by Robin Perini
He circled tightly, focused on the ground cover, but nothing appeared out of place until . . . He froze at a radius of ten feet, unable to move or breathe.
God, please no.
On the edge of a group of shrubbery . . . freshly sifted dirt, and just beyond that, a small ditch covered with dead branches and leaves. With a sidelong glance at his father, he hurried to the site. A fox scampered away, streaking below the evergreen leaves.
Thayne knelt down.
Please don’t be here, Cheyenne. Please.
He braced himself and shoved aside several branches.
Buried beneath the logs, an old, shredded tent and a few fence posts lay embedded in the earth.
Thayne’s knees gave way. He fell back in the dirt. Hard. Thank God.
“What’d you find?” His father’s clipped voice jerked Thayne out of the intense relief. “Is it her? Is she . . . ?”
Thayne stood up and quickly strode to his dad. “It’s not her. It’s remnants of the last flash flood.”
His father closed his eyes. Thayne hated being grateful they hadn’t found Cheyenne, but for a moment, he’d believed he’d uncovered her lifeless body. He never wanted to feel that way again. Not ever.
The radio sparked.
“Sheriff. It’s your mother. She’s awake, but it’s not good.”
The streets of DC never slept. Even well after midnight. Horns honked nearby, a car alarm pierced through the dark, and Riley squirmed in the seat next to her boss. He’d been too quiet since they’d left the crime scene. His silence didn’t bode well.
Tom pulled up in front of Riley’s apartment building and shifted into park, the rumbling purr of his government vehicle nothing but a reminder that he’d been lying in wait since they’d left the hospital.
“You look like hell,” he said, his voice soft but clipped, his gaze hard and knowing. “And not because of that bullet graze. When’s the last time you slept more than a few hours?”
Her mind ticked back through the last week or two, buried in this case, getting to know, to appreciate, to really like Patricia. At the same time living in the heart of a monster, peeling back the dark layers of hell.
What could she say? She had no idea.
“That’s what I thought.” A long sigh escaped him. “What did I tell you after the last case, Riley?”
She ignored the question. What was the point in rehashing an order she could never follow? She couldn’t do her job if she didn’t make the case personal. It was her gift: getting into the mind-set of the victim . . . and the killer. It was how she worked. It was how she’d found O’Neal. She couldn’t change now.
Riley met his gaze, her own unblinking, and he shook his head.
“We can’t save everyone.” Tom frowned at her, a furrow between his brows. “You know that.” He steepled his fingers under his chin. “You still can’t let her go, can you?”
“I joined the FBI to save lives. To save people like Patricia.” Unrealistic expectations? Probably. That didn’t change the sour taste rising in her mouth at tonight’s failure. She should have anticipated O’Neal’s behavior. That was her job, damn it.
“I’m not talking about Patricia Masters. I’m talking about your sister. You see your sister in the face of every victim and it’s destroying you. You can’t keep going on like this, Riley.”
Her lips grew taut. She couldn’t deny the truth, but she didn’t have to admit it.
“Do you know why I chose you for this unit? Even though you’ve only been with the FBI for three years?”
“My winning personality and ability to get along with others?” she said, her voice dry.
“You’re the best profiler to go through the training at Quantico in twenty years.”
Her mouth dropped open in shock.
“You get inside these guys’ heads. I need someone like you for this position because it’s an experiment. The staff based at Quantico does more data crunching than investigating. The field agents take on that role. This team combines the two skill sets. It forces us to face the worst of the worst when we embed ourselves as part of local task forces.”
“The unit’s working,” she said.
“Yeah. Our solve rate is higher than any of the other teams’. That’s not the point. The very gift that makes you the best at your job is going to drive you out of it. You empathize, Riley. You live every horror with the victim, but you also immerse yourself inside the killer’s head. You’re not going to survive if you don’t find a balance.”
The words coming from the man who controlled her destiny with the FBI clawed at her throat, cutting off her ability to breathe. Desperate, she dug her nails into her palms to subdue the panic. “I can do this, Tom. I promise you.”
He raised an eyebrow. He’d been a profiler for nearly thirty years. He didn’t miss much.
“I want you to stay home. For a week.”
“But—”
“You’re injured. You’re running on empty.”
One glance at her bandaged arm reinforced the point. She’d let the serial killer get the drop on her. A few ibuprofens and the graze would heal. She’d be fine.
Unlike Patricia.
In some jobs, a failure meant a late report or a reprimand. For Riley, failure meant someone else died. Not something that could—or should—be forgiven. Or forgotten.
“Tom—”
He held up his hand. “Say anything else, and I’ll make it two weeks. When you come back, I want you to report exactly how you plan to emotionally survive this job, because right now, I don’t think you can.”
Her boss walked around the car to help her out. “I’m not kidding, Riley. Seven days of serious contemplation. That’s an order.”
Without another word, he got into his car and drove away.
As the taillights disappeared around the corner, Riley’s mind whirled in chaos. A week. She had a week to come up with an answer that would convince him that she could do the job she’d worked for most of her life.
She couldn’t lose her position on the unit. She had too many promises to keep. The biggest one to her sister, Madison.
The streetlight above Riley flickered. A skitter of awareness tingled at the base of her neck. She clasped the butt of her Glock and hurried through the small gate leading to the old walk-up that had been converted into efficiency apartments a decade ago.
She climbed the concrete steps and unlocked the door. The old oak squeaked open, and she closed the outside behind her.
All was quiet in the foyer. She trudged up the stairs to her apartment. Her gaze darted from side to side with every step down the hall until she reached the last door on the right and inserted the key into the lock. It went in easily. Just like normal.
She pushed inside and quickly disarmed the alarm system, then reset it for home.
With the temporary cloak of safety in place, Riley walked directly into the bedroom, dropped her go bag, and sank onto the bed, her knees shaking. She buried her head in her hands, rubbing the grit from her eyes. Stark despair twisted her gut. She was running on empty, her energy sapped. It had nothing to do with her arm, and everything to do with Patricia’s vacant, lifeless gaze. God, she’d wanted to save her.
Barely able to find the strength to move, she shucked her pants and shirt and slid beneath the covers. She’d wash her face tomorrow.
With a flick, she turned off the lamp beside the bed, but the room didn’t go dark. A small night-light flickered from the outlet near her bathroom.
It never went completely dark in her room.
She hated the dark.
As a kid, she’d believed only bad things happened in the dark. She’d learned over the years the horrific could happen at any time.
But no one else had to know that. Too many demons, too many nightmares. Too many explanations she refused to provide.
No one needed to see the fears that welled up from deep within to suffocate her. They wouldn’t understand. She folded her hands behind her head and stared u
p at the ceiling, the shadows twisting, taunting.
OK, not true. One person would understand. He always understood.
Instinct trumped logic. She reached for her cell phone. The screen glowed to life, blank and lonely. No new notifications. No new calls. No texts. No e-mails.
“Thayne,” she whispered, tracing the screen with her finger, fighting the disappointment that clung to her like a wet wool blanket. She longed to hear his voice. She could feel herself falling into that dark place in her head. Thayne could rescue her from drowning in a sea of frustration and doubt with a few well-chosen words. Who would’ve thought that what started out as a single passionate week, followed by a few flirtatious phone calls, would have transformed into a lifeline.
His uncanny ability to sense her moods by just the sound of her voice terrified her. Of course, she could do the same with him.
She’d come to eagerly look forward to their weekly conversations. More than that, she counted on them. Thayne helped her keep her sanity. Most of the time.
Her finger hovered over the screen. One touch and his phone would ring. She would hear his voice.
He’d called three times last week, and she hadn’t picked up. Was that why she hesitated calling now? Because he might recognize what she didn’t want to acknowledge—that her job was eating her up inside.
She tucked the phone beneath her pillow and left her hand there. If he could, he’d call sometime tonight.
One punch on her pillow and Riley curled up on her uninjured side, searching the shapes cast through the room by the night-light. Though she tried, she couldn’t fight the fatigue or the pain pills. She blinked. The grit behind her eyes hurt, but she didn’t want to close them. She hated the moments before she fell asleep.
She hated the moments just before she awoke even more because the dreams wouldn’t leave her alone and the nightmares never stopped.
Tonight would be no different.
A twisted shadow slid down the wall, devoured by the darkness. Riley’s eyelids grew heavy, and she could fight no longer. Little by little, she sank into the oblivion of sleep.
Another shovelful of dirt sprinkled on top of Riley, covering her torso, pinning her arms beside her. The smell of fresh earth embedded itself in her senses.
She sucked in a deep breath. Dirt clung to her mouth. She looked up to the sky, blue and beautiful. It should be raining and cold. She couldn’t die beneath a blue sky.
Suddenly, she was no longer in the grave; she was standing beside the hole, looking down.
She didn’t want to look inside.
Her heart raced with an erratic pounding against her chest. She forced her eyes to peer into the grave.
Below her, Patricia Masters, terrorized, innocent, and dead, stared up at her, accusing. “Why didn’t you save me?”
“I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.” Riley’s eyes stung with frustrated tears, unable to look away from the dead woman’s face.
The vision morphed.
Patricia’s blonde hair turned auburn. An adult’s face transformed into that of a twelve-year-old girl.
Madison. Oh God, it was Madison. Her sister.
Riley screamed.
She jerked up in bed. Her heart wouldn’t slow down. She choked in a shuddering breath.
With a groan, she sagged back into the soft down pillow cradling her head.
One swipe of her hand over her eyes and she knew she wasn’t covered with dirt. She glanced over at the clock. Three forty-five in the morning. She’d slept all of an hour.
She closed her stinging eyes. She should sleep. Her body needed rest. So did her mind.
Breathe in, out. In and out. She lay there for several moments, but her mind burned with the memory. She could see it as clearly as if the kidnapping had happened yesterday.
Like Patricia and O’Neal’s other victims, her sister’s body was in a grave somewhere. Except Madison was still waiting to be found.
Riley couldn’t give up. Not ever. No matter what it took, she would never stop searching until she found Madison. Never.
Fifteen Years Ago
“Madison and Riley Lambert. Get out of bed, girls. The bus will be here in fifteen minutes.”
Madison blinked open her eyes, closing them again at the bright sun piercing through the window slats.
A snore sounded softly beside her just before two knobby knees ground into her back.
“Ow! Get off, Riley,” Madison said, shoving her little sister off the bed. “Why can’t you sleep in your own room?”
Riley hit the carpet with a thud and a groan. “What’d you do that for, Maddy?”
“I told you. It’s Madison. Maddy is for little girls. Like you.”
Madison walked over to the bedroom window and peered outside. She let out a small sigh. Thank goodness he was gone. She’d seen him on her way home from school every day for the last week.
Last night he’d stood below her window.
She hadn’t told her mother. If she did, her mom would cancel the slumber party. Madison would tell her afterward. Until then, she’d just watch out for him.
She was in middle school now. Practically grown up.
Madison waltzed over to the closet and pulled out her new flare jeans and a halter top, then grabbed a scarf to use as a belt and some hoop earrings. She tossed them on the bed.
Riley reached out to touch the jewelry.
“Quit it. I told you to stop touching my things, Riley. You’ll mess them up.”
Her little sister looked down at the ink stains on her hands, but not before tears glistened in her eyes. Madison ignored the twinge of guilt. Maybe last year she and her sister had played Barbies together, but that was a long time ago.
Madison turned on the latest tune from her favorite boy band and danced into the Jack and Jill bathroom she shared with Riley. She opened the drawer.
“Riley! Get in here! Where’s my lip gloss?”
Riley came to the door, biting her lip. “I dropped it on the floor. Flower got it.”
“The dog ate my lip gloss?” Madison wailed. “Can’t you do anything right?”
Madison slammed the door in Riley’s face and locked it. She took out her brush and counted to one hundred as the bristles smoothed her long auburn hair.
Knocks pounded on the door. “Come on, Maddy. I have to get ready, too.”
“No way. I’m getting ready all by myself from now on. And I’m locking my bedroom door so you can’t sneak in at night.”
“Maddy . . . ,” Riley whined. “I get scared in the dark.”
“Too bad. You’re being stupid. Monsters aren’t real. All you’re doing is scaring yourself.”
After all, a girl starting seventh grade knew ghost stories were told to scare you, and unlike her sister, Madison never got scared.
That night, however, Madison Lambert would learn some monsters are very, very real.
CHAPTER FOUR
Four years of medical school, three of residency, and an emergency medicine fellowship could never have prepared Cheyenne for this.
A dungeon—because that’s the only way she could describe the windowless prison she found herself in—was no place to operate.
And yet here she stood, scalpel in hand. The other med students and residents had thought she’d gone crazy signing up for every surgery elective throughout her education, but she’d known coming back to Singing River to practice medicine, she’d be on her own. She’d imagined search and rescue, car accidents, someone on the wrong end of a bull’s temper and no time to transport. Definitely not being kidnapped so she could perform an appendectomy in the middle of nowhere.
Right now she sent up a prayer of thanks for every moment she’d spent in those surgery rotations. She could do this.
But would her makeshift assistant survive without fainting?
She glanced over at him. Ian stood next to the instrument tray, his face pale but his posture determined.
They might actually pull this off.
She
checked her patient. The sedative had taken effect. Cheyenne administered the local anesthetic. No way could she put the woman under with a general. Too risky. She had no one to monitor her vitals. Luckily, during her Emergency Medicine Under Austere Conditions fellowship, she’d learned how flexible medicine could be.
She made the first incision and set to work, letting instinct and training take over. Every so often she glanced at Ian, but he hadn’t fainted yet.
“Retractor,” she ordered.
His eyes grew wide and panicked. She pointed out the instrument, and he handed it to her.
She pushed aside the tissue and revealed the woman’s appendix. Cheyenne froze.
Pink. Perfect. Healthy.
Oh God. What was she supposed to do now?
“Is something wrong, Doctor?” Ian whispered, tone laced with fear.
“Of course not,” Cheyenne lied, her mind racing.
The door creaked open. Adelaide stepped in. “Father says you should be finished by now. He wants a report. Can I tell him Bethany’s going to be fine?” Her trembling voice left no doubt Adelaide prayed Cheyenne could say just that.
So, Cheyenne finally knew her patient’s name. “Bethany would have a better chance if you’d let me take her to a hospital.”
“She can’t leave.” Adelaide took one step toward the makeshift operating table, her expression desperate. “Please, Doctor. Father must know. Will Bethany recover?”
“Yes, she’ll be fine.”
“Thank goodness.” Adelaide turned to leave, then paused. “Father wishes to see her appendix,” she said, tone apologetic.
Cheyenne’s gut knotted. “I need to concentrate, Adelaide. Come back later, but please think about what I said before. My father can help us all.”
Ian’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. The woman bit her lip and nodded before locking them inside the room.
Cheyenne’s gaze lingered on the steel door for a moment. Then she stared down at the healthy tissue, a plan forming in her mind. During most abdominal surgeries, the appendix was removed, since it served no function. She’d follow procedure and damage the organ so it appeared diseased. Giving in to her captors would buy her time. Time to convince Adelaide that she had a choice.
