More like demanded.

When he went back outside and handed the glass to Maude, she seemed to notice him only barely. Dwayne thought she smelled wonderful, of mingled scents of lotion and perspiration that gleamed on her smooth tan skin.

He left poolside and stood on the rear deck of the house, where he could observe his soon-to-be stepmother. He’d just turned fourteen, and he couldn’t help but be enthralled by Maude. Not that she minded. She would secretly urge him on, smiling and winking at him behind his father’s back.

Well, not so secretly. They were both amused by Dwayne’s discomfort, by his inability to conceal the erection he would often get in Maude’s presence. This embarrassed Dwayne so that he blushed a vivid pink, provoking their laughter. Sometimes, to tame and reduce the erection, Dwayne would think about his late mother. About how he’d hated her.

She and Dwayne’s father had used him in ways he hadn’t imagined possible. Ways he despised, and that made him despise them and himself.

When Dwayne’s mother died nine months ago, Dwayne hadn’t known how to feel. He did know the nighttime visits would stop, the gin breath and the giggling, his pain that his parents so enjoyed. His father had objected to hurting him that way at first, then his mother had convinced him that it didn’t matter. That Dwayne actually enjoyed what they were doing. She had figured out various ways to prove it.

When she died from heart failure that was somehow connected with the white powder she and her husband used, Dwayne had to pretend to mourn convincingly enough to fool the phony friends and business associates who came to pay their respects. He got pretty good at it.

What was life but playing a series of roles?

There had never been mention of where his father had obtained Maude Evans. She’d simply shown up a few weeks after his mother’s death. His mother’s life.

Maude smoothly replaced the life part with her own version.

Dwayne’s own life slipped into a routine. He was supposedly being homeschooled. A strict tutor, Mrs. Jacoby, would arrive at nine o’clock every weekday and stay until one o’clock. She was a broad, middle-aged woman with a perpetual scowl. There was no need for him to know her first name, as long as he learned his prime numbers and Latin roots. She took no crap from Dwayne.

Mrs. Jacoby and Maude seemed barely to notice each other. Or maybe that was just in Dwayne’s presence.

At precisely nine o’clock, when Mrs. Jacoby arrived, was when his father would go to work at his property procurement and management office. The company owned prime beach front property all over Florida, and some in the Carolinas. Money was no problem. Money allowed for the regular, sun-drenched routine. It was something taken for granted.

After the conversation Dwayne overheard between Maude and Bill Phoenix, the man who came every other day to service the pool, Dwayne knew that money was all that had attracted Maude to his father. Phoenix was a tall, rangy guy with friendly brown eyes, muscles that rippled, and curly black hair on his head and chest. He looked like he’d make a great James Bond in the movies. Maude and money had attracted Bill Phoenix.

Dwayne knew that Maude and the swimming pool guy had plans.

3

Creighton, two years ago

Quinn kept up a rough but steady pace parallel to the shoreline, casting a sharp eye in all directions as he ran. He knew the dogs were slightly ahead of him and to his left. To his right was the lake. Directly ahead of him was the killer. It was like a steadily narrowing isosceles triangle, gradually bringing killer and pursuers together at its narrow point. The killer could keep going the way he was and stay in the squeeze. Or he could break to his left and try to get out ahead of the dogs and their handlers. Or he could break to his right and start swimming.

Quinn figured the killer would stay on course, and when he ran out of safe ground, he would run out of freedom or life.

Maybe that was the way he planned it.

No way to know that for sure now. No point in worrying about it.

They’d almost had the bastard back at the lodge, where he’d just taken his latest victim, after torturing her with dozens of knife cuts and cigarette burns, and gradual disembowelment. An anonymous phone call, proclaiming that someone was being murdered at the lodge, hadn’t come in time to save the victim.

The killer had seen their approach. He’d fled the scene after making the phone call, not realizing how quickly they would respond, how close Quinn was on his heels. Now he found himself in a running gun battle with Quinn and the county sheriff.

Quinn was sure that the sheriff, a slim, gray haired man named Carl Chalmers, had been badly wounded. The last Quinn saw of him, he was sitting on the ground, talking on what Quinn assumed was a cell phone, and waving his free arm at Quinn, urging him to continue the chase. Chalmers had come late to the hunt, joining Quinn after Quinn had followed a trail of dead bodies from New York City to Maine.

There was a lot of blood around the sheriff.

And here Quinn was, in the chase and with unexpected help. He knew now that the sheriff had called in the dogs as well as the state police.

Quinn also suspected that the anonymous phone call had been made by the killer to him alone, to lure him to the scene of the murder, to trick him into a futile chase.

This was the kind of asshole who played that kind of game.

Now, unless the killer had a boat stashed somewhere, the chase might not be futile after all. The dogs, forcing a hard and close pursuit, might be the difference. The killer might not have planned on the dogs.

Suddenly the flat plane of the lake appeared through the trees to Quinn’s right, exactly where it was supposed to be. Quinn slowed and veered in that direction, coming out at the edge of the woods, and near a long and dilapidated wooden dock that poked like an accusing finger out toward the opposite shore.

Quinn stopped running and bent forward to catch his breath, leaning his rifle against a nearby tree.

He knew now how the killer planned to escape. He also knew the killer had outsmarted and outmaneuvered him.

But not out-lucked him.

Quinn had the bastard!

The killer could see the level blue-green surface, and knew he was almost on the mud bank. He slowed down and glanced right and left to get his bearings. The trees thinned. There was a subtle but unmistakable scent that rose from flotsam and algae and acres of still water.

He hadn’t been running blind. He had some sense of where he was and had to be close to the dock.

He glimpsed movement through the trees and stopped running immediately, standing stock still and trying to quiet his breathing.

Ahead of him, his back to the water, was Quinn!

Regret and anger flashed through the killer’s mind: It had all gone as planned, except for the damned sheriff. If he hadn’t come along with Quinn, and somehow remained alive long enough to call in a nearby tracker with dogs, this would all be working out very well.

Then he saw that his luck wasn’t all bad. Quinn was bent over with his hands on his knees, out of breath. His rifle was leaning against a tree, beyond his immediate reach.

The killer watched Quinn straighten up and stretch, raising his arms high and twisting his body so he momentarily faced the lake. As if he couldn’t resist another glance back at the rickety pier, where the last thing he expected was docked.

Then he turned back to look around on shore, no doubt to find shelter from which to ambush his prey. Obviously, he assumed he’d won the race to the lake.