"Are you nuts? Calm down? Did you hear me? He just murdered someone!"

"Okay," he said, pulling out one hand and splaying his fingers as if she could see him.

"Hey, buddy! Watch it." A woman jogging past nearly ran into his arm. He ignored her.

"Okay. Where are you?"

"At my house."

"Where's that?"

She hesitated.

He couldn't blame her. He was virtually a stranger.

"I want to help." He didn't remind her that she had called him.

She let out a long breath, then, with a "What does it matter, anyway?" rattled off her address. Quickly. As if the longer the words stayed in her throat, they might choke her.

"Got it. I'll see you in about half an hour," he told her, calculating the drive without traffic and fog. Inaccurate for a Saturday afternoon on any day in June, worse today because of the fog that was between Seaside and Deception Bay, and the extra cars driven over to the coast for the beach cleanup, but he didn't want her to think it would take him as long as it really would. She might regret everything and try to back out of seeing him.

Glancing back once to Jenny, he saw she was helping a customer, her attention on scooping up some pink-tinged ice cream into a waffle cone, while the woman counted out bills from her wallet and a toddler clung to her leg. He knew that he was leaving the robbery story at a critical time, that Jenny might just lead him to the rest of the teen criminals, but he didn't care.

But Justice Turnbull was the story of the moment.

And Laura might be in danger. Alone. Vulnerable to whatever Turnbull wanted to set into motion. And you were instrumental in this, weren't you? Encouraged her to "communicate" with a homicidal maniac.

He felt more than a little pang of guilt, but then he hadn't really bought into the telepathy, or whatever she called it. . . . The lodge, dead mother, creepy aunt, mental communication, and walls she built in her mind all sounded a little paranoid.

Except that Justice Turnbull was on the loose again.

That thought spurred him on.

He hurried to his Chevrolet, jumped in, and drove with repressed urgency, one hand on the horn at the lollygagging weekenders, who were all over the place for the Clean Up The Beach!! event. The miles rolled slowly under the Impala's wheels, and Harrison was a bundle of nerves, alternately standing on the brakes and willing himself not to pound on his horn at the slow-moving traffic. Vans, SUVs, sedans, pickups . . . a line of summer traffic that stretched along 101.

Swearing under his breath, he finally reached the turnoff to her house, a humble cottage with loads of deferred maintenance. It had been over an hour since her call.

"Damn."

Jumping from the car, he snatched up his laptop from the backseat, then set it back down again, leaving it with his digital recorder. After locking the Impala, he patted his back pocket for the small notebook that always resided there. He didn't want her to think he was setting up shop, though that was what his half-baked plan was. At least partially.

There were creaky wooden steps that led to an equally creaky front porch, all painted gray, worn through on the treads, listing slightly. He pounded on the door, peering through one of the three diamond window inserts that ran in a diagonal across the top. He watched through the tiny pane as she hurried to answer him, appearing from the back of the house, her darkened hair tucked behind her ears.

When she opened the door, all he saw were her eyes, greenish blue, serious, careful, full of secrets. And scared to death.

For an instant, he wanted to yank her forward and fold her into his arms, to tell her that it would be all right. To even brush his lips over her hair and comfort her.

Holey moley!

He slammed on the mental brakes before he did something stupid and was shocked by his reaction. His arm actually reached out before he caught himself, and he ended up gesturing lamely to cover the lapse. What the hell was wrong with him?

"You okay?" he asked, and she, too, appeared to want to rush into his arms, but she didn't, just hung onto the side of the door and let out her breath.

"Yeah. I mean, I have to be." She managed a weak, unhappy smile and nervously peered over his shoulder. "Come on in." Ushering him inside, she shut the door and shoved the dead bolt into place. Then they stood in the foyer, with the gray light emanating through the three diamond panes. She chewed on a corner of her lip and shook her head. "He's toying with us," she said softly. "He wanted me to know what he'd done. That he'd murdered someone." Her eyes thinned thoughtfully. "He wanted to crow about it."

"He told you his motives?" Though it still seemed ludicrous, the whole telepathy thing, he let that go. For her, at the very least, it was real.

"I just . . . Oh, God, sometimes it's like I understand him." She shivered. "Sick, huh?"

"No judgment calls here," he said. "So who's this woman you think he killed?"

She shook her head. "I don't know."

"Did you . . . see . . . her?"

"No."

"Well, what happened? What did he say to you?"

"You sound impatient," she said suddenly.

"I am impatient," Harrison responded right back. "If he's killed someone, you bet I'm impatient!"

Her blue eyes assessed him, charged him with lying. "You don't believe me. Not really. You just want information and you think I'm an idiot!"

When she turned, he grabbed her arm, and she jerked back as if he'd burned her. "You called me," he reminded her.

"And I thought you'd be a better choice than the police. Am I wrong?"

She was half turned away and gave him only her face in profile. He noticed her lips and chin and the curve of her cheek. The downy softness of the hairs at her temple. The wing of her brow, many shades lighter than her hair color.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she said to the room at large, as if it were an awakening. She walked through an archway.

"You've got a killer after you," he stated bluntly, following her into the living room with its rock fireplace and furniture that had seen better days. "That, I believe, is fact. I don't know about all your communication with him and your family, but I don't really care. You're not safe. A lot of people aren't, like maybe this woman he let you know about."

She shrugged and shook her head, her arms wrapped around her torso, as she stared through the window facing the street and driveway. His Impala, parked in the drive, was visible, as was a house, a similar bungalow, across the street.

"If you had something more concrete, I'd tell you to call the cops."

"I don't want to talk to the authorities," she stated quickly.

"I know. And I get why you don't. Hey, I've had my own problems with them, and sometimes they're just too damn difficult to deal with. Take Detective Fred Clausen, for instance, at the TCSD. I was looking into some unsavory behavior on the part of the deputies there, and he barely contained himself from physically throwing me into the street." She didn't seem to hear him, but he soldiered on. "'Course, I was . . . inferring . . . that the guy had looked the other way when his brother had sex with an underage high school student, and that didn't go over so well."

"Inferring?"

"Okay, accusing. I wasn't wrong about the bastard, but nobody wanted to hear it, especially Clausen. I ran the piece anyway, though my editor was quivering in his boots."

"What happened?" she asked, turning slightly so he could see her profile again. There was something sinuous in her movements that she was completely unaware of.

"Guy got fired from his coaching position at the school for some other' reason," he said. "Then the girl turned eighteen and they took off together. Everybody was pissed at me, even her parents. They didn't like the affair, but they didn't like publicity even more. No charges were filed. But the story was true. It happened when I first got to the Breeze and I was getting over a few image problems of my own at the time."

"Such as?" Now she turned all the way to face him.

In for a penny, in for a pound. He didn't like talking about what had happened to Manny, but she'd opened up to him. Now it was his turn. Tit, as they say, for tat. "I accused my brother-in-law's business partner of setting up his murder and making it look like an accident."

Recognition lit her eyes. "Now I remember you. I saw you on television in conjunction with that shooting outside the nightclub. You thought there was more to it."

Harrison snorted. "I'm a conspiracy theorist, if you believe Bill Koontz's lawyers and the implication of Pauline Kirby and her news crew."

"Koontz was your brother-in-law's business partner?" she clarified, her eyebrows pulling together as she pieced together what she'd heard.

He nodded. "He's sole proprietor of Boozehound now. Manny's dead. And my sister and niece got next to nothing."

"You believe Koontz set up your brother-in-law to be murdered."

"You got it. I can't prove it. Yet. But I will." He added, "I lost my job at the Portland Ledger over the way I handled the story, but again, I wasn't wrong."

She thought that over. Opened her mouth several times to say something, then closed it again. Finally, she said carefully, "If you stay ahead of the police on this story . . . if you could find Justice first, or a lead to him . . . that would go a long ways to reestablishing your credibility, wouldn't it?"

"Well. Yes. Of course." He gazed at her seriously.

"Okay," she said and inhaled a long, shivery breath as she dropped onto the couch.

"Okay?"

"I want you to help me. Really help me, and my family. I want you to keep us safe from Justice, and in return I'll try to lead you to him, or, more accurately, allow him to be led to me." She shivered as she spoke, as if she felt she were treading on the graves of the undead.

"Okay," he repeated.

They looked at each other.

After a moment, Harrison asked, "So, how exactly do you call Justice?"

"If I drop the wall down for a moment, he'll sense me." She glanced away, as if embarrassed at how silly it sounded.

"So . . ." He lifted his palms, silently asking what she wanted to do next.

"I don't . . . I just can't do it yet. I'm afraid," she admitted.

He nodded, watching her. "Got any kind of timeline on that?"

She half laughed but still worried her hands. "No. I've just got to work up my courage. It's . . . it's not that easy."

"Okay. Yeah. I see. I'll wait till you're ready." And in truth, he wasn't too thrilled about the prospects of her communicating with Turnbull. If there were another way, if he could hunt down the bastard personally, or find a way to sic the police onto him, that would be better. But, for now, there weren't any other options.

She gazed at him through wide, soulful eyes. "Thanks. I'm just . . . I need . . . to know that my sisters are all going to be safe. I don't want to make things worse." She closed her eyes for a second, buried her face in her hands. "If I did anything to hurt any one of them, I don't think I could live with myself."

"I'm not going to let him hurt you," he said, meaning it.

"Us," she said softly.

"All of you," he said. "Catherine. Your sisters. But no one's safe while he's on the loose. Trust me, Lorelei, I just want to get him."

"And write about it." She lifted her head and smiled then, without a trace of humor. He felt a small twinge of conscience at using her for his own purposes, but he meant to keep her safe. He'd promised himself.

"And write about it," he admitted.

CHAPTER 16.

The hospital's van was winched from the gully by its back axle. Once at the top of the mesa, it was given a cursory examination by the detectives before being loaded onto a flatbed and hauled to the department for forensic scrutiny.

Langdon Stone walked to his Jeep and waited for Savvy Dunbar, who'd accompanied him after she'd gotten back from visiting Mad Maddie at Seagull Pointe. Savvy wasn't known for idle chitchat, but she'd been dead quiet the whole trip. "What's eating you?" he asked as Savvy approached.

"I was thinking about whom he found to give him a ride."

Lang nodded. The thought had been circling his mind as well. "Whoever it is, if they're still alive, they're in danger."

"Big-time," she said, staring at the road where the tow truck with its cargo of a mangled hospital van had disappeared. "What time do you think they picked him up?"

"You mean, they probably weren't listening to the news and/or hadn't had time to talk to anyone to be warned about Justice."

Nodding thoughtfully, she tucked an errant strand of reddish-brown hair behind her ear. She was too pretty to be a cop, in Lang's opinion, not that he hadn't seen his share of lookers on the force, but for one reason or another they seemed to move on quickly. He expected Savvy to last another six months at the most.

"He drove off from Halo Valley around six or six thirty," Lang said, going through the timeline. "Headed west. Got to the turnoff and drove through the chain around sevenish? Had ditched the van by seven fifteen or seven thirty. Walked back to the road and waited. Somebody came along and he flagged them down."

"He would have been in his inmate clothes," Savvy said.

"A woman wouldn't have stopped for him, most likely."

"Not a man, either. Not dressed the way he was."

Lang thought that over. "If he was on foot, we'd have found him by now."

"Is there anyone he could have contacted to help him?"

"Not that we know of." Lang grimaced. "The man had no friends, and he tried to kill all his relatives. Even his mother."

Savvy opened the passenger door to Lang's Jeep and climbed inside. Lang slid into the driver's seat and gave her a sideways look. "There something you're not telling me about her?"

"I hope we find him soon," was her only answer.

Laura felt almost ill with worry. Promising was one thing; following through was quite another. She'd said she would let down her guard. Allow Justice into her thoughts. She'd promised; then she'd backed off.