After She's Gone

Book 3: West Coast Series

by Lisa Jackson

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

In this explosive thriller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson delves into the deep bond between two sisters and their shared dream that becomes a harrowing nightmare of madness, hatred and jealousy.…

Cassie Kramer and her younger sister, Allie, learned the hazards of fame long ago. Together, they'd survived the horror of a crazed fan who nearly killed their mother, former Hollywood actress Jenna Hughes. Still, Cassie moved to L.A., urging Allie to follow. As a team, they'd take the town by storm. But Allie, finally free of small-town Oregon, and just that little bit more beautiful, also proved to be more talented-and driven. Where Cassie got bit parts, Allie rose to stardom. But now her body double has been shot on the set of her latest movie-and Allie is missing.

Police discover that the last call to Allie's phone came from Cassie, though she has no recollection of making it. Instead of looking like a concerned relative, Cassie is starting to look like a suspect-the jealous sister who finally grew sick of playing a supporting role. As the tabloids go into a frenzy, Cassie ends up in a Portland psych ward. Is she just imagining the sinister figure who comes to her bedside, whispering about Allie-a visitor of whom there is no record? Is someone trying to help-or drive her mad?

Convinced she's the only one who can find Allie, Cassie checks herself out of the hospital. But a sudden slew of macabre murders-each victim masked with a likeness of a member of Cassie's family-makes Cassie fear for her safety and her sanity. The only way to end the nightmare is to find out what really happened to Allie. And with each discovery, Cassie realizes that no one can be trusted to keep her safe-least of all herself.…

Release date: July 26, 2016

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 484

Sample

Chapter 1

 

The nightmare was relentless.

Like a vaporous shadow it seemed to slip under her door and through the window casings, shifting and swirling through the hospital room before steadfastly pushing into Cassie’s brain, infiltrating her dreams as she desperately tried to sleep.

No amount of medications or willpower could stop the nightmare from sliding a kaleidoscope of painful pictures through her subconscious. Tonight, in her mind’s eye she saw it all again. Lightning sizzled across the sky. Thunder clapped. Rain poured from the heavens.

She and Allie, her little sister, were running frantically for their very lives.

Bam!

The crack of a rifle exploded and she jumped, startled, the noises and visions racing through her head so real, so damned real. “No more,” she whispered, and let out the breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding.

Slowly she opened her eyes and saw the digital readout of her clock. Three AM. Again. Every damned night. Jittery as always from the nightmare, she slid off her hospital bed and walked to the window where rain ran in jagged rivulets against the glass. Her room was located on the fourth floor of this wing, part of the original building built over a century earlier. She peered into the darkness, past the parking lot flanked by hundred-year-old rhododendrons. Farther down the hillside the city of Portland stretched in myriad lights that pulsed along the snaky blackness that was the Willamette River. Bridges linked the river’s shores and streams of lights blurred as cars and trucks sped across the concrete and steel spans connecting the city’s sprawling east side to its hilly west. Atop this hill, Mercy Hospital was afforded a breathtaking view of the city. If one chose to be inspired.

With her index finger, Cassie traced the path of a raindrop on the pane, the glass cool to her touch. Slowly, as it always did, her heartbeat returned to normal and the nightmare thankfully withered into the hidden corners of her subconscious again. “Just leave me alone,” she muttered as if the dream could hear. “Go away!” She was sick of being trapped here in this damned hospital, plagued by the nightmare and exhausted from lack of sleep.

Angry at herself and the whole damned situation, she made her way to the bed, slid between the sheets, and drew the thin blanket to her neck. Sleep would prove elusive, she knew, and she considered picking up the book she’d tried to read, a mystery novel that was lying on the table beside her plastic water container and a phone that looked like it had come straight out of the eighties, or maybe even an earlier decade. But her gaze wandered back to the window where, in the glass, she spied a watery reflection, a dark figure backlit by the illumination slicing into the room from the doorway.

Her heart nearly stopped.

She swung her head around and expected the room to be empty, that the image she saw was imagined, a play of light and dark, a figment of her imagination, but she was wrong. A tall woman in a nurse’s uniform stood in the doorway, garbed in an outfit straight out of the fifties or early sixties: crisp, pointed cap; white dress; pale nylon stockings; heavy-duty shoes; and tiny red cross earrings. In her hands, she carried an old-fashioned clipboard and a medical chart, and she ignored the computer monitor mounted near the bed. The thin scent of smoke followed her into the room.

It was all weird as hell.

“You work here?” Cassie asked, not completely sure she wasn’t dreaming. What was this? The nurse was almost ghostlike in appearance, her skin pale and sallow, her eyes buried so deep in her skull their color was in question.

Staring down at Cassie, she didn’t try to take her vital signs or offer medication or anything.

“Who are you?” Cassie asked, and her fingers moved on the bed rail to the nurse’s call button as she searched the snowy uniform for some kind of name tag. None was visible in the half-light.

“Your sister is alive.”

“What?”

“Your sister..” The woman’s voice was flat, her face with its deep-set, haunted eyes expressionless. “She’s not dead.”

“How do you know?” God, this had to be a dream. Allie had been missing since the time she hadn’t shown up for the final shot of Dead Heat. “Have you talked to her? Seen her?”

Silence.

Cassie asked, “Where is she?” And when that didn’t garner a response, added, “Of course she’s alive.” Allie had to be okay. She just had to. No way would Cassie let the doubts creep in, the doubts that had been shouted across the tabloids, screamed in all those horrid blogs, discussed on fan-based chat and message boards, regurgitated over and over again in celebrity news media that Allie Kramer, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, was missing and feared dead. Speculation ran rampant that she’d been kidnapped or committed suicide or been murdered, or come to some deadly fate, but it was all just gossip. No one knew where Allie Kramer was, least of all Cassie, and she felt miserable about it. Allie who had been such a sweet, sensitive child until the monster had come. Long ago, in one of the coldest winters on record, their world had been shattered and Allie had never recovered. Nor, she supposed, had she. Now her insides shivered and she twisted the blanket in her fingers.

Cassie’s mind wandered a bit. She’s alive, she thought, before suddenly coming back to where she was. The nurse, if she had ever really been standing near Cassie’s bedside, had left, slipping quietly away on her crepe-soled shoes.

Cassie’s skin crawled.

That terrible little voice that taunted her at night started nagging again.

The nurse was all in your mind, Cass. You know it. No one dresses like that anymore except in the old movies you’re addicted to. Nurse Ratched—that’s who she was. “Big Nurse” in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Right. All just your imagination running wild again. It’s not the first time you’ve seen someone who wasn’t there, now, is it? Or had a blackout? It’s not as if you haven’t “lost time” or seen someone no one else has. Ever since you were kidnapped, nearly murdered, you haven’t been completely able to sort fact from fantasy or even know what you may have done.... Remember the sleepwalking incidents? Of course not. But they happened. The hospital has the security footage to prove it. You’re losing it, Cassie . . . all over again, and God only knows what you’re capable of when you’re “out.”

“Stop it!” Cassie hissed, then glanced wildly to the door. On the other side the nurses convened at a wide desk and they might hear her talking to herself again, or worse yet, to whomever or whatever was just here.

You idiot, no one was here. No ghost. No apparition. No nurse, for God’s sake. Pull yourself together.

She struggled, her brain at war with her senses. But she knew this time was different from the others, the hallucinations that had landed her here in this mental ward. Didn’t she still smell the odors of cigarette smoke and perfume?

Goose bumps crawled up Cassie’s arms and she felt a chill as cold as the waters of the Arctic. This was nuts. No way had that nurse really been here. The weird-looking woman’s “appearance” was all part and parcel of the bad dreams, the result of exhaustion and fear. She was just stressed out. That’s all. Her guilt-laden mind was playing tricks on her. Again. And if the hallucination wasn’t caused by her own neurosis, then it was probably caused by the medication they were force-feeding, the stuff that was supposed to keep her “calm” and “stable.” Cassie wasn’t going crazy. Of course not. Just because the tabloids said—

“Miss Kramer?”

She looked up sharply. The door had swung open and this time a nurse in pale blue scrubs, a staff member she recognized as Leslie Keller, RN, stepped into the room.

“Are you all right?” the RN asked, glancing from Cassie to the monitors surrounding her bed, checking her vitals. Tall and willowy, with springy black curls and smooth mocha-colored skin, Nurse Keller was all business. “I heard you speaking with someone.” Nurse Keller’s gaze swept the semi-dark room. It, of course, was empty.

“Bad dream,” Cassie said.

“Another one?” The nurse sighed and shook her head. “While I’m here, let’s get your BP.” She was already adjusting the cuff over Cassie’s arm.

“Has anyone called? Or asked about me?” Cassie queried.

Nurse Keller’s plucked eyebrows shot up and she gave Cassie an are-you-kidding look. “At three in the morning?”

“I meant earlier.”

She shook her head, wild curls dancing around her face as her features drew into a scowl. “A little elevated,” she said to herself, taking note of the blood pressure reading.

“The dream. Got me going, I guess,” Cassie said.

“Hmm.”

Before she could stop herself Cassie asked, “No one around here wears any of those old uniforms, do they? You know, the white dress and pointy cap?”

“Oh, God. And retro blue and red cape?” She shot Cassie a wry glance of disbelief. “Not in like forty or fifty years, I guess. Why?”

“No big deal.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, the age of scrubs, thank God.” Quickly she typed some information into the keyboard positioned near Cassie’s bed. Cassie desperately wanted to ask more questions about the nurse in white, but realized it wouldn’t help her cause to appear more confused—that was the term they used—than ever. She cleared her throat and faked a yawn. Better to end this conversation before she said something she’d regret. That was her problem, well, one of them, she was too inquisitive, too forthright, too eager to say what was on her mind. People, especially the doctors and nurses at Mercy Hospital, didn’t appreciate her overabundant curiosity and quick tongue. So she held it. For now.

“Do you need anything else?” the nurse asked.

“I don’t think so. I’m . . . I’m fine.”

Nurse Keller didn’t seem convinced and Cassie held her breath, hearing the rattle of a tray from the hallway and the gentle hum of a whispered conversation from the nurses’ desk. “Okay, so, if you do need anything, just call.”

“Got the button right here,” Cassie said, lifting the electronic paging device attached to the rail of her bed.

“Good.” A quick smile as the nurse turned to leave.

“Uh, wait. There aren’t any cameras here, right? In the room?”

At the reknitting of the nurse’s brows, Cassie instantly knew she’d made a mistake.

“I mean monitors, you know?” Oh, she’d stepped into it this time. “Just . . . just to keep an eye on patients, make sure they’re okay. For medical reasons.”

“Mercy Hospital is very concerned with patient privacy and patient rights. Private rooms are just that: private.”

“Oh, good. I thought so,” Cassie said with a smile she didn’t feel, then pretended to yawn again.

“Is there something wrong?”

“No, no. Just wondering.”

Nurse Keller wasn’t buying her excuse for a second, Cassie could tell. She hesitated, then with an almost unnoticeable shake of her head, said, “Well, try to rest now,” and was gone a few moments later, her footsteps padding down the hall.

This was all so very wrong. Through the crack, she saw Nurse Keller approach the nurses’ station. From her elevated bed, she had a view of the curved desk that molded beneath the chest-high counter. Phones, equipment, and monitors were tucked beneath the counter and desk chairs on wheels moved from one station to the next.

Wide hallways fingered like tentacles on an octopus from the nurses’ station to the patient rooms. A bank of elevators was positioned across from control central. She couldn’t see them from her room but they were close enough that she heard the soft ding of bells announcing the elevator cars’ arrival on this the fourth floor, all day and deep into the night.

Cassie’s gaze followed Nurse Keller as she joined two other graveyard shift nurses. Tom was tall and lanky. His once red hair was starting to gray and somehow, despite the constant Oregon drizzle, he boasted a perpetual tan. The third nurse was in her twenties, a pudgy blond woman whom Cassie didn’t recognize. They whispered among themselves and glanced in her direction, then the blonde giggled.

Cassie exhaled heavily. She was a celebrity of sorts. Both her sister and mother were far more famous than she, each an actress who had found the public’s favor, while her attempt to conquer Hollywood had been pretty dismal, but here, at Mercy Hospital, she’d finally found fame.

Not that she wanted it.

She’d heard her name whispered between the staff and sometimes people Cassie didn’t recognize, people she hoped were part of the medical community. She’d caught bits of conversations and had gleaned that there was more discussed than just her physical or mental condition—not that both weren’t juicy grist for the gossip mill on their own. But with Allie missing and her own hospitalization, Cassie had probably gained more fame, or notoriety, than she’d experienced in all her years of work in the film industry. Not that she really gave a crap right now. Her fame meant little with her sister gone missing and another woman dead in the freak accident on the movie set.

A soft, persistent ding caught the group of nurses’ attention and Tom and Nurse Keller hurried off, leaving the blonde to answer a phone, which she did with her back turned to Cassie’s doorway. Good.

From the bed, Cassie stole a glance at the window again. The rain had stopped, only a few lingering drops visible on the glass. The room seemed to lighten again and in the reflection she saw the door crack open farther, thin light seeping into the room from the hallway.

A stealthy figure slipped into the room.

Her heart clutched.

She whipped her head around just as the door shut with a soft thud. “What the—?” Her body tensed and she grabbed the nurse’s call button, but stopped before depressing it when she recognized Steven Rinko.

She let out her breath. Rinko was the weird kid who had been here longer than she and had the ability to move between rooms on stealthy footsteps, the staff rarely noticing. Around thirteen, with a shock of blond hair and skin starting to show signs of acne, he rarely spoke, but when he did, he seemed more genius than mentally challenged. Though usually silent, when prodded, Rinko could tell you every feature on every make and model of car ever designed in America or around the world, or he could rattle off the most insignificant baseball stat about anyone who’d ever played the sport in college or professionally. He hung with a small group of boys who were forever bickering. Why he was at Mercy Hospital, she didn’t know, nor, she supposed would she ever as she planned to spring herself by tomorrow or the day after. Enough with this place. She’d checked herself into the hospital and planned on checking herself out.

Now, Rinko sidled to her bed. He knew how to get around the security cameras, guards, and nursing staff, traveling the halls on stealthy feet, almost a ghost himself. “She was here,” he said in a whispered voice that cracked.

“Who?”

“I saw her too.”

Cassie’s skin seemed to shrink on her scalp as he reached forward and grabbed her hand. She bit back a scream as he turned her wrist over and dropped something into her hand. A bit of red, she saw, then recognized a tiny cross, one of the earrings the weird nurse had worn.

“Where did you get this?”

“The nurse,” he said, and before she could ask him anything more, Rinko was already sliding out of the room on noiseless footsteps, slipping into the hallway, disappearing from view. Her heart clamored as she curled her fingers around the tiny bit of metal, feeling it press into her skin. It was real, and that meant she wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating from the high-octane psychotropic medications that could easily be the reason she blurred reality with lies, fact with fiction, all because she believed something horrid had happened to her younger sister.

Allie, the innocent.

Allie, the sweet.

Allie, the liar.

How had she grown from a naive girl to a self-serving bitch? A once shy teenager who would now step on anyone in her path to fame? A beloved sibling morphing into an archrival?

Cassie drew in a long breath, fought her jealousy, reminded herself that Allie was missing, perhaps dead.

This was all so wrong—her life, these days.

The little bit of metal in her hand cut into her flesh.

She closed her eyes and let her breath out slowly, calming herself, telling herself that she wasn’t losing her mind, that everything would be all right. She just had to check herself out of the hospital.

Tomorrow. You’ll leave this psych ward and Mercy Hospital forever. And you’ll find Allie . . . you will.

Unless she’s already dead.

“Oh, God,” Cassie whispered, cold to the bone as she opened her eyes to the sterile room.

She was alone.

Again.

So why did the rocker in the corner sway ever so slightly?

All in your mind, Cass. You know it. All in your damned mind.

 

 

Chapter 2

Whitney Stone had two things going for her, she thought as she drove through the spitting morning rain. Her first noticeable asset was her looks. She knew it. Everyone knew it. Her features were even, her eyes large and dark fringed, her heart-shaped face compared to the animated Snow White in that ancient Disney flick. Yeah, she looked great. But her second asset wasn’t something so obvious and that was her brain. She was smarter than anyone knew, because she downplayed it. Oh, she came off clever, even cunning and Lord knew people respected her dedication to her job, her doggedness, her ability to sniff out a story and track it down. In a good ol’ boys network, she was one of the few women who had blazed her trail, even if she’d had to do a little lying, a bit of sleeping around, and just a smidge of illegal phone taps and camera work. Otherwise she wouldn’t have made it as far as she had in the cutthroat business of journalism.

Whitney hadn’t only survived or made her way, she’d thrived. Because she’d been cagey and smart. Used her good looks and acting ability to her advantage. Had she slipped in and out of roles?

Of course.

But this . . . this was a little trickier.

She had to be careful because damn it, she wasn’t getting any younger. Now, she needed her career to take off, to go farther. Much farther. She needed to be catapulted onto the national stage and she had just the ticket: Allie Kramer.

Heading into town, she smiled at the thought as her SUV twisted through the Terwilliger curves on the freeway. Speeding past a moving van that was drifting into her lane, she blasted her horn and the idiot at the wheel yanked back, nearly overcorrecting and fishtailing through a final turn. Wasn’t that the same truck she’d followed, with a question printed on the back of the trailer? How’s my driving? Well, it was shitty, that’s what it was. If she had a second to spare, she would ease off the gas, let the damned truck pass, then crawl up its backside and take a picture of the stupid question about the driving along with the number to call to report any infractions.

It would serve the moron right.

But she didn’t have time.

She never had enough.

Through her windshield, she caught a glimpse of the Willamette River and the city sprawled upon its wide banks. Bridges connecting the east side to the west were visible through the trees. High-rises had sprung up closer to the heart of the city and she noticed morning mist rising from the water as she spied the aerial tram that connected the waterfront campus of OHSU to the huge hospital built high in the West Hills. Oregon Health and Science University wasn’t too far from Mercy Hospital, where Cassie Kramer was currently a patient.

Again she smiled, thinking of Cassie in a mental ward.

A perfect place for her.

And one more juicy element in her story.

All in all Whitney liked Portland. It currently had a cool vibe ascribed to it, but, truth to tell she was sick to her back teeth of the gloomy weather and the constant traveling from PDX to LAX in Southern California.

It will be all worth it.

Soon.

She warmed inside at the thought, clicked on her blinker and edged her way toward an off ramp that would dump her near the Hawthorne Bridge with its metal grating and vertical lift, which allowed large ships to pass beneath it.

She was running late to a meeting with a source on the Eastbank Esplanade, a bicycle and pedestrian path on the east shore of the river. The source was supposed to have information on the rift between the missing Allie Kramer, her nutcase of a sister, Cassie, and their reclusive mother, Jenna Hughes. Whitney expected the guy to be a no-show, one more in a series of irritating dead ends, but she wouldn’t let an opportunity pass to gain more information, more insight into the Sisters Kramer and their famous mother.

This was her chance, she thought, as she found one of the few remaining parking spaces, grabbed her microphone and cell, then dodged a speeding bicyclist to wait for the informant.

In the meantime, she made calls and did research, studied the skyline of the west side of the river, where skyscrapers rose against a backdrop of forested hills. After an hour, her irritation growing with each passing minute, she finally gave up. One more time a promising source had turned out to be a dud and she was stood up, once again.

She walked back to her car and flopped inside. As she twisted on the ignition, she decided that she would do whatever was necessary to nail this story and if she had to be . . . uh, creative? . . . so be it. She wasn’t above bending the truth a little, or even staging a little drama.

Within reason.

There were lines she wouldn’t cross, of course. She had her ethics. But she also had a story to tell, a story that promised her a new echelon of fame.

And she deserved it, by God.

Life hadn’t been fair to her, and this time she wasn’t going to let the brass ring slip through her fingers. Not when it was sooo close.

Licking her lips, she plotted her next move.

How far would she go to get what she wanted?

Again, her lips twitched.

Pretty damned far.

“But you’re not well, not strong enough to leave,” Dr. Sherling said to Cassie after breakfast. She was a kind woman, who never wore makeup, her white hair a cloud, her cheeks naturally rosy, her skin unlined though she had to be in her seventies. Slim and fit, Virginia Sherling had been a competitive skier in her day, according to the nurses’ gossip. Beneath her bright, toothy smile and soft-spoken, easygoing demeanor lay a will of iron. Cassie knew. She’d tested the psychiatrist several times during her stay here and had witnessed the color rise in the older woman’s face and her slight English accent become more pronounced. Now, however, upon walking into Cassie’s room and finding her packing, Dr. Sherling was calm. At least outwardly as she stood next to the rocker in the room.

“I’ll be okay,” Cassie assured her.

“Have you talked to your family? Your mother?”

Cassie threw her a glance. “Have you?” she asked, double-checking that her phone and charger were tucked inside with her clothes and makeup bag. Everything was where it should be. Except for the bottles of meds that were tucked into a side pocket. No need for those. She grabbed the three bottles, read the labels, then threw them all into a nearby trash can.

The doctor’s lips tightened. “You can’t just stop those,” she said. “You need to taper off. Seriously, Cassie, I strongly advise you wean yourself carefully.” She walked to the trash, scooped up all three bottles, and dropped them into Cassie’s open bag. “These are strong drugs.”

“Exactly.”

“Please. Be responsible.” The doctor’s eyes behind her glasses were serious and steady. “You don’t want to come back here on a stretcher.”

Cassie’s jaw tightened.

“Have you talked to your mother?” she asked again.

The answer was “no,” of course, and Cassie suspected Dr. Sherling knew it and was just making a point.

When the older woman spoke, her voice was softer, more conspiratorial, as if they shared something personal. “Jenna’s concerned.”

For a second Cassie flashed on her mother. Petite. Black hair. Wide green eyes. A once-upon-a-time Hollywood beauty, Jenna Hughes had been a household name years before either of her daughters had tried to follow in her famous footsteps, before a monster, a deranged serial killer, had tried to destroy them all. Cassie shuddered, knew that the terror from all those years before had chased after her, unrelenting. Those memories, the horror, fear, and gore, were the dark well from where her blood-chilling nightmares sprang. For years she’d kept the terror at bay. Until the near-murder on the set and Allie’s disappearance. Now they’d come back again, with a vengeance.

“You entered the hospital voluntarily,” the doctor reminded her softly, as if she could read Cassie’s thoughts. That much was true, though she’d felt pressured into the decision. “You know you have unresolved issues.” A slight rise of the doctor’s white eyebrows punctuated her thought. “Night terrors. Hallucinations. Blackouts.”

“They’re better.” Cassie zipped her bag. Thought about the nurse she’d seen in her room. Not a hallucination; she had the earring to prove it. Still, she’d decided not to mention the visitor; nor would she rat out Rinko. There was no reason to make more trouble.

“Are they?” the doctor asked, her eyes narrowing behind her rimless glasses.

“Mmm.” A bit of a lie. Well, maybe more than a bit, but she nodded, pushing aside her doubts. “I was freaked out after the near-murder on the set. You know that. It’s why I came here. Voluntarily. To sort things out and get my head right.” She stared the doctor squarely in the eyes. “I’m still convinced someone was gunning for Allie.”

“It was an accident,” Dr. Sherling reminded her, a theory Cassie didn’t buy. There was an ongoing investigation after the “incident,” of course; the actor who’d pulled the trigger more shocked than anyone, the prop gun having been tampered with. So how was that an accident? This was the kind of thing that was never supposed to happen. Never. There were fail-safes in place.

And yet, Lucinda Rinaldi, who had miraculously survived after nearly two weeks in a coma, was recovering. She was now out of the hospital and, according to a mutual acquaintance, had graduated into a rehabilitation center on the other side of the river, where she was putting her life back together, all the while contemplating a lawsuit against the production company and anyone attached to Dead Heat.

An accident?

Cassie didn’t think so, but then she’d always been one to buy into conspiracy theories. She would keep her thought to herself for now. What she needed to do was get out of the hospital. She’d admitted herself voluntarily, she was going out the same way.

“Thanks,” she said to the doctor, swinging the strap of her bag over her shoulder.

“Seriously, Cassie, I think you should reconsider. Hallucinations? Blackouts? These are very serious issues.”

“Duly noted.” And then she walked out of the room. She wasn’t coming back. Period.

“Remember our appointment next week,” the doctor called after her.

Right. Cassie hurried past the information and admittance desks. Through an atrium with a soaring glass ceiling, she made her way outside where she felt the cooling mist against her face. She then hastened down wide marble stairs to the waiting cab, where the cabbie was smoking a cigarette and talking on a cell phone. At the sight of her, he abandoned both activities and climbed out of the car to toss her bag into the trunk of a dented cab that was definitely in need of a wash.

She caught sight of Steven Rinko on the front lawn. “Just a sec.” Rinko was a few steps away from a group of young men playing ring-toss.

“Meter’s runnin’,” the cabbie muttered.

“I’ll be right back.”

Cassie cut across the dewy grass to the spot where Steven stood in jeans and a white T-shirt and used a bathrobe as a coat. “You’re leaving,” he said sadly, his gaze traveling to the idling cab.

“That’s right.”

“Will you be back?”

Never. “I’m not sure. And so I need to know where you got the earring,” she said.

“The nurse.”

“Last night? The nurse you saw?” She caught one of the other teenage boys holding a plastic ring staring at her. He was tall and reed-thin, an African-American with haunted eyes and a sorrowful expression. Jerome.

“Yeah.” Rinko was nodding.

“She was in blue scrubs?” Cassie said, testing him.

He shook his head. “White.”

Her knees nearly buckled. Rinko had seen the same vision she had? Then it definitely wasn’t all in her mind! “Do you know her? Her name? Does she work here?”

“Hey, Butt-Wipe, you playin’ or what?” a third player, with skin that matched his bad attitude, yelled at Rinko. He was scrawny, with a sunken chest and hate-filled eyes, his baseball cap turned backward. “You’re up, Romeo.”

“Shut up, Fart Face,” Rinko said to the kid, then to Cassie, “Look, I gotta go.”

“Do you know her?” Cassie wanted to shake the answer from him.

“Nurse Santa Fe?” He shook his head and shrugged. “No one does.”

“Her name is Santa Fe? Like Santa Claus? Or saint in Spanish?