Then the speaker called, “You, by the gym set. I have a weapon. I’m a county deputy. Do not move!”
Dance tried to see who this was. She couldn’t spot her attacker either.
There was an eternal pause and then from behind her she heard fleeing footsteps as the attacker escaped.
Then her rescuer was running too, in pursuit. Dance rose unsteadily, trying—still largely unsuccessfully—to breathe. Who was it? Harutyun?
She expected to hear gunshots but there was none, only the sounds of returning footfalls and a man saying in a whisper, “Kathryn, where are you?” The voice was familiar.
“Here.”
He approached. Finally she sucked in a solid breath and wiped tears of pain from her eyes. She blinked in surprise.
Walking through the woods, holstering his weapon, was Michael O’Neil.
She barked a laugh, which contained part relief, part joy and a dash of hysteria.
THEY SAT IN the bar, drinking Sonoma Cabernets.
Dance asked, “That was your car? That I saw pulling in fifteen minutes ago?”
“Yeah. I saw you crossing the street. You looked … furtive.”
“I was trying. Not furtive enough.”
“So I followed.”
She lowered her head to his broad shoulder. “Oh, Michael, I never thought it’d be a trap.”
“Who was it, Edwin?”
“Probably. Yes, no. We just don’t know. What did you see?”
“Nothing. A shadow.”
She gave a faint laugh at the word, sipped her wine. “That’s the theme of the case: shadows.”
“He’s still using that song you told me about?”
“Right.”
She gave him an update of what had happened so far, including how the information on the website he’d found from the file sharer’s partner in Salinas had let them save the life of Kayleigh’s stepmother.
“So he’s targeting family?” O’Neil, as a Major Crimes detective, had some experience with stalker cases too. “That’s rare.”
“Yes, it is.” She added, “There’s one verse of ‘Your Shadow’ left. But Kayleigh’s written a lot of songs. She’s convinced he’s using fire because of her hit ‘Fire and Flame.’ Who knows what else he could decide to do? Each verse in ‘Shadow’ has a theme but they’re also pretty vague so we can’t figure out just who he’s going to target next.”
“How does the last verse go?”
Dance recited it.
You can’t keep down smiles; happiness floats.
But trouble can find us in the heart of our homes.
Life never seems to go quite right,
You can’t watch your back from morning to night.
“Maybe it’s a love song but it’s plenty creepy to me. And, right, it doesn’t exactly give GPS coordinates about where he’s going to attack.”
“So,” Dance asked, looking him over, “you just jumped in the car and drove three and a half hours after supper?”
O’Neil was not big on eye contact even with those close to him and he examined the bar and the ruby-colored ellipse of the light refracted through his wineglass. “With that fellow in Salinas, there was a Monterey connection. It made sense I come on over here.”
She wondered if he’d have made the journey because he’d learned Jon Boling wasn’t here.
The detective continued, “And I figured I should bring you a present. The sort I couldn’t send FedEx. TJ said you came here unarmed. I checked out a Glock for you from CBI. Does Overby always insist on filling out so many forms?”
Yes, the head of her office would be worried that protocol involving firearms might end up with bad publicity for the Bureau. Well, for him.
“Charles is a triplicate kind of guy,” she said, smiling and adjusting her position on the seat as some pain from the tumble shot through her side.
He reached into his computer bag and handed her a black plastic gun case. “Fifty rounds. If you need more than that, well, we’re all in trouble.”
She took his arm, squeezed it. Wanted to rest her head against his shoulder again but refrained. “This was a vacation. That’s all it was.”
Just then Dennis Harutyun walked into the bar and Dance introduced them—though the local deputy remembered O’Neil from the Skype conference call. It was midnight but the detective looked as fresh as if it were the start of his daily tour, uniform shirt perfectly pressed. He said to Dance, “Charlie’s folks’ve been through the park. Nothing other than the cigarette and the fishing line used as a trip wire. We’ll send the cigarette in for DNA but there probably isn’t any. If he was smart, which he seems to be, he just lit the end, probably wore gloves. The line is nylon, the sort you’d buy in any one of a hundred sports or big box stores.”
O’Neil reported what he’d seen, which was very little. Dance had heard the weapon’s receiver but neither of them had actually seen a gun, much less the attacker himself.
The Monterey detective said, “Could be the weapon he stole from that deputy of yours, the one who’s out of commission now?”
“Yeah, could be. Oh, and it gets worse. You tell him?” Harutyun asked Dance, who said, “No.”
“The head of the detectives here and another officer were a little casual in a search and seizure. Edwin filed DOJ complaint and they’re suspended too.”
“Hell,” O’Neil muttered. “Pike Madigan?”
“That’s right. You saw him in our Skype conference.”
Dance glanced out the window and noted a few cars slowing as they drove past the now brightly lit park, filled with crime scene officers and uniformed deputies, flashing lights from cruisers. Dance wouldn’t have been surprised to see the big red Buick. But of course she didn’t.
“I think I better get some sleep.” A glance toward O’Neil. “You must be tired too.”
“Haven’t checked in yet either.”
No, he came to rescue me….
As Dance signed the drinks to her room, her mobile dinged with an incoming text. She’d turned it back on after her disastrous mission into the park.
“What is it?” Michael O’Neil asked, noting she was frozen, staring at the screen.
“It’s a text.” She barked a laugh. “From Edwin Sharp.”
“What?”