"Even if you had an enemy you'd prefer to get…out of your way?"

"Even if. And we don't make those kinds of enemies. I told you. We're harmless."

"Okay. So who invited you out here?"

Steve frowned at her. "I told you that too. He said his name was Wesley Tate."

Desperately trying to read his expression and pick up on verbal clues, Riley said, "I'm still having a hard time believing you'd bring your people here on the word of a stranger, Steve. I would have thought you'd know better than that. You've been practicing-what? Twenty years?"

"Nearly that." He sighed. "Yeah, I know it could have been a setup of some kind. At best somebody trying to take our money, and at worst a hate group out to make an example of us. But he just sounded so damn charming and welcoming, Riley. We've been taking heat back home, getting pressure to go elsewhere, so the invitation to visit Opal Island came at a perfect time."

A suspiciously perfect time.

Riley mentally crossed her fingers and guessed. "But to accept the invitation of a man you hadn't even set eyes on…"

"I know, I know. Not something I'd normally have considered, except that he knew all the right things to say. I mean, we're not some secret brotherhood with code words and bullshit like that, but you know as well as I do that there are…"

"Code words?" she supplied dryly.

"Well…yeah. The right words, anyway. The right names. He knew people. He checked out. And it wasn't like he was inviting us to his own place or asking for anything. Just suggesting we might want to check out Opal Island and Castle because people were laid-back here and because there were some even like-minded."

"And have you found them?"

"No. But it's just been a few days, after all. We've sort of put out the word." He grimaced. "As you said, rotten timing, obviously. And I've gotta tell you-if those like-minded people are into human sacrifice, we're not gonna have much in common with them."

"If anything at all," a new voice added pleasantly.

Riley looked past Steve, unsettled yet again that she hadn't noticed the approach of the tall, dark woman now joining them on the beach. Especially since the woman was strikingly beautiful and had a strong, definite presence. Probably in her mid-thirties, she was both exotic and sensual, her centerfold body ripe to bursting and her dark eyes practically smoldering.

"Hey, Riley," she said as she joined them. Her voice was as sultry as the rest of her, low and rather throaty. And her night-black hair fell straight and gleaming down her back all the way to her hips.

Put her photo in the dictionary beside the name of the alternative religion of your choice and she'd look the part.

Even wearing a very brief swimsuit. Maybe especially wearing a very brief swimsuit.

Riley dredged in her mind and produced a name. "Hey, Jenny."

"Guess the shit's really hit the fan with this murder," Jenny said, shaking her head. "Is that what you came to tell Steve? That we should pack up and get out?"

Though the other woman's voice was casual, the question was, in some peculiar way Riley couldn't define, some sort of challenge. She was sure of that, even if she didn't understand what lay behind it.

At least…I think I'm sure.

"I was just stretching my legs after lunch," she said mildly. "Steve was the one who wanted to talk to me."

"Should we pack up and leave?" Jenny asked.

"Not my place to say. But there's been a murder, and plenty of evidence left behind to point toward the occult. So if I were you, I'd be careful. Maybe stick close to the house. Maybe keep my beliefs to myself for the duration."

"If you were us."

Riley nodded. "Something like this happens, and people get jumpy as hell. Things snowball. So I'd lay low for a while. If I were you."

"Understood." Jenny smiled. She linked her arm with Steve's and with her free hand reached out to pat Riley on the shoulder. "You don't worry about us. We'll be fine."

…the candlelight cast dancing shadows around the room and shimmered off the velvet hangings and silken robes. On the wall above the altar hung an inverted cross fashioned of some metallic material that also caught the light. Below the inverted cross was the usual platform, and upon it the altar.

She was naked. Her head raised on a pillow, she lay in the center of the rectangular platform so that one of its long edges came to the backs of her widely parted knees. Her arms were stretched out to either side, and each hand grasped a silver candlestick containing a black candle.

The candles were lit.

Her body was pale, her long black hair arranged to frame her bold nakedness with no attempt to coyly conceal. Her lush breasts were tipped with artificially blood-red nipples, and as Riley watched, the robed celebrant-the "priest" conducting the ceremony-stepped between the altar's spread legs and dipped his thumb into the silver cup he held, then drew with the viscous liquid an inverted cross onto the pale flesh of her lower stomach.

Red. Blood.

The room smelled of incense and blood, and Riley had to breathe through her mouth to avoid coughing.

Couldn't cough.

Couldn't give herself away.

She peered through the narrow opening in the draperies, trying to look for anything familiar in the robed individuals. Height, build, a gesture-anything to help her identify at least one of them. But it was an exercise in futility. They were eerily featureless, their faces concealed by the hoods.

They were chanting in low voices, in Latin, and she could only catch a few words of what they were saying.

"…Magni Dei Nostri Satanas…"

Riley sat up with a smothered gasp, her heart pounding.

A Black Mass. That was what she'd seen, part of a version of the satanic ceremony known as a Black Mass.

Seen? Seen when? Seen where?

She was in bed, Riley realized. In her own bed, in her own bedroom of the beach house with moonlight streaming through the blinds on the windows. When she turned her head cautiously, it was to see Ash sleeping beside her. Beyond him she saw the clock on the nightstand.

5:30 A.M.

Wednesday?

No, that wasn't right. That couldn't be right. She'd been on the beach, talking to Steve and Jenny, and it had been no later than three or so on Tuesday afternoon. And then…

Here. Now. Waking in bed with Ash.

More than twelve hours later.

Resisting panic, she slipped from the bed without waking him. She found one of her sleep-shirts on the floor and put it on, then crept from the bedroom.

As usual, several lights had been left on dimly in the main living area of the house, and the blinds in there were firmly closed against the night. The latter fact told her only that she must have, as usual, closed all the blinds at dusk; Riley disliked the exposed sensation of uncovered windows at night, especially when people were likely to walk along the beach on the other side of those windows.

A holdover from her army days, when being too visible and presenting too much of a target had never been a good idea.

Riley paused for a moment and held out her hands, studying them. Not too shaky, but hardly steady. Rather the way she felt inside.

She went to the kitchen to collect an energy bar and a glass of orange juice. The TV remote was on the breakfast bar, so she used it to turn the set on, hitting the MUTE button as she did so. Automatically turning it to CNN, hopeful of verifying the date, she swore softly to see a commercial for some diet product.

Figured.

She got her juice and the PowerBar, then carried both to the small table in one corner of the living area, where it looked like she'd been working on her laptop.