Tonight, no lights glow from their windows. The forest covers them.

As I face the sea, I tilt my head, lift my nose to the wind, but I smell nothing other than the briny scent of the Pacific crashing a hundred feet below. I close my eyes and concentrate. As the wind tosses my hair into my eyes and my skin chills with the frigid air, the blood in my veins runs hot.

I imagine the scent of her skin. Like a rain-washed beach. Tantalizing…

I can almost smell her. Almost.

Even without her scent, I now know where she is. I’ve learned of her by another who has unconsciously shown me the way.

Good.

It’s time, once again, to right an age-old wrong.

This time, there will be no mistake.

A frisson slid down Becca Sutcliff’s spine. She inhaled sharply and glanced behind her. The girl at the counter of Mutts & Stuff slid her a look from the corner of her eyes. “You okay?”

“Someone’s walking on my grave, I guess,” Becca murmured.

The girl’s brows lifted and Becca could practically read her mind: Yeah. Right. Whatever. She rang up Becca’s purchases and stuffed them in a bag. Thanking her, Becca shifted the packages she was already carrying to accommodate them. Yes, she was filling a need, shopping like it was an Olympic sport, a result of the messy, lingering aftermath of unsettled feelings that still followed from her split with Ben. And now Ben was dead. Gone. Never to come back. And it all felt…well…weird.

She headed back into the mall, slightly depressed by the cheery red and pink hearts in every store window. Valentine’s Day. The most miserable day of the year for the suddenly single.

Okay. She wasn’t completely unhappy. She’d known for a long time that she and Ben weren’t going to make it. They’d never been in love. Not in the way she’d wanted, hoped, planned to be. When she’d learned he was seeing someone else, she was angry. At herself, mostly. She couldn’t really even recall what had triggered their marriage in the first place. What had she wanted? What had Ben wanted? Had it just been timing? A sense that, if not Ben, then who?