Chapter 16

Rachel called the Zion Police Department and, without giving her name, informed them that Dexter Bates had broken into her aunt’s house and committed a violent crime. She supplied a detailed physical description of Dexter. She even gave them his inmate number, reading it from the record she’d printed off the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site.

The police dispatcher promised to send officers to her aunt’s house immediately. Rachel hung up and rocked back in her office chair, shaking.

Dexter didn’t hurt Aunt Betty. He couldn’t have.

But she could still hear her aunt’s raw scream. Worse, she had an awful knot in the pit of her stomach—a pulsating ball of tangled muscle that she felt only when someone close to her had died. When her parents had passed when she was a teenager, she’d experienced identical sickening premonitions and feelings.

She can’t be dead.

But the Dexter she remembered was fully capable of murder. She knew that better than anyone.

His voice returned to her: I’m going to find you.

Before calling her aunt, she had punched in the code to hide her phone number from Caller ID, but it gave her no comfort. Dexter would bring to bear the same tunnel-vision focus to finding her that he brought to everything else in his life. And he was intelligent, frighteningly so, with a damn near photographic memory, the cunning of a predator—and no conscience whatsoever.

Sooner or later, he was going to discover where she lived. It was as inevitable as nightfall.

The thought of what he’d possibly done to her aunt . . . the fear of what he would do to her, and then, innocent Joshua, was too much for her to withstand. She bolted out of the chair, raced to the bathroom, flipped up the toilet lid, and vomited so violently into the bowl it felt as though her stomach lining had torn loose.

None of the other stylists came to check on her. The music playing out front, and the chattering women hard at work on hair, would have drowned out any noises from back there.

She was grateful for the privacy. She couldn’t share her predicament with anyone. She didn’t dare to put anyone else at risk.

At the sink, she washed her face with cold water, rinsed out her mouth.

The cell phone she wore on her hip rang. Joshua’s cell number appeared.

She remembered her two o’clock doctor’s appointment. He was probably calling her to confirm that she was meeting him.

She let the call go to voice mail. A wave of sadness washed over her that almost drove her to her knees again.

I’m so sorry,Josh, she thought.

She touched her abdomen and imagined the as-yet-unformed heart of their child, beating softly inside of her.

I’m sorry, but I’ve got to protect our baby.

It was time for her contingency plan.