The Obsession(89)

He stood, tail ticking, and a shoe in his mouth.

A woman’s shoe, she noted, open toed, long skinny heel in cotton-candy pink.

“You’re not taking that home. You can just forget about that.”

When he dropped it at her feet, she stepped around it. “And I’m not touching it.”

As she picked her way down, he grabbed up the shoe, raced ahead again.

She stepped down onto the coarse sand, the bumpy cobbles of the narrow strip. Tag sent up a fierce spate of barking, a series of high-pitched whines that had her spinning around to snap at him.

“Cut it out! What’s wrong with you this morning?”

She lowered her camera with hands gone to ice.

The dog stood at the base of the bluff, barking at something sprawled on the skinny swatch of sand. She made herself walk closer until her legs began to tremble, until the weight fell on her chest.

She went down to her knees, fighting for breath, staring at the body.

Marla Roth lay, wrists bound, her hands outstretched as though reaching for something she’d never hold.

The bright, sparkling light went gray; the air filled with a roar, a wild, high wave.

Then the dog licked her face, whined, tried to nose his head under her limp hand. The weight eased, left a terrible ache in its place.

“Okay. Okay. Stay here.” Her hands shook as she unlooped his leash, clipped it on him. “Stay with me. God, oh God. Just hold on. Can’t be sick. Won’t be sick.”

Setting her teeth, she pulled out her phone.

—

She didn’t want to stay; she couldn’t leave. It didn’t matter that the police had told her to stay where she was, to touch nothing. She could have ignored that. But she couldn’t leave Marla alone.

But she went back to the rocks, climbed up enough to sit so the air could wash over her clammy face. The dog paced, tugged on the leash, barked until she hooked an arm around him, pulled him down to sit beside her.

It calmed them both, at least a little. Calmed her enough that she realized she could do the one other thing she wanted. She took out her phone again, called Xander.

“Hey.” His voice pitched over loud music, noisy machines.

“Xander.”

It only took one word, the sound in her voice on a single word, to have his stomach knotting.

“What happened? Are you hurt? Where are you?”

“I’m not hurt. I’m down below the bluff. I . . . It’s Marla. She’s . . . I called the police. I found her. I called the police, and they’re coming.”

“I’m on my way. Call Kevin. He can get down there faster, but I’m coming now.”

“It’s all right. I’m all right. I can wait. I can hear the sirens. I can already hear them.”

“Ten minutes.” Though he hated to, he ended the call, jammed the phone in his pocket, swung a leg over his bike.

On the rock, Naomi stared at the phone before remembering to put it away. Not in shock, she thought—she remembered how it felt to go into shock. Just a little dazed, a little out of herself.

“We have to wait,” she told the dog. “They have to get down the trail, so we have to wait. Someone hurt her. They hurt her, and they must have raped her. They took her clothes off. Her shoes.”

She swallowed hard, pressed her face against Tag’s fur.

“And they hurt her. You can see her throat. The bruises around her throat. I know what that means, I know what that means.”

The panic wanted to rear back, but she bore down, forced herself to take careful breaths. “Not going to break.”

The dog smelled of the rain that had dripped from wet trees, of wet ground, of good, wet dog. She used it to keep centered. As long as she had the dog, right here, she could get through it.

When she heard them coming, she drew more breaths, then got to her feet. “I’m here,” she called out.

The chief broke through the trees first, followed by a uniformed deputy carrying a case. Then another with a camera strapped around his neck.

She couldn’t see their eyes behind their sunglasses.

“She’s over there.”

His head turned. She heard him let out a breath of his own before he looked back at her. “I need you to wait here.”

“Yes, I can wait here.”

She sat again—her legs still weren’t altogether steady—and looked out to the water, to its sparkling beauty. After a time, Tag relaxed enough to sit down, lean against her.

She heard someone coming, too fast for safety on the steep, muddy track. Tag sprang up again, wagged everywhere in happy hello.

“They want me to wait here,” she told Xander.

He knelt down beside her, pulled her in.

She could have broken then—oh, it would have been so easy to break. And so weak.

He eased back, skimmed a hand over her face. “I’m going to take you up to the house.”

“I’m supposed to wait.”

“Fuck that. They can talk to you up at the house.”

“I’d rather do it here. I’d rather not bring this into the house until I have to. I shouldn’t have called you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I called before I . . .”

She trailed off as the chief walked back to them. “Xander.”

“I called him after I called you. I was pretty shaky.”