After Caroline

by Kay Hooper

  “Keep watching, Cassie. When you see the house, look for a sign. The house has a name.”

  “There—there’s the house.” Her voice quickened. “It has a sign near the door. The sign says … ‘retirement fund.’”

  Logan blinked, then glanced at Paul, who mouthed, “Typical.”

  Logan turned back to Cassie. “Talk to me, Cassie. Is he stopping the car? Is this house where he’s going?”

  Cassie said, “Wait … we’re going past it Oh. Oh, I see. There’s … a boathouse. I think it’s a boathouse. I see…”

  “What, Cassie? What do you see?”

  “It’s … a weathervane on top. On the roof. I can see it moving in the breeze. I can … hear it creaking.”

  “Hear it? Cassie, has he stopped the car?”

  She seemed startled. “Oh. Oh, yes, he has. The lights are out. I can see the shape of the boathouse, the darkness of it. But … he knows his way. He’s … he’s getting her out of the back. Carrying her into the boathouse. She’s so little. She hardly weighs anything at all. Ohhhh”

  “Cassie—”

  “She’s so afraid ….”

  “Cassie, listen to me. You can only help her by paying attention to what he’s doing. Where he’s going.” He looked at his partner. “Where the hell are they?”

  “Almost there. Five minutes.”

  “Goddammit, she doesn’t have five minutes!”

  “They’re moving as fast as they can, Bob.”

  Cassie was breathing quickly. “Something’s wrong.”

  Logan stared at her. “What?”

  “I don’t know. He feels … different about this one. Sly, somehow, and almost … amused. He means to give the cops something new. He—oh. Oh, God. He has a knife. He wants to just cut her open—” Her voice was thready with grief and horror. “He wants to … he wants to … taste…”

  “Cassie, listen to me. Get out Get out, now.”

  Logan’s partner stared forward. “Bob, if she stays with him, she might be able to help us.”

  Logan shook his head, never taking his eyes off Cassie. “If she stays with him, and he kills the girl, it could pull her in too deep, into his frenzy. We’d lose them both. Cassie? Cassie, get out. Now. Do it.” He reached over and plucked the tissue-paper rose from her fingers.

  Cassie drew a shuddering breath, then slowly opened her eyes. They were so pale a gray, they were like feint shadows on ice, strikingly surrounded by inky black lashes. Dark smudges of exhaustion lay under those eyes, and her voice shook with strain when she said “Bob? Why did you—”

  Logan poured hot coffee from a thermos and handed her the cup. “Drink this.”

  “But—”

  “You helped us all you could, Cassie. The rest is up to my people.”

  She sipped the hot coffee, her eyes on the rose he still held. “Tell them to hurry,” she whispered.

  But it was nearly ten long, long minutes later before the report came in, and Paul scowled at Cassie.

  “The boathouse was empty. You missed the fork in the driveway. One branch led to the boathouse, and the other led to a cove less than fifty yards away, where a cabin cruiser was tied up. He was gone by the time we found it. The little girl was still warm.”

  Logan quickly caught the cup that fell from Cassie’s fingers and said, “Paul, shut up. She did her best—”

  “Her best? She fucking missed it, Bob! There was no weathervane on top of the boathouse—there was a flag flying above the boat That’s what she saw moving in the wind. And the creaking she heard was the boat in the water. She couldn’t tell the difference?”

  “It was dark,” Cassie whispered. Tears filled her eyes but didn’t fall. Her shaking hands twisted together in her lap, and she breathed as though struggling against an oppressive weight crushing her lungs.

  Paul said, “Five minutes. We wasted five minutes going the wrong way, and that little girl’s dead because of it What am I supposed to tell her parents? That our famous psychic blew it?”

  “Paul, shut your goddamned mouth!” Logan looked back at Cassie. “It wasn’t your fault, Cassie.” His voice was certain.

  But his eyes told her something else.

  Her own gaze fell, and she started at the tissue rose he held, its delicate perfection emphasized by the blunt strength of his cop’s hand.

  Such beauty to have been created by a monster.

  Sick fear coiled in the pit of her stomach and crawled on its belly through her mind, and she was barely aware of speaking aloud when she said huskily, “I can’t do it I can’t do this anymore. I can’t”

  “Cassie—”

  “I can’t. I can’t I can’t.” It was like a mantra to ward off the unbearable, and she whispered it over and over as she closed her eyes and shut out the mocking sight of the paper flower that now lived in her nightmares.

  Ryan’s Bluff, North Carolina

  February 16, 1999

  As towns went, it didn’t have much to boast of. It was about as broad as it was long, with more acreage than buildings. There was a scattering of churches and car lots and small stores that didn’t call themselves boutiques but charged enough for their plain little dresses to be considered just that There was a Main Street with a grassy town square, enough banks to make a body wonder where all the riches were, and a drugstore so old, it still had a soda fountain.

  Of course, there was also a computer store on Main Street, as well as two video stores and a satellite dish dealership, and just two miles away from the center of town was the very latest thing in movie multiplexes.

  So Ryan’s Bluff was staring the coming millennium right in the eye.

  It was also, on most levels, a small Southern town, so the politics were largely conservative, church on Sunday was the norm, you couldn’t buy liquor by the drink, and until the previous year the same sheriff had been voted in at every election since 1970.

  In 1998 his son got the job.

  It was, therefore, a predictable town by and large. Change came as reluctantly as heaven admitted sinners.

  There were few surprises, and even fewer shocks.

  That’s what Ben Ryan would have said. What he believed, after a lifetime of knowing this place and with generations of family history at his back. This town and its inhabitants could never surprise him.

  That’s what he believed.

  “Judge? Someone to see you.”

  Ben frowned at the intercom. “Who is it, Janice?”

  “Says her name is Cassie Neill. She doesn’t have an appointment, but asks if you can spare a few minutes. She says it’s important”

  Ben’s very efficient secretary was not easily persuaded by people without appointments, so he was surprised to hear a note almost of appeal in Janice’s voice. Curious, he said, “Send her in.”

  He was still jotting down notes and didn’t look up immediately when die door opened. But even before Janice announced “Miss Neill, Judge,” he felt the change in the room. It was as if an electrical current had been set loose, making his skin tingle and the fine hair on his body stir. He looked up and rose to his feet in the same instant, noting Janice’s disconcerted expression as she gazed warily at the visitor.

  They were all three disconcerted.

  The visitor was functioning under an enormous level of stress. That was his first realization. He was accustomed to weighing people, and this young woman weighed in as someone carrying a burden too heavy for her.

  She was of average height but too thin by a good twenty pounds, a feet obvious even under the bulky sweater she wore. She might have been pretty if her face hadn’t been so thin. Her head was bowed a bit, as if her attention were focused entirely on the floor, and her shoulder-length, straight black hair swept forward as if to shelter her face, the long bangs all but hiding her eyes.

  Then she looked at him through those bangs, a quick, surprised glance darting warily upward, and he caught his breath. Her eyes were amazing—large, dark-lashed, and a shade of gray so pale and clear, t
hey were hypnotic. And haunted.

  Ben had seen suffering before, but what he saw in this woman’s eyes was something new in his experience.

  He found himself coming around his desk toward her. “Miss Neill. I’m Ben Ryan.” His normal speaking voice had softened, so much so that the uncharacteristic gentleness startled him.

  Something else startled him. Ben was a Southern lawyer, a one-time judge, and had been for years involved in politics at the local and state levels; shaking hands with strangers was as natural to him as breathing, and sticking out his hand during an introduction was automatic. Yet somehow this woman not only managed to elude shaking hands with him, she did it so smoothly and with such perfect, practiced timing that there was nothing obvious in the avoidance of physical contact, and nothing at all awkward. He was not left with his hand hanging in the air, and was conscious of no slight

  She simply circumvented the gesture by moving promptly toward his visitor’s chair and glancing casually around at his office. “Judge Ryan.” Her voice was low and beautifully modulated, the accent not Carolina. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  When she looked at him doubtfully with another of those guarded, darting glances, he realized that she had probably expected him to be older. More … judgelike.

  “My pleasure.” He gestured to the chair, inviting her to sit, then looked toward the doorway with a lifted brow. “Thank you, Janice.”

  Janice took her gaze off the visitor finally and, still frowning slightly, backed out of the office and closed the door.

  Ben returned to his chair and sat down. “We’re pretty informal around here,” he told her. “I’m Ben.” His voice, he noted in some surprise, was still gentle.

  A faint smile touched her lips. “I’m Cassie.” Another quick glance at his face, and then she stared down at the hands clasped in her lap. Whatever she had come there to say, it was obviously not easy for her.

  “What can I do for you, Cassie?”

  She drew a breath and kept her gaze fixed on her hands. “As I told your secretary, I’m new in Ryan’s Bluff. I’ve lived here a little less than six months. Even so, that’s long enough to get a sense of who’s respected in this town. Who is apt to be … listened to, even if what he says is unbelievable.”

  “I’m flattered,” he said, very curious but willing to let her get to it in her own time.

  She shook her head. “I’ve done my homework. You’re descended from the Ryans who founded this town. You left only to go to college and law school, returning here to practice. You became a much admired and highly respected district court judge—obviously at a young age-but chose to retire after only a few years because you felt your true vocation was as a prosecutor. You were elected district attorney for Salem County, and you are very involved in community affairs as well as local and state politics. Your … support would count for a lot.”

  “My support in what?”

  She answered his question with a matter-of-fact one of her own. “Do you believe in the paranormal?”

  That was unexpected, and threw him for a moment. “The paranormal? You mean ghosts? UFOs? ESP?”

  “Specifically extrasensory perception. Telepathy. Pre-cognition.” Her voice remained calm, but she was sitting just a bit too stiffly and her clasped fingers moved nervously. She darted another glance at him, so fleeting that all he caught was a flash of those pale eyes.

  Ben shrugged. “In theory I always thought it was garbage. In fact, I’ve never encountered anything to make me change my mind.” It was the fairly cynical mind common to many law enforcement officials, but he didn’t add that

  She didn’t look discouraged. “Are you willing to admit the possibility? To keep your mind open?”

  “I hope Pm always willing to do that” Ben could have told her that he himself was given to hunches, to intuitions he found difficult to explain rationally, but he said nothing since it was a characteristic he hardly trusted. By training and inclination he was a man of reason.

  Still utterly matter-of-fact, Cassie said, “There’s going to be a murder.”

  She had surprised him again, unpleasantly this time. “I see. And you know that because you’re psychic?”

  She grimaced, registering the disbelief—-and the suspicion of a prosecutor—in his voice. “Yes.”

  “You can see the future?”

  “No. But I … tapped into the mind of the man who intends to commit a murder.”

  “Even assuming I believe that, intentions don’t always translate into actions.”

  “This rime they will. He will kill.”

  Ben rubbed the back of his neck as he stared at her. Maybe she was a kook. Or maybe not “Okay. Who’s going to be murdered?”

  “I don’t know. I saw her face when he watched her, but I don’t know who she is.”

  After Caroline

  A Bantam Book

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1996 by Kay Hooper.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-5741.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-56709-3

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