Haven (25 page)

But whatever it was remained elusive.

She didn’t see Navarro at all, which made her even more uneasy, because she had assumed he’d be looking for Jessie. And though she had a hunch he had a talent for blending in when he chose, she thought she should have caught at least a glimpse of him at some point.

But she hadn’t.

Just before noon, Emma saw her sister speaking to Dan Maitland, and a few minutes later to local bad-boy-grown-to-drunken-failure Peter Troy.

She had no idea what any of the conversations were about, but none of them looked casual, and that was troubling to Emma. Especially since she lost Jessie in the crowd sometime just after noon.

And as the festival wore on, hard as she looked, she could see no sign of her sister.

Not long after noon, Jessie slipped away from the festival. Everyone in town was busy celebrating; she’d never have a better chance to return to the cabin.

She was reasonably sure she had time for one last visit to the cabin undetected. It hadn’t been part of her original plan to go back there; the original plan was to leave Baron Hollow and get only far enough away to be clear before calling in the troops.

Not that she didn’t want to be part of catching this monster; she most certainly did. But her concern was for Emma. Because monsters weren’t easily caught even when their lair was known, and just in case he escaped and had time to do more damage, Jessie didn’t want him to connect what was about to happen to him in any way to Jessie—and, by extension, to Emma.

He’d been smart up to now, and careful, but once he knew someone
had discovered his secret, he would probably stop being careful and just be enraged.

Jessie didn’t want the target of his rage to be her sister.

Hence the ruse she had concocted. She was leaving town, called back to work. Simple, reasonable, believable. She had slipped back to the inn to grab her already-packed bag, leaving a note for Emma to find later on. She had managed to move her car without, she believed, being noticed; there would be so many cars parked at either end of downtown for the festival, in every possible parking spot, that she doubted anyone would even notice hers missing.

She even stopped by the pharmacy early to buy some cough drops for her “scratchy” throat, telling Patty the clerk—and the most notorious gossip in Baron Hollow—that she’d been called back to work and would be leaving town that afternoon, even before the fireworks.

And, no, she didn’t know when or even if she’d return.

Groundwork laid.

All that had been according to plan.

The plan made before she’d known about Nathan Navarro.

Jessie had spent a sleepless night trying to decide what difference his presence made. She should have met with him, confided in him; she knew that.

She knew it.

All her training, all her experience, told her that. Logic and reason told her that. She argued inwardly with logic and reason that one thing she absolutely needed to do was return to the cabin just long enough to hide his trophy box, leaving it in the cabin as evidence, but making sure he wouldn’t have the chance to destroy it while she and Navarro were busy calling in the troops.

That made sense. That was even, in its way, logical.

But something else was nagging at her, an uneasy sense of something she still didn’t know or hadn’t realized or found. And whatever it was, it stopped her whenever she thought about meeting up with Navarro or confiding in him. Or in Emma.

No, as careless and irresponsible, as dangerous as it seemed, Jessie’s deepest instincts urged her to do this on her own, and now. She had to.

She had to…atone.

That was what she felt, as baffling as she found it.

Atone for what?

Jessie didn’t know, but she did know her time was limited and that she had none to waste in going back over her decision one more time. It was made, and that was that. Now she had work to do.

All she had to do was one final bit of verification—and leave at least one very subtle signpost for the right people to find. Navarro, probably. He’d know what to look for. They were taught that at Haven, to leave signs for other operatives. Because you never knew when someone might be right behind you and need the edge of information you hadn’t had time to share.

She did have preliminary information for the troops when they were called in, a point of professional pride with her. On her tablet was a report that contained a list of the names on those driver’s licenses; using his “trophies” to compile evidence against him was something that gave her grim satisfaction. And she’d made a start, working long into the night searching missing-persons databases for names on the driver’s licenses and ID cards. On her tablet.

And a backup on a thumb drive she’d left in Emma’s jewelry box.

However, she couldn’t remove the trophies themselves from his cabin; the evidence needed to remain there. But she was also worried that he might—just—have time before the troops could catch or kill him to destroy it, or move it, and that was not a chance she was prepared to take.

That was what she kept telling herself. It was logical and reasonable, after all. They didn’t know what he’d done with the bodies—though she had a hunch she almost wanted to be wrong about—and without the bodies
or
the trophies, they might well have no case.

So she had to preserve the trophies. She had to.

Besides, she really did want to take a look inside what she suspected was where he imprisoned his victims for a time.

How often, after all, was an investigator given the chance to get a good look into a monster’s lair?

“
EMMA?
”

She turned with relief to find Navarro at her side. “Where have you been? It’s the first I’ve seen of you all day.”

Rather grimly, he said, “Trying to connect with Jessie. I saw her half a dozen times during the morning, but she has an uncanny knack of slipping away into the crowd. Still not answering her cell phone, either; it’s going straight to voice mail.”

They were both speaking a bit louder than normal, because a band was playing enthusiastically only a few yards away. With sizable amplifiers.

“So you haven’t talked to her yet?”

“
No. Christ, I thought this was a small town; how many people can there
be
in an area like this?”

“They come from nearby towns. The festival is one of the best in the Southeast,” Emma replied automatically. “I’m worried about Jessie. She wouldn’t say much last night, but there was something odd about her, something I couldn’t put my finger on.”

“Probably pissed that I’m here.”

“She didn’t seem angry. Just…set. Like she’d made up her mind and there was no turning back.”

“Made up her mind about what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Confronting whoever hurt her in the past?”

Emma was startled. “How did you—?”

“It had to be a trauma of some kind, or it wouldn’t be interfering with her abilities, especially after so many years. Emma, you’ve got to tell me what happened to her.”

Emma looked around, spotted a guitar player from the upcoming band heading toward her with panic on his face, and said quickly to Navarro, “We can’t talk here and now. Keep trying to find Jessie. I’ll find somebody to relieve me and catch up with you.”

“Hurry,” he said. “I have a feeling I don’t much like.”

SHE HAD EARLIER
parked her car quite a distance from downtown, nearly halfway to the highway, discovering a handy dirt road she suspected was used by young lovers since it faded into nothing about a hundred yards from the main road. It was close to the shortcut
she had been using to get to the cabin, but since she’d had to make an appearance at the festival, and talk to a few people, she still had quite a hike to get back to the car later.

The information she had gathered had done little to solve the mystery that was her past, that summer party so long ago. If anything, the reactions she’d gotten had only confused things. Nellie had proven the most useful; Jessie hadn’t even remembered that the other woman, the same age as Emma, had been at the party briefly and had been able to offer up two names Jessie hadn’t even considered.

And their reactions to her casual questions had been…odd. One had displayed a flash of panic and the urgent need to be somewhere else, and the other had coolly denied being there.

At all.

I don’t have time to think about that now. I’ll think about it after I’ve done what I have to and get out of here.

It was an unsatisfactory realization, but one she had to accept.

She hiked to where she’d left her car, reasonably sure no one had noticed her leaving the downtown area. She had locked up all her stuff in the car earlier, carrying only the car key and some cash in her pockets while she was at the festival. She hadn’t bothered to carry her cell. She had tried to charge it overnight, but apparently the battery had taken all it could of psychic energy or her own carelessness; it had remained dead despite being plugged in all night. And she hadn’t brought a spare.

Now the only things Jessie took with her from the backpack she normally carried on her hikes were her small tool case of lockpicks, her weapon, and a flashlight. She unholstered her weapon and stuck
it inside the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back to make it less obvious that she was armed; she slid the small tool case into the front pocket of her jeans, and carried the flashlight, then locked up her car and slid the key into another pocket.

She wanted to travel light, just in case she had to move fast. Even though she had taken great care to leave no sign behind, there was always the chance the killer had realized someone had been in the cabin.

A slim chance, Jessie believed.

She followed the footpath from the road only about thirty yards, then veered off toward the east, and the shortcut she had found. It wasn’t a path or a trail, just a very faint track she thought might have been made and maintained by deer and other wildlife passing through the woods.

Whatever had made it, she had yet to see any human footprints along the way, and she had followed the track several times by now. Before and after fairly heavy rainstorms. And still no sign anyone else had walked this way. Even though she moved quickly, she also moved cautiously, allowing her senses to flare out and probe her surroundings.

As she neared the cabin, she had to pull those senses in a bit, because what she always felt near and at the cabin was a sense of dread and darkness so absolute she had never been able to bring herself to just let it wash over her.

She wasn’t strong enough for that. She didn’t have to think about it; she just
knew
.

She had stopped beating herself up about it. It was something she just couldn’t do. Fine. Everybody had their limits. What she
could
do was help stop the monster, and that was what she intended to do.

To give Emma her safe little town back, so she wouldn’t…

Wouldn’t…

That was always as far as the thought went. No matter how hard Jessie concentrated, she couldn’t find the rest of that sentence. It was weird, and it bothered her on a level deeper than thought. She pushed it out of her mind, but this time for a very good reason.

She couldn’t afford to be distracted.

She reached the cabin just then, circling warily as she always did, just to be safe, then went straight to the front door and unlocked it. Inside, she set her tool case and the flashlight on the coffee table, then took the time to check the bedroom and bath quickly, just to make sure nothing was different. Finding everything as it had been on her last visit, she went to the bookshelf and removed the book that secreted the box of trophies.

Aware of time passing, she resisted the temptation to do more than unlock and open it quickly just to make sure the contents were there and the same. They were, and as far as she could tell, nothing new had been added.

Good. That was very good.

She had considered long and hard about where she might be able to hide the box here in this very bare cabin; she had to assume that if he discovered it missing, he would suspect it had been taken away, not merely moved to a new hiding place. So the hiding place had to be one he wasn’t likely to stumble upon, or even find easily if he
did
somehow suspect it was still here.

If all went according to plan, the next time he went for the box it would be in desperation, because the hunters were closing in on him.

Jessie returned the pretend book to its place on the shelf, and then went directly to the open fireplace. In the heat of summer it would never be used, or at least that was what she prayed would be true. She leaned into the opening and reached up inside the chimney, touching nothing with her fingers but allowing the box she held to slide along the rock until she felt the narrow ledge she had found.

The box fit perfectly.

She eased her arm from the chimney and looked at the logs piled on the iron grate, at the hearth, making sure there wasn’t even a little soot knocked loose to drift down and catch his attention.

She didn’t have to be a profiler to know that this monster was neat to the point of being obsessive-compulsive; the extreme neat order of this place was proof enough of that.

There was no sign of soot.

Jessie reached back to get her lockpick kit from the coffee table, and unzipped it, removing a sharp tool. Then, very, very carefully, she scratched a tiny, almost invisible lightning bolt in the center of the flagstone hearth, pointing toward the fireplace. Only someone looking for a sign would see it.

She hoped.

THE PROBLEM WITH
trying to find Jessie in Baron Hollow—anywhere in Baron Hollow—during the festival was, as Navarro observed, that it appeared every man, woman, and child within two hundred miles had decided to attend.

The problem was compounded by the fact that they didn’t have a clue even where to start looking.

“
Still can’t ping her cell phone,” Maggie reported briefly when Navarro pulled Emma into the recessed doorway of one of the few downtown stores that were closed and placed the call.