“Hmmm,” Lucian muttered, and glanced to Harper. “I was glad to get your message.”
“Gave you an excuse to avoid eating Leigh’s cooking, hmm?” Harper asked with amusement.
He nodded, and picked up his sandwich again. “Which is why I am not as angry as I should be.”
“Leo makes all of us angry,” Basil said quietly as Lucian took another bite of his sandwich.
Lucian didn’t even look at him. His gaze was locked on Drina as he chewed. Once he swallowed, he asked, “Why did you bring the girls back?”
“I explained everything in my message,” Harper said with a frown.
When Lucian didn’t even glance his way, but continued to stare at Drina, she said, “Leo found the girls.”
“No. He didn’t,” Lucian said, and took another bite of his sandwich.
“Yes, he did,” Drina assured him. “At least he found Sherry. He approached her at a mall in London. We were concerned that Leo might have followed them back to Port Henry.”
Lucian nodded as he swallowed and then said, again, “He didn’t.”
“He didn’t follow them back?” Drina asked with a frown. “How can you know that?”
“Because he didn’t approach her at the mall,” Lucian said grimly.
“What?” Drina asked with confusion.
“It’s Susan all over again,” Lucian announced.
“Susan?” Sherry murmured, glancing to Basil questioningly. However, he merely shrugged, apparently not knowing what the man was talking about either.
“I don’t understand,” Drina said slowly.
“Port Henry,” he reminded her. “The attacks there. You all assumed it was Leonius.”
“But it wasn’t,” Drina pointed out. “That time it was Susan.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “And this is the same thing all over again.”
Drina shook her head. “This is nothing like the last time, Uncle. There haven’t been any attacks. And this time it is Leo. He approached her at the mall. We saw him in Sherry’s memory.”
“Did you?” Lucian asked mildly, peering into the bag of chips and picking one out to sniff suspiciously before popping it in his mouth.
“Yes, we did.” Stephanie spoke up now, scowling at the man as he winced, his cheeks sucking inward as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “We all saw it in her memory.”
Lucian didn’t even glance at the girl. Returning his gaze to Drina, he chewed, swallowed, and said, “Look again . . . and this time really look . . . as you would if you had no idea who it might be.”
Sherry wasn’t surprised when Drina immediately turned to her. She was a little dismayed, though, that everyone else did too. Well, everyone but Lucian. He turned his attention back to eating as Drina, Harper, Stephanie, Bricker, and even Basil turned to eye her. Basil was the only one who wasn’t staring at her with that weird concentrated expression, but then he was the only one there who couldn’t read her.
Resigning herself to it, Sherry recalled the moment they were looking for and simply waited.
“See,” Stephanie said with a nod. “She was wearing the outfit she has on now. Someone knocked at the dressing room door. She opened it and it was . . .” Stephanie shook her head with frustration. “It looks like Leo, except—”
Sherry tilted her head at what Stephanie had said. It twigged a memory for her. She recalled exactly what Stephanie described. She had been wearing the jeans she now had on and the sweater. A knock sounded at the door. She’d opened it, expecting it to be Elvi, but . . . Sherry frowned and shook her head. It was all very fuzzy. She saw Leo standing outside the dressing room, but another face kept trying to replace his, and the image was overlaying his, or perhaps his image was overlaying the other so that it was a confused picture, like a double-exposed photo.
“It was a dream,” Stephanie said suddenly, her eyes wide. “It was fuzzy the first time, but I can see it better now. It’s like a digital recording that’s gone whacky. It must have been a dream we’ve picked up on.”
Sherry let her breath out with a little sigh of relief. That made sense. As she’d suggested back at the house, she’d been having nightmares about Leo and his little trio of monsters since the attack in her store. Why wouldn’t she have one during her faint?
“It’s not a dream,” Lucian announced, and took another bite from his sandwich.