Rebecca York - Solid as Steele

He went back to contemplating his masterpiece. Everything had been planned. Down to the smallest detail. Like the place where the floor had been slippery. And then the hallway where she’d stubbed her toe on an unexpected rock sitting in the middle of the passageway. And it had all worked out the way he wanted. Yet…

He dragged in a deep breath and expelled it sharply. While she’d been running from him in terror, he’d had the strange feeling that someone else was watching the whole performance. Someone he couldn’t see.

But that was impossible, of course. No one else was here. Not an invisible person or anyone else. Only himself and Lynn Vaughn. And he wasn’t going to tell anyone what had happened to her. By the same token, she wasn’t going to call up her friends and relate the nightmare either. He laughed at his little joke, then stopped abruptly.

Nightmare.

What was he thinking? Something impossible. Yet as unsettling thoughts swirled in his brain, he began to work faster, wrapping Lynn in the tarp he’d brought so she wouldn’t get blood in his SUV. Methodically, he rolled up the body, which was still limp enough to handle easily, then carried her out the back door and down the steps to the detached garage.

When he’d deposited her in the back of the vehicle, he pulled down the long driveway and into the mist-shrouded city, heading for the mountains.

His sense of satisfaction increased as he began looking for a good spot to dump the body. The ground was frozen, but he wasn’t planning to dig a grave. He wanted people in this damn town to know.

He was going to make everyone who’d ruined his life four years ago pay for what they’d done. The punishment wouldn’t make up for his loss, of course. But it would be fitting retribution. When he was finished, he’d leave this jerkwater town that was the scene of his misery and never come back.

MACK’S VOICE WAS FIRM when he spoke. “Jamie, I’m not leaving until you tell me why you called the Light Street Detective Agency at two in the morning.”

Anger, anxiety and defiance warred within her. That was none of his damn business, but unfortunately she’d been too quick to make a phone call in the middle of the night, and he’d been the one on the other end of the line. She didn’t owe him anything, yet she heard herself trying to justify her behavior.

“Like I said, I had a dream. A nightmare. It wasn’t my dream, exactly. It was something happening to a woman in Gaptown.”

He kept his gaze on her. “You’re saying it was something that really happened?”

She swallowed hard before answering. “Yes,”

“How do you know?”

Jamie wasn’t going to start off by telling him she’d been plagued by psychic dreams since she’d been little. She was going to avoid that, if possible. And she wasn’t going to explain that the dreams had stopped when she came to Baltimore with Craig.

Could she convince Mack with a concrete fact? Up till now, she’d avoided using a name, even in her thoughts, because that made the dream too real.

Now she raised her head and said, “The woman’s name was Lynn Vaughn.”

His instant alertness unnerved her. It was like when Craig was working on a case.

“How do you know?” he said.

“I just do.”

“Maybe we’d better check that out.”

“Okay,” she whispered, wishing again that she’d kept her mouth shut. What was Mack thinking now? From the look on his face, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t like his speculations.

“Where’s your computer?” he asked.

“In the office.” Craig’s old office, which she’d kept looking like he’d left it so that when she sat at the desk she could pretend he was going to come to the door and ask her to get out of his chair.

She and Mack walked to the office, where Mack stopped for a moment in front of the desk before sitting down and booting up the machine. Jamie took the beat-up easy chair where she’d liked to sit and read while Craig was working in the evening. Usually he’d work late, and then they’d go upstairs and—

She ruthlessly cut off that line of thought. As Mack waited for the computer to go through the start-up routine, he said, “Lynn Vaughn, right?”

“Yes.”

He brought up one of the programs you could use to locate people and typed in her name, plus “Gaptown.”

Jamie sat with her pulse pounding, wondering if she had everything backward. What if it had been her dream, and she’d somehow pulled that woman into it? When Lynn Vaughn’s listing came up, he dialed the number from his cell phone and put it on speaker so they could both hear. She sat clenching the arms of the chair as a woman answered on the first ring. It was the middle of the night, but obviously she wasn’t sleeping.

“Lynn?” Mack asked.

“No. Who is this?”

“I’m an old friend of Lynn’s. I was hoping to get in touch with her.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize the time,” he said, lying with the same facility that Craig had exhibited when he worked a case. “Is she there?”

Jamie could hear the tension in the woman’s voice as she replied.

“Lynn didn’t come home this evening, and she didn’t call me. That’s not like her. I’m worried.”

“Have you called the police?”

“I—”

“You should do that,” Mack said.

“What did you say your name was?” the woman asked.

Instead of answering, Mack clicked off and swung the chair around so that he could look at Jamie.

“Will she have your cell phone number on her caller ID?” Jamie asked.

He shook his head. “How did you know Lynn’s name?”

She thought about how to answer. “I…don’t know.”

“And you don’t have any specific information about her tonight?”

“What kind of information?”

He shrugged and kept his gaze on her.

“Like I told you, I had a dream,” she repeated.

His reply totally startled her.

“I’m going to Gaptown in the morning.”

Her own response was just as startling. “If you’re going, I’m going, too.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I’m not staying here if you’re driving up there,” she said, hearing her urgent tone and wishing she didn’t feel compelled to return to the scene of so many unhappy memories before Craig had offered her an escape hatch.

She’d been taking classes at the local community college and working at the Star Bar and Grill when she’d met him. He’d come to town investigating an insurance fraud case in which a doctor had colluded with patients. Dr. Bradley had documented injuries after automobile accidents, injuries that he wrote up as much worse than they really were. The patient would get a nice insurance settlement, which he split with the doc.

The moment Craig had walked into the restaurant, she’d been attracted to him. They’d gotten to talking, and he’d told her he’d be in town for several days. He could have eaten at a lot of different places, but he kept coming back when he knew she’d be on shift.

He’d been out of his element and lonely. She’d been friendly, and they’d ended up getting something going. They’d had a lot in common. He was from a small town, too. In Ohio. Only he’d had a scholarship to one of the state colleges.

After he’d sewn up the case against the doctor, he’d had another job that had brought him back to town. And after that, he’d kept returning to visit her. She’d moved to Baltimore to be with him, and gotten a job in the shop at 43 Light Street with Sabrina Cassidy. Pretty soon after that, she and Craig had gotten married.

Because she’d been ambitious, she transferred her credits to UMBC. She’d just gotten her degree in history when Craig had gotten killed, and she’d canceled her law school plans. Better to wait awhile before getting back into serious studying again.