“Well, maybe…and you had those visions, didn’t you?” Renee reminded her and Becca felt her face grow hot.

“I’d hoped people had forgotten.”

“Maybe they have. But at the time it was the kind of thing that ran like wildfire through the school. A rumor with a life of its own. I never knew just how much was fact or fiction.”

“I used to have them,” Becca answered slowly. The vision of Jessie practically burned behind her eyeballs, but she couldn’t bring it up. Not now. Not yet. Not until she understood Renee’s interest.

“Not anymore?”

“No.”

She inclined her head. “Well, anyway, sound like a nut job, don’t I? I hear myself talking like there’s some-evil out to get me, and can’t believe I just said that. Forget it. This whole thing with finding Jessie’s bones is making me jump at shadows and find meaning in things that aren’t there. Dumb. Oh, screw this. I need a glass of wine.” Scooting out her chair, she looked disgusted with herself, then walked to the counter and paid for a glass of Chardonnay. Taking a sip as she returned, Renee said, “That’s more like it.”

“Was this the ‘odd’ something you wanted to talk about?”

“Yeah.” She drank half her glass and shook her head. “I can’t tell you how all of this…whatever the hell it is has taken its toll. I’m jumping at shadows, second-guessing everything. And looking over my shoulder, like someone’s following me.”

“That’s how I felt in the maze,” Becca said.

“Oh, right.” She paused. “Maybe we’re both just letting atmosphere take over reason.”

Becca thought about that and was about to confess that she’d had a vision of Jessie on the very day that she’d learned about the grisly discovery at St. Elizabeth’s, but she didn’t get the chance. Renee tossed back another gulp of wine, glanced at her watch, and scowled. “Oh, God, it’ll be almost ten when I get there if I don’t leave now.” She swept up her purse and got to her feet in one swift motion. “Keep in touch,” she said brightly, but there was something about the way she hurried through the door that made Becca think Renee had no intention of following her own words.

What the hell was it about Rebecca Ryan Sutcliff? Renee asked herself as she punched the accelerator of her Camry and slid through an amber light just before it turned red. She was headed west, ever west, merging onto Sunset Highway, a section of Highway 26.

You’re running away, her mind insisted over the pain of a headache that was pounding at the base of her skull. “No,” she answered herself aloud as she flipped on her blinker and passed a yokel in an ancient truck that refused to go over forty, a truck not too many years newer than the pickup her father used to drive. She wasn’t running away from anything, she was running to what promised to be a new life; one that didn’t include her husband Tim and the Valley Star.

What a two-bit rag. It kinda matched with her two-bit husband and her two-bit life. Well, it wasn’t good enough. None of it. Not now, not when she knew the brass ring was finally within her reach.

She’d always been looking for a story, no, make that the story that would propel her to the big time, and thanks to Jessie Brentwood, Renee was about to make that leap. No one was going to stop her. Not a whining husband who had lost most of her inheritance in the stock market, nor an editor who couldn’t see her talents.

And she wasn’t going to let strange mumbo-jumbo predictions and a feeling of persecution stop her, either. And what had she been thinking when, outside Blue Note, she asked Becca if they could get together sometime and talk things over? What had she expected from Hudson’s ex-girlfriend? Just because she kind of reminded Renee of Jessie-probably because of Hudson-didn’t mean she had any answers. Worse, Becca seemed to have her own problems dealing with Jessie’s disappearance.

She slowed to sixty because of the drizzle and the fact that she really couldn’t afford another speeding ticket. That was the trouble, Renee thought, the rest of the world was cruising along at fifty-five and she was revved up to ninety. Sometimes it seemed that she was dragging everyone through life with her and they were all limp, dead weight.

The rain poured down in earnest and she cranked up the speed of her squeaking wipers. They slapped away the drops and Renee wondered again about Becca. Hudson, it seemed, was taken with her all over again. Oh, yeah. Renee had witnessed it the other night at Blue Note. No big surprise that they were hooking up again, though Renee didn’t understand it.

Becca was pretty enough. Streaked hair, light brown with pale highlights, large hazel eyes that hovered between green and gray, and a smile that showed off teeth that weren’t quite straight, probably even a little sexy. Her cheekbones were prominent, her eyebrows arched, and she had one of those long Audrey Hepburn necks. She was definitely his type. He always went for the blondish, mysterious-looking chicks.

A flaw, in Renee’s opinion. But then her twin had many.

The needle of her speedometer hit seventy-five, her tires hydroplaning on the slick asphalt before she noticed and slowed again. It was as if she couldn’t get to the damned beach fast enough. She checked her rearview mirror, afraid she might have blown past a cop and sure enough, another car was bearing down on her, one with bright headlights.

Great.

She slowed, not by braking, but by taking her foot off the gas until she was going a lawful fifty-three miles an hour and the car behind her slowed. Probably to run her plates.

This was just getting better and better, as the Camry belonged to Tim. She steeled herself, practiced her smile and “Oh, dear me, Officer” routine, had her excuses all in a row, but no red and blue lights began to streak the night, no siren screamed at her to pull over. If anything, the vehicle behind her just hung back. Maybe he hadn’t clocked her and was waiting for her to speed up.

Screw that!

She pulled into the right-hand lane and sure enough, the guy following her did, too, tucking in behind a compact.

Not a cop, then.

Or at least not a cop interested in her.

No lights. No siren.

Maybe just her imagination, her sense of persecution. She plugged an old Springsteen CD in and watched as the compact swung off the highway at Hillsboro. Another few miles, past North Plains and Laurelton, and the car behind her just kept coming. She sped up, he sped up, she slowed, he slowed.

Goose bumps raised along the back of her arms and she told herself she was being paranoid. No one was following her. No one knew what she was up to. No one could. She hadn’t told a soul.

And yet, she was almost certain she was being followed. She glanced to her purse. Pulled her cell phone out of the zipper pocket. If she was going to call someone, it had to be now, before her service cut out as it did in several spots along this stretch of road.

Call who? Say what? That you suspect someone is following you? Why? Because you’re digging into the Jezebel Brentwood mystery?

She snorted in disgust and tossed her cell into her purse.

The headache was getting to her. The impending divorce was getting to her. All the talk about Jessie was getting to her. And that strange prediction from the old lady at Deception Bay-that was really getting to her. The thought that someone was out to do her harm was her constant and worrisome companion.

“It’s bunk,” she told herself as the CD played and the wipers slapped away the rain. “Bullshit. Nothing more.”

But she knew better.

Her teeth sank into her lip and she swallowed hard.

Payback?

Justice?

For what?

What have I done?

“Mother Mary, help me.” Renee sketched the sign of the cross over her chest, a movement she hadn’t practiced since her senior year at St. Elizabeth’s, but the comfort she once had found in murmuring a quick prayer now eluded her, reminding her only of the bones that had been found at the base of the statue of the Madonna.