Edwin said with a sincere intensity, “I knew how much this meant. This property. I wanted to give it back to you. You’ll have to show me where you rode your pony and walked your dogs when you were a little girl. We can go for the same walks. That’ll be fun! Maybe we’ll do that before supper tonight.”

She supposed she should play along, pretend she was touched and then when his back was turned grab a rock and break his skull and run. But she couldn’t feign. Revulsion and anger swirled within her. “How the hell can you say you love me and do this?”

He grinned and gently stroked her hair. She jerked her head away. He hardly noticed. “Kayleigh … from the first time I heard your opening number at that concert in Monterey, I knew we were soul mates. It’ll take you a little longer but you’ll figure it out too. I’ll make you the happiest woman in the world. I’ll worship you.”

He covered the van with a camouflaged tarp, secured it with rocks and slipped his arm around her shoulders, very firmly. He guided her toward the trailer.

“I don’t love you!”

He only laughed. But as they approached the trailer, his gaze morphed from adoring to chill. “He fucked you, didn’t he? Bobby. Don’t say he didn’t.” He eyed her carefully as if asking tacitly if it was true. And wanting to hear that it wasn’t.

“Edwin!”

“I have a right to know.”

“We were just friends.”

“Oh, I don’t know where it’s written friends don’t ever fuck. Do you know where that’s written?”

So, the sanitized language from earlier—in conversation and emails—had been phony, just another part of the innocent image he created. And she now knew that he hadn’t been simply tapping his leg in time to the music the other day.

They were at the trailer door now. He calmed and smiled again. “Sorry. I get my hackles up, thinking about him.”

“Edwin, look—”

“I should carry you over the threshold. The wedding night thing, you know.”

“Don’t touch me!”

He gazed at her with some pity, it seemed, then pushed the door open and swept her up into his arms like she weighed nothing at all. He carried her inside. Kayleigh didn’t resist; one of his massive hands firmly cradled her throat.

Chapter 74

“WE’RE ON OUR way,” Kathryn Dance said into her phone, speaking to Michael O’Neil.

She then gasped as Dennis Harutyun nearly demirrored his cruiser as the passenger side of the car came within inches of the truck he was passing. He skidded back into the lane and sped up.

“Are you okay?” O’Neil asked. “Are you there?”

“Yes. I’m … yes.” She closed her eyes as Harutyun took on another tractor-trailer.

O’Neil was at his desk in his own sheriff’s office. Dance opened her eyes briefly and asked, “What’s in place?”

“Two helicopters around Point Lobos—that’s where Edwin first saw Kayleigh at the concert two years ago. And another chopper’s covering the area from Moss Landing up to Santa Cruz. Concentrating on the deserted areas. CHP’s setting up roadblocks around Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach and Carmel. We’ve got about forty Monterey county and city uniforms involved.”