Ultraviolet

by Nancy Bush

  I responded with a total lack of enthusiasm. I told her I couldn’t come. I was sorry, but I just…couldn’t. She said it was okay. She understood I’d had a tough week. She didn’t mind. She would bring some food by later in the afternoon. She hung up before I could argue with her. I called back, but she sounded remarkably cheery and determined that it was okay. Things had changed, she said, sounding slightly mysterious. She would tell me about it later when she stopped by.

  I got in my car and drove directly to Dwayne’s. I’d spoken to him several times while I’d cocooned myself and he’d talked about the cases beginning to percolate. I’d tried to keep my mind on them, but honestly, I was currently simply not interested.

  To my consternation, he was loading up his surveillance car with an overnight bag when I arrived at his cabana. “What’s this?” I asked.

  “I’m heading to Seattle to see my sister. No, I don’t want to go. Yes, I’m a masochist. Yes, my stepmama will be there and will find a way to eviscerate me.” He slid me a look and a smile. “But I’m a little good at that, too.”

  His drawl was deep today. I had an insane desire to throw myself in his arms and demand he take me to his bedroom and make love until the damned holiday was over.

  Instead, I said, “Drive carefully. There are idiots out there.”

  He said, “Tell Cynthia hello.”

  I said, “Cynthia’s coming to my house and bringing food. Something’s happened. She sounds…happy, though.”

  He said, “Must not have to do with family.”

  And then he turned to me and for a moment I held my breath. We shared a look. That kind of scary awareness that sometimes we act on, sometimes we don’t. I thought he was going to touch my face, or my hair, or kiss me, or something. He settled for a good-bye hug. I wondered if I held on a little longer, would something shift between us? I suspected it would.

  I let him go.

  Forty minutes later I was through a cold shower, dressed in my traditional Thanksgiving sweats, wringing water from my hair, when my doorbell pealed.

  Expecting Cynthia, I was surprised to find Booth on my doorstep. Booth with a row of four earrings on the edge of one ear. Booth with shaggy, unkempt hair and an equally unkempt beard. My twin looks a lot like me, same hazel eyes, same light brown hair. He’s always been more driven, more serious, more intense than I, but now he looked downright guy-tough and scary, exhibiting that kind of gangish, urban, dangerous aura that’s so popular these days, and which I don’t quite get.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “What happened to your eye?” he asked, to which I shrugged.

  Binkster came over, wiggling and excited, but it was a bit tempered. Not as wildly effusive as she can be. I didn’t blame her.

  Booth bent to pet her and I took it as a good sign as he’d been less than thrilled to learn I had a dog when Binks first landed on my doorstep. The extra attention garnered him a quick doggie lick on the lips. “That’s huge,” I told him as I closed the door behind him. “She doesn’t give out kisses to just anyone.”

  Booth wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She have all her shots?”

  “Except rabies. I kind of took a stand on that one. Don’t think it’s necessary.”

  Booth actually smiled.

  “What brings you here?” I asked.

  “It’s Thanksgiving.”

  “Like that’s something we care about.”

  Booth sank onto my couch. He seemed tired, yet pent-up at the same time. I decided right then and there that working undercover for long periods of time is detrimental to one’s health. “Cynthia said we were meeting at your place.”

  “Cynthia,” I repeated. Not your friend Cynthia. Not that friend of yours who owns the art gallery Cynthia. Just Cynthia. “I didn’t know you knew her that well.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’ve never known her to play the ‘let’s get the family together’ card before,” I said, watching him. “Is Sharona coming by, too?”

  “Sharona and I broke up,” he said.

  My shoulders sagged. “Over your undercover assignment?”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it, Jane.” He narrowed his gaze on me. “I talked to Vince Larrabee about you.”

  “If you’re going to start in with all the ‘you can’t do the job’ bullshit, save it.”

  “What do I know?” Booth said with a shrug of his shoulders.

  This was so unlike him that I stared. I asked him a few questions about what he’d been up to, but he said it involved drugs, gangs and a seamy underbelly of life that he didn’t really want to go into.

  Cynthia showed up about an hour later and Booth and I helped her carry sacks and trays of food inside. She pulled out a couple of bottles of wine, chattering in a way I found faintly disturbing. She wasn’t acting like herself at all. Her friend/chef had prepared everything in advance. The turkey was ready to pop into the oven, which she did with a flourish, shutting the oven door with her hip. In a gray skirt and sweater, and silver chunky jewelry, she made me feel pretty damn low-class in my sweats.

  “Did you lose the memo on the dress code?” I groused.

  She laughed merrily. Now I really stared. “Cynthia” and “merrily” don’t go together. And then I saw the way she looked at Booth from under her lashes, and I read the faint smile on his lips.

  It was like a zing of energy shot across the room.

  I was horrified. “Oh no. You’re not—”

  Booth said, “I walked into the Black Swan one afternoon.”

  Cynthia sat down on the couch beside him, her eyes all over him. “It was lust at first sight.”

  “What about Sharona?”

  “She broke it off, Jane,” Booth replied. “I didn’t.”

  “But…I’m sorry…you were…so in love.” They were freaking me out. Nobody could change that fast. Nobody.

  “Her ex came back into her life,” Booth said with a trace of bitterness. “Criminal defense attorney. Just like her. Being undercover, that’s just been an excuse.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. I hadn’t realized until this moment that I’d depended on Booth and Sharona’s relationship. Believed it was the bedrock of true love.

  Cynthia and Booth both looked at me. I couldn’t come up with an appropriate response. I don’t know how other people feel about their friends getting together with members of their family, but yikes. It looked bad to me.

  “Maybe I need a drink,” I said and turned toward the kitchen.

  My cell phone buzzed. I snatched it up like a lifesaver. Something to rescue me from the terrible complications of life.

  Please, please, let it be Dwayne, saying he’s turned around.

  “Hey, Jane!” Chuck’s voice boomed. “I bought your cottage! Signed the agreement last night. I’m gonna be your landlord. Woohoo! What do you think about that!”

  ONE BY ONE, THEY’LL DIE…

  Years ago, wild child Jessie Brentwood vanished from St. Elizabeth’s High School. Most in Jessie’s tight circle of friends believed she simply ran away. Few suspected that Jessie was hiding a shocking secret—one that brought her into the crosshairs of a vicious killer…

  UNTIL THERE’S NO ONE LEFT…

  Two decades pass before a body is unearthed on school grounds and Jessie’s old friends reunite to talk. Most are sure that the body is Jessie’s, that the mystery of what happened to her has finally been solved. But soon, Jessie’s friends each begin to die in horrible, freak accidents that defy explanation…

  BUT HER…

  Becca Sutcliff has been haunted for years by unsettling visions of Jessie, certain her friend met with a grisly end. Now the latest deaths have her rattled. Becca can sense that an evil force is shadowing her too, waiting for just the right moment to strike. She feels like she is going crazy. Is it all a coincidence—or has Jessie’s killer finally returned to finish what was started all those years ago?

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek
at

  WICKED GAME,

  by

  Lisa Jackson and Nancy Bush

  Coming in February 2009!

  St. Elizabeth’s campus, February, 1999, midnight…

  The girl rushed headlong through the maze, stumbling, grazed across the face by a poking branch. She cried out softly in surprise, clapped a hand to her cheek. Blood welled against her fingers.

  This was wrong. Impossibly wrong.

  It shouldn’t be this way! Couldn’t!

  Glancing behind her, she listened hard, deafened by her own heartbeats. She wasn’t lost. She knew where she was. She knew the twists and turns that would take her to the maze’s center and out again.

  But she felt fear—true fear—for the first time in her life, because he knew about her. How could he? How could he? When she’d spent so many years—her entire life, it seemed!—learning the truth about herself.

  And now he was here, following her, brought to the maze by her own invitation.

  But things weren’t going right. Not like she’d planned. Somehow the hunter had become the hunted.

  He couldn’t know…unless…he was one of them.

  She heard something. A noise…a sibilant hiss…

  What was that?

  She froze, hands up, as if to ward off danger, her body quivering, poised on the balls of her feet, panting. He was here! He’d entered the maze. She could hear him now, easily, as he was making no effort to disguise his approach. Was he alone? She thought he was alone. He should be alone. She’d set this up so he would be alone, but now she didn’t know. Didn’t know…

  And that’s where the fear came in, because she always knew. That was her gift. She always knew. That’s why they hadn’t been able to keep the truth from her. That’s why she’d found out who they were and who she was, even though they’d tried hard to keep her from learning.

  For her own safety, they’d said.

  And now…now she was beginning to understand what they’d meant.

  She strained to listen, her heart pounding, her fear mounting. He was walking through the maze. Unhurried. Undeterred. Making all the right turns. Were there more than one set of footsteps? Someone else? She couldn’t be sure.

  And she couldn’t stay where she was.

  As stealthily as possible, she edged onward, toward the center of the maze, toward the statue. She’d always been slightly leery of the ghostly Madonna, but now she wanted with all her heart to reach it. Her need to find it was like a hunger, something she could almost cry out for if she dared on this dark night. Sanctuary. Safety.

  Or so she hoped.

  Fear filled her veins with ice. Paralyzing. Cold. Freezing her so thoroughly it felt as if her blood might solidify is she ceased moving.

  She rounded a final corner and the statue of Mary suddenly appeared, arms uplifted, greeting her in pale white, accompanied by the shiver of the branches and the musty smell of dead leaves and mud. The girl stumbled and a tiny stick snapped beneath her shoe. She glanced backward, crouched, poised like a hunted animal. Behind her, in the maze, he came onward, steadily. She knelt at the statue and mouthed, “Mother Mary, save my soul…”

  She hadn’t been good.

  But she wasn’t all bad, either.

  Behind her, she heard him move ever forward. No rush, no rush at all.

  He knew he had her.

  She kept silently, desperately praying.

  Mother Mary save my soul.

  She can’t help you. You have no soul to save, he said.

  Or, did he? Was that the voice inside her head?

  Desperately she thought, I am sixteen years old and I am going to die.

  Head pounding, heart beating wildly, her ears filled with the roar of the ocean, the battering of the sea against distant cliffs…though she was nowhere near the ocean. But it had always been this way. She had always heard these oddly familiar sounds, always sensed a remote place.

  How stupid she was to have goaded him—teased him. Dared him.

  What had she been thinking?

  That was the problem with her. Not only could she see the future, she sometimes tried to change it.

  And now he was going to kill her. But because that could not be—simply could not be—she dug her teeth into her bottom lip and surreptitiously dragged a small knife from her pocket.

  She’d been foolish to lure him here, to let him follow her, to tease him into this meeting. He was a danger to her, and he was relentless. There would be no satisfactory ending. No loving reconciliation.

  With all her strength she prayed for her life, her soul. Above her pulsing heart she heard the hunter’s footsteps. Nearer. Relentlessly closer. Slowly she rose to her feet and turned to meet him. She knew she was in for the fight of her life. She must be strong. She couldn’t hesitate.

  Then suddenly his dark figure appeared, hovering near the wet and waving laurel branches. Words trembled on her lips. Questions he could answer but wouldn’t. She knew that.

  “I will kill you,” she warned him harshly, and was answered by the glimmer of his deadly, self-satisfied smile in the darkness.

  He knows he has me. The creep’s enjoying this.

  No way!

  Lunging forward, she drove her knife toward him with all her strength.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Her gaze clashed with his…and strong fingers bent her wrist back. Pain burned through her muscles. Fear congealed in her heart. His breath a hiss through his teeth, he snapped her wrist back and tore the knife from her nerveless fingers. Before she could scream, he thrust the blade deftly between her ribs. “No more.” he rasped.

  She cried out. The night swirled around her, a kaleidoscope of pain and regret. She crumpled to the ground at the feet of the statue, aware that her attacker was staring down at her, his breath excited gasps.

  She lay still as death at the feet of the Madonna and thought: I am a sacrifice.

  Then the darkness descended.

  St. Elizabeth’s campus, February, 2009, midnight…

  Kyle Baskin held the flashlight under his chin, beaming its illumination upward, highlighting the planes and hollows of his face.

  “Bloody Bones entered the house,” he whispered in his deepest, most ghoulish voice. His eyes darted around the circle of boys seated on the ground at his feet, their scared faces turned up earnestly. “Bloody Bones crossed to the stairs. Bloody Bones looked up and could see the children through the walls.”

  “Like X-ray vision?” Mikey Ferguson squeaked.

  “Shut up,” his older brother, James, whispered harshly.

  The branches overhead shivered. There was a moon, but it wasn’t visible over the height of the maze’s hedge. Only the faintest trickle of light wavered through the leaves.

  “I’m on the first step.”

  Kyle hesitated for maximum effect. He gazed across the beam of the flashlight at the kids he and James had brought to the center of the maze. They were supposed to be babysitting, but that was boring as hell. “I’m on the second step.” He drew a shaking breath and said slowly, “I’m on…the…third step…”

  Mikey shot a look of terror over his shoulder and edged closer to James, whose smirk was fully visible to Kyle.

  Tyler, that little piss-ant, started to snivel.

  “I’m on…the…fourth…step…”

  “How many steps are there?” Mikey cried, clutching at James’ arm.

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “I wanna go home!” Tyler wailed.

  “I’m on…the fifth step!”

  “I’m calling my dad.” Preston, the overweight prick, clambered to his feet, his normally toneless voice quaking a bit.

  “The phone’s in the car, moron.”

  “I’m on the sixth step. I’m on the seventh step, I’m on the eighth step!” Kyle declared in a rush.

  The boys leapt to their feet as if yanked by strings, crying, heads jerking around, searching vainly for escape, but the hedges loomed, branches sticking out li
ke skeletal arms.

  Kyle’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m on the ninth step…”

  James started to worry a little. They couldn’t have these dumbasses charging off in all directions in the dark. “Sid-down!”

  “I’m on the tenth step…and now I’m walking down the hall…I’m outside your door…I’m pushing it open…cree—eeaa—kkk!!!”

  It sounded sorta dumb, the way Kyle did it, but it sure as hell did the trick. The kids started running around like Keystone Kops, shying from the dirty old statue of that lady, screaming and blubbering. James and Kyle started laughing. They couldn’t help themselves. That ratcheted the kids to near hysteria, and Mikey stumbled right into the statue—the idiot—and knocked the damn thing to one side. The bulldozers had been at the site. The school was being razed and they were taking down the maze as well. That’s why Kyle had come up with the idea in the first place. One last spooky hurrah where they could scare the snot out of the little kids.

  “Moron, you knocked over the old lady,” James said in a long-suffering tone.

  He went to pick up his younger brother while Kyle corralled Tyler and Preston, who were crying like the babies they were. Mikey had practically turned to a statue himself. He stood frozen, staring. He slowly lifted one hand as Kyle approached and pointed toward a mound of earth that had humped up when the statue tilted.

  “Bloody Bones,” he whispered, his finger quivering.

  James looked in the direction he was pointing. From the ground a skeletal human hand lay upturned, its bones both dirty and oddly white, its fingers reaching upward, as if for help.

  James’ eyes bugged out. He started shrieking like a banshee and couldn’t quit. Little Mikey grabbed his older brother’s hand and hauled them both out of the maze, the rest of the gang thundering behind them, the touch of Bloody Bones feathering their napes as they ran for their lives.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Ifeel it…that change in the atmosphere, subtle but strong, like the slight tremor of a gentle earthquake with its aftershocks. I know what it means.

  I’m being summoned to her.