Bullshit. This is bullshit.” The other girl went to the bars, and just as Stevie had done when she’d arrived, she shook and screamed and pounded and pulled. She didn’t beg or cry the way Stevie had. She sounded strong, sure of herself, confident. Everything Stevie wasn’t.

Eventually she stopped fighting the useless door, and paced the cell instead, back and forth.

Stevie was sitting on the bottom bunk hugging her sweater around her and waiting until it felt like time to talk. Eventually she tried. “My name’s Stevie. Um, Stephanie.”

The pacing stopped. She felt the girl looking at her. Eventually she said, “Lexus.”

Stevie nodded. “How did you get here?”

“Fucker grabbed me right off the damn street is how I got here. Threw me in a van, tied me up and tossed me here.” She shuffled a little. “You?”

“Same.”

“He come in here? He do anything to you?”

“No. Nothing. He shoves food through the bars every little while. Never says a word. It’s creepy. I’m not even sure if it’s a man.”

“Oh, he a man all right. I grabbed him by his balls before he got me bound and gagged, put a hurt on him he won’t forget. Piece’a shit. I get the chance again, I’ll rip ’em right off.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Don’t look to me like you see anything,” Lexus said. “You blind, girl?”

Stevie nodded.

“Shee-it, you get all the luck, don’t you?”

“Looks like.”

Lexus came to the bunk, sat down beside Stevie. “A’right, then. We look out for each other, you and me. We got no one else. We got to get out of this shit, you follow?”

“I do. Maybe between the two of us we’ll find a way.”

“Ain’t no maybe about it, girl. We will.”

Stevie felt a rush of relief. There was no doubt in her mind that Lexus was older and wiser and stronger than she was. She’d been reassuring herself that her father had enough clout and connections to be turning the planet upside down to find her from the outside. Now she had help from the inside, as well. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, immediately clapping a hand to her mouth.

“Yeah, that makes one of us. Not how I ’spected to be spending my eighteenth, you know?”

“Your eighteenth...birthday?”

“Uh-huh.”

She wasn’t older, then. Maybe stronger, maybe braver, but not older. She was just a kid. Stevie’s conscience gave her a needle-like jab. She should be comforting the teenager, not leaning on her. She was almost three years older.

Hell. Okay, all right, might as well show her around the place and see if she came up with any ideas. Stevie got up off the bunk and pulled the box from underneath. “This is everything we own. Pitcher, glasses, spoons, some washcloths and some hairbrushes.”

She felt the other girl come around to crouch beside her, heard her pawing around in the box. “Four glasses. Four spoons. Four hairbrushes.” Lexus paused, took a breath. “Four beds in here. Four blankets.”

“I didn’t realize... Lexus, do you think...?”

“I think he’s gonna open that door at least two more times, Stevie-girl.”

Stevie nodded. “Okay. Okay, then we’re gonna have to figure out how to take advantage of that the next time he does.”

* * *

Even though we had Myrtle with us, we didn’t go to a drive-thru window for lunch. We headed instead to the Park Diner, ordered take-out and took it with us to a bench nearby with a view of the Susquehanna River. I liked that I could hear its rushing flow from where we sat, and I liked even more that I could see it. Bodies of water had fascinated me since I’d got my vision back. I live across the dirt excuse for a road from a lake—okay, a reservoir, but it looks like a lake—so I get plenty of time to study it. Rivers were an entirely different creature. The countless colors, the eddies and swirls, the constantly shifting patterns, the frothy bits and the way the sunlight reflects like diamonds when it hits just right.

I sat there, relishing my club sandwich with added hot sauce and sipping my Diet Coke, staring at the water until a paw on my leg reminded me I was not alone.

“Sorry, Myrt.” I tore the other half of my oversize sandwich into Myrtle-sized bites and fed her one of them. “Good, huh?”

Myrt swallowed it whole and whacked my shin again. And I knew what she was saying with her sightless brown eyes. How would I know if it’s good? That bite wasn’t big enough to tell. More, please. And by please, I mean now.

I sighed. I hate depriving her of people food when she likes it so much.

Mason was ripping the cellophane wrapper from the pack of styluses we’d picked up at the drugstore. “You should carry dog food,” he said. “Diet dog food.”

“Shut up. She’s not fat.”

“The vet said—”

“The vet is partial to skinny dogs. Greyhounds and Chihuahuas. For crying out loud, he owns a whippet.”

“Is his whippet good?”

I had broken off another bite and was handing it down to Myrtle, but I stopped in midmotion to send him a grimace. “That was terrible.” I didn’t tell him that I’d made the same joke in the exam room.

“I liked it.”

“Snarf!” said Myrt.

Mason smiled at her. “See? She agrees with me.”

“No. She wants her sandwich.” I obliged my dog, then said, “That’s all, Myrt. It’s all gone.”

She tilted her head to one side at the words all gone. Her least favorite words in history, besides go to the vet. Then she sighed heavily and collapsed, because bulldogs don’t lie down, they just drop. I knew that she knew I was a liar, and she knew that I knew that she knew it.

Mason whistled softly, drawing my attention away from both my dog and my guilt trip. “What?”

He was looking at the phone, holding it with his napkin and using the stylus to touch the screen. “She’s been calling Jacob Kravitz. Frequently.”

“Jacob,” I said, reviewing the details he’d given me on the way over here. “Oh, Jake. Wait a minute, isn’t that the ex-boyfriend?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. Doesn’t sound all that ex, does it? How about the current love interest? Kirk what’s-his-name?”

“Mitchell Kirk. And yes, there are two. One incoming, one outgoing.”

“Sounds like trouble in paradise.”

“All the calls to Jake were outgoing. Less than a minute each.”

I nodded. “So she was calling him. Maybe leaving him messages. But he wasn’t answering.”

“Or calling back,” Mason said, tapping the screen with the stylus but not saying much, until he finally seemed satisfied and dropped the phone back into its plastic bag. “Nothing much on there. Nothing that jumps out at me, anyway.”

I looked at my watch, grinning because I didn’t have to feel it. Yes, still, after almost nine months of being sighted. Hell, I still smiled when I opened my eyes every morning and found I could see. I’d had no idea just how much I’d been expecting the transplant to fail, my body to reject the new corneas the way it had all the others, and my world to be plunged back into darkness all over again, until I noticed just the other day that I’d stopped expecting that. There had been some kind of bowstring tension inside me. Waiting for the axe to fall, that sort of thing. And then one day I noticed its absence. Such a different feeling. Like I’d become seventy pounds lighter overnight.

“Rache?”

I realized I had been staring at the ticking second hand. “Sorry. I was just wondering what’s taking Amy so damned long.”

“I’m here, I’m here!” she called from about fifteen feet away. She was scurrying toward our bench with a paper bag in her hand. She wore a black T-shirt dress with a neon green geometric design over leggings and black leather boots. She had spiked her purple-and-black bangs with more gel than usual, and her nose stud was winking in the sunlight. “Sorry I’m late. My mother called just as I was heading out the door. What’s the emergency?”

Myrt lifted her head at the sound of Amy’s voice. She was one of Myrt’s favorite people, probably because Amy was the one who’d rescued her and brought her to me, then used skillful emotional manipulation to trick me into falling in love with the mutt. I don’t know exactly how. Introducing us, I guess.

“It’s all good. How’s your mom?”

“Excellent, as always. Sends her love, says she’ll send you that stuffing recipe from Thanksgiving. She won’t, though. She never shares her secret recipes. Says I’ll get them all when she’s dead.” Amy took a seat on the bench next to ours, opened her bag and took out a bag of chips. She ate one, gave one to Myrtle and flashed the bag at me when I scowled at her. “It’s all right, see? They’re baked. And it was just one.”

“You know by the time each of you and everyone else in that dog’s life gives her ‘just one bite’ it adds up to a couple of extra meals’ worth of food a day,” Mason said. “At least.”

“Life’s short. Dieting only makes it seem longer,” I said.

“Oh, that’s a good one, Rache. We need to put that one on a mug.” Amy yanked her smartphone from her bag, wiped her fingers on her black spandex leggings and started tapping the screen. “‘Life’s short. Dieting only makes it seem longer.’ Rachel de Luca.”

Mason frowned at me.

“She’s working on some new merchandising for me. We’re adding mugs and mouse pads to the affirmation cards and perpetual calendars.”

He tightened his lips and nodded. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking and was afraid he thought I was greedy. Well, hell, maybe I am. If there’s more money to be made, I’ll go for it. But I share. A third straight off the top to Uncle Sam to pay for bombs and guns, of course. And I give bushels to my charities on top of that.

“So, Amy,” he said, turning his full focus to my assistant. Hard not to. “I wanted to talk to you about last Thanksgiving.”

She stuffed her cell phone back into her oversize bag. Black. Of course. “When those two pervs snatched me off the side of the road?” she asked. Then she looked up at him. “How come? Did you finally catch the second guy?”

“No. Just want to keep it fresh in my mind.”

For a detective, he was terrible at deception. Amy saw right through him. “You didn’t catch him. Then there must have been another kidnapping.”

“No,” Mason said at the same exact moment that I was saying, “We’re not sure yet.”

He shot me a quelling look. I waved a dismissive hand. “What? Like she’s gonna go Tweet it to the world?” I looked at Amy sternly. “This is strictly hush-hush. Spill it and you’ll nix Mason’s shot at the chief’s job.”

“You told her that, too?”

“She’s my personal assistant, Mace. I tell her everything.”

“Yeah,” Amy said. “Nice job in the sack, by the way.”

He looked like he was gonna pass out before I said, “I don’t tell her that, for crying out loud.”

He closed his eyes and gave his head a rapid shake.

“So, Amy,” I said. “Yes, a girl is missing. And the truth is, she might just have run off. But I keep getting a feeling it has something to do with what happened to you.”

“And we all know better than to ignore her feelings,” Mason added, probably relieved that I hadn’t blurted out Stephanie’s name, address and phone number while I was at it.

“I am so dying to help out on a case,” Amy said.

“You’re not helping out. And it’s not a case.”

I clapped a hand onto Mason’s thigh. “You are helping out, and it’s not a case yet. But it might turn into one if she didn’t leave voluntarily. So if you can stand to go over it one more time...”

“I was driving to my mother’s in Erie for Thanksgiving,” she said, nodding. “I stopped for gas and noticed these guys in a white pickup pulling in behind me. I went in for the restroom and some snacks for the drive, and when I came out, they were still there. Not buying gas, not shopping, just sitting there.”

“Right. We saw the surveillance footage,” Mason said. “What do you remember about the second guy?”

“It’s all in my statement,” she said.

“I know, but you might have left something out that didn’t seem important, or remembered something since. Maybe there’s something you thought you told us but didn’t. Just humor me, okay?”

“Okay.” She ate another chip, handed one down to Myrtle, then took her sandwich out of her bag and unwrapped it slowly. “I didn’t really look at the guys in the truck at that point. I just sort of noticed the truck was there as I left. I didn’t get any bad vibes until I saw them pull out behind me. And even then, I thought I was just being a drama queen.”

I nodded and said to Mason, “She can be a real drama queen sometimes, so that adds up.”

Amy threw a chip at me. It landed on the sidewalk and Myrtle snapped it up before it settled. “Then my tire went flat. I still wasn’t overly concerned, until they pulled over in front of me. That’s when my alarm bells started going off. I snapped a quick pic of the truck with my phone and slid it under the car just in case.”

“Remind me how smart she is if I ever even consider letting her go, Mace.”

“I promise.” He nodded at Amy to keep going.

“After they dragged me into the truck, the driver dropped the second guy off. Do you need me to describe them again?”

I looked at Mason to answer that one. He shook his head. “No, the driver’s dead, and we have the sketch you and the police artist did of the second guy on file. We’re just trying to figure out why they took you. Did they say anything that might be a clue? Maybe something you’ve remembered since the incident?”

She frowned really hard, and I knew she was trying her best to recall every detail. “The jerk drove me off to that freaking no-tell motel and chained me to the bed. But he didn’t touch me. Didn’t even try. Then I said I had to use the bathroom. He cuffed me to the pipe in there so I wouldn’t run off. I picked the lock and crawled out the window, then ran for it. He chased after me. Caught me and tied me up again out there in the woods, and then you guys showed up.” She shrugged. “The only odd thing he said was when he was chasing me through the woods. He was calling me, only not by my name. He called me Venora.”

Mason blinked and looked at me. “Was that in the report?”

I shrugged and looked at Amy. “Was it? Did you tell the cops that?”

“I think so.”

“Either way, it bears looking into,” Mason said. “Thanks a lot, Amy. Remember not to say anything about this to anyone. Not even your mother.”

“Please, if I told my mother it would be on America’s Most Wanted by tomorrow. That woman is better networked than I am.”

* * *

Jacob Kravitz lived in an apartment above a tattoo place on Washington Avenue in Endicott, one of what we locals call the Triple Cities, the other two being Binghamton and Johnson City.

I’ve had Manhattanites tell me that all three combined don’t really qualify as a single “city,” but it works for us. We’ve got the river. We invented Spiedies, bits of chicken marinated in our own Spiedie sauce, served on sub rolls with cheese and other tasty toppings. Hell, we even have our annual blowout, the Spiedie-fest. And we’re on the Best Small Cities in America list.

Washington Avenue is a funny place. It’s got the highest-end salon we can lay claim to and drug deals going down on the sidewalk outside. It’s got a Greek diner where customers come to get a whole meal for five bucks and park their Mercedes out back. It’s got local celebs strutting up one side of the sidewalk and pants-falling-off gangbangers on the other.

We went through the front door and up a set of steep stairs to Jake’s apartment door, rapped on it and waited.

“You lookin’ for me?”

We both turned toward the guy who was at the bottom of the stairs, standing in the open door, a plastic grocery bag dangling from one hand and a six-pack of Genesee beer in the other. I sized him up visually, which was becoming way more automatic than I liked. I pick up more about people non-visually.

He was tall. Even from up here I could tell he was taller than Mason. Maybe six-three, six-four. He had Frampton Comes Alive! hair (I’d seen Amy’s classic vinyl collection) and a rugged unshaven thing going on. Wore jeans and an army-green coat with about fifty pockets, despite that it was a sixty-degree afternoon.

“If you’re Jake Kravitz,” Mason said.

“I am.” He came up the stairs, tucking the beer under one arm and then fishing a set of keys out of one of the coat’s pockets. When he reached the top and inserted the key in the lock, he said, “You look like a cop.” Then he looked at me. “And you don’t.”

“That’s ’cause I’m not. But you’re good. How could you tell he’s a cop?”

He shrugged and opened his door, then waved an arm at us to enter ahead of him, so we did. The place was a hole. Sofa with a blanket over it to hide the worn spots and stains, assuming the rest of it matched the arms. Linoleum floors so old the pattern was worn off. A fat-ass-style TV set sitting on the middle of a wooden card table that was sagging a little under its weight. An open door revealed an unmade bed and scattered clothes on the bedroom floor. He walked into a kitchen with appliances that were almost old enough to qualify as retro, dropped the bag on the Formica table, took a can of beer out of the sixer and slung the rest into the ancient fridge.

He did not offer us one.

“So what do you want?”

“Wanted to talk to you about Stephanie Mattheson,” Mason said.

“And to know how you knew he was a cop,” I added, because I thought there was something there. He didn’t like cops. It felt like he, big guy that he was, was shrinking into himself on the inside, where it didn’t show. On the outside he wasn’t revealing a thing, subconsciously making himself bigger. Like an animal in defense mode. I wondered if I could close my eyes without being obvious. My inner senses worked better when I drew the shades.

He shifted his gaze to me only for a second, then it went right back to Mason. “What about her?” he asked, ignoring my question completely.

It pissed me off a little, frankly.

“When’s the last time you heard from her?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of years ago. Something like that.” Then he popped the top on his beer can and took a slug.

I felt the lie, but that was cheating. I already knew the truth.

“Her cell phone says different,” Mason told him.

I walked a few steps away, to the window that looked down onto Washington Avenue, parted the curtain like I was looking out and closed my eyes.

“If you think you already know, then why waste time asking me?”

“Because I want to hear it from you,” Mason told him.

“She’s been calling,” he said after a brief pause. “I haven’t been answering. I haven’t called back. I haven’t talked to her in a couple of years. Just like I said.”

And that was the truth. But he was nervous as hell. I could feel it radiating from him. I said, “It’s kind of important, Jake. She’s missing.” Just so I could feel his reaction to that.

And I did. I felt a pulse of something big. Shock? Surprise? Concern? Or was it fear that we were on to him?

“What do you mean, missing?”

I stayed right where I was. Mason would read his face, his body language. I was reading his emotions. And they were all over the place.

“Missing. As in, no one knows where the hell she is,” Mason said. “Unless you know. Do you?”

“She’s missing?”

“Her father thinks she’s probably run off.”

“She’s blind. Where the hell is she gonna run off to?”

“How do you know she’s blind, Jake?” Mason asked. “Her family kept it pretty quiet.”

He walked a few steps, set his beer down. I heard all that. “We still have a few friends in common. I heard about it.”

He still cares about her, I thought. I could feel it beneath the words.

“I don’t know where she is. I wasn’t lying. I haven’t talked to her in a couple of years. And I didn’t know she was missing.” I had the feeling he was telling the truth, and then he got all tense again. “You’re here because you think I had something to do with...with whatever happened to her, aren’t you?”

“We’re not sure anything’s happened to her,” Mason told him. “I saw your name on her outgoing calls and thought I oughta talk to you, since her father said you two ran off together a few years back. It’s that simple.”

I turned from the window, ’cause my senses had given me a big clue. “You don’t like him much, do you?”

“Who?” Jake knew exactly who I meant. He picked up his beer, turning his back to me as he did.

“Stevie’s father. Judge Howie.”

He just shrugged. “I don’t have any contact with the man.”

“But you did. Two years ago when you and Stevie ran off together. Right? I’m sure he threw a fit about that.”

“Threw a fit?” He frowned and turned to look at me. I totally got that he was searching for something in my face. Then he quickly schooled his expression into a mask. “I don’t have anything to do with him. And I don’t know where Stevie is. I hope she’s okay. And I really have to get ready for work now.”

I couldn’t tell if that was sincere or not. The man had closed up tight, was keeping everything inside and showing us the door. Literally. He went to the door and opened it.

Mason sighed, and I knew he was disappointed. “Call me if you hear from her, okay?” He handed the guy a card.

Jake took it from him but didn’t even look at it. “Sure.”

I didn’t believe him.

I waited until we were back on the sidewalk in the bright afternoon sunshine to say, “Something happened between him and Judge Howie. Something big enough that he thought we already knew about it. You need to find out what it was.”

Mason nodded. “I think the guy has a record.”

“Really? I didn’t get that at all. How did you—”

“You get a feel for it after a while. People who’ve done time almost carry the scent of it. I’ll run him through the system, see what pops up. Should’ve done that first, but I figured the judge would’ve told me if there was anything.” He looked at me. “What else did you get?”

“I think he still cares about her. And he was either surprised to hear she was missing or surprised that we were there asking him about it.” We got to the car, Mason’s big black beast. I opened the passenger-side door and had to heft my bulldog out of the way to make room on the seat. Her loud snoring broke into aggravated bursts and she opened one eye, but other than that, she didn’t break nap. “When do we get to talk to the other boyfriend? The current one? What’s his name again? James Tiberius?”

Mason got behind the wheel and started her up. “Mitchell Kirk,” he corrected, deadpan. My Star Trek reference went right over his head. He wasn’t a Trekkie like me. “Tomorrow night at the chief’s anniversary party.”

“He knows the chief?”

“He’s his nephew.”

“Oh. I did not know that. The plot thickens.” I relaxed in my seat and watched the city pass by as he headed for the highway. Ten minutes and we were back on 17, heading for 81.

“So what now?” I asked after riding in silence for a little bit longer.

“I take you home and head back to HQ to tell Chief Sub what we’ve found so far. See if he’s ready to make this thing official yet.”

A big sigh rushed out of me before I could prevent it, catching me by surprise. He shot me a look. “What?”

“I don’t know.” I frowned. “I think that was me being disappointed that our day hanging out together is over. Weird, huh?”

Mason’s grin made his dimple flash at me. It was a more potent weapon than his stupid handgun. “I enjoyed it, too. It’s like old times, huh?”

“Old times meaning the last time a serial killer was after us? Pretty sad when I’m missing those sorts of good ol’ days.”

“Are you?” he asked.

I shrugged, because I didn’t want to get too deep or stupid. “I think if I wrote a book about you, the title would be Meets, Screws and Leaves.”

“Is that literary humor or a serious complaint?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Never mind.”

He eased into the left lane, then pressed the pedal down. He had a big, loud motor in the Beast, and even I got a little thrill when he made it roar. The nose end of the thing literally rose a little as the powerful engine kicked up a notch. I had discovered that the sighted Rachel was a little bit of a motor-head. I drove a convertible T-Bird that was a modern homage to the classic 1955 model, and I loved it. I had to admit, the ’74 Monte Carlo was growing on me, too.

A little.

As he merged onto 81, he said, “Jeremy has a home game tonight. You should come.”

I looked at him fast. “I wasn’t hinting around for an invitation.”

“Shit, Rachel, you don’t hint around for anything.”

“It’s fine, we have the party tomorrow night. Don’t overdo it or I’ll get sick of you.”

“I was going to ask you anyway. Josh has been griping that he never gets to see your potbellied pig anymore.”

“Hey!” I punched him in the shoulder and hoped it hurt. “Fine, my gorgeous, sweet-smelling, damn near svelte bulldog and I will be there. What time?”

4

“Boys’ varsity baseball is not nearly as much fun as girls’ varsity softball,” I said a few hours later from the bottom row of the bleachers at the Whitney Point High School’s baseball diamond. Mason was sitting beside me, his nephew Josh beside him, and Myrtle was lying on the ground in front of Josh’s feet. Possibly on Josh’s feet. She was the president of the eleven-year-old’s fan club. She was smiling with her bottom incisors sticking out over her upper lip, and every time the kid stopped petting her, she batted him with a forepaw.

“And you’ve come to this conclusion based on...?” Mason asked.

“Everything. The pitches are too fast, the hits are few and far between, the scores are too low—”

“Baseball scores are supposed to be low.”

“He’s right, Aunt Rache,” Misty called. She and Christy, my sixteen-going-on-twenty-five-year-old twin nieces were sitting on the top row, as far as possible from us. They only insisted on being part of our conversation if it meant an opportunity to correct their too-long-out-of-high-school-going-on-spinster aunt.

I twisted my head around. “You’re saying this? You, when your game last week ended because your team got so many runs ahead that they had to invoke the mercy rule?”

She shrugged, and returned to avidly watching the game, while her twin never looked up from the screen of her phone. Her thumbs were moving at the approximate speed of sound. Misty whisper-shouted, “Jeremy’s up!”

So I turned to pay attention. Misty and Jeremy were an item, though neither had admitted it yet, and nothing was official, as far as I could tell. But it was on. I’d have known that even if I’d still been blind.

Thank God I wasn’t, because it was one gorgeous spring evening. The sky was bluer than blue, not a cloud in sight, and Mason was beside me, a situation I liked way better than I had, up until now, admitted to myself. Admitting it to myself now gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I liked things easy and casual between us. I didn’t want to screw it up by wanting more.

Jeremy was crouching low, elbow up, bat moving in little circles behind him as he awaited the pitch. Then it came. He swung, and crack! It was outta there.

I shot to my feet, whooping and clapping and grinning so hard my face hurt as the ball sailed out of sight and Jeremy jogged the bases while we cheered. I glanced at Mason. He was smiling harder than I was. He met my eyes and nodded.

Yeah, I heard him. It had been a rough year for Jere. Last August he’d lost his father. In November his baby sister had been stillborn. At Christmas his mother had gone off the deep end and now she was in a locked psych unit. On top of all that, Jeremy had shot a man dead to save Mason’s life, and mine along with it. That he was still upright and not curled in a corner, drooling, was a triumph, in my opinion.

“Okay, maybe I spoke too soon about boys’ games not being as exciting as girls’,” I said as he rounded third and headed home. We sat down again as the applause died down. “That was freaking awesome.”

“And it means ice cream sundaes,” Josh added. “You promised, Uncle Mace. If he hit a home run, we get sundaes.”

“I guess I have to pay up, then,” Mason said.

“Don’t let him bullshit you, Josh. He’d have paid up either way.”

Josh grinned, probably because I’d said “bullshit.” Hell, I forgot again. I was lousy around impressionable youth. Yet another reason to keep things right where they were with Mason. He had kids now. I was not mommy material. I was eccentric aunt material. I had that gig down.

The inning ended, and during the approximate lifetime it always took for the teams to change sides, toss balls around and warm up the pitcher, I leaned closer to Mason. “So what did you find out about Jake?”

We’d gone our separate ways after we’d questioned Stephanie Mattheson’s ex-boyfriend. Mason had dropped me at home, where I’d played on Facebook and Twitter instead of writing my daily ten pages, changed clothes and walked Myrtle. He’d gone back to the PD to talk to the chief and run a background check on Jacob Kravitz.

“He did eighteen months in Attica,” he said.

“Shit, you were right.” I clapped a hand over my mouth and glanced down at Josh, but he was oblivious. On the ground now, rubbing Myrt’s belly in just the right spot to make her leg go, and laughing like a freckled hyena. “What did he do?”

“Pissed off Judge Mattheson.”

I frowned.

“Turns out that when Stephanie and Jake ran off together, she wasn’t quite eighteen yet. They crossed state lines. The judge made sure Jake got the maximum.”

“That motherf— That prick.”

He grimaced at me. “Not much of an improvement there, Rache.”

“It’s a slight improvement. So then Jake has good reason to hate the judge.”

“Yeah. And to keep his distance from Stephanie. He’s also got a pretty powerful motive for wanting revenge.”

I nodded. “You think he’s hiding her somewhere? That the two of them planned this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or that he did something to her? For payback?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t think he’d hurt her. Maybe he’s gonna hold her for ransom, only maybe she’s in on it, too, and they’re going to run off to Tahiti together once the judge pays up.”

He stared at me like I’d sprouted a unicorn horn. “What?”

“I’m telling you, Aunt Rache, you’ve got a novel in you.” Misty had moved three levels down and was sitting behind us, leaning her head down between ours. “Now, what’s all this about kidnapping and ransom?”

“Hello? Private conversation here.”

She gave me an exaggerated pout and still managed to be gorgeous. “Then have it somewhere private.”

“She’s right,” I said to Mason. “We shouldn’t be working at a game. Baseball is way more important than work.”

“Is that from one of your books, Rachel?”

“No, but it should be.” I pulled out my phone, tapped the little blue birdie.

“You’re Tweeting?” Mason asked, using the same tone he might use to say “You’re reproducing by mitosis?”

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