Nancy Bush's Nowhere Bundle: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide & Nowhere Safe. Nancy Bush

back her arm and popped her eyes open. The room was empty and dark. She was alone. Had only heard him in her head.

      What? she answered silently.

      The room was quiet. There was no sound anywhere. All in her head.

      Then, a voice said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Dr. Yancy.”

      She recognized it. It was her own voice. Sullen and combative.

      She saw herself at Dr. Yancy’s desk and the doctor was regarding her with concern.

      “You saw something,” Dr. Yancy said. “Something you’re repressing.”

      “What?” Liv demanded. “What? I didn’t see anything!”

      “Something,” the doctor insisted. She was fading in and out, a watery vision.

      “All I saw was my mother, hanging by her neck!” Liv practically screeched.

      “Something else . . . maybe something that didn’t actually have to do with that day. . . .”

      A cracked door. A beam of light. In the glint of illumination, the wetness of an eye as he turns and sees her . . . outside . . . outside . . .

      “I don’t want to talk anymore!”

      Slam! She was out the door. Running. Running. Running!

      And Dr. Yancy’s voice was calling after her, “It was him, Olivia. You saw him.”

      The memory sank away and Liv came fully awake, drenched in sweat. She heard the door to Auggie’s bedroom slam open and suddenly he was there, beside the couch, kneeling beside her.

      “You cried out,” he said.

      “I saw him. The monster. I saw him through a crack in the door. Dr. Yancy made me remember at Hathaway House but I ran away from her.”

      “Who is he? The monster?”

      “Monster?” She blinked.

      “You said ‘the monster.’”

      “I meant . . . the doctor. The zombie. The bogeyman. I think maybe I saw him, and he’s the serial strangler. But if he’s the doctor in the picture, that means Mama knew him. . . .” She swallowed. “Maybe she knew about him and that’s why he had to kill her.”

      “Okay, wait. Take it slow. We’ll start with him. We’ll call Dr. Yancy again in the morning, if she hasn’t called back. See what she knows about the doctor.”

      “Okay.”

      He smiled at her and actually had the audacity to sweep her hair back from her forehead before he turned to leave. Liv had to fight the desire to call him back. She kept her lips pressed tightly closed with an effort. The last thing she needed was to suddenly depend on him too much.

      Chapter 14

      The next morning Liv woke up when he walked past her to the kitchen in a pair of low-slung blue jeans and no shirt. She sat up, finger-combed her hair, then followed him into the kitchen. He’d picked up his cell and was looking at it.

      “Let’s go somewhere for breakfast,” he said.

      “I don’t want to be seen. . . .”

      “If you’re with me, it’s less chance you’ll be recognized. Put on your baseball cap again.”

      “I guess I’m buying, huh.”

      That stopped him short and he shot her a look. “I . . . guess so.”

      She smiled faintly. “No problem. But I’m going to take a shower first.”

      “Do it,” he said, turning back to his phone.

      “Is there . . . a towel?”

      “Should be. Linen closet’s in the hall outside the bathroom.”

      She left him working through his phone and wondered if he’d lied about being such a loner. Maybe he’d contacted someone. He could be texting someone right now.

      With a last look back at him, she picked up her backpack and headed into the bathroom.

      Auggie had indeed received a text. A raft of them, actually. Mostly from his sister. At least she’d shown the good sense to move from phoning to texting. He’d turned off the text “alert” and they came in silently.

      It was Sunday. He had one day until he needed to bring, coerce or drag Olivia Dugan to the Laurelton police station.

      He heard the taps turn on and he texted his sister, telling her to stop texting him. He would bring Olivia Dugan in tomorrow. Monday. And did she have any leads on the Zuma massacre, or Trask Martin’s death?

      She texted back:

      New case. Short-handed. Will get back to you.

      New case? Something that superseded the Zuma shooting? Not likely.

      “Hmmm,” Auggie said aloud.

      What was that about?

      September stared down at the cold, white corpse of the woman and felt ill. The woman’s body had been stripped to the waist and her abdomen was carved with the scrawled words:

      DO UNTO OTHERS AS SHE DID TO ME

      “Jesus, somebody went to a lot of trouble.” Gretchen’s nasal tones were normally cool, curling around the edges with disdain, but staring down at the female corpse she sounded shaken. “‘Do unto others as she did to me.’ What the hell does that mean?”

      “Who is the ‘she’ he means?” September asked.

      “Or the ‘she’ she means,” one of the techs corrected her. Bronson, September remembered.

      “This wasn’t done by a woman,” Gretchen said with a cold look at Bronson.

      “I’m just saying it’s possible,” he argued, although lamely. “She’s been strangled, too. There are ligature marks.”

      “Anyone taking bets on whether she’s been sexually abused?” Gretchen asked.

      There were no takers.

      “You have all the charm of a boa constrictor,” Bronson said. He had a nerdy, prim look and a way of rolling his eyes that was epic theater.

      “Shut up,” Gretchen said, though it was almost an afterthought. She was gazing around the clearing where the body had been found while they stood on the edge of a small, wooded area filled with Douglas firs, oaks and scrub pines.

      “This is a lot like Sheila Dempsey,” September observed. She hoped to stall the pissing contest between Bronson and Gretchen, though they seemed to like to go at each other. She’d learned that much on her few weeks on the job.

      Bronson rocked back on his heels. “Mebbe,” he allowed.

      Gretchen’s lips grew even tighter, as if she were forcibly holding back another argument.

      They were on the north side of the clearing where the shallow grave had been discovered by a couple of day hikers on a jaunt carrying a picnic basket and a bottle of wine. Now the basket was upended, the wine spilled in a red river on the ground and both hikers were sitting in bug-eyed silence on a moss-covered log, their arms entwined in a hug of support. The man’s mouth was twitching as if he couldn’t control it; the woman looked ready to keel over.

      Sheila Dempsey’s body had been discovered in an overgrown field behind an abandoned building. Unlike this one, she’d been stripped bare, where this victim still had on her jeans, socks and a pair of running shoes. Her chest was bare; no sign of a blouse or bra.

      “Dempsey’s the picture on Weasel’s