Keeping the pistol at her side, she peered through the sidelight. The motion detector flood on her front porch had come on. She had a clear view of the steps and the yard. No one was out there now, but the light had recently been activated. Raccoons, possums and stray cats were the usual culprits, but an animal hadn’t rung her doorbell.
Another prank? A harmless game of Ring and Run?
It wouldn’t be the first time. The subject matter of her radio program invited mockery. Some of the local teenagers had started hanging out at the Ruins again. She’d seen the bobble of their flashlights along the bank lately, had heard the whoops of their laughter as she sat out on the dock. She tried not to think harshly of their mischief. She’d been a teenager once, susceptible to peer pressure and the tug of her own curiosity.
There’d been a blood moon on the night she and her friends had ventured into the Ruins, but she wouldn’t think about that right now. She wouldn’t dwell on the creaking floorboards that should have been a warning or the gleam of eyes that had watched from the shadows. She wouldn’t dwell on the lost memories of that night, the survivor’s guilt that still dogged her after all these years or the violent images that came to her in dreams from time to time.
She wouldn’t dwell on any of that, even though all of it had brought her back to Echo Lake.
She kept watch at the window for the longest time. Nothing seemed amiss. Whoever had been at her front door was either long gone or watched from the bushes to see how she reacted. Maybe if she went outside and waved her gun about, they’d turn tail and run. Might think twice about their next little game of Ring and Run.
Of course, she would never behave in such a reckless manner. She would never knowingly terrorize anyone over a silly prank.
Locking the gun back in the drawer, she returned the key to the box and told herself to turn in. Forget about pranks. Forget about those disturbing calls. Just get some rest. Everything will be fine in the morning.
The good news was, she’d managed to fend off a panic attack and she could take comfort in knowing she was stronger for it.
Even so, sleep was a long time coming. When she finally dozed off, images of a demonic face flickered across her subconscious like the strobe of an unwatched TV.
SAM REECE COULDN’T sleep. He sat out on the balcony of his Dallas townhome and watched the shimmer of moonlight on the surface of the landscaped pond that curved around the gated community. The streets were empty at this hour, the neighborhood almost preternaturally silent. Earlier, he’d spotted a young couple out walking their dog, but they’d long since scurried home.
An odd restiveness plagued him, though he had no idea why. He liked it here well enough, having settled in a quaint area of town halfway between the hustle and bustle of downtown and One Justice Way where he worked. Maybe the neighborhood was a little too laid-back at times, but at thirty-seven, he no longer felt the need to be in the mix. The proximity of bars and restaurants had become less important to him than quiet neighbors.
There’d been a time not so long ago when he never would have imagined himself in such a place. Never would have considered a voluntary reassignment to any field office—let alone Dallas—after spending so many years in DC. Maybe he was going through some sort of pre-midlife crisis, feeling the pull of his roots more strongly than the soar of his wings. He’d grown up in northeast Texas and had cut his teeth in the Tyler satellite office after Quantico. Eventually, he’d been transferred to the Dallas field office and from there to FBI headquarters where he’d spent the past ten years as a member and then leader of one of the first Child Abduction Rapid Deployment teams in the country.
It had been an exciting, fast-paced life, grueling in some ways, but Sam had always thrived on chaos and clutter. He lived for new challenges and liked nothing more than the exhilaration of a complicated case. Yet here he was back on his old stomping grounds.
He reminded himself that Dallas was hardly a demotion. The field office was one of the busiest in the country with no shortage of stimulating cases. But in all honesty, he hadn’t come back because of boredom or even to be close to his family. He’d come back because his first case still haunted him.
On the night of a blood moon, three teenagers in Belle Pointe, Texas, had entered the ruins of an abandoned psychiatric hospital. One of the girls had been found unconscious the next morning at the edge of the lake. Another girl had been spotted a few weeks later wandering along the side of a country road in a fugue state. The third girl, Riley Cavanaugh, had never been seen or heard from again.
In the days and weeks following her disappearance, the local authorities had combed the countryside and interviewed dozens if not hundreds of witnesses. In desperation, they’d finally requested help from the Bureau. Sam, fresh out of Quantico with a savior complex the size of Texas, had been sent in to offer assistance. He’d used all the federal resources at his disposal, but Riley Cavanaugh had never been found and her kidnapper remained elusive to this day.
Sam had done everything by the
