Solid as Steele. Rebecca York

she saw a highway sign coming up, she felt a little jolt as the exit name flashed by. Smokehouse Road.

      “Take this exit,” she said.

      “Why?”

      “Take it,” she insisted.

      “Why?” he asked again.

      “I don’t know for sure,” she answered honestly. “But I think we’re going to…find something.”

      She gripped the sides of her seat as he took the exit a little too fast. She wished she knew why she was giving him these directions. Or maybe she already knew, and she didn’t want to admit it.

      “Right or left?” he asked with an edge in his voice when they came off the exit ramp.

      “Right,” she answered, wondering why she was so certain where they were going. There was absolutely no hesitation on her part as she gave him directions.

      They drove for a few more moments before she told him to turn onto Jumping Jack Road.

      FROM A HIDING PLACE where he was sheltered by the woods, the man who called himself Fred Hyde took a bite of the caramel, nut and chocolate bar he’d brought along. He chewed with appreciation as he watched the activity down the hill through binoculars. All those cops rushing around looked like a bunch of ants serving their queen.

      He laughed. Yeah, ants.

      He’d considerately left the body where it was going to be easily spotted—along the side of the road in a nice open valley. Then he’d made himself comfortable up here, waiting for the fuzz to show up and get to work. They’d be from Gaptown, but he knew there was a cooperative investigative unit that drew on some of the other surrounding jurisdiction.

      He’d seen them find Lynn Vaughn’s I.D., so they knew who she was, but they didn’t know why she was here. And, of course, he’d worn rain gear that wouldn’t leave any fibers on the body. He’d also moved the woman from his property to this location, so they weren’t going to find any clues to his identity.

      But he wanted them to understand that something serious was going on in their little town, with its speed traps and cops who were so quick to do their duty.

      He would have liked to keep enjoying the show, but he had work to do. He took a last bite of the candy bar and crumpled the wrapper, but he wasn’t dumb enough to drop the trash where someone could find it and maybe get a line on his DNA. Instead he put the crumpled paper into his pocket and started down the other side of the hill to where he’d left his car. Things were moving faster now. He had to set up the funhouse again to get ready for the next victim.

      “NOW WHAT?” MACK CLIPPED out as he continued down the blacktop.

      “Keep going,” she directed, hardly able to speak around the tight feeling in her throat. Pictures were forming in her mind, but she thrust them away. She could be making them up. She hoped she was making them up.

      He drove past a couple of farms and a country store.

      “You know this area?”

      “Of course. When I was in high school, my friends and I would come out here to drive around.”

      They didn’t speak again until she saw a crossroads with a restaurant, bar and gas station.

      “Turn left here.”

      He slowed the car and made the turn. From the small commercial area, they drove into the mountains, where they passed widely spaced farms and houses. When they rounded a steep curve, they were stopped by a police car with flashing lights blocking the road.

      A few cars were pulled up along the shoulder, and several spectators were standing along the blacktop, craning their necks toward the center of the activity, where two more patrol cars were pulled up, along with an ambulance.

      Mack rolled down the window and pulled up beside a man in jeans and a plaid shirt who was standing on the shoulder and staring toward the cop cars. “What’s going on?”

      “Guy found a woman’s body.”

      Jamie had been hoping against hope not to hear that news. Now she dragged in a sharp breath as the words slammed into her.

      “A local resident?” Mack asked.

      “Don’t know. The cops have been asking if we know a Lynn Vaughn. That must be her name.”

      Jamie felt a shiver go over her skin as her worst fears were confirmed. She’d been with Lynn Vaughn in her dream. She’d been afraid someone had killed the woman, and now she knew for certain it was true.

      “You know her?” the guy asked, looking from Mack to Jamie and back again.

      “No. We just happened down this road. I guess we’d better go back the other way,” Mack answered easily, giving nothing away before he rolled up the window, made a U-turn and got them out of the vicinity. He kept going toward the road where they’d exited the highway, then turned into the parking lot of the country store they’d passed earlier. After finding a parking space, he cut the engine and turned to Jamie.

      His face looked grim. “I thought maybe the dream came from your imagination,” he said.

      She lifted one shoulder. “Even after I gave you a name, and you confirmed that she was a real person?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Maybe that’s what you wanted to think, but I knew something had happened.”

      “You dreamed about a murder that turned out to be true….”

      Somehow she managed to keep her voice even as she said, “I was hoping it didn’t end that way.”

      His eyes boring into her, he said, “People don’t dream about a murder one night, then find out the next day that it really happened.”

      Chapter Three

      Jamie swallowed, wishing that Mack would stop using the word murder like a bludgeon.

      “Tell me exactly what you dreamed.”

      She’d deliberately been vague with the details of the nightmare when she’d told him about it. Now she knew she was going to have to be more specific.

      “Jamie?”

      She stared straight ahead, her hands folded one on top of the other in her lap. “In the dream, I wasn’t myself. I was that woman, Lynn Vaughn. She was in a…I guess you’d have to call it a funhouse.”

      “What do you mean by that?”

      “Did you ever go to a haunted house on Halloween when you were a kid? Like maybe something set up by a local charity to raise money? They had a bunch of spooky stuff to give the kids a fright, but everybody knew it was all for fun.”

      “Yeah.”

      “It was like that, only it was serious.” She clenched her hands together as she remembered the experience and the place. “It was dark and enclosed. There was scary music. A musty smell. Hallways with things set up to startle you, like witches jumping out. But some of it was a lot worse. One place had a trapdoor where she tumbled through and ended up on a slide that took her to the basement. She landed hard on the cement floor and hurt her shoulder.”

      Jamie winced, remembering the pain.

      She hated dredging up more details, but Mack was staring at her with an expectant look on his face, so she gulped in a breath and let it out before she went on.

      “The light was weird. Someone had worked hard to make the place into a creep show. In one section, there were horror movie posters. Dead-end hallways. Spatters on the floor that looked like blood.

      “At first she was alone. But she kept hearing a man’s voice coming from hidden speakers. Then he was there. With her.”

      Details came fast and furious now.