It was her own individual quirk; most of the SCU agents could claim at least one such oddity.
Riley fixed herself a large bowl of cereal and ate it leaning against the work island in the kitchen.
Her weapon was never out of reach.
By the time she’d finished her meal, the coffee was ready. She carried her first cup with her as she went over to the ocean-side windows and the glass doors leading out to the deck. She didn’t go out but opened the blinds and stood drinking the coffee as she scanned the grayish Atlantic, the dunes and beach.
Not a lot of activity to be seen, and what was there was scattered. A few people stretched out on towels or beach loungers, soaking up the sun. A couple of kids near one sunning couple building a peculiar-looking structure out of sand. One couple strolling along the waterline as small waves broke around their ankles.
The beach between Riley’s small house and the water was empty; people here tended to respect the boundaries of public/private beach access, especially at this less-populated end of this particular small island, and if you paid the higher bucks for oceanfront you generally had your little piece of the sand to yourself.
Riley returned to the kitchen for her second cup of coffee, frowning because her head was still pounding despite aspirin, food, and caffeine. And because she still couldn’t remember what had happened to leave her covered in dried blood.
“Dammit,” she muttered, reluctant to do what she knew she had to. As with most agents in the SCU, control was a big issue with Riley, and she hated having to admit to anyone that a situation was out of her control. But this one, inarguably, was.
At least for the moment.
Leaving her coffee cup in the kitchen but still carrying her weapon, she searched for her cell phone, finding it eventually in a casual shoulder bag. One glance told her the cell was dead as a doornail, something she accepted with a resigned sigh. She found the charger plugged in and waiting near one end of the kitchen counter and set the cell into it.
There was a land-line phone on the same end of the counter, and Riley stared at it, biting her lip in brief indecision.
Shit. Nothing else she could do, really.
She finished her second cup of coffee, perfectly aware that she was stalling, then finally placed the call.
When he answered with a brief “Bishop,” she worked hard to make her own voice calm and matter-of-fact.
“Hey, it’s Riley. I seem to have a bit of a situation here.”
There was a long silence, and then Bishop, his voice now curiously rough, said, “We gathered that much. What the hell is going on, Riley? You missed your last two check-ins.”
A chill shivered down her spine. “What do you mean?” She never missed check-ins. Never.
“I mean we haven’t heard a word from you in over two weeks.”
Riley said the only thing she could think of. “I’m…surprised you didn’t send in the cavalry by now.”
Grimly, Bishop said, “I wanted to, believe me. But aside from the fact that all the teams were out and hip-deep in investigations they absolutely couldn’t leave, you had insisted you could handle the situation alone and that I shouldn’t be concerned if you were out of touch for a while. Any of us going in blind didn’t seem like the best of ideas. You’re one of the most capable and self-sufficient people I know, Riley; I had to trust you knew what you were doing.”
Almost absently, she said, “I wasn’t criticizing you for not riding to the rescue, just sort of surprised you hadn’t.” Which told her that he himself was undoubtedly “hip-deep” in a case he was unable to leave; whatever she’d told him, Bishop tended to keep a close eye on his people and was rarely out of touch for more than a day or two during an ongoing investigation.
Then again, he also likely would have sensed it if she had been in actual, physical danger. Or at any rate had certainly done so more than once in the past. He was like that with some of his agents, though not by any means all of them.
“And, anyway, I’m all right,” she said. “At least…”
“What? Riley, what the hell is going on down there?”
His question made her grimace half-consciously, because if Bishop didn’t know what was going on here, she was most likely in very big trouble.
How on earth had she managed to end up in a situation deadly enough to cover her in blood and apparently trigger a short-term memory loss and yet still manage to conceal what was happening from the formidable telepathic awareness of the SCU chief?
Perhaps the memory loss had something to do with that? Or maybe the same thing that had triggered the memory loss had thrown up some kind of block or shield? She didn’t know.
Dammit, she just didn’t know.
“Riley? You didn’t believe there was a risk of violence, at least according to what you said when you did check in. No suspicious deaths, no one reported missing. I got the impression you were half-convinced it was just a series of pranks. Has something happened to change that?”
Avoiding the direct question, she asked one of her own. “Listen, what else did I say?”
For a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer, but finally he did.
“Since you arrived at Opal Island three weeks ago, you’ve filed only one formal report, and that one was seriously lacking in details. Just that you’d settled in, you had a reliable contact in the Hazard County Sheriff’s Department, and that you were confident you could successfully resolve the situation.”
Riley drew a breath and said casually, “The situation being?”
The silence this time was, to say the least, tense.
“Riley?”
“Yeah?”
“Why did you go to Opal Island?”
“I…don’t exactly remember.”
“Have you been injured?”
“No.” She decided, somewhat guiltily, not to mention the blood. Not yet, at any rate. She thought she might need that later. “Not so much as a scratch, and no bump on the head.”
“Then it’s likely to be emotional or psychological trauma. Or psychic trauma.”
“Yeah, that was my take.”
Being Bishop, he didn’t waste time exclaiming. “What do you remember?”
“Getting here—vaguely. Renting this house, settling in. After that, just flashes I haven’t been able to sort through.”
“What about before you left Quantico?”
“I remember everything. Or, at least, everything through the close of the investigation in San Diego. I got back to the office, started in on all the paperwork…and that’s pretty much it, until I woke up here a couple of hours ago.”
“What about your abilities?”
“Spider sense seems to be out of commission, but I woke up starving so that probably doesn’t mean anything. I dunno about the clairvoyance yet, but if I had to guess…” She knew she had to be honest. “Not exactly firing on all cylinders.”
Bishop didn’t hesitate. “Go back to Quantico, Riley.”
“Without knowing what’s happened here? I can’t do that.”
“I don’t want to make it an order.”
“And I don’t want to disobey one. But I can’t just pack up and leave with this—this huge blank place in my life. Don’t ask me to do that, Bishop.”
“Riley, listen to me. You’re down there alone, without backup. You can’t remember the last three weeks. You don’t even remember what you’re there to investigate. And the abilities that could normally help you focus on and sort through undercurrents aren’t available to you—either temporarily or permanently. Now, can you give me a single reason why I should ignore all that and allow you to stay there?”
She drew a breath, and gambled. “Yeah. One very big reason. Because when I woke up today, I was fully dressed and covered with dried blood. Whatever happened here, I was up to my elbows in it. One call to the local sheriff and I’d probably be sitting in his jail. So I have to stay here, Bishop. I have to stay until I remember—or figure out—what the hell’s
going on.”
Sue McEntyre wasn’t at all happy with the local ordinance that kept dogs off the beach from eight A.M. until eight P.M. It wasn’t that she minded getting up early to allow her two Labs a good long run on the beach, it was just that big dogs—hers, at least—would have been happier if they’d been able to get out into the water a few times during the day as well. Especially during a hot summer.
Luckily, there was a big park skirting downtown Castle with an area complete with wading pond where dogs were allowed off-leash anytime during the day, so at least once every day she loaded Pip and Brandy into her Jeep and off they went, across the bridge and onto the mainland.
On this Monday afternoon, she didn’t expect it to be crowded; summer visitors tended to be baking on the beach or shopping downtown, so it was mostly locals who used the park, and most of them for the same reason Sue did.
She found a space closer to the dog area than usual and within minutes was throwing a Frisbee for Brandy and a tennis ball for Pip, giving all three of them plenty of exercise as she threw and they happily fetched.
It wasn’t until Pip abruptly dropped his ball and shot off into the woods that Sue realized a section of the fence was down and that the bolder and more curious of her two dogs had seized the opportunity presented.
“Damn.” She wasn’t too worried; he wasn’t likely to head toward the streets and traffic. But neither was he at all likely to respond if she called him, especially since he loved exploring the woods even more than running on the beach and had perfected the art of going suddenly and temporarily deaf when his interest was engaged.
Sue called Brandy and clipped a leash to her collar, then set off in pursuit of her other dog.
One would think it would be easy to see a pale gold dog in the shaded woods, but Pip also had the knack of making himself virtually invisible, so Sue had to rely on Brandy’s nose to find her brother. Luckily, it was a common enough occurrence that she didn’t have to be told what to do and led her owner steadily through the woods.
This patch of woods was fairly uncommon in the area, consisting as it did of towering hardwood trees and fairly dense underbrush rather than the more usual spindly pines in sandy soil. But since it was also less than a mile from downtown Castle, it was hardly what anyone would have called a wilderness.
Sue and her dogs had probably explored every inch in the five years she’d lived on Opal Island.
Even so, she would have avoided the big clearing near the center of the woods had Brandy not been leading her straight for it. She’d heard the talk about what had been found there a week or so ago and didn’t like the realization that what had seemed to her just an interesting jumble of boulders providing a seat to pause and enjoy the quiet of the forest now had a possibly more sinister purpose in her mind.
Satanism, that’s what people were saying.
Sue had never believed in such things but, still, there was no smoke without fire, hunters weren’t allowed in these woods, and why else would somebody kill an animal—
Pip began barking.
Conscious of a sudden chill, Sue picked up her pace, almost running beside Brandy along the twisting path to the clearing.
Anybody who would butcher an animal out in the woods for no good reason, she thought, probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone’s pet, especially if it was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Pip!” Not that it would do any good to call him, but she was desperately afraid suddenly, afraid in a way she’d never been before, on a level so deep it was almost primal, and that terror had to be voiced in some kind of cry.
It wasn’t until much later that she realized she had probably smelled the blood long before she reached the clearing.
She and Brandy burst into the clearing to find Pip only a couple of yards in, standing still and barking his head off. Not his happy I’m-having-fun bark, but an unfamiliar, nearly hysterical sound that spoke of the same primal fear Sue felt herself.
Holding the whimpering Brandy close to her side, Sue went to Pip and fastened his leash to his collar blindly, her gaze fixed on what was at the center of the clearing.
The seemingly innocent jumble of boulders was there, no longer innocent but splashed with blood, a lot of blood.
Sue paid little attention to the rocks, however, nor even noticed that there had been a fire built near them. Her gaze was only for what hung over them.
Suspended by ropes from a sturdy oak limb, the naked body of a man was only barely recognizable as such. Dozens of shallow cuts all over him had bled a great deal, turning his flesh reddish and, clearly, dripping down onto the boulders.
Dripping for a long time.
The ropes were tied around the wrists, both of them tied together and stretched above…above the…Except that the wrists weren’t stretched above the head.
There was no head.
Sue turned with a choked cry and ran.
It took considerable persuasion, but in the end Riley prevailed.
In a manner of speaking.
Bishop agreed not to recall her, but he wasn’t willing to leave that open-ended. It was Monday afternoon; she had until Friday to “stabilize” the situation—by which he meant recover her memories of the last three weeks and/or figure out what was going on here. If she couldn’t do that to his satisfaction, she’d be recalled to Quantico.
And she was to report in every day; one missed report, and he’d send in another team member or members with orders to pull her out. That or come himself.
She was also to send the bloodstained clothing she’d awakened wearing to Quantico for testing immediately; Bishop would send a courier within a couple of hours to pick up the package. And if the results showed human blood, all bets were off.
“You think it could be animal blood?” she asked.
“Since you went down there to investigate reports of possible occult rituals, it may be more likely than not.” Bishop paused, then went on. “We’ve had a number of these reports across the Southeast in the last year or so. You remember that much?”
She did. “But nine times out of ten, there’s no real evidence of occult activity. Or at least nothing dangerous.”
“Nothing satanic,” he agreed. “Which is always the idea feeding local hysteria, that devil worshippers are conducting robed rituals out in the woods that involve orgies and sacrificing infants.”
“Yeah, when in reality it’s almost always either pranks or just somebody jumping to conclusions when they find something on the weird side while out taking their daily constitutional.”
“Exactly. But once the gossip gets going, such incidents are blown out of all proportion, and fear can stir up real trouble. Sometimes deadly trouble.”
“So I came down here to investigate possible occult activity?” Riley was still struggling to remember and still trying to reconcile the clothing and underwear she’d brought along with what sounded like a perfectly ordinary investigation—for her, at any rate.
She was the go-to girl of the SCU when it came to the occult.
“The possible beginnings of occult activity,” Bishop said. “A friend and former colleague of yours got in touch. He didn’t want us down there openly and, in fact, lacked the authority to ask us to get involved, but he had a very bad feeling that whatever’s going on in Castle and on Opal Island is both serious and more than the local sheriff can handle.”
“So I’m here unofficially.”
“Very unofficially. And on the strength of Gordon Skinner’s request and your confidence that his instincts were trustworthy.”
“Yeah, Gordon has a rep for hunches that pay off. I always figured him for a latent precog. And he’s not a man to jump at shadows.” Riley frowned to herself. “I guess he got in his twenty and retired just like he planned. To Opal Island?”
“So you said.”
“Okay. Well, Gordon’s definitely somebody I can trust. If I’m here because of him, it’s a cinch I’ve spent time with him over the last three weeks. He can
fill me in.”
“I hope so. Because you aren’t there undercover, Riley. You haven’t hidden the fact that you’re an FBI agent. As far as the locals are concerned—including the sheriff, since you checked in with him when you arrived—you’re on Opal Island on vacation. Taking some accumulated leave time after a particularly tough case.”
“Oh,” Riley said. “I wonder if that was smart of me. Being here openly, I mean.”
“Unfortunately, I have no idea. But it’s clearly too late to second-guess that decision.”
“Yeah. So I picked the island for a vacation spot because my old army buddy Gordon retired here.”
“It gave you a legitimate reason to be there.”
Riley sighed. “And that’s all you know?” His silence spoke volumes, and she hastily added, “Right, right, my fault. Should have reported in. And I’m sure when I remember why I didn’t report in, there’ll be a good reason.”
“I hope so.”
“Sorry, Bishop.”
“Just be careful, will you, please? I know you can take care of yourself, but we both know investigations that turn up genuine black-occult practices or some other variation of evil go south more often than not. Usually in a hurry.”
“Yeah. The last one involved a serial killer, didn’t it?”
“Don’t remind me.”
She wasn’t all that happy to have reminded herself, because that memory, at least, was quickly all too clear. She had come within a hair of being that particular killer’s final victim.
“I don’t like any of this, Riley, for the record,” Bishop said.
“I know.”
“Remember—you report some degree of success by Friday, or I pull the plug.”
“Got it. Don’t worry. I’ve got Gordon to watch my back, if necessary, while I figure out what’s going on.”
“Be careful,” he repeated.
“I will.” She cradled the receiver and stood there for a minute or so, frowning. Her headache was finally easing off, but although the pounding was somewhat muffled now, so were her senses.