LITMIR.BIZ

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she’d eaten that day and couldn’t remember eating anything since the bowl of cereal the evening before.

      The water spotted the white sink, sending iridescent reflections against the white, the shimmering drops like the flash of colors in the black feathers of the grackles.

      Josie stared at her startled eyes in the spotted mirror above the sink and then passed her wet hand over the image in the mirror. Water splintered across her reflection. For a second she’d seen Mellie there, Mellie who lifted herself up to the mirror to see if she was “bootiful” today.

      Memories. The unending heat.

      Sighing, Josie pressed her palms to her burning eyes. Maybe she was fooling herself. Maybe she wasn’t coping as well as she thought she was. She’d been in the sun all morning and then stormed along the path in the heat of high noon. Heat could make a person do strange things. Imagine things.

      Her fingers rested against her closed eyes.

      She hadn’t seen the colony of birds on her return. It was as if the curious massing of birds had been a dream.

      They had been real, though.

      The slow pursuit of the birds had been as real as the feral dogs. But like her conviction that the dogs were watching her with an evil intelligence, her panicked flight from the birds made no sense to her, either.

      She wasn’t a woman given to wild imaginings. She’d coped with the reality of blood and bones in the operating room and dealt with prima donna orthopedic surgeons. She was faced with reality every moment of her life. She liked reality.

      Or she had until the reality of Mellie’s disappearance and what it meant.

      Had she heard a child’s voice, though? Really? Had she actually seen a small form in that chilled, silent hallway?

      Yes?

      No?

      But something had happened.

      Cooling her feverish skin, Josie slicked water down her arms. She couldn’t begin doubting her own perceptions. She was a trained observer in the operating room, competent in emergencies. Grounded. As she’d told Hayes, she wasn’t a woman given to hysterical imaginings.

      Before he’d strolled out of her life and Mellie’s with a charmingly regretful smile on his face, Bart had always mockingly teased her about her sense of responsibility, but she’d sensed the knife-edge of truth in his teasing, the stab of hostility behind the charm.

      “No imagination, no sense of fun, Josie,” he’d said, shrugging. “How can I be tied down to a woman who lives by schedules and lists all the time? I’m a restless kind of guy, Josie,” he’d said, throwing his duffel bag over one very broad, very restless shoulder, “and you’re, well, doll, you’re so predictable. And I like spontaneity, know what I mean, sugarbabe?”

      Oh, yes, she knew. But someone had to worry about schedules and bills, and babies needed order, routine, and—

      Josie breathed deeply, stopping the bitterness welling inside. No, she wasn’t a woman given to fancies.

      She could’ve been mistaken about—

      Flipping water at her throat, she paused and considered possibilities. It made more sense to her that thrown off-balance by the power of Ryder’s presence, she probably had seen nothing more than the flutter of a curtain in the shutter-induced twilight of that house, the yowl of a cat becoming a childish cry, the product of her own need.

      But with one more child missing, she had to tell Jeb Stoner what she’d seen, no matter how flimsy the evidence. He was the detective investigating the disappearance and deaths of the children. He was the one who’d taken all the information about Mellie. He should know. It was his call.

      The police could add Ryder Hayes to their list of suspects. They could search his house. If they found nothing…

      She let her face dry in the air, welcoming the illusion of coolness as she scooped out the water from the sink into a can. She would pour the water on her garden tomorrow at daybreak.

      Sooner or later, someone would slip up. She would find out what had happened to Mellie.

      That was the day she lived for now. That fierce determination to look into the face of the person—

      Josie smacked her hand against the sink.

      No, she hadn’t seen her daughter in that long, shadowy hallway. She’d given up hope that Mellie was out there, somewhere, desperate and frightened.

      Now, all she hoped for was that someday she would know.

      The drought would end.

      The killings would end.

      She would find out what had happened to Mellie.

      In the meantime, she put out raisins for the mockingbirds that sang at night and pans of water for the drought-stricken animals that staggered and crawled to her yard.

      While she endured the slow passage of heat-heavy days, she planted seeds in her scrap of garden, saving water to dribble on the parched earth that rolled up around the drops of water and coated them with dust.

      And, always, she waited.

      But a child was missing again.

      The shrill ringing of the phone shattered her thoughts.

      She went into her kitchen. “Hello?”

      Humming silence. “Who is it? Hello? Who’s there?” she repeated, her heart speeding up a little. A click. Static. Josie replaced the mouthpiece of her squatty black rotary phone, the old-fashioned relic of a phone Bart had hated, gently onto the base. A bad connection. A storm somewhere buzzing along the electrical wires.

      She always hoped, somehow, though, that the phone would ring and it would be Mellie.

      Facing the woods in back of her house, Josie lifted the phone again and dialed the number of the police station. The line was clear.

      Five years he’d been gone, and she hadn’t missed him, not after the first year, anyway, and then only because she wanted him there for Mellie, for Mellie to have a father’s hand to cling to as she took her first step. Josie couldn’t help the sliver of resentment over the intrusion of those old memories into her chaotic thoughts today. One more thing that made no sense, she thought as she waited for someone to pick up the receiver at the other end.

      Something moved in the woods.

      Holding the phone, Josie leaned forward, straining. Only a wisp of cloud passing over the sun.

      No one there.

      Ryder Hayes. That was why she was remembering Bart. Two very different men, but in those few moments with Ryder, she had been edgily aware of him. Uncomfortable, but caught in the spell of that disturbing, heated awareness, she’d been at a pitch of awareness she’d never experienced.

      She bent down to pick up a white dust ball.

      The voice rasped in her ear. “Stoner here. Whaddaya want?”

      “Josie Conrad here, Detective,” she mocked. “And what I want is to see you. Today, please.”

      Listening to the faint drone that translated into words, into meaning, she waited. “I know, but—It’s about my neighbor, Ryder Hayes. Please,” she said, her voice rising and sinking in the late-afternoon quiet. She twined the cord in large loops around her elbow and hand as she listened. “All right. If you can’t, you can’t. Tomorrow afternoon will have to do.” Carefully she placed the dumbbell-shaped receiver back on its hooks.

      Tomorrow.

      But there was another night to endure.

      Just before supper, the phone rang.

      Again the click and then staticky squawks.

      “Hello?” Josie said irritably, thinking she heard someone say her name. “Hello? I can’t hear you. Can you

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