mockery was gone, leaving something quiet and too solemn in its place. “I think I would like you, if you’d let me get to know you.”
“What do you call last night?” Abby asked tartly.
“Did we exchange ten words?”
“We were supposed to be having fun.”
“My eardrums still hurt.”
“Like I said, I could tell it wasn’t your scene.” She sounded brittle, even to herself. “Which suggests we don’t have much in common.”
Anger to match hers sparked in his voice. “I’d say we have a hell of a lot in common. We do the same kind of job. We have to live with having seen things other people never do. We care about the same things. We both live alone, isolated partly by our jobs. We probably shop at the same goddamn grocery stores. We could exchange recipes.”
She was fighting a losing battle; she could feel it. But “stubborn” was Abby’s middle name. “That’s one more thing we don’t have in common. I’d have to tell you my favorite microwave dinners.”
“You don’t cook?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I like to cook. See? We’re made for each other.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “All right, all right,” Abby conceded. “Just let me know whether to wear shorts or a strapless dress, okay?”
“I will.” Amusement played a bass note in his slow, deep voice. “As soon as I decide.”
“But tell me one thing, will you?” Get it out front, she decided.
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Shea echoed. Although he asked, “What do you mean?” he sounded wary, which meant he’d guessed.
“Why me? Why are you so determined? Is it just the challenge?”
Again he was silent for a long moment. Again his voice had changed, although this time she couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking. “No. I like a challenge. But...no.”
“What, then?”
“You’re beautiful.”
“No more so than plenty of other women. Most of whom are easier to get along with than I am.”
“You look lonely.”
“Lonely?” Abby gave a derisive laugh. “You’re seeing things.”
“I don’t think so.”
“And if I am? So what?”
“I thought we might...connect. That’s all. Do we have to analyze our relationship already?”
She let out a sigh he wouldn’t be able to hear. “No. I just wanted to find out whether it was my charm that had gotten to you.”
“That was it,” he agreed.
“Friday,” she said. “Call me before then.”
ABBY HAD A LATE DINNER: a spinach salad and microwave penne pasta. Afterward she tried to read, but found her attention wandering. TV seemed like an idea, but nothing on tonight grabbed her. Using the remote control, she turned the television off just as her telephone rang.
“Abby, Scott here,” Meg’s husband said. “I’m up at the ski area. Just leaving. I need you to look at something. Can you come?”
“Up to Juanita Butte?”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s late.” He sounded grim. “But I really think you need to see it”
A chill stirred the hair on her nape. “What is it?”
“I’d rather you see for yourself,” Scott repeated.
“Is this something like the fire?”
“Yeah. But uglier. Or maybe it just got to me personally, I’m not sure.”
“All right.” She was already slipping her feet into canvas sneakers. “Don’t move. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
The clock on the dashboard said 9:04. Here at midsummer, night was just settling, the first layer like purple gauze, the next denser and darker.
The mountain loop highway climbed fast, bare at this time of year. Abby rolled down her window and breathed in the distinctive scent of pine and earth ground from red lava. The air was cool, dry; it became cold as the elevation rose. In the shadow of the mountain, nightfall came more drastically. She switched on her bright lights, noting how little traffic she met.
The ski area parking lot opened before her, huge, bare and empty, a paved sea that looked alien in the middle of nowhere. She could just make out the bulk of the lodge and the first lift towers rearing above. Patches of snow still lay up there, where plows had formed towering banks during the winter. Her high beams spotlighted Scott McNeil’s Jeep Cherokee. parked in its usual spot behind the lodge. He was half sitting on the bumper.
She parked next to him and climbed out, flashlight in hand. “What is it?”
A big man with dark auburn hair, he nodded toward the driver’s side of his Jeep. “Over there.”
She circled the back bumper, then stopped, shock stealing her breath.
A child’s car seat sat beside the driver’s door, facing the parking lot and highway. Just as Emily’s car seat had, the freezing cold night when she had been abandoned.
A doll was buckled into this seat. Abby trained her flashlight beam on it, wanting to be mistaken about what she was seeing.
The doll was plastic, the kind with arms and legs and a head that attached to sockets in the hard body.
This one was missing its head. From the empty, blackened socket, trickles of red dripped down the pink dress.
CHAPTER FOUR
IN THE BRIGHT illumination from the headlights of his Bronco, Ben Shea squatted beside the child’s seat. Abby overheard his muttered profanity.
“I shouldn’t have called you,” she said to his back. “I know there won’t be any fingerprints, and there sure as heck aren’t any witnesses.” She glanced involuntarily around at the dark parking lot. “I didn’t think. I assume this is connected...”
“The doll’s neck socket is seared.” He sank back on his heels and shot her a look. “Why wouldn’t you call me?”
“You were home...”
“Staring at the boob tube. Trust me, you didn’t interrupt anything.” Ben stood in a lithe movement. “This is some scary bastard.
