They had backed away from the water, moving closer to the boardwalk. 'I guess I can't blame you.'
'It's insane.' The wind shifted, and bursts of grit rippled across the beach, tracking each other in silent swells, until the gusts grew stronger and spun themselves into a conch of sand. 'What if it's true?' She shielded her eyes. 'What if they ever got loose?'
'I thought you didn't believe me?'
'I don't. Look at me. Be honest. I'll know if you're not.' She squared her shoulders. 'Do you really think...? Do you really believe Ramsey Chandler is one of these...?'
'No.' He saw puzzlement twist her expression. 'Not him.' In the frigid sunlight, the fine veins near her temples were like purple cobwebs, the delicate hollows of her face almost blue. For an instant, he felt as though he confronted some weird child, some seductive elf with smoky red hair and eyes the color of moss. 'It's the boy,' he told her.
'What?'
'The brother. Don't you see?'
Her mouth opened and closed. 'He's only...what? Fourteen? Fifteen?'
'That's how I got onto him. That's what I was searching for.'
'You were looking for a little boy?' Twisting away from him, she ran. 'Oh God.' Cold air stabbed into her chest as she pounded over the gravel. 'You're crazy.' He caught her at the stairs and held on, until they leaned against each other, panting painfully. 'Get away from me.' But she didn't fight, only jerked her arm away. 'What have I done?'
He released her. 'Kit?' As he plodded up the stairs behind her, she dodged into a tiny gazebo. 'You have to listen, Kit.' He found her huddled on a bench. 'Please. After the first killing a few months ago...the pond where they found the first girl. Remember? I went there myself. On a hunch.' The balustrade blocked the worst of the wind. 'I hid in the woods. And waited. It paid off. I spotted a boy prowling around. I stayed hidden. He seemed to be searching for something. Kit, I'm good at what I do. I've had to be. There's no way he could've seen me, but all of a sudden, he knew I was there. He just knew. And he took off. Only animals run like that. No way I could move fast enough. I figured I'd blown my one chance at him, never thought I'd get close enough again. But then a second killing made the news a few months later, farther down the coast, and I played another hunch and started checking out the resort towns. Especially small deserted ones, right on the outskirts of the pines.' He chuckled grimly, a sound like the crunch of a clamshell underfoot. 'It helped that I started hearing about Jersey Devil sightings.'
She smiled thinly. 'You really are crazy, aren't you?'
'You tell me.' He turned to look back at the beach. 'I found footprints in the sand. Not every morning. But enough. And I waited.'
'I could have made those. I run every night.'
'Not these tracks. You see them once, you never forget. Then about a week ago I, well, let's say I caught a glimpse of the boy.' Disgust and frustration gritted together in his voice. 'That day they found the woman in the bay.'
'Spell it out for me. Let me just hear you say the words, just so I know I'm not dreaming this.'
'What difference does it make? Whatever you want to call them. There's one of them here in this town, and I'm not going to let him get away.' He pulled something out of his coat pocket.
'What is that?'
'A list.'
'I can see that much.'
'From the cemetery.'
'You copied names off headstones?' She leaned away from the bit of paper.
'There are families that show up a lot.' A muscle tightened in his face. 'I was looking for any kind of lead I could follow. I found Chandlers going back four generations. All over the pines.' He squeezed her gloved hand between his fingers. 'I'm not crazy. Honest to God, I'm not, Kit. And I need your help. Kit, please, look at me.'
'Stop.'
'Look at me. I'm a zombie. Going through the motions. And sooner or later, I'll drop. Entropy, it's called. And it won't matter. Not even to me.'
'Stop, please.'
He didn't seem to hear her. 'There's only one door out of this place. If I can finish this, if I can stop this nightmare, then maybe I've got a chance to get my life back. Some kind of life at least.'
Stiffly, she pulled her hand away. 'I can't do what you're asking.' She brushed at her coat, stood.
'Can't you?' He rose beside her.
'I'm a cop.'
'A cop who doesn't report homicides?'
Her expression hardened.
'That has to tell you something, Kit. Like it or not, you do trust me. What if he really does have a hostage? You want her death on your hands? Like you said, you're involved in this now. You know what kind of job the troopers will do, don't you? Blundering in like an army? A minute after they pull into town, pieces of that girl will start hitting the water, because you can be sure he's aware of everything that goes on. Can't you feel that? Can't you feel he's watching us all the time?' He scanned the beach. Far off in the haze, a gull dipped languidly. 'We're her only chance. If we can find out where the boy's got her...'
'It doesn't make sense. It's the other one, Ramsey, who has the hostage. Has to be. But what did he say? Something about...' Her voice faded like a receding wave. A stiff wind pushed her, and she staggered against him. 'I knew you were good at this.' She shuddered with anger. 'This is what you wanted, isn't it? To suck me into this. To compromise me. Now I'm stuck. How could I explain my delay in reporting...how could I explain that I...?'
'You could always make an anonymous phone call.'
She huddled into her coat. 'I still might.'
'No, you won't.'
'Don't be so sure.' A pigeon seemed to fall out of the air. It flapped spastically on the boards. 'I'm freezing. Can we go now?'
His hands slid beneath her jacket, slipping from her waist to her back, under her sweater. Despite the chill, his palms felt warm against her spine, and she pushed against him, then went slack. Her head barely reached his shoulder.
'Go on. Tell me you're not just using me.' Angrily, she tried to pull away. 'I'll end up doing whatever you want.'
He pressed closer.
She'd never felt anyone's heart pound that way before, dull, rapid blows, as though some animal struggled beneath his jacket. Pulling off a glove, she touched his cheek, felt the heat flare beneath her fingertips, and she kept her hand there as though her touch had the power to silence whatever thundered within him. 'Don't look like that.' The pale stubble of his beard scratched her palm. 'I've never seen anything so sad.'
She kissed him back, hard and determinedly, like a stubborn child. She felt him shiver but realized that she herself had stopped shaking.
He pulled her harder against him. Even in the wind, she felt his heat increase. He brought his mouth to hers and forced her teeth apart, sliding in his tongue, as she ground her hips against his.
'Can we get inside now, please?' She jerked her head away. 'Before we freeze to death?'
XVII
As dream images lanced her psyche, she twitched: something vaguely human prowled along the swamp, and somehow she knew its pain and sensed the fetid lusts that drove it, even felt the freezing water that sucked around its legs. A thickly veined mixture of mud and stringy weeds dripped from its clawed hands.
No, not mud, she realized.
She sat up in the bed. Bright patches brindled the ceiling and blotted down toward the floor. Beneath the bureau, the cat curled in a wedge of sunlight, just a twist of dusty fur, belly-up to the warmth. Kit lay back, and the movement disturbed Steve so that he slid against her. She listened until his breathing eased again. After a moment, he turned slightly, and his chest, damp against her side, pulled away with a sound like a kiss. She stayed very still,
