Champion didn't ask.

Jaylene pulled herself forward and held on to keep herself steady in the jolting vehicle as she peered at her partner. "Luke?"

He coughed, muttered, "Dark."

"Oh, shit. Glen, how far?"

"At least fifteen minutes," he replied, fighting the wheel and the ATV's tendency to buck.

"Luke-"

"No. No, goddammit…"

Champion sneaked a quick glance at Lucas and realized immediately that whatever thread had connected him to Lindsay had been snapped. He looked dazed, shaking his head as though to clear dizziness.

"Luke?"

Thickly, he said, "The bastard left her alone. He left her alone. All those hours."

Jaylene didn't say another word. And neither did Lucas. He sat there in the bucking, straining vehicle beside Deputy Champion, his pale face and haunted eyes telling anybody who cared to look what they would find when they reached the old gold mine.

Even so, when they broke into the cinder-block building that had once served as the storehouse for the mine, Champion wasn't prepared for what they found.

To his dying day, he'd never forget the sight of Lindsay Graham suspended in a water-filled tank, garishly lighted from above, her open, sightless eyes accusing them all.

Monday, October 1

Detective Lindsay Graham was buried on a gray and misty afternoon, laid to rest in the family plot beside her parents. They, too, had died before their time, though in their case it had been the fault of a drunk driver and an icy highway. They hadn't been carried to their graves in a flag-draped coffin by uniformed police officers, hadn't been saluted by dozens of other cops, many of them openly weeping, while bagpipes played plaintively.

Their deaths hadn't been front-page news in even the Golden local, far less several regional newspapers, and no news crews had pestered what family survived them for comments.

Lindsay died far more famous-or infamous-than she had ever been in life, a fact that undoubtedly would have roused little in her except cynical amusement. Because in the end, famous or not, Lindsay was lowered alone into the ground just as her parents had been.

Hugging the neatly triangled flag that had been presented to her, Caitlin stood at the graveside long after most of the others had gone, thinking about that. About her sister. For whatever reason, they hadn't been especially close, but they had liked and respected each other, Caitlin thought.

Too late now to wish there had been more.

Wyatt Metcalf stepped up beside her. "I'll drive you back to the motel," he offered.

There would be no traditional gathering after the funeral, not for Lindsay. She hadn't liked the practice of covered dishes and hushed voices, of parked cars lining the long country driveways and funeral wreaths on the homes of the bereaved.

"Bury the dead and get on with living," she had said more than once, perhaps with a cop's hard-won understanding. Or an orphan's. And quite suddenly, Caitlin wished desperately that she knew what in Lindsay's life had taught her that.

But it was too late now to ask.

Too late to ask what she had thought of the latest blockbuster movie, or novel, or whether popcorn was still her favorite snack. Too late to apologize for missed birthdays and unreturned phone calls, or commiserate about the often difficult life of a single career woman, or ask if Wyatt Metcalf had been the one for Lindsay. Just too goddamned late.

Realizing at last that the sheriff was waiting, Caitlin said, "No, thanks. It's close enough to walk. Everything's close enough to walk here, really."

A bit awkward with her, as he had been all along, Metcalf said, 'If there's anything I can do-"

"No. Thanks. I won't be staying long, probably. I have to pack away her stuff, close up the apartment, deal with all the legal crap. However long that takes."

"We'll get him, Caitlin. I promise you, we'll get the bastard."

Caitlin knew the sheriff would be surprised if she told him the truth, that she didn't care if they ever caught the monster who had taken her sister's life. It wouldn't, after all, bring Lindsay back. And, besides…

He didn't seem real, that monster. From what she'd been told, there was a curious lack of emotion there, a lack of anything human. No hate driving him, no insane voices directing him to murder.

Just taking people for money and then killing them when he no longer had a use for them.

"Good," she said, realizing the silence had lengthened yet again. "Good. I'm glad you'll get him. You go do that now." She didn't realize until a tinge of color crept up into his rather haggard pallor how dismissive she sounded. She toyed briefly with the idea of explaining, but it just seemed too much trouble. And she didn't care what he thought anyway.

"Caitlin-"

"I'll be fine." She thought the meaningless phrase should be tattooed on her forehead by now. "Thank you."

He hesitated, then went away.

Caitlin didn't turn to watch him go. She was vaguely aware of others trickling away. Aware that the solemn men from the funeral home were off to the side, patient and unmoving, along with the men ready to finish the physical task of burying her sister.

The coffin still hung, suspended, above its vault, waiting to be lowered. The scent of the flowers was thick in the misty air, a sweet, rather sickly odor that was especially unpleasant mixed with the faint, underlying smell of freshly turned earth.

"You have to leave her now."

Caitlin looked across the dully gleaming bronze-colored casket to see Samantha Burke. She was completely different from the Madam Zarina of the fortune-teller's booth; without the turban, the colorful shawls and wraps and clinking gold jewelry, and most of all without the heavy makeup, she looked decades younger and ather ordinary.

Or not.

There was something in those unusually dark eyes that was far rom ordinary, Caitlin thought. Something direct and honest and innervingly discerning, as if she could truly see beyond the boundaries of what most people accepted as reality.

Caitlin remembered how Lindsay's ring had seemingly burned a neat circle into Samantha's palm, and wondered what it was like o see and feel things other people couldn't even imagine.

"You have to leave her," Samantha repeated. She hunched her houlders a bit inside the oversize black jacket and thrust her lands into its pockets, as though chilled by the miserable weather. Or by something else.

For the first time in this endless day, Caitlin didn't respond vith platitudes. Instead, she simply asked, "Why?"

"Because it's time to go. Time to get past this moment." Samantha's voice was utterly matter-of-fact.

"Because Lindsay would want me to?" Caitlin asked dryly.

"No. Because it's what we do. It's how we cope. We dress them in their Sunday best and put them inside satin-lined boxes designed to keep them dry and safe from the worms, like the concrete vaults we put the boxes in. And then we have a headstone or marker engraved, and lay turf over the spot, and at least for a while we come regularly to visit and bring flowers and talk to them as though they can hear us."

Caitlin was conscious of the mortuary people shifting in uneasiness or disapproval, but they naturally said nothing. For herself, Samantha's bracing words sounded like the first real thing anyone had said to her in days.

"I won't even do that," she said. "Visit, I mean. As soon as I've packed away her stuff, I have to go home."

"And get on with your life." Samantha nodded. "The dead have their own path, and we have ours."

Curious, Caitlin said, "So you believe there's something after?"

"Of course there is." Samantha was still matter-of-fact.