“What?” Bentz froze, his hand still holding the remote, his gaze riveted to the tiny screen.

“The names of the victims have been withheld pending notification of next of kin. A source close to the investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told us that the girls had been reported missing early this morning, the day of their twenty-first birthdays.” The reporter paused meaningfully, then added, “Unfortunately, they never made it to their party, the one they had planned to celebrate with family and close friends.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Bentz sat bolt upright and stared at the TV. Déjà vu cast a stranglehold on his throat. Twins? On their twenty-first birthday? The footage changed to a different camera angle and Bentz watched as Detective Andrew Bledsoe, a few pounds heavier than Bentz remembered, flecks of gray showing in his black hair, talked to the reporter. Bledsoe, appearing serious and troubled, offered her nothing concrete, but Bentz knew the truth.

He fell back on his cheap pillow and felt sick inside.

The cops weren’t saying much, but Bentz could read between the lines.

The Los Angeles Police Department feared that the Twenty-one killer, the madman who had taken lives in the past and gotten away with it, was back.

And back with a vengeance.

“I’m sorry!” Bentz said, his voice echoing as it reached her from the other side of the tunnel, “This is something I have to do.”

“No! Don’t go! Rick, don’t leave me! Don’t leave us!” Olivia ran after him through the darkness, her legs pumping but feeling wooden, her feet tripping on the rails and gravel of the track. She pushed forward, her heart pumping. He wasn’t that far ahead of her, but he was backing up, still facing her, but running away.

“Rick!” she screamed. “Stop!”

“I can’t.”

“But the baby. Rick, we’re going to have a baby!”

Another noise, loud and fierce. The thunder of a heavy engine, the clack of wheels against rails.

Bentz turned away as if he hadn’t heard her and continued moving through the cavernous tunnel, leaving Olivia gasping, racing, trying to outrun the huge engine with its ominous light bearing down on her.

No!

A whistle blasted, shrieking so loudly she thought her eardrums would shatter.

No! Oh, God, no!

“Rick! Help!” she cried as the end of the tunnel seemed to shrink, becoming smaller and farther away.

Her heart drummed and her legs were heavy, so heavy.

“Bentz!” she tried to scream, but her throat was strangled, her voice a whisper.

He turned back toward her for a second and she saw his badge, catching in the bright sunlight. “I can’t,” he said as the day turned to night and suddenly he wasn’t alone. A woman was with him, a beautiful woman with long dark hair and crimson lips. She took his hand, linked her fingers through his, and smiled with malice and glee as she pulled him away.

“No! Wait! Rick-”

The train thundered ever closer, the tracks quaking. She stumbled, barely able to right herself.

A horrific whistle shrieked while brakes squealed. The sound of metal screeching against metal was deafening, the smell of burning diesel acrid in her nostrils.

Steam swirled all around her.

Help me! Help my baby!

But her prayer fell on deaf ears as steam and shrill noise reverberated through the tunnel.

“No!” she yelled, startling herself awake.

Her heart was pounding, her body drenched in sweat, the sheets of her bed twisted. Dear God. It was a dream. Only a flippin’ dream. Taking in deep breaths, she glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen. Still a few hours before she had to get up and dressed for a day at the shop.

She sat upright, pushed her hair from her eyes, and realized her fingers were trembling, the residual effect from the nightmare.

From his dog bed on the floor, Hairy S lifted his scruffy head. His ears pricked forward and his little tail beat against his bed hopefully. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Come on, jump up!”

He didn’t need a second more of encouragement. The dog hopped from his bed, made a running leap, and landed near Olivia’s pillows. After washing her face enthusiastically, he burrowed under the covers and she stretched out again. With one hand she scratched Hairy behind his ears. His warm body curled close to hers.

A far cry from her husband’s embrace, but it would have to do for now. Her husband. What the hell was he doing in L.A.? Chasing after a ghost, or a dream? She tried not to think that he was still harboring feelings for his dead ex-wife, but she knew better. His guilt, she thought, was swallowing him whole and someone was preying upon him.

Who?

The same nagging question that had been with her since he’d shown her the mutilated death certificate kept poking at her brain relentlessly. It’s not that she didn’t believe in ghosts; she just wasn’t certain. She’d had her fair share of dealing with unexplained, if not paranormal, activity. Hadn’t she, herself, seen through the eyes of a twisted, sadistic serial killer?

Oh, for some of that insight now.

She glanced at the clock. It was only one-twenty in the morning in L.A. Was Bentz still awake? Was he thinking about her? Chasing down a dream? She touched her still-flat abdomen and wondered if she and Bentz and the baby would ever have a normal life.

Yeah, well, what’s that? You knew what you signed up for when you married a workaholic.

Sighing, she closed her eyes, determined to relax and find sleep again. She was just starting to doze when the phone rang. Smiling, she said to the dog. “I guess he can’t sleep, either.”

She picked up the receiver and said, “Hey,” a smile audible in her voice.

“Do you know what your husband’s doing in California?” a woman’s hoarse voice whispered.

“What?” Olivia was suddenly wide awake, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling in fear. “Who is this?”

“He’s looking for her. And do you know why? She’s his true love, not you. Jennifer. He’s never forgotten her.”

“Who is this?” she demanded again.

But the phone went dead.

“Bitch!” Olivia hissed into the receiver. Of course Bentz was in L.A. She knew that. She also knew that he was looking for Jennifer or a woman who was impersonating his ex-wife. She looked at caller ID; the display flashed UNKNOWN CALLER. “Great.” No name. No number. No area code. No way to figure out who had called her. It’s no one, just a crank call, someone who knows Bentz went to L.A. to determine what happened to Jennifer.

But there weren’t many people who knew that fact. At least not here in New Orleans. Only Montoya and herself. So the call must’ve come from somewhere else, and she’d bet her life savings that it had originated in Southern California.

Bentz, it seemed, was rattling a cage or two. Which was what he’d hoped to do.

As she set the phone onto the nightstand, she thought about calling her husband and explaining what had happened, but decided to let it go.

For tonight.

Instead, she tossed back the covers and padded to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water and drank it down. She stared out the window over the sink to the backyard, watching the play of moonlight through the cypress trees.

Afterward, she set her glass in the sink and double-checked that all the doors were locked and the windows latched.

Only then, did she return to bed.

She glanced at the digital read out one last time and decided that in five hours she’d call her husband and find out what the hell was going on.

Bentz stayed up listening to news reports, soaking up any information he could find on the Internet. Why the hell had the Twenty-one killer or some damned copycat decided to strike again, after all these years? It was too late to call Olivia, so he spent several restless hours thinking about the case surrounding Delta and Diana Caldwell’s murder. It had been a travesty, a horror for the shell-shocked, grief-ridden parents and older brother, another D name…Donny or Danny, no. Donovan! That was it. The girls’ brother had been eight years older and at the time of the tragedy had been forced to hold his shattered family together. Apparently it was an effort destined to fail, as years later Bentz had learned through the grapevine that the kid’s parents had divorced.