Page 59 of Preying Game

“What?” they both asked.

“When Jonah came to you at the estate, he was like a ‘ghost.’ He wasn’t solid. He couldn’t touch anything.”

“But at the end, he got to be himself.”

“Did he?” Frank asked.

“I haven’t written up a report of last night yet—but yeah, I did it.”

“What happened to change you?” Frank asked.

“It was when Hayward charged into the house to kill Alice. In that moment, I knew I had to stop him. And the only way I could do it was to turn into flesh and blood.”

“You think you can do it again?” Frank asked. “When you’re not in the middle of an emergency.”

“I guess I’d have to find out.”

“And take Alice with you?”

He hesitated. “That may not be necessary.”

Frank looked like he might argue. Instead, he said, “Let’s assume you can go as yourself—not a ghost—and show up to stop Hayward’s taking the first victim.”

Jonah nodded.

Frank turned to Alice. “You say there were five other women.”

“That’s what he told me.”

“We’d have to figure out who they were.”

“All of them or just the first one?” Alice asked.

“All,” Frank answered. “Because we’d need to know how they fit into the timeline. What if it was someone important who could change history by not getting killed?”

Alice shook her head. “I came to you all excited about this. Now I see I didn’t think it through.”

“But it might be okay. We’d have to do a lot of research. And there’s one more important point,” Frank said. “You’d have a big decision.”

“About what?”

“You told Jonah that Hayward made it look like you died in a rock fall.”

“Yes.”

“So as far as the world is concerned, you’re supposed to be dead—under thousands of tons of rock.”

“Yes.”

“But if Hayward never captured you, you’d have kept on with your normal life.”

She nodded, wondering where this was going.

“If you kept on with your life, you would not have met Jonah.”

She felt her heart stop, then start up again in double time. Oh Lord, she’d been so anxious to save the murder victims that she hadn’t considered a lot of important points. And this was the most critical. She swung toward the man beside her, knowing in that instant how much he meant to her. “I . . . have to meet him.”

“Then we’d have to go back and make the fake accident happen,” he said, his voice calm and reassuring.

“Oh God. What if it doesn’t work?” Her head was spinning now.

“You’ll be stuck in your old life,” Frank said. “I think you won’t even know Jonah existed. And of course, there’d be no chance of your meeting because he wasn’t born until decades later.”

The devastated look of strain on Jonah’s face made her want to weep. Instead she threw herself into his arms, holding him with all her might.

But as she clung to him, she knew she had no alternative. The moment she’d thought of saving those women, the course had been set. If she didn’t carry out her plan, she was as good as killing them.

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