Charlie forced herself to breathe. Then, seeing how Haney was looking at her, seeing the surprise on his face, she put up her chin and met his gaze.

“That’s how I know,” she said coolly. Turning her back on the TV, she headed for the door.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“I’d be apologizing for getting you involved in this, except for the fact that we have a missing girl. And I have to say, I still think you’re the best hope Bayley Evans has.” Bartoli followed her out onto the deck. Charlie’s stomach had settled down now that she didn’t have any apparitions to deal with, but she still felt shaky and a little weak-kneed. Her head hurt. She was tired, and not just physically. The distance to the house next door seemed way too far to even attempt to walk it right then, so she paused by the rail near the steps to gather her strength. She didn’t bother glancing around for Garland; if he was nearby, she figured she would find out soon enough, but she didn’t see him or hear him right now, so she thought maybe he wasn’t. Maybe the emotions Trevor Mead had triggered in him had been enough to catapult him back into the afterlife.

I hope.

But knowing what he was facing there, did she really?

“It’s all right,” she said.

Bartoli had stopped behind her. “Is it?”

The sky was black now, and velvety soft–looking above a black satin sea. The moon, as palely luminous as a pearl, hung high among glittering stars. The wind blowing in from the water was warm, but strong. It smelled of salt. The rush of the waves pounded as relentlessly as her heartbeat as the tide rolled in. A few people walked the beach, as faceless as shadows. Not knowing who they were, realizing that they could be anyone at all, did make her anxious. But still …

“Yes, really.” Charlie’s fingers gripped the rough wooden rail as she stared blindly out to sea. And thankfully, even as she said it, she knew it was true: whatever personal danger joining the investigation might have placed her in, it paled into insignificance when she thought about Bayley Evans. If anything she brought to the search could help save the girl’s life, it was worth it. “I’m glad I’m here. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I hadn’t come.”

“You’ve already helped tremendously. Somewhere amidst the reams of information that has come in, we have the fact that Bayley Evans and her friends attended a dance at the Sanderling less than a week before the attacks, but it might have been weeks, if ever, before anybody focused on it. Even then, it might not have meant much if you hadn’t found out the unsub had a heart stamped on his hand.”

Charlie smiled a little wryly at that, and threw a glance over her shoulder at him. Bartoli was standing close, looking tall and lean and darkly handsome. Just the kind of guy she would have wished for before all this had happened.

He’s even wearing a suit. How perfect is that?

“There’s more,” she said. “I was able to find out more tonight. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Haney.”

His eyes had questions in them, but instead of asking, pushing, he glanced at the lighted windows behind them. The curtains covering the French doors weren’t completely closed, and through them she could see Haney and Simon and the uniformed cops standing around in the living room. They were talking, probably about her. Having observed the same thing, Bartoli took her arm. His hand felt firm and warm as it curled around the smooth skin just above her elbow.

A strong, steady hand.

“Let’s walk and talk,” he said, and Charlie nodded.

When they were on the wooden path, he said, “Tell me,” and Charlie did. As they walked, she told him every bit of information she—or rather, Garland—had gleaned from Trevor Mead. What she didn’t tell him was how she knew it.

And he didn’t ask.

“So what we’ve basically got is more confirmation that the unsub is a tall, strong white male, probably around six-one, one hundred ninety pounds, mid-twenties, with a long, thin face, black eyes—or any color eyes, with severely dilated pupils—who was wearing all black clothing plus a black or dark blue ski-type cap at the time of the crime,” he summed up when she was finished. “That’s good stuff. As soon as I get you safely tucked away back in the house, we’ll start digging into it. A ski cap with an eagle or hawk—it could be a company emblem of some kind. Or a team cap.” He shrugged, and his tone turned dry. “Then again, it could be something the unsub picked up on sale at the Dollar Store with no particular meaning at all.”

“You understand why I think the perpetrator is almost certainly a copycat.” Charlie looked out toward the ocean, but didn’t really see it. The coalescing certainty, the significance of which was just now really registering with her, brought with it a lessening of the terrible fear that had gripped her ever since she had seen herself on TV and realized that the monster who had killed Holly might also be watching the newscast and thus seeing her in her grown-up incarnation of Dr. Charlotte Stone. Since then she had felt exposed, vulnerable, naked. Now she grabbed on to the lifeline Trevor’s revelations had thrown her way with both hands: if the perpetrator was a copycat, he shouldn’t care anything about her. Except, perhaps, as just one more investigator to outwit.

“Because of the unsub’s age.” Bartoli seemed to be mulling the possibilities over. Charlie had told him mid-twenties, because she vaguely remembered reading in one of the files that Julie Mead had one sibling, an older sister, with two daughters in their mid-twenties. Tomorrow she would check to be sure that one of those daughters was named Cory, and verify her age. Although Charlie hadn’t told Bartoli that Trevor had described his attacker as “about my cousin Cory’s age,” because she didn’t know how to explain that.

“The age is the clincher. If the perpetrator is in his mid-twenties, he can’t possibly be the original Boardwalk Killer. But there’s also the duct tape. And the missing fifteen years,” she said.

They were walking almost side by side, with her slightly in front, close enough so that her shoulder and arm brushed his jacket. Charlie was glad of his nearness. With the rolling dunes and blowing sea oats between the wooden sidewalk and the beach, and a stretch of scrub ground thick with trees and other vegetation on the other side, they suddenly seemed very isolated. The spill of light from the windows of the Meads’ house and the subdued glow emanating from the RV illuminated only the beginning and end of the walkway, far short of where they were. Darkness enfolded them and the sandy ground around them like a blanket.

The killer could be out here right now.

A shiver raced down Charlie’s spine. She glanced covertly all around: nothing. Of course nothing. Besides the police car guarding the Meads’ house, there was another one, complete with two officers, parked beside the RV. And the road in front of both houses had been closed to all but official traffic, in an effort to combat media intrusion. There was plenty of protection, she knew. But she was nevertheless suddenly very glad the man she was with carried a gun.

“You’re probably right.” Bartoli’s voice was nearly borne away on the wind. “But still, I don’t want you going anywhere alone. One of us stays with you at all times now that your connection to the old cases is known.”

Charlie opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. Reluctantly she admitted to herself that, for all her increasing certainty that the man they were after was a copycat, she was deathly afraid.

The memory of the horror that had unfolded that night in the Palmers’ house was something she was never going to escape; it had established itself in her body on a cellular level. And this perpetrator, this killer, had awakened her once again to that inescapable truth.