LITMIR.BIZ

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like him. The beard hid his jaw. Aaron’s had been square and strong. And the sunglasses disguised the color and shape of his eyes. Aaron’s had been a deep brown and wide-set, his nose broken from an old basketball injury…She studied the pictures again and thought she saw the slight bump on his nose.

      Of course it had been over ten years since she’d seen her first husband. He, if he had lived, would have changed. Like the man in the photo, who was at least ten pounds heavier and bearded. But the hair, that light brown hair with its distinctive widow’s peak, was the same—thick and wavy.

      So distinctively Aaron.

      What did it mean if this photo was real…if Aaron was alive? He would have built some sort of life for himself. A wife and kids. A home.

      Don’t fall for this, Jillian, she warned herself, but it was too late. She was already half-buying into the fact that these photos showed her first husband, the one whom everyone, including the insurance company and the authorities, had presumed to have slid down a steep ravine to a raging river, where he’d been swept away by a swift current and drowned.

      Presumably drowned.

      The house phone rang and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Carrying the rest of the mail and the damned pictures with her, she walked through the hallway to the small family room and snapped up the receiver before the second ring. “Hello?” she said into the receiver and noted that, once again, the caller ID had been blocked.

      “He’s alive,” the disembodied voice hissed again.

      “Who is this? I’m not interested in playing any games.”

      “Check your mail and your e-mail.”

      “What do you want?”

      Click.

      “Damn it!” Jillian hung up and felt a rage so deep she could barely think. Who was doing this? Not Aaron, even if he were alive. So who? And why?

      Jillian felt as if a ghost had just brushed against the back of her neck. Either the person on the other end of the call had been teasing her, playing a sick prank on her, or the unthinkable had happened and Aaron had come back from the dead.

      Jillian closed her eyes. Ten years. A damned decade! He couldn’t be alive. That didn’t make any sense and yet…and yet…

      Go to the police her inner voice suggested as she peeled off her coat, walked to the front of the house again and hung the garment on the wrought-iron coat tree near the front door. She found her tattered umbrella, fixed the broken spokes as best she could, then shoved it into the lower part of the same tree. Taking the steps two at a time, she climbed to the second floor and made her way to her den, which, when the hide-abed was opened, became her guest room. The computer was on and waiting, a screen saver of waving palms like wistful arms beckoning her to some sunny, remote destination where the sun always shone.

      Kicking out her desk chair, Jillian sat down and clicked onto her e-mail account. She found one that had slipped through her spam filter with an attachment. When she opened it, sure enough, the same three pictures of the bearded man who was supposed to be her dead first husband appeared.

      She checked the e-mail address, pressed REPLY, but, of course, her mail bounced back at her.

      Damn.

      She clicked back to her home page and a news item caught her eye. SERIAL KILLER STRIKES MONTANA. The story mentioned two women found dead in desolate parts of the Bitterroots, but she was too distracted to read on with these photos of Aaron taunting her.

      She enhanced the pictures, enlarging them, then sharpening the images. As she worked with computer and photographic images for a living, this was a piece of cake. She’d spent the past five years creating brochures, both real and virtual, for clients ranging from universities to travel agencies and tour groups. In this room alone, the walls were covered with photographs she’d taken herself, colorful pictures of exotic locales and beautiful homes turned into inns. There were images of a brilliant sunset on the Oregon coast, the Cascade Mountains deep in snow, a fishing excursion on the Kenai River in Alaska and a hundred-and-fifty-year-old hotel situated in the rugged Columbia Gorge.

      Using programs that enhanced, enlarged, zoomed in and recolored, she played with the photographs, erasing the man’s beard and sunglasses, growing his hair a few inches, taking off ten pounds. With each change, her heart beat a little faster, her nerves tightened and anticipation coursed through her veins.

      When she was finished, the altered image was a dead ringer for her long-lost first husband.

      Anyone can make someone look different. You’ve seen countless short movies of people morphing from one person to another. You’ve seen the before and after pictures of models on the covers of magazines. You know how to make an image change shape.

      This could be an out-and-out scam.

      But why?

      And who was behind it? Mason, in Missoula?

      She shook her head at the thought. If Mason wanted to give her information, he’d just do it, call her up and give her the facts. And if he were trying to be sneaky, he’d mail the envelope from another town. He knew she wasn’t an idiot.

      But what about that new wife of his—Sherice? She always had it in for you. And his mother, Belle—that woman never did like you.

      It seemed far-fetched. She and Mason rarely communicated, and though Sherice, Mason’s receptionist, had outwardly despised Jillian when Jillian and Mason were married, now, since she’d become the second much younger Mrs. Mason Rivers, Sherice’s animosity had faded. Sherice had won the great prize of becoming a trophy wife. So why try to stir up trouble now?

      Jillian leaned back in her desk chair and tapped the eraser end of her pencil on the arm of the chair as she stared at the image on the computer. She heard a soft meow and then Marilyn padded through the open door and, spying Jillian’s empty lap, leaped onto it.

      “Hey, sweetcakes,” Jillian said, absently rubbing the calico’s head. “What do you think?”

      The cat responded by curling up in her lap while Jillian tried to figure out if her long-dead husband had suddenly resurrected and why anyone would want her to know.

      “It’s a problem,” she confided to Marilyn and knew in that instant that she couldn’t leave it alone.

      She had to find out the truth.

      If for no other reason than to clear her name.

      No matter what it entailed, how painful it happened to be.

      Chapter Four

      Naked, I stand at the window.

      Alone.

      Waiting.

      While sand slips oh so slowly through the hourglass.

      The coming night is near, shadows playing darkly. A hollow wind, keening and savage, cuts through the canyons with the promise of death upon its breath. I hear its plaintive cry from deep in the cabin.

      It wants me, I think. It wants her.

      It’s as hungry as I am.

      Good!

      Feeling the ache, the low, insistent pulse, I peer through the windowpanes glazed in ice, frosted with blowing snow.

      Naked branches of the lonely trees rattle and dance, like skeletal arms raised in supplication to the heavens.

      As if God were interested.

      I feel the urge to step outside. The tug of the cold tempts me to languish in the caress of frigid gusts upon my bare skin.

      But it is too soon.

      I won’t let myself fall victim to that easy enticement. The timing isn’t right. Not yet.

      I have to be patient.

      Because she is coming.

      Unfailingly

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