Sleeping With Fear

Chapter 11

Riley decided to approach the Pearson house casually, from the beach. Having made that decision, she returned to her own house after the lunch with Ash, exchanged her shoulder bag for a fanny pack just large enough to hold her weapon, I.D., a couple of PowerBars, and house keys, found a pair of sunglasses behind which she could at least partially hide a multitude of uncertainties, and went out for a seemingly casual stroll.

"Casual" out on the beach meant carrying her gun out of sight. Or at least that was what she told herself.

Judgment call. Sometimes I wear the weapon on my hip and sometimes I hide it away. That makes sense. Right?

Her wavering was both uncharacteristic and unprofessional-and scary. Riley pushed it away, telling herself one more time that things would become clearer.

Eventually.

Other people were hitting the beach as well, since it was after two and therefore considered a safer time of day for the sun worshippers. A number of people nodded and smiled as Riley passed, but nobody called out to her-which was a relief, since the faces were those of strangers.

She was, in any case, more intent on scanning the oceanfront houses as she passed; no one had been specific as to the actual location of the Pearson house, other than to say it was "up the beach from your place."

Jake had been so pissed at her when she'd left the arson scene with Ash that she hadn't wanted to ask him. As for Ash, she'd been preoccupied wondering when he was going to repeat his request that she confide in him about everything and had forgotten to ask him.

Oh, yeah, some cop I am.

Rather than repeat that request, he had instead talked casually of casual things, and Riley had reached the uncomfortable conclusion that he was simply going to wait until she brought up the subject.

Either he knew her well enough to know that she despised both ultimatums and feeling cornered, or else he was utterly confident that she would, sooner or later, confide in him.

She found either possibility disconcerting.

"Hey, Riley!"

She stopped but remained where she was on the beach, just above the high-water mark. A man, waving an arm to get her attention, was walking rapidly toward her across the wooden walkway that provided beach access from one of the houses.

The Pearson house? Riley didn't know. Had she visited the house at all? She didn't remember. The house at which she was looking was no more familiar to her than any other one in the neat row of attractively individualized yet basically similar houses along the beach: lots of deck space, lots of windows, colorful beach towels fluttering in the breeze as they hung over deck railings to dry. Nothing made this particular house memorable.

But the man…

I know you. Your face is in my mind.

One of the faces in her mind, at least. Not a bad face, on the thin side with the bones a bit too prominent. It matched his thin body, which was currently dressed in an old T-shirt featuring the logo of a seventies rock band and a pair of slightly baggy, too-long shorts.

At least he's not wearing a Speedo…

Riley did her best to shake off the irrelevant thought and concentrate on the man trudging awkwardly toward her through the deep sand piled up at the bottom of the walkway stairs.

Early to mid-forties, at a guess. Fairly tall, thatch of dark hair in no particular style, and very pale skin already showing the first pink signs of sunburn.

Already? Do I know he's only been here a short while or just assume it from what Ash said?

"Sunblock," she said casually as he reached her. "You can get burned before you know it on the beach. It's that nice breeze coming off the water." She was still groping in her mind but so far had found no name for this vaguely familiar face.

He grimaced. "Yeah, that's what Jenny keeps telling me. She also says the punch lines are too easy when you're a sunburned satanist."

"That is a point," Riley said. Satanist? Oh, shit. But if he's this open about it…

"Anyway, I'm wearing sunblock today. Plenty of punch lines for that, now that I think about it. But never mind. Riley, what's this we're hearing about the body found yesterday? He was a sacrifice?"

"You must know I'm not free to discuss any of the details with civilians. It's an ongoing investigation"-Your name, dammit. What's your name? It's- "Steve." So ordinary? Damn, bet I've got it wrong.

But apparently not.

"Riley, if he was killed and hung above the altar inside a circle of salt, we both know that's ritual."

She pulled her sunglasses down her nose and peered at him over the tops.

"Not my ritual," he added hastily. "Or ours, rather. Come on, Riley, you know we don't do that kind of shit. I don't know anybody who does. And a human victim is sure as hell not what we expected when we were invited out here."

Invited?

"Yeah, about that," she said, testing the waters cautiously. "About that invitation."

"What about it?" Steve frowned. "I told you when we talked about it Saturday afternoon."

"A lot's happened since then." She kept it vague.

Steve didn't appear to find that strange. "No kidding. I guess the sheriff has you on the murder officially, huh?"

Riley pushed her sunglasses back up her nose so she could hide behind them. "Like I said, Steve, it's an ongoing investigation."

"Right, right. Well, just so you know, I'd a lot rather talk to you than the sheriff. He thinks we're a bunch of nuts-probably dangerous nuts, at that. You know better."

Do I?

Mildly, she said, "Well, you can't really blame the sheriff. You've been talking to people. About your beliefs."

"We have nothing to hide," Steve insisted.

"Mmm. Having nothing to hide is one thing. Going around telling people you practice Satanism when weird things have been happening in the area is asking for trouble."

"Yeah, so you said when we talked on Saturday."

Riley waited, hoping that silence on her part would keep him talking. It was a technique that had worked for her often in the past, and it worked now.

"I know you warned me, Riley, but, Jesus, I didn't know some poor bastard was going to get killed. If I'd had any idea that was in the wind, I never would have brought my people here. We concentrate on compassion rituals, I told you that. We don't do any destruction rituals; the energy required and expended is just too negative. We don't want that coming back to us."

"Even if you had an enemy you'd prefer to get…out of your way?"

"Even if. And we don't make those kinds of enemies. I told you. We're harmless."

"Okay. So who invited you out here?"

Steve frowned at her. "I told you that too. He said his name was Wesley Tate."

Desperately trying to read his expression and pick up on verbal clues, Riley said, "I'm still having a hard time believing you'd bring your people here on the word of a stranger, Steve. I would have thought you'd know better than that. You've been practicing-what? Twenty years?"

"Nearly that." He sighed. "Yeah, I know it could have been a setup of some kind. At best somebody trying to take our money, and at worst a hate group out to make an example of us. But he just sounded so damn charming and welcoming, Riley. We've been taking heat back home, getting pressure to go elsewhere, so the invitation to visit Opal Island came at a perfect time."

A suspiciously perfect time.

Riley mentally crossed her fingers and guessed. "But to accept the invitation of a man you hadn't even set eyes on…"

"I know, I know. Not something I'd normally have considered, except that he knew all the right things to say. I mean, we're not some secret brotherhood with code words and bullshit like that, but you know as well as I do that there are…"

"Code words?" she supplied dryly.

"Well…yeah. The right words, anyway. The right names. He knew people. He checked out. And it wasn't like he was inviting us to his own place or asking for anything. Just suggesting we might want to check out Opal Island and Castle because people were laid-back here and because there were some even like-minded."

"And have you found them?"

"No. But it's just been a few days, after all. We've sort of put out the word." He grimaced. "As you said, rotten timing, obviously. And I've gotta tell you-if those like-minded people are into human sacrifice, we're not gonna have much in common with them."

"If anything at all," a new voice added pleasantly.

Riley looked past Steve, unsettled yet again that she hadn't noticed the approach of the tall, dark woman now joining them on the beach. Especially since the woman was strikingly beautiful and had a strong, definite presence. Probably in her mid-thirties, she was both exotic and sensual, her centerfold body ripe to bursting and her dark eyes practically smoldering.

"Hey, Riley," she said as she joined them. Her voice was as sultry as the rest of her, low and rather throaty. And her night-black hair fell straight and gleaming down her back all the way to her hips.

Put her photo in the dictionary beside the name of the alternative religion of your choice and she'd look the part.

Even wearing a very brief swimsuit. Maybe especially wearing a very brief swimsuit.

Riley dredged in her mind and produced a name. "Hey, Jenny."

"Guess the shit's really hit the fan with this murder," Jenny said, shaking her head. "Is that what you came to tell Steve? That we should pack up and get out?"

Though the other woman's voice was casual, the question was, in some peculiar way Riley couldn't define, some sort of challenge. She was sure of that, even if she didn't understand what lay behind it.

At least…I think I'm sure.

"I was just stretching my legs after lunch," she said mildly. "Steve was the one who wanted to talk to me."

"Should we pack up and leave?" Jenny asked.

"Not my place to say. But there's been a murder, and plenty of evidence left behind to point toward the occult. So if I were you, I'd be careful. Maybe stick close to the house. Maybe keep my beliefs to myself for the duration."

"If you were us."

Riley nodded. "Something like this happens, and people get jumpy as hell. Things snowball. So I'd lay low for a while. If I were you."

"Understood." Jenny smiled. She linked her arm with Steve's and with her free hand reached out to pat Riley on the shoulder. "You don't worry about us. We'll be fine."

…the candlelight cast dancing shadows around the room and shimmered off the velvet hangings and silken robes. On the wall above the altar hung an inverted cross fashioned of some metallic material that also caught the light. Below the inverted cross was the usual platform, and upon it the altar.

She was naked. Her head raised on a pillow, she lay in the center of the rectangular platform so that one of its long edges came to the backs of her widely parted knees. Her arms were stretched out to either side, and each hand grasped a silver candlestick containing a black candle.

The candles were lit.

Her body was pale, her long black hair arranged to frame her bold nakedness with no attempt to coyly conceal. Her lush breasts were tipped with artificially blood-red nipples, and as Riley watched, the robed celebrant-the "priest" conducting the ceremony-stepped between the altar's spread legs and dipped his thumb into the silver cup he held, then drew with the viscous liquid an inverted cross onto the pale flesh of her lower stomach.

Red. Blood.

The room smelled of incense and blood, and Riley had to breathe through her mouth to avoid coughing.

Couldn't cough.

Couldn't give herself away.

She peered through the narrow opening in the draperies, trying to look for anything familiar in the robed individuals. Height, build, a gesture-anything to help her identify at least one of them. But it was an exercise in futility. They were eerily featureless, their faces concealed by the hoods.

They were chanting in low voices, in Latin, and she could only catch a few words of what they were saying.

"…Magni Dei Nostri Satanas…"

Riley sat up with a smothered gasp, her heart pounding.

A Black Mass. That was what she'd seen, part of a version of the satanic ceremony known as a Black Mass.

Seen? Seen when? Seen where?

She was in bed, Riley realized. In her own bed, in her own bedroom of the beach house with moonlight streaming through the blinds on the windows. When she turned her head cautiously, it was to see Ash sleeping beside her. Beyond him she saw the clock on the nightstand.

5:30 A.M.

Wednesday?

No, that wasn't right. That couldn't be right. She'd been on the beach, talking to Steve and Jenny, and it had been no later than three or so on Tuesday afternoon. And then…

Here. Now. Waking in bed with Ash.

More than twelve hours later.

Resisting panic, she slipped from the bed without waking him. She found one of her sleep-shirts on the floor and put it on, then crept from the bedroom.

As usual, several lights had been left on dimly in the main living area of the house, and the blinds in there were firmly closed against the night. The latter fact told her only that she must have, as usual, closed all the blinds at dusk; Riley disliked the exposed sensation of uncovered windows at night, especially when people were likely to walk along the beach on the other side of those windows.

A holdover from her army days, when being too visible and presenting too much of a target had never been a good idea.

Riley paused for a moment and held out her hands, studying them. Not too shaky, but hardly steady. Rather the way she felt inside.

She went to the kitchen to collect an energy bar and a glass of orange juice. The TV remote was on the breakfast bar, so she used it to turn the set on, hitting the MUTE button as she did so. Automatically turning it to CNN, hopeful of verifying the date, she swore softly to see a commercial for some diet product.

Figured.

She got her juice and the PowerBar, then carried both to the small table in one corner of the living area, where it looked like she'd been working on her laptop.

Looks like? Jesus. Why don't I remember this?

It would have been easy to panic.

Very easy.

She sat down and tapped a key to take the computer out of sleep mode. When the dark screen brightened, the first thing she did was check the time and date, just to confirm that this was indeed very early on Wednesday. And it was.

She'd lost more than twelve hours.

But there was lost…and then there was lost.

From the looks of things, she'd been functional, even working. In one window was an FBI report on recent occult activities in the U.S., while another window contained the beginning of a report apparently written by her.

"Huh," she murmured. "Since when do I write-Oh."

The first line explained the otherwise inexplicable: Since I have no idea what the long-term effects of my current situation might be, I've decided to keep this written journal/report for the remainder of the investigation.

Current situation? That was worded so ambiguously she must have feared someone else might read it. Maybe Ash, for instance, since he apparently spent most nights here.

In any case, the rest of the entry was pretty bare-bones, detailing only the previous morning's visit to the sheriff's department, the autopsy results on their murder victim, and her visits with the sheriff to the arson sites. Not a word about her stroll up the beach and meeting/conversation with Steve and Jenny.

Then again, maybe she'd imagined all that. Or dreamed it.

Like the Black Mass, where Jenny had served as the altar. Maybe Riley had dreamed that? It had certainly seemed unreal, at least in a sense. Blood. Blood played no part in a Black Mass, despite popular belief; it was supposed to be a ceremony all about mocking traditional Christian beliefs and ceremonies, twisting and corrupting them. Blasphemous, certainly, from any conventional point of view, but neither dangerous nor inherently evil, and it didn't involve blood or actual sacrifice.

At least, it wasn't supposed to.

Riley looked around the quiet, peaceful space, listened to the surf pounding out on the beach, and wondered what was real. What she could trust. What she could believe in.

Had she actually witnessed that ceremony?

Had she dreamed it?

A touch on the nape of her neck found the burns left by a Taser. That was real. The man sleeping in her bed was certainly real.

Though the presence of both in her life was baffling.

She didn't sleep with men she barely knew, most especially during an ongoing investigation. And her training and experience made it highly unlikely that anyone could sneak up and blindside her with a Taser attack. Particularly in a situation where all her instincts and senses would have been on alert.

Unless…unless whoever had attacked her had been with her all along. That was possible, she supposed. Maybe more than possible. Someone she had trusted could have been close enough to surprise her, to catch her off her guard.

Nice little theory, that. The problem was proving it, identifying who that someone might be, and accomplishing both objectives without giving away her own ignorance on the subject.

No one so far had volunteered any information about where she had been or who she might have been with on Sunday night. At least not that she remembered, dammit.

All I really know is that I was Tasered. That I was covered in some of the same blood found in our victim's stomach-

Damn. Was he identified in the last twelve hours? That was the priority, to I.D. him. Though surely I would have made a note in this damn report of mine. And what about that other probable victim? Has he-or she-even been discovered yet?

She didn't know. Couldn't remember.

All she knew was that another twelve hours of her life were gone, and she didn't have the faintest idea what she had been doing all that time.

She put her head in her hands and slowly rubbed her face.

"Riley?"

She looked up to see Ash approaching her and hoped her face didn't show the growing panic she was all too aware of feeling.

"It's not even dawn," she told him, outwardly calm. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"I'm getting used to these predawn urges of yours to work." He bent down to kiss her briefly, adding, "They seem to come most often after a restless night. You tossed and turned a bit."

"Sorry."

"Didn't disturb me. Much, anyway." He smiled. "I gather you're up for the day? I'll grab a shower and shave, then fix breakfast."

Somewhat involuntarily, she said, "You're almost too good to be true, know that, pal?"

"I keep trying to tell you. If you're not careful, somebody else is going to steal me away from you." He kissed her again, then headed off for his shower.

Riley sat there at the table, her computer humming quietly, and gazed after him. Right now, in this moment, she felt safe with Ash-but what did that mean? That she trusted him? That she felt no threat from him? Or simply that she was thinking and feeling with a part of her anatomy quite a bit south of her brain?

Could she even trust her feelings-any of them-when her senses and memory were, to say the least, unreliable? When she could lose more than twelve hours without warning and apparently without some external cause?

There's a reason, a trigger. There has to be. I just have to figure it out.

Easily said. Not so easily done.