One Grave Too Many

talents, like being able to guzzle a quart of beer at once, that served no useful purpose other than to impress her friends when she was in college—until now, and now it might save her life. She stayed underwater to the count of 120. Two minutes. She forced herself to let her eyes come up slowly to make sure . . . Good thing she was a caver. It made her strong. She needed physical strength right now. Emotional strength too. That was a lot harder.
    They crossed the bridge again and again. Searched the toolshed, broke in its door. She waited. The water was cool and seductive. She could see how easy it was for people to drown themselves. Just slip under and breathe, let the water fill your lungs and take you to a place where there’s no pain or grief. But not me.
    Diane never wanted to die, even in the depths of her grief for Ariel, cursing God and man, throwing up until her ribs ached, crying until her eyes were so swollen she could hardly see. All that, but she never wanted to die. She didn’t want to die now, and she wasn’t going to. She would kill before she would die. She waited.
    She knew patience. Anyone who could take weeks to excavate a mass grave of murdered innocents, map miles of unexplored caves, take eight hours to climb twenty feet up a rock face was patient. She could wait.
    He, the raspy voice, knew about the missing skull. The thought had struck her as he said it, but now she had time to think about it. How did he know? It wasn’t a secret, but he had to be close to her investigation to know. Who was the secret enemy in her camp?
    The cool, soothing water was feeling colder, but she didn’t think she was in danger of hypothermia. She pretended she was in a cave. She’d traversed many a water-way colder than this. There was nothing more serene and lovely than an underground lake. Cave ethics dictate that you remove your dirty clothes and stuff them in a waterproof bag to keep the pristine waters of an underground lake or stream as unpolluted as possible. She thought about how the cool cave waters felt on the skin, how she felt like an otherworldly creature slipping through the still waters of a deep, dark chamber. She pretended the piling was a stalagmite, one she could touch—another principle of caving is to not touch anything that has taken eons to form and could be destroyed by careless touching, but this one she could touch. This one was life-giving.
    She’d have to do a cave exhibit at the museum. Take visitors on an underground adventure beneath the earth, give them a new view of nature. She could do that in the basement—create a cave environment. She wondered if Mike Seger, the geology student, knew anything about caves. She planned the entire project in her head as she waited and listened, trying to hold at bay the feelings of terror inside her.
    No more light hounds, but can’t trust them to be predictable. They may have been crouched in the dark, waiting for her to move. She’d wait all night until her staff arrived, until the groundspeople arrived. In the meantime, she’d continue planning exhibits and try to figure out who might be doing this.
    Korey thought Frank’s attacker was a racist. She didn’t think so. He just wanted to look the opposite of what he is. People would see the dreadlocks, the dark face, and think African-American; they wouldn’t think white. But where did that get her? She had already guessed that.
    Better to go back to planning exhibits. She could handle concepts, but her brain was having a hard time with deduction. What she would really like to do is sleep. Perhaps it might be safe to move now, to get out of the water. She quietly moved away from the piling and scanned the distance around the pond. No lights; everything was quiet.
    Something, perhaps fear, told her to stay with her plan. She felt physically unable to deviate from it. She went back to her place just as a flash of light swept through the woods. The hounds were still there.
    She began planning an attack on Jonas’ chess pieces, forcing her brain to plot moves, anticipate responses. By the time the sun was beginning to show through the trees she’d planned a campaign against his black king, and designed an underground adventure exhibit for the museum. Perhaps all she needed to be able to get her museum work done was to become stranded overnight in the swan pond with murderers on shore searching for her.
    When the road noise picked up and she saw the movement of the groundskeepers,