“Valentine Lopez is my oldest friend.”

“I know,” she whispered, hurting for him. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” He glanced past her, toward the bar and its patrons. When he met her eyes once more, the anger in his took her breath. “You’re accusing my best friend of murder. Of conspiracy. Of satanism. What else? Stealing little old ladies’ social security checks?”

“Just hear me out.” She tightened her grip on his hands. “Please, Rick.”

“Can’t do it.” He eased his hands from hers. “I let myself be drawn into your drama. I used my friends and contacts in an unethical fashion. No more, Liz.”

Realization dawned. It hit her with the force of a blow. “You talked to Val, didn’t you? He poisoned your mind against me.”

Rick didn’t reply and tears flooded her eyes. “You have to believe me. Please, I have no one else.”

He brought a hand to her cheek. “I want to,” he murmured, voice thick. “Believe me, my every instinct shouts for me to hold you close and protect you from all the bad guys, real or imagined.”

“They’re not imagined,” she whispered. “The Horned Flower exists.”

He dropped his hand. “You don’t have any real proof, Liz. You don’t have one person to back up any of your accusations.”

“The shopkeeper, he’ll tell you Heather’s missing-”

“Did she tell him or anyone else that she was being followed? Anyone but you, that is?”

“I don’t know.” With a growing sense of panic, she realized he was right. “I mean, I don’t think so, but-”

“Did she go to the police?”

“I urged her to, but-”

“But she didn’t? Just like your sister didn’t go to the police even though teenagers in her flock were in danger from this Horned Flower group?”

It sounded implausible-crazy-even to her own ears. But it wasn’t. “Look at the evidence, it’s real.”

“What evidence? A couple drawings that supposedly came from your sister’s journal. A tattoo on Tara’s thigh? The coincidence of two men from Florida attending the same state university. The word of a young man who’s wanted in connection with a murder? A young man no one’s seen since that murder-except you, of course.”

He looked away a moment, then back at her. “You could have manufactured all of it. The envelope, the threats, even the dead rat.”

“And the dead women, Rick?” she demanded, quivering with the force of her emotions. “Could I have manufactured them as well?”

“No, unfortunately.” He let out a heavy-sounding breath. “I understand you’re hurting. That you want to make sense of what happened to your sister, that you-”

“I’ll never make sense of it,” she corrected, tone bitter. “I just want to know what happened to her. Is that so wrong?”

“Only if you’ve used these murders to support that agenda.”

Liz couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Or how much it hurt. “Is that what you think I’ve done?”

He didn’t reply; she took a step away, devastated. “Why can’t you see? Who knows how many people are a part of this? And if the Horned Flower is operating with the full support of the police-”

“Stop it! This has gone too far! You’re accusing upstanding citizens of murder and moral corruption. My oldest friend. A popular preacher. Who else? The mayor? The elementary-school principal?”

“Why not?” she retorted, a hairbreadth from falling apart. “Anyone could be involved.”

He took another step back, expression closed. “You’re the outsider here. You’re the one who’s crazy, not everybody else.”

She brought a hand to her mouth. “How can you say that? After all we’ve shared?”

“Did we share anything, Liz?” he asked tightly. “I’d begun to believe that maybe…that sometimes life offered up second chances. But now I wonder, was I simply a pawn in your desperate game?”

She moaned as if in pain. She had never felt more alone, more abandoned.

“It’s over, Liz,” he said softly. “I can’t be a party to your delusions anymore.”

CHAPTER 49

Wednesday, November 21

12:25 p.m.

Carla sat at her desk, struggling to keep her thoughts from showing. She glanced at her watch, noted that Val’s secretary, Becky, would be leaving for lunch any moment. She would walk by Carla’s door, call goodbye then stop and ask if Carla wanted her to pick her up anything. Same as she did every day.

What made today different was what Carla planned to do while the woman was gone.

Apprehension tightened her chest. She couldn’t believe what she was thinking. She wanted to prove her suspicions wrong.

Val wasn’t dirty. He wasn’t involved with these women’s deaths-or with this Horned Flower group Rick had told her about.

Carla lowered her eyes to the file lying open on the desk in front of her. Tara Mancuso’s file. Below it lay Rachel Howard’s. Below that Naomi Pearson’s. Inconsistencies jumped out at her. Little ones she had missed before. Things like dates and times. Things that could be nothing.

Or something big.

She had eavesdropped on Val and Rick’s conversation that morning. Something Val said had jumped out at her, bold as a street whore.

“If Rachel Howard had uncovered a cult on the island, one that was endangering the teenagers in her flock, wouldn’t she have come to the police for help?”

Carla brought a hand to her temple, to the headache that pounded there. She was thinking Rachel Howard had called the police. Shortly before she had gone missing. Carla closed her eyes, trying to recall. She had been walking by Val’s office; he had been on the phone. She had paused to speak to him and he had said the woman’s name as he hung up.

“I’ll look into it, Pastor Howard. Thanks for calling.”

Why hadn’t she recalled that snippet before? she wondered. The day after Tara ’s murder, Liz Ames had come to see Val. Carla had been there; Val had told Liz that he had never spoken to her sister. Why hadn’t alarm bells sounded then?

In the past hours she had made a number of excuses for herself. That the memory had been so fleeting, so inconsequential. That she’d had no reason to suspect her superior of any kind of impropriety. That even now she was uncertain if the memory was accurate-or one conjured by exhaustion and frustration.

She was done making excuses. The truth was, Rick never would have forgotten such a detail, inconsistencies never would have escaped him. He would have involved himself so thoroughly in the investigation that inconsistencies, whether sloppy mistakes or deliberate falsification, never would have happened. Period.

Carla turned her attention to the files on her desk once more. Val had claimed to Rick that morning that Tara had been clasping a piece of paper in her hand, the Hideaway’s number scrawled on it. It hadn’t been paper at all, but a scrap of white fabric, most probably torn from Tara ’s attacker’s shirt. Why had Val lied to Rick? About that and about Pastor Howard’s call?

To influence him into discrediting Liz Ames. To convince him to back off.

Why?

Because Rick had been a damn good cop. Because he had feared Rick would figure out the truth.

Val was dirty.

Carla shook her head. She wasn’t going to believe it, not without proof.

“I’m out of here, Carla,” Becky called from the hallway outside her office. “You want me to pick you up anything?”

Carla looked up, praying she didn’t look as guilty as she felt. “No thanks. I’ll catch a bite later.”

“Be sure to do it before Lieutenant Blood gets back.” Becky made a face. “If you don’t, you won’t get lunch. He was on a tear this morning.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Carla forced a smile. “By the way, when is Val due back?”

“He thought his meeting with the chief would go through lunch. I figure I’ll see him sometime after one.”

Carla thanked her but the words stuck in her throat. The secretary looked at her strangely. “I think I’m coming down with a cold,” Carla explained, clearing her throat.