Kay Hooper - Sleeping With Fear

He pulled the Hummer into a parking space outside a busy café, turned off the engine, and looked at her steadily. "But I am asking you, in this investigation, in this place and time, just this once, to break a few of your rules and talk to me about what's going on."

"It's never just once," she murmured. "Break a rule, and before you know it life is chaos. You're running with scissors, coloring outside the lines, putting your elbows on the table. Anarchy."

"Quit stalling. Look, I can separate personal confidences from my professional responsibilities."

"I'm not sure I can," she admitted.

"I'm sure. Trust me, Riley."

Hating the gambit, Riley nevertheless fell back on a handy excuse and tried to keep it light. "It's not fair to ask anything of me when I'm starving and can't think straight. You don't want to win that way, do you?"

"I," Ash said, "am willing to win any way I can. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

He didn't press her for a response just then, which was good since Riley didn't really have one. Instead, he got out of the vehicle, and as she followed suit Riley was aware of the unsettling realization that she was going to have to decide whether to trust Ash completely-and decide without the aid of the extra senses she had counted on her entire life.

Blind trust.

Something she wasn't at all sure she was capable of.

Riley decided to approach the Pearson house casually, from the beach. Having made that decision, she returned to her own house after the lunch with Ash, exchanged her shoulder bag for a fanny pack just large enough to hold her weapon, I.D., a couple of PowerBars, and house keys, found a pair of sunglasses behind which she could at least partially hide a multitude of uncertainties, and went out for a seemingly casual stroll.

"Casual" out on the beach meant carrying her gun out of sight. Or at least that was what she told herself.

Judgment call. Sometimes I wear the weapon on my hip and sometimes I hide it away. That makes sense. Right?

Her wavering was both uncharacteristic and unprofessional-and scary. Riley pushed it away, telling herself one more time that things would become clearer.

Eventually.

Other people were hitting the beach as well, since it was after two and therefore considered a safer time of day for the sun worshippers. A number of people nodded and smiled as Riley passed, but nobody called out to her-which was a relief, since the faces were those of strangers.

She was, in any case, more intent on scanning the oceanfront houses as she passed; no one had been specific as to the actual location of the Pearson house, other than to say it was "up the beach from your place."

Jake had been so pissed at her when she'd left the arson scene with Ash that she hadn't wanted to ask him. As for Ash, she'd been preoccupied wondering when he was going to repeat his request that she confide in him about everything and had forgotten to ask him.

Oh, yeah, some cop I am.

Rather than repeat that request, he had instead talked casually of casual things, and Riley had reached the uncomfortable conclusion that he was simply going to wait until she brought up the subject.

Either he knew her well enough to know that she despised both ultimatums and feeling cornered, or else he was utterly confident that she would, sooner or later, confide in him.

She found either possibility disconcerting.

"Hey, Riley!"

She stopped but remained where she was on the beach, just above the high-water mark. A man, waving an arm to get her attention, was walking rapidly toward her across the wooden walkway that provided beach access from one of the houses.

The Pearson house? Riley didn't know. Had she visited the house at all? She didn't remember. The house at which she was looking was no more familiar to her than any other one in the neat row of attractively individualized yet basically similar houses along the beach: lots of deck space, lots of windows, colorful beach towels fluttering in the breeze as they hung over deck railings to dry. Nothing made this particular house memorable.

But the man…

I know you. Your face is in my mind.

One of the faces in her mind, at least. Not a bad face, on the thin side with the bones a bit too prominent. It matched his thin body, which was currently dressed in an old T-shirt featuring the logo of a seventies rock band and a pair of slightly baggy, too-long shorts.

At least he's not wearing a Speedo…

Riley did her best to shake off the irrelevant thought and concentrate on the man trudging awkwardly toward her through the deep sand piled up at the bottom of the walkway stairs.

Early to mid-forties, at a guess. Fairly tall, thatch of dark hair in no particular style, and very pale skin already showing the first pink signs of sunburn.

Already? Do I know he's only been here a short while or just assume it from what Ash said?

"Sunblock," she said casually as he reached her. "You can get burned before you know it on the beach. It's that nice breeze coming off the water." She was still groping in her mind but so far had found no name for this vaguely familiar face.

He grimaced. "Yeah, that's what Jenny keeps telling me. She also says the punch lines are too easy when you're a sunburned satanist."

"That is a point," Riley said. Satanist? Oh, shit. But if he's this open about it…

"Anyway, I'm wearing sunblock today. Plenty of punch lines for that, now that I think about it. But never mind. Riley, what's this we're hearing about the body found yesterday? He was a sacrifice?"

"You must know I'm not free to discuss any of the details with civilians. It's an ongoing investigation"- Your name, dammit. What's your name? It's- "Steve." So ordinary? Damn, bet I've got it wrong.

But apparently not.

"Riley, if he was killed and hung above the altar inside a circle of salt, we both know that's ritual."

She pulled her sunglasses down her nose and peered at him over the tops.

"Not my ritual," he added hastily. "Or ours, rather. Come on, Riley, you know we don't do that kind of shit. I don't know anybody who does. And a human victim is sure as hell not what we expected when we were invited out here."

Invited?

"Yeah, about that," she said, testing the waters cautiously. "About that invitation."

"What about it?" Steve frowned. "I told you when we talked about it Saturday afternoon."

"A lot's happened since then." She kept it vague.

Steve didn't appear to find that strange. "No kidding. I guess the sheriff has you on the murder officially, huh?"

Riley pushed her sunglasses back up her nose so she could hide behind them. "Like I said, Steve, it's an ongoing investigation."

"Right, right. Well, just so you know, I'd a lot rather talk to you than the sheriff. He thinks we're a bunch of nuts-probably dangerous nuts, at that. You know better."

Do I?

Mildly, she said, "Well, you can't really blame the sheriff. You've been talking to people. About your beliefs."

"We have nothing to hide," Steve insisted.

"Mmm. Having nothing to hide is one thing. Going around telling people you practice Satanism when weird things have been happening in the area is asking for trouble."

"Yeah, so you said when we talked on Saturday."

Riley waited, hoping that silence on her part would keep him talking. It was a technique that had worked for her often in the past, and it worked now.

"I know you warned me, Riley, but, Jesus, I didn't know some poor bastard was going to get killed. If I'd had any idea that was in the wind, I never would have brought my people here. We concentrate on compassion rituals, I told you that. We don't do any destruction rituals; the energy required and expended is just too negative. We don't want that coming back to us."