Page 57 of Nothing Hiding

As Juliette climbed out, she saw the beam of a flashlight in the distance and caught her breath. But then, she realized it was just a security guard or night watchman checking the area. The gray-haired man in an official jacket, with a badge on his breast pocket, was now heading toward her.

"Evening, ma'am. We're closed," he said, pausing to give a wheezy cough. "You'll need to come back tomorrow. Ticket sales are at the entrance or else online."

Juliette showed him her badge. In a quiet voice, she said, "I'm taking a look around as we think a dangerous criminal might be here."

His eyebrows raised. "You want me to walk with you, ma'am?" he asked.

Juliette shook her head. This elderly man, suffering from a cough, should not be exposed to the level of danger this killer would present. In fact, there was too much risk altogether for him to stay on site.

"Please leave this area,” she said. “Please drive off the site and call the police when you’re outside the exit gate. They can wait there with you until we’ve cleared this site. They’ve been briefed to patrol around the area so there should be police nearby."

The security guard nodded, reading out his phone number to her, and taking her card. His expression was uneasy as he took in the extent of the threat. "Right you are, ma'am. I'll do that."

He turned and hurried to the small, fenced parking lot. A moment later, he drove out, heading for the site’s main exit gate, which was out of sight, over a hill.

Juliette took a deep breath and walked through the entrance, past the cashier’s desk and the gift shop. Then she headed out into the area of the stones themselves.

They loomed up in the darkness, resting on neatly mowed grass. Their shapes were indistinct in the gloom, but she could feel their presence, the weight of history and power that emanated from them. She shivered, partly from the cool breeze blowing across the plain, partly from the anticipation of what she might find.

The stones themselves were massive and awe-inspiring, casting eerie shadows in the flickering beam of her flashlight. They provided a hundred different hiding places, and she was going to have to quickly and sneakily check around and behind every one.

She started to walk along the perimeter of the stones, shining her flashlight ahead of her. The beam darted from stone to stone, revealing nothing out of the ordinary. Everything was still, silent except for the occasional gust of wind. Quickly, she ducked inside the circle and had a look, shining her light between two stones. Nothing.

And then, her phone started buzzing in her pocket again.

It was Wyatt calling, and she grabbed it up. Had the killer been caught?

"Any news?" she said quietly.

"Massive news," he said, sounding breathless. "Detective Black just found the missing woman, Louise Allday, in an alleyway a few yards to the right of where the last body was dumped."

"She did?" Juliette gaped in astonishment. That wasn’t in sequence with the sites they’d planned out. What was happening?

A moment later, Wyatt’s second bombshell landed.

“She’s alive.”

“Still alive? Did he try to kill her and fail? Was she painted up?”

"She was bound, gagged, and blindfolded. Been there a couple of hours at least. But she’s unhurt, and she wasn’t painted up."

"That doesn’t make sense," Juliette said, feeling shocked. "Then it must be an unrelated crime. Surely? Unless he was going to come back for her?"

Wyatt continued, sounding breathless. "No, it’s the same criminal, for sure. Black questioned her immediately, and she said that the man who took her—who she never saw—had ranted to her that she was the wrong one, that he was on the trail of the right victim, the ones the stones needed. That the stones would help him to draw power, that she was second best, and he was not going to sacrifice her to them. All sorts of crazy things like that. She's still being debriefed, and they're doing a massive search of the area now. Warnings are being given to all young women who are walking alone after dark."

"I'm going to finish searching here and come back and help," Juliette said. All hands were needed in London, now. She might have been wrong coming out here, even though it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

She quickly hung up and turned away. But as she did, her flashlight beam bobbed over something that she saw in the periphery of her vision, only out of the corner of her eye.

It looked like a human form, standing close to the stones.

Juliette froze. Carefully, she looked again, her heart speeding up.

Suddenly, a lot of puzzle pieces were falling into place. The oblique referrals to this site that had sparked her interest. The massive focus of attention that had directed all the police into London.

And the way that she'd been subtly lured out here.

Was that a human behind the stones?

---