Sleeping With Fear (12 page)

Figured.

She got her juice and the PowerBar, then carried both to the small table in one corner of the living area, where it looked like she'd been working on her laptop.

Looks like? Jesus. Why don't I remember this?

It would have been easy to panic.

Very easy.

She sat down and tapped a key to take the computer out of sleep mode. When the dark screen brightened, the first thing she did was check the time and date, just to confirm that this was indeed very early on Wednesday. And it was.

She'd lost more than twelve hours.

But there was lost…and then there was
lost
.

From the looks of things, she'd been functional, even working. In one window was an FBI report on recent occult activities in the U.S., while another window contained the beginning of a report apparently written by her.

"Huh," she murmured. "Since when do I write-Oh."

The first line explained the otherwise inexplicable:
Since I have no idea what the long-term effects of my current situation might be, I've decided to keep this written journal/report for the remainder of the investigation.

Current situation? That was worded so ambiguously she must have feared someone else might read it. Maybe Ash, for instance, since he apparently spent most nights here.

In any case, the rest of the entry was pretty bare-bones, detailing only the previous morning's visit to the sheriff's department, the autopsy results on their murder victim, and her visits with the sheriff to the arson sites. Not a word about her stroll up the beach and meeting/conversation with Steve and Jenny.

Then again, maybe she'd imagined all that. Or dreamed it.

Like the Black Mass, where Jenny had served as the altar. Maybe Riley had dreamed that? It had certainly seemed unreal, at least in a sense. Blood. Blood played no part in a Black Mass, despite popular belief; it was supposed to be a ceremony all about mocking traditional Christian beliefs and ceremonies, twisting and corrupting them. Blasphemous, certainly, from any conventional point of view, but neither dangerous nor inherently evil, and it didn't involve blood or actual sacrifice.

At least, it wasn't supposed to.

Riley looked around the quiet, peaceful space, listened to the surf pounding out on the beach, and wondered what was real. What she could trust. What she could believe in.

Had she actually witnessed that ceremony?

Had she dreamed it?

A touch on the nape of her neck found the burns left by a Taser. That was real. The man sleeping in her bed was certainly real.

Though the presence of both in her life was baffling.

She didn't sleep with men she barely knew, most
especially
during an ongoing investigation. And her training and experience made it highly unlikely that anyone could sneak up and blindside her with a Taser attack. Particularly in a situation where all her instincts and senses would have been on alert.

Unless…unless whoever had attacked her had been with her all along. That was possible, she supposed. Maybe more than possible. Someone she had trusted could have been close enough to surprise her, to catch her off her guard.

Nice little theory, that. The problem was proving it, identifying who that someone might be, and accomplishing both objectives without giving away her own ignorance on the subject.

No one so far had volunteered any information about where she had been or who she might have been with on Sunday night. At least not that she remembered, dammit.

All I really
know
is that I was Tasered. That I was covered in some of the same blood found in our victim's stomach-

Damn. Was he identified in the last twelve hours? That was the priority, to I.D. him. Though surely I would have made a note in this damn report of mine. And what about that other probable victim? Has he-or she-even been discovered yet?

She didn't know. Couldn't remember.

All she knew was that another twelve hours of her life were gone, and she didn't have the faintest idea what she had been doing all that time.

She put her head in her hands and slowly rubbed her face.

"Riley?"

She looked up to see Ash approaching her and hoped her face didn't show the growing panic she was all too aware of feeling.

"It's not even dawn," she told him, outwardly calm. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"I'm getting used to these predawn urges of yours to work." He bent down to kiss her briefly, adding, "They seem to come most often after a restless night. You tossed and turned a bit."

"Sorry."

"Didn't disturb me. Much, anyway." He smiled. "I gather you're up for the day? I'll grab a shower and shave, then fix breakfast."

Somewhat involuntarily, she said, "You're almost too good to be true, know that, pal?"

"I keep trying to tell you. If you're not careful, somebody else is going to steal me away from you." He kissed her again, then headed off for his shower.

Riley sat there at the table, her computer humming quietly, and gazed after him. Right now, in this moment, she felt safe with Ash-but what did that mean? That she trusted him? That she felt no threat from him? Or simply that she was thinking and feeling with a part of her anatomy quite a bit south of her brain?

Could she even trust her feelings-any of them-when her senses and memory were, to say the least, unreliable? When she could lose more than twelve hours without warning and apparently without some external cause?

There's a reason, a trigger. There has to be. I just have to figure it out.

Easily said. Not so easily done.

R
iley finished the PowerBar and juice, hoping the calories would help clear the fog in her brain but not very surprised when it didn't happen. She couldn't seem to think except to ask herself questions for which there were no answers.

Yet, at least.

I've been functioning. Normally-or surely Ash would have commented. But I don't remember what I've said or done. And lost hours and a restless night culminating in a dream-or memory-of some kind of Black Mass can't possibly mean anything good.

The panic was crawling inside her now, cold and sharp and no longer something she could deny to herself. This was out of control,
she
was out of control, and she had no business whatsoever being part of a murder investigation. The right thing to do, the safe and
sane
thing to do, would be to return to Quantico.

Today. Now.

Something on the TV broke through the panic to catch her attention just then, and she lunged for the remote to turn on the sound.

Bishop. He hardly ever made the news, went out of his way to avoid being photographed or videoed, and
always
kept a low profile during investigations. So what the hell was he involved in that was making the national news?

"…the agent in charge refuses to comment on the ongoing investigation, but sources within the Boston police confirmed only minutes ago that the latest victim of the serial killer terrorizing the city these last weeks was indeed twenty-one-year-old Annie LeMott, daughter of Senator Abe LeMott. The senator and his wife are in seclusion with family, as police and FBI agents continue to work around the clock to catch their daughter's killer."

The CNN anchor went on to the next subject, her voice turning perky as she reported on something less tragic.

Riley hit the MUTE button on the remote and returned to her laptop. It didn't require either memory of recent events or senses to tell her what to do next; within two minutes, she was reading a more detailed FBI report of the Boston serial killer. And the report explained a lot.

Bishop was hip-deep in his own investigation, all right. In fact, he was tracking a particularly vicious killer with, so far, at least a dozen notches on his belt. Twelve known victims in just under twenty-one days, all young women, all murdered with bloody abandon.

No wonder Boston was going nuts. No wonder this particular series of murders was making national news.

And no wonder Bishop had accepted Riley's assurances that she could handle the situation here, even when she had failed to report in. She doubted he'd had much time to sleep or eat in the past few weeks, let alone worry too much about any of his primaries-people he had handpicked as team leaders
because
they were highly intelligent, capable agents with all the skills and initiative required to operate independently of both him and the FBI if necessary and for as long as necessary.

It just…usually wasn't necessary.

With that thought in mind, Riley remained online and connected to a special database at Quantico reserved for the SCU, wended her way through the layers of security, and checked on the whereabouts of the rest of the unit.

Jesus.

Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, Phoenix, L.A., and Seattle, plus two small towns she'd never heard of in the Gulf Coast region. The unit was literally scattered across the map, manpower and resources spread thinner than she'd ever known them to be. And every team was involved in high-risk operations ranging from murder to possible terrorist threats-the latter being investigations the unit had only recently begun to be called into as consultants.

As far as Riley could tell, she was the only agent operating without a team, partner, or any kind of backup. But then, she was also the only one who had set off on a very unofficial investigation of a few oddities-not murder or any other major crime.

Then. Now the situation was definitely high-risk. And being on her own here now was both a very bad idea, and seemingly unavoidable.

Unless she bailed. Returned to Quantico. Nobody would blame her for that, not under the circumstances. Hell, when-if-she told Bishop about this latest wrinkle, he'd undoubtedly recall her without even allowing her time to pack.

Riley realized she was fingering the burn at the base of her skull. She forced herself to stop, swore under her breath, and disconnected from the SCU's database.

She couldn't bail. Couldn't leave.

She had to
know.
Had to figure out what was going on.

"Let's pretend," she whispered. She could do that. It's what she did best, after all. Pretend.

Pretend everything was normal. Pretend there was nothing wrong with her.

Pretend she wasn't terrified.

The sheriff said to Ash, "You realize, of course, that you have no business being involved in this investigation. This part of it, at least. Your part begins when we catch the son of a bitch."

Ash leaned back in his chair at the conference table and shrugged. "I've gotten involved in the past long before the trial stage, we both know that."

"Not in a murder, Ash."

"We haven't had a murder until now, not since I've been DA. And not since you've been sheriff. I'm betting if we'd had one, we'd have worked together. I may not be a cop, but I have experience in investigations-murder investigations included. And you're too good a cop to ignore that."

Leah glanced at Riley, interested to know how the other woman was reacting to all this, and wasn't very surprised to see that Riley was apparently engrossed in reading reports concerning what little information had come in since the previous afternoon.

There wasn't much. Teams had been canvassing Opal Island as well as Castle, literally going door-to-door in search of an identity for their murder victim. So far, the search had turned up three temporarily misplaced teenagers and one temporarily misplaced husband (the former all found sleeping off a late party and the latter discovered on a nearby golf course), but no man missing since sometime Sunday night.

Leah had read and reread the reports Riley was now studying, and wondered what the federal cop found so interesting. Then again, she decided, maybe it wasn't interest so much as a refusal to get involved in the "discussion" going on between the two men.

"I'll take any resource I can get," the sheriff was saying. "But don't you have to be in court?"

Ash shook his head. "Not at all this week, and hardly next week. Unless something unexpected happens, at least. Even my paperwork is all caught up."

"Just bored and have time on your hands, huh?"

"Jake, it's your investigation. Want me to keep my nose out of it, just say the word."

It wasn't really a challenge, Leah thought. And yet it was. If Jake refused Ash's offer of help, it wouldn't be a smart move; Ash had worked as an assistant DA in Atlanta for several years, and whatever rumor had to say about why he left, nobody doubted he had gained considerable experience with murder investigations while he was there. More than Jake had, when it came right down to it.

Refusing the offer of that sort of experienced help might well be something the voters would remember come the next election, particularly if the situation worsened. Plus, it made Jake appear either insecure or jealous of his authority.

Or just plain jealous, period.

So Leah wasn't very surprised to see her boss accept the offered help, albeit with little grace or gratitude.

"As long as we're clear about who's in charge, I got no problem with you helping out, Ash."

"We're clear."

"Okay, then." Jake looked at Riley. "See anything there the rest of us missed?"

"I doubt you missed it," she said calmly. "The blood in the vic's stomach contained glycerol."

"An anticoagulant, yeah. I got that. And an ingredient in all kinds of things, from antifreeze to cosmetics, so not exactly difficult for someone to get their hands on. Which means virtually impossible to trace."

Leah asked, "So what does that mean? That there was glycerol in the blood?" She hated to admit to ignorance, especially when the sheriff had-rather surprisingly, to her-chosen her to assist him on this case, but she didn't feel less of a cop for not having specialized knowledge, and she needed to understand.

It was Jake who said, "Somebody didn't want the blood to clot too quickly."

"I'm still in the dark," Leah complained.

Riley said, "What it probably means is that the blood the victim drank-whether willingly or because he was forced to-wasn't fresh. Someone had kept it for that purpose. Maybe for quite a while."

Leah grimaced. "Bucket of blood. Oh, yuck."

"Was it so much?" Ash asked.

"At least a quart," Riley answered. "That's way more than is used in any ritual I know of."

Ash said, "And more than anybody could have swallowed without vomiting some of it back up, I would have thought."

Riley looked at the M.E.'s report again. "Some minor abrasions inside the esophagus. I'm betting they used a tube. Probably while he was unconscious. Poured the stuff straight into his stomach. And I doubt he lived long enough after that to get rid of it."

"Then what was the point?" Jake demanded. "Fill his stomach with blood and then decapitate him-why?"

"I don't know," Riley said. "But there had to be a reason. Blood in a ritual represents life, power. Human blood much more so than animal blood."

Leah's thoughts were running along a different track. "You mean the stuff I've heard about that is true? Human blood really is used in occult rituals?"

"Some very rare black-occult or satanic rituals, yeah. But the donor-or donors-offer up only a small amount of their blood, willingly, as part of the ceremony. By pricking a finger, usually, or a cut across the palm. It's pretty much a symbolic thing. Nobody gets bled to death."

"But somebody did this time? I mean, other than the guy we found in the woods?"

Riley frowned slightly as she gazed at the now-closed folder on the table before her. "Like I said-there was at least a quart in his stomach. All of it the same blood type, so likely from the same donor, though we can't be sure without DNA testing. But if it all did come from one person, that's a lot of blood to lose at one time."

"Too much?" Leah asked.

"Could someone have lost that much blood and lived? Sure. Five or six quarts in the human body, depending on size and weight. Losing a quart would be serious but not necessarily fatal, especially if it was a ritual blooding and not some traumatic injury."

"Thing is, at least some more got splashed all over the scene." Jake nodded when Ash looked at him. "We've got two blood types in all that, most from the vic but some apparently from the same…donor…who provided what was in his stomach. No real way to measure how much, especially since the ground soaked up a lot. I'm betting it was more than a couple of quarts, all told."

"Then there's likely to be another murder victim we have yet to find."

"Maybe." Riley was still frowning. "Or maybe not. Maybe the anticoagulant was necessary because it took a while to get enough blood without killing the donor. Or donors. You could probably take a little bit every day for several days without too much danger, if you were careful, knew what you were doing."

Ash said, "So, we're looking for somebody with anemia?"

"Failing a second victim. Or a first victim, rather." She looked at the sheriff. "Any luck finding some kind of pattern in the blood spatter at the scene?"

"So far nada. Melissa says the software hasn't run its course yet, but her gut feeling is that there's nothing to find."

"It was a long shot." Riley shrugged.

"What would you have expected, if there had been a pattern?" Ash asked.

"Well, whoever this is seems to be big on signs. So I would have expected another sign or symbol."

"Here there be devil worshippers?" Jake suggested dryly.

"Something like that. Subtle they aren't."

"They?" Leah asked. Then she shook her head. "Of course-it would be a group, wouldn't it?"

"Probably. There are solitary practitioners in most religions, but for any major ritual there would have to be more than one. Anything up to a dozen or so participants is most likely."

"Conspiracy in murder," Ash noted neutrally, "is very rare."

"They wouldn't have viewed it as murder," Riley said.

"Still, for a group of people to keep this sort of secret…How likely is that?"

"If they practice Satanism, very likely. Or at least very possible. Ash, these groups can only survive if they keep their…less conventional activities to themselves. And they learn that early. They're just too far out of the mainstream for community tolerance, much less acceptance."

Leah was faintly surprised. "Do they need community acceptance?"

"If they live in the community, sure. Their religion is only a part of their lives; they shop, go out to eat, go to the movies and the theater, usually send their kids to school. It's not all that uncommon for some of them to hold public office, especially at the local level. So, generally speaking, they keep quiet about occult practices."

Ash was frowning. "But you said whoever we're looking for in this case isn't being very subtle. Deliberately?"

"Maybe. Or desperate. That was a very public place for a ritual," Riley said. "Especially a major ritual involving sacrifice. Add that to the obvious arson sites, all the signs and symbols…It's either deliberately blatant or very careless. Either way, somebody is moving fast. Maybe too fast to avoid mistakes."

"Any idea what that
major
ritual would have been?" Jake asked her. "You said these things had a purpose, right? So what purpose was there in torturing a man and then beheading him?"

Riley shook her head to the repeated question, and repeated her earlier answer. "I don't know. Yet."

He nodded as though expecting it. "Well, while you're working on that, I've got some people checking out that group in the Pearson house. Because as far as I can tell, they're the only ones in the area who worship Satan."