Jeffery Deaver - Roadside Crosses

Edie's face revealed that, yes, she had about a thousand. But she merely shook her head.

"It's not hopeless, Edie. The evidence in the garage is troublesome but we'll do the best we can with that." Sheedy gathered up his papers, organized them and put them into his briefcase. He shook everyone's hand and gave reassuring smiles to them all. Stuart saw him to the door, the floor creaking under his solid weight.

Dance too rose. She said to her mother, "Are you sure the kids won't be too much? I can take them back to Martine's."

"No, no. I've been looking forward to seeing them." She pulled on a sweater. "In fact, I think I'll go outside and visit."

Dance briefly embraced her, feeling stiffness in her mother's shoulders. For an awkward moment the women held each other's eyes. Then Edie stepped outside.

Dance hugged her father too. "Why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow?" she asked him.

"We'll see."

"Really. It'd be good. For Mom. For you, everybody."

"I'll talk to her about it."

Dance headed back to the office where she spent the next few hours coordinating stakeouts of the possible victims' houses and of the Brighams' residence, deploying the manpower as best she could. And running the frustratingly hopeless search for the boy, who was proving to be as invisible as the electrons making up the vicious messages that had sent him on his deadly quest.

COMFORT.

Pulling up to her house in Pacific Grove at 11:00 p.m., Dance felt a tiny shiver of relief. After this long, long day she was so glad to be home.

The classic Victorian was dark green with gray banisters, shutters and trim-it was in the northwestern part of Pacific Grove; if the time of year, the wind and your attitude about leaning over a shaky railing coincided, you could see the ocean.

Walking into the small entryway, she flicked the light on and locked the door behind her. The dogs charged up to greet her. Dylan, a black-and-tan German shepherd, and Patsy, a dainty flat-coat retriever. They were named respectively for the greatest folk-rock songwriter and for the greatest country-western vocalist in the past hundred years.

Dance reviewed emails but there were no new developments in the case. In the kitchen, spacious but equipped with appliances from a different decade, she poured a glass of wine and foraged for some leftovers, settling on half a turkey sandwich that hadn't been resident in the fridge for too long.

She fed the dogs and then let them out into the back. But as she was about to return to her computer she jumped at the raucous fuss they made, barking and charging down the stairs. They did this sometimes when a squirrel or cat had had the poor judgment to come for a visit. But that was rare at this time of night. Dance set the wineglass down and, tapping the butt of her Glock, walked out onto the deck.

She gasped.

A cross lay on the ground about forty feet away from the house.

No!

Drawing the gun, she grabbed a flashlight, called the dogs to her and swept the beam into the backyard. It was a narrow space, but extended for fifty feet behind the house and was filled with monkey flowers, scrub oak and maple trees, asters, lupine, potato vines, clover and renegade grass. The only flora that did well here thrived on sandy soil and shade.

She saw no one, though there were places where an intruder could remain hidden from the deck.

Dance hurried down the stairs into the dimness and looked around at the dozen of unsettling shadows cast by branches rocking in the wind.

Pausing, then moving slowly, her eyes on the paths and the dogs, which tracked around the yard, edgy, wary.

Their tense gait and Dylan's raised hackles were unsettling.

She approached the corner of the yard slowly. Looking for movement, listening for footsteps. When she heard and saw no signs of an intruder, she shined the flashlight onto the ground.

It seemed to be a cross, but up close Dance couldn't tell if it had been left intentionally or been created by falling branches. It wasn't bound with wire and there were no flowers. But the back gate was a few feet away, which, though locked, could easily have been vaulted by a seventeen-year-old boy.

Travis Brigham, she recalled, knew her name. And could easily find where she lived.

She walked in a slow circle around the cross. Were those footsteps beside it in the trampled grass? She couldn't tell.

The uncertainty was almost more troubling than if the cross had been left as a threat.

Dance returned to the house, stuffing her weapon in the holster.

She locked up and stepped into the living room, filled with furniture as mismatched as that in Travis Brigham's house, but nicer and homier, no leather or chrome. Mostly overstuffed, upholstered in rusts and earth colors. All purchased during shopping trips with her late husband. Dropping onto the sofa, Dance noticed a missed call. She flipped eagerly to the log. It was from Jon Boling, not her mother.

Boling was reporting that the "associate" had had no luck as yet with cracking the pass code. The supercomputer would be running all night, and he'd let Dance know the progress in the morning. Or, if she wanted, she could call back. He'd be up late.

Dance debated about calling-felt an urge to-but then decided to keep the line free in case her mother called. She then phoned the MCSO, got the senior deputy on duty and requested a Crime Scene run to collect the cross. She told him where it was located. He said he'd get somebody there in the morning.

She then showered; despite the steamy water, she kept shivering, as an unfortunately persistent image lodged in her thoughts: the mask from Kelley Morgan's house, the black eyes, the sewn-shut mouth.

When she climbed into bed, her Glock was three feet away, on the bedside table, unholstered and loaded with a full clip and one "in the bedroom"-the chamber.

She closed her eyes but, as exhausted as she was, she couldn't sleep.

And it wasn't the pursuit of Travis Brigham that was keeping her awake, nor the scare earlier. Not even the image of that damn mask.

No, the source of her keen restlessness was a simple comment that kept looping over and over in her mind.

Her mother's response to Sheedy's question about witnesses in the ICU the night that Juan Millar was killed.

There were some nurses down on that wing. But that was all. His family was gone. And there were no visitors.

Dance couldn't recall for certain, but she was almost positive that when she'd mentioned the deputy's death to her mother just after it happened, Edie had acted surprised by the news; she'd told her daughter that she'd been so busy on her own wing that she hadn't gone down to the ICU that night.

If Edie hadn't been in intensive care that night, as she'd claimed, then how could she be so certain it was deserted?

At 8:00 in the morning, Kathryn Dance walked into her office and smiled to see Jon Boling, in too-large latex gloves, tapping on the keyboard of Travis's computer.

"I know what I'm doing. I watch NCIS. " He grinned. "I like it better than CSI. "

"Hey, boss, we need a TV show about us," TJ said from a table he'd dragged into the corner, his workstation for his search for the origins of the eerie mask from the Kelley Morgan scene.

"I like that." Boling picked up on the joke. "A show about kinesics, sure. You could call it The Body Reader. Can I be a special guest star?"

Though she was hardly in a humorous mood, Dance laughed.

TJ said, "I get to be the handsome young sidekick who's always flirting with the gorgeous girl agents. Can we hire some gorgeous girl agents, boss? Not that you aren't. But you know what I mean."