Exposure

“Sit down.”

She lowered herself to the chair. Her ankles shook.

Rodney ran his tongue between his lips. He remained standing beside his chair, arms folded. “On the phone you talked to Tricia about dreaming of the dead man. You heard screams and footsteps. You saw a dark yellow floor.” His words were clipped, terse.

The sense of those eyes upon her — in her own home. Kaycee’s skin flushed. “How did you know?”

“I tapped your phone.”

“Why?”

His expression blackened. “Answer the question!”

“Wh – what question?”

“You heard screams and footsteps.”

“Yes.”

“Just in the dream? Or also while you were awake?”

“I — both.”

His mouth flattened in a cold smile. “And you ‘saw’ a dark yellow floor under the dead man. Before you saw it in the picture on your monitor.”

Kaycee’s fingers curled around the front of her seat. “How’d you get that picture on my computer?”

Rodney shot her a withering look. “Do you think I am incapable? I’ve studied technology for years. I’ve planned this. It’s nothing for me to get in and out of your house with a motion-sensored camera. I only added a few seconds’ delay to it. As for hacking into a computer, that’s rudimentary. The TV was harder, but far from impossible. I have special toys that can interrupt a signal. And yes, I can develop a photo so it fades in sunlight.” He slapped both palms on the table and leaned toward her. “I’m your ‘they,’ remember? Your worst fear come true. I live in your walls. I see what you do and hear what you say. You’ve sensed me since you were a child. Known me practically all your life. So why now do my abilities surprise you?”

Kaycee’s neck arched back until it started to cramp. “I . . . you’ve been watching me, for real, since I was a child?”

He shook his head, as if disgusted with her slowness. “Only in the last year since I found you.”

“You’ve lived in this cabin for a year?”

“Do you think I’m that tasteless? No, no, I’ve saved this lovely abode just for you.”

A year he’d been watching her. The knowledge jarred her bones. A year ago Mandy had died, and Kaycee’s own downward spiral began . . .

Understanding glimmered. “Those times I went to the police in Wilmore. When I thought I saw somebody . . .”

He gave her an evil smile. “Part of my plan to make you look crazy. They don’t believe you, you know.”

Maybe not before. They did now.

But now was too late.

Slowly Rodney straightened, leaving two smeared handprints in the dust. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to proceed.” He swiped his palms together to clean them. “I want to hear about everything you’ve been sensing.”

So he could make sure all those fears came true?

Kaycee’s mouth dried out. She needed water.

Rodney yanked up his T-shirt and reached for his gun. “Tell me if you want Hannah to live!”

She jerked. “Yes, I saw the dark yellow floor. I felt a dark, closed space where I could barely breathe. I heard screams and footsteps and saw bright light. And I smelled blood.”

Kaycee’s words cut off. She eyed Rodney’s hand on the gun.

He drew it away. “Anything else?”

She shook her head.

He swung toward the kitchen, reached in a tilted cabinet, and withdrew a large manila envelope. His movements thrummed with dark, excited glee. At the table he pulled out the envelope’s contents and slapped them down.

Eight-by-ten color photos. The top one was the first one she’d seen of the dead man. The close-up. Kaycee recoiled.

Rodney thumped a forefinger on the dead man’s face. “Who is he?”

Kaycee looked away, sick. “The policeman in the barn. You killed him.”

Rodney made an impatient sound in his throat and flicked the picture off the stack. The next photo showed the man on the blood-smeared dark yellow floor. Rodney jabbed at it. “That look like a barn floor to you?”

Kaycee’s shoulders drew up. “I don’t know.”

He flicked away the picture to reveal a third. The same man, looking into the camera very much alive. “Who is this?”

“I told you. Why do you keep asking me, what do you want me to say?”

“You want to help your little friend in there?”

“Yes!”

“Then think!” He picked up the top photo and smacked it down to the side. With both hands he spread all the remaining pictures except one, which he left hidden. “Look at them.”

Kaycee’s vision blurred. She knew what the final hidden photo would show. Mark, dead.

“Look!”

“I am!” Kaycee hitched a breath and wiped her eyes.

“Here.” He smacked his fingers on the close-up face of a young woman. Blue eyes, long strawberry blonde hair.

Kaycee stared at it, her mind on the unseen photo. “Who is she?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve never seen her before.”

“Look again.”

“I don’t know her!”

“Give him what he wants, and he’ll let me go home.” She couldn’t help Hannah. They were trapped. Kaycee felt sweat pop out on her forehead. Why was he doing this?

Rodney hit the second photo. “This one.” The same man and woman, standing side by side, smiling.

“The policeman and his wife?”

An angry vein throbbed in the side of Rodney’s neck. “This one.”

Some dingy-looking apartment living room. An old couch, cheap curtains. “I don’t know this place.” Kaycee’s voice flattened. “Please. I don’t know it.”

“I have one more to show you.” Rodney raised his eyebrows, his face a mask of contempt. Kaycee dug her heels into the floor. “Close your eyes.”

Her lids slipped shut. Kaycee’s chin lowered, silent sobs battering her chest for release. She heard the soft whisk of one slick paper against another.

“You will know who this is.”

Oh, dear God. Kaycee pressed the back of a hand against her mouth.

“Now look.”

Muscles like steel, Kaycee opened her eyes.

Her heart wrenched. Not Mark’s dead face.

It was a little girl with long unruly red curls. She’d never seen herself so young. “That’s me,” she whispered.

Something foreboding and deathly clanked in Kaycee’s head, as if the ancient cover of a deep well shook loose its rusty chains.

“What do you know, she gets one right.” Rodney lifted a leg around his chair and sat. He listed over the table with expectation, pushing the picture toward her. “Looky here, it’s little you, just turned four. It’s time you two met. Time you learned your real name. Kaycee Raye? No.” He tapped the photo one, two, three times.

“Tammy Giordano.”