Flashback

“Some do. Some don’t.”

“And if they don’t, what kinds of problems would they have?”

“Physically? You ever see somebody after a stroke? That’s a kind of brain injury in itself. Muscle weakness, usually confined to one side of the body. Mentally? It could involve amnesia. Aphasia. Even personality changes.”

The tip of the pencil she’d been jotting notes with lifted. “What kind?”

“Any kind. Somebody who’s been mild-mannered and shy becomes overbearing. Or vice versa. Or they may suffer from extreme excitability. Impulsivity. Have anger-management issues.”

“Might they become violent?”

Again there was a silence on the other end of the line. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible, Eden, but most of the men and women who suffer brain injuries come home and resume their lives. They may struggle with mobility or memory or control, but they don’t become somebody else. If they weren’t violent criminals before, most of them don’t commit acts of violence after. They just come home and try to be the best they can be, despite what’s happened to them while they were fighting on our behalf.”

The silence this time was Eden’s. She broke it finally to suggest, “I don’t guess I need to tell you that I’d appreciate your keeping what we’ve talked about to yourself.”

“You don’t need to tell me. But I’d do it anyway. As on edge as folks in this town are right now, the suggestion that we’ve got somebody around here who’s become dangerous because he’s had a brain injury could be disastrous. Frankly, I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate your help. And the advice.”

“Your daddy would be proud of you, Eden. You’re doing a good job. And the hardest one you got facing you may be keeping the yahoos here from going off the deep end. I’d hate to see that happen in Waverly.”

“Me, too, Doc. Me, too.”

“While you’re taking care of everything else around here,” the old man said, “don’t forget to take care of you. We need you. Your daddy knew that, too.”

“Thank, Doc. That means a lot.”

“You just do what he taught you. You’ll be fine.

YOU’RE A DAMNED slow learner, boy, Jake thought, as he watched the special agents’ car disappear behind the cloud of dust that enveloped any vehicle exiting his property this time of year. Or maybe he was as brain-damaged as the surgeons who’d worked on him had feared he might be.

No matter the impetus, going to the police department had been a colossally stupid, totally idiotic mistake. One he still couldn’t believe he’d made. And now that blonde Barbie, who hadn’t believed a word he’d said, had sicced the Feds on him.

The old adages were true. Never volunteer. Keep your head down and do your job. Mind your own business.

That’s exactly what he’d do from now on, Jake vowed. Even if he had another of what the agents had called “his visions.”

Not that he planned on doing that. At least not the kind he’d had yesterday.

He had enough ghosts in his head already. He didn’t need Raine Nolan’s there, too.

BY THE END of Day Three, the effects of being overextended were apparent on everybody in the department. And probably on most of the townspeople as well, Eden acknowledged. The local search parties had been joined by teams with cadaver dogs—an unwelcome reality check, based on the passage of time since the Nolan child had been taken.

“You talk to the lab?” Dean asked.

“Yesterday and today. Special Agent Davis called them, too. They say they’re doing the best they can. And, truth be told, I’m not sure we sent them anything that’s going to tell us much.”

Cliff Davis was the senior of the two agents the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had sent down. Eden had found him helpful and professional, but a couple of times, she thought she’d detected a gleam of contempt in his eyes when she asked for his opinion of things the department had talked about doing.

Paranoid, she chided herself. Everybody was grasping at straws, including the Bureau.

She’d been open with her officers, that if they had any ideas about other avenues they should be pursuing in this investigation, they should speak up. Several had, and they’d already put a couple of those suggestions into play.

And of course, they were still concentrating on the tried-and-true. They’d interviewed the registered sex offenders in the region—at least the ones they could track down. They’d also canvassed the upscale neighborhood where the Nolans lived to see if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual, not only on the night of the kidnapping, but also in the days leading up to it.

The Nolans had both taken lie-detector tests, verifying hers and Dean’s initial reactions to their stories. The hotline and the Amber Alert had yielded a ton of calls, but so far nothing that led anywhere. Other than that…

“We sent ’em all we got.” Dean’s comment was nothing but the truth. A truth that grew less palatable with each passing hour.

“I don’t know what else to do.”

“You’ve done everything you can,” her deputy chief said earnestly. “Nobody could’a handled this better. I mean that, Chief.”

He always called her chief, despite how long he’d known her. Almost twenty years, Eden realized, a little surprised it had been that long.

But then, her existence before they’d moved to Waverly seemed very distant. Another time. Another place. Another life.

“I really appreciate your saying that, Dean. I keep thinking there must be something we haven’t thought of. Something that will give us a handle on who did this.”

“Sometimes, despite all you can do, things like this just don’t have a happy ending.”

“I know.” She did. The chance that they’d find Raine Nolan alive decreased hour by hour. And far too many of those had already passed.

“Why don’t you go on home and get some sleep? I grabbed a few hours this morning. I can hold down the fort for a while.”

Eden glanced at the clock above her office door. The windowless room made it too easy to lose track of time, especially when things had been as hectic as today. Still, she was surprised to find it was almost seven. It would be dark in another hour. Since the marshy terrain was too treacherous to risk after nightfall, even the search parties would be coming in.

She might as well take advantage of Dean’s offer. He was more than capable of taking charge of the command center.

Especially when there was so little to command.

“I think I’ll do that. You’ll call me if anything happens? And I mean anything, Dean.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

They both understood how unlikely such a call would be, given the end of the searching day. Sadly, it was now almost a relief when they had reached that point without incident. It meant that at least for one more day Eden didn’t have to face Margo Nolan with the news that her daughter had been found. And that, against her mother’s hopeful expectations, she wouldn’t be coming home again.

HIS GRANDMOTHER USED to preach to him about “speaking things into existence.” At the time, Jake had considered it all a bunch of Holy Roller hogwash, but when the familiar flickering began, his vow that he would keep any other “visions” to himself came to mind.

That was the last thought he managed before the horror closed in, so strong it made rational thinking impossible. The darkness was terrifying enough, but now, somehow, he knew what it contained. And understood the things that could happen within it.

He could again hear water dripping. Could smell its stench. Maybe if he opened his eyes…

There was more light this time, so that his surroundings were clearer, more distinct. Exposed roots lay against the black walls like a network of veins.

A trickle of moisture glinted on the ground in front of him, reflecting a light whose source he couldn’t determine. The sun? Or something artificial? Something put into this place to illuminate it?

Not that it did. Not to any real degree.