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Simon just hoped that it would beenough to narrow the field of the killer’s potential next victims enough thatthey could find out who he was targeting next, before it was too late.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Roz had always loved to run, evenback when she’d been in the army. Back then, it had been an essential fitnessrequirement, a way to keep herself in the shape she needed to be in to fight.It had been a way to clear her head and remember that there was more to theworld than being out on patrol or picking off targets at long range as asniper.
Now that she was out, it was alifeline. It was a way to keep some of the demons at bay that threatened tooverwhelm her if she was still for too long, if she had too much time to think.
Currently, Roz was running along ahiking trail outside of Keystone, her dark hair flowing in the wind behind her,her headtorch lighting up the trail in front. She was wearing her old fatiguesand a cheap t-shirt, because she didn’t see the point in expensive running gearfor something so simple and free.
Maybe also because the old fatiguesmeant that she could carry the memories of some of her old unit members withher while she ran, heading on through the growing darkness of the hiking trailwithout anyone around her.
There were trees to either side ofthe trail, their branches adding odd shapes to the evening light, lettingthrough a few purple-pink glimmers of the sunset. Roz paused for a moment ortwo at one of the spots she always knew was clear, switching off her head torchand looking out at the beauty of the sunset over the town and the ocean beyond.
In moments like this, briefly,everything was still inside her. It wasn’t that she had forgotten anything,just that for a few minutes at least, the world would feel in balance.
A twinge in her shoulder broughtRoz out of her reverie, in a reminder of that last action that had almost costher everything. Even as it was, she’d found herself on a medical discharge, letgo from the army partly because her body couldn’t do what she wanted it toanymore and partly because her mind refused to move out of that moment. Hershrink said it was PTSD, gave her all kinds of mental exercises to do to try tokeep it all in check.
Most days, Roz preferred to run.Running mile after mile reminded her that her body was still strong in plentyof ways, that there was still a lot of stuff she could do. It gave her a senseof routine, too, in a way that the world outside of the military so oftenseemed to lack.
Roz briefly touched the tattooshe’d gotten. The ram’s head, Aries. Her company sergeant had always laughed ather for being so superstitious, but old Habbin wasn’t laughing now, was he?Couldn’t do much of anything beyond the grave. Roz didn’t know whether to laughor cry at the fact that she’d been the lucky one, and that tapped into a greatwell of feelings she didn’t want to have to deal with right then.
So she started running again.
The route was always the same forher, give or take. Occasionally, she would take a different trail here andthere as she headed up the side of the big hill that the hiking trail woundalong the face of, but she would always make her way up to the top, then turnand head back to where she’d parked her SUV down by the spot where folksstopped to have picnics.
Roz made it up to the top just asthe light failed completely. That was fine by her. Running down in the dark wasa part of the joy of it. It meant that she wasn't likely to run into anywherenear as many other people along the way, didn't have to deal with hikersclogging the trail, or worry about people looking at her as she ran. Roz didn'tlike that feeling of people silently judging her, of them not getting any ofwhat she'd been through.
She started to run down the trailagain in the dark, her torch lighting the way. She guessed that she should havebeen worried about tripping in the dark or hurting herself some other way, butthese days, Roz didn’t care so much about small risks like that. She’d come soclose to death that almost nothing else made it onto her radar for danger.
It meant that she could run downthe trail in the dark without hesitation, not caring about the branches thatwhipped past her, or about the way she occasionally had to dodge roots on thetrail.
Roz was about halfway down when shebecame convinced that there was somebody watching her after all. Rozshook her head at first, knowing that paranoia was as much a symptom ofeverything she'd been through as anything else, telling her that the odds ofthere being someone out there in the dark were almost zero.
Still, the feeling wouldn’t goaway, and Roz started looking around in the dark, hoping that her torch wouldpick up some hint of what was going on. Was that a flicker of movement away inthe trees?
Roz came to a halt, trying toisolate every sound, every hint of movement. “Is there someone there?” shedemanded. If there was, she would deal with it. She might have been wounded,her body might not be up to the rigors of active service anymore, but she couldstill fight. She had a small knife on her, and she pulled it now, ready for anytrouble. If some guy tried to mug her in the dark, he would quickly regret it.
There was, unsurprisingly, noanswer from the trees. There was no sense of someone closing the distance,either, the way there might have been if she’d been about to come under attack.Roz’s heart was hammering in her chest, her adrenaline pumping, her fistsclenching reflexively, but as the seconds ticked by, it seemed as if there wasless and less reason for her to react like that.
If there had ever been anyone thereat all, they were gone now. Roz sucked in air, counting her breaths, doing thekind of mindfulness exercises that her shrink insisted would help with a bodyhopped up to meet a threat that wasn’t actually there.
Was that what all of this had been?An episode of some kind? A mini-flashback, as Roz’s body insisted that she wasstill under threat in a warzone even while her mind knew that she wasn’t?
Roz tried to calm down, tried tofocus. She was still counting her breaths when someone ran out of the treesstraight at her.
Roz didn't get a good look at himbecause he was covered by a dark, shapeless, hooded top. She started to lifther knife to engage him, but he didn't run at her, exactly. Instead, he ranpast her, and as he did, Roz felt a sharp pain in her arm.
She looked down to see a syringesticking out of it.
Roz cursed and started to run downthe trail, knowing that her only hope now was to make it to her car, to make itto other people. Already, she could feel whatever drug had been in the syringerunning through her system, slowing her steps, making her stumble on the trail.
Roz didn’t know when she fell overcompletely, but suddenly, she was looking up through the trees at the stars.She could make out the constellations there. Aries was high above, like abeacon, except that it was a beacon that was slowly fading as darkness claimedher.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“We’re getting nowhere,” Ambersaid, as she sat in an office of the Keystone PD, working through as manypublic records as she could, trying to find people who matched the details thekiller had given for his next victim.
Assuming that Alonzo could betrusted, and that was a big assumption right at the start, then the birth dateof the next victim was April 2nd, and they would currently betwenty-seven years old. That obviously narrowed things down considerablycompared to looking at every Aries in Keystone who might fit the definition ofa “warrior” as the first part of the message said, but in a town that size,they were still looking at far too many potential victims.
