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“It.”
“She couldn’t explain her feelings. Tamara thought she’d taken the Tarot too seriously, but it was more than that. But she was determined to get the story, like it was going to save us all, I guess. I don’t know. She didn’t say that. It just seemed like that.”
He squinted his eyes, as if in pain. “Something that killed her.”
“Why would anyone kill Renee?”
“Her story about Jessie. God, I don’t know.” He shook his head in frustration.
Becca sighed, feeling that same frustration. “You said Renee called you. What did she say?”
“I couldn’t hear her. It was a bad connection.”
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“She was excited about the story. About Jessie. Something about getting justice and some history…about people living on cliffs. Colonies forming on cliffs,” he corrected himself.
Becca shook her head, perplexed.
“Your visions,” he said. “You said you’ve had a series of them since Jessie’s remains were found.”
She looked into his tense face. He was grasping at straws. Lines of weariness radiated from the corners of his eyes. She suspected she looked much the same.
“Like I said, I had the first one at the mall. Jessie was standing on a cliff above the ocean. She put her fingers to her lips and then she said something to me. I couldn’t make it out. And then I saw her outside the Dandelion Diner.”
“When we met McNally and his partner?”
She nodded. “That’s why I went into the restroom. I was afraid I was going to pass out. And then I saw the nursery rhyme note to Glenn, and then this latest one, my car being pushed off the road.”
“Do you think you were reminded of it because of Renee’s accident?”
“Possibly.” But it had felt far more real than that. A vision, not a memory.
Hudson came back to the bed and lay down beside her, moving a reluctant Ringo aside. “I can’t take it all in.”
“Me, neither.”
He draped an arm around her, pulling her close. Time passed while they were lost in their own thoughts. Becca eventually heard Hudson’s breathing grow more even, but her own mind ran through a maze of alleys, seeking answers that were always around the next corner, always just out of reach.
Gretchen was waiting for Mac when he crossed the room to his desk, and she didn’t waste time with hellos or even to ask where he’d been all afternoon. “Reports are on your desk. The fire was arson, gas line was purposely damaged. The DNA results are back from the Preppy Pricks. And we’ve got our artist’s mock-up on what she looked like.”
“Jesus.” Mac snatched up the files and glanced through them. “Good things really do happen in threes.”
“That’s bad things.”
“Hmm. See if Hudson Walker’s DNA matches with the baby’s.”
“Already told ’em. We should get a call soon.”
“And the rest of the Preppy Pricks,” Mac added as an afterthought.
“They’re checking them all,” Gretchen said impatiently. “What do you think of this?” She plucked the rendering of the victim’s face from the pile and held it in front of Mac’s eyes. He gazed at it hard. “This your little girlfriend?”
“I only saw pictures of Jessie.”
“Me, too. And?”
“I think this is pretty close,” he said slowly, though his heart was beating like a drum as he looked into those sexy, knowing eyes, the perfect mouth that he imagined twitching upward in a teasing, knowing grin. “What are little boys made of?” He could almost hear the rhyme slip through those sensuous lips.
