Cait nodded. “Don’t worry, I know the drill.”
“I know you do.” Still, he sounded restless, and unease was reflected in his next words when he said, “I think I’ll take one more walk around the area, just to be sure—”
“Go to bed, Brodie.” She stared up at his shadowy face and wished she had the nerve to suggest she join him there. “You haven’t slept more than two or three hours a night since we got on to Sarah, and you’ll need to be rested when we go after Tucker tomorrow. I can handle this.”
He hesitated a moment longer, but finally nodded. “Yeah, I’m beat.”
The admission surprised Cait, but she had the sense not to say so. “See you in the morning.”
“Right.”
When she was alone outside, Cait automatically adjusted the pistol stuck inside her belt at the small of her back and started to walk the perimeter—Leigh’s front and back yard. There was no moon, but there were numerous streetlights in the neighborhood, and they lent the area enough light for her to see fairly well.
Either there were no dogs nearby or else they were no more disturbed by Cait’s almost silent movements than they had been Brodie’s, because no barking greeted her as she made her cautious way around the property. In fact, she heard no sounds at all, other than the usual peaceful night sounds.
She didn’t think too much, just did what she’d been taught to do. Move slowly and quietly, watch everything, and stay alert. But as time passed, inevitably, she grew a little bored and found her mind wandering even as she completed yet another walk around the house.
Which was why she nearly jumped out of her skin when a man stepped out of the tall shrubs in front of her not two feet from Leigh’s front walkway.
“Shit!”
He chuckled. “Sorry—I thought you saw me coming. You’re Cait, right?”
Her hand on the pistol’s grip relaxed. “Yeah. And you’re—Nick? Tim? I knew Brodie called in reinforcements, but we weren’t expecting you until morning.”
“Traffic was light.” He stepped closer, his smile a slash of white in the darkness.
There was absolutely no indication that anything was wrong, but in her head, suddenly, Cait heard Brodie’s implacable words.
Never trust anybody who comes to you in the dark.
She tried to pull her gun, but it never even cleared her belt.
Sarah woke suddenly, her heart pounding. She had no idea what was wrong, but something was, something was terribly wrong: There had been a scream in her mind. She threw back the covers and got out of bed, not bothering to find her shoes or put anything on over the white sleep shirt. And she didn’t turn on the light.
She wasn’t trying to be quiet, so it wasn’t surprising that she woke Brodie hurrying past his door; she heard a sleepy curse from inside the room but still didn’t pause, and she was at the bottom of the stairs by the time he reached the top of them.
“What the— Sarah?”
“Something’s wrong,” she flung back over her shoulder, struggling with the front door’s lock.
“Don’t go out there! Goddammit, Sarah—!”
She could have told him that whatever danger there had been was past, but Sarah didn’t waste the effort or the breath. Instead, she got the door unlocked and flung open before he could reach her and rushed out of the house with no clear idea of where she was going.
She tripped over something that lay in the shadows of shrubs near the house and went down hard, bruising her knees. But she barely felt that pain, because her hands were in something warm and sticky, and a wave of terrible revulsion swept over her.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“Sarah?” He was coming through the door toward her.
She wanted to warn him, to say something, but the only sound Sarah heard escape her throat was a kind of moan.
Then the flashlight in Brodie’s hand came on, spearing stark white light through the darkness. The light fell on her shaking hands, held out in front of her, and she stared numbly at the blood dripping.
She heard a sound come from Brodie, saw the light jerk away from her hands…and fall on Cait’s white face and staring eyes.
And the gaping wound that opened her throat almost to her spine.
The sun was well up when Brodie came into the kitchen, where Sarah and Leigh sat in silence with coffee cups before them. He poured himself a cup, his hands steady, but his voice was stony when he said, “Nick isn’t here yet.”
“What about Murphy?” Leigh’s voice was calm.
He nodded. “Gathering some supplies. We should be ready to move in another couple of hours.”
Sarah looked at him incredulously. She could still feel Cait’s blood on her hands despite a hot shower and lots of soap, yet this man who had been her partner stood there talking as if nothing had happened. Before she could say anything, however, Leigh spoke gently.
“We’ll grieve later, Sarah. Cait would understand.”
“Would she? I’m not so sure I do. You both act as if nothing happened. What about—what about her body?”
Brodie’s jaw tightened. “We’ve cleaned up the walkway so there’s no visible evidence anything happened. Tim’s taking her back to New York. It’s where she’s from. I’ll talk to her brother after this is finished, though he probably knows already. And…simple enough to arrange to have the body found so it’ll look like one more victim of senseless violence.”
Sarah moved slightly, not realizing how clearly her feelings showed on her face until Brodie spoke again, harshly this time.
“There’s nothing else we can do. We can’t afford to call in the police, Sarah. We don’t have any answers they’d believe, and no time to even try convincing them.”
“But…just to dump her somewhere…How can you?”
He drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Listen to me. We don’t have a choice. Bodies require explanations. Serious explanations to serious people in authority. And people in authority frown on murder. They look for likely suspects—and they don’t believe in ghostly conspiracies involving psychics and shadowy merciless bad guys. So who do you think they’d suspect?”
“Not us,” Sarah objected. “Surely—”
“Of course us. We found one of Leigh’s kitchen knives out there. The murder weapon. With her prints on it—or mine, or yours. Sarah, the other side doesn’t generally leave bodies lying around just to show they can.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they always have a reason, a purpose. Cait was meant to be a murder victim, and we were meant to be suspects.”
It was Leigh who said slowly, “But, why? They have a baited trap waiting for Sarah. Why this…diversion?”
“I don’t know why.” Brodie, his face still gray and older than his years, stared at his coffee with a frown. “It’s a stupid, senseless waste of a life. A young life. I never should have taken her on as my partner, never. She was too young, too reckless.”
“Brodie, it isn’t your fault,” Leigh said quietly.
He shot her a look but, instead of arguing, said, “The only thing I can think of is that they’re trying to delay us and figured a murder would do it. If Sarah hadn’t awakened knowing something was wrong, the first person to…see Cait would have been that neighbor of yours across the street, Leigh. The one who goes to work so early. When he came out his front door, he would have seen your front walk clearly. And seen her body.”
“And raised the alarm,” Leigh agreed.
Brodie nodded. “Even at best, we’d have been kept tied up with the cops all day. At worst, one or more of us would have ended up in jail.”
Sarah shook her head a little, trying to make her mind work as logically as these two seemed able to. “I just don’t understand why they would want to delay us.”
“Neither do I,” Brodie said. “Stalling for time. But why?” He looked sharply at Sarah. “What’s going on with Mackenzie?”