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Then she settled her attention on the bed. Unmade. Several quilts and comforters piled in a mound in the center of the mattress. Smelled like a boys’ locker room near the end of the school year, with a couple of dead rats thrown in the mix.

She snapped her gaze back to the mound of covers and started toward the bed. There was something ... atoe. Big toe. It peeked just beyond the pile of soiled fabric.

Vera reached out slowly. “Mr. Owens, are you all right?” She dragged back layer after layer until there was only the man and the dingy sheet beneath him. Wrinkled T-shirt and jeans were twisted around, as if he’d tossed and turned in his sleep; long, stringy hair was matted to his head.

She stared at his chest ... her own rising and falling too rapidly.

Is he dead?

Reaching out, she touched the fingers of her right hand to his carotid artery.

The faint but distinct pulse there sent air rushing into her lungs.Good. Still alive.

A scream pierced the air.

Not hers.

The man’s eyes flew open wide, and another scream escaped him.

Vera jumped back. Stumbled over a lump and hit the floor hard on her butt. Pain radiated up her spine. Her phone flew from her hand.

She scrambled after it, grabbed it, and shot to her feet. Air sawed in and out of her lungs as she stood stone still. No movement from the bed. She roved the light over the man lying motionless there, his eyes closed once more. Then she searched the floor for what had made her stumble.

A bag of apples. A few decaying cores were scattered around it. Damn. Evidently the man liked apples.

For a long moment Vera didn’t move. She listened intently for the slightest sound. The occasional shallow breath whispered in the air.

Still breathing. Good. Okay.Her attention shifted back to the wall. This could be nothing but the delusions and paranoia of a drug addict. But there was no way to be certain what fed his dive into the subject of the Time Thief. Whatever the case, she should call Bent.

Easing a few steps farther from the bed, she made the call.

Then she waited. She’d run into her share of tweakers in the past. The one thing she understood with reasonable certainty about a person with a methamphetamine addiction was that they could be unpredictable.

And dangerous.

10

Owens ResidenceMcDeal Road, Fayetteville, 6:00 p.m.

Bent wouldn’t have been surprised when Vee called him even if she’d told him she had landed on the moon. He’d learned to expect the unexpected when it came to the Boyett sisters, especially this one. He glanced at her, and she pretended not to notice.

They waited while the paramedics struggled to strap Owens to a stretcher. The man hadn’t moved or said a word when he was picked up and loaded onto the gurney, but as soon as the first strap was pulled over his chest, he came to life.

A half minute was required for the sedative to take effect. As suddenly as he’d started, he stopped fighting.

“We’re gone,” Paul Graves, the lead paramedic, said to Bent.

Bent gave him a nod and watched as they navigated out of the shack. After they’d loaded him into the ambulance and headed to the hospital, Bent turned to Vee. “Start from the beginning.”

Somehow Vera Mae Boyett just didn’t get the concept of teamwork. When they worked together, he kept her informed, and she was supposed to do the same.

Except she never did—not fully.

She stared at him. “Do you mean from when I arrived here?”

She knew damned well what he meant, but that was another thing about Vee: she never made this sort of thing easy.

“From the moment I last saw you today, shortly after eleven.”