Free Blood Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff Page A

likes storms.”
    “She likes the outdoors,” Roarke said.
    “Uh huh.”
    “But was there any place she showed you on a map, or a place with a name?”
    Jason frowned and shrugged. “She likes the beach. And the mountains. And butterflies.”
    That narrows it all down .
    “Okay, Jason. You just keep talking to your dad, okay?” Roarke glanced at Sebastian, and the father nodded.
    Then Roarke’s eyes fell on the stuffed toy, and something tugged at his mind.
    “Did you and Leila ever talk about dolphins?”
    Jason considered this, shook his head. “No.”
    “Did you ever see a dolphin when you were with her? In the ocean, or in a store?”
    “Uh uh.”
    “So… why do you think she left you a dolphin?”
    Jason shrugged. “Dophins are awesome.”
    Roarke stood, and felt a rush of certainty. No, the dolphin isn’t some special message to Jason. It’s a message to me .
     
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
    The team looked up simultaneously from the conference table to see Roarke walk into the conference room. He hadn’t called in from the road to tell them where he was, but after leaving the Sebastian ranch, he’d driven straight back up to the city.
    “Boss. Weren’t expecting you,” Epps said. “Any luck?”
    “In a weird way.” The weirdest way possible. The trip he’d taken that seemed only to yield clues on a twenty-five year old case that wasn’t his to investigate had resulted in not a trail to Cara, but to Cara herself.
    Epps was staring at him. “You found Lindstrom?”
    “She found me,” Roarke said.
    He filled them in about the dolphin toy. Even as he was recounting it he knew that it sounded absurd, no kind of proof at all. Jones was looking perplexed. “Because of a stuffed dolphin? I don’t get why you think it was her.”
    “It was her,” Epps said. “Of course it was her.” He looked at Roarke. “She’s alive. And she’s after you.”
    “I wouldn’t say she’s after me,” Roarke said.
    “What would you say?” the agent demanded.
    Roarke found he didn’t have any immediate answer, so he just shook his head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”
    They all sat in silence. Roarke looked at the white board, at the police sketch he knew so well by now. Sunglasses, turtleneck, those fine, carved features.
    “This is how we catch her,” Epps said suddenly, with a tension Roarke recognized as excitement, and for a moment he had no idea what Epps was talking about. “We tail you and wait for her to show.”
    Roarke felt a sudden sinking in the pit of his stomach. “That’s if she isn’t three states away by now,” he said.
    Epps looked at him strangely. “She isn’t.”
    He was right, of course. Roarke didn’t know what Cara was doing following him, but he knew if that’s what she was doing, she wasn’t about to stop.
    “What does she want?” Singh asked. Concern was grave in her voice. “Are you in danger?”
    “I don’t think so,” Roarke said automatically. Cara could have killed him any number of times already. He said it aloud. “If she wanted to kill me, I’d be dead.”
    The fact was they had no evidence that she had ever killed anyone who wasn’t dangerous or just plain evil. And she didn’t seem to care much about self-defense, either, although he didn’t want to think about what might happen in a law enforcement standoff, either to her or to law enforcement.
    So what did she want? And how long had she been watching him?
    And then the obvious hit him.
    “Blythe,” he told them. “It had to be in Blythe. She followed me from there.”
    She must have picked up his trail when he’d gone back to her old home, the site of the massacre of her family. It made the most sense that she had been drawn back there, just as he had, but with a much stronger pull.
    Epps was speaking. “So we stake out your place, we put a team on you everywhere you go. And you should be wearing a vest at all times.”
    “She’s not going to shoot me,” Roarke said, stiff