your mom now. Tell me everything you remember about it.”
Max frowned thoughtfully. “There was a fence and little houses. Is my dad okay?”
“He’s fine, but he took a pretty good hit on the head, and so he’s going to stay in the hospital tonight. What do you remember about the man who hit your dad?”
Once again, a little frown rode across the boy’s forehead. “He had on a mask, you know, like you wear in the wintertime.”
“A ski mask?”
Max nodded. “And he was wearing jeans and a blue short-sleeved shirt. He talked in a funny, low voice and pretended to be somebody else, but he was wearing the shoes he always wears when he works out in the yard, and I saw his mole when he moved his arms and his shirt opened a little.”
“You know him?” Cole asked, his heart beating a thousand miles a minute. A mole? He remembered seeing a distinctive mole. “Was it your neighbor, Max?”
“Yes, it was Mr. Gershner. I don’t know why he hurt my dad or why he pretended to be somebody else and took me. I pretended not to know who he was, because he was scaring me and I thought he might get mad if I told him I knew.” Tears began to fill Max’s eyes once again. “Please find my mom, Sheriff Cole. She needs you.”
At that moment, a patrol car pulled up. As Max got into the backseat, Cole quickly told the officer behind the wheel what Max had told him and then watched the patrolman pull away.
He knew that, within minutes, the cops would be swarming Ed Gershner’s place and looking for clues. In the meantime, Cole wanted to find a place with little houses and a fence before Amberly wound up stretched out somewhere with a dream catcher over her head.
AMBERLY REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS to find herself bound at the wrists and ankles and in one of the storage units. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling, and through the slits of her eyes, she saw Ed Gershner working on a large dream catcher in the corner of the small room. He’d removed the ski mask that covered his face.
Shock stuttered through her at the sight of him. Ed? Friendly, neighborly Ed? Ed who played chess with John so often? What was he doing? Why was he doing this? Her head pounded with a nauseating intensity, but not so badly that she didn’t realize she was in terrible danger.
He glanced in her direction. “Ah, I see you’re awake. Won’t be long now, just got to put the finishing touches on this dream catcher. No cheap Made In China one for you, Amberly. You should feel honored you’re getting the real deal. ’Course I had to read up on how to make one of these dream catchers on the internet. Amazing, isn’t it? The kinds of things you can learn from a website?”
She felt like she was staring at a man she’d never seen before. “You killed those women in Mystic Lake?” she asked, knowing it was probably useless to scream, for there was nobody around to hear her cries.
“I did what had to be done.” He wove the string with nimble fingers, creating the web of the dream catcher. “I needed you drawn away from home, to a place where nobody would suspect me. Mystic Lake was just close enough, yet far enough away from the city to accomplish what I needed. I figured the dream catchers would do the trick and get you involved, and I was right.”
“But why?” She struggled with the rope that bound her hands in front of her but found it tight and well tied.
Ed stopped what he was doing and rose to his feet, his face twisted with a rage Amberly had never known before. “Why? Why? Because you have to die, that’s why. It’s the only way John will ever be able to live again. As long as you’re anywhere on the face of this earth he’ll remain nothing but a shell of a broken man.”
She stared at him with horror mingling with a strange sense of wonder. For John? He was doing all this for John? “Ed, this is crazy. John will be fine. You need to let me go before anything else happens. We can get you some help.”
“I don’t need help,” Ed scoffed. “I know just how John feels. I was married once and I loved my wife just like John loves you, with every fiber of my