Free River's Edge by Terri Blackstock

me.”
    “Sit down.” He pointed her to a plush easy chair. Her heart raced as she sat down, terror taking her breath away. He took the seat across from her. They were almost knee to knee.
    She couldn’t wait any longer. “So what did you find out?”
    He picked up the sweater he had lying on an end table and moved it around in his hands. “Rani, I’m really sorry. I hate to be the bearer of bad news.”
    Rani wilted back. She knew it. “Just spit it out. Come on.”
    “I’m afraid your friend is dead.”
    Rani had expected it—had even rehearsed it—but now she found that it hit her in the gut.
    “That’s what you saw? That she’s dead?”
    “I saw more than that. I’m sensing that there was foul play of some kind, though I can’t say exactly what the nature of it was. When I hold the sweater, I just feel a lot of tension and fear.”
    Rani sat up straighter, blinking back the tears in her eyes. He could be wrong…He could be blowing smoke, conning her. He probably didn’t know what he was talking about.
    “I believe I know where she is. In a vision, I saw her car going into the water about half a mile east of Bull Bridge.”
    Fear rammed its fist into her chest again. This was more specific than she’d expected.
    “I believe if you find that car, you’re going to find her. Tell the police to search there first.”
    She got up, trying to think. Lisa wasn’t dead. The man was a fraud. Just an evil, conniving, con artist trying to get his name in the paper. She tried to believe it was a hoax, but her heart wasn’t buying. She looked down at a statue of a Buddha on a table, trying to think.
    “I tried to get more,” he said. “But it just didn’t come to me. It’s hard to know how these visions work. Sometimes I get parts of things, sometimes wholes. I guess the important thing, though, is that we notify the police.”
    Rani nodded and started digging through her purse for her keys. Then she realized she already had them in her hand. “I’ll go straight there from here.”
    “If you need me to talk to them, I will, but as I’ve told you before, Chief Cade doesn’t like me very much.”
    Rani wanted out of there. She started for the door. “I’ll handle it.”
    “And would you do me a favor? Let me know if and when you find her?”
    Nodding absently, Rani headed back out to her car and closed herself in. She sat there for a moment, staring at the steering wheel.
    Lisa wasn’t dead. He was flat wrong.
    She pulled out into traffic, wishing for numbness. It couldn’t be true, yet what if it was? What if her friend was dead at the bottom of the river?
    She couldn’t make herself go to that place for fear she would find her. Instead, she drove to the police station as fast as she could.

CHAPTER 16
    C ade had gone to the site where Lisa was supposed to have shown property yesterday—a plot of land on the edge of some forest land, on the eastern side of the island. Rani got the location and decided to go there and tell Cade herself what Carson Graham had said. If she gave the information to someone else, it might be ignored.
    She found the site easily. Cars lined the street out in front of the land, and a table was set up near the road, where police officers were registering volunteers and giving them instructions. She tromped in her high heels through the grass, right up to the table.
    “You’ll need to change your shoes, ma’am,” a young cop said. “It’s rough treading in those woods.”
    “I’m not here to search. I need to speak to Chief Cade.”
    “He’s busy right now.”
    She leaned on the table and glared into his face. “Go find him and tell him it’s Rani Nixon, and that I have information about where Lisa is!”
    The cop sprang up. “Okay, just stay here for a minute.”
    She paced back and forth in front of the table, waiting for Cade to come out of the house. In a moment, he emerged, looking fatigued and distracted. His limp was more pronounced than it had been