Roadside Crosses

for not doing anything, all of us who were there. We all knew [the driver] is a luser and perv and we should have called the police or somebody when they left. I had this bad feeling like in Ghost Whisperer. And look what happened.
    Why? Why did I say that?
    I was all, Leave Tammy alone. Don’t flame people online. And then I went and said something about Travis.
    Shit. Now he’s going to get me too! Is that what I’d heard outside earlier? Maybe he really was outside and, when my brother showed up, that scared him off.
    Kelley thought of the bicyclist she’d seen. Hell, Travis rode a bike all the time; a lot of kids at school made fun of him because he couldn’t afford a car.
    Dismayed, angry, scared . . .
    Kelley was staring at the posts on the screen of the computer, when she heard a noise behind her.
    A snap, like earlier.
    Another.
    She turned.
    A wrenching scream poured from Kelley Morgan’s lips.
    A face—the most frightening face she’d ever seen—was staring at her from the window. Kelley’s rational thinking stopped cold. She dropped to her knees, feeling the warm liquid gush between her legs as she lost control of her bladder. A pain spurted in her chest, spread to her jaw, her nose, eyes. She nearly stopped breathing.
    The face, motionless, staring with its huge black eyes, scarred skin, slits for the nose, the mouth sewn shut and bloody.
    The pure horror from her childhood fears flooded through her.
    “No, no, no!” Sobbing like a baby, Kelley was scrabbling away as fast as she could and as far as she could. She slammed into the wall and sprawled, stunned, on the carpet.
    Eyes staring, black eyes.
    Staring right at her.
    “No . . .”
    Jeans drenched with pee, stomach churning, Kelley crawled desperately toward the door.
    The eyes, the mouth with the bloody stitching in it. The yeti, the Abominable Snowman. Somewhere in that portion of her mind that still worked she knew it was only a mask, tied to the crape myrtle tree outside the window.
    But that didn’t lessen the fear it ignited within her—the rawest of her childhood fears.
    And she knew too what it meant.
    Travis Brigham was here. He’d come to kill her, just like he’d tried to kill Tammy Foster.
    Kelley finally managed to climb to her feet and stumbled to her door. Run. Get the fuck out.
    In the hall she turned toward the front door.
    Shit! It was open! Her brother hadn’t locked it at all.
    Travis was here, in the house!
    Should she just sprint through the living room?
    As she stood frozen in fear, he got her from behind, his arm snaking around her throat.
    She struggled—until he jammed a gun against her temple.
    Sobbing. “Please, no, Travis.”
    “Perv?” he whispered. “Luser?”
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!”
    As he dragged her backward, toward the basement door, she felt his arm flex harder until her pleas and the choking grew softer and softer and the glare from the spotless living room window turned gray and then went black.
    KATHRYN DANCE WAS no stranger to the American justice system. She had been in magistrates’ offices and courtrooms as a crime journalist, a jury consultant, a law enforcement officer.
    But she’d never been the relative of the accused.
    After leaving the hospital, she’d dropped the children off at Martine’s and called her sister, Betsey, who lived with her husband down in Santa Barbara.
    “Bet, there’s a problem with Mom.”
    “What? Tell me what happened.” There’d been a rare edge in the voice of the otherwise flighty woman, younger than Dance by several years. Betsey had curly angelic hair and flitted from career to career like a butterfly testing out flowers.
    Dance had run through the details she knew.
    “I’ll call her now,” Betsey had announced.
    “She’s in detention. They’ve got her phone. There’ll be a bail hearing soon. We’ll know more then.”
    “I’m coming up.”
    “It might be better later.”
    “Sure, of course. Oh, Katie, how serious is this?”
    Dance had hesitated. She recalled Harper’s still,determined eyes, missionary’s eyes. Finally she’d said, “It could be bad.”
    After they’d disconnected, Dance had continued here, to the magistrate’s office at the courthouse, where she now sat with her father. The lean, white-haired man was even paler than usual (he’d learned the hard way of the dangers a marine biologist faces in the ocean sun and was now a sunscreen and hat addict). His arm was around her