Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Eleri shook her head, her cheekbones too sharp against her skin. “No alarm bells so far. They seem to be people who didn’t like their lives and took the chance offered by the fall of Silence to build a new one. Most were more scared of me than otherwise until I mentioned my cover story.”
“They thought you were what, an operative sent to haul them back?” Adam guessed.
“The scars of the past will take a long time to fade.” She stared off into the parking lot with that calm statement that offered no insight into what she thought about the decision her Psy ancestors had made to condition emotion out of their young.
A decision that had, from what Adam had learned, begun in a desperate attempt to keep those children safe—but ended up with psychopaths at the top of their hierarchy.
“The assault on your clanmate,” Eleri said, “the chief’s heart attack…I was the first domino.”
“Maybe. Timing doesn’t quite fit for me—you’d barely spoken to anyone when Jacques was shot.” It would’ve been easy to blame her, but if it was related to the Sandman case, then the serial murderer had always been hiding in Raintree. All Eleri had done was bring the problem into the light.
“I’m recognizable to the Sandman,” Eleri said. “His letters indicate he stalked me for years before the first letter. I wouldn’t have had to talk to him—it could be as simple as him glimpsing me when I first drove down Main Street.”
Adam’s entire body was a knot of muscle. “Jacques would stand in front of a hundred guns if it would help expose a murderer of innocents. I do, however, think, Sandman or another bastard, the shooting was a mistake, an act of impulse—impetus as yet unknown. We need to use that mistake to pin him down.”
Eleri continued to stare out at the dawn, but her next words weren’t to do with blame, her brain clearly having shifted track with Adam’s words. “There’s a chance he’s decompensating—some serial killers are stable for a long time, while others disintegrate into chaos with unexpected rapidity. The pathologist on the case has reported signs of increasing violence on the brains of our victims, as if he’s losing control rather than refining his skill. I’ve seen that kind of rapid decline before.”
Even as Adam wondered what it had done to the girl he’d met to walk into minds vicious and twisted day after day, what it had stolen from her, how it had altered her, Eleri continued to speak.
“The assault on your clanmate could,” she said, “as easily be a thing of proximity and chance. Let’s say it’s our killer, and he is aware I’m in town. I think he’d be excited, hyped, not scared. The letters show that he wants my attention in a way that’s disturbing.”
Adam’s talons pricked at the inside of his skin. “Yet you work alone.”
“He won’t murder me. Not yet. I’m his audience.” Eleri still didn’t look at him, her gaze fathomless as she stared past him. “Let’s say seeing me arouses him on the emotional level, leading him to want to go sit in his vehicle, relive his crimes.”
“Only Jacques beat him to the site, and took flight right as the killer parked and got out,” Adam said, seeing where she was going. “It had to be someone Jacques knew, could identify.” Which meant it was also someone Adam would know, perhaps even a person he called a friend.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if the killer had kept a cool head, pretended he was out for a drive and spotted Jacques so stopped,” Eleri said. “But he couldn’t take the risk, especially not when his mind was full of what he’d done, the excitement of his crimes.”
Her eyes met his again, the hazel more green today and devoid of any hint of personality. “It can’t be about the car alone. Anyone who’s spent even a day in Raintree would know your people would react with speed to the assault on Jacques—the car was forfeit the instant the shooter took aim.”
“Not if Jacques died before calling for help.” Adam would’ve been left to search the desert for his fallen clanmate, the blood bond severed. “The shooter—possibly your killer—made a mistake, yes, but we can’t be sure which mistake.”
“You’re right.” She released the doorjamb and flexed her hand…then stared, as if suddenly aware of her exposed skin.
“Why the gloves?” Adam asked at that moment. “None of the Psy in town wear them, but I’ve seen a few others over the years.”
• • •
Eleri considered whether to lie or otherwise obfuscate, because to tell him the truth would be to make herself vulnerable. But he already hated her for a lie; she wouldn’t add to that. Not because she expected him to feel any differently about her and not because any part of her was still that young girl who’d run into him in the hallway outside the courtroom, but because she’d made a promise to herself to never again betray Adam Garrett.