The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance 1)

SATURDAY

Chapter 61

Tears pooling in her eyes, a woman lay on the bed of the cheap transient hotel off Del Monte, near Highway 1. Listening to the hiss of traffic, she was staring at the ceiling.

She wished she could stop crying.

But she couldn't.

Because he was dead.

Her Daniel was gone.

Jennie Marston touched her head, under the bandage, which stung furiously. She kept replaying the last few hours of their time together, Thursday. Standing on the beach south of Carmel, as he held the rock in the shape of Jasmine, her mother's cat, the one thing her mother would never hurt.

Recalling how Daniel held the rock, turning it over and over.

"That's exactly what I was thinking, lovely. It looks just like a cat." Then he'd held her tighter and whispered, "I was watching the news."

"Oh, back at the motel?"

"That's right. Lovely, the police found out about you."

"About--"

"Your name. They know who you are."

"They do?" she whispered in horror.

"Yes."

"Oh, no . . . Daniel, sweetheart, I'm sorry . . ." She'd started shaking.

"You left something in the room, right?"

Then she remembered. The email. It was in her jeans. In a weak voice she said, "It was the first one where you said you loved me. I couldn't throw it out. You told me to, but I just couldn't. I'm so sorry. I--"

"It's okay, lovely. But now we have to talk."

"Sure, sweetheart," she'd said, resigned to the worst. She caressed her bumpy nose and no silent recitations of angel songs, angel songs were going to help.

He was going to leave her. Make her go away.

But things were more complicated than that. It seemed that one of the women in the Family was working with him. Rebecca. They were going to get another Family together and go to his mountaintop, live by themselves.

"You weren't supposed to be part of it, lovely, but when I got to know you I changed my mind. I knew I couldn't live without you. I'll talk to Rebecca. It'll take a little while. She's . . . difficult. But eventually she'll do what I say. You'll become friends."

"I don't know."

"You and me, lovely, we'll be the team. She and I never had that connection. It was about something else."

If he meant they just had sex, that was okay. Jennie wasn't jealous about that, not too much. She was jealous about him loving someone else, sharing laughs and stories, someone else being his lovely.

He'd continued, "But now we have to be careful. The police know you and they'll be able to find you easily. So you've got to disappear."

"Disappear?"

"For a while. A month or two. Oh, I don't like it either. I'll miss you."