Page 565 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

I have a feeling I know why.

Because more is coming back to me. The coffee shop is the last in a line of tiny local shops, a florist, a bicycle repair shop, a café, and just down the street, an eclectic gym. They’re all located on the bottom level of a massive, empty warehouse. I’m standing in the middle of time here, that crest of hope that ifyou build it they will come. I have no doubt some contractor somewhere is drawing out plans for 900 square foot, open-beamed lofts.

I get out and stand under the streetlight, getting a feel for the place. Maybe it’s the darkness, almost like the edge of a dream, but I can almost smell it, the singe of flame against wood, hear the shatter of glass.

I make out faded lettering on the brick above the shops. A store supply center. Store supply means displays, racks and…mannequins.

I see them in memory, just a flash through the back of my mind. Charred, their faces distorted, curled into themselves from the heat. Bodies that lay grotesquely on the pavement, jarring us into panic until we realize the truth.

Bingo.

I was here. I stood outside the rim of fire, watching the water arc, listening to the chaos.

Eight people died. But worse, this time the bomber hadn’t spared the nearby buildings. Whether too enthusiastic, or simply unaware, he’d created a force that leveled almost half this city block.

The reminder turns me ill and I bend over, gripping my knees, my stomach roiling. But it’s empty, save for the beer, so I gulp in breaths and clear my head before I make a fool of myself on the street.

I climb back into my car, sweaty, trembling.

This time, no one will die.

I back up, out of the light, swaddled in the darkness with a good view of the shop, lay my head back on the rest, pin my eyes on the store, and wait.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It always starts the same way. I’m standing in the middle of a lake—not a big lake, more of a bay, with a wooden bridge arching over a waterway into the larger expanse.

This lake is surrounded by cattails and rushes frozen in January’s grip, some broken, turned mustard and brown in the crisp air. A thin layer of snow casts over the ice, thick and blue and rippled by the wind. People often believe ice freezes in pristine, skate-able smooth sheets when in fact it is scarred with thick runnels and often littered with the carcasses of unfortunate ducks and geese, trapped in its frozen grasp.

My breath puffs out smoky, then clears in the frigid air. I can almost feel it—the numbing grip of the below-zero temperature stinging my nose, but as dreams go, I can’t really feel anything. I can only hear. The wind, moaning through the willows and behind it a voice.

Always the voice, haunting, calling.

I turn, searching the shore. Empty. Just the skeletal arms of birch and poplar reaching to the gunmetal gray sky.

Then I hear the crack. It’s sharp, like a shotgun, fracturing the air, and although it’s expected, I flinch. Ravens startle andlift from the rushes. The wind whips the snow into a dervish at my feet and only then do I think to look down.

A vein has fissured open below my feet.

I start to run.

I’m fast. I can feel it, running with my mouth open, breathing hard. I pump my arms, careening across the ice, but my feet betray me and I slip. I fall, slam hard. My wind explodes out of me.

Another crack, and this time the report shatters my bones. Shaking, I lift myself off the glass. The ice webs under my mittened hands.

As I scramble to my feet, I’m no nearer the shore.

Now, a voice is calling.

I’m gasping, my breath labored, fatigue weighting each step.

The cycle repeats. I run, I fall hard, and it knocks my world sideways. Then the crack, the voice and in my soul, I know I’ll never reach shore.

The lake will open, and I’ll slide into the dark, murky, frigid depths. Disappear.

They’ll never find me.

Rembrandt!

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