Charlie pictured how Bayley’s body had looked in death, and her blood ran cold.

“He’s going to kill her.” Brimming with tears, Bayley’s eyes were open. Still on her knees, she was talking to Garland, with her head tilted back so that she could see his face. The hideous injuries she had suffered, that Charlie remembered from Jockey’s Ridge and had just seen again in her mind, were no longer in evidence. Bayley was wearing a pale blue, summery, go-to-church dress, and Charlie wondered if that was what her family was burying her in. “He’s going to kill them both. He hurt me so much. He is evil.”

Garland’s nostrils flared. His jaw clenched.

“I’m not going to let that happen,” he said to Charlie. His tone was very calm now, very even. He was trying to reassure her, Charlie knew, but she saw the truth in his eyes: as big and bad as he had been in life, he had no substance in death, and there was nothing he could do. “Look, I’m going to see if I can’t get your FBI boyfriend here. I’ll be back as quick as I can. You stay quiet.”

With that he was gone.

“He’s going to hurt Hannah.” Bayley was looking at Charlie now. Her big blue eyes still rained tears. Her voice shook. “Just like he did me.”

Charlie felt the upsurge of nausea that a close-at-hand spirit always provoked. Her heart ached for Bayley and she longed to offer comfort, but with Garland’s warning fresh in her mind, she didn’t answer. She was getting a handle on the true danger of her position. Whatever this madman wanted from Hannah, he didn’t want the same from her.

She wasn’t part of his fantasy. She was interfering with it. If she knew anything of how killers of this type worked, he was in a rage right now because of it. He’d kill her as soon as he could.

Please, God, let me figure a way out of this.

Being very careful not to make a sound, Charlie adjusted her position enough to allow her to tug at the metal ring. Yanking it out of the wall probably wasn’t going to happen: she wasn’t all that physically strong, and it had been solidly installed. Careful not to make the chain rattle, she felt the bracelet around her wrist and each metal link that secured her to the wall.

Not going to be able to break it.

Charlie realized that she was breathing way too fast, and had to force herself to slow it down.

Stay calm.

“He made me call him Terrybear,” Bayley wept. “He said if I was a good girl he would let me go home.”

Terry Kingston. Charlie remembered the suspect’s name.

The van slowed and then turned left. Bright sunlight poured through the front windshield. The windows in the back were lined with a tinted film that from the outside would make them almost impossible to see through. If Bayley had been alive, Charlie realized, she never would have been able to see her inside the van. But the dead had their own way of making their presence felt, and Bayley had been trying to bring help to Hannah.

Instead of helping her, I’m probably going to die with her.

Cold sweat prickled to life around her hairline. Try as she might, Charlie could see no way of freeing herself. She was as trapped and helpless as Hannah. As Bayley and the other girls had been. As Holly had been.

Please, God, help us. Please.

“But he didn’t let me go. He killed me.” Bayley’s voice shook. “He cut me. I screamed and screamed and then …”

She bent double with the force of her sobs.

Charlie felt desperately sorry for her, and sick to her stomach, and terrified all at the same time.

The van was stopping. Brakes squeaked, and the vehicle lurched slightly as it came to a halt.

Charlie’s breath caught. A fresh burst of fear shot through her.

Here we go.

“He kept telling me I could go home. He promised. But—” Bayley looked up, and her sobbing voice broke off. Her eyes went wide. “He’s got his knife,” she added in a very different tone. She sounded scared.

Charlie instantly saw why. Having shoved the transmission into park, the driver rolled to his feet and headed straight toward the back. No hesitation whatsoever. In such a cramped space, three strides brought him to the foot of her bed. A wickedly sharp-looking, silver-bladed hunting knife was in his hand. Charlie’s breath stopped as her eyes fixed on the knife for one terrified instant. Then she looked up at his face, and her heart started to thump like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest.

She’d seen that expression in the eyes of any number of the men she had studied: he was in full serial killer mode now, primed for murder, hungry for the kill.

“You shoulda stayed away from my van,” he said, his tone brutally casual as their eyes connected. Charlie saw that along with a puffy right eye he did, indeed, have a broken front tooth.

Even as Charlie spotted it, Bayley was screaming and jumping to her feet. She was right under his nose, but of course he could neither see nor hear her. Only Charlie could. The scream rattled her a little. Didn’t faze him at all.

“I did everything you said. I did! You told me you’d let me go,” Bayley cried to her murderer. He couldn’t hear her, but his hand tightened on the knife.

A scream of her own burbled into Charlie’s throat. If she let loose with it, she knew he’d fall upon her and she would die right there and then. Scrambling into a crouch on the bed because she just couldn’t stand to lie there so helplessly, tethered by that hopelessly short chain, Charlie had one hideous instant to swallow the scream. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might explode.

“Stop, Terrybear.” Charlie did her best to make her voice both authoritative and calm. She met his widening eyes. Show no fear. “We need to talk about why you didn’t keep your promise to Bayley.”

He froze, knife suspended. “Why did you call me that?”

“ ‘Terrybear’? Bayley told me that’s what you like to be called.” Charlie was having to work to keep her breathing under control. Icy shivers of terror raced over her skin. She was crouched in the far corner of the bed now, as far away from him as she could get, which wasn’t very far. One lunge and she would be done for. There was nowhere else she could go: she could feel the wall at her back; the damned chain kept her prisoner. “She said you promised to let her go, but you didn’t. You broke your promise. She wants to know why.”

“How did you talk to Bayley?” His voice was sharp. Something—suspicion? fear?—flickered behind the killing light in his eyes. The physical description they’d been working with fit: he was tall, rangy, with a long, thin, moderately good-looking face. Twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Kaminsky had said that besides working for Frigate Security, he was a used car salesman who delivered pizzas. Charlie recognized him now: he had delivered a pizza to the beach house the night Tony had kissed her. She had seen him leaving.

If only I had known.

“Bayley is here with us right now,” Charlie said. “I can see the dead, you know. She’s right in front of you. She wants to know why you broke your promise to let her go.”

“Tell him I hate him,” Bayley said. “He made me say I loved him, but I hated him the whole time.”

“She lied to me.” The left corner of Terry Kingston’s mouth started to twitch. “She said she loved me, but she didn’t.”

“That’s the way to do it, Doc. Keep him talking. They’re looking for you all over the place.” Garland was back, radiating aggression and fear. Looking solid as a rock, he stood balanced on the balls of his feet in the space between the beds, close enough so that she could have touched him if there had actually been anything physical there for her to touch. “They’re going to find you. Play for time.”

“How do you know she didn’t love you?” Allowing herself to be distracted could prove to be a fatal error, Charlie knew. She had to keep Kingston engaged. Instead of looking at Garland, at Bayley, Charlie kept her eyes fixed on his face.