Everett Sanders rolled onto his side and searched for sleep. But he remained facing the window, opening his eyes every so often to check if the face was back. Of course it wouldn't be. He knew that. But it had seemed so real. So real…

Will Ryerson awoke sweating. At first he thought it might be another of his nightmares, but he couldn't remember dreaming. As he lay there in the dark he had a strange, uneasy sensation, as if he were being watched. He got up and went to the window, but there was no one outside. No movement. No sound except the crickets.

Yet the sensation persisted.

Slipping into an old pair of loafers, Will grabbed a flashlight, turned on the yard lights, and went out to the front yard. He stood there in his undershirt and Jockeys and trained the flashlight beam into the dark recesses of the tree-lined lot. Somebody was out there. He was sure of it.

Why? Why would someone be watching him? He was sure no one knew about him. If someone did, they'd surely turn him in. So who was out there?

He sighed. Maybe no one after all. Maybe just his paranoia getting the best of him. But why tonight? Why now, after all these years?

The phone call. That had to be it. In the three days since it had happened, his subconscious must have gone into overdrive. He was beginning to feel the effects tonight.

As he turned to go back inside, he glanced up and froze.

Far above him, a white cross floated against the stars.

It was moving, drifting toward the south. As Will squinted upward, it appeared less like a cross and more like a man—a man all in white, floating in midair with his arms spread.

Will felt his saliva dry up as his palms began to sweat. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. A nightmare—this was the nightmare. But after his real-life nightmare experience in New York five years ago, he knew that the rules of reason and sanity were not constant. Sometimes they broke down. And then anything could happen.

Far above, the man cross-drifted over the trees and was gone from sight.

Trembling with dread, Will hurried back inside the house.

THE BOY at six months

May 19, 1969

Oh, Jimmy—what's wrong with you?

Carol Stevens stared down at her sleeping son and wanted to cry. Lying prone in his crib, pudgy arms and legs spread wide, round-faced with soft pink cheeks, wisps of dark hair clinging to his scalp, he was the picture of innocence. She studied the delicate venules in his closed eyelids and thought how beautiful he was.

As long as those eyelids stayed closed.

When they were open he was different. The innocence disappeared—the child disappeared. The eyes were old. They didn't move like the eyes of other infants, roving, trying to take in everything at once because everything was so new. Jimmy's eyes stared, they studied, they… penetrated. It was unnerving to have him watch you.

And Jimmy never smiled or laughed, never cooed or gurgled or blew bubbles. He did vocalize, though. Not random baby noises, but patterned sounds, as if he were trying to get his untrained vocal cords to function. Since his birth, his grandfather Jonah would sit here in the nursery with the door closed and talk to him in a low voice. Carol had listened at the door a number of times but could never quite make out what he was saying. But she was sure from the length of the sentences and the cadence of his speech that it wasn't baby talk.

Carol turned away from the crib and wandered to the window where she looked out on the Ouachita Mountains. Jonah had brought them here to rural Arkansas to hide until the baby was born. She'd followed his lead, too frightened by the madness she'd left behind to do anything else.

If only Jim were alive. He'd know how to handle this. He'd be able to step back and decide what to do about his son. But Jim had been dead a little over a year now, and Carol could not be cold and logical and rational about little Jimmy. He was their son, their flesh and blood, all she had left of Jim. She loved him as much as she feared him.

When she turned she saw that Jimmy was awake, sitting in the crib, staring at her with those cold eyes that started out blue but had darkened to brown within the past few months. He spoke to her. It was a baby's voice, high and soft. The words were garbled but clear enough to be understood. She had no doubt about what he said: "I'm hungry, woman. Bring me something to eat."

Carol screamed and fled the nursery.

FOUR

Manhattan

"Letter for you, Sarge," said Potts, waving the envelope in the air from the far side of the squad room.

Detective Sergeant Renaldo Augustino glanced up from his cluttered desk. He was reed-thin with a ruddy complexion and a generous nose. His dark hair was combed straight back from his receding hairline. He took a final drag on his cigarette and jammed it into the crowded ashtray to his right.

"The mail came a couple of hours ago," he told Potts. "Where you been hiding it?"

"It's not regular mail. Came over from the One-twelve."

Great. Probably another late notice for dues to a PBA local he no longer belonged to. He'd been transferred to Midtown North over two years ago and they still hadn't got the message yet.

"Chuck it out," he said.

"Could be a bill of some sort," Potts said.

"That's what I figured. I don't even want to see the damn thing. Just—"

"A phone bill."

That brought Renny up short. "Local?"

"No. Southern Bell."

His heart suddenly thudding in his chest, Renny was out of his chair and across the squad room so fast, he frightened Potts.

"Give me that."

He snatched the envelope from Potts's fingers and strode back to his desk.

"What gives?" said Sam Lang, leaning over Renny's desk, slurping coffee from a foam cup.

They'd been partners for a couple of years now. Like Renny, Sam was in his mid-forties, but balding and overweight. Everything Sam wore was rumpled, tie included.

As Renny sped through the text, he felt the old anger rekindling.

"It's him!" he said. "And he's up to his old tricks!"

Puzzled creases formed in Sam's doughy brow.

"Who?"

"A killer. Name of Ryan. Nobody you'd know." He scanned the letter again. "Any idea where Pendleton, North Carolina, is, Sam?"

"Somewhere between Virginia and South Carolina, I imagine."

"Gee, thanks."

Renny seemed to remember something about a big university there. No matter. He could find out easily enough.

Almost five years now… the kid, Danny Gordon… left for dead by some sicko bastard. Renny had been assigned to the case. He'd seen a lot of gut-wrenching things in his years on the force. When you spent your nights turning over rocks in a city the size of New York, you got used to the slimy things that crawled out. But something about that boy and what had been done to him had grabbed Renny by the throat and wouldn't let go. Still hadn't let go.

His mind leapt back across the years, images flashed before his eyes. The white, pain-racked little face, the hoarse screams that wouldn't stop, and other horrors. And the priest. So horrified, so shattered, so lost, so convincing in the lies he told. Renny had fallen for those lies, had allowed himself to believe, to get sucked into that bastard's trap. He'd come to like the priest, to trust him, to think of him as an ally in the search for Danny's mutilator.

You worked me beautifully, you son of a bitch. Played me like a maestro.

Renny knew he was being hard on himself. The fact that he had once been an orphan like Danny Gordon, growing up in the same orphanage as Danny, raised a Catholic with endless respect for priests, all of that had made him an easy mark for that slimy Jesuit's lies.