“Sure.” Hugh seemed pleased to be asked. Then he looked past Jeremy and Brad to the door, and a smile lit his face. “Hey, Eric. Good to see you.”
Jeremy turned and saw Eric Rolfe coming into the bar. He was alone, and though he was only wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a denim jacket, he looked like a man who had showered and shaved in preparation for a night out. Except for a single autumn leaf sticking out of the top of his left boot.
Brad seemed not to have heard Hugh’s greeting, nor to have noticed Eric’s arrival.
He was staring morosely at his beer.
“The morning,” he said bleakly. “Everything is always something we’re going to get to in the morning.” He looked at Jeremy. “We’re getting nowhere. How many more mornings will Mary have?”
Jeremy’s thoughts turned back to the man Hugh had seen with Dinah, even though he didn’t know if she’d left with him or not.
Boston wasn’t far away. The man could be their killer. Just because Hugh hadn’t seen him on Halloween, that didn’t mean he hadn’t been in town.
Whoever had killed Dinah Green was still on the streets.
Mary was still missing.
And Rowenna hadn’t arrived yet.
Jeremy stood abruptly and said goodbye to Brad, nodding to Eric as he passed and looking once again at the leaf protruding from his boot.
Shower, shave and take a walk in the woods? He didn’t think so.
He wanted to grab the man as he walked by, shake him and demand to know where he was keeping Mary Johnstone. Somehow, he refrained. Until he had more to go on than a hinky feeling and a stray leaf, he was going to have to hang back. Meanwhile, he was worried about Rowenna, anxious to get to the street and take the shortest route from the bar to the museum.
“No.” It was only a whisper of protest. She was too shocked to manage anything more.
That was her name.
On a tombstone.
And there was a shadow in the cemetery, taunting her, calling to her.
No. It was all in her mind.
It was nothing but the power of suggestion, nothing real, only her fears given substance by her own traitorous mind.
It was as if the skills she used when she put herself in a victim’s place, feeling what had happened, using logic and intuition to let her imagination run free, had suddenly all turned inward and created a monster from all the fears that had been haunting her. Perception was truth and reality, so now she had to change her perception and defeat this shadow monster.
She’d been in this cemetery a hundred times. Her name wasn’t on any tombstone. And she wasn’t going to be anyone’s victim, not even the Devil himself if he had risen from hell just to find her.
“No,” she said loudly and firmly, staring into the dark graveyard.
It was empty. No one was there, not even a shadow.
She stared back at the stone where she had so clearly seen her name in blood.
There was nothing there.
The moon came out from behind a cloud, dispelling the darkness that had seemed so tangible only moments before. In the silver light she could see autumn leaves lying on the ground, and when she examined the stone, the writing that was the only memorial to some stranger’s death was too eroded by the passage of time to say anything, much less her name. The breeze blew lightly, and when she looked around, there was no one else in the cemetery, real or imagined.
Then, suddenly, she heard her name called in a real, solid and worried voice.
“Rowenna?”
She spun around.
“Hey, Rowenna, are you all right?”
Adam Llewellyn was standing by the gate—closed now, she noticed, but she wasn’t going to dwell on the strangeness of that—as if he were afraid to venture into the graveyard by night. He was staring at her as if she had lost her mind.
Had she?
As she stared at him, a couple, hand in hand, came walking down the street, talking about the restaurant they were heading to.
A car passed along the nearby street, its headlights cutting reassuringly through the darkness.
It was just a night like every other night.
A man was passing the wax museum, walking a yapping Pekingese. Big guy, small dog.
“Ro?” Adam asked again.
She squared her shoulders and strode quickly in his direction, and made it easily to the low wall.
“Adam, hi. Were you following me?” she asked, studying him. He was just Adam, the same Adam she had known for years.
Had he just helped save her from her own mind—or from someone or something else? Or was he somehow involved in whatever had just happened to her? She dismissed the idea out of hand. Nothing could be more ridiculous.
“I was trying to catch up with you,” he told her, still looking confused.
“Did you see anyone else?” she asked him, and though she tried to sound calm, even blasé, she knew there was an edge of hysteria in her voice.