It had been a tough fight. Her secretarial work at Bennett, Bretherton, and Pfeiffer had tapered off with the decline of the law firm’s clients-an aspect of a decline in health of one of the senior partners and disinterest in the others. Now Becca worked mostly from home, using a fax machine to receive her eldest boss’s hand-scratched notes, or using e-mail and the Internet to download drafts of contracts, legal notes, letters, and memoranda before rewriting, polishing, and sending the finished product back via the Internet. It was a disembodied way to work, and there wasn’t really enough of it to sustain her much longer. The firm was tightening up-keeping their information “in-house” due to confidentiality issues.

Becca was at a crossroads. Choices were going to have to be made. Maybe her earlier vision of Jessie was a result of the low-grade stress she wasn’t acknowledging. Or maybe it was that she was a weirdo and just couldn’t admit it.

“Damn it all to hell,” she said, flipping off the light and yanking the covers to her neck.

Sighing, Ringo stretched his legs and pushed against her with his paws.

And beneath everything she’d thought about tonight was the image of Jessie on that cliff, her hair caught in the wind, the sound of the surf blocking out her words. What had she mouthed so desperately? What had she wanted Becca to know? Was it her own subconscious trying to tell her something, or was it something more?

Becca squeezed her eyes shut, but the image of the girl on the cliff remained, as if permanently etched on her eyelids. Was the skeleton that had been discovered in the maze Jessie’s? She kind of thought so, and it left her with an all-consuming feeling of dread.

Something bad was about to happen.

She feels me…

As I drive through the rain, watching the road shimmer darkly under the beams of my headlights, my blood boils with anticipation. I’ve had to bide my time. Wait in seclusion.

But now another has led me back here. One that will have to be taken later, but her interference has given me what I seek: The woman! Missing for all these years because I could not smell her. But now…I know where she dwells…I can find her.

And she senses me, too. I can almost feel the thud of her heartbeats. Taste her fear.

This should have been over long ago but has lingered. Because of the mistake.

My jaw clenches so hard it hurts as I think back on it, and when I check the rearview mirror, I almost witness my own failure on the road behind.

But I won’t think of the time I failed when last I was called…Though the woman survived, her demon-spawn did not, my mission only partially fulfilled.

Now is the time for second chances, to right that error.

I will not fail.

Not this time.

Not ever again.

If anyone gets in my way, they, too, will be laid to waste.

There is no room for error.

The tires of my car sing across the wet pavement as I regretfully draw away from her. I have been close, but must pull back to plan. But soon…

“Rebecca.” Her name comes easily to my lips and I feel heat in my veins, the anticipation of release to come when, at last, she will breathe no more and her heartbeat, the one I hear pounding in my ears, will be stilled forever.

“Rebecca…”

Becca pulled her car into the parking lot through driving rain. Her wipers could scarcely keep up with the deluge, and as she turned off the ignition she watched the neon script lights that read BLUE NOTE blur into an indistinct azure haze. So Scott Pascal and Glenn Stafford owned this brick building on the outskirts of Portland in the area known as Raleigh Hills and uncomfortably close to St. Elizabeth’s campus. She still found it odd that the two had teamed up. In high school Scott was a bit of a show-off, all swagger and winks, a flirt, always hinting of something racy or naughty or indecent, while Glenn…she barely remembered him. He did belong to the group, she decided, but he was on the fringe, always hanging close to The Third, like a little lost puppy, hoping to be noticed. As for The Third, he’d always been a pain, had always rubbed her the wrong way; even his nickname had bothered her.

But it was Hudson who had really occupied her thoughts ever since he called. Maybe it would be good to finally see him, to put that old nostalgia and sense of regret behind her once and for all. She didn’t think he was married, at least he hadn’t said so, but who knew? He could be fat and balding and have had three wives and eight or nine children since she’d last seen him.

Somehow she doubted it.

She figured he was probably one of those men who got better looking as they aged, and as for wives, exes, and children, she’d never heard that he’d been married. So now’s your chance to find out. Her hands gripped the wheel. She seemed to forever be waiting in a car, almost afraid to take a breath, conscious that something unpleasant or just plain bad lay ahead of her. This time she was about to meet her old high school friends. Her “gang.” Her buddies.

Her lover.

Becca inhaled a long breath, held it, let it out slowly. Hudson Walker hadn’t been hers. Yes, she’d made love to him. Yes, she’d wanted him. But he’d been Jessie Brentwood’s right from the start, and after Jessie’s disappearance he’d been Becca’s only briefly, and only because Jessie was gone.

She needed to keep reminding herself of that fact.

Pocketing her keys, she stepped out of her Jetta, locked the door, then flipped the hood of her coat over her hair. Walking rapidly through the rain, she headed for the main entrance of Blue Note while traffic streamed by on a nearby arterial that ran east to west. Three steps across the lot and her feet were soaked through her black pumps. Four more steps and she lost feeling in her toes.

What a night.

Shouldering her way through the double doors, Becca headed toward a small maitre d’s podium. A young woman wearing a body-hugging indigo dress and a bright smile greeted her. “Welcome to Blue Note.”

“Thanks.” Becca pushed her hood off her head. “I’m meeting a group of people here, kind of a reunion. We’re with Glenn and Scott, the owners? I think Renee Walker organized it?”

“You mean Renee Trudeau.”

“Right.” Becca had known Renee was married, but she’d forgotten her last name.

“They’re in the private dining room. Right this way.” The hostess led Becca across a polished herringbone floor and through several “rooms” that were really curtained-off sections of a larger space, which added an intimacy to the restaurant, making it seem more luxurious than Becca would have believed possible. The tables were mostly empty on this Thursday night; the votive candles flickering in crystal holders were welcoming despite the lack of patrons to enjoy the ambience. Soft jazz emanating from discreet speakers was wasted on the lonely chairs while outside wind threw rain against the windows that banked one wall.

“Right here,” the girl said, pushing on the bronze levers to a set of frosted French doors. Inside was a long, distressed black table with heavy carved legs. Around the massive table, seated on taupe armchairs, were Becca’s high school friends, every one of whom turned and looked at her as she entered. Water glasses, a few wine goblets, and a couple of short old-fashioned glasses littered the table.

“Becca!” Tamara called, but Becca was still taking in all of the faces. She saw them in a rush of memories, a dizzying kaleidoscope not unlike one of her visions. It was all she could do to murmur a hello to their chorus of greetings and fumble her way to a seat.

“I wondered when you’d get here,” Tamara said, a friendly smile stretching across her face. Tan in the dead of winter, Tamara was crowned with the same wild red hair she possessed in high school. Flamboyant was the word Becca would use to describe her, then and now. Her arms jingled and glittered with rows of bracelets, her hair curled around a face that showed little aging in the twenty years since she’d been a pain in the neck for the nuns and lay teachers at St. Elizabeth’s.