LITMIR.BIZ

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a hunter at the moment.

      More like a caged animal, she thought.

      She’d just gotten home from taking the girls to their first day of school. Jilly was delighted to finally be in the same high school as her sister. The new students and their parents got the customary welcome in the auditorium, then a quick tour of the students’ classrooms. April had been able to join Riley and Jilly for the tour.

      Although Riley hadn’t had a chance to talk at length with each teacher, she’d managed to say hello and introduce herself as Jilly’s mother and April as Jilly’s sister. Some of Jilly’s new teachers had taught April in earlier years, and they had nice things to say about her.

      When Riley had wanted to hang around after the orientation, both girls had teased her.

      “And do what?” April had asked. “Go to all of Jilly’s classes?”

      Riley had said maybe she would, provoking a moan of despair from Jilly.

      “Mo-o-o-m! That would be so uncool!”

      April had laughed and said, “Mom, don’t be a chopper.”

      When Riley asked what a “chopper” was, April informed her it meant “helicopter parent.”

      One of those terms I ought to be up on, Riley thought.

      Anyway, Riley had respected Jilly’s pride and come on home—and now here she was. Gabriela had gone out to meet one of her numerous cousins for lunch, then do some grocery shopping. So Riley was alone in the house, except for a dog and a cat that didn’t seem the least bit interested in her.

      I’ve got to snap out of this, she thought.

      Riley went to the kitchen and got herself a snack. Then she forced herself to sit down in the living room and turned on the TV. The news was depressing, so she switched to a daytime soap. She had no idea what was going on in the story, but it was diverting, at least for a little while.

      But her attention soon wandered, and she found herself thinking about what Ryan had said during his awful visit when she got back from the beach …

      “I can’t face it alone. I can’t live in that house alone.”

      Right now, Riley had some idea of how he felt.

      Were she and her ex-husband more alike than she wanted to admit?

      She tried to convince herself otherwise. Unlike Ryan, she was taking care of her family. Later today, the girls and Gabriela would all be home and they’d have dinner together. Maybe this weekend Blaine and Crystal would join them.

      That thought reminded Riley that Blaine had been a little bit reserved toward her ever since the whole thing with Ryan had happened. Riley could understand why. Riley hadn’t wanted to talk to Blaine about the visit afterward—it seemed too intimate and personal—and it was only natural that Blaine had felt uncomfortable about it.

      She had an urge to phone him right now, but she knew that Blaine was putting in a lot of hours catching up with things at his restaurant now that their vacation was over.

      So now here Riley was, feeling terribly alone in her own house …

      Just like Ryan.

      She couldn’t help feeling a little guilty toward her ex-husband—although she couldn’t imagine why. Nothing that was wrong in his life was her fault. Even so, she more than half-wanted to give him a call, find out how he was doing, maybe commiserate with him a little. But of course, that was an incredibly stupid idea. The last thing she wanted to do was give him any false signals that they might get together again.

      As the soap opera characters argued, wept, slapped each other, and jumped in out of bed with each other, something occurred to Riley.

      Sometimes her own life at home, her family and relationships, didn’t seem any more real to her than what she was watching on TV. The actual presence of her loved ones tended to distract her from her deep-seated sense of isolation. But even just a few hours by herself in the house was enough to painfully remind her of how truly alone she felt inside.

      There was an empty place inside her that could only be filled by …

      What, exactly?

      By work.

      But how meaningful was her work, to herself or to anybody else?

      Again she remembered something her father had said in that dream …

      “It’s a damn crazy useless life you’ve got—seeking justice for people who’re already dead, exactly the people who don’t need justice anymore.”

      She wondered …

      Is that true?

      Is what I do really useless?

      Surely not, since she often stopped killers who would certainly have killed again if they could have.

      She saved lives in the long run—just how many lives, she couldn’t begin to imagine.

      And yet, in order for her to even have a job to do, somebody had to kill, and somebody had to die …

      It always starts with death.

      And more often than not, her cases continued to nag at her and haunt her even after they were solved, after the killers were slain or brought to justice.

      She turned off the television, which was only irritating her now. Then she sat back and closed her eyes and thought about her most recent case, that of a serial killer down in Georgia.

      Poor Morgan, she thought.

      Morgan Farrell had been married to a wealthy but abusive man. When he’d been brutally stabbed to death in his sleep, Morgan had been sure she was the one who had killed him, even though she couldn’t remember the deed.

      She was sure she’d forgotten about it because of pills and alcohol.

      And she’d been proud of what she’d thought she’d done. She’d even called Riley by phone to tell her so …

      “I killed the bastard.”

      Morgan had been innocent, as things turned out. Another deranged woman had killed Morgan’s husband—and several other equally abusive husbands.

      The woman, who had suffered at her own late husband’s hands, had been on a vigilante mission to free other women from that pain. Riley had stopped her just before she could mistakenly kill a man who wasn’t guilty of anything except loving his disturbed, delusional wife.

      Riley replayed the scene in her mind, after she’d fought the woman to the ground and was putting her in handcuffs …

      “Adrienne McKinney, you’re under arrest.”

      But now Riley wondered …

      What if everything could have ended differently?

      What if Riley been able to save the innocent man, explain to the woman the mistake she’d made, and then simply let her go?

      She’d have kept on killing, Riley thought.

      And the men she killed would have deserved to die.

      So what kind of justice had she really carried out that time?

      Riley’s heart sank, and she remembered again her father’s words …

      “It’s a damn crazy useless life you’ve got.”

      On one hand, she was desperately trying to live the life of a mother raising two daughters, the life of a woman in love with a man she hoped to marry. At times, that life seemed to be actually working out for her, and she knew she would never stop trying to be good at it.

      But as soon as she found herself alone, that ordinary life seemed unreal.

      On the other hand, she struggled against awful odds to bring down monsters. Her work was intensely important to her, even though it all too often began and ended in pure futility.

      Riley felt perfectly

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