Murder at Sunrise Lake Read online

  Stella took a sip of the coffee. It was very hot. Too hot, just the way she liked it. “Why would it make a difference? I’ve always concentrated on what I’ve seen through the lens, not on the lens.”

  Zahra leaned closer. “What if you could make the lens wider yourself, Stella? If there were details on the lens you’re looking through, the camera itself, you might be able to adjust it, shift the view a little each time. I don’t know, it’s just a thought. When I dream, I can sometimes change my dream a little.” She shrugged and dabbed the zucchini stick in more sauce.

  Stella sat back, staring at Zahra in shock. In a hundred years she would never have thought of trying to change her dreams. Not those dreams. She was too shocked by them. Too terrified. “That’s brilliant, not that I know the first thing about cameras or lenses.”

  “But you do know how to draw what you see, and Harlow knows a lot about photography. She’s good, Stella, really good. If you can get any details at all, she might be able to tell you what you’re looking through and how to widen your view or move it even a little.”

  Stella bit down on her lower lip, trying to recall all the times she saw through the lens. She’d always concentrated on what she saw, the vivid details, training herself to see everything she could, not what she was seeing through. Now she tried to narrow her vision, block everything out but that lens.

  “Honestly, I’m too scattered to recall anything about the lens, Zahra, but you might be onto something. The thing is, if you are, and I can find something on the lens to help identify it, then I’d have to go to Harlow. As you well know, Harlow, like everyone in our circle of friends, is extremely intelligent and quick on the uptake. She’s going to know something is up, especially after the attack on Sam. Everyone now suspects James Marley was murdered but no one can prove it.”

  Zahra shrugged. “Maybe, but how is your asking about a certain type of lens going to have her connecting those dots?”

  “I’ve never asked about a camera in my life, Zahra. I have zero interest in them. I’ve gone to see her work and that’s it. You all laugh at me and I’m good with that. I don’t make any effort to get better. She knows that,” Stella pointed out.

  Zahra gave her that little mysterious, intriguing smile that got to every single man within miles if they saw it. Stella always thought she was beautiful when she flashed that particular secretive smile that told anyone seeing it exactly nothing, but they would want to know more.

  “You can’t purposely taunt Harlow, Zahra,” Stella said. “You’re such a minx sometimes. What did Harlow ever do to you?”

  “Harlow was very good to me,” Zahra said staunchly. “If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have made it into this country. I wouldn’t have gotten my citizenship or gotten into college. I owe her a lot. She’s been a good friend to me.”

  “But?” Stella prompted.

  Zahra shook her head. “I’ve never changed the way I’ve felt about her. It’s just complicated between us. I tease her occasionally and she takes it with grace.”

  “She never goes home. Never. Her mother comes here to see her, but she never goes home.” Stella didn’t make it a question, because if Zahra knew why Harlow’s mother visited but her very popular senator father didn’t, she didn’t want to put her on the spot.

  Harlow was a talented surgical nurse, but her first love was photography. She’d gone to school for it and not only taken classes at college but interned with some of the masters, both digital and old-school. She’d been making a name for herself when all of a sudden she’d gone to nursing school and seemingly become passionate about that career. Then she’d gone to the High Sierras and stayed. She was needed there and she could take the photographs she loved and do the work she felt was important.

  “Tonight I’ll see if I can get any details on the lens, Zahra,” Stella promised. “If I can, I’ll write it down, sketch it, and see if Harlow can help me. Thanks for understanding, but mostly, thanks for being my friend. I really needed you. As your friend, I have to tell you, that’s the same zucchini stick you’ve had for the last half hour and you’re dipping it into the sauce. You may as well pick up the sauce container and drink it.”

  Zahra made a face at her and dropped the zucchini onto her plate. “The sauce is excellent.”

  “I was getting that.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mommy, Daddy’s doing the bad thing again.

  The man kept up a steady pace in the very early morning hours, the young woman right behind him. It was still dark and both wore headlamps clamped to their foreheads. He cast a few glances over his shoulder, as if anxious that she was all right. She looked around her more than she paid attention to where she was putting her feet. The light whirled and bobbed as she tried to take in her surroundings even in the dark.

  The wind blew viciously, cutting at them both, tugging at their clothing, whipping at their jackets and her hair in spite of her baseball cap. Leaves swirled around the couple as they advanced along the trail. The man had a good gait, easy and natural along the climb. The woman seemed to struggle. There were rocks beneath the mat of leaves and she rolled them beneath the soles of her hiking boots, mostly because she wasn’t paying any attention to where she was going or what she was doing.

  The woman’s bobbing light shone on the trees surrounding her and then, when they gave way, to granite walls rising above her and rocks on the ground, with leaves of all colors clinging to them. She turned this way and that, at one point whirling around so fast she tripped and went down on one knee. Instantly, the man turned back and hurried to her. He helped her up and they consulted for a few minutes. He insisted she drink water, which she did, while he stood close to her. He gestured back the way they’d come, but she shook her head and gestured the way they were going. He nodded and resumed the hike, albeit reluctantly.

  The climb seemed to be going steadily uphill. Twice, he turned, saying something, and she nodded and took drinks of water. He was keeping her hydrated. That meant the hike was a long one. She was a little more cautious, keeping the light on the ground, just ahead of where she was stepping, although after a few minutes, she couldn’t help herself and began to look around again, showing various views of the rocky formations. Just flashes as her light bobbed and weaved through the section they hiked.

  Abruptly, the lens began to close. It hadn’t even gotten light. Stella wanted to shout that it wasn’t fair, but she forced herself to be aware in the dream. Not to be a passive observer, or a terrified one. For the first time, she tried changing the dream, maintaining it longer by staring at the lens only, trying to see if she was holding a camera and looking through it, silently cursing herself for not caring about photography. What was wrong with her when every other person in the world seemed obsessed with selfies?

  She tried to study the lens from every angle, to see if she could see even a part of the camera itself. Was that a dial on it? A button of some sort? Did it look like a knob? She tried to study it so she would be able to sketch it accurately. The lens closed abruptly.

  * * *

  —

  In spite of how composed she’d been, she heard that child’s voice very distinctly reverberating through her mind. She began to fight to get herself to the surface, to pull herself out of the nightmare.

  Her heart beat too fast. Blood thundered in her ears. Her breath hitched, lungs burning raw, desperate for air. She woke fighting the sheets, kicking frantically to get them off her legs. She sat up abruptly and gulped in air.

  Stella looked around her bedroom, her eyes a little wild, trying to take in everything familiar to anchor herself. Bailey was there, curled up in his bed across the room. Sam sat in a chair straight across from her, a silent sentry, looking strong and invincible. He had that expressionless mask, the one that was intimidating as hell. She’d never viewed him like that, and she knew that look was there to keep anyone from thinking they could harm her.<
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  “Stella?” Sam’s voice was gentle, moving over her like a caress.

  This was the first time she wasn’t sobbing hysterically or rocking back and forth. She had held the dream longer by just changing it slightly with her will. She had refused to view it as a nightmare, but more as a chance for her team to identify and catch the killer. To keep him from killing more victims.

  “I think I’m okay, Sam,” she said. Her voice trembled and she wasn’t certain she was telling him the truth, but she wanted it to be the truth. She pushed back the damp hair tumbling around her face. Her hands were shaking.

  Little beads of sweat had formed on her skin, running unattractively down her forehead and between her breasts. She had fought the sheets, but she hadn’t gone to sleep with a slew of blankets, knowing from experience what was coming. She wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t catatonic. She was thinking, her brain processing.

  “You’re the strongest woman I know, Stella,” Sam said. Respect was in his voice. Admiration. “Of course, you’re okay. You’ve got this, sweetheart.”

  Just knowing he believed in her was half the battle. She wasn’t alone in this fight. She had Sam and Zahra and even Raine if she needed to call on her. Raine would believe her and help in any way she could.

  “Tell me what you saw while it’s fresh in your mind,” Sam encouraged.

  She liked that he didn’t coddle her. There was no, Don’t think about it. He was all about, Get it out. Go over it a dozen times if you have to. Write it down. Draw it. That was Sam.

  “It was dark. I couldn’t see much. They both wore headlamps. She kept moving hers around so I caught a few glimpses of the terrain, but not much. At the end, when the lens was shutting down, I did my best to force the dream to continue and I studied the lens. I think I can draw a couple of features I saw around it. I don’t know if that will help or not.”

  That expressionless mask softened and his eyes lit up. His mouth curved. “You were right about Zahra. She really came through, didn’t she? Whether it pans out or not, she had a couple of really good ideas.”

  “She did point out that Harlow knows cameras and photography better than anyone in the county. She’s really good, Sam, but if I went to her, that would be bringing another person into our circle,” Stella said a little reluctantly.

  Sam had been so adamant about keeping the number who knew about her past very low so there was no way the killer would discover Stella’s true identity. She didn’t want others to know about her, but on the other hand, she didn’t want to be like her mother, going to any length to protect what she had and letting others die when she could possibly have saved them. She knew going to the police wouldn’t do any good at this point, but perhaps bringing Harlow in might help if she really was able to find something about the camera to widen her view.

  Sam tapped a rhythm on his thigh, his dark eyes drifting moodily over her face and then taking in her thin racerback tee that she’d worn to bed. It was old and ratty but it was soft and comforting and she’d needed it when she knew she was going to have a nightmare. The cotton was damp from her sweat and clung to her skin, revealing more than it covered.

  “Don’t like that you have to go through this, Stella, but your friends are women and we know the killer’s a man. These women have been your friends for over five years, some a little longer, and they’re all loyal to you. I can’t imagine any of them selling you out to the media, especially Harlow. If we bring her in, I want to be with you. They’re your friends, so it’s your call, but I want to be there.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. Her nerves were beginning to settle. Just talking to Sam did that for her. “Why?”

  “I scare people, sweetheart. Haven’t you noticed? I don’t have to say anything, I can just sit next to you instead of a few seats down and they’ll get the message.”

  Stella frowned, trying to analyze his tone. His voice had a velvet quality to it, almost as if it brushed over her skin. At the same time there was a note of menace, something very sinister and frightening, when he never raised his voice at all. He spoke low, but his instructions were always carried out. She’d noticed if he talked to a drunk causing a problem, the drunk listened immediately, no matter how far gone they appeared to be.

  “What message, Sam?” She looked directly into his eyes, challenging him. Daring him to tell her. She wasn’t afraid of him. She would never be afraid of him.

  “Not to fuck with you. They do and they’ll have to answer to me. That’s something they aren’t ever going to want to do.”

  His honesty sent a little frisson of heat curling down her spine. She lifted her chin at him. “Did you know that Raine is required to do a background check on anyone she hangs around with?”

  He folded his arms across his chest, looking more relaxed than ever. “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “She’s done one on everyone with the exception of you. Said she didn’t want to raise any flags in case you had enemies that might have alerts on your file. She also said she didn’t want you paying her a visit in the middle of the night. Is there a possibility of that if she had alerted an enemy? Or if any of the people who find out about me do rat me out?”

  “Yes.” There was no hesitation.

  Stella’s restless fingers gripped the sheet. “I don’t want that for you, Sam. You said so yourself, you put in your time. If something goes wrong, I’m a big girl, I can handle it. We can handle it without you going back to that place, whatever it is or was. We both came here because the Eastern Sierras offer something beautiful and unique, something we couldn’t find anywhere else. It’s my place of peace, of happiness. I think it’s yours as well. We started over here and we’ve got something good. Nothing can take that away, not even this serial killer.” She sent him a small smile. “You get me?”

  His answering smile was slow in coming. “Woman, you’re about as good as it gets. A gift. Write up your report and make your sketches. I’ll make your hot chocolate for you.” He stood up, took a step and stopped, turning back to her. For a moment he just stared at her with those dark, fathomless eyes.

  “What?”

  Sam shook his head. “Don’t want to lose you, woman. Not for any reason. If I lose my mind and fuck up, you hang in with me and let me know what I did and how to fix it.” He stood a moment longer and then turned his back on her and sauntered out of the room as only Sam could.

  Stella let her breath out. As declarations went, it was a good one, a Sam one, and she’d take it because he always meant every word he said. He could melt her heart when he did unexpected things like grill salmon for her at the end of a long day when she was so tired she just wanted to curl up in her egg chair and forget everything. When he brought her an ice-cold beer, or watched her favorite movie for the tenth time without complaint, those were Sam things. He bought books she liked, treats for Bailey, he remembered to get the particular kind of chocolate she loved. He was quiet about it. The books would show up occasionally, the chocolate would be in the kitchen and Bailey always had treats. Sam was thoughtful and he kept them uppermost in his mind.

  Stella switched on her lamp and pulled the drawing pad and journal out of the drawer of her nightstand. The moment she illuminated the bedroom, she had that eerie feeling she didn’t like, the one that told her someone could see in. She wished she’d gotten black-out screens for the windows instead of the shades that allowed her to see through them to the lake. She loved her views and hadn’t wanted to compromise them.

  She glanced at the window. She was being silly, wasn’t she, letting her imagination get the better of her? The aftereffects of the nightmare. She put one hand in the air and it was still trembling. It wasn’t as if she could say she wasn’t still freaked out by her dreams just because she was being proactive and Sam and Zahra were helping her.

  She forced her mind to be meticulous about remembering every component she could, writing it all down, and then s
he began to sketch. She was better at drawing. The details emerged when she fleshed out her illustration. She got lost in the picture, no longer thinking in terms of it being a serial killer’s view, or a witness’s view, but simply an artist’s rendition of two backpackers on a trail in the very early morning hours as they started on their journey.

  It was dark and she filled in that darkness with charcoal, adding the woman’s brief spotlighting of the floor of the trail, various rocks and the walls by putting each separate image in its own square, much like a graphic novelist might do. By treating each of the pictures as an individual drawing, rather than one as a whole, she could concentrate on details of what the light revealed to her. Veins in the rock. Crevices in the wall. Leaves from the types of trees or bushes. Stella always found that when she drew what she’d seen in her nightmares, she recalled quite a lot more detail. Her subconscious mind picked up far more than she realized.

  She turned to a new blank page and began to sketch the lens she had peered through, adding in the features she had noticed on the sides. What might have been a partial round knob that didn’t mean anything at all to her but hopefully meant something to someone else. This wasn’t a cell phone she was looking through. She put as much detail into that fractional view of the button as she had the other pictures, right down to the strange little vee-shaped mark in gold that ran through the black rounded-looking thing she thought might be a knob one could turn.

  When she looked up, Sam was standing well to the back of the room, out of the light spilling from the lamp beside her bed. Just the fact that he hadn’t come close to put her chocolate on the nightstand or see what she’d drawn sent more chills walking like fingers of doom down her spine.

  She glanced toward the bank of windows that overlooked the lake. With a little sigh she turned off the light, once more plunging the room into semidarkness. Even with clouds drifting across the moon, the lake reflected enough light to allow her to see well enough in the bedroom.