“Here?”

“I’m having a little trouble remembering.” His brows flicked up, dropped. “You catch my meaning?”

I did. I dug my wallet from my purse and teased free a twenty.

The kid’s hand shot forward. I held the bill out of his reach.

“Take the highway west from town. Beyond where the Arriba Pathway T’s in, past the Las Brisas del Pacifico, down on the beach. Got a blue awning. Watch for a road cuts inland on the left. There’s a guy named Blackbird rents out a couple of tree houses up there. Your guy’s in one of them.”

“He’s still here?”

“He’s still here.”

Our eyes locked for a moment, then I let him snatch the money.

As I hurried back down toward the water, my pulse was racing. Could it be this simple? Walk into one café and score?

Or had I been played? Was the kid now laughing on his cellphone, describing the dumb gringo he’d just scammed?

But he knew I’d come back if I’d been conned. Right. Come back and do what?

Again I considered options. Which seemed few. Hurry there now? Wait until later, when Ryan might be in bed? How much later? Sleep, then strike at sunrise?

My stomach growled.

That decided it. Dinner first, then I’d set off.

I unfolded and checked my TripAdvisor printouts. El Lagarto was just up the beach. A lot of people liked it. What’s not to like about a joint with a slow-dancing gator couple as its logo?

I located the entrance and followed a lantern-lit walkway to a very long bar. Beyond the bar, a man tended steaks, fish, and plantains on a huge grill. The smell set my stomach whining again.

A woman wearing an embroidered cotton top seated me in an open area filled with tables and chairs that looked made of fossilized wood. Already half were occupied. Overhead, lanterns and colored lights twinkled softly. At ground level, candles flickered inside dozens of glass hurricane chimneys. In the gathering dusk, across the sand, the ocean boomed softly.

I ordered the seafood platter. Ate it. Felt sluggish as blood diverted to my gut.

I was on my second coffee, idly scanning my fellow diners, when my brain snapped back to attention.

Across the restaurant, a man stood talking to the bartender, his back to me. He wore a black T-shirt with a neon-green surf logo, faded denim shorts, and boat shoes. The hair was blonder and shaggier than the last time I’d seen it. But I knew the jawline, the shoulders, the long ropy limbs.

As I stared, heart pounding, the man flicked a quick one-finger wave at the bartender, turned, and walked out.

I dug money from my purse. Too much. I didn’t care.

Slapping colones on the table, I bolted for the door.

CHAPTER 6

IN THE ATMOSPHERIC but ineffective lantern light, I saw a neon-green surfboard near the end of the walkway. It disappeared as its wearer turned right.

Ryan was ten yards ahead when I hit the beach road. He wasn’t walking fast, yet I had to quicken my pace to keep up.

After going north a few blocks, he headed west along the highway. That fit with the dreadlocked kid’s account.

The tourists thinned as we moved farther from the center of town. With fewer rival noises, the ocean sounded louder. The sky, now fully black, was starting to show points of twinkling white light.

Fifteen minutes out, Ryan stopped abruptly. I froze, certain he’d seen me. Uncertain how my intrusion into his new life would be received.

Ryan’s shoulders rounded and his hands rose. A match flared. A tiny orange dot lit his face briefly. Then he straightened and turned left.

I let the distance between us increase, then I followed.

The road was narrow and paved only with gravel. Vegetation packed both sides, dark and dense in the moonless night.

Mosquitoes whined. Fearful of discovery, I fought the urge to slap them away.

Ryan’s footsteps continued another fifty, maybe sixty yards. Then a door opened, banged shut. Seconds later, light filtered through slivers in the tightly packed flora.

I held back a full minute, then moved forward.

It was a Tarzan arrangement of sorts, a crude cabin on stilts within the branches of a tree. I crept close and peered through the wood-latticed screening.

The lower level contained a very basic kitchen whose centerpiece was a wooden table with two blue plastic chairs. In one corner, an open door revealed a bath with stone-covered walls. In another, slatted stairs angled steeply to an upper floor. The wan illumination was seeping from above.

I stood a moment, breath frozen. What if I was wrong? What if the man wasn’t Ryan?

It was Ryan.

Moving gingerly, I eased open the screen door, tiptoed across the tile and up the stairs. I was on the second tread from the top when he spoke. “What do you want?”

The voice sounded hoarse, weary. Angry? I couldn’t tell.

“It’s Tempe,” I said.

There was no response. I swallowed. Tried to recall the words I’d practiced in my head.

“Why are you following me?”

“I located you through your email.”

“Congratulations.”

“It wasn’t hard.”

Shit. Was I trying to make him feel bad?

“Actually, I had help.”

“So I have been found. Now leave me alone.”

“May I come up?”

Silence.

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“No. I don’t.”

I stepped onto the top riser.

Ryan was sitting on an unmade bed, knees raised, back to the wall. A single bulb oozed light through a paper-covered fixture above his left shoulder. A fan rotated slowly overhead. A book lay spread on his chest.

An open bottle of Scotch sat on a table made of sticks to the right of the bed. An empty bottle rested at the base of one wall, abandoned where it had rolled to a stop. The smells of old booze and soiled clothing overrode the jungle bouquet coming through the screening that formed the upper half of the walls.

“You look good,” I said.

Partially true. Ryan’s skin was tanned, his hair bleached by hours in the sun. But he’d lost weight. His cheeks were gaunt below the stubble of beard. The shadowing of ribs and hollow spaces rippled his T-shirt.

“I look like shit,” he said.

I launched into the speech I’d practiced. “You’re needed. It’s time to come home.”

Nothing.

Screw it. I cut to the quick. “Anique Pomerleau.”

Ryan’s eyes flicked in my direction. He seemed about to speak, instead reopened the book.

“It’s her, Ryan. She’s killing again. A girl was murdered in Vermont in 2007. Her body was posed. The cold case detective—”

“Past life.” His eyes returned to the book.

“Pomerleau’s DNA was found on the kid.”

Ryan’s gaze remained fixed on the page. But a changed tension in his neck and shoulders told me he was listening.

“You tracked Pomerleau. You caught her. You know how she thinks.”

“I’m no longer in the show.” Still not looking up.

“She’s resurfaced, Ryan. She got away from us on rue de Sébastopol, and now she’s back at it.”

Finally, his eyes rolled up to mine. A spiderweb of red surrounded each neon-blue iris.

“A girl was murdered in Charlotte in 2009. The victimology and crime scene signature parallel the case in Vermont.”

“Including Pomerleau’s DNA?”

“That’s being confirmed.”

“Sounds weak.”

“It’s her.”

Ryan’s eyes held mine for a very long moment, then dropped back to the page he wasn’t reading.

“Another girl has now gone missing. Same physical type. Same MO.”

“No.”

“Undoubtedly, there were others in between.”

“Leave me alone.”

“We need you. We have to shut her down.”

“Do you know the way back to your hotel?”

“This isn’t you, Ryan. You can’t turn your back on these kids, knowing there will likely be more. More murders of young girls.”