LITMIR.BIZ

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throat had turned dry, so that she had to swallow before she could speak. “Not a phone call or anything like that. It was a dream. But…I’m pretty sure it was real.” Absolutely sure. But she wasn’t going to say it that way. Not to Mack Steele.

      He turned his mug around on the table. When he spoke, his words were measured. “Dreams aren’t reality.”

      “Yeah. Right,” she agreed too quickly. “Everybody knows that.” Rushing on, she added, “It was a mistake for you to come over. I think the best thing for you to do is leave.” As she spoke, she knew that her voice sounded sharper than she’d meant it to be.

      ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY miles away in Gaptown, Maryland, the man who now called himself Fred Hyde took off his fright mask and black cape. Still wearing a black shirt, pants and boots, he looked down at the lifeless body of the woman sprawled on the floor of the Funhouse.

      Another one punished for her sins, even when she claimed not to know what she had done.

      Her name was Lynn Vaughn, and she’d suffered before she’d died. Not so much physically, but mentally. He’d known how to feed her terror and enjoyed every moment that she’d run desperately through his private amusement park, trying to get away from the relentless pursuer behind her.

      He’d told her more than once that she had a chance to escape, but that was just part of the fun for him. Really, he’d known all along how their private drama would end. Well, not which of his clever setups would stop her. But there was no question he would get her in the end, because that was his goal. When he set his mind to something, it always worked out the way he wanted.

      He clenched his teeth. Except once. One damn time. In this damn town.

      Asserting his will, he drove that thought from his mind. He would not think about failure. Not now.

      He went back to contemplating his masterpiece. Everything had been planned. Down to the smallest detail. Like the place where the floor had been slippery. And then the hallway where she’d stubbed her toe on an unexpected rock sitting in the middle of the passageway. And it had all worked out the way he wanted. Yet…

      He dragged in a deep breath and expelled it sharply. While she’d been running from him in terror, he’d had the strange feeling that someone else was watching the whole performance. Someone he couldn’t see.

      But that was impossible, of course. No one else was here. Not an invisible person or anyone else. Only himself and Lynn Vaughn. And he wasn’t going to tell anyone what had happened to her. By the same token, she wasn’t going to call up her friends and relate the nightmare either. He laughed at his little joke, then stopped abruptly.

      Nightmare.

      What was he thinking? Something impossible. Yet as unsettling thoughts swirled in his brain, he began to work faster, wrapping Lynn in the tarp he’d brought so she wouldn’t get blood in his SUV. Methodically, he rolled up the body, which was still limp enough to handle easily, then carried her out the back door and down the steps to the detached garage.

      When he’d deposited her in the back of the vehicle, he pulled down the long driveway and into the mist-shrouded city, heading for the mountains.

      His sense of satisfaction increased as he began looking for a good spot to dump the body. The ground was frozen, but he wasn’t planning to dig a grave. He wanted people in this damn town to know.

      He was going to make everyone who’d ruined his life four years ago pay for what they’d done. The punishment wouldn’t make up for his loss, of course. But it would be fitting retribution. When he was finished, he’d leave this jerkwater town that was the scene of his misery and never come back.

      MACK’S VOICE WAS FIRM when he spoke. “Jamie, I’m not leaving until you tell me why you called the Light Street Detective Agency at two in the morning.”

      Anger, anxiety and defiance warred within her. That was none of his damn business, but unfortunately she’d been too quick to make a phone call in the middle of the night, and he’d been the one on the other end of the line. She didn’t owe him anything, yet she heard herself trying to justify her behavior.

      “Like I said, I had a dream. A nightmare. It wasn’t my dream, exactly. It was something happening to a woman in Gaptown.”

      He kept his gaze on her. “You’re saying it was something that really happened?”

      She swallowed hard before answering. “Yes,”

      “How do you know?”

      Chapter Two

      Jamie wasn’t going to start off by telling him she’d been plagued by psychic dreams since she’d been little. She was going to avoid that, if possible. And she wasn’t going to explain that the dreams had stopped when she came to Baltimore with Craig.

      Could she convince Mack with a concrete fact? Up till now, she’d avoided using a name, even in her thoughts, because that made the dream too real.

      Now she raised her head and said, “The woman’s name was Lynn Vaughn.”

      His instant alertness unnerved her. It was like when Craig was working on a case.

      “How do you know?” he said.

      “I just do.”

      “Maybe we’d better check that out.”

      “Okay,” she whispered, wishing again that she’d kept her mouth shut. What was Mack thinking now? From the look on his face, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t like his speculations.

      “Where’s your computer?” he asked.

      “In the office.” Craig’s old office, which she’d kept looking like he’d left it so that when she sat at the desk she could pretend he was going to come to the door and ask her to get out of his chair.

      She and Mack walked to the office, where Mack stopped for a moment in front of the desk before sitting down and booting up the machine. Jamie took the beat-up easy chair where she’d liked to sit and read while Craig was working in the evening. Usually he’d work late, and then they’d go upstairs and—

      She ruthlessly cut off that line of thought. As Mack waited for the computer to go through the start-up routine, he said, “Lynn Vaughn, right?”

      “Yes.”

      He brought up one of the programs you could use to locate people and typed in her name, plus “Gaptown.”

      Jamie sat with her pulse pounding, wondering if she had everything backward. What if it had been her dream, and she’d somehow pulled that woman into it? When Lynn Vaughn’s listing came up, he dialed the number from his cell phone and put it on speaker so they could both hear. She sat clenching the arms of the chair as a woman answered on the first ring. It was the middle of the night, but obviously she wasn’t sleeping.

      “Lynn?” Mack asked.

      “No. Who is this?”

      “I’m an old friend of Lynn’s. I was hoping to get in touch with her.”

      “At three in the morning?”

      “Sorry. I didn’t realize the time,” he said, lying with the same facility that Craig had exhibited when he worked a case. “Is she there?”

      Jamie could hear the tension in the woman’s voice as she replied.

      “Lynn didn’t come home this evening, and she didn’t call me. That’s not like her. I’m worried.”

      “Have you called the police?”

      “I—”

      “You should do that,” Mack said.

      “What did you say your name was?” the woman asked.

      Instead of answering, Mack clicked off and swung the chair around so that he could look at Jamie.

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