Free Sleeping With Fear by Kay Hooper Page A

investigated."
    "It won't stop the talk."
    "No. But I can't offer anything else, Ash, not yet. I need time. Time to get a better grip on what's going on here."
    "I don't like the idea of you working alone on this."
    "Jake and his people-"
    "Are out of their depth. We both know that. Why don't you want to be on the official clock, Riley? Why not call your boss, have him send down some help?"
    "The unit's spread really thin right now," Riley answered truthfully. "Besides, Jake said an official FBI presence would stand out around here, and he's right. It may be no secret I'm with the Bureau, but at least I won't be flashing my badge or gun and interrogating people. That makes a difference, Ash; it changes how people respond to even a casual question, much less a pointed one. If I can keep my presence low-key, I'm more likely to find out…something."
    "Yes," he said. "That's what I'm afraid of."
     
    It was a Monday evening, but it was also in-season for the beach community and surrounding areas, so the restaurant Ash had chosen on the outskirts of Castle was doing brisk business. The good news, as far as Riley was concerned, was that the majority of that business consisted of summer visitors, most of whom didn't know one another.
    Knowledge or memory?
    She wasn't sure. Dammit.
    In any case, if the restaurant's customers on this night even knew a body had been found only a couple of miles away, it didn't appear to be hampering their enjoyment of the quiet music and excellent seafood.
    Riley did, however, catch at least a couple of glances and smiles aimed toward them as she and Ash were seated in a semisecluded back corner booth and left alone with their menus, and she murmured, "Nobody looks too panicked."
    "Yet," he said. "But you can bet word of what was found this afternoon is spreading. By morning the summer visitors will be uneasy, some to the point of packing up early. The locals will be worried and demanding answers. More calls to my office, that's for sure. But I don't envy Jake, since he and his people will get the brunt of it."
    "Part of the job."
    "Probably not what he signed on for, though. Not in Hazard County."
    "You either, I guess."
    "No," Ash said after a moment. "I didn't sign on for it either."
    Riley was looking at her menu but not really studying it. Something else was nagging at her. "Jake said nobody'd been reported missing."
    "Yeah. You think who the victim is-or was-might be more important than how he was found?"
    "At least
as
important, surely."
    "No random sacrificial victim?"
    "I'll have to do some research," she said, hedging her bets since she couldn't remember just what Ash knew of her background, "but offhand I can't think of any sort of black-occult ritual centering around the sacrifice of a victim chosen at random or just because he happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. Rituals tend to be very controlled, very specific.
Especially
when they involve anything as extreme as a blood sacrifice."
    "So I take it all the urban legends about homeless people disappearing, to be used in satanic rites or as part of a black market for organs, are just that. Urban legends."
    It was at least half a question, and Riley nodded in response as she met his intent gaze. "The vast majority of stories like that are about as real as leprechauns. The Bureau conducted an exhaustive investigation years ago, when half the country seemed convinced there were devil worshippers on every corner, and didn't find a shred of evidence to support all the scary claims of ritual human sacrifices during black sabbats."
    "Yet there are genuine satanic rites practiced."
    "Even genuine satanic rites don't involve murder. You have to get beyond…conventional…Satanism and really out on the fringes to find that sort of thing."
    "Seriously? There are fringes beyond Satanism?"
    "You'd be surprised." He really did have the most amazing eyes. She hadn't known eyes
came
in such a pale shade of green. Not human eyes, at any