Free Blood Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff

could barely swallow.
    “Dolphin,” Jason said impatiently. “She came and left a dolphin.”
    The men trouped after Jason into his bedroom, a huge room for a five-year old, with a bed area, a TV and computer area, a play area, a low table for art. Jason stopped and pointed.
    There was a stuffed dolphin on the bed, a big plush toy. Like the kind you could get at Sea World, or any number of souvenir shops — if you happened to be in San Diego.
    For a moment Roarke was back on the beach, watching leaping flashes of silver against the setting sun.
    “It’s not his,” Mark Sebastian said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
    Roarke crouched to the boy. “Did you see Leila?” The name was unfamiliar in his mouth. “Did she talk to you?”
    Jason shook his head.
    “How do you know the dolphin is from her?”
    Jason shrugged. “It was outside,” he said. “On the swing.” Irrefutable logic.
    “And how do you know it’s from her?” Roarke repeated.
    “Because it is ,” Jason said.
    “Jesus Christ,” Sebastian said under his breath. “She was here.”
    She’s alive , Roarke thought. She’s alive .
     
    The two men strode out of the house, off the back porch. Roarke saw it immediately, a twisted tree that looked as if it had been there forever. A sturdy rope swing hung from a thick horizontal branch.
    “Right there,” Jason said, importantly, now caught up in the men’s excitement. “It was there.”
    There was no fence around this part of the property. The house was set on the rolling hills and the wilderness came right up to the house. Roarke scanned the hills, searching between the gnarled olive trees, as if he would be able to see her.
    “She’s following me,” he told Sebastian. “She must have followed me up from San Diego.”
    And while he’d been sleeping two miles away in a motel, she’d been right here.
    Sebastian looked alarmed, and conflicted, parental protectiveness wrestling with something less definable in his face.
    “You said she wouldn’t come after Jason,” he said.
    No , you said that , Roarke thought, but didn’t argue the point. “I don’t think she’s come after Jason. She left him a stuffed toy.”
    “Why?”
    Roarke thought of the dolphins, the joyous arcs against the swells of waves. They had put him in mind of Jason, himself.
    “Maybe she was just thinking of him.”
    And then something else occurred to him.
    She wanted me to know she’s out there. She followed me here last night and knew where I’d be going in the morning and she put the dolphin here so I would know she’d been here .
    Was that really true? Or some wild speculation of his own?
    But the dolphin couldn’t be coincidence. And he had felt something on the bluffs. He’d felt — not alone.
    Oh, yeah. That’s scientific proof, all right .
    He was jolted from his thoughts by Sebastian’s agitated voice. The father was staring at him tensely. “Agent Roarke, I need to know if my son is safe. Any input you have on the subject would be appreciated.”
    Roarke stifled a flash of irritation, kept his voice even. “I don’t think that she’s after Jason. But I would take all precautions until…”
    “Until you catch her?” Sebastian said, and Roarke’s breath stilled. “Is that going to be soon?”
    Roarke didn’t know how to answer that.
     
    He went through several varations of questions with Jason, but the boy was adamant that he had not received any other gifts or messages from Cara until the dolphin appeared.
    “If you hear from her, or see her, you’ll let your dad know right away, right, sport?”
    “Uh huh,” Jason said, but wasn’t looking at Roarke. Roarke didn’t know if that meant he was bored or upset or lying. He crouched again to look Jason in the eyes.
    “Did Leila ever tell you about special places that she has? Places she likes to go? Or a place she said she would take you, sometime?”
    “She likes the sky and the wind and the sand,” Jason said. “And storms, she