It had been brilliant—absolutely brilliant.
And it had been the god’s scheming and doing, not his.
Of course, there had been other sacrifices—people in graves thepolice had no idea about.
Did Pan intend to reveal all those graves sometime soon?
Would he use that revelation to unleash his apocalyptic panic?
It’s up to the god.
It’s Pan’s will.
His ears perked up as a sound started coming from the concretewalls around him—a musical incantation.
Pan’s song—at last!
He picked up his scissors and got ready to cut out the message ofthat song, feeling possessed by the primal powers of the universe.
For he knew the true meaning of Pan’s name …
All.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Riley slowed the car down as the headlights fell on abattered-looking rural mailbox with the number 345 on it.
“This must be the place,” Riley said. “345 Magnolia Road.”
Ann Marie muttered from the passenger seat, “I don’t like thelooks of this.”
I don’t either, Riley thought, although she didn’t say soaloud.
Their surroundings had changed a lot during the last half mile orso. As they’d followed their GPS directions to the address that Bill had givenRiley over the phone, they’d passed large country homes, small farms, andoccasional clusters of houses.
Everything had struck Riley as fairly prosperous, not like therough rural areas she’d known during her childhood. But they hadn’t passed anyhouses for a while now. And even though they’d come to a mailbox, there was nohouse in sight.
Instead there was a wire fence with barbed wire on top and a gatewith a sign that read NO TRESPASSING. The sign was crudely hand-painted, as wasthe number on the mailbox. The gate was secured with a chain and padlock
Riley drove slowly past the gate and the mailbox.
“Where are we going?” Ann Marie asked.
Riley thought the rookie was sounding a bit worried.
Maybe we should both be, Riley thought.
Riley didn’t reply, just drove on for about an eighth of a mileuntil she came to a broad shoulder in the road. She pulled over and parkedtheir vehicle, then turned off the engine and the headlights.
“What are we doing?” Ann Marie said.
“We’re going to walk back,” Riley said. “I don’t want to announceour approach.”
“But it doesn’t look like anybody lives anywhere near here.”
Riley felt a flash of impatience.
“There was a mailbox back there,” she said. “Where there’s amailbox, there’s a house. And a big freezer got delivered to that house about ayear ago. I want to find out why and who it was delivered to. I want to checkout that house. There are a couple of flashlights in the glove compartment.Hand me one, and keep the other for yourself.”
Ann Marie handed a flashlight to Riley, and they both got out ofthe car. The night was chilly and dark. No other vehicles came into sight asthey walked back along Magnolia Road toward the gate and the mailbox.
“What are we looking for, anyway?” Ann Marie asked.
She sounded like her teeth were chattering—and not from the cold.Riley couldn’t help but be amused.
“We’ll know it when we find it,” Riley said. “If we findit. You sound kind of scared for a kid who grew up around dead people.”
Ann Marie sighed and said, “Yeah, well, in case you nevernoticed, mortuaries aren’t exactly spooky places. They’re designed to lookpeaceful and pleasant, nice lighting and pretty pastel colors and all. I’m notused to wandering around outside at night—at least not in a wilderness likethis.”
Riley smiled at the irony.
My partner is a mortician’s daughter who’s afraid of the dark,she thought.
She wondered what else she was going to learn about Ann Mariebefore the night was over. The rookie still hadn’t told Riley the story of thatcase she’d solved—the case that had gotten her recruited into the FBI HonorsInternship Program. Riley figured now was still not the time to ask her aboutthat. It might turn out to be a long and involved story.
But Riley had another question on her mind, and she thought itwas an important one. Now seemed like as good a time as any to ask it, butRiley wasn’t sure how to say it.
“You’ve seen a lot of corpses,” Riley said cautiously. “But haveyou ever …?”
Riley’s voice trailed off.
Ann Marie said, “Seen anybody get killed? No. I haven’t even seenanyone die from natural causes. I was just never around when any of the olderpeople in my family died. Kind of weird, huh? I guess that’s likely to changenow that I’m an FBI agent.”
It sure is, Riley thought.
She hoped they could finish this case without Ann Marie goingthrough that particular rite of passage. Riley wasn’t at all sure the girlwould handle it well, and she didn’t much want to be the one to help herthrough it.
When they arrived at the gate, they could see that the dirt roadbeyond it led into a wooded area. Riley shined the flashlight along the road,but they could see nothing beyond those impenetrable trees and underbrush.
Ann Marie said, “I don’t see an intercom button to push to tellanybody we’re here.”
Riley almost laughed at what seemed to her like a rather sillyidea.
Ann Marie added, “Um … the sign says ‘no trespassing.’”
“So it does,” Riley said. “And this is where you learn that signsaren’t always there to be obeyed.”
In spite of the padlocked gate and barbed wire on the fence, shesaw how they could get inside. There was a fair amount of space between thegate and the fence.
Riley squeezed through the space to the other side of the gate.
“Come on through,” she told Ann Marie.
The girl just stood there, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.
“Did you hear me?” Riley asked.
Ann Marie nodded nervously and squeezed through herself.
They started to walk along a dirt road that suddenly seemed oddlyfamiliar to Riley. Then she realized it reminded her of the drive that had ledto her father’s cabin up in the Appalachian Mountains. Although she had soldthe place after he died, she had walked that road many times in earlier years.This one wasn’t uphill like her father’s drive, but the dirt and stonescrunched underfoot in much the same way.
She also remembered that her father was sometimes prone
