Once Shunned (A Riley Paige Mystery—Book 15)

PROLOGUE Robin’s eyes snapped open. She found herself lying wide awake in her bed. She thought at first she’d been awakened by a noise coming from somewhere in her little house. Breaking glass? But as she lay there listening for a moment, she heard nothing except the comforting rumble of the furnace in the basement. Surely she’d just imagined the sound. Nothing to worry about, she thought. But as she turned on her side to try to get back to sleep, she felt a sudden sharp pain in her left leg. This again, Robin thought with a sigh. She switched on the lamp on the nightstand and pulled away the covers. She no longer felt surprised to see that she had no left leg. She’d gotten used to that months ago. The leg had been amputated above the knee after her bones were crushed to a pulp in a terrible car accident last year. But the pain was plenty real—a cluster of throbbing, cramping, and burning sensations. She sat up in bed and stared at the stump under her nightgown. She’d suffered from phantom limb pain like this ever since the amputation, mostly at night when she was trying to sleep. She looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was four o’clock in the morning. She let out a groan of discouragement. She was often awakened by the pain at this hour or earlier, and she knew there was no chance of going back to sleep while this sensation was tormenting her. She considered reaching under the bed for her mirror box, a therapy device that often helped her through episodes like this. It involved slipping the stump into the end of a long, prism-shaped box with a mirror on one side, so that her remaining leg cast a reflection. The mirror box created the illusion that she still had both of her legs. It was a weird but effective technique for diminishing or even getting rid of the phantom pain. She’d watch the reflection while manipulating her remaining leg, clenching and unclenching the muscles in her feet, toes, and calves, as she tricked her brain into believing that she still had both legs. By imagining that she was controlling the missing leg, she could often work out the pain and cramping she felt there. But it didn’t always work. It required a level of meditative concentration that she couldn’t always attain. And she knew from experience she had little chance of success just after waking up in the early morning hours. I might as well get up and get some work done, she thought. She briefly considered putting on the prosthetic leg that she kept beside her bed. That would mean stretching a nylon gel liner over her stump, pulling a couple of socks over the liner to compensate for the shrinkage of her stump, then fastening the prosthesis into place, putting her weight on it until she felt it pop fully into place. It hardly seemed worth the trouble right now—especially if she got lucky and the pain faded on its own and she could go back to bed and get some more sleep. Instead, she pulled on her bathrobe, reached for her elbow crutches, slipped her wrists through the cuffs and gripped the handgrips, then hobbled out of the bedroom into her kitchen. A pile of papers awaited her there on the Formica-topped table. She’d brought home a huge bundle of poems and short stories to read—submissions for Sea Surge, the literary magazine where she worked as the assistant editor. She’d read more than half of the pieces last night before she’d gone to bed, selecting just a few that might be worthy of publication while setting the many others aside for rejection. Now she skimmed through a batch of five especially bad poems by a remarkably untalented writer, the sort of greeting-card verses that the magazine too often received. She laughed a little as she plopped the poems onto the rejection pile. The next batch was altogether different, but also typical of the sort of thing she often had to wade through while sorting through submissions. These poems immediately struck her as dry, bloodless, obscure, and pretentious. As she tried to make some sense of them, her mind started wandering, and she found herself thinking about how she’d wound up living alone in this cheap but comfortable little rented house. It was sad to remember how her marriage had broken up early this year. Shortly after the accident and the amputation, her husband, Duane, had been attentive, caring, and supportive. But as time went on, he’d become more and more distant until he’d pretty much stopped showing her any intimacy or affection. Although Duane wouldn’t admit it, Robin had realized that he simply didn’t find her physically attractive anymore. She sighed as she remembered how wildly in love they’d been during the first four years of their marriage. Her throat tightened as she wondered whether she’d ever experience that kind of happiness again. But she knew she was still an attractive, charming, intelligent woman. Surely there was a wonderful man out there who could see her as a whole person, not merely as an amputee. Still, the shallowness of Duane’s love for her had been a blow to her self-confidence and to her faith in men in general. It was hard not to feel bitter toward her ex-husband. She reminded herself as she often did … He did the best he could. At least their divorce had been amicable and they still remained friends. Her ears perked up at a familiar sound outside—the approaching garbage truck. She smiled as she looked forward to a little ritual she’d developed on such sleepless mornings. She got up from the table, put on the crutches, hobbled over to the living room window, and opened the curtains. The truck was pulling up in front of her own house now, and the huge robotic arm clamped onto her bin and lifted it and dumped its contents into the truck. And sure enough, walking alongside the truck was an odd young man. As always, Robin found something endearingly earnest about him as he followed the truck on its way, gazing attentively in all directions as if keeping some sort of lookout. She figured he must work for the town’s sanitation department, although she wasn’t sure just what his job could be. He didn’t seem to have anything to do except walk along and make sure the big machine did its job and didn’t drop any stray pieces of garbage. As she always did when she saw him out there on the lighted street, she smiled, took an arm out of a cuff, and waved at him. He looked straight back at her, as he always did. She found it odd that he never waved back, just stood there with his arms at his sides returning her gaze. But this time he did something he’d never done before. He lifted his arm and pointed in her direction. What’s he pointing at? she wondered. Then she felt a chill as she remembered the moment when she’d woken up … I thought I heard a sound. She’d thought it might be breaking glass. And now she realized … He’s pointing at something behind me. Before she could turn around and look, she felt a powerful hand seize her right shoulder. Robin froze with fear. She felt a sudden deep pain as something sharp plunged into her ear, and the world around her quickly dissolved. In another moment she felt nothing at all.