Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) (5 page)

She fumbled at her
pocket and pulled out her cell phone. She texted a message to April.

She received no
reply.

Riley went back
inside and sat down on the couch. She held her head in her hands.

She was back in
the crawlspace, lying on the dirt in the darkness.

But the small
light was moving toward her. She could see his cruel face in the glow of the
flames. But she didn’t know whether the killer was coming for her or for April.

Riley forced herself
to separate the vision from her present reality.

Peterson is dead,
she told herself emphatically
.
He will never torture either of us again.

She sat up on the
sofa and tried to focus on here and now. Today she was here in her new home, in
her new life. Gabriela had gone to the store. April was surely somewhere
nearby.

Her breathing
slowed, but she couldn’t make herself get up. She was afraid she’d go outside
and yell again.

After what seemed
like a long time, Riley heard the front door opening.

April walked through
the door, singing.

Now Riley could get
to her feet. “Where the hell have you been?”

April looked
shocked.

“What’s your
problem, Mom?”

“Where were you? Why
didn’t you answer my text?”

“Sorry, I had my
phone on mute. Mom, I was just over at Cece’s house. Just across the street.
When we got off the school bus, her mom offered us ice cream.”

“How was I supposed
to know where you were?”

“I didn’t think you’d
be home yet.”

Riley heard herself
yelling, but couldn’t make herself stop. “I don’t care what you thought. You
weren’t thinking. You have to always let me know …”

The tears running
down April’s face finally stopped her.

Riley caught her
breath, rushed forward, and hugged her daughter. At first April’s body was
stiff with anger, but Riley could feel her relax slowly. She realized that
tears were running down her own face too.

“I’m sorry,” Riley
said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that we went through so much … so much awfulness.”

“But it’s all over
now,” April said. “Mom, it’s all over.”

They both sat down
on the couch. It was a new couch, bought when they had moved here. She had
bought it for her new life.

“I know that it’s
all over,” Riley said. “I know that Peterson is dead. I’m trying to get used to
that.”

“Mom, everything is
so much better now. You don’t have to worry about me every minute. And I’m not
some stupid little kid. I’m fifteen.”

“And you’re very
smart,” Riley said. “I know. I’ll just have to keep reminding myself. I love
you, April,” she said. “That’s why I get so crazy sometimes.”

“I love you too,
Mom,” April said. “Just don’t worry so much.”

Riley was delighted
to see her daughter smile again. April had been kidnapped, held captive, and
threatened with that flame. She seemed to be back to being a perfectly normal
teenager even if her mother hadn’t yet regained her stability.

Still, Riley couldn’t
help but wonder whether dark memories still lurked somewhere in her daughter’s
mind, waiting to erupt.

As for herself, she
knew that she needed to talk to somebody about her own fears and recurring
nightmares. It would have to be soon.

Riley fidgeted in
her chair as she tried to think of what she wanted to tell Mike Nevins. She
felt unsettled and edgy.

“Take your time,”
the forensic psychiatrist said, craning forward in his office chair and gazing
at her with concern.

Riley chuckled
ruefully. “That’s the trouble,” she said. “I don’t have time. I’ve been
dragging my feet. I’ve got a decision to make. I’ve put it off too long
already. Have you ever known me to be this indecisive?”

Mike didn’t reply.
He just smiled and pressed his fingertips together.

Riley was used to
this kind of silence from Mike. The dapper, rather fussy man had been many
things to her over the years—a friend, a therapist, even at times a sort of
mentor. These days she usually called on him to get his insight into the dark
mind of a criminal. But this visit was different. She had called him last night
after getting home from the execution, and had driven to his DC office this
morning.

“So what are your
choices, exactly?” he finally asked.

“Well, I guess I’ve
got to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of my life—teach or be a field
agent. Or figure out something else entirely.”

Mike laughed a
little. “Hold on a minute. Let’s not try to plan your whole future today. Let’s
stick to right now. Meredith and Jeffreys want you to take a case. Just one
case. It’s not either/or. Nobody says you’ve got to give up teaching. And all
you’ve got to do is say yes or no this once. So what’s the problem?”

It was Riley’s turn
to fall silent. She didn’t know what the problem was. That was why she was
here.

“I take it you’re
scared of something,” Mike said.

Riley gulped hard.
That was it. She was scared. She’d been refusing to admit it, even to herself.
But now Mike was going to make her talk about it.

“So what are you
scared of?” Mike asked. “You said you were having some nightmares.”

Riley still said
nothing.

“This has to be part
of your PTSD problem,” Mike said. “Do you still have the flashbacks?”

Riley had been
expecting the question. After all, Mike had done more than anybody to get her
through the trauma of an especially horrible experience.

She leaned her head
back on the chair and closed her eyes. For a moment she was in Peterson’s dark
cage again, and he was threatening her with a propane flame. For months after
Peterson had held her captive, that memory had constantly forced its way into
her mind.

But then she had
tracked down Peterson and killed him herself. In fact, she had beaten him to a
lifeless pulp.

If that’s not
closure, I don’t know what is,
she thought.

Now the memories
seemed impersonal, as though she was watching someone else’s story unfold.

“I’m better,” Riley
said. “They’re shorter and much less often.”

“How about your
daughter?”

The question cut
Riley like a knife. She felt an echo of the horror she’d experienced when
Peterson had taken April captive. She could still hear April’s cries for help
ringing through her brain.

“I guess I’m not
over that,” she said. “I wake up afraid that she’s been taken again. I have to
go to her bedroom and make sure that she’s there and she’s all right and
sleeping.”

“Is that why you don’t
want to take another case?”

Riley shuddered
deeply. “I don’t want to put her through anything like that again.”

“That doesn’t answer
my question.”

“No, I don’t suppose
it does,” Riley said.

Another silence
fell.

“I’ve got a feeling
there’s something more,” Mike said. “What else gives you nightmares? What else
wakes you up at night?”

With a jolt, a
lurking terror surfaced in her mind.

Yes, there
was
something more.

Even with her eyes
wide open, she could see his face—Eugene Fisk’s babyish, grotesquely
innocent-looking face with its small, beady eyes. Riley had looked deeply into
those eyes during their fatal confrontation.

The killer had held
Lucy Vargas with a razor at her throat. At that moment, Riley probed her most
terrible fears. She’d talked about the chains—those chains that he believed
were talking to him, forcing him to commit murder after murder, chaining up
women and slitting their throats.

“The chains don’t
want you to take this woman,”
Riley had told him.
“She isn’t what they need. You know what the chains want
you to do instead.”

His eyes glistening
with tears, he’d nodded in agreement. Then he’d inflicted the same death upon
himself that he had inflicted upon his victims.

He slit his own
throat right before Riley’s eyes.

And now, sitting
here in Mike Nevins’s office, Riley almost choked on her own horror.

“I killed Eugene,”
she said with a gasp.

“The chain killer,
you mean. Well, he wasn’t the first man you killed.”

It was true—she’d
used deadly force a number of times. But with Eugene, it had been very
different. She’d thought about his death quite often, but she’d never talked to
anybody about it before now.

“I didn’t use a gun,
or a rock, or my fists,” she said. “I killed him with understanding, with
empathy. My own mind is a deadly weapon. I’d never known that before. It
terrifies me, Mike.”

Mike nodded
sympathetically. “You know what Nietzsche said about looking too long into an
abyss,” he said.

“The abyss also
looks into you,” Riley said, finishing the familiar saying. “But I’ve done a
lot more than look into an abyss. I’ve practically lived there. I’ve almost
gotten comfortable there. It’s like a second home. It scares me to death, Mike.
One of these days I might go into that abyss and never come back out. And who
knows who I might hurt—or kill.”

“Well, then,” Mike
said, leaning back in his chair. “Maybe we’re getting somewhere.”

Riley wasn’t so
sure. And she didn’t feel any closer to making a decision.

*

When Riley walked
through her front door a while later, April came galloping down the stairs to
meet her.

“Oh, Mom, you’ve got
to help me! Come on!”

Riley followed April
up the stairs to her bedroom. An open suitcase was open on her bed and clothes
were scattered all around it.

“I don’t know what
to pack!” April said. “I’ve never had to do this before!”

Smiling at her
daughter’s mixed panic and exhilaration, Riley set right to work helping her
get her things together. April was leaving tomorrow morning on a school field
trip—a week in nearby Washington, DC. She’d be going with a group of advanced
American History students and their teachers.

When Riley had
signed the forms and paid the extra fees for the trip, she’d had some qualms
about it. Peterson had held April captive in Washington, and although that had
been far off on the edge of the city, Riley worried that the trip might dredge
up the trauma. But April seemed to be doing extremely well both academically
and emotionally. And the trip was a wonderful opportunity.

As she and April
teased each other lightheartedly about what to pack, Riley realized that she
was having fun. That abyss that she and Mike had talked about a little while
ago seemed far away. She still had a life outside of that abyss. It was a good
life, and whatever she decided to do, she was determined to keep it.

While they were
sorting things, Gabriela stepped into the room.

“Señora Riley, my
cab will be here
pronto,
any minute,” she said, smiling. “I’m packed and
ready. My things are at the door.”

Riley had almost
forgotten that Gabriela was leaving. Since April was going to be away, Gabriela
had asked for time off to visit relatives in Tennessee. Riley had cheerfully
agreed.

Riley hugged
Gabriela and said,
“Buen viaje.”

Gabriela’s smile
fading a little, she added,
“Me preocupo.”

“You’re worried?”
Riley asked in surprise. “What are you worried about, Gabriela?”

“You,” Gabriela
said. “You will be all alone in this new house.”

Riley laughed a
little. “Don’t worry, I can take care of myself.”

“But you have not
been
sola
since so many bad things have happened,” Gabriela said. “I
worry.”

Gabriela’s words
gave Riley a slight turn. What she was saying was true. Ever since the ordeal
with Peterson, at least April had always been around. Could a dark and
frightening void open up in her new home? Was the abyss yawning even now?

“I’ll be fine,”
Riley said. “Go have a good time with your family.”

Gabriela grinned and
handed Riley an envelope. “This was in the mailbox,” she said.

Gabriela hugged
April, then hugged Riley again, and went downstairs to wait for her cab.

“What is it, Mom?”
April asked.

“I don’t know,”
Riley said. “It wasn’t mailed.”

She tore the
envelope open and found a plastic card inside. Decorative letters on the card
proclaimed “Blaine’s Grill.” Below that she read aloud, “Dinner for two.”

“I guess it’s a gift
card from our neighbor,” Riley said. “That’s nice of him. You and I can go
there for dinner when we get back.”

“Mom!” April
snorted. “He doesn’t mean you and me.”

“Why not?”

“He’s inviting you
out to dinner.”

“Oh! Do you really
think so? It doesn’t say that here.”

April shook her
head. “Don’t be stupid. The man wants to date you. Crystal told me her dad
likes you. And he’s really cute.”

Riley could feel her
face flushing red. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked her on
a date. She had been married to Ryan for so many years. Since their divorce she
had been focused on getting settled in her new home and decisions to be made
about her job.

“You’re blushing,
Mom,” April said.

“Let’s get your
stuff packed,” Riley grumbled. “I’ll have to think about all this later.”

They both went back
to sorting through clothes. After a few minutes of silence, April said, “I’m
kind of worried about you, Mom. Like Gabriela said …”

“I’ll be fine,”
Riley said.

“Will you?”

Folding a blouse,
Riley wasn’t sure what to answer. Surely she’d recently faced worse nightmares
than an empty house—murderous psychopaths obsessed with chains, dolls, and
blowtorches among them. But might a host of inner demons break loose when she
was alone? Suddenly, a week began to feel like a long time. And the prospect of
deciding whether or not to date the man who lived next door seemed scary in its
own way.

I’ll handle it,
Riley thought.

Besides, she still
had another option. And it was about time to make a decision once and for all.

“I’ve been asked to
work on a case,” Riley told April. “I’d have to go to Arizona right away.”

April stopped
folding her clothes and looked at Riley.

“So you’re going to
go, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,
April,” Riley said.

“What’s there to
know? It’s your job, right?”

Riley looked into
her daughter’s eyes. The hard times between them really did seem to be over.
Ever since they’d both survived the horrors inflicted by Peterson, they’d been
linked by a new bond.

“I’ve been thinking
about not going back to field work,” Riley said.

April’s eyes widened
with surprise.

“What? Mom, taking
down bad guys is what you do best.”

“I’m good at
teaching, too,” Riley said. “I’m
very
good at it. And I love it. I
really do.”

April shrugged with
incomprehension. “Well, go ahead and teach. Nobody’s stopping you. But don’t
stop kicking ass. That’s just as important.”

Riley shook her
head. “I don’t know, April. After all I put you through—”

April looked and
sounded incredulous. “After all
you
put me through? What are you talking
about?
You
didn’t put me through anything. I got caught by a psychopath
named Peterson. If he hadn’t taken me, he’d have taken someone else. Don’t you
start blaming yourself.”

After a pause, April
said, “Sit down, Mom. We’ve got to talk.”

Riley smiled and sat
down on the bed. April was sounding just like a mother herself.

Maybe a little
parental lecture is just what I need,
Riley thought.

April sat down next
to Riley.

“Did I ever tell you
about my friend Angie Fletcher?” April said.

“I don’t think so.”