Part 1    table of contents  

She had been having the dreams for about two days. By the second day, they were no longer confined to her sleeping hours. She found herself “winking out,” as she called it, even when standing at the stove stirring canned soup, or doing dishes at the small sink. Always the same vision. Always a man, dressed in black clothing, face pale as if nearly drowned or nearly frozen, always the same message: help me.

When she could stand it no longer, having winked out this time sitting on the couch trying to read a murder mystery, she put the book down on the coffee table, laced up her running shoes, and went out the door, flinging on her hooded sweatshirt as she exited.

The boat shed was where she headed. She didn’t know why, or how she knew that, she just knew that was where she had to be and she didn’t question it. She had stopped questioning both her visions and her instincts when she was a child. The sand this far from shore was hard with the arrival of autumn and packed tight. There was a cold wind blowing in from the water that whipped her hair around her face and stung her cheeks. She wondered if it would snow before Halloween.

The boat shed had been unused for years. Even when the whole family had come up for vacations they had not bothered with the old wooden shack. It stood a few hundred feet back from the shore, far enough not to be flooded unless there was a good run of storms and it had been a long time since that had happened. The walls leaned crazily as the foundation had shifted or rotted beneath it. It was no longer the gray-blue it had been when she was a child.

She stopped outside the door, catching her breath in the shadow cast by the small building. If she had thought about it logically, she would have said she was crazy. But logic never had anything to do with either her visions or her feelings, and taking one more deep breath, she had turned the knob and pushed the door open.

It was dark inside, musty and smelling of old wood and dampness. The floor of it was nothing but sand—if there were planks beneath it, one would have to dig to find them. When her eyes grew used to the gloom she looked around warily. There were stacks of rotting tarps in one corner, and a lifebuoy that had seen better days perhaps early in the last century. The shelves that remained intact were surprisingly empty. A coil of rotting rope hung from a hook. And there, in the far left corner...

She had been expecting this but it was still a shock to see him lying there. He was nearly supine, his head and shoulders still leaning up against the back wall, and his eyes were closed. He was as pale as she had seen and the black clothing, a suit, she guessed, was in tatters. She reached him in three steps and felt for a pulse in his neck.

He stirred then, grabbing her wrist with surprising speed and strength. His mouth worked, but no sound came forth.

“Shhhh.” She tilted her head to make contact with his barely open eyes. “We need to get you out of here.”

He closed his eyes completely with a sigh and she took that as compliance.

“We’ll go slowly, all right? Can you get into a sitting position?”

He tried, struggling against gravity and his own weakness, and she caught him by the arm, lean but hard as cord wood, and helped him straighten up. Just the effort of that seemed to deplete him.

“Rest a minute,” she said. “And then we’ll get you to your feet.”

He nodded nearly imperceptibly.

In a few moments, she felt him gathering himself for the effort and she braced one foot against the corner of the wall and the floor to stabilize both of them. Working together, and she was surprised at how much easier it was than she had anticipated, they got him to his feet, one of which was bare, the other in a torn black sock.

“It’s not far,” she encouraged him and again was aware of a small nod of acknowledgement.

It was the work of nearly half an hour to get him from the shed to her cabin. He needed to rest frequently and managed to communicate, by pushing against her when she would stop, that he needed to rest in as concealed a place as possible. Thus, when she tried to pause just a few feet from the door, he pushed at her and she realized he wanted to stop against the side of the shed, screened on one side by the wall itself, and hidden in the shadow it cast. Yet another time, he stumbled onwards stubbornly, nearly pitching both of them forward, to pause for a moment behind a cluster of bushes that grew wild and untamed where the sand merged into the sparse grass of the woods. But at last they gained the cabin.

“I’m going to park you right here,” she said, removing his arm from around her shoulders and bracing him against the wall just within the doorway. It felt warm and sheltering to be out of the lake wind. “If you sit down anywhere, we’ll never get you back up and I want to put you in the warmest spot in the house. Okay?”

His eyes were closed with weariness, and there were black circles that were shocking against the paleness of his skin, but he nodded once more. He was starting to shiver.

Hurriedly, she shoved the coffee table to one side and spread her thickest blankets directly before the fireplace. She grabbed a pillow from the guest bed, nicked a few more blankets on the way out, and then returned to where she had left him.

He was beginning to sag in spite of the effort she could see he was making to stay upright, and she caught him up again, and helped him across the room.

“Just here,” she said, easing him down. She was relieved. For someone who appeared so thin he was actually quite heavy.

He collapsed more than anything onto the blankets and she had a chance to do a cursory examination of him as he did so. There was no blood visible on him anywhere or any obvious wounds to his head or his neck. His shirt, untucked, had fallen open starting at the bottom and she caught a glimpse of hard muscle over bone and very flat abs. His pant legs were in shreds in various places and he had moved stiffly, but not as if in pain. The bones of his legs appeared straight. She removed the remnants of the sad black sock and cast it aside. His feet were torn as were his hands, but no more than she would have expected from someone who had made what was obviously a very rough journey. She eased his head onto the pillow, then mounded more blankets over him.

“Try to stay with me,” she said. “I need to get something warm into you, okay? I’ve got some soup I can heat up.”

He didn’t even nod this time, just squeezed his eyes more tightly shut for a fraction of a second.

She grabbed the last of her canned chicken soup and rice, stored handily in a microwaveable bowl in the refrigerator, and slipped it into the microwave. While it was heating, she lit the kindling and paper neatly laid in the fireplace, glad that she had known to set it up in advance. Just another one of those urges. When the flames finally caught, she placed two large chunks of wood on it to keep it going, then went back to the soup.

When she returned to him, he had managed to free one arm from the blanket and had extended his hand as far as he could toward the heat. He looked as if he were recharging himself.

“Here.” She sat down cross-legged beside him and began to spoon-feed him. After several mouthfuls he shook his head.

“One more,” she said sternly. “I know hypothermia when I see it. One more. And then I call a doctor.”

His reaction was nearly violent. “No,” he managed. “No doctor. You cannot...” His voice broke as he struggled to get out from under the blankets.

“Okay!” She pushed him back down and covered him again. “Okay. No doctors.”

He acquiesced then and looked straight at her for the first time with eyes that glittered strangely. Perhaps it was the firelight. “How...?” he managed to croak out, but as suddenly as his eyes had jabbed hers with that strange mixture of light and energy, they began to lose their focus, closing in spite of his apparent attempts to keep them open.

“Go to sleep,” she said softly.

His exhaled deeply, a soft rushing sound against the crackling in the fireplace, and the arm that had been straining once more to reach the fire relaxed suddenly. She tucked the blankets in around his narrow form and sat back, soup bowl still in hand, just looking at him. Who are you? she thought, and wondered if she had opened her door to an escaped convict. His face, relaxed, was thin but not unpleasantly so. His skin was very pale and his features finely shaped. He looked like artwork. Even his fair, arched eyebrows looked sculpted. She touched the pale hair for a moment, and was not surprised at the softness of it.



He woke again at night, close to eight.

She had drawn the blinds against the dark, but had put on very few lights. There was something pulling at her, tugging, and she wondered what she would see the next time she winked out. What more could there be for her to see? She had already found the pale man in black.

The fire still roared and she had brought in enough wood to last until the morning. She sat at her place on the couch with just the lamp on the end table for light, reading her book, but even without looking up she knew the instant his eyes opened. “Let me get you more soup.” She put the book aside and rose.

“The soup,” he said quietly, and his voice was low and musical with just the right amount of drawl in it for her to hear the Deep South, “is abysmal.”

She burst out laughing. “It’s canned,” she said. “But it works.”

He managed to groan and sigh at the same time in reply.

“Can you handle solid food?” she asked.

“I had better,” was the somewhat rueful answer.

They agreed on an egg, scrambled, and a cup of tea, ginger peach, not green, much to his chagrin. But he finished the egg and drained the tea and was improved, albeit still quite weak.

“I cannot thank you for this adequately,” he said at last, his voice slightly hoarse.

“You don’t have to.” She looked at him. “But I need to know something. I guess you’re in trouble. A lot of trouble. I haven’t called the police, and you did manage to keep me from getting a doctor. Are you on the run from the law? Are you an escapee of some kind? I deserve to know that much, especially if I’m just going to get a bullet in my brain for all my efforts.”

He looked at her keenly. “You are a strange one,” he said. “No one usually comes right out and states that sort of thing.”

“Life is too short for niceties sometimes,” she said. She returned his gaze levelly, searching for an answer in the pale eyes. His expression was completely blank and told her nothing. “So what are you doing here?”

He looked away from her, into the fire. “I am an escapee, you are correct in that. But not from the law. In point of fact, I’m an FBI agent. You can believe me or not, as you choose. What I run from...” He was silent for a long time and so still that something stayed her from prompting him. “I am afraid I may have put you in very grave danger, here,” he said at last, his voice low and perhaps sad. “If I had not been so weak, I would not have allowed this. But clearly I needed help.”

“Clearly,” she said. She looked at him, curious. “I checked you over while you were asleep,” she said without embarrassment. “You have no wounds that I can see. Hypothermia is certainly possible up here at this time of year. But there is something else, isn’t there?”

He inclined his head, as if trying to think how best to answer the question. The fire glinted in his pale hair, cast shadows across his face. “Exsanguination,” he stated at last. “Bloodletting.”

“I understand the word,” she said. “But what do you mean?”

“The man holding me has a...fascination with blood. He has been draining mine.”

Her breath caught but the horror she felt was not reflected in his closed expression. “Draining yours? For what?”

“I might have said for experimentation. But as it is my blood, I doubt very much that he is doing anything other than collecting it in mason jars.”

“A madman,” she said at last. “You were the prisoner of a madman?”

He didn’t answer.

“But how did he take you? How did he keep you there?”

“How he took me...” He didn’t finish the sentence. “How he kept me, well, you can see my present state. He drugged me initially, then began taking my blood. He only gave me water intermittently, and not very much. Once or twice he gave me some rice. All he had to do was take my blood at regular intervals. Not all at once. He does not wish to kill me that way. But enough to weaken me. It is, you realize, more effective than chains or locks, to be held prisoner by one’s own weakness. After a point, he did not need the drugs or any kind of restraints any longer.”

Part 2    table of contents  

She shook her head, still trying to grasp what he told her. “And how did you get away?”

“Perhaps he was careless, though that would be outside his nature. He taunted me by leaving the door unlocked after a while, and then by leaving it open. So I could get a view, he told me. A view of...” Again he did not finish the sentence. “After the last bloodletting I allowed him to think I was a bit weaker than in truth. He left the door open. I found a way to leave.” He looked at her. “Where am I, exactly?”

“Northern Wisconsin,” she said. “That’s Lake Michigan, out there.”

He groaned.

“Wisconsin is not so bad as all that,” she said tartly.

“You misunderstand,” he said. “Do you know this area quite well?”

She nodded.

“Then I will describe to you where I was being held and perhaps you can tell me if it is anywhere near this place.”

She felt the hair at the back of her neck rise, realizing suddenly what he meant. She nodded again.

“It was on the water. That is how I made my escape. I took a small rowboat from a neighboring estate. There were piers up the coast to my right. And a lighthouse.”

“What did it look like?” she demanded.

“There was a house at the base. And the tower itself looked almost shingled. It stood a short way off the shoreline.”

“You were less than two towns away,” she said faintly.

He closed his eyes. “I feared as much.”

“But that would mean he was holding you in a resort area. It’s the off season now, true, but there are still people about. The last festival for the year was just last weekend. Not everything closes up here. Why would he choose something so open and populated? Why not something out in the dessert, or in the mountains?”

“He sometimes enjoys seeing what he can get away with. I would be willing to wager that his neighbors find him an agreeable addition to their neighborhood. No doubt he has been involved in a few of their activities. You say it is a resort area? I would not put it past him to have contributed to that festival last weekend, or even grilled the brats at it. He can be quite charming. And after all of that, he would be coming back to his private estate...and back to me, to—” He stopped abruptly.

“He is looking for you,” she said.

“Most assuredly.”

“Do you want the police now?”

“They will be of no help and indeed to involve them would be to expose them to almost certain death. I do not wish to destroy any community up here in such a way.”

“Then what do we do?”

A small smile seemed to tug at the corners of his mouth, then changed its mind and faded. “We?” he repeated with some emphasis. “We shall do nothing. I will have to hunt him down myself before he finds this place.”

She looked at him and then she knew what had been pulling at her. “It’s too late,” she managed to say, and then winked out entirely.



He will find this place. But you will not be here. You will be gone. Gone already. You will be gone... The words were in her head, looping over and over through her like some sort of mystical chant, when she came back to herself. She was still sitting before the fire with him, she could see that much, but it took long moments before the room came back into focus, until he came back into focus. But the vision was still all around her. And the other man... He had seen her. He had touched her... And she had seen nothing of him but how very tall he was, and strong, and how he carried weapon upon weapon with him, and yet the worst of it was his mind. She reeled from the impact of memory and would have fallen over but strong arms caught her, steadied her, held her until the trembling had stopped.

“How did you know to find me?” There was urgency in the question. His voice was quiet but insistent and cut through the fog in her brain that always descended after a lapse. The gentle drawl when he spoke warmed and somehow settled her.

“He is coming for us,” she whispered.

He took her shaking hands into his very firm grasp and squeezed them gently. “He is coming for me,” he corrected her. “Please focus. I know there is not much time. What just happened to you? Is that how you knew to find me?”

“I have visions,” she said hesitantly, reluctant to speak, although she knew that speaking of it changed not one iota of what was going to happen. “I see things.” She paused once more and then it all came in a rush. “I have feelings and instincts and urges and everything else that makes me sound like a histrionic female. But I am right. Always.”

He did not laugh at her, or make any derisive comment as she had been half-expecting. “There is no scientific foundation for that,” he said in a soft voice. “I have never found any for it. But I have also found that it exists despite science. What you used to find me—he shall also use.” His head rose at her sharp intake of breath. “He has something like...what you have. I do not have that gift myself.”

“You have enough,” she said. “That is why you’re here. You called to me, repeatedly. For two days. When I couldn’t ignore it any longer, when it was no longer in my dreams but in my waking hours as well, I knew to go to the boat house.” She stiffened suddenly in spite of herself.

“What are you seeing? What did you just see when you went away a few minutes ago? He is here, isn’t he?”

“He’s close. He’s getting closer.” The vision threatened to push its way to the fore and she pushed it back just as fiercely. She looked at her unexpected guest and then stood up. He tugged on her hand inquiringly. “I will get you some things you need from my room,” she said.

“Some things I need?”

She removed her hand from his cool grasp without replying and went to the master bedroom. Instinct, or urge, stayed her hand from turning on the light but she didn’t need it. She knew this cabin inside and out, backwards and forwards. The heavy, wooden case was still in the bottom drawer of the bureau. The smaller, equally heavy box was still in the night stand. She retrieved both of them silently and made her way back to where he still sat, waiting by the fire.

“My husband was in law enforcement,” she said, handing both items to him. “You will be needing these.”

“You are married?” he asked gently.

“I was. Married, one daughter. A while ago.” She did not volunteer any more information and he did not ask.

The case contained two handguns, one a revolver, the other a Glock. He checked both and nodded with satisfaction, then took what ammunition he needed from the smaller box. “What about you?”

“I have a gun. He bought me one. It’s in the nightstand, also,” she said listlessly. “You are going out, I know. To try to draw him away. Only...”

He had slipped the loaded revolver into the waistband at his back. He stopped while loading the Glock and looked at her. “Tell me what you see,” he said.

“You will find him,” she said, nodding. “I can see that. But that will be after...”

“After?” He stared at her. “After he has already found you?”

“You will be gone already,” she said the words aloud. “And I will be dead the day after tomorrow.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he reached across and took her hand, lacing his long fingers between hers. “My dear lady, you are not always right.”

“I am,” she said softly. “Perhaps I don’t even mind,” she added, shaking her hair back and looking up at him. “My husband and daughter have gone on. There is not much keeping me here. Not the house back in the city. Maybe not even this place.”

He leaned forward, still holding her hand, and stared into her eyes with his own silvery ones. “I had once felt that way. I know that emptiness very well. But they have gone on and you are still here. As I am still here. If there is a choice to be made at this juncture, then I ask that you choose life for yourself. At this moment. Right now. You have this place. I would ask that you not give up your life because you saved mine.” His eyes gleamed with a frightening intensity. “I do not believe you are a quitter,” he added in a very quiet voice.

“I’m not. Just a realist.”

“Then let’s change reality. His reality. Perhaps the visions you see now are what he gives to you.”

She shook her head. “You are still very weak.”

“I believe I am strong enough to squeeze a trigger,” he said calmly. He smiled at her then, an unexpected and warm and heartfelt smile that touched his eyes and made them dance, and somehow she felt better.

She prepared more tea for both of them (“Dear woman, I shall have to provide you with some green tea. Surely even Northern Wisconsin is civilized enough for that”) and this time he ate a ham sandwich, something he clearly did not relish. “Although I was eating insects before,” he observed offhandedly.

She looked at him, feeling something between horror and pity. “Survival,” she said. “I understand.”

She woke with a start with sunlight in her face. She was alone at the fireplace and the fire had gone out. “Hello?” she asked tentatively.

“He did not come during the night.” The now-familiar drawl came from the direction of the guest room. Seconds later the man himself emerged. He had rolled up his shirt sleeves, but the shirt remained tucked into his pants. When he turned she saw the gun at his waistband. He was barefoot and unshaven and his white-blond hair was still damp and had not been combed after his shower, but somehow he still looked both severe and intimidating. She believed he was an FBI agent. “But he will. Tonight, I think. Perhaps close to sundown.”

“Why?”

“Sundown is a private matter between us.”

She frowned at him. “The way you talk about him, you know him very well. Is he someone you caught and put away before? Is he someone with an old hatred of you?”

He nodded. “The hatred is very old. Almost his entire life. Perhaps he did not hate me when he was an infant.”

“You’ve known him that long?”

“He is my brother.”

There was a long silence. “I’m so sorry,” she said at last.

“Don’t be. It is just how our lives have worked out. It is I who should be apologizing to you, involving you in what is a personal matter.”

“It seems a long time since I have felt involved in anything,” she said softly.

He did not reply.



The wait was interminable. The afternoon passed slowly. He checked and rechecked the guns, drinking all of the juice in her refrigerator and force-feeding himself the deli ham, which he assured her was an abomination. But he seemed to be growing stronger as the day progressed, and she wondered at the energy that she suspected came from the anticipated arrival of his brother. There was a restlessness as he paced the confines of the small cabin. Even when he sat, she could see he was coiled to spring.

The knock came so softly that at first she thought she was hearing things. The clock said five fifty-five and the sun had slid into the trees, leaving nothing behind but traces of purple and pink behind the gathering clouds. She froze at the sound and he caught her eye from where he sat at the table with both guns before him. He silently picked up the Glock and shook his head. She did not answer the person at the door.

The knock was repeated. “Frater, will you make me open this door myself? We have better things to do. Oh, and she is a perfect target, sitting there on the sofa like that.” The voice was pleasant and well-cultured, polite even, with a teasing note and an edge of iron in it.

She turned to him, terrified, and again he shook his head.

Part 3    table of contents  

Quiet and cat-like he slipped from the table and approached the door quietly, gun at the ready. She could see the corded muscles in his forearms as he held the weapon steady.

“Really, dear brother, you do me a rudeness, making me stand out here on the doormat, addressing you through this wooden door. Shall I make an opening so that we can hear each other more clearly? Better still, I could make an opening in both the door and your woman at the same time. I have always enjoyed efficiency.”

“An opening like that would much improve my own aim,” he answered, just loudly enough to be heard. His voice was strong and composed, and she wondered at the calm, confident air in a man who was facing the brother who had been draining his very blood.

There was a laugh. “And sacrifice her? My dear brother, you are growing quite callous. You really should take up an occupation more suitable to your disposition. This FBI nonsense can get very wearing. I sometimes read about your exploits. Astonishing the Boy Scouts didn’t see you as an appropriate fit. They were mistaken, weren’t they?”

While the man outside was still laughing, the man inside suddenly grasped the knob of the door, flung it wide, and fired point-blank. The sudden roar of the gun made her jump.

There was a pause, and then somewhat breathlessly, “Bravo, frater. I would never have dreamed you would have it in you, shooting me like this. Well struck.” He managed a short laugh. “You realize, of course, that if something should happen to me and I do not return to my estate, you, this woman, this place...gone in but a second. If I do not return tonight.” She heard the man laugh again. “You must have realized I arranged for that contingency already. You cannot kill me here and now.”

The gun roared one more time and this time she couldn’t control a gasp. Was he killing his brother on her doorstep regardless?

But no, the voice started again, somewhat strained. “Twice? You wound me twice?”

Then at last the man in black spoke. “I have wounded you once in each arm. You will not be able to shoot me, or her. At least not today. But you will be able to go back to your estate, so this woman and this place will remain intact. And that is what you are going to do. You are going to leave and never come back. You will not harm this woman ever. Is that understood? Should anything happen to her, and you do realize that I know your signature quite well, I promise you I will take every last diamond in Enoch’s collection and destroy it.” The drawl that had made his voice so warm and comforting when he spoke to her now shifted into something cold and hard, tempered steel.

“You don’t know where they are, brother. It is so unlike you to make empty threats.”

“Au contraire, mon frere.” There was just the slightest sneer in the quiet voice. “It is so unlike you to make assumptions. You are not the only one to have the resources to find them. I know where every single one of them now reposes. Harm this woman and those diamonds will cease to exist in this world. I promise you this. I will pulverize each one of them myself.”

There was a pause. “Check, frater. You understand I make no promise regarding you, or anyone else you may hold dear in your pathetic Boy Scout life.”

“I believe we understand each other.” She could almost picture a lazy smile on the pale countenance, as the rest of the reply was drawled out. “But you cannot kill me here and now, either. It may take some time for those muscles to heal. And the tendons.”

“Oh, very well. Adieu, brother. At least until we meet again.” The voice dwindled as the speaker moved away. “Oh, and it turns out your blood is quite useless to me. Certainly of less use or interest than all those creatures whose heads I displayed so lovingly for you to look at while you were my guest. Funny thing about those animals, though. You had a hand in that. You see, I didn’t collect your blood after I took it from you. I just poured it out in the woods and let the animals have at it. They had quite a party with it, all those nights. What a perfect killing field...” A final laugh came back to them from a distance and lingered on the cold air.

At last he closed the door against the night, gun still held tightly in his hand, and collapsed against the wood of it, sliding his back down the rough surface until he sat down on the floor with a bump. He looked at the gun in his hand as if he didn’t remember how it had gotten there, and put it down on the floor beside him. He was shaking.

She moved then, gathering him up in her arms and bringing him back to the fireplace. “I’ll get some more wood,” she said.

“No.” He pulled her down with him onto the blankets, his grasp strong and sure, and after wrapping her arms around him tightly, he fell asleep against her warmth.



He left the next afternoon. “Even out here, remote as it can be, someone will come to investigate those gunshots.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “Maybe. Maybe not. This is, after all, Northern Wisconsin.” She smiled crookedly at him and was pleased that he smiled back, the same warm, heart-stopping smile she had seen so briefly the night before. “But you have no shoes,” she pointed out. “You have no coat and it is quite cold out there. Are you sure...?”

“I used your phone this morning and arrangements have been made. Someone will be waiting for me just a little way down the road.”

She nodded. “You be careful. Make sure you drink enough to replace the blood you lost. And eat enough meat.”

“I will take care of myself,” he said quietly. “And you?”

“Me? I choose life,” she said. “Thank you.”

He leaned forward and kissed her then, a soft touch of his even softer lips against hers. “I owe you much. But I do not believe we will ever see each other again.”

She smiled at him and touched his pale hair, his ear, and ran her fingertips along the side of his face one last time. His skin was soft and warm. “I will see you, perhaps,” she said. “I have visions.”

He inclined his head by way of reply and quietly let himself out the door.

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