He murmured something and backed out of the room.

My pounding head made it impossible to fall into anything resembling actual sleep. I should have taken a painkiller, but if Gabriel had caught me, he’d have insisted on that middle-of-the-night emergency room visit. So now I was lying in bed, picking up snatches of Rose and Gabriel talking downstairs. After a while, it was as if a door had been opened, and I could hear them clearly.

“—so when are you going to tell her?” Rose was saying.

“I don’t intend to.”

“Because you can’t prove it? That’s a ridiculous excuse and you know it. Tell her and—”

“No. This is better.”

“Better? How is this better, Gabriel?”

“I should go.”

“You’re not driving back to Chicago tonight.”

“I need—”

“It’s 4 a.m. You’ll take the other spare room.”

“I have to work—”

“It’s Sunday.”

“I’ve been busy with Pamela Larsen’s case and falling behind on paperwork.”

Rose sighed. “Fine. Go. I’ll speak to Olivia in the morning.”

“But not about—”

“Of course not.”

“She needs to see a doctor. She’ll argue—”

“I will look after Olivia for you, Gabriel.”

“That’s not—”

“Yes. I know. Now go.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After I finally did fall asleep, Rose came in every hour to ask the date and my name and how many fingers she was holding up. I played along without complaint. This wasn’t how she’d planned to spend her Saturday night, so I was grateful … until 7 a.m., when I recited a dozen Sherlock Holmes quotes, back to back, and she declared I was clearly not suffering from a concussion and we could both get some sleep. Which would have been lovely, if my phone hadn’t buzzed an hour later.

Gabriel.

“Where’s your cat?” he said in greeting.

“Wha—?”

“TC. Your cat.” He bit the words off, impatient. “I just realized I didn’t see him at the apartment last night. Where is he?”

“Gone. The accommodations were not to his liking, apparently.”

“When?”

I rubbed my face as I sat up. “Yesterday after my shift. He must have slipped out while I was taking the trash—”

“Did you see him leave?”

“No. I’m just presuming…” I realized where this was going. “You think someone took him?”

I must have sounded alarmed, because his voice smoothed out. “No, that’d be too much trouble. It seems unlikely, though, to be a coincidence that he vanished hours before this happened. I suspect someone was testing the door and let him out. I’m sure he’s fine. However, that would mean the intruder was at your apartment earlier that day. I’ll question Grace about that. Nothing escapes her notice, and she’s usually forthcoming with me.”

After talking to Gabriel, I tried to sneak home, but Rose caught me. We had breakfast. We talked. There wasn’t much to discuss. Yes, poppies were a death omen. Yes, the most common hound folklore was the Black Shuck. Yes, finding a dead girl in my car—and her head in my bed—was terrible … and clearly an omen of the “you need a security system now” variety. She promised to read the cards and see what came up.

In the meantime, I had to see the doctor. Rose had set up the appointment. Dr. Webster made house calls, even on Sundays. She checked me out and decided I might have suffered a mild concussion, but nothing requiring more than rest and painkillers.

After Dr. Webster left, I covered every inch of my apartment, looking for clues. There wasn’t so much as a stray hair from the wig. All I had were the photos, blurry from my hands trembling.

I made notes from my memories of the night before. Then I looked up Ciara Conway on the Internet again, and found nothing new. She was still missing, and would remain so until her killer decided to part with her corpse, which he or she seemed in no hurry to do.

That was the hardest part of all this to wrap my head around. Her killer was storing her body, toting it about, using it to scare me, as if it was a plastic tarantula. There was something truly chilling about that. What complete lack of respect for life would allow someone to cart a body around like a prop, would allow someone to say, “You know, I can’t sneak the whole body into her apartment, so let’s just chop off the head”? And what did it have to do with me?

Someone had murdered a young woman, one who resembled me in a very superficial “height, weight, body shape” way, and had a family connection to the tiny town where I now lived. As much as I wanted to believe my assailant had just … oh, I don’t know, found Ciara dead from an overdose and decided to use her body, the chances of that were infinitesimal. She’d been selected. Killed to warn me not to dig deeper into my parents’ crimes or deeper into Chandler’s crimes or … Oh, hell, I didn’t even know what the warning meant. I supposed I’d find out, whether I wanted to or not.

The next morning, I was in a coffee shop, sitting across from a guy getting nonstop stares from the businesswomen, as much for his biker-patch leather jacket as for his rugged good looks. The first time we’d met, I thought Ricky reminded me of a blond young Marlon Brando without the angst. I’d even speculated there’d be a cleft chin when he shaved his stubble. There was. There was also a dimple, showing up when I walked in and he fixed me with a grin that made me stutter-step … and nearly bolt back out the door.

Lydia had said that Ricky was even harder to resist in person. She was right. Fortunately, that grin, as dazzling as it was, said only, I’m glad to see you.

“Hey.” He stood as I walked over. No hug. No squeeze on the arm. Just standing, as if that’s what you should do when a woman walked to your table, though you didn’t go so far as to pull out her chair, suggesting she couldn’t handle it herself. I swear every woman around us sighed a little.

I just smiled and said, “Hey,” back.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

“I can—”

“My invitation. My treat. And if you feel guilty about that, you can get it next time.” Another flash of a grin. “Which means there has to be a next time. See? I have it all worked out.”

“A mocha, please.”

He was back in a minute, setting it down and swinging into his chair with, “So you have to work at three, right?”

“I do.”

“Plenty of time, but I’ll watch the clock to be sure. What are you up to these days?”

I told him, and he earned the distinction of being the first person who didn’t react like I was punishing myself by working in the diner. He understood. His life might seem radically different from mine, but it wasn’t really. We’d both been raised in a successful family business, where it was expected that if you wanted a job, that’s where you’d work, and if you wanted to just focus on your studies, that was fine, too. We were also both only children raised by a devoted father—as healthy a father–child relationship as you could ask for, whether Daddy owned a landmark department store or ran a notorious biker gang. Ricky’s mother wasn’t in the picture. He didn’t go into detail, but it seemed she was a doctor in Philadelphia. He saw her now and then, and they had a good relationship, but she was more like a distant aunt.

The only thing that kept it from being a perfect coffee break was Ricky’s phone, which kept buzzing. He hit Ignore every time, but it was almost nonstop, and he finally apologized.

“I’d turn the damned thing off, but my dad needs to be able to get hold of me at any time. Club rules. If he calls, I have to take it. Otherwise, it’s just birthday wishes.”

“Birthday? You mean it’s your…? Shit. I’m sorry. I would never have suggested today—”

“Um, pretty sure I suggested it. I don’t have plans until tonight, and then it’s just take-Ricky-to-dinner-and-embarrass-the-hell-out-of-him.”

“Do they make the servers sing ‘Happy Birthday’?”