Chapter 1
Vancouver, First Monday in June…
Newly minted homicidedetective Kate Morgan sat on one of the many benches positioned in this child-friendly park, watching the kids play on the swings in downtown Vancouver. She’d passed her first three months in her new position amid the craziness of too many murder cases to count. Vancouver, BC, was like any big city around the world and had its share of criminal activity. The city had its issues—just being on the coast and blending many different nationalities—yet somehow it all worked. Plus it was home for her. Always had been.
Because of those life-and-death issues, Vancouver had three homicide units, usually with six or seven detectives in each unit. She chuckled. At one time, the two other units called themselves Team Canuck or Team Flames, showing how hockey crazy Canada got. She didn’t know what her unit used to call themselves, as she was the odd-one-out still. New enough to know her place and not so new to misunderstand the team needed time to meld.
Her ever-assessing gaze watched two men on a bench on the far side of the park. One got up, tossed a bright yellow ball at the other and then, with a raised hand, turned and walked away.
Her focus flitted to the storm approaching in the distance, assessed its threat, and dismissed it. Rain was part of the reality when living on the coast. The more pressing threats in her world were the two-legged predators. She’d known the dangers ever since her younger brother had disappeared, even now, twenty-five years later with still no trace of him. She kept a copy of his file on her desk, as a reminder of the work she’d dedicated herself to. Timmy was always close to her heart. She could only hope to get closure, as she worked to give closure to others.
Sudden movement on her left had her watching a lean man of average height, walking into the park and staring at the kids on the swing. Something about his gaze set her nerves on edge. He was slightly turned away from her, only letting her see his jeans and well-worn jacket with the upturned collar. He perched on a nearby bench seat, seemingly fascinated by the boys’ antics.
The single male on the far side stood suddenly and strode her way, tossing the yellow ball and catching it smoothly with every step. He gazed at the street beside her, unconcerned for the kids or other adults. His focus was internal. From the power suit he wore, business deals most likely.
As she turned back to the other man, he’d disappeared. Her gaze zipped to the boys at the swings. They were still there. Relaxing slightly, she studied the park exits. Both men had left at the same time. From opposite sides of the park.
It shouldn’t have meant anything.
But it felt like it did.
Her phone rang just then. Rodney, one of her team. “We found another one. Prepare yourself. It’s a little boy.”
*
Tuesday
Simon St. Lauranthad had a bad week. He twisted in bed, kicking off the blanket. His body shimmered with sweat. He drifted in and out of sleep. He’d been up until two in the morning in one of his friendlier gambling games and had crashed soon afterward. Now it was five in the morning, and the last thing he wanted was to be awake. He rolled over, pulled the sheet over his sweating body, and closed his eyes.
As he tried to fall asleep again, he drifted down the same godforsaken dark street, just a halo of light coming from the streetlamps across on the other side. A small man, holding the hand of a very young boy at his side, walked quietly down the street. The little boy asked, “When will we be there?”
“We’ll be there soon,” the older man promised.
Something was just so damn wrong about that picture that Simon kept telling the little boy to run, wanting to reach out and drag him to safety. But, even as Simon reached out a hand, he saw that it wasn’t real, that he wasn’t there, that he couldn’t grab that little boy and escape. As the older man walked under the streetlamp, Simon caught the hungry look on the man’s face. A predator’s look. Yet not clear enough to identify him.
Simon woke immediately, sat up, and groaned in frustration. “Why that same goddamn freaking nightmare?” he cried out, before flopping to his back yet again.
He was exhausted, his mind overwhelmed, as he drifted once again into the deepness of sleep. This time he landed in a small room, with lots of toys on the bed and on the floor. A bed that broke his heart because it had a plastic sheet for the little kids who might wet themselves. A blanket was atop the bed but was otherwise empty. Simon’s mind knew that a light was on the side of the room and that Simon would see the child soon, but he didn’t want to go there. He kicked himself out of the dream, sitting up again, shuddering in the dark. “Damn it,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “What fresh hell is this?”
Almost as if by asking that question, his body stiffened. He fell backward again, and this time he was in a different room, and the bed was bigger. It had little pink roses around the base and unicorns across the headboard. A little girl sobbed her eyes out, curled up into a tiny ball, hugging a teddy bear. The problem was that fancy little bed was completely out of place, surrounded by bare concrete walls and old cracked floors. The lack of carpet or any other niceties suggested this would not be a nice little home for her.
Instead Simon saw the bloodstains on the mattress around her, the pain and the terror in her heart, and the loneliness in her soul. He wanted to hold her and to tell her that it would be okay. But the same words rippled through his mind:Hide. He’s coming.
Then everything went dark…
When he woke again, he lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, dry-eyed, but felt as if he’d bawled his entire life away. Every part of his body hurt, especially his soul. He sat up, felt like he was thirty years older than his thirty-seven years on this planet. Thirty-seven years of pain and fighting to get the upper hand, trying to make sure that he wouldn’t be a victim in this world again.
Years ago he’d sworn to be a victor instead. He played the game, but he didn’t let others play him. That wasn’t part of his new reality. Not anymore—not for a long time. He looked down at his bed, the bottom sheet literally pulled off the mattress and twisted beneath him, while the top sheet was crumpled on the floor beside him.
“Looks like I had a party—and not the fun kind,” he muttered, as he slowly straightened. He stretched, turned to get the kinks out of his neck and his back. A bad night had the effect of turning his spine into a pretzel that he could spend hours trying to untwist. He needed a hot shower to complete the job. Yet every time he went under the water, he kept seeing images of the boy that he’d seen in the first nightmare this morning.
It made no sense, when he’d seen many other children throughout his lifetime of nightmares, but, for some reason, he identified with that one. That night terror always upset him because he didn’t know that child. It wasn’t Simon as a child, and he didn’t understand the dialogue, didn’t remember it from his own life. What he did know was that these nightmares had to stop.
If he had a friend who was a doctor, he might have talked to him or her, but unfortunately he didn’t even have that. In truth, speaking out loud of this weakness,… in the wrong hands, that knowledge could crush Simon. As he walked naked to the shower, he knew something had to change; he couldn’t keep going on this way. The nightmares had restarted suddenly, for no current reason, and they were getting stronger, clearer, and more traumatic to view.
He should get away for a few days. Book a gambling cruise to take his mind off this mess. Maybe see Yale there. Simon’s gaze caught sight of the yellow child’s ball that Yale had tossed to Simon, the two men out of the blue both at the park yesterday.
Simon often walked that corridor and had come upon his old friend, looking sad and depressed. It had been nice to see Yale unexpectedly. Normally they’d be in on the same poker games or cruises, but he hadn’t seen his old college friend in over six months.