"Miss Neill? I'm Dan Crowder, SafeNet Security. My partner and I are here to install your security system."
She looked past him to a white van in her driveway with the security company logo on its side and another clean-cut and uniformed young man standing beside it.
"My security system?"
"Yes, ma'am. Judge Ryan sent us."
He certainly hadn't wasted any time.
Dan smiled reassuringly. "Judge Ryan said you were to call him if you had any doubts, Miss Neill."
Cassie didn't call Ben; she called the security company. As she'd expected, Dan's story was confirmed.
Cassie toyed with the idea of sending Dan and his partner away, but in the end let them in so they could commence their work. Because Ben had been right about one thing.
In a small town, it was only a matter of time before the wrong person discovered what she could do.
"Ben?"
On the point of entering the building next door to the courthouse where his office was located, Ben paused and turned to see Jill Kirkwood approaching him. He couldn't help remembering Cassie's assertion that Jill had not accepted their breakup, but still managed to smile and greet her with the same low-key easiness he'd held on to since they'd broken it off.
Since he had broken it off.
"Hi, Jill. What's up?"
"Is there any news on who killed Becky Smith?"
He was only a little surprised that she asked. In the brief time it had taken him to walk the two blocks from the downtown office where he'd had an earlier appointment, he had already been stopped three times by worried citizens asking the same anxious question. Still, it wasn't like Jill to be much interested in crime, even a particularly vicious one.
"Nothing new that I know of," he told her. "Matt and his deputies are working on it."
"Does he know that Becky thought she was being followed?"
"She thought – how do you know that?"
"She told me. Came into the store one day last week. Wednesday, I think it was. We got to talking, and she mentioned she'd caught a glimpse of somebody watching her. She sort of laughed about it, said something about having a secret admirer who didn't want to show his face. She wasn't worried about it, so I didn't give it a second thought."
So he did watch her before. Another bull's-eye for Cassie.
"You'd better tell Matt about it, Jill. I don't think he knows, unless somebody else told him in the last day or so."
"All right, I'll go see him." She smiled. "I was glad to meet Cassie Neill. I liked her aunt."
"Yeah, so did I."
"She hasn't been in town long, has she?"
"Cassie? About six months, I think."
"Oh. I just didn't remember seeing her before yesterday."
"I'm not surprised. She seems as much of a loner as Miss Melton was."
"Seems? You don't know her very well?"
"I met her Tuesday." He felt a flash of annoyance at being questioned but trusted he kept the reaction out of his face.
Jill laughed a little, with the bright smile and artificial ease of someone aware of crossing the line. "Sorry, I didn't mean to pry."
Obviously his poker face wasn't as good as he'd thought.
Ben said, "Don't be ridiculous. Look, why don't you go and tell Matt what you know. He needs to hear it. The sooner we get this bastard behind bars, the better it'll be for everyone in town."
"Okay. I'll see you later, Ben."
"Sure." For just an instant as she turned away, he considered warning her to be careful, but cast off the impulse as ridiculous and unnecessary. What could he say, after all? Watch out for strangers following you?
She was a smart lady, and knowing what she did about Becky being followed, she would certainly take notice – and take steps to protect herself – if she suspected the same thing was happening to her.
So Ben watched her walk away and said nothing.
Laughing at me. I can hear them. Watching me. Eyes following me. Gotta stop them. Gotta make them pay. My head hurts. I'll show them. My feet hurt. Gotta slow down. Gotta.
Look at that one. So proud of herself. So sure she's the best. She deserves… she deserves… she deserves… My head hurts so bad. Eyes watching me. I wonder if they know… Blood smells like coins.
FIVE
FEBRUARY 21, 1999
When Cassie heard the scream, it was so loud in her head that she dropped the glass she'd been holding and clapped her hands over her ears.
"No," she whispered helplessly.
Without her volition her eyes closed, and behind the lids flashed whorls of vivid colors streaked with black. A second scream made her jerk. And hurt her throat.
"No, please… please don't hurt me…"
Abruptly Cassie was somewhere else, someone else. She felt the painful constriction of something around her wrists, felt a sharp edge at her back and cold hardness beneath her. She couldn't see, it was all black, but then the bag over her head was jerked off.
"Please don't hurt me… please, please don't hurt me… please don't – "
The mask he wore was horrible. The character might have been from some recent slasher movie, the face a human one but terribly distorted, and it made her shock intensify, her terror soar.
"Please don't hurt me! Oh, God, please don't! I won't tell anyone, I promise! I swear! Just let me go, please!"
For an eternal instant Cassie was paralyzed, completely trapped in the woman's spiraling emotions. Shock, wild terror, despair, and the cold, cold certainty that she was going to die soon and horribly clawed at her. Through the woman's tear-blurred eyes she saw that eerie mask loom above her, saw the butcher knife in his gloved hand, and her throat hurt with gasping breaths and whimpers and raw screams.
"You'll never laugh at me again," he rasped, and his arm lifted, the knife gleaming dully.
"No! Oh, Jesus – "
As his arm started downward in a vicious arc, Cassie desperately wrenched herself free of the doomed woman. But she wasn't fast enough to save herself completely. She felt the first hot agony of the knife piercing her breast, and everything went black.
"Ben."
"Matt? What is it?"
"Meet me in town. Ivy Jameson's place."
Ben switched the phone to his other hand and checked his watch. "Now? It's Sunday afternoon, she'll be – "
"She's dead, Ben."
Ben didn't even ask how. Matt's tone told him all he needed to know. "I'm on my way," he said.
Ten minutes later he parked the Jeep behind Matt's cruiser and one other in the driveway of the Jameson house on Rose Lane just two streets behind Main Street. It was usually a quiet neighborhood, the big old houses sitting peacefully on manicured lawns, the older residents happy to be no more than a short, pleasant afternoon walk from downtown.
Ben noticed that several of those older residents were on their front porches, staring at him as he got out of his Jeep. Although they were too polite or too frightened to venture closer to Ivy's house, it was obvious that their interest was intense.
One of Matt's deputies was standing by the front door and opened it for Ben as he came up on the porch. "Judge. Sheriff's inside." He looked a bit green around the gills.
Ben went into the house. He was familiar with it, as he was most of the homes of the more politically active citizens of Ryan's Bluff; Ivy Jameson's vote had been one of the hardest to get.
From the spacious entrance hall the staircase rose to the second floor, the formal dining room opened to the right, an equally formal living room to the left, and straight ahead lay the rear of the house and the kitchen. The hardwood floor gleamed, fresh flowers in a lovely crystal vase decorated the entrance hall table, and there was an air of stuffy dignity about the place.