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For Sherry Kappler Cooley

Who took as much love and joy from life as she brought into it.

We miss you every day.

CHAPTER 1

SHE WAS FLOATING. FLOATING IN a pool of blood.

No, now it had become a river of blood.

What in the hell…?

Of course.

This was a dream. The same horrible nightmare that had haunted her for months. Why hadn’t she realized it before?

Because the terror was real, and she was always afraid the nightmare was real, too. Colby was a demon. Couldn’t a demon make a nightmare come true?

She was back at the gully in Coachella Valley, the place where she had beaten him. Yet here he was, night after night. He crouched on a rock at the gully’s end, waiting for the blood river to carry her to him.

No!

Colby laughed and raised his two large knives. “Here we are. Just me and you, Kendra. The way it was meant to be.”

He swung his blades at her.

Darkness. Darkness. Dark—

*   *   *

GOT ONE FOR YOU.

Kendra Michaels jerked wide-awake at the jangle she’d programmed to signal the text messages on her phone.

Damn.

She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and studied the message header. It was from Martin Stokes, a San Diego Police Department homicide detective. He’d included an address and a few details.

She took a few minutes to steady her breathing, trying to gain control. She was still trembling from her nightmare, and her face was covered with sweat. She’d be okay in a minute. Every night the nightmare came, and every night she survived it.

Just as I survived you, Colby.

I won’t let you drag me back to that time, and someday I’ll fight off this damn nightmare.

But here in her hands, a real-life nightmare beckoned. She didn’t have to go, of course; a glance at the crime-scene photos and a reading of the case file would probably tell her everything she needed to know.

Probably.

Who in the hell was she kidding? She knew she was going.

No matter how horrific the scene was, it couldn’t compare with the beast still taunting her in her dreams.

A quick shower and she’d be out of here. She reached for her jeans and headed for the bathroom.

She stopped short as she glanced in the vanity mirror. She reached up and touched one of the dark circles beneath her eyes.

Those nightmares again. There was no strength in that face at this moment. She appeared delicate, breakable.

She was not breakable. She was the one who had broken Colby that night in the gully four years ago.

Colby had been her first case as an FBI consultant, and she had been so horrified at the brutality of his kills that she had become obsessed with catching him. The cat-and-mouse search had culminated with her almost dying in that gully and Colby’s going to the hospital with a fractured skull. He had found that defeat intolerable. His ego couldn’t bear the thought that she had triumphed and sent him to prison. She had become the focus of his hatred and obsession, and he had let her know; he had been a dark shadow behind her all those years he had spent on death row.

You’re out there waiting, aren’t you, Colby?

I can feel it.

So wait, you bastard. And when you get bored, come after me.

I’m waiting for you, too.

And I’m not standing still.

She turned and jumped into the shower.

*   *   *

“I DIDN’T THINK YOU WERE going to show.” Detective Stokes lifted the police tape for Kendra to duck under and join him in the driveway of the one-story craftsman home. Four squad cars were parked on the street, flashers pounding the house with out-of-sync strobes of red and blue light. The scene was crawling with uniformed officers, detectives, and forensics experts.

Kendra shrugged. “What else would I have to do at three-thirty in the morning?”

“I could think of lots of things. Especially since you don’t have to be here.”

What did he know? She felt the familiar chill. “I do have to be here.”

She’d tried to suppress the shudder, but Stokes’s narrowed stare told her the effort was unsuccessful. “Sure, but you should be thanking Detective Kael. He’s the one who beat it into my brain that I should contact you if I encountered any killings of a serial or ritualistic nature. He thinks you’re the real deal.”

Did that mean Stokes did not? She gazed at him appraisingly. Thirtysomething, receding brown hair, pleasant enough features. No sign of belligerence or cynicism. “Kael is a good man.”

“He’s a rotten softball player, but other than that…” He motioned for her to follow him up the driveway. “But I trust him most of the time. I was actually glad when I had an excuse to call you on this case.” He grimaced. “I’m very curious. But you know I’ve heard so many incredible things about you that it’s hard to separate the truth from the bullshit.”

She half smiled. “Bank on the bullshit.”

“I don’t think so. Tell me, were you really blind for the first twenty years of your life?”

“Yes.”

“Completely blind?”

“Yep. I’d never seen a thing in my life.”

“That’s amazing. Kael says you got your sight from some kind of stem-cell surgery.”

She nodded. “In England. They did a lot of the early work in corneal-regeneration techniques.”

“I’ve always heard that blind people developed their other senses to compensate. And that’s how you pick up on stuff most other people don’t.”

She wished he’d just drop it. Patience. At least, he was pleasant enough, and she might need him to notify her again if he ran across one of the target murders. “I guess so. But I don’t think my senses of hearing, smell, taste, or touch are better than anyone else’s. I just had to use them to make my way in the world.”

“Yeah. And afterward you used your eyes, too.” He smiled. “You don’t remember me, but I was at the Van Buren crime scene a few years ago. It wasn’t my case, but I was curious as hell about you. So I just stayed in the background and watched.”

“Really? I hope you were entertained.”

“Did I say the wrong thing? I didn’t mean—I was impressed. You cracked that case by reading the lips of a suspect when he was talking on the phone to his wife. It was amazing … and surprising. It made me want to go out and learn it myself.”

“Did you do it?”

“No, it was like a lot of things in my life. It just somehow slipped away as time passed.” He paused. “But I think I should let you know, Kael isn’t the only one who thinks you’re the real deal. I do, too, Dr. Michaels.”