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“Only if you stay hidden in here while I check the rest of the house.”

“I promise. Pull me up, hurry. I don’t like this, Adam. She was alone here. I know he’s done something bad.”

A lone owl hooted fifty feet away, from the safety of the woods and a tall tree. The moon glistened down on her face. Adam pulled her over the ledge and she swung her legs to the floor.

She watched him walk toward the closet door, listen intently, then jerk it open. Nothing. Then she watched him walk to the closed bedroom door, staying to the side, never directly facing the door. He slowly turned the knob, then smashed the door open, sending it banging back, and stepped into the hallway, his pistol up. Then he was gone. She stood there shaking, wishing she wasn’t, listening to that owl, loud and clear, sounding from the forest.

Where was he? Time passed as slowly as it did in the dentist’s office. Maybe even slower.

Finally, she heard him shout, “Becca, go back out the window and tell Savich it’s okay for everyone to come in. He’s not here.”

“No, I want to come out—”

“Out the window, Becca. Please.”

When he was sure she was outside, Adam stepped out onto the sagging front porch with its scarred and peeling railing and said, “He’s gone. Savich, come here a moment. The rest of you just stay outside and keep watch, okay?”

“Yeah, we’ll keep watch, but this is nuts,” Tommy said and pulled out his pipe. “No one moved after we got here and we converged on the place not ten minutes after you called, Adam.”

Savich said slowly, “Then he knew, of course, that we’d tapped the phone.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “The bastard knew, all right. In the kitchen, Savich.”

“I don’t like this,” Becca said to Sherlock as she pressed toward the front door. “Why can’t we go in the house?”

“Just stay there for the moment, Becca.”

Several minutes passed. No one said anything, but one by one the men walked into the farmhouse through the open front door.

Becca didn’t know what to do. Sherlock, who was standing on the small front porch, her 9mm SIG drawn, sweeping in a wide arc around her, scanning the perimeter, said, “I’ll go check. Becca, why don’t you wait out here just a while longer?”

Becca stared at her. “Why?”

“Just wait,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp. “That’s an order.”

Becca heard the men talking, knew all of them but her were in the house. Why didn’t they want her in there? She ran around to the back of the house and slipped in behind one of the men who was standing in the middle of the back door. The kitchen was painfully bright with two-hundred-watt bulbs hanging naked from the ceiling. The kitchen was small, the appliances were harsh white, clean, and very old. There was an old wooden table, scarred, a beautiful old vase holding dead roses in the center. It had been pushed against the wall. Two of the chairs were overturned on the floor. The refrigerator was humming loudly, like an old train chugging up a hill.

She slipped around the man in the doorway. He tried to hold her back, but she pulled free. Tommy, Savich, and Sherlock were standing in a near circle staring down at the pale-green linoleum floor. Adam rose slowly.

And suddenly Becca could see her.

17

The woman had no face. Her head looked like a bowl filled with smashed bone, flesh, and teeth. He’d struck her hard, viciously, repeatedly. There were two broken teeth on the floor beside the woman’s head. There was dried blood everywhere, congealed and black on her face and on the worn linoleum, streaks of blood, like lightning bolts, down the white wall. Her hair was matted to her head, blood-soaked dark clumps falling away onto the floor. And there was dirt mixed in with the dried bloody hair.

“She’s young,” she heard a man say, his voice low, calm, detached, but underlying that voice was a thick layer of fury. “Jesus, too young. It’s Linda Cartwright, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Adam said. “He killed her right here in the kitchen.”

Linda Cartwright lay on her back on the floor wearing