But those old attacks had nothing to do with his hunt. As reluctant as he was to admit it, the best chance of finding her, barring a hospital report or getting lucky on a car she’d stolen, was to pick up her trail again at her next kill. Unless she was dead. And he knew in his bones she wasn’t.
And whether she was in a cooling-off period or not, it was almost certain that she would kill again. Whatever drove her, she had been on her bloody mission for a long time.
He stared out at the rolling waves, the liquid gold of the melting sun, and felt the coarse sand under his fingers. Then he pushed himself up to his feet.
Somehow it would have to stop.
From the bluffs, she watches.
She follows along the narrow and sandy trail, keeping back from the cliff’s edge, as far below her Roarke walks along the water.
She has followed him from Blythe.
Not literally; that would be far too risky. He is too astute not to pick up that he is being tailed on the road.
His rental car is a Camry; she has a master key for the make. So while Roarke had slept fitfully in her old house, her old room, she’d checked the GPS of the car, and found several destinations programmed into the device: Ironwood Prison — meaning he’d been to see that vermin Trent, her non-uncle. The police department in Palm Desert — meaning he must be thinking of asking questions about the group home counselor she’d taken care of so very many years ago now, after he and his sociopathic teen protégé had forced their way into her room one night, thinking that as the youngest female in the home she’d be easy prey.
She could tell Roarke all about it, how she’d fought back with everything in her, which turned out to be much more than she’d ever expected. The counselor had fled the premises for fear of discovery and then testified she’d attacked and tried to kill the older boy, whom she’d beaten into unconsciousness. For which she’d been sent up to Youth Authority, California’s maximum security juvenile facility, for three years.
By the time she’d got out, her fighting skills had improved immeasurably. The first thing she’d done upon release was make sure the counselor could never be a problem for anyone ever again.
The last address in Roarke’s GPS was her cousin Erin. So this is where she has followed him, driving her own route down to San Diego and the campus, in the truck she took from the cement plant. The battered, dusty truck is naturally inconspicuous on the desert roads; she has passed many such trucks on her rare forays out of the Joshua Tree cabin. And there has been another point in its favor: she doubts the traffickers from the cement plant are cooperating with authorities in any way. They aren’t about to report a stolen vehicle, if they even know or care it is gone.
She is still processing the oddity of seeing Roarke with Erin. Erin has grown into her looks, no longer the awkward and coltish, paralyzingly shy girl that Cara remembers from a far, far different life.
She is sure she knows what they were talking about. When had been the last time Erin had seen her, where she might be now…
Roarke is trying to find her, going first to that scum Trent, and then Erin. It is not an unreasonable plan. She has not contacted Erin over the years but she has always been aware of where she is, what she is doing. Erin is perhaps the only living being she feels any pull of connection to. Before, briefly, the boy Jason Sebastian.
She watches Roarke on the sand below her, and she listens to the whispers of the wind and tide and rising moon. They had led her to the boy, and the boy had led her to the nest of monsters, and Roarke had followed her path and had been there to save her that last bloody night. One clear step after another, a perfect trail.
Now Roarke is following the same sort of trail, and it will lead him to her.
The night at the house he had told her he’d gone into law enforcement because of her, because of the night, that it had set him on the track of hunting monsters. They are the same that way. Different, because he hunts and has never been hunted. But the same.
He is the only one who has ever seen her. The only one who understood from the start who she once was, what she does.
He saved her life, under the full moon. Now he is after her to arrest her.
And that, she will never let happen.
Never.
On the beach, Roarke sat up suddenly as he caught an arcing gleam against the water, backlit by the sun, and then a series of identical arcs, in perfect, fluid rhythm. His heart flipped as he realized he was looking at a pod of bottlenose dolphins, their sleek, streamlined bodies leaping and plunging through the swells of the surf, silver flashes against the dying sun.
And then, not knowing why, he looked back toward the cliffs. They loomed, silent… and empty.
He climbed the trail in rapidly encroaching darkness, knowing full well he had stayed too long past the setting of the sun. Not the smartest move on his part. One false step and he would tumble to his death on the rocks below. He had a small Maglite on his keychain but it would be next to useless in the deep blackness of the night. He brushed his hand along the rock wall beside him, and tried to tamp down a growing anxiety as he concentrated on finding his way up in the shadows.
He made the top of the cliff with his heart racing, not just from the climb. He turned back to look at the vast and slowly rolling carpet of ocean below him, thundering softly against the shore. Then he wound his way along the sandy trail through the silky whispers of the pines.
As he turned back toward the trail, a twig snapped and he spun, his weapon already in his hands.
His eyes searched the shadows… but he saw nothing.
He reached his car with no idea what could have had him so spooked. He stood and looked out at the spiky silhouettes of pines against the blue-black sky. The beach had put him in mind of the Sebastians, the father and son with whom Cara had taken refuge in the middle of the killing spree leading up to the anniversary of the massacre of her family. They had found her on the beach, not knowing she’d cut the throat of a trucker in a rest stop bathroom just hours before.
His thoughts focused on Jason Sebastian, the five-year old she had abducted. Or saved, depending on your point of view. He was the most recent witness to anything Cara had done or thought or planned.
Roarke had questioned the boy about Cara’s possible whereabouts, but he had to be entirely honest with himself: he had no particular skills for extracting information from a five-year old. Maybe the boy knew better than Roarke how to say what Roarke wanted to know.
He was restless, wired. It was barely 8:00 p.m., and the Sebastians lived in San Luis Obispo, en route to San Francisco. He could stay where he was and get a hotel and pace the room for the rest of the night. But from San Diego, now that it was after rush hour, the Sebastians were about a five-hour drive up the coast.
He looked out on the softly shifting moonlit pines, then pulled open the driver’s door, dropped into the car and drove.
Chapter Seven
He woke in another motel, with a completely different landscape out the window: green rolling hills and twisted oak trees.
The Sebastians owned an olive ranch outside San Luis Obispo in central California, for Roarke’s money about the most gorgeous stretch of California in existence. In a state where knockout scenery was the norm, that was saying a lot.
He’d driven five hours the night before, which put him into SLO about half-past midnight. Far too late for a casual drop-in, but he’d phoned Sebastian en route and asked to see Jason the next morning. Sebastian had agreed.
Roarke drove in from the motel as the sun was burning off the coastal mist. The olive ranch was just a few miles inland, a huge spread, rambling over the hills, with the sturdy little trees lined up in rows, not much taller than the grapevines that comprised the area’s famous vineyards. Olives were an old crop in California but the gourmet and organic food craze had launched a whole new demand for artisanal olive oil. Roarke suspected that the Sebastian’s “ranch” would more aptly be called a multimillion dollar agribusiness, and
as he drove up the winding road toward the Sebastian home, he felt a tightness in his chest that he was aware was alpha-male competitiveness. He stopped in front of the old Spanish-style ranch house beside a late-model Tundra parked in the drive, and took a deep breath to settle himself before he got out and moved toward the porch. Mark Sebastian stood waiting for him.
Sebastian was in his mid-thirties, dark blond and brown eyes, fit, tan and attractive in the casual way the wealthy and successful in California managed without seeming to spare a thought for it. But a genuine person, Roarke had to admit, a wounded recent divorcé who had succumbed to Cara Lindstrom’s unusual charms.
He pushed the front door open for Roarke and Roarke instantly felt the underlying tension. Neither man would ever say it, but it was silently understood that Sebastian responded to Roarke’s requests because it kept him connected to Cara, and because Roarke was probably the only human being on the planet who would understand that. She had been Sebastian’s lover for three days at most, but her imprint on him would last a long time.
He had been no use in terms of evidence that would lead to her, though. The story she had given him had been completely false, and he had seen only what she wanted him to see.
His son Jason was a force, a quiet tornado of a boy who, like many children of addicts and alcoholics, observed and understood far more about the adult world around him than most boys his age. Young as he was, he seemed to have a better grasp on Cara Lindstrom than his father ever had.
“Special Agent Roarke!” he shouted as he ran into the room and stopped on a dime, two feet in front of Roarke, looking him over. “FBI Special Agent Roarke,” he repeated.
“Hello, Jason,” Roarke said, and felt a disquieting warmth in his chest at the boy’s enthusiasm. Roarke was more than three years divorced himself and wasn’t sure that children of his own were in his future, something he never thought anything about… except lately, in Jason Sebastian’s compelling presence. He sat on a nearby ottoman to put himself at the boy’s height.
“I wanted to talk to you some more, is that okay?”
“About Leila,” Jason stated. It was the name Cara had given the Sesbastians, undoubtedly one of many aliases, but the only name Jason knew her by.
“Yes. I wondered if…” Roarke paused, and surprised himself with his next words. “If you had heard anything from her.”
The boy looked at him, clear gray eyes. “Uh huh. She left me a dolphin last night.”
Both Roarke and Mark Sebastian were electrified. “What?” “Jason, what?” The men overlapped each other. Roarke’s throat was suddenly so dry he could barely swallow.
“Dolphin,” Jason said impatiently. “She came and left a dolphin.”
The men trouped after Jason into his bedroom, a huge room for a five-year old, with a bed area, a TV and computer area, a play area, a low table for art. Jason stopped and pointed.
There was a stuffed dolphin on the bed, a big plush toy. Like the kind you could get at Sea World, or any number of souvenir shops — if you happened to be in San Diego.
For a moment Roarke was back on the beach, watching leaping flashes of silver against the setting sun.
“It’s not his,” Mark Sebastian said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
Roarke crouched to the boy. “Did you see Leila?” The name was unfamiliar in his mouth. “Did she talk to you?”
Jason shook his head.
“How do you know the dolphin is from her?”
Jason shrugged. “It was outside,” he said. “On the swing.” Irrefutable logic.
“And how do you know it’s from her?” Roarke repeated.
“Because it is,” Jason said.
“Jesus Christ,” Sebastian said under his breath. “She was here.”
She’s alive, Roarke thought. She’s alive.
The two men strode out of the house, off the back porch. Roarke saw it immediately, a twisted tree that looked as if it had been there forever. A sturdy rope swing hung from a thick horizontal branch.
“Right there,” Jason said, importantly, now caught up in the men’s excitement. “It was there.”
There was no fence around this part of the property. The house was set on the rolling hills and the wilderness came right up to the house. Roarke scanned the hills, searching between the gnarled olive trees, as if he would be able to see her.
“She’s following me,” he told Sebastian. “She must have followed me up from San Diego.”
And while he’d been sleeping two miles away in a motel, she’d been right here.
Sebastian looked alarmed, and conflicted, parental protectiveness wrestling with something less definable in his face.
“You said she wouldn’t come after Jason,” he said.
No, you said that, Roarke thought, but didn’t argue the point. “I don’t think she’s come after Jason. She left him a stuffed toy.”
“Why?”
Roarke thought of the dolphins, the joyous arcs against the swells of waves. They had put him in mind of Jason, himself.
“Maybe she was just thinking of him.”
And then something else occurred to him.
She wanted me to know she’s out there. She followed me here last night and knew where I’d be going in the morning and she put the dolphin here so I would know she’d been here.
Was that really true? Or some wild speculation of his own?
But the dolphin couldn’t be coincidence. And he had felt something on the bluffs. He’d felt — not alone.
Oh, yeah. That’s scientific proof, all right.
He was jolted from his thoughts by Sebastian’s agitated voice. The father was staring at him tensely. “Agent Roarke, I need to know if my son is safe. Any input you have on the subject would be appreciated.”
Roarke stifled a flash of irritation, kept his voice even. “I don’t think that she’s after Jason. But I would take all precautions until…”
“Until you catch her?” Sebastian said, and Roarke’s breath stilled. “Is that going to be soon?”
Roarke didn’t know how to answer that.
He went through several varations of questions with Jason, but the boy was adamant that he had not received any other gifts or messages from Cara until the dolphin appeared.
“If you hear from her, or see her, you’ll let your dad know right away, right, sport?”
“Uh huh,” Jason said, but wasn’t looking at Roarke. Roarke didn’t know if that meant he was bored or upset or lying. He crouched again to look Jason in the eyes.
“Did Leila ever tell you about special places that she has? Places she likes to go? Or a place she said she would take you, sometime?”
“She likes the sky and the wind and the sand,” Jason said. “And storms, she likes storms.”
“She likes the outdoors,” Roarke said.
“Uh huh.”
“But was there any place she showed you on a map, or a place with a name?”
Jason frowned and shrugged. “She likes the beach. And the mountains. And butterflies.”
That narrows it all down.
“Okay, Jason. You just keep talking to your dad, okay?” Roarke glanced at Sebastian, and the father nodded.
Then Roarke’s eyes fell on the stuffed toy, and something tugged at his mind.
“Did you and Leila ever talk about dolphins?”
Jason considered this, shook his head. “No.”
“Did you ever see a dolphin when you were with her? In the ocean, or in a store?”
“Uh uh.”
“So… why do you think she left you a dolphin?”
Jason shrugged. “Dophins are awesome.”
Roarke stood, and felt a rush of certainty. No, the dolphin isn’t some special message to Jason. It’s a message to me.
Chapter Eight
The team looked up simultaneously from the conference table to see Roarke walk into the conference room. He hadn’t called in from the road to tell them where he was, but after leaving the Sebasti
an ranch, he’d driven straight back up to the city.
“Boss. Weren’t expecting you,” Epps said. “Any luck?”
“In a weird way.” The weirdest way possible. The trip he’d taken that seemed only to yield clues on a twenty-five year old case that wasn’t his to investigate had resulted in not a trail to Cara, but to Cara herself.
Epps was staring at him. “You found Lindstrom?”
“She found me,” Roarke said.
He filled them in about the dolphin toy. Even as he was recounting it he knew that it sounded absurd, no kind of proof at all. Jones was looking perplexed. “Because of a stuffed dolphin? I don’t get why you think it was her.”
“It was her,” Epps said. “Of course it was her.” He looked at Roarke. “She’s alive. And she’s after you.”
“I wouldn’t say she’s after me,” Roarke said.
“What would you say?” the agent demanded.
Roarke found he didn’t have any immediate answer, so he just shook his head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”
They all sat in silence. Roarke looked at the white board, at the police sketch he knew so well by now. Sunglasses, turtleneck, those fine, carved features.
“This is how we catch her,” Epps said suddenly, with a tension Roarke recognized as excitement, and for a moment he had no idea what Epps was talking about. “We tail you and wait for her to show.”
Roarke felt a sudden sinking in the pit of his stomach. “That’s if she isn’t three states away by now,” he said.
Epps looked at him strangely. “She isn’t.”
He was right, of course. Roarke didn’t know what Cara was doing following him, but he knew if that’s what she was doing, she wasn’t about to stop.
“What does she want?” Singh asked. Concern was grave in her voice. “Are you in danger?”
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