**Warning, this collection contains graphic crime scenes and frightening situations. Please do not purchase this collection if you have a weak stomach or frighten easily!

Did you know that James Rollins recommends... The Harbinger Collection, including Plain Jane: Brunettes Beware, a #1 bestseller in both Hard-Boiled Mysteries and Police Procedurals.

Let’s see why…

“If you think you know what is going to happen, you're wrong. I have read so many suspense and crime books that guessing the end gets easier and easier. NOT this time. Be prepared to be hooked from the first page and lose some sleep because you just can't put it down”

Michelle Delgado

Amazon Reviewer

“I just finished The Harbinger Collection. It was a real page turner and if I didn't know that Carolyn McCray is the author, I would think I was reading a James Patterson novel. It definitely isn't for the squeamish! It is like a thrilling roller-coaster ride!”

Skeeter

Amazon Reviewer

“I am hooked on these stories! Very well-written and entertaining...Very hard to put down! Time to return this set and check out some more.”

D. Harris

Amazon Reviewer

“I flat out fell in love with the main characters in these tales. They made me laugh out loud and gasp in shock when I wasn't supposed to be reading my Kindle at work. Rarely do I ever find a story that outs me at work. Totally worth the lectures I received. If you like serial killers, witty detectives and love triangles, these tales are you for you.”

Appliquetion

Amazon Reviewer

Anyone who enjoys mystery/thrillers such as James Patterson, Lee Child, and Patricia Cornwell, The Harbinger series with definitely satisfy your need for suspense!

While this is the completed Omnibus collection, from time to time I might add other short stories as the series expands.

Luckily there is now a super easy way to get your collection updated with whispersync…

Read about it here in the Afterword!

Main Menu

Anatomy

the prequel short story to start the Harbinger series!

Plain Jane

the full-length book that started it all!

Dark Lullaby

the post-Plain Jane short story

My Soul to Keep

the post-Plain Jane novella featuring Nicole

WallFlower

the full-length sequel to Plain Jane

Shallow Grave

the bridge short story between WallFlower and Buzz Kill

Buzz Kill

the final full-length book in the Harbinger trilogy

Pallor

the wrap-up short story to the Harbinger series, featuring Lucky 37

Start Reading

Afterword

Other Works by Carolyn McCray

About the Author

Copyright

ANATOMY – The prequel short story to Plain Jane: Brunettes Beware

CHAPTER 1

Detective Nicole Usher gulped despite having every intention not to gulp. You didn’t get your gold badge without seeing some things. Gross things. Horrible things. Things no one should ever have to see.

Yet the body that lay before her, before them all, was just wrong. It wasn’t so much that the killer had dissected the woman, flaying open her chest and abdomen. Or that he had carefully teased ligaments away from bone. The thing that made her force back bile was the series of little labels stuck into the vital organs.

Liver. Kidneys. Ovaries… Each word written in the victim’s own blood.

That was what made her gulp again and look away.

Around her, the crime scene was barely contained chaos, with every acronym in the book accounted for, EMTs, CSIs, MEs, FDs, PDs. Given that this was the serial killer’s sixth victim, when the call came over that another body had been found, all hands, whether they were needed or not, came on deck.

Nicole glanced to her partner, Ruben Torres, the lead detective on the case. All answered to him, which was what he wanted. What he had wanted for a long time. Their city was large enough to have its fair share of murders, but small enough that they didn’t have a Major Crimes division. Instead, the department had one detective that they turned to for their most difficult cases, the Captain’s go-to detective.

For decades, that had been Hatachi Nogamori. But after a long-overdue retirement, the door was thrown wide open, and Ruben had been the first to charge through. To Nicole’s eye, he had the skills, knowledge, and ambition to fill Hatachi’s shoes.

Now, though, with his jaw muscles rippling, Nicole wasn’t so sure that Ruben was all too enthused that he had stepped up to the plate. She knew the disgust on his face wasn’t from the gore. Even though the sun was going down, the mid-summer heat rose from the alley’s pavement, bringing with it a smell, so strong that you could taste it, of a poorly ventilated butcher’s shop, which someone had tried to clean up with formaldehyde.

The heady aroma turned Nicole’s stomach, but she was pretty sure it didn’t bother Ruben. He’d seen a tour in Iraq before the Green Zone was established. Her partner didn’t ever talk about his time in the Middle East, even to her, which pretty much convinced Nicole of exactly how grueling the tour must have been.

A flash of light cut through the dusky night.

Nicole blinked several times as the CSI photographer stepped around her and took another shot.

Ruben, too, seemed startled out of his thoughts, and grumbled, “Just make sure these pictures aren’t leaked to the press.”

The older photographer frowned, setting the heavy camera down against his potbelly. “We’re all here to do a professional job.”

Ruben bristled at the CSI’s tone. She knew her partner’s frustration. Those leaked pictures had revealed the one detail of the crime that they had been holding back…the organ labels. Now every crackpot in the city was claiming credit for the murders. It had taken days, if not weeks, to disprove their statements, sucking precious time and resources away from finding the real killer.

Before Ruben could counter the older man’s statement, Nicole pointed to the roof of an adjacent building. “Speaking of the press…”

An especially intrepid cameraman and news anchor were peeking their heads over the roof.

“Damn it!” Ruben barked, then turned on his heel toward a group of uniformed policemen. “If you are going to gawk, at least secure the perimeter!”

The cluster of blue uniforms scattered in the wake of Ruben’s anger. Which was so unlike her partner. Ruben was usually the good cop, negotiating the politics of the detective’s bullpen like a fish in clear water. Most of the men he’d just chastised were poker buddies.

Nicole stifled the instinct to lay a hand on his arm in comfort. While their relationship was no secret, she knew that the boys’ club gathered here would see her gesture as a sign of weakness. And with all of the media attention? She couldn’t risk a random cellphone snapshot of their intimacy.

This investigation had gone from a local police matter to a statewide manhunt to, now, a national cause celebre. And the longer the investigation stretched out, the more intense the media coverage became. Which wasn’t making any of this easier. It was a little hard to keep your head in the game when Nancy Grace was calling you an incompetent ham-fisted Fred Flintstone of detectives.

Nicole waved a fly away from her face. It persisted, landing momentarily on her shoulder. She tried not to think of what its tiny feet left behind on her blouse. The grit of the crime scene crept under her clothes, mixing with the sweat streaking down her back. There weren’t enough showers in the world to wash the desperation from her skin.

Ruben turned his attention from the roof to the medical examiner kneeling by the body. “Time of death?”

The ME chewed at the butt of a cold cigar and read from one of the labels. “Specimen collected at 9:52pm Central Standard Time.”

Her partner’s jaw muscles worked overtime, yet he somehow modulated his tone so as not to sound as exasperated as he clearly was. “That was her capture time. I need time of death.”

Shoving the cigar butt over to the corner of his mouth, the ME spat onto the pavement. Not exactly hygienic or conducive to maintaining a proper crime scene, but the ME was the oldest of the good ole boys. Dr. McGregor did as Dr. McGregor saw fit, and you’d best like it.

“I really don’t know why they haul my ass out here to the body,” McGregor grumbled. “When have I, or any ME ever in the history of crime scene investigations, been able to tell you anything but… ‘I’ll have to see once I get the body on the table?’”

“Anything you could tell us about the time or cause of death could be a help,” Nicole answered, as Ruben’s lips pressed down into a firm line. They both knew that the CSIs wouldn’t find any forensic clues. This killer was far too sophisticated to make a clumsy error. Their only hope to catch the killer was to jump on any lead they could get, such as time of death, and hope it opened up a new avenue of investigation.

The ME scanned the crowd then nodded to an EMT as she gathered up her gear. “You.” Nicole had met the young EMT before. She had an androgynous name, Jaime, maybe? She had been one of the first responders at the crime scene.

“Me?” the EMT squeaked out. Her eyes darted around her, obviously hoping that McGregor was talking to someone else.

“Yes, you,” he said, waving her over. Reluctantly, Jaime came over. “Now could you please tell these fine detectives when and how this victim died?”

The EMT’s eyes flickered to Nicole, then Ruben, then the ME, then even to the photographer. She found no solace from any of them. “I wouldn’t know.”

McGregor didn’t let it go. “Shocking,” he mocked. “Why don’t you just guess? Apparently Detective Torres wants something, anything. Accurate or not.”

“We get the point, Dr. McGregor,” Nicole said, trying to get the poor EMT out from under everyone’s glare and close this conversation before Ruben said something he would regret. Hell, even she was getting to the point of wanting to test if McGregor could take it as well as he dished it out.

“No,” the ME said. “No, I don’t think you do.” He turned back to the young woman. “Well? No theories? Postulations? Informed guesses?”

Surprisingly, the EMT’s shoulders squared and she kneeled next to the body. “If this killing holds up to the others, she was lured to a remote location, injected with a cocktail of paralytics, then…dissected.” The woman gulped. Nicole knew how the EMT felt as the she continued. “Cause of death will most likely prove to be a combination of severe shock and blood loss. However, The Professor has gotten better and better at keeping his victims alive during the procedure, so her time of death could be hours after her capture.”

McGregor grunted in the EMT’s general direction. “See? You don’t need me out here.”

With a groan, McGregor rose and dusted off his cover-up. Again, not very crime scene-friendly.

“So?” a voice asked. “We’re thinking suicide?”

Everyone’s head snapped around to find a man in a tuxedo, tie casually undone, walking up to the supposedly secured crime scene.

“Who the hell are you?” Ruben demanded, but the man just put his hands in his pockets and leaned over the body, cocking his head from side to side.

“Did she leave a note?” the man asked.

Nicole had no idea what was going on. As odd as the man was, he demanded attention, and Ruben seemed more than intent on giving it to him. Her partner nodded for a uniformed cop to frisk the tuxedo. Nicole braced for the man’s reaction, her hand straying toward her holster.

The man hardly seemed to notice, though. His hands stayed in his pants pockets as he studied the body and the cop performed the pat-down.

“Did she lose her job?” the man asked. “Her husband leave her? Is that what the trigger was?”

Even though he was making absolutely no sense, there was a smoothness to his tone that made him seem anything but wrong. The cop pulled what looked like a badge out of the man’s jacket pocket and read the name aloud, “Kent Harbinger. FBI.”

Nicole inhaled sharply as Ruben’s eyes narrowed to a slit. “FBI?” he repeated.

The cop nodded. “Looks like he’s attached to the BAU.”

Ruben went rigid next to her. Their mystery man was from the FBI’s vaunted Behavioral Analysis Unit, the most elite serial killer investigation division in the country. No, in the world. Their captain must have called in the profiler…behind Ruben’s back. The lack of confidence this showed was…well many a career had been destroyed this way.

Her partner recovered fairly quickly. Faster than she had. “Perhaps, then, Special Agent Harbinger, you should read the file before you offer any advice.”

The profiler’s lips turned up in a subtle grin as his eyes took in the entire crime scene. “Oh, I’ve read the file, and the conclusions in there are nearly on par with chalking this up to a suicide.”

“We have a detailed profile already which—”

“23-35-year-old white male that has an anatomy teaching background?” The profiler sighed, shaking his head, although there didn’t seem to be anything sympathetic in Harbinger’s tone as he gestured to the body. “There’s nothing sophisticated about this killer.”

A flash of the camera went off, startling everyone but the profiler.

“A killer as amateur as the profile of him,” Harbinger concluded.

If Ruben had been on edge before, her partner was on the precipice, his toes dangling over. Nicole rushed into the void. Perhaps the situation could still be salvaged.

“We should start over,” Nicole said, putting her hand out. “I’m Detective Nicole Usher.”

The profiler accepted her hand. She found his palm cool to the touch. How she wished she’d taken a moment to wipe hers on her pant leg before shaking his. Harbinger had an average, medium strength grip, yet her palm tingled, like static electricity or the feel in the air before a lightning strike. The sensation wasn’t exactly pleasant, yet she didn’t necessarily wish it to stop. She looked up to Harbinger’s face as their hands pumped up and down together. His eyes held nothing but mischief.

Still holding her hand, he turned it over, his thumb tracing the veins just under her skin. “Large hands for a woman,” the profiler commented.

The moment shattered, Nicole jerked her hand back, then wished she hadn’t. His grin spread. Harbinger had clearly been testing her. Nicole was pretty sure that her show of insecurity earned her a failing grade.

Her partner stepped between them, shoving his hand forward to the profiler. “Detective Ruben Torres.”

Harbinger accepted the handshake then winced. “My, my, what a strong grip we have…”

Nicole frowned. Salvaging the situation might have been an overly optimistic goal.

* * *

While Kent hadn’t exaggerated the tensile strength of Torres’s handshake, the man’s physical prowess was of little concern. The detective’s palms had callouses most likely associated with a significant chunk of his day at the gym. Yet they weren’t rough. Quite the opposite, in fact. Torres must have had a manicure recently. Interesting.

Time to dig a little deeper.

“Compensating for something?” Kent asked Torres, yet his eyes slid over to watch Nicole’s reaction. The woman’s face flashed fear. How does he know about Ruben and my relationship? Kent could have easily answered that one if he wished. The two’s body language, feet pointed toward one another, the close interpersonal space, the casual contact of two people who knew each other’s bodies inside and out. Then the woman’s pupils constricted and her lips relaxed. There was his answer.

“Ah, so you are packing some heat,” Kent said, directing his attention back to Torres. The detective’s grip grew stronger. Not just packing some heat, but pretty proud of it. Again, interesting. “It must be that you just don’t know what to do with it.”

The blood vessels in Torres’s face opened, flushing his cheeks as his nostrils flared. Rage. You didn’t have to be an expert in micro-facial expressions to pick that one up.

Kent’s eyes darted to Nicole, who wouldn’t meet his stare. Interesting. Very interesting. Torres tightened his grip on Kent’s hand, as if brute force alone could stop him. Not very likely. Although he did have to give the detective a bit of credit. Most heterosexual males would have taken a swing at him already. And a Latino, at that? Keeping his rage under control while Kent dissed his equipment and his ability to satisfy his woman? Torres must have had some therapy.

Or was it the fact that everyone at the crime scene was now watching, or pretending not to watch, this little exchange? The wheels of the gurney stopped squeaking. The rustle of plastic of evidence by those that collected it, died down. The murmur of conversation reduced to a hush.

Ah, Kent always did his best work with an audience.

Unfortunately, the detective was attempting to crush a few bones in Kent’s hand. “So, quite enthusiastic…” Kent taunted, “However, not very creative.”

Okay, Torres’s shoulder flinched that time. Kent was ready to duck and throw a counterpunch, but Nicole stepped forward, putting a hand on her partner’s arm.

“He’s just testing us,” Nicole whispered. Her lips a dark pink, and not colored by lipstick or gloss. If Kent was correct, the woman was wearing Chapstick, probably SPF 30 balm. And even though she wore her dark hair back in a tight ponytail, there was a hundred-dollar haircut under there. The carefully feathered tips swished at the nape of her neck.

They were all close enough together that Torres’s Drakkar Noir aftershave blended with Nicole’s kiwi shampoo. The scents were definitely not harmonious.

“More of a matter of convenience than compatibility?” Kent asked.

He was halfway to ducking. No matter Nicole’s restraining hand, Torres was on the verge of swinging. So why not pour fuel onto the fire? Give the people something to remember?

“Come on, big guy,” Kent said with a wink. “Let’s hug it out.”

* * *

Ruben froze as the profiler drew him into a bro-hug. Should he shove him back? Punch him in the face? Anything else but allowing the bizarre gesture to play out would create a scene. Not that this little confrontation didn’t already have all eyes glued on them.

Count to ten, Ruben. Count to ten. A little hard as each heartbeat bounded in his ear.

“Detective Torres?” a voice called out, slicing through the tension. Some poor uniformed cop walked right into the middle of the scene. The kid looked around, suddenly seeming to realize he had just interrupted something above his pay grade. “Sorry…I just…”

“Yes?” Ruben answered, pushing back from the profiler, glad to be rid of the man. The patrolman stared awkwardly. Ruben nodded, trying to encourage the kid to fill the awkward space.

“Um, yeah…I just wanted to let you know that the neighborhood canvass didn’t turn up anything.”

No surprise there. None of the previous sweeps had found a single person who had seen or heard anything. “Have tomorrow morning’s shift go around to the buildings again, in case we missed anyone tonight.”

The patrolman gave a sharp nod, which the profiler contradicted with a shake of his head.

“I wouldn’t waste my time.”

“Procedure is procedure,” Ruben stated, biting back a sharper, more curse-word-filled retort. But exploding, arguing, or otherwise engaging with Harbinger would be playing into the profiler’s hands. Instead, Ruben continued on with the patrolman. “And I want an update on the whereabouts of all of our POIs last night.”

The kid went to fulfill his orders, but Harbinger chuckled.

“Ah, Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” the profiler stated, putting his hands back into his pockets. “Kind of a metaphor for the whole case, wouldn’t you say?”

Ruben turned to find the ME and his assistant trying to figure out how to put the body into the bag without disturbing the labels. You would think that by the sixth try they would have figured out that they just couldn’t do it. He ignored Harbinger’s taunt, however accurate. Ruben had an investigation to run.

“What do you mean?” Nicole asked. Ruben shot her a look but she must not have seen it, her eyes intent on the profiler.

“There is a body.” Harbinger shrugged. “There is a body bag. Ipso procedural facto, the body must go into the bag.”

The uniformed cop frowned. “What would you have them do?” Ruben shot the kid a look as well, but he, too, was focused on the profiler. “Rig up some kind of drape to keep particulates from falling into the body cavity?”

“Or…” Harbinger drawled out. “Use something that is already so conveniently body-sized? Rigid sides? A lid?” The profiler looked to Nicole then the patrolman. “A coffin?”

“Oh, yeah! Duh!” the uniform stated.

Even if Ruben hadn’t already instinctually disliked this profiler, he would have hated him by now. A coffin was such an eloquent solution to their problem. One that a dozen plus law enforcement members hadn’t thought of. If only Harbinger could solve the crime so easily.

Ruben turned to the patrolman. “Make the arrangements.”

The cop hustled over to the ME, thankfully putting an end to the three-ring circus by the body. Hopefully, giving the profiler one less target for his ridicule.

Ruben wished that he were so lucky, as Nicole turned to Harbinger. “What did you mean it was a waste of our time to expand the canvass?”

Oddly, the profiler shouted, “Help!”

Everyone at the crime scene swung around at the strange outburst, but Harbinger pointed up to the apartments lining the alleyway. Not a single person came to the window. Not a single shade moved.

“In this part of town?” Harbinger questioned, “The residents actively don’t hear or see anything.”

“The perfect dumping ground,” Nicole concluded.

“And your ‘person of interest?’” Kent chuckled. “The anatomy instructor at the community college?”

Ruben’s hand made a fist of its own accord. It was one thing for the profiler to riff and poke at the crime scene. It was quite another for him to actively dis the core of his case. Ruben was so sure that the professor was involved that he had put round-the-clock surveillance on the man. They just needed him to trip up.

“You don’t think Professor Munz is involved?” Nicole asked the profiler. Clearly, she was not picking up Ruben’s mental urging to ignore the man in the tuxedo.

“Oh, the professor is a necrophiliac, of course,” Harbinger stated.

Nicole turned to Ruben, the question clear on her face. Was the professor into dead bodies? Ruben had no answer for her. However, the profiler was more than happy to continue.

“But I mean, who hasn’t experimented?” Harbinger pulled a hand out of his pocket and pointed at the ME. “Am I right?”

The doctor responded by grinding the butt of his cigar between his teeth.

Harbinger looked like he took the aggressive gesture as a compliment and turned back to Nicole and Ruben with a grin. “Focusing on the most obvious suspects, those with a biology background, was your first mistake.”

Ruben tried to keep his tone calm, even though he was anything but. “If you hear hoof beats, you should think horse, rather than zebra.”

“With a serialist like this?” The profiler pointed to the body laid out it in its gruesome form. “You’d best be looking for Hyracotherium.”

Ruben was sure that he should know the reference, but it took Nicole to fill in the blank.

“The ancestor of the horse,” Nicole stated.

“And zebra,” the profiler interjected.

Nicole continued on. “It was the size of a dog and spotted.”

Harbinger gave a slow nod of approval to Nicole. “This killer obviously has a fascination with anatomy. However, clearly he doesn’t have any professional background in the field.”

“And how exactly would you know that?” Ruben demanded. The profiler sideshow had gone on long enough. Time to show everyone that it was only a man standing in front of them, not some kind of psychic.

“By the way he selects his victims,” Harbinger responded, sounding as if Ruben had just asked him if the sky was blue.

Nicole’s eyes darted to Ruben’s then shot back to the profiler. “So far there hasn’t been a pattern. The killer is choosing his victims at random.”

“Oh,” Harbinger said in a singsong voice. “You two are so adorable. Random? There is nothing random about any of this.”

Counting to five, Ruben simply did not have the patience to make it to ten. He responded. “Put it all down on paper, Harbinger, and I’ll have a look.” He turned to the knot of people standing just within earshot. “And let’s wrap this crime scene up.”

EMTs, CSIs, and cops dispersed before him, some bumping into others in their haste. Ruben did not feel sorry for them in the least. Focus was distinctly lacking today, and he intended to bring it back.

“What do you mean, not random?” Nicole asked. Jesus, she just wouldn’t let it go, would she? When did she forget the meaning of “having your partner’s back?”

“Best guess?” Harbinger said, although Ruben was beginning to fear that the profiler didn’t guess at anything. “Online dating.”

Finally the guy swung at a pitch and missed. “We’ve checked their computer search history,” Ruben rushed on, “including any hidden cached sites. I can say with absolute certainty they were not contacted through social dating sites.”

“Ah,” Harbinger cooed. “Absolute certainty. You almost make this too easy.”

Face burning, Ruben stifled the response he would like to give the FBI profiler. Before he could think of a retort that did not use the F-word, Nicole stepped forward.

“Beyond the lack of evidence, the victims are a mix of men and women.”

The profiler cocked his head. “And everyone is honest online? He could be posing as a women to men, or just be a man seducing another man, or offering up a monkey in a matador costume. People going to the sites I am thinking of aren’t looking for vanilla options.” Harbinger pointed to the only article of clothing the victim had left to them. “Look at those shoes. Tell me they aren’t date heels.”

Thankfully, Ruben’s cellphone vibrated on his belt. “Torres,” he answered with a bark. He would be grateful for any interruption that ended this performance. As Ruben listened, he became more and more grateful.

“Got it.” He snapped his phone closed. “They’ve brought in Munz and, once again, he does not have an alibi for the time of capture.” He gave a sharp nod to the profiler. “You, of course, are welcome to join us in his interrogation. They are bringing him in as we speak.”

“Naw,” Harbinger said. “I think I’m going to recreate the captures instead, but thanks.”

Well, that was a welcome relief. Ruben felt certain that the profiler would want to tag along, if for nothing more than to disrupt the interview as thoroughly as he had the crime scene.

Ruben turned away from the profiler and headed toward the car. He was a good six steps away when he realized he was alone. Ruben looked to Nicole, who wouldn’t meet his eye. “Something wrong?”

“I just…” Nicole glanced up, but only held eye contact for a fleeting moment. “I think I’m going to stay to see the direction that Harbinger is going.” She rushed on. “Just for a few minutes. I’ll join you at the station.”

Had Nicole just punched him in the gut? Because that was exactly what it felt like. And the profiler certainly seemed to agree, as a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin spread. Ruben wasn’t so insecure that he was worried. He shouldn’t be worried, should he? Of course not.

Pulling his tie out from his shirt, where it had been protected from the gore of the scene, Ruben shrugged. “See you soon, then.”

It was time to prove the profiler wrong.

CHAPTER 2

Nicole watched Ruben stalk away. He didn’t even look back as he opened his car door and got inside. She felt bad, knowing that he would see her interest in the profiler’s methods as some sort of betrayal. Ruben was big on loyalty. Really big on loyalty. Sometimes, though, it seemed he wanted blind loyalty. All for one and one for all. Where did that leave her, though?

With six dead, didn’t they owe it to the victims to explore every possible lead? Even one as bizarre as the one the profiler suggested? To her, the next five minutes represented an investment not only in the case but in her career.

She turned to find the profiler already halfway down the alley. Nicole glanced back over her shoulder as Ruben revved the car. Was it her imagination, or was he stalling in the hope that she would join him? Instead, she gave a wave. Nicole wasn’t sure if he’d seen it or not, as Ruben pulled the car away from the curb and peeled out down the street.

“Well?” Harbinger asked. “That internet café isn’t going to seduce potential victims all by itself.”

Trotting to catch up, Nicole noticed that the profiler ducked under the crime scene tape, but didn’t bother to lift it for her. Not exactly the gentleman. Though Harbinger seemed quite keen to analyze everyone around him, that didn’t mean she couldn’t gain some insight into his character as well.

Dipping under the tape, Nicole followed the profiler as he turned left out of the alley and onto the main street. Half a dozen doors down, he opened the door of an internet café. Bowing, he waved her in.

It was eerie. Almost as if he’d heard her thoughts about his lack of chivalry. She passed by him and entered the café. The denizens were of a motley sort. Some looked homeless while, strangely, others seemed like they had just left work at one of the high-rises a few blocks away.

Harbinger pointed to a woman’s shoes. “Those would be work heels.”

Nicole couldn’t argue. Since all of the victims had been found with only their shoes left on, they had of course thought them to be significant, however it had never occurred to any of them that the victims had been dressed to impress. Given the discrepancy in the victims’ income levels, it was easy to miss. However, no matter how broke a woman was, she usually found a way to have a “date” pair of shoes. They may have been from a Salvation Army store, but they were date-worthy.

Damn it, she should have caught that. On the job, there were few times when being a chick came in handy. This should have been one of them.

The profiler sat down in front of a computer. Nicole waited, but he didn’t type.

“We’re pre-pay only,” the clerk said from behind the counter.

Nicole looked to Harbinger, but he was certainly not reaching for his wallet. She walked over and handed the clerk a twenty. “I’m going to need a receipt for that.”

Once she was sure that she had something to give the reimbursement department, Nicole rejoined the profiler, who was already typing away. Why wasn’t she surprised that he already had a screen name? DrkLvr. Harbinger didn’t waste any time as he popped into a chat room. His eyes scanned down the right hand bar, studying the avatars.

“So which one should I lure first?” he asked.

“Try to lure,” Nicole corrected.

Harbinger grinned. “Sure. Try.”

The profiler’s cockiness should have put her off, but it didn’t. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to prove her wrong or if she wanted to watch him fail. Each seemed like an equally interesting proposition.

He nodded toward the screen again. “Which one?”

Her eyes darted from the avatars to the chat room, but the profiler put his hands in front of the screen. “Oh, no. No cheating. You can tell everything you need to from the avatars.” Nicole leaned in to study them more closely. “I will give you a hint,” the profiler said. “There are three good candidates, but one is just begging to get lured.”

Was Harbinger just making this up? Setting her up to fail? Sliding her eyes over, she watched as he studied the avatars. His expression seemed sincere. More than sincere. Intense. Like a predator watching his prey from the bushes.

Nicole pointed to Happy420, whose avatar had a marijuana leaf behind a smiley face. Not too creative. “How about him?”

“He is a lurker,” the profiler explained. “Way too much of a slacker to actually leave his bong and meet up with someone.”

“How about SexyMomma?” Nicole asked, pointing to the cartoon figure of Jessica Rabbit with an apron on.

“Your seduction muscles really are out of shape,” Harbinger commented as he pointed to the screen. “Desperation is like a bouquet. It has a scent, a feel, a look to it.” He read off three user names. “HopelessRom, WrkOnWood, and MelissaOTK.”

Nicole looked to each of them. The first had a heavily-airbrushed white rose avatar, the second had a graphic of a woodworking shop, and the other was a picture of a rather attractive woman. “I get the first two, I guess, but what about Melissa? She doesn’t look desperate at all.”

Harbinger chuckled as Nicole sat down next to him. “Because Melissa doesn’t look like that at all. My guess? Add ten years, a hundred pounds, and seven years’ bad luck to get an accurate picture.”

“But won’t anyone she meets recognize the fact that she completely lied about her appearance?”

“Detective, we are in a sex chat room. Lying is their form of currency. Lying to each other. Lying to their spouses. Lying to themselves.”

Nicole still wasn’t satisfied, though. “If her intent is to find a sex partner, isn’t she sabotaging herself?”

“Oh, you really have lived a sheltered life,” the profiler sighed. “She is betting on the fact that anyone she meets will be so, let us say, revved up that they won’t care what she looks like.”

Wow, that was pretty desperate.

A ding came from the computer, and a request to join a private chat room opened up, from none other than MelissaOTK. The profiler didn’t even have to say “I told you so.” His smirk did it for him.

Harbinger’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Over your knee or mine?” Nicole was certain her confusion showed up on her face. The profiler explained. “Oh, and another hint was the OTK part of her screen name. Over. The. Knee.”

So Harbinger wasn’t psychic, he just knew the chat room lingo. Nicole didn’t feel quite as much like the dunce in the corner sporting the tall cone hat. Letters flew across the screen as Melissa responded. “How about we alternate?”

To Nicole’s surprise, Kent didn’t go along with that. Instead he typed out, “Sorry. Too much of a top for that.”

“I thought we wanted to lure her?” Nicole asked.

The profiler angled his body toward her. “We don’t just think about the serial killer’s motives. We think like the serial killer. Act like the serial killer.”

The intensity of Harbinger’s gaze took her off guard. Nicole had to suppress another gulp. But if anything, she was a quick learner. “The killer needs someone malleable. Someone he can manipulate.”

Then it hit her. The lack of defensive wounds. The lack of heavy restraint marks. Not all of that was because of the paralytics. The victims must have willingly submitted to the bondage, unaware that they were playing into a serial killer’s dark fantasy.

“He’s picking submissives,” Nicole blurted out.

Harbinger nodded. “I noticed a distinct lack of discussion regarding that aspect of the victimology in Mr. Handshake’s report.”

Actually, it was worse than that. Ruben was dead set against the notion that these killings were sexually motivated. He was so sure that the killer’s entire emphasis was on sadism. The concept had never quite sat right with her, however she had nothing to back up her instinct. Until now.

Melissa’s response popped up. “Intriguing. So UR more Marquis than Don Quixote?”

“Marquis de Sade?” Harbinger typed. “In my eyes a man not very creative and in my mind a tad bit lazy. Don’t we think my fingers could accomplish so much more than IM’ing?”

Nicole shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She was no prude by any means, but this was feeling a bit too much like being a voyeur, even if the profiler’s part in it wasn’t real. Right? This was an act. A ruse. It had to be, right?

Before she could decide, Melissa’s answer appeared. “I will only meet in a public place.”

“Then onward to something a little more private?” Harbinger responded.

“We will see…”

The profiler leaned back. “Yeah, right,” he said, then typed, “Do you know the Decadence Café?”

Melissa’s answer was nearly instantaneous. “Intimately.”

Harbinger raised an eyebrow at Nicole as he typed. “10pm.” The profiler didn’t even wait for a response. He logged off, then pushed the keyboard away from him. “And that is how it is done.”

It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Was he really that skilled at luring, or had he just gotten lucky? Nicole was pretty sure she knew the answer, but she wanted confirmation.

“And how about luring a man?” Nicole questioned.

Harbinger’s eyes scanned over her face. Her skin felt like it was encoded with Braille. How much could the profiler read? Then the inspection was over, as Harbinger laced his fingers together and then cracked them. “Watch and learn.”

The profiler logged into yet another account. Mr9x5. Nicole cocked her head. “That seems a bit…mild,” she noted.

“Those aren’t hours I am referring to,” Harbinger stated as he found a male-male chat room. “They are inches.”

“Inches of —” Nicole stopped herself, unfortunately understanding the part of the body he was measuring. She was certain her cheeks were a ruddy pink. And they did not cool down any as Harbinger launched into his domination of the room. The men were lined up to join him.

Then, in rapid succession, the profiler switched accounts, hopping into chat room after chat room. He set up ménages. He set up foursomes. He even found someone who thought a monkey in a matador’s costume sounded like a good idea.

“I think you’ve made your point,” Nicole conceded.

“I do like to be thorough,” Harbinger answered then angled the keyboard toward her. “So? Your turn?”

Nicole pushed back from the object like it was a rattlesnake, not even caring that her face was probably showing every bit of revulsion she felt. Her head shook back and forth. “No, I’m good.”

* * *

Kent watched the detective sputter for a few more moments, not even listening to her words. They were meaningless. Her expressions, however, were fascinating. To watch her go from panic, to rejection, to her eyes flickering over to the keyboard. Did she even realize that her feet had changed position and were now pointing toward him rather than toward the door? Funny how people did not know what they truly wanted.

The body, though? The body knew. Her eyes were dilated slightly. Her eyelids wide. Her lips slightly parted. She was ready to take in whatever came next. Did she even know that her fingers were twitching slightly? Getting ready to type?

“You know you want to,” Kent coaxed, inching the keyboard toward her.

Nicole blinked once, then stared down at the keys. “I wouldn’t know how.”

“What do they say?” Kent made sure his tone was silky smooth. He did not want to intrude on the conversation going on in the detective’s head. She was doing more to convince herself than he ever could. “Practice makes perfect.”

She leaned forward ever so slightly, but to Kent she might as well have jumped up and down, shouting how eager she was to start. He didn’t say a word as her hands reached out and her fingertips hovered over the keyboard.

“How do I start?” she asked, licking her lips.

Kent was impressed. Most would not dare to follow where he tread. Before her conscious mind could convince her otherwise, Kent clicked the mouse and brought up one of his female personas, MissJustRight.

The detective bit her lower lip, then nodded. He loaded the account and found her just the right chat room. Her fingers pulled back, though, when she realized it was a female-female environment.

“I…I can’t.”

“Oh,” Kent cooed. “You can.”

With a deep breath, Nicole put her fingers back on the keyboard and typed. “Hi.”

Okay, maybe she couldn’t. At least not without some coaching.

“Remember,” Kent whispered. “We are seducing. We create a presence then allow them to come to us. We need to be the dominant.”

Nicole nodded. “Yeah, right. Sorry.”

As the seconds stretched out, Kent could feel her tense. Her fear that she had ruined the moment was palpable. There was no place for fear in a seduction.

“Which one do you think will respond?” Kent asked, trying to keep her mind off the blank screen in the private chat window.

The detective’s gaze scanned over the list of participants. There were over twenty five, yet, to his eyes, there was only one.

“Ready2Party?” she guessed.

That was not the one.

“Too many options,” Kent explained. “She’ll have plenty of girls hitting on her. We need someone a bit more complicated than that.”

Nicole shook her head. “They all seem pretty much the same.”

This detective had so much to learn. So many layers to peel back.

Kent pointed to a name. “Chastity4U.”

He watched as her eyes squinted, reading the name. Kent didn’t have to ask, he knew she was trying to figure out why he had picked that one.

“She calls herself Chastity, yet is in a sex chat room,” Nicole stated, sounding a bit unsure of herself. Off his nod, she continued. “So she is already lying.”

Kent didn’t have to affirm her theory, since Chastity IM’d Nicole. The detective looked over to him and grinned. He had called it yet again. What could he say? He was on a roll.

As Nicole responded to Chastity, Kent leaned in. Too intent on the screen, the detective did not move away. He breathed in her kiwi shampoo as he watched the pounding of her carotid just beneath the skin. Nicole was an odd mixture of sweet and sweat. Tender and tenacious. Kent hadn’t expected to find that combination in this Mid-Western town.

The bell on the door jingled as another after-work client walked in. Who did these people think they were fooling? No one came to an internet café unless they wanted to hide something. The FBI might as well just put out a blanket search warrant on all café computers. It was well known that over fifty percent of the business conducted here was illegal in nature. The other half? Well, they might as well just hand the transcripts of their sessions over to their spouses along with a guide to quick divorce.

A ding brought Chastity’s response.

Kent leaned in even further—this was about to get interesting.

* * *

Nicole fidgeted in her chair. She read, then reread Chastity’s IM. “So what do you like?”

She had watched Harbinger navigate exactly this question half a dozen times, yet Nicole couldn’t think of a single response. “What should I answer?” Kent was at her shoulder. Somehow his knee was brushing against hers. When had he moved so close? She angled away a bit. “Well?”

“Tell her the truth,” the profiler said.

“I’m straight,” Nicole clarified. She didn’t have any problem with not being straight, it just wasn’t how she was wired.

“Tell her a fantasy, then,” Kent stated. “Those are actually more truthful than we like to admit.”

Nicole leaned back from the keyboard. “I thought we were creating a false persona. Acting out what they want to hear.”

“Ah,” the profiler said, leaning back as well. “But you won’t be convincing unless your seduction comes from a real place. Somewhere inside, you know exactly what both you and she want.”

It didn’t seem possible, yet Nicole’s fingers did know exactly what she wanted to type. “Role-playing.”

“I’m intrigued,” Chastity wrote back. “Who? Where?”

There were some pretty obvious choices. Going for the Marquis-type seduction or the standard two chicks in a hot tub, but Nicole didn’t want to be obvious.

“Clothes shopping,” Nicole wrote. “Two friends, same booth. I’m straight. You aren’t.”

Chastity seemed to take the bait whole. “I help you with your dress’s belt, smoothing the fabric over your hips.”

“Helping adjust my neckline,” Nicole prompted.

“My hand accidently brushes against your breast.”

“I don’t pull away.”

The profiler put his hand on the keyboard. “Okay, we don’t want to give away too much of the milk before she buys the cow.” Nicole jerked her fingers back, startled at his intrusion. She hadn’t realized just how intent she had been on the screen. Harbinger continued. “Let’s make the date and peace out.”

As Nicole complied, out of the corner of her eye she watched the profiler. Was he a little flustered? Was he really averting his eyes from the screen? Or was he just too busy taking notes?

Wait. That pad and pen looked familiar.

“That’s Ruben’s set!” she said, snatching the items from Harbinger.

The profiler didn’t even try to hide the fact he had stolen them from her partner. “The leather is so supple, and the pen? Glides across the paper.”

“I gave him that for Christmas,” Nicole exclaimed, retracting the pen’s tip and tucking it inside the small leather holder.

“Really?” the profiler stated, his eyebrow arching. “Your first Christmas together and you get him a pad and pen set? How practical.”

Feeling the tips of her ears burning, Nicole was even more horrified to find that the profiler had transcribed everything she’d said to Chastity into Ruben’s notepad. Nicole ripped the page out, crumpling it, then shoving it deep in her pocket.

“What?” Harbinger asked. “I was just trying to give him some pointers.”

Before she could retort, the clerk called out from behind the counter, “I’m going to need another twenty if you want another hour.”

That couldn’t be. Nicole looked down at her watch. It had been nearly an hour. Ruben must be going ballistic by now, wondering why she wasn’t in the interrogation with him. She looked down to her phone to find two missed calls and four texts from her partner. How had she missed them?

“That’s it, I’ve got to get back.”

“I’ll drive,” the profiler said as he stood up.

It wasn’t until then that Nicole realized that she did need a ride. Ruben had taken the car, and by now all the patrol cars would be gone. She didn’t have time to argue. The sooner she got back to the station, the better.

Harbinger led them out of the internet café and to a dark brown SUV. He unlocked the door with a click of the remote. Nicole climbed in, getting seated and snapping her seat belt closed. To her surprise, the profiler turned on the ignition and pulled out into traffic without any hesitation. She half expected him to stall or tell her they had a stop to make.

Certainly he wasn’t giving her a ride out of the goodness of his heart. She’d only known him for a few hours, but that just didn’t seem to be how he operated. But they were making a beeline for the precinct, so she couldn’t complain. Well, maybe she could complain. The interior of the car smell like…cigar. Didn’t the rental car company clean it out between drivers? Harbinger didn’t strike her as the type to smoke, especially not cigars.

Then she noticed the parking permit swinging gently from the rearview mirror. A permit for the morgue’s parking lot.

“This is Dr. McGregor’s SUV!”

“I figured at some point we would need a set of wheels,” the profiler calmly explained.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Nicole knew that panicking wasn’t going to help keep away the wrath that would rain down upon her from the Medical Examiner, but her panic was well warranted.

“We’ve got to return it. Now,” Nicole emphasized.

“All in due time,” Harbinger answered, leaning his elbow against the open window frame.

“No,” Nicole snapped. “You don’t understand.”

But the profiler smiled. “Oh, but I think I do.” Then he winked.

What had she gotten herself into?

CHAPTER 3

Ruben checked the clock. Again. Nicole was never late. His partner had a metronome in her head. If a waiter said the entrée would be out in five minutes, Nicole would not have to look at her watch to advise him if he were a moment overdue. Ruben even questioned why she even wore a watch in the first place.

“Yes, detective,” the lawyer who sat across from him said. “We’ve all got other things we would like to be doing.”

No doubt they did. Ruben returned his focus to the suspect sitting across from him. At first glance, you wouldn’t take him for a serial killer. The anatomy professor looked like, well, an anatomy professor. He had the air of a professional nerd. Black-rimmed glasses and all.

However, if he were so innocent, why was he always so cagey during his interrogations? Ruben had flagged him months ago, after the initial round of interviews. The man never answered a question directly. And his lawyer was no help.

Levinson closed his briefcase. “If we are done, my client would like to go home to his wife, who, I might remind you, has already given him an alibi for last night.”

Ruben had hoped to wait for Nicole before really getting into the meat of the interrogation. Her presence seemed to fluster the professor. However, he couldn’t wait any longer.

Slowly, he opened the folder with the latest crime scene photographs. “Look familiar?”

As always, the professor shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose and studied the dissected bodies. His eyes coursed over the organs as his lips moved without sound. Carefully, he lined the pictures up. The head at the top. The chest area next, then the abdomen. Finally, the pelvis and legs.

“I would have used more sharp dissection than blunt. It creates a better distinction between the muscle groups.”

Ruben had to constrict his throat as bile threatened. “She was alive when this was done to her.”

The professor looked up, frowning. “And for that I am sorry, but I had nothing to do with it.”

“Do you know how most people react when they see something like this?” Ruben asked, then answered his own question. “They are horrified. Revolted.”

Munz went to answer, but his lawyer laid a hand on his arm and spoke instead. “Unless the legal code has changed since we’ve been in here, being an outlier is not a crime.”

Ruben knew he was losing this round. Soon, very soon, Munz’s lawyer was going to insist that they either charge his client or let him go. Ruben could, of course, reveal that fact that they had surveillance on Munz which could break his wife’s alibi. But Ruben wanted to hold that back. Let Munz and his lawyer believe that they had nothing on the professor. All the better when they finally caught Munz in the act.

“So, as I said, I think this interview is…”

The lawyer’s words were cut off as Nicole rushing in. She mouthed “sorry” as she closed the door. Ruben noted that Munz sat straighter in his chair, his shoulders back like an English schoolboy.

“Detective Usher,” the lawyer said with a nod. If Ruben wasn’t mistaken, the guy actually thought he had a chance with Nicole. Like she’d ever go out with a defense attorney.

“Mr. Levinson,” Nicole answered as she sat down.

“Fashionably late?” the lawyer asked. “Or did you find some exculpatory evidence for my client?”

When she didn’t answer, Ruben looked to her. Nicole wouldn’t meet his eyes, but she did push his notepad and pen toward him. Weird. He didn’t think he’d given them to her.

Levinson’s eyes darted between them. “Something I should be aware of?”

“No,” Ruben stated. “But I would like to know your client’s exact movements last night.”

The lawyer sighed. “You do tape these interviews, correct? And since you already have him explaining that he was home all night with his wife about three times, I think you can just make a loop of it and we’ll never have to come in again.”

“How about one more time,” Ruben suggested. If he could just trip Munz up, he wouldn’t have to reveal the surveillance.

“As much as I would love”—Levinson emphasized the “love” as he nodded to Nicole—”to continue this conversation, my client pays me by the hour, and it would simply be highway robbery to go over it all again.” There wasn’t much Ruben could do as the lawyer rose, urging his client up. “So I think we are going to call it a night.”

* * *

Nicole watched as the two pushed their chairs back, getting ready to leave. She should have been here. But, really, would it have made much of a difference? Ruben was so certain that the killer was Munz, but after Harbinger’s demonstration, she wasn’t so sure. Her partner had no theory on how Munz would have met and seduced all of the victims. And the professor had always seemed so…obvious.

Yes, in common crimes it usually was the most obvious suspect. A wife turns up dead, you look to the husband. A child? You look to the parents.

But this crime was anything but common. So an anatomy professor being The Anatomy Professor seemed so out of character for the killer who went to such great length to cover his tracks.

The more time they spent on Munz, the less time they spent on finding the real killer. They needed to rule him in or out, like right now.

“Just tell us, professor,” Nicole said before she realized she was going to speak. “Tell us the truth so we can move on.”

Everyone turned to her. Ruben’s eyes questioning what the hell she was doing. Nicole’s gaze sought the two-way mirror, picturing the profiler standing behind it, watching her, judging her, urging her to get this over with.

“I have told you the truth,” Munz said. Did his words sound as hollow to him as they did to her?

“We have you under surveillance,” Nicole blurted as Ruben’s eyes dilated. She knew they wanted to keep that a secret, but why, if Munz wasn’t the killer? Nicole was pretty damned sure she knew what the professor was hiding. Well, she knew if Harbinger had been at all correct in his assessment. “And you weren’t home with your wife.”

The lawyer seemed concerned, looking to his client. “I wouldn’t say anything, Dr. Munz.” He urged his client to the door, but Nicole stepped in front of them.

“I get it that you want to keep your…activities private,” Nicole sympathized. “But people are dying. Your secret pales in comparison to another person being dissected alive.” Munz refused to look her in the eye. “I know you don’t want that.”

Ruben put a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe we should let them go and bring the professor back in when—”

“Or, you could tell us right now what you were doing last night.” Nicole shrugged off her partner’s restraint. “Your wife has perjured herself, Dr. Munz. We can prosecute her for that.” The professor finally looked up. She’d found the chink in his armor. His wife. “She knows, doesn’t she?”

Munz’s lips pursed together. Nicole was close, but not correct. “She suspects, then?”

“What are you talking about?” Levinson asked.

“Yes,” her partner added tersely. “What exactly are you implying?”

The professor knew, though. Nicole could tell, as his eyelid twitched and his hand trembled against his pant leg.

“I have the right not to incriminate myself.”

Nicole couldn’t allow the smile she felt inside to reach her lips. She still needed him to confess to his actual crime. “We aren’t interested in prosecuting you, Dr. Munz. But we do need you to tell us what you were doing last night.”

Still, the man seemed hesitant. She had to find something else to apply the right pressure to break the seal of shame. “My guess is that you disabled the cameras in the anatomy lab, but did you remember to turn off the ones in the hallways? The ones that will show your repeated after-hours trips to the lab?”

By the way his lips clamped down, she guessed not. “And are you absolutely certain we won’t find biologicals, your biologicals, on the cadavers?”

“It’s a victimless crime,” Munz blurted out.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Levinson intervened. “How about my client and I confer before—”

Nicole stepped around the lawyer. “What is, Dr. Munz? What have you been doing in that lab? At night? By yourself?”

“They don’t want anything. They don’t have expectations,” the professor stammered out. “They don’t fight.”

“Dear God,” Ruben whispered. “You’re a necrophiliac.”

Munz turned on his heel. “We prefer the term daisy pusher.”

Nicole didn’t have to hear anything more. The professor was a pervert, but he wasn’t their perp. She made for the door.

“Where are you going?” Ruben asked.

“To search for the actual killer,” Nicole stated, then left the room. As the door shut, her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the hallway. She found her captain standing at the observation window. Nicole glanced around, but he was the only one there.

“What the hell was that about, Usher?” Captain Glick demanded.

“Where’s FBI Special Agent Harbinger?”

Captain Glick frowned. “What Special Agent?”

“The one you called in to help with the case?”

Glick shook his head. “I didn’t call in any FBI agent. And back to why you—”

A laugh erupted before Nicole could stop it. Harbinger wasn’t even on official duty, yet was closer to solving the case then they had come in months. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve got to follow up a lead.”

“Without Torres?”

Definitely without her partner.

* * *

Kent sat at a corner table in the back of the Decadence Café. He blew on his hot chocolate, causing the whipped cream to tremble and dance across the dark surface. Everyone else around him was drinking an iced tea, or iced latte, or iced something or other. Given the fact that it was ten o’clock at night and still ninety degrees with one hundred percent humidity, Kent didn’t blame them.

However, he found the warmer it was outside, the warmer he liked his drink. Call him a contrarian that way.

As he waited for his hot chocolate to cool just below scalding temperatures, Kent studied those around him. More than half of the patrons he and Nicole had lured here. You could tell them from their furtive glances and barely contained excitement and shame. He had made sure to tell each of them to order something different, with a twist.

Never before had café-goers been so interested in what everyone else was eating. Who would be brave enough to get up and introduce themselves to their supposed blind date? Kent had certainly manipulated each of them, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t tried to match each of them with someone compatible. It felt like it was his civic duty.

He might be a puppet master, but he liked to think of himself as a benevolent one. Well, perhaps not benevolent, but at the least indulgent. The café door opened to reveal a petite brunette with a badge on her hip. Once again, he pulled a string, and look who followed.

Nicole spotted him and headed straight over. “Special Agent Harbinger.”

“Please,” he said, indicating to the chair across from him. “Once you’ve seduced together, I believe you should be on a first-name basis.”

“Kent, then,” Nicole said as she sat down. “You weren’t called in.”

Leaning back, Kent took a sip of the hot chocolate. The barista had been right. That shot of spearmint really did liven up the drink. “I never said I was.” Off of her frown, he continued. “Your paramour was the one that ousted me as a profiler. I was simply observing.”

She cocked her head. Both of them knew there was nothing simple about his presence here, but she didn’t push it.

“So how was it?” Kent asked.

Nicole shrugged. “It’s good that we’ve eliminated Munz and can move on.”

“That’s not what I asked though, is it?” he pointed out.

The detective shifted in her seat, her fingers playing with an empty sugar packet. “I could…” she stopped, then started again. “It was like I could sense his internal resistance, then the cracking of his composure. Not in a psychic way, just in a…” Nicole pointed to her midline, “Physical way.”

Kent knew exactly what she was describing. Most cops called it their gut, but really it was a complex set of visual and auditory clues, filtered and sorted by the brain, before the autonomic system sent the message down to the belly. There was very little instinct about it. For the most part, it was a learned craft that could be cultivated if one wished and was willing to risk opening themselves up to it.

“Again, not what I asked.”

Nicole let the packet go. “It felt pretty damned good.”

Kent grinned. That’s what he’d thought. “And what do you think of our handiwork?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look around,” Kent said. “Recognize anyone?”

Nicole turned in her seat, surveying the room. “I don’t —” She stopped herself, then swung back to him. “No. They can’t be.”

“Oh, but they are,” Kent said, then took another sip. “Can you guess who’s who?”

A smile flickered at the edge of her lips as she studied those around her. She pointed to the chubbiest of the bunch. “Chastity4U?”

“Very good,” he purred. “And MelissaOTK?”

Nicole nodded toward a redhead wearing a dark purple bustier.

“Now, knowing what you do,” Kent stated, “reimagine your profile of the killer.”

The detective’s eyes narrowed. “He certainly has far more social skills than we had anticipated.”

“Online,” Kent reminded her. “That is a whole other set of skills. But I was speaking more to his baseline personality.”

“What do you mean?”

How this reminded Kent of his days of teaching at Quantico. Okay, so it was only for one class, but still. There was a certain thrill to watching someone else’s mind expand.

“Talk to me about how he disposes of the bodies.”

Nicole opened her mouth, but shut it again. She thought a bit longer before answering. “He is a bit of a showman.”

“Exactly,” Kent concurred. “After all that work and flare, do you really think he would be content to sit back and let the police take it from there?”

“You aren’t suggesting…”

Kent was about to acknowledge that that was exactly what he was suggesting when the café door opened again. A tall, ravishing brunette entered, her long black dress hugging every curve. Her heavy eyeliner expertly applied, then smudged just enough to give that smoky look.

“Ah, but here is the showstopper,” Kent stated.

Nicole turned to take in the new beauty as the grin fell and was replaced by a frown. “Jaime? The EMT?”

Ah, if a picture was worth a thousand words, the look on Nicole’s face was worth a million.

“But…but…” Nicole balked. “Why would you lure her here?”

“Oh, my darling,” Kent cooed. “I allowed her to lure me.”

* * *

Nicole didn’t bother to open her mouth. Gibberish would just fall out. Her mind had to grasp the several bombshells that had just been dropped.

First Kent was suggesting, or, more like the profiler, telling her that the killer had inserted himself into the investigation. That someone she knew was the killer. Second, Jaime standing in that doorway. The EMT that had lured Kent here.

She couldn’t be the killer, could she? Everything about her was so wrong for the crime, yet here she stood, not looking a thing like she did while on the job. She had transformed from mousy to seductress in a few short hours.

The woman’s dark eyes passed over Nicole, then flickered back. Recognition registered. The smooth self-confidence was replaced by a look of barely contained panic. Jaime turned on her heel and headed back out the door.

Nicole knocked her chair over rushing to follow. “Police,” she announced as the room turned to her. Dodging past MelissaOTK, Nicole hit the door and burst out onto the street. No Jaime, though. Just her partner. He must have followed her here. Under other circumstances Nicole would have found that a bit overbearing—right now, though, it was a godsend.

“Ruben, did you see Jaime?”

“The EMT?” Ruben asked, glancing around the empty street.

Nicole didn’t have time to explain. “Did you see a woman in a long black dress? Hot? Smoking hot?”

“Yes, she hurried off to the south, but—”

Not bothering to answer him, Nicole struck off, knowing that Ruben would follow.

“I don’t understand,” her partner said as he hurried to catch up. “Actually, I don’t think I understand the last few hours.”

And Nicole really couldn’t help him, not while busy checking out side alleys trying to find Jaime. The EMT couldn’t have gotten very far. Not in those stilettos. Then she heard it. The click of heels against the pavement. Nicole took the next left, rushing down the alley. Was that a flash of red from the bottom of the EMT’s designer shoe?

Pulling her weapon, Nicole quickened her pace. While Ruben un-holstered his weapon, as well, he didn’t sound any more sure than he had been a moment ago. “We are chasing down Jaime?”

There she was! Nearly to her car. They couldn’t let her get away, but they were pretty damned far off. Then an arm reached out from a doorway and clotheslined the woman. Jaime flew off her feet, landing on her back, clutching her throat. Kent stepped from the shadows, adjusting his cuff links.

“What the hell is going on?” Ruben demanded.

Nicole got Jaime up, patted her down, making sure that she wasn’t carrying a weapon. “Jaime has been using chat rooms to lure victims.”

Ruben took a step back. “Do you mean that…?”

Catching her breath, Nicole nodded to the profiler. “Kent thinks that the Professor inserted themselves into the investigation. Jaime was the first on the scene this morning.” Nicole found a small label in Jaime’s purse. It read “Ureter.”

Ruben read the label. “You crazy—”

“Wait,” Jaime croaked out, trying to clear her throat. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“We will see about that,” Nicole said, handcuffing the EMT.

“No,” Jaime said. “I just sold the crime scene photos.”

Kent stepped forward, “No, that’s not all you did.”

The EMT nodded slowly. “And stole evidence to sell to the murder memorabilia auctions, but that’s it.”

Nicole looked to Kent, who didn’t seem surprised. Nor did he correct Jaime.

“She isn’t the killer?” Nicole asked, feeling her heart sink in her belly.

“Oh, heavens no,” Kent answered. “I mean, we already know who the killer is. Don’t we?”

* * *

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ruben demanded, stepping forward, taking charge.

“It’s the crime scene photographer,” Kent answered, nonplussed. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“No,” Nicole snapped.

“Oops, my bad.”

Ruben felt like he’d just walked in on a Wagner opera halfway through, in its original German. “Nikki, what is going on?”

But she didn’t answer. Instead, her brows furrowed as she frowned. Clearly, her mind was whirling a mile a minute. Unfortunately, Ruben couldn’t wait for her to come up for air.

“What makes you think that Roy is the killer?” asked the detective.

“Um,” Harbinger said, acting as if Ruben wanted to know why the sun rose in the morning. “He had access. He had suppressed rage. He was the only one at the crime scene that reacted when I called the killer stupid. Clearly he has body image issues—do I need to go on?”

“Yes,” Ruben growled. “Yes, you do. Because no jury in a millennium is going to convict on that thin of, Jesus, it isn’t even evidence.”

The profiler didn’t seem shaken at all. If anything, the more Ruben pushed, the calmer Harbinger became. “Perhaps a routine internet search might show that the photographer’s biological mother, not the mother that raised him, was an anatomy professor at the local med school.” Ruben was about to comment on how that still wasn’t enough when the profiler continued. “The mother that left poor little Roy when he was a small child in order for her to go and have a sex change. That mother.”

As much as Ruben did not want to admit that Harbinger was on to something, he could not ignore a set of coincidences like that. He flipped open his phone. “Dispatch, I am going to need the address of —”

“Really?” the profiler asked. “You are going to the house of the mastermind? Like he’s going to have his killing grounds in that little apartment. The guy can’t even fit a full Foreman Grill. He had to buy the mini.”

“He’s right,” Nicole added, finally coming back to the conversation. “He would need somewhere much more isolated to set up a full anatomy lab.”

Ruben ignored the dispatcher, who was asking him to finish as he snapped his phone closed. Gritting his teeth, he asked what had to be asked. “And I assume, Harbinger that you know where that is?”

“Well,” the profiler chuckled. “An educated guess might be his second cousin on his father’s side. Nice farm parcel of land on the outskirts of town which has had low electricity consumption except on the nights of the abductions and murders.”

If Ruben had had time to glower, he would have. Clearly that wasn’t an educated guess on the profiler’s part. He’d done his research and leapt miles ahead in the case. In a matter of freaking hours. Plus he’d nailed the fact that Munz was a necro, and had somehow caught Jaime as a crime scene thief. Oh, and he was, all the while, in a tuxedo.

Nicole got her phone out. “I’ll get us back up.”

Although Ruben wasn’t quite sure why. They had double “O” profiler with them.

* * *

Nicole held onto the car door handle as Ruben took a corner way too fast. The tires squealed as they made the turn down a gravel road. Dust kicked up before she could roll up her window.

The sound of the siren wailed overhead as red and blue lights flashed. Ruben’s urgency had gotten them here before their backup. Nicole’s eyes found the rearview mirror. Kent’s reflection seemed oddly at peace. Eyes closed, his lips moved in what looked like a chant or meditation. The profiler was certainly unpredictable.

Of course, he’d captured dozens of serial killers over the course of his career. He probably didn’t have the same butterflies in his stomach as she did.

The tires crunched their way down the lane. Ruben cut the siren and lights as they took another right-hand turn. This road didn’t even have gravel. Kent had certainly been correct regarding the isolation of the farm. Trees lined the lane, blocking any view ahead until the road emptied out into rolling pastures.

A dark house sat in the middle of a field, with a large barn off to the left. It seemed empty. The only illumination came from their headlights slicing through the darkness. Ruben pulled them to a stop.

“I’m thinking the barn,” her partner stated, then looked over his shoulder to the profiler.

“What?” Kent responded. “I’m just along for the ride.”

Ruben shook his head, checking his weapon. “How long until our backup arrives?”

Nicole pulled her phone out. No bars. No reception. “They can’t be too far behind us.”

Ruben looked in the rearview mirror to the profiler. “Aren’t you going to prep your weapon?”

“Me?” Harbinger asked. “I don’t carry a gun.”

“What?” Ruben exclaimed, then shook it off. “Then just stay in the car.”

The profiler shrugged, then closed his eyes again. Ruben glanced to Nicole. “We can wait.”

There wasn’t much worse she could imagine than sitting here waiting and waiting as her stomach churned while adrenaline sang in her ears. Her toe tapped against the floor of the car. “At least, let’s check out the barn.”

Getting out of the car, Nicole glanced one last time to the profiler, who seemed perfectly content to meditate in the backseat. Strangely, that bugged her. How many doors had she rushed through without a second thought? And with Ruben by her side? He’d take a bullet for her. No, make that an entire clip. Then why did her legs feel a little rubbery as she walked away from the car?

Perhaps it was the fact that they were going after a predator this time. Not some street punk or even a hard-core gang-banger. This was a man who had killed, then worked right alongside of them. He had lured half a dozen people to their death without raising a single red flag. Nicole wasn’t all that much in a hurry to see what he had in his barn.

Maybe waiting in the car hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.

Then Ruben gripped the handle on the barn door and pulled. It didn’t budge. Carefully, they made their way to the small side door. Her partner turned the handle. It gave. Backing up, Ruben indicated for her to open the door. Nicole pointed her gun down and out to the side as her other hand found the knob. She gave it a sharp twist, then shoved the door forward, her left foot sliding forward to stop the rebound.

Ruben charged through the doorway, his gun up and ready. Nicole entered swiftly after him, their flashlight beams crisscrossing the room. Which turned out to be rather small. Silver glistened back at them, but it wasn’t surgical equipment. Instead, it was halters and bridles. Tack. Horseback riding equipment.

Nicole hissed out a breath. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Her partner crossed over to another small door.

They repeated the process, but this time, they entered a cavernous space. Instead of a barn with stalls and hay bales, they found a cement-lined floor and a fully functional surgical suite. Huge operating lights flooded the room, making the stainless steel equipment shine brilliantly.

The rows of scalpels. Trocars. Rib spreaders. Everything you would need to dissect a human.

Pinching her nose closed, Nicole tried to ignore the strong smell of iron and formaldehyde. Blood and preservative. She could taste it with each breath.

“Dear God,” Ruben breathed out.

Nicole joined him at a tray of labels. Each to be carefully written with the names of each organ in the victim’s own blood. There were at least ten new sets. Ten new victims the killer had planned on dissecting.

In the still air, Nicole heard the faintest sound of dripping. She looked down at the ground. It had recently been hosed down. Nicole tried not to imagine what the killer had washed away. But if the drain was still dripping…

“He’s here,” Nicole whispered.

Ruben’s gun went up as his gaze swept the large chamber. There didn’t seem to be any other exit, and there didn’t seem to be any place to hide. Yet water still ran in small rivulets down the concrete. And if the tack room was the only way out, there was no way Roy could have slipped past them.

But where could he be?

She took the right side of the room as Ruben took the left. They checked behind and under each and every cabinet, table, and instrument stand. Anything that provided the least bit of cover, but still they found nothing.

Ruben then pointed to a tall glass-lined cabinet. Nicole crossed the room, setting up on the other side of the object. She noticed small grooves in the floor where the hidden door must have been swung open and shut many times.

With a heave, Ruben shoved the cabinet away from the wall, revealing another doorway. This one led into a labyrinth of medical supplies. Boxes were stacked to the ceiling, blocking their view forward.

From somewhere deeper inside the storage area, the sound of scuffing filtered through to them.

Who knew what might be ahead, but they couldn’t wait. Not when the killer might be within reach. As they stepped into the maze of supplies Nicole wished, not for the first time, that the profiler had come along.

CHAPTER 4

Kent opened the front door to the house, glad that Roy had left it unlocked. Or at the least left a lock easy enough to pick. He wasn’t into splitting hairs. With one last glance over his shoulder to the barn, Kent entered the house. Nicole and Ruben had chosen to explore the killer’s dissecting grounds. He was far more interested in his seduction grounds.

Flicking on the light, Kent found a rather average-looking living room. Actually, it was a perfectly crafted average-looking living room. How long had it taken Roy to build this perfect balance of familiarity and individuality?

The furniture was arranged to make the fireplace the focal point of the room. The stonework gave the room an earthy, grounded feeling. The pictures that lined the mantle imparted a homey air. It was everything you would expect of a country house. The house felt lived in. Quite the accomplishment for a psychopath to achieve.

Kent ran his finger along the back of the suede coach. How many men and women had Roy brought here before he actually got the nerve to do something about the urges he was feeling inside? Kent could imagine the number of potential victims that had bailed once they drove down that long, dark, dirt road. Others must have high-tailed it out of here once they realized how isolated the house was.

With each failure, though, Roy learned something new. All of those dry runs had taught him how to create an environment that soothed and comforted. He had also honed his skill at choosing victims that were either such extreme risk-takers, or so desperate for attention that they would actually enter the house.

Didn’t they notice the warning signs? No matter how cozy Roy tried to make the place, there were telltale signs of mental illness. The newspapers by the fireplace were stacked with precision. Not a page out of place. Kent would guess they were in perfect chronological order, as well. The wood in the fireplace was so neatly positioned that it could be in an ad for the Boy Scouts. Also, there wasn’t a phone to be seen. Not that house phones weren’t on the decline as cell phones grew in prominence. But way out here? There should have been some kind of antique rotary phone somewhere within reach.

And the lack of animals? Did no one notice that, this being a farm, there wasn’t a single animal sound? Not a moo or a bray or even a bark? Kent was fairly sure that old Roy had practiced his craft on those poor denizens long before he ever made the leap to humans. That was how most serial killers started out. Really, animal control officers should just be allowed to make arrests on children guilty of animal cruelty. It certainly would stem the tide of adult serial killers.

Shots rang out from the barn, jarring Kent from his musings. He probably should go out there and see what the kids were doing, but why? Kent had already led them here by the nose. Did he really need to capture the killer for them, as well?

Instead, he closed his eyes and imagined that an unsuspecting victim sat on the couch. What would Roy do next? He didn’t have the social skills to fool anyone for long in person. He would want to immobilize his victim as quickly as possible.

The obvious next step in this process would be for Roy to offer his “guest” something to drink. He would want them to be at ease. Which must be why Roy had redesigned the house so that you could see into the kitchen from the living room. He would want to keep an eye on his victim the whole time.

The layout also served to decrease suspicion on the part of the victim. It was one thing to walk into a stranger’s house and sit down in their living room. It was quite another to have that stranger disappear into the bowels of the house. Left to their own devices, most would pick up the subtle clues that something wasn’t quite right.

By having an open floor plan, Roy could now keep talking to his victim as he went into the kitchen, keeping them engaged and unaware. That did lead to a slight problem, however. Since Roy was in full view of his victim, how did he get the syringe he needed to inject the paralytics?

Kent crossed into the kitchen, bypassing the oak kitchen table and going to the refrigerator. It was stocked with the usual suspects. Milk, lettuce, ketchup, cheese, grapes, etc., plus a single bottle of chilled white wine. Kent pulled it out, setting it on the counter as Roy must have done. What next?

Opening the freezer, Kent took a step back. Well, at least he’d found the cousin. Or at least that’s what it looked like was stored there in a variety of plastic containers. Clever. It was a risk, of course, to have a dead body in one’s freezer, but Kent imagined how it made Roy feel each and every time he opened the door. To see his accomplishment right there. It was probably what got Roy through those first few killings.

Kent closed the freezer and opened the drawer closest to the refrigerator.

Ah, there they were.

Lined up in a nice neat row like a set of prized heirloom cutlery were syringes, each precisely filled to the three milliliter mark. Right next to them was a corkscrew.

How easy to grab a syringe as you pulled out the corkscrew. Again. Clever.

The slightest scuff alerted Kent that he was no longer alone. Grabbing a syringe, he twisted around just as Roy took a swing at him…with a trocar. Kent ducked, using his arm to block the blow. The stainless steel shaft clanged against the limb, hitting Kent’s radial nerve, numbing his hand. An expert blow by someone way too familiar with anatomy. The syringe fell, useless, to the floor.

Why did psychopaths always want to put up a fight? Kent didn’t know, but damn, they always did.

Using his only functional hand, Kent grabbed the heavy, solid oak kitchen chair, knocking it back, tripping Roy in the process. For such a tubby old man, Roy recovered quickly. That trocar, with its sharp tip, came arcing overhead, aiming for Kent’s jugular. His only option was to dive under the table. A loud whack sounded as the stainless steel hit the table, digging deep into the wood. That would have been Kent’s flesh. So far he had not been injured by a trocar, and he planned to keep it that way.

Nicole and her partner must have figured out by now that Roy had escaped using the Prohibition-era tunnels running from the barn to the house, right? Although the two detectives had not been too quick on the draw so far.

Roy, on the other hand? He was all too quick, pulling the trocar out of the splintered wood, getting ready for another blow. Kent pushed another chair out of the way and tried to make for the kitchen door, but Roy had anticipated the move. More than likely, a few of his earlier victims had tried that play.

This kitchen was its own little battleground —one in which Roy had the home court advantage. Kent changed course abruptly, spinning on his heel, grabbing for the freezer handle. Roy couldn’t correct in time, and he slammed the stainless steel instrument into the open freezer door.

Containers of cousin fell from the freezer, covering the floor like human ice cubes.

“Did you mean to kill him?” Kent asked, trying to distract Roy from the fact that Kent was unarmed. Roy didn’t seem like the talkative type though. Instead, the man lunged again, only this time his foot hit a slick spot and he careened toward the sink.

Kent snatched the syringe from the floor. Just as Roy turned, the trocar angled toward Kent, he slammed the syringe into the killer’s arm, pumping the contents into Roy’s flesh.

Still, the trocar’s sharp tip found Kent’s neck, pushing against his skin, trying to find his jugular. If that happened, Kent knew that he would bleed out before anyone could stop it. But the tip didn’t dig any further.

How could it, as Roy’s arm lost its strength and his muscles went lax?

“Was that a single dose in the syringe?” Kent asked as he pushed the plunger all the way down. By the way Roy’s eyes dilated, it hadn’t been. “Oh, so that was an overdose, then?”

Roy tried to speak but his lips just made a flapping motion.

“Is that how your victims tried to scream, Roy?” Kent grabbed the killer’s arm and turned the trocar away from his own neck and toward Roy’s. “Did they see it coming? Did they flail?”

Well, Roy certainly was. Kent took some grim satisfaction as the killer’s arms flopped around like fish just pulled from the water. Pushing harder, Kent brought the tip of the trocar up to Roy’s neck, letting the sharp edge lay against his skin.

“Could they feel the blood rush out of them? Did they know the exact moment they passed the point of no return?”

By Roy’s dilated pupils and fluttering eyelids, Kent guessed that they did.

Before he could help Roy really get in touch with his victim’s feelings, the door burst open. “Kent!”

* * *

Nicole raced over as Roy fell to the ground. Kent’s knees buckled and she caught the profiler while still holding her gun on the downed killer. “Are you okay?”

Ruben charged in behind her. He dropped to his knees, checking Roy’s pulse. “He’s alive, but barely.” Her partner glared at Kent. “What the hell happened here?”

“Self-defense.”

“With a syringe and trocar?” Ruben demanded.

The profiler shrugged. “You use the gifts that God gives you.”

Her partner flipped his phone open and tried to dial for help, but there was no signal. Luckily, sirens sounded in the distance. Their backup. Finally.

“I’ll flag them down,” Ruben said as he rushed from the room.

Kent leaned heavily into Nicole as he retorted. “You do that.”

She helped the profiler into a kitchen chair. She ran her hands over his arms, chest, and neck. “Are you injured?”

“A few blows to my pride perhaps…”

How Kent could go into the ring with a vicious serial killer and come out of it without a scratch was beyond her, but here he was. The only thing out of place was a few hairs. She combed them back in place with her fingers.

“What took you so long?” Kent asked softly. It was only then that Nicole realized they were only inches apart.

Taking a step back, she couldn’t look the profiler in the eye. “We followed a noise into the storage area.”

“And the shots?”

“Um…a rat. But in our defense,” Nicole hurried on, “it was a really big rat.”

Kent smiled, his eyes softening as he chuckled. The expression was incongruent, yet oddly consistent with the profiler’s personality. “That’s when you figured out that Roy had doubled back?”

Nicole nodded. “We hurried back to the main room and I found the trap door under the surgical table.”

“You found it? Like it was hidden and you deduced its location?” Kent asked, narrowing his eyelids. Seriously, the guy was half psychic.

“Well, Roy didn’t close it completely shut,” Nicole admitted.

Her eyes shifted to the man lying, like a broken doll, on the floor, his legs askew and neck bent at an awkward angle. She couldn’t bring herself to straighten him out. To think, for all this time she had casually chatted with him. Thought of him as an okay kind of guy. He’d even bought her coffee, for Christ’s sake. And she’d returned the favor.

“What really happened?” she asked.

“You would like to know, wouldn’t you?”

The profiler’s gaze bored into her. His eyes scanning back and forth across her face almost like he was reading a book. Could he see that being a junior partner in a Midwest City’s police department hadn’t been her career goal? Could he see that she’d written down “FBI agent” in her kindergarten dream job book? Did he know that dream had been shattered when her father had been diagnosed with MS? How her brother had gotten to go off to Harvard law school, but Nicole had had to stay close by to help with her father’s illness?

A barely perceptible grin returned to Kent’s lips as Ruben and the rest of their backup rushed into the room. “Not here,” the profiler whispered. “Later.”

His voice had been so soft that it seemed like he hadn’t even breathed the words. Especially not as the room filled with the chatter of cops and EMTs. Ruben barked orders, trying to contain the chaos, but The Professor had been caught. There would be no containing that.

Yet the profiler simply watched the scene with what appeared to be a sense of amusement. Like it was just another day at the office for him. And it probably was. What would it feel like to have the audacity to go up against a serial killer, alone? And to have the confidence that you could win?

Nicole didn’t know, but damn if she didn’t want to give it a try.

* * *

Ruben signed yet another form as Roy was wheeled out of the house toward the ambulance. Out of the knot of first responders, Captain Glick strode up the steps of the farmhouse and entered the living room.

“Excellent job, Torres.”

Grinding his teeth, Ruben flicked his eyes towards Harbinger. “I can’t take all the credit, Captain.”

“Sure you can,” the profiler said as he leaned against the doorframe. “I just came along because I thought we were getting ice cream.”

Glick frowned. The captain wasn’t any too fond of humor, let alone sarcasm. “I don’t understand.” Ruben went to explain when Glick held up his hand. “I’ll read about it in the report.”

“Captain!” a uniformed cop called out from the back of the house.

Before moving off, Glick turned to Ruben. “A thorough report. A painstakingly thorough report.”

“Yes, sir,” Ruben answered.

The captain wasn’t two feet away when the profiler pushed off the doorframe. “Well, I’ve given my statement, so I think I’ll be off.”

“Yeah,” Ruben responded, more relieved than he should have been. “You do that.”

The dig just didn’t work when Harbinger looked ready to hit the town in that tux of his. Then Ruben noticed Nicole heading toward the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Ruben asked, before thinking it through.

“Kent offered his expertise on a few of my cold cases,” Nicole said, although her partner wouldn’t meet his gaze. “And since he’s leaving in the morning…”

Expertise. Right.

Ruben knew enough about Nicole to know that he couldn’t strong-arm her into staying, as much as he wanted to. He tried a different tactic. “Whoever writes up the report gets the collar.”

She reached out and patted his shoulder. Patted. “You deserve it, Ruben. You put in all the legwork.” After giving his arm a little squeeze, she turned for the door.

Once she was past the profiler, Harbinger winked at him. “I wouldn’t wait up.”

Ruben tried to count to ten, however he couldn’t even think of what came after the number one. Glick came up from behind.

“Is Nicole leaving with the profiler?” Glick asked. All Ruben could do was nod. The captain squinted into the night. “And isn’t that your car they’re taking?”

“Yep.”

Why was it that on the night of catching his first serial killer, Ruben felt like the loser?

“Guess it’s best they get to know one another,” Glick said, clearly not in tune with Ruben’s inner landscape. “Harbinger’s requested to transfer here as a consultant.” Of course he had. Glick continued, “And the FBI has already approved it.” Of course they had. “The serial killers of this city are going to have to sit up and take notice,” Glick finished.

As the captain moved off, Ruben stared out past the knot of police vehicles and watched the lone car leaving the crime scene until it disappeared behind the trees. Ruben doubted that serial killers were the only ones that needed to take notice of the profiler.

Damn it.

PLAIN JANE – The full length novel that started it all!

PROLOGUE

The man forced himself deeper into the darkened storefront. He could not chance the brunette spotting him as she approached.

Joann was late. The man knew her schedule because he had watched her office from the roof of an adjacent building. Watched that boss of hers give the brunette a new account right before seven. The lazy bastard knew that Joann would stay hours to input the client’s information, then run a full set of actuaries before she left. Not because the brunette had to, but because Joann would never leave a task unfinished.

That sense of responsibility was only one of the many, many traits that attracted the man to her. You only had to glance at the brunette to know that she was worthy. Worthy of his time. Worthy of his attention.

As Joann drew closer and closer to his position, any sense of frustration over the long, cold wait melted. The sight of her dark brown eyes, slightly drooped from long hours in front of the computer, was why he risked positioning himself so close to her route home.

He needed to be near her. Near enough to smell her Obsession perfume. The fragrance he had sent her. Of course Joann did not know it was from him. The brunette thought she had won it from the Avalon Woman’s Week website contest. But he knew. Knew a piece of him caressed her skin. Lingered at her throat.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the man closed the chasm.

Close enough that he noticed the night chill force one of her delicate hands into her coat pocket, while the other clasped her jacket tight around her neck. Joann had been rushed this morning due to a call and had forgotten her scarf. The long purple one. Her favorite.

The man noticed such things. Knew such things because, unlike every other male in her life, the man took the time to discover such things.

Breath caught in his throat as she neared. The man could not let his excitement reveal his presence. His fists tightened as the urge to reach out and caress her skin felt near to overwhelming him.

To many Joann might have seemed average, perhaps even plain, but the man did not care what others thought. He knew her to be perfect. Had the brunette used a bit of rouge, or was the flush to her cheeks brought on by the crisp night air?

As she hurried along, a small plume of fog punctuated the brunette’s every breath. Even this act of breathing was perfect, just as she was.

So petite and delicate.

Joann could not be taller than five feet three. Short enough that if the brunette ever kissed him she would need to stand on the tips of her toes. Slender enough that he could encircle her waist and pull her against him with a single arm.

The man felt a slight buzz as his body urged him to take a breath, but he could not. Not while she passed. Passed so closely that if the man wished, he could have reached out and stroked her shoulder-length hair.

He could have touched the tender flesh beneath her ear then trailed down the curve of her shoulder. But that would not do. He could not let Joann know he watched her, followed her. He could not let her know that he even existed, not until he was ready. Not until she was exactly where he wanted her.

The click of her low heels carried the brunette down the street, but the man did not follow.

He knew exactly where she headed.

Just like last night and the night before, he would wait until Joann crossed the street at the light and disappeared around the corner to her apartment building before he caught up. The man could not take the chance that she would spot him on the empty street. Not before he found the perfect moment to introduce himself. Not a single moment before then.

Letting out his long-held breath, his vision became obscured by the cloud of fog. As it cleared he found Joann looking back over her shoulder. Panic gripped him. Had she seen him? Felt his warmth from the shadows? The brunette’s lips turned down, eyes scanning the street behind her, but they were not yet fixed on his position.

Holding his breath, the man watched as Joann abandoned her survey of the street behind her. Clearly, though, the brunette had become alarmed.

You could see it in her shoulders, in her rushed step, in the way she clutched her purse to her body.

The man hissed out an exhale, slowly enough to keep the steam from betraying him. His eyes were glued to the back of the brunette’s head.

Keep walking, just keep walking.

Movement across the street diverted his attention. Lively chatter filled the otherwise-deserted avenue. He had forgotten it was Thursday, Midnight Movie Night at the Crestview Theater.

The opposite sidewalk filled with Tim Curry wannabes and enough black leather and red velvet to choke a transvestite. The man’s eyes flickered to Joann. She moved at a near run. But still he hung back. Safely tucked away from prying eyes.

Their relationship needed to stay secret, at least for a little while longer.

Abruptly, Joann crossed the street and melted into the growing throng. His stomach twisted. Why had the brunette done that? Was she going into the theater to make a call? The man knew Joann did not have her cell phone because she had forgotten to charge it the night before and had been forced to leave the phone at home.

Risking exposure, the man stepped out from the deep shadows. He had to take this calculated gamble if he wished to keep her within sight.

Even so exposed, the man could barely make out Joann’s beige coat amongst the sea of Rocky Horror red and black. To cross the street could raise suspicion. Not crossing might mean losing her forever.

Shrugging his collar up as if to protect him against the gaining wind, the man trotted across the street, trying to act as if he were meeting someone casually after the film. Perhaps to apologize for being late. At least that was the impression he wanted to project as Joann made her way through the thick, rambunctious crowd.

Abandoning his usual disdain for others, the man dove into the mass of laughing, giggling revelers. He could not lose her. Lose Joann.

Yet for every step he made forward, the brunette seemed to make two. How he wished Joann had remembered her bright lavender scarf now. In the second it took to right himself as he tripped over a drunk in heels, the man lost sight of Joann.

Not bothering to contain his urgency, he brusquely pushed aside the moviegoers, making for the far side of the crowd. Finally the throng parted, and he stumbled onto the empty pavement.

Desperately, he searched the street. No Joann. He swung left, then right, then back toward the crowd. But not a single clue as to where she had disappeared.

Joann was gone.

CHAPTER 1

Officer Mickey Macaine’s elbows settled against his duty belt as he shifted his weight onto the heels of his boots. This was going to be a long-ass night, most of it standing on Crestview Avenue. It was only two-thirty in the morning and they already had three noise complaints from the neighbors about women and men dressed in fishnet stockings, arms linked, singing some piss-poor tune from the damned homo movie.

“Keep it down,” Macaine intoned for the fifteenth time, certain that it would take another fifteen before this rowdy crowd dispersed.

His attention became piqued, though, when a mascara-smeared woman staggered toward him. These moviegoer get-ups made the working girls down the block look like cloistered nuns. Therefore, Mickey let the chick bump into him before he spoke. “I’m sorry, ma’am. You need to exit off Fremont.”

The blonde’s words slurred as she leaned heavily against his puffed-out chest. “But my car’s down there…somewhere.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s a residential—”

“Sarah! The car’s down here!” a man yelled.

The cop was slightly disappointed as the woman pulled away. Mickey could have squeezed in another few minutes of contact with her before sending her along.

“Oops. My bad,” the girl slurred, then flashed a smile that totally made up for any inconvenience.

Maybe he might come to one of these midnight movies himself. With his attention focused on the chick’s skirt, so short that you could see the rounded crescents of her ass, Macaine ignored a sound from behind.

Who cared when you had a view like this? But a louder clang made Mickey prick up an ear.

Did one of these yahoos get past him?

His lieutenant would have his head if the Neighborhood Watch lodged another loitering complaint. But had he really heard a sound? Or was it just the rush of blood leaving his crotch after his close encounter with the blonde?

Halfway to the intersection, Macaine heard it again. This time he was certain. Certain that the sound was metal against pavement.

The cop clicked on his flashlight. The sounds were definitely coming from the alley. Way down the alley. And was that a gasp? Panting?

Maybe he would get lucky enough to catch a couple banging away. Besides the thrill factor, it would make a great story for the bullpen.

Still, Mickey unhooked his nightstick.

Not because he thought he was going to need it, but because it always looked cool. “Police! Show yourself.”

More heavy breathing. Maybe he should call for backup? But his hand did not reach for his handset. Not while there was still a chance these noises were some S&M couple going at it like dogs in heat.

“Police,” Mickey growled. “Last chance to keep this out of the public record.”

Another sound. That did not sound like sex. That sounded like pained. Anger. This time Macaine unhooked his gun.

Not because it looked cool, but because he might actually need to use it.

There it was again. Definite sounds of a struggle.

Instinctively, the cop changed his stance.

Gun out, arm forward.

“Police. Step out, now!” Macaine stressed that last word. He needed them to know he was serious. Besides the for-shit lighting, a Dumpster blocked his view. Carefully, Mickey picked his way around it.

Sure enough, it was a couple. Girl on the ground, guy on top. Relief swept over him, until the cop realized that the glistening pool on the ground was not rainwater…it was blood.

“Step away!” Macaine grabbed his handset. “I need backup in the alley behind Crestview and Van Wheller.”

The man not only ignored him but continued beating on the brunette. And the more Mickey’s eyes adjusted to the dark, the more blood he saw. So much. Too much.

“Step back, or I will be forced to shoot.” And Macaine meant it.

But not only did the man stay on the ground, he leaned over the woman’s face. Was he kissing her bloody lips?

Sick bastard.

Mickey popped the safety off. This guy only got one more warning. “Last chance.” Macaine cocked his gun. Was this really going to be his first shooting? Was it really going to be tonight? The man went back to beating on the woman.

Yep, he guessed it really was.

The cop’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“No!” A woman’s voice shouted from behind.

Mickey’s eyes darted over his shoulder. A brunette ran full tilt toward him. Even before he saw the gun in her hands, held out to her side in perfect academy position, Macaine knew that she was a cop. She ran like a cop. Sounded like a cop.

“Don’t shoot!” The gold badge clipped to the petite woman’s belt sparkled as she put a hand on Macaine’s out-stretched gun arm and urged it down as the fucked-up guy still beat on the woman.

“He’s FBI.”

CHAPTER 2

Detective Nicole Usher forcibly pushed the uniform’s arm down. She could not let him shoot Kent. At least not before she got the chance.

“He’s one of us,” Nicole reassured the cop, although he did not look close to believing her. She did not have time to convince him. Not with a woman down and the profiler performing CPR in a urine-soaked alley.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” a new voice came from behind. “But don’t shoot.”

By the baritone timber and obvious disdain, Nicole knew the newest arrival was Ruben Torres, her partner, and least favorite fan of Kent Harbinger.

The beat cop’s arm wavered, but Ruben’s wide frame convinced him to finally lower the gun.

Despite her hope that Joann was still alive, the closer Nicole came to the grisly scene, the more obvious it became that the brunette was well past saving. Blood pooled around the woman’s head and ran down her side. The slick lake did not end until it washed up against the brick wall. Deep red saturated Joann’s clothes. Kent’s shirt was smeared with it.

The most telling sign that Joann was beyond any of their help was her blank, glazed stare. Unblinking. Pupils fixed and dilated. Nicole had seen it too many times before.

Seventeen times in the last two years. Five times in the last four months. Now twice in three weeks. The killer was accelerating his behavior, becoming reckless and all the more dangerous for it.

“She’s gone, Kent.”

Sirens wailed in the distance, like nails on a chalkboard. It was the sound of their defeat yet again.

For a moment Kent stopped his compressions, then leaned over and continued giving Joann mouth-to-mouth. Could he not see he was too late? Could not he see that no amount of CPR would bring Joann back?

To anyone else Nicole might have offered a compassionate word, a reassuring pat on the arm, but Harbinger was not just anyone. He was an FBI profiler known for his ability to immerse himself so completely into the perversion of a serial killer’s mind that he could select and stalk a victim before the madman could.

Yet a price had to be paid for such a talent. Each time the profiler went this deeply into a case, he lost a part of himself. How could he remember the concept of love when his job demanded that he pick a woman and hunt her down like prey?

This focused on a task and so detached from reality, Nicole couldn’t trust that Kent knew friend from foe right now.

She firmed her tone. “It’s over.”

Harbinger rose up from the brunette’s mouth and put his hands back on Joann’s sternum as his own breaths came in great heaves. Nicole feared he would start compressions again. Finally his head tilted forward in defeat. His eyes squeezed shut. His pain palpable.

“She’s gone.”

Nicole chanced a tentative hand on his shoulder.

Two years ago the gesture might have meant more. Now, she just needed to get Kent away before he contaminated the crime scene any further. This was the freshest kill to date. If they were going to gain any new insight, they needed to vacate now and turn the body over to forensics.

They owed it to Joann.

Ignoring her, Harbinger pulled the brunette’s blouse up.

“Kent!”

The profiler appeared far beyond listening to anyone, let alone her, as he ripped the buttons from Joann’s shirt. The wailing sirens merged as if singing a lament. Crying out to stop the sacrilege that was about to occur.

He jerked open the stained silk to reveal a huge gash deep into Joann’s pale abdomen. Blue and red lights flashed as the patrol cars descended on their position, casting bright splashes of color on the otherwise dreary alley.

It felt all too surreal.

The unnatural position of Joann’s legs. The huge, bloody gash across her belly. The look of obsessed determination in the profiler’s eyes. Nicole dug her fingers into Harbinger’s arm.

“Damn it!” Nicole tried to pull the profiler from the brunette before he not only contaminated the autopsy but desecrated the body as well. Had Harbinger lost all sense of himself? Of basic human decency?

“The ME will tell us if he took his trophy!”

Seeming oblivious to the fact that she had his arm, Kent prepared to force his bare hand into Joann’s bloody wound. Short of shooting the profiler, Nicole was helpless to stop him.

Her partner, however, had no trouble grabbing Kent by the collar and hauling the profiler to his feet.

“Oh no you don’t, you sick fuck,” Ruben growled.

CHAPTER 3

Ruben’s hands shook with rage as he slammed Kent against the rough brick wall. Enough was enough.

He might only have an associate’s degree from a community college versus Kent’s cum laude graduation from Yale, but that did not mean the profiler was always right.

Or even sane.

“I’ve put up with your ‘I’m so brilliant that no one can even try to understand me’ crap.”

He searched the profiler’s face for some reaction, but found only boredom. Kent acted as if he did not have the academy’s champion boxer’s hands at his throat. Shit, he acted as if he did not have anyone’s hands at his throat.

Fine. If Ruben could not physically intimidate the prick, he was not above pushing some hot buttons.

“And your ‘let’s pretend coming back doesn’t hurt Nicole routine is getting stale…”

Ruben stopped short. His voice had cracked at her name, and he was not about to let Kent have the satisfaction of seeing him out of control.

It had been four long years since Ruben was forced into the background as Harbinger swept into town, hijacking his first major case. Adding insult to injury, and seemingly without effort, Kent lured Nicole away as well. First a promising career, then a promising relationship had been sabotaged by the profiler.

That was the past, Ruben reminded himself. Harbinger had been out of commission, out of their lives, for so long. In the past two years he thought that he’d grown enough as a detective and as Nicole’s lover to not be rattled by the profiler.

Obviously he had been sadly mistaken. Kent, however, didn’t need to hear any of that betrayed by Ruben’s voice. Voice measured and even, he continued, “I won’t allow you to violate that woman again.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, she’s not a woman anymore,” the profiler stated flatly. “She’s a corpse.”

Without thinking of the consequences, Ruben bounced the back of Kent’s skull off the wall. “Because of you!”

How could this creep have been recruited out of high school by the FBI? Reminding himself that the only upper hand he had over Harbinger was some form of emotional control, Ruben kept his anger in check.

Instead of physically lashing out, he indicated the dozen or so cops who descended upon the scene. “We had twenty cops on alert. An alert that you insisted upon. But you could not bother to call in because—”

“Because as good a profiler as Kent is…” Nicole elbowed her way between them, “he’s no psychic.”

Kent shrugged as if Nicole had stated the profiler did not play the piano very well. Seemingly uncaring that just a few feet away the EMTs pronounced Joann dead. A woman who Kent failed to protect.

“Damn it!” Ruben shoved the profiler hard against the wall, but Nicole put a hand over his closed knuckles.

CHAPTER 4

“Ruben, come on,” Nicole coaxed. “We’ve got a canvas to roll out and—”

“This asshole does it for the rush,” her partner growled.

“And that outburst was helpful, exactly how?”

Nicole knew her tone was harsh, but here was not the place to be having a testosterone-fueled standoff.

Dozens of cops, EMTs, CSIs, and firefighters crowded the alley. All trying to pretend this little altercation wasn’t happening. Their showdown needed to end now or it was going to be on the nightly news.

She squeezed her partner’s hand, but Ruben refused to break his stare. The profiler had really gotten to him this time.

“Rube, please,” Nicole said, her tone more conciliatory.

Her partner’s eyes met hers. She understood his frustration. Kent could get under your skin like bamboo shoots. However, they needed to hash out Harbinger’s difficult personality traits another time.

“This isn’t helping.”

Ruben shoved Kent against the wall and in the same motion, released the profiler. Even so, her partner did not back away, not even a step. The two men were no longer in contact, but locked in combat nonetheless.

Her partner stood several inches taller than Kent and had seventy pounds on the leaner profiler. Ruben was the type of guy who not only had a gym membership, but actually used it. Whereas Kent relied upon his genetic heritage to keep fit.

Despite her partner’s clear physical advantage, Kent seemed completely ignorant of Ruben’s towering presence. And there was nothing that annoyed her partner more than being discounted. Nicole made sure to position herself between them as Kent leaned his head back against the wall. As if the profiler might take a nap.

Nicole hesitated as the air stilled. Activity buzzed all around, yet an eerie calm blanketed the area. The CSI camera flashes added strobe. Faster and faster. They too must have sensed the change in the air. A storm approached. A storm that would wash away vital evidence.

Reminded of the real issue, Nicole set her jaw. The boys were just going to have to suck it up.

“Now if you two are done—”

Then Kent did the unthinkable. He yawned.

Nicole wedged herself deeper between them before Ruben’s shock transformed into anger. While she was trying to think of something, anything, to defuse Ruben’s increasingly short temper, her cell phone rang.

Nicole flipped open the phone. “Usher.”

“Status?” Her boss asked.

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Nicole stressed the last word to keep Ruben in check. “Joann Forme, the woman Kent had under surveillance, is dead.”

Nicole heard a loud sigh on the other end. Followed by a long pause. Her captain believed in counting to ten before responding to bad news.

“Are you going to explain that despite a trained FBI officer providing round-the-clock surveillance and twenty officers on call within a mile of this woman, somehow the killer was still able to get to her?”

“I promise you, sir. We will explain tonight’s events.”

“Within the hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

She snapped the phone closed, harder than she intended. “We’re due back by two, so let’s direct our hostilities toward the killer, all right?”

Ruben glanced at Kent, who still stared up at the brooding clouds. Finally her partner gave a stiff nod and strode over to the beat cop who discovered the grisly scene.

Nicole waited long enough to make sure that the cop held Ruben’s attention before she turned back to Kent, but the profiler had vanished.

Immediately she looked at Joann. Luckily he had not gone back to the body. She searched the growing crowd of blue uniforms, but no sign of him.

Besides being the special agent who had apprehended the highest number of serial killers in the last decade, Harbinger’s other specialty was disappearing when things did not go his way.

Desperate, Nicole looked down the alley in the opposite direction and found Kent’s retreating form.

Nicole trotted to catch up. “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?”

Kent ignored her. She grabbed his arm. Why did he always make her run after him? Why did he always make her feel like a little girl trying to get an absent daddy’s attention?

“Damn it, you are not going to leave me to answer to Glick alone.” Kent tried to walk away. This time Nicole jerked him so hard that he had to face her. She was done chasing.

“Not again.”

CHAPTER 5

Kent stared blankly at Nicole even though he knew exactly the shared past she meant. Not only did he know the reference but took her accusation like a kick to the ‘nads.

Anger flared. At the killer, at himself, even at Nicole for dragging him back into a case like this.

Joann’s sticky blood dripped from his hands. The metallic taste lingered on his lips. A woman he had grown to know more intimately than most husbands know their wives had been killed on his watch. How could Nicole expect him to stand here and have a normal conversation? If he opened his emotions even a crack, the dam would break. He would break.

A profiler was not allowed that luxury. As long as the Plain Jane killer was still on the loose, Kent had to contain his anger, his pain. He had to bottle it and use it as fuel to drive him deeper into the killer’s mind.

Closer to the killer’s truth.

Standing here attending to Nicole’s feelings of abandonment was not going to help him catch Plain Jane.

Nicole must have sensed the emotional wall he had erected. Her words were meant to be stern, however, her tone already sounded defeated. “You’ve got to come back to the station with me.”

Kent looked down at his clothes. His pants were soaked through with dirty rainwater, grease, blood, and who knew what else from his failed attempt at resuscitation. His shirt and coat were streaked crimson with Joann’s arterial blood. Even if he did not need to get the hell away from here, he could never show up at the station looking this much the worse for wear.

He looked up into the eyes of the woman who he had once hoped would be the mother of his children. That was years ago, though. Now this woman just sighed, silently agreeing that he was not fit to present to her captain.

“Fine. I’ll explain to Glick, again, that you had no way of knowing for certain if Joann was Plain Jane’s next victim.”

Nicole paused, waiting for confirmation. Kent gave a noncommittal shrug even though her statement was patently false. He had known Joann was the killer’s next prize. Known it in his gut every time she tucked her hair behind her ears. Known it in his groin each time she flashed that lopsided smile. Kent had known Plain Jane could not resist Joann’s perfect blend of humility and inner beauty.

“Even if Joann was the target, you had no way to know if the killer was going to strike tonight.”

Again Nicole waited for confirmation.

Kent thought the clarification was more for herself than for Glick. She wanted reassurance that there was nothing they could have done to save Joann.

Again he shrugged.

Again he lied to Nicole. For Kent had known tonight was the night. He knew Plain Jane could not resist Joann any longer. The urge to kill. The urge to slash her throat and get up to his elbows in her belly was near to overwhelming.

Kent had known because his hands had wished to reach out to her. He had almost betrayed his presence on the street. The need to know her had grown that strong. His and Plain Jane’s desire merged into one. Yet Kent still could not keep Joann from that long, sharp knife.

“Anything else?” she asked, searching his face. Kent forced his muscles to go slack.

Nicole did not need to know his sense of distress. If she did, the detective might balk at his next course of action.

As the silence lingered, the air closed in around them. The barometer fell as rapidly as the temperature. It was only a matter of minutes before a deluge. Nicole inhaled as if to speak, then sadly shook her head, dropping the hold on his arm.

Free, Kent continued walking down the alley.

Away from the body. Away from his failure.

Nicole was not done with him yet. “Still…” Her voice lingered on the air as thunder rumbled overhead. “When you lost her, you should have called for backup.”

As a heavy rain began to fall, Kent turned to Nicole, the scent of Joann’s perfume fresh in his nostrils.

For the first time tonight, he did not lie to the woman he once loved. “I know.”

CHAPTER 6

The killer charged down the stairs, two steps at a time.

Panting more from excitement than from exertion. The five-block sprint was not as much of a rush as coming that close to being caught.

Hurrying over to the sink, the killer snapped off bloody gloves, rinsed them over and over again under hot water, then balled them together and set off down another set of stairs to the furnace.

Opening the door, the killer threw the gloves into the blasting heat, then pulled off a long, blood-smeared overcoat and tossed it in as well. The fire flared brighter, burning hotter for a brief second. Just as Joann’s eyes had done before being extinguished forever.

CHAPTER 7

Kent crouched in the bushes outside the morgue’s loading dock. The building seemed squat and quite unattractive, even for government work. All dull steel and rough concrete. Artistically as dead as the denizens inside. Meat packing plants had more character than this place.

At some point, someone must have realized that this building was a place where friends and family came to claim the bodies of their loved ones.

That “someone” had planted enough foliage to create an arboretum, not realizing that greenery alone could not shake the building’s despair. No matter the flowering shrubs, no happiness could come of this place.

But Kent was not here to criticize.

He was here to claim his own dead.

Perhaps everyone else could wait until Dr. McGregor rolled his ass out of bed at seven, but the profiler could not wait those four hours. He needed to know now.

Unlike metropolitan centers such as LA or New York, with their round-the-clock medical examiners and nearly instantaneous answers, the remainder of the country still had to make do with good-ol’-boy docs.

Doctors who turned off their pagers at midnight. If you planned on dying after the witching hour, you didn’t count on an autopsy until after McGregor had his breakfast.

Clearly the good doctor did not understand that the killer’s timetable depended on his success or defeat this night. If Plain Jane had his trophy, Kent and the police might have another four or five days, maybe a week, to stop the lunatic before he struck again. If the killer left the crime scene empty-handed, Plain Jane would be out again, maybe even tonight.

If that were the case, Kent needed to know. He needed to be on the prowl again. Trolling the city for short, quiet, and unassuming brunettes.

No one else, not even Nicole, seemed ready to act upon his urgency. Glick had made it perfectly clear when Kent came on the case that his role was solely that of an advisor. He had a better chance of bossing the janitors around than he did of ordering anyone in the department to do his bidding.

Glick had tied his hands. If he hadn’t, Kent would have awakened the medical examiner himself. This idiotic following of bureaucratic protocol could get another woman killed.

A growing fury reduced his vision to a pinpoint.

They were to blame. Glick, Torres, Nicole.

Well…

Kent gulped, remembering his own tragic decision. Nicole had been right. When he lost track of Joann in the Rocky Horror crowd, he should have called for backup. However, Kent knew if all those cops descended on Joann to protect her, the killer would have evaporated.

Worse, had Kent shown his hand that boldly, Plain Jane might have been able to make him. How safe would the women of this city be if the killer knew the face of the man who hunted him?

And they were running out of time. If Kent were correct in his calculations, Plain Jane would only make one more kill in this city before pulling up roots, replanting months from now, miles from here.

Plain Jane had already changed MOs three times in three different cities. He was getting bolder, no longer hiding his true aim. The killings would never lessen, only grow.

Sighing, Kent knew those were all the logical reasons he had not called for backup. However, crouched behind a bush in the pouring rain, Kent could admit the real reason he had not called for help. The sole reason, which he could never share with anyone, not even Nicole, was his delusional belief that he, and only he, could keep Joann safe. He had slipped so deeply into the killer’s mind-set that his reality had warped. Tunnel vision could not even describe it.

There were only he and Joann. No others. The rest of the world was but a blur, meaning nothing and contributing nothing. Joann was his and his alone. The backup police force felt so insignificant that they did not even register on Kent’s radar. Joann was his only concern.

And now he sat here in the mud, waiting for her body. Maybe breathing in her Obsession one last time might give him a sense of peace.

Refocusing, Kent stared at the morgue. It was the one and only building he needed to get into tonight, yet it was the single building he could not enter.

A two-year-old restraining order barred him from entering the morgue or even approaching within one hundred feet. Even if that were somehow lifted, the DA would never officially sanction what Kent needed to do, for fear of contaminating the chain of evidence. That, and the minor fact that Kent had no medical training.

For the span of a breath, anger welled again at Nicole. If only she had not stopped him at the crime scene. Just a few more moments in that wretched alley, and he would have known if Plain Jane had claimed his trophy.

As quickly as the anger rose, the hot burn faded. Not that Nicole wasn’t to blame, but Kent could not dwell again on the detective. He needed laser-sharp focus if he had any hope of catching the killer.

Kent could still feel the firm grip of her fingers on his arm. Damn, she had been pissed. He might even have a few bruises. But the touch that lingered most was the gentle laying of her hand upon his shoulder. Why the hell had she done that? Why had she reached out to him like she used to? He’d been perfectly content glowering at her and her partner-boy toy. Perfectly happy to secretly pine for her unattainable affection.

For months they had worked at arm’s length. Alternating between apathy and begrudging acceptance. Their relationship was right where he liked it.

Now she had to go and cover for him again. Just like the old days. Just like the old nights when he would hold her until she fell asleep, then watch her breathe in and out. He would lie motionless beside her, gaining a sense of quiet and peace, before he left their bed to go stalk another killer.

Damn, but she’d felt good in his arms. The smell of her hair. The taste of the sweat on her skin after she had worked out. His body remembered the sensation even better than his mind. And this was not the echo of some pervert’s lust when he stalked victims. This was his own desire. His own need. And that is what made it so painful. Nearly unbearable.

Kent shook his head, trying to clear Nicole from his thoughts, but simply ended up scattering rainwater from his hair. That’s why he could not allow his mind to touch upon the detective. It always led him down a path he couldn’t follow.

Gritting his teeth, Kent forced himself to stare at the morgue’s loading dock. The body should have been here by now. Did Nicole suspect his plan and have the corpse shipped to the FBI’s body shop in Kansas City instead?

His concern had been premature, as the medical examiner’s van hydroplaned into the parking lot. A spray of dirty water washed over him as the transport skidded to a stop. Kent did not even bother to wipe the grunge off. His renewed pinpoint focus would not let him. Nothing else mattered.

Joann, or what was left of Joann, had arrived.

A young morgue attendant, one who Kent did not recognize from two years ago, rushed out the thick double doors. Protecting a “Slipknot” leather choker, the slim attendant pulled his white coat over his head.

The storm’s fury had withered to a sprinkle as the driver, wearing a beat-up and stained, yet officially licensed, NASCAR jacket, got out of the van and opened the door.

“Got another one for you.”

“Man, would people stop dying or what? It’s going to be a week before we process all these stiffs.”

The driver seemed unimpressed by the younger man’s bluster. “They want a preliminary report this morning.”

“Yeah, right.”

“By 9:00 a.m.”

The wiry attendant did a double take before he answered, “Are they huffing formaldehyde?” When the driver did not respond, he continued, “I’ve got three homicides for McGregor to cut before this one.”

“They want to know if she got sliced by Plain Jane.”

“Oh man, you’re kidding!”

“Nope,” the driver said flatly. “They need to know first thing if he took his usual trophy or not.”

Kent recognized the look on the attendant’s face. His expression held a respect that almost bordered on fascination. He had felt it earlier this evening, huddled in that storefront, waiting for Joann to pass.

“Wow, this is my most favorite corpse to date.” He opened the bag and passed his finger along her slit throat.

As perverse as it sounded, Kent felt a dagger of jealousy. No one should touch Joann like that. No one.

“Don’t worry, babe. You are first on the hit parade.”

“You are one sick bastard.” With that, the driver got back into the van, leaving the attendant to wheel the body back toward the morgue.

Kent’s muscles tensed.

The long wait was forgotten.

Soon he would be with Joann.

CHAPTER 8

With the wagon gone and the kid heading inside, Kent made his move. Keeping between the stucco wall of the morgue and the thick foliage, he made sure the security cameras could only register his shoulder.

Then Kent’s luck changed for the good. The heavy-metal-loving attendant pushed two Shure noise-canceling earbuds into his ears. Kent knew because he owned three pairs of the same brand. They were the only things that kept his neighbor’s late-night amorous adventures to a reasonable level. Now Kent just needed to keep out of view of the cameras.

As the attendant keyed in the door’s security code, he began air-guitaring. With this guy’s ADD, breaking into the morgue was like stealing candy from a preemie. Timing it perfectly, Kent crept in alongside the gurney as the attendant half pulled the body behind him and half stomped to some unheard beat.

As the rich air of the rainstorm met the acrid odor of death, Kent’s nostrils clamped down. The stench of formaldehyde vied for supremacy over bitter antiseptics.

His masterful break-in almost complete, Harbinger felt his trench coat catch in the closing doors. He jerked the garment, but it was stuck. If he delayed any longer, even the head-banger was going to notice his much unauthorized presence. Trusting the kid’s iPod to mask the sound, Kent ripped the edge of his coat off.

Kent slunk forward. He had to keep the gurney between him and the camera positioned above the intake desk. Another few feet and he could take the first sharp right and be free of the attendant.

“Boy, what are you dragging in here?”

Freezing, the profiler knew that voice. O’Fallon, the world’s oldest security guard. Kent and the gaunt gentleman had locked horns before.

O’Fallon jerked the plugs from the kid’s ears. Kent had to scramble to stay out of the old man’s line of sight, which brought him dangerously close to the camera’s view.

The kid nearly shouted his answer. “Just rolling in another satisfied customer, O’Fallon.”

Kent kept low under the gurney. O’Fallon might have been hard of hearing but for an octogenarian, he had surprisingly good eyesight.

“Then what’s that in the door, boy?”

“Just some crap kicked up by the storm, old man.”

Tensing as the security guard’s heavy footsteps approached, Kent glanced around for an escape route. A hiding place. A nook. A cranny. Anything. He did not need much wiggle room.

Kent had won plenty of bets back at Quantico by nearly disappearing into thin air.

Unfortunately, this morgue’s tile floors and stainless steel-lined walls were all sharp angles and open space. Even the nearest air vent was a good ten feet away.

“I’ll have no cursing, boy,” O’Fallon warned as he made his way around the gurney.

Kent cursed as he shoved the gurney into the attendant, forcing the kid to stumble into the aged guard. Head down and tilted away from the camera, the profiler sprinted the length of the hallway as the two untangled themselves.

“Harbinger!” The guard shouted. “You just violated your TRO!”

It appeared the old man’s memory was as sharp as his eyesight. Fortunately, Kent had an even better sense of recall. Without hesitation, the profiler took a left, then a fast right for eight paces, then another quick left to a door that led to the back parking lot. A photographic memory came in handy, given his frequent run-ins with local law enforcement.

Even though a sign over the emergency exit warned an alarm would sound, the profiler hit it at a full run. No bells. No buzzer. Harbinger was glad to see they took security of the building as seriously as they had two years ago.

Kent burst into the renewed storm and made for the tree line. He could hear muffled shouts, yet he did not worry. The video surveillance would show his break-in. But enough evidence to pin it on him?

Never.

There was no proof he had ever been inside the morgue. No proof except the small, torn corner of his overcoat. Proof that he violated a restraining order.

Given his abject failure to protect Joann, Kent could not give the DA any other excuse to pull him from the case.

Despite the nearly hail-like rain, he shrugged off his torn coat. He did not bother to bury the evidence. The weather would wash away any DNA. Sometimes, granted rarely, but sometimes it came in extremely handy to think like a criminal.

Making his way into the wooded park, Kent glanced back at the morgue. Despite his initial failure, this night was not over. He still needed time alone with Joann’s body. As much as he hated to admit it, he would need help.

Her help.

CHAPTER 9

Across from Glick, Nicole sat as if she were a statue upon the chair. Her waist at a perfect right angle. Her knees bent at another ninety-degree angle. Her left ankle crossed over the right. Both hands lay in her lap, atop an FBI textbook Harbinger had written on the apprehension of serial killers.

After the cold alley, Glick’s office practically steamed. Too humid. Too claustrophobic. Crowding the small room were the captain’s pseudo-wood desk, five dented file cabinets, and an old-fashioned radiator. For a city council that insisted it was tough on crime, they certainly did not fund the fight very well.

The detective wished she could take off her jacket, but with Ruben sitting right next to her, she did not want to draw attention to herself. His anger, frustration, and distrust of Harbinger already carried over in waves.

Nicole gripped Kent’s book tighter. She wanted plenty of ammunition to counteract any accusations Ruben might hurl. Without Kent at her side, his book was the next best thing.

Even though Nicole knew the statistics from the text by heart, it still hurt to lose Joann. Knowing that it could take officials months or even years to realize that they had a serial killer on their hands did not make Nicole feel any better.

Nor did the fact that once you identified a serialism, you were destined to lose another five, maybe six more victims before even coming close to capturing a proficient killer. Sometimes the number doubled. Sometimes decades elapsed. Sometimes the bastards eluded capture completely.

But not with Harbinger. The most victims this profiler had ever lost before on a case numbered three. Joann shattered that record to bring the total to four. Though an outsider would never know it to look at him, Nicole knew Kent felt regret. Guilt. Even shame. She could see it in his eyes. Joann’s death had shaken him.

It turned out that his arrogance was a double-edged sword. It carried Kent to victory after victory, but in defeat it drove him to obsession. The investigation became oh-so-personal. He was no longer a cop after a suspect. It was now Kent against the Killer.

Worse, when Harbinger felt guilt he became reckless. Defying authority more than usual. Breaking laws even more than usual. Keeping her at an emotional arm’s length way more than usual.

Nicole dragged her thoughts out of the past. They had enough problems now that she did not need to dredge their history for more. Her gaze flickered up to make sure Glick had not finished with the report. His salt-and-pepper hair seemed to have gained more salt over the past few months to the point where his bushy mustache was nearly white. His heavily-lidded eyes scanned the document, giving it his customary diligence.

Well, his newfound diligence.

It wasn’t two years ago that the captain would have railed at them like any worthwhile superior officer. But after three heart attacks, two following altercations with Kent, Glick must have realized the bluster just was not worth it.

With his dark blue tie loosened and the top button of his shirt open, you could see the tip of his scar. A quadruple, triple bypass. Heart surgery did not get much more serious than that.

Which was why it pained Nicole to have failed her captain. You could see by the way his jaw worked that Glick’s frustration doubled her own. While she only had the victim’s family to answer to, he had an entire city.

Worse, an entire city council had been none too subtle about their displeasure. Being splashed across the news that their fair city was the serial killer capital of the world was not doing the tourist trade any good.

Ironically it had been this heightened level of political pressure that had allowed Nicole to convince Glick they needed Kent on the case. She had thought she was doing her captain a favor by bringing in the lauded profiler, but by the vein throbbing on his forehead, Nicole was not so sure.

On numerous occasions, usually right after she said she had a headache and did not want to spend the night at his place, Ruben accused her of pulling Harbinger out of retirement for her own personal reasons.

Had she?

A few months ago she might have vehemently disagreed, but now? Now, all she could think about was Kent. Think of where he might be right this minute. Think of what trouble he could be stirring up. Think of how she should be out there with him hunting a predator rather than in here performing damage control.

Nicole knew the rumors that circulated the bullpen. Her colleagues thought Kent to be some sort of Svengali. Using his nearly mythical intellect and stubbled good looks, Kent had mesmerized her so deeply that she could look past all his flaws.

What no one seemed to understand was that it was exactly those flaws that called to her. She had gone to an Ivy League college. She had been around enough brainiacs to not be so easily impressed by sheer intellect alone. Plus, if you put Kent and the other men she had dated over the years in a lineup, the profiler’s looks did not even crack the top five.

No, only Nicole knew the real basis of her fascination. She was not exactly proud of it, so she did not broadcast it to the world. It was almost safer to let other people think she could be so easily seduced by success.

For it was not what Kent gave that attracted Nicole, but what he withheld. The profiler would give her mere glimpses of his genius, but hold back that most vital detail. He kept her coming back for more. Professionally and emotionally.

She knew the impulse was dysfunctional, but a single backhanded compliment from Kent meant more to her than all of Ruben’s declarations of devotion.

CHAPTER 10

Ruben tried to keep his eyes forward, watching Glick read their very preliminary report filled with even more preliminary conclusions, but no matter how much he willed his stare ahead, his eyes flickered to Nicole.

Even though his partner dressed in a stern pantsuit, there was no mistaking Usher for anything but a woman. Her open blazer allowed a bit of cleavage to show. And it was truly a miracle that she could run in those three-inch heels. But just try to take them away from her. Nicole was sensitive about her height. She did not want to look small. Frail.

How anyone could look into those green eyes and think her weak, Ruben would never know. He waited for her to glance over, but Nicole was far more successful at keeping her gaze across the desk at their captain.

A mumble from outside the office drew Ruben’s attention. At least half a dozen uniforms still hung around the bullpen, mostly officers fresh from being released from their TO. These young bucks certainly weren’t waiting for Ruben, Nicole, or even Glick. The word must have gotten out that Harbinger had been summoned to the captain’s office. The naïve officers hoped for a sighting of the famous profiler.

Famous, my ass, Ruben wanted to retort, but that remark would pretty much prove him as unstable as Kent.

A grunt from the captain brought Ruben’s attention back to the room. Glick must have gotten to the part where Nicole tried to justify why Harbinger hadn’t called for backup.

Again, Ruben’s eyes strayed to his partner. Her eyes were cast down, fixated on the hands crossed in her lap, where a finger toyed with a single string from her bookmark. Over and over again she entwined the thread around her fingertip, then released it. A nervous habit. One that she only displayed when Harbinger invaded her life.

How he hated seeing her like this. Her heel tapped ever so quietly, like a schoolgirl nervous about being called to the principal’s office.

By the set of her lips, Ruben knew how alone she felt. Once again, Kent had fucked up and, once again, left Nicole to clean up the mess. After her difficult childhood, raising her younger sister, and then working her way through college, she deserved far better than this. Far better than a profiler who abandoned her at every turn.

Tonight though, she proved that, yet again, she could not abandon Harbinger. While Ruben took the statement from Officer Macaine, he had watched Kent’s and Nicole’s argument. Ruben knew the depth of her fury at Harbinger, yet within a few words, he witnessed the profiler turn Nicole from a self-assured, professional, experienced detective into an uncertain, defensive, and worst of all, submissive woman.

Although Ruben had to admit that Harbinger had that effect on just about anybody the profiler decided to go up against.

Kent was an ass, but an ass with a résumé to rival Holmes. Even the FBI had been too small a pond for the profiler. With half a dozen high-profile arrests under his belt by the age of twenty-five, the boy wonder had been recruited into a classified think tank.

Damn it, why couldn’t the bastard have just stayed tucked away with those other eggheads? But no, someone had to go and randomly poison the nation’s beef supply, forcing the president to personally ask Kent to come out of retirement to solve the apparently unsolvable crime.

A laugh rose from the bullpen behind him, and then just as quickly, the titter died. Despite Kent’s abject failure to save another victim, the station was still abuzz at the very idea that Harbinger would deign to make an appearance. However, even the most junior officer knew that tonight was not for levity.

It galled Ruben that whatever social skills Kent lacked, he made up for in reputation. How the profiler had cracked the beef poisoning case was the stuff law enforcement legends were made of.

After the president’s desperate call, Harbinger had boarded a plane in Chicago completely ignorant of the facts, yet by the time he landed in Washington, D.C., Kent had solved the crime.

Yep, the prick had cracked a masterful scheme that had brought the stock market tumbling a thousand points and dropped the meat industry to its knees while he sipped champagne in first class.

Without any fanfare, Kent had come off the tarmac and handed the agents, who were waiting to whisk him off to Quantico, a list of leads scribbled on a napkin.

Despite the president’s orders, the profiler refused to go back to headquarters with them. Instead, as only Harbinger could, Kent went into an airport restaurant and ordered a steak.

Rare.

The bastard had been that damn sure he knew the pattern of the poisonings, he ordered a fucking porterhouse. Before Kent had finished his meal, a group of domestic terrorists, who had evaded seven separate task forces for over eleven months and traveled all over the country undetected, had been arrested.

But the story did not end there. When Harbinger received the congratulatory call from the director of the FBI himself, Kent told his old boss that he was billing the agency for a full day’s wages and taking the afternoon off so that he could go comic book shopping.

Ruben sighed. It was probably that last part that had sealed Harbinger’s reputation with the young officers.

It truly was a great story. Who else but the profiler could have realized that the terrorists had spiked poison into the anti-bacterial fluid that meat handlers used to sanitize their hands? And not every bag, but every third one delivered.

He might have had a begrudging respect for the profiler, had he not met the man behind the legend.

Having to actually work with that level of genius made him just want to punch the guy rather than worship him.

How could anyone put a theory forward or think to disagree with a man whose advice had been sought by presidents and kings alike?

It was a little hard to imagine that one might have something meaningful to contribute when Kent had the secretary of state on speed dial.

Ruben’s reverie ended as their captain closed the file. “I’m not even going to bother to ask where Harbinger is.”

Ruben snuck a peek over to Nicole, whose eyes were up from her hands, but averted from their captain’s gaze. She had no good answer to that question, and they all knew it. Ruben noticed her finger winding the string into a tight coil.

Glick continued, “As you know, I try to be the kinder, gentler captain, but I need an answer as to how we let this woman die, or I will start yelling.”

Surprisingly, Nicole glanced over at Ruben. While just a little flattered, he could not help her this time. Not with Kent. Not with another death under the profiler’s belt. “You don’t want me going first.”

To her credit, Nicole regrouped, straightening her back and abandoned the string. “Sir, the very fact that Kent was within moments of the killer shows that his methods are working.”

“This is the fourth victim on Kent’s watch.”

“We all knew there were going to be losses.” Nicole hurried on, “His technique is to hunt the victim—”

Ruben could not help himself. “So far, so good.”

“Thanks for proving my point,” Nicole snapped.

“I wasn’t.”

Flushed, Nicole turned to face him. “Can you do that? Can you watch a sea of women and pick the one, the same one as the killer? Because if you can, I’d like to see it.”

Ruben’s ears burned as his jaw clenched. What had gotten into her? Where did she get off talking to him like that? Throwing his inadequacies back into his face?

“I don’t think that was—” Glick tried to interrupt, but Nicole turned on him as well.

“Kent has the unique ability to find the victim first, then backtrack to the killer.”

“I know the jacket liner, Usher. What we—”

Nicole jumped over their captain’s words again. “He cuts off the killer at the proverbial pass.”

“Or not,” Ruben interjected.

Glick cut off Nicole’s retort. “It’s not his profiling skills that are the issue. We’ve got to face the possibility that he’s becoming more of a liability than an asset.”

“What?”

Ruben tensed as the captain glanced in his direction. With the slightest nod, he agreed that Glick should continue. Bracing himself, Ruben knew that Nicole would be angered, maybe even irate, with both of them. But their intervention was not just for the scared brunettes in the city, it was for Nicole as well. Someone had to break the sick influence Kent had over her.

Glick pulled out a large stack of files and flipped through them. “Twelve Peeping Tom reports. Five stalking complaints.” He overrode Nicole. “And a shoplifting incident.”

Ruben tried to suppress his anger and project a more sympathetic tone. “He’s out of control.”

“If the press or the public ever found out that we not only allowed but, worse, encouraged this kind of behavior—”

“We’ve already had four other FBI profilers before Kent.” Nicole didn’t bother to hide her exasperation.

Both men shifted uncomfortably. If Nicole was upset at this part, well, this talk was not going to unfold well at all.

Glick measured his words out slowly and carefully. “Ruben has done some solid police work and perhaps might be better suited to run the case.”

CHAPTER 11

Nicole sat shocked, horrified, and more than a little confused. The words coming out of her captain’s mouth could not be the ones she thought she heard.

“Excuse me?”

“Torres has some angles on the case that I think Kent might have overlooked.”

Fury and betrayal overrode all else as she turned on her supposed partner. “And you were going to tell me this, when?”

Ruben shrugged. “You don’t like anything that contradicts your stubbled Sherlock.”

Nicole tried to speak, but the captain’s volume rose higher than she had heard for two years. Since Kent had left.

“We’ll hear from Ruben and Kent. We’ll look at their profiles side by side and decide in which direction to take the case.”

“That’s not—”

“We’ll hear them both out, Usher.” Glick’s tone could not be argued.

Choking back a hundred retorts, Nicole could only nod.

As graciously as she could, Nicole rose and exited Glick’s office, making sure to shut the door behind her. Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes, but she held them back as she passed the six or seven young cops who lingered in the bullpen. It was bad enough to have been humiliated back there, she did not need to repeat the experience in front of this eager crowd.

Once past the gaggle of onlookers, Nicole dug through her purse. Where in the hell were her keys? She wanted out of here. Now. Before Ruben came chasing after her, trying to placate her with how he had gone behind her back for her own good. She did not know how much more male manipulation she could stand right now.

Crossing to her desk, Nicole tossed the drawers. She found a stapler she thought that she had lost. Her favorite pen reclaimed, but no keys. She was so intent on her task that she did not hear her partner’s approach.

“Nikki,” Ruben’s tone sounded almost as bruised as her feelings.

“Don’t.”

The good old logical, thoughtful Ruben tried to reappear. “If I thought he was even slightly sane I would back off, but Nikki…” She could not see it, but she heard a deep sigh from her partner as Ruben continued, “You saw him tonight. Saw what he was like.”

Emotions constricted her throat as she checked the middle drawer again, but the words came out easily since she had defended Harbinger with them a hundred times before. “You know as well as I do that Kent has to strip his psyche down so far that he—”

“You…don’t.” His tone cut. “Save the misunderstood genius spiel for Glick.”

Nicole paused in her frantic search when she realized her hands were shaking. Was it fury at a partner who had betrayed her? Or was it the fact that he might be right about Kent?

Ruben stepped closer so that he could place his hand on her shoulder. “We all gave him another chance. It was Harbinger who blew it, not us.”

Tears stung again as she noticed a glint from the corner of her drawer.

Grabbing her keys, she said, “I’m out of here.”

Ruben wasn’t going to be denied. “Where to?”

“Home.”

“What happened to Thursday nights at my place?”

Nicole could not believe that Ruben would choose this night, this moment, to bring up their stagnant relationship. For weeks, no for months, neither of them brought up the fact that they had not had sex in forever, or the fact that their “dates” had devolved to the point where the only time they went out was to get the occasional beer with the rest of the squad.

She wasn’t about to change that dynamic. “I’m going home. Alone.”

“You so sure about that?” Nicole did not rise to the bait, but Ruben continued as he walked alongside her toward the exit. “Maybe Kent is hiding down in the shadows of the garage for a secret rendezvous?” She ignored him, but her partner refused to relent. “Let me guess. You two are off to some dark, mysterious locale?”

“I am not amused,” she tried to warn him off.

“A funeral parlor? Morgue? Oh wait, perhaps a picnic at a cemetery?”

That was it. Nicole turned on her heel. “You don’t know jack about him and obviously not much more about me.”

Instead of seeming angered, Ruben just looked sad. “He’s not the same man he was, Nikki.”

Why were all the men in her life spending so much time trying to protect her that they forgot she could protect herself?

“Did it ever occur to you that I’m not the same woman?” Nicole was done. Done wrangling. Done arguing. Done getting her feelings hurt. “You know what? No matter his flaws, Kent never would have stooped to playing politics behind your back.”

Not waiting for her partner’s retort, Nicole stormed toward the door.

Ruben’s words were just loud enough for her to catch, but quiet enough that Nicole could pretend she didn’t hear them. “No, because that would require him to actually care about someone.”

CHAPTER 12

Kent heard Nicole coming down the garage stairs before he saw her. She was hurrying. Rushing her steps. Traveling far too fast for her mood. Far too fast for those clunky high heels.

Oh, Nicole might be a great athlete, but graceful when pissed off she was not. Almost on cue, a loud clang resounded from the staircase. That would be her foot slipping off the end of a step, then her banging her elbow before catching herself with a last-ditch grab from her now numb wrist.

Sure enough, a pause in her footsteps and some muffled cursing. Kent knew her too well.

He knew once she was out of the stairwell exactly how many steps it would take her to get to her car. He knew she’d started using a new shampoo, because even though she took the time and energy to shop at a beauty supply house rather than picking up her hair care products at the grocery store, Nicole could not resist a bargain. He also knew that she carried a Nine West purse. Once she discovered this brand had penholders sewn right into the inner pocket, she’d never buy another brand.

Kent knew that and so much more. How Nicole could go for days without applying makeup but would not be caught dead without her nails polished.

Religiously, she bought the same color as the salon and had a bottle in her purse, in her car, and at home. That way, if Nicole barely even chipped a nail, she could repair it in a heartbeat. How many times before bed, and over his protests, had she pulled one of those bottles from her nightstand for a touch-up?

The thought brought a grin to his troubled lips. He knew her habits. Knew her moods. Knew her body better than she did. That’s how he knew she was only a few days away from her period. She would be at her most emotional, but also at the height of her sexual appetite.

A few years ago that combination would have guaranteed they take not one, but two or three rounds in her goose-downed bed. He knew all this as well as he knew his own name, but there was one thing he did not know.

How he could convince Nicole to help him.

Especially with what he had in mind.

CHAPTER 13

Nicole winced as she pushed the Mustang’s key into the lock. That blow to her elbow was going to bug her for a few days. Just another reminder of the disaster this night was chalking up to be. She could not wait until she crashed into bed. Maybe by daylight she could get some sense of perspective on Joann’s death and Kent’s abandonment.

She went to turn the key, then paused. She did not so much hear a breath or see a shoe tip, but Nicole just knew Kent stood behind her. The night just would not end.

“If you came all the way down here, you could have at least taken some of the heat during the meeting.”

“You should be more careful.”

Kent’s voice had never sounded so sexy. He could infuse words with honey and musk. Sweet and sultry. It took the sting out of almost everything that had happened tonight.

“I could have taken you six ways to Sunday,” she said.

“Really?” Was that amusement on his lips?

Then she found out why. Kent held out a gun, butt first, toward her. Why would he do that? Her hand flew to her holster. Her gun was missing.

No, not missing. It was being handed back to her.

Embarrassed, Nicole snatched the gun from him. “You’d better show up at the briefing tomorrow.”

Kent not only ignored her words, but used the distraction as she re-holstered her gun to grab her keys. Before she could stop him, Kent had opened the driver’s side door and hopped in as if it were his own. Just like he used to.

“Whoa. Where are we going?” Nicole asked as she made her way around to the passenger side. The profiler could give the most perfect, dead-on, teenage “duh” expression when he wanted to, but she was not as intuitive as he was, so Nicole had to ask. “Where?”

“Where else?” Kent rolled his eyes. “The morgue.”

Nicole’s hand dropped from the handle. “Of course.”

“You getting in or not?”

The argument with Ruben came back in a rush. How her partner had foreseen the profiler waiting for her in the garage. Her own words declaring she wasn’t the same woman she had been two years ago. Now was the time to prove it.

The thirty-two-year-old Nicole would have jumped in the car and gladly gone on the wild Kent-ride, but the thirty-four-year-old detective took a step back from the car.

“Go be morbid on your own time.”

“I already did.”

From the look on his face, Nicole knew Kent was not lying. But the situation still did not make any sense.

“Then why drag me there?”

Obviously Harbinger wasn’t used to her saying “no.” And didn’t sound very happy with it. “Get in or not.”

Kent getting bossy actually steeled Nicole’s resolve. She took another step back to make her intent clear. “Let me know how it goes.”

CHAPTER 14

Kent felt incredulous, which was odd, because he’d never experienced that particular emotion before.

Whatever you called it, it felt damn weird. A mixture of surprise, bewilderment, and just a hint of pride that Nicole had actually stood up for herself.

Tonight, however, was not the time to hear her roar.

He needed her.

Perhaps if he just told her that. Told her how much he needed her. And not just for breaking into morgues, but other, less gruesome things. Maybe if he just told her that, she might help. But that would break his cardinal rule.

Never, ever, even under threat of torture, be emotionally honest. If someone actually knew how you felt, they would have a hold over you. Like the hold he had over the psychos that he hunted. Once Kent knew basic truths about them, he had them by the short hairs. He would never allow another person to have that kind of control over him.

Not even Nicole.

Kent looked one last time in the rearview mirror to find that Nicole had not budged. She wanted to play chicken? He could play chicken. Kent turned on the engine. Put the car into gear. Revved the gas, but still the detective did not move.

Exactly how ballsy had Nicole gotten?

He inched the car forward and checked the mirror again. Still no movement. Damn her. Hitting the gas, he squealed out of the garage.

He did not need anyone that badly.

CHAPTER 15

Nicole was surprised to find her feet still planted solidly on the ground as Kent drove off. The detective let out a breath that she did not even realize she was holding. She had done it. She had stood her ground.

A small smile spread across her lips until Nicole realized she had no way to get home to celebrate this historic moment. She was not about to go upstairs and beg a ride off Ruben. She could check, but Nicole knew she did not have cash for a cab. It was a hell of a walk home, especially with her ankle still sore from the near fall in the stairwell.

With no palatable options, Nicole just stood there. Tired and a little shaky. If this was what victory felt like, it was not exactly motivating her to go for another win.

Was that the sound of a car? Engine sounds echoed off the garage’s low ceilings. Nicole’s mood brightened. Maybe a squad car was coming in for the night. With luck, she could get a lift home from a uniform.

But the arrival turned out to be far more complicated. It was Kent, backing her car down the ramp. Nicole stayed in place not so much from stubbornness as from shock. Kent had never come back.

Never.

Kent stopped the car right beside her. “O’Fallon recognized me.” His gaze met hers. “And, well, I was not exactly welcomed.”

If she were in a better mood, there was probably a story in there that would be quite amusing. When she did not respond, Kent continued, “The brain incident of 2010? I trust you remember?”

Oh, Nicole remembered it all right. Not an era that she wanted to revisit. “And you want my help for…?”

“A distraction.” He shrugged. “I need some quality time with the body.”

“Imagine my surprise that they didn’t let you in.”

All the humor left his face. “The trophy…” The words caught in his throat, and the profiler had to restart. “I have to know if he has his prize.”

There it was. Kent’s siren call. Everyone else, herself included, was willing to wait until the morning for the report. What did Kent understand about the killer that the rest of them did not? Normally that intrigue would have been enough to lure her into the car. But now, tonight?

She was just tired and sore.

The more Kent massaged his ego, the more hitching a ride with Ruben sounded appealing.

Nicole headed toward the stairs. “Read it in the report like everyone else.” The profiler’s eyes narrowed. Kent had that lean and hungry look. Nicole wasn’t impressed this time. “Waiting four hours for the autopsy isn’t going to kill you.”

CHAPTER 16

No, but it might get another brunette killed.

Kent watched Nicole walk across the garage to the stairs. What was she thinking? The nation’s most prolific serial killer had been interrupted.

How could he gauge the killer’s reaction if he didn’t know his level of frustration? Was he happy, coveting his latest trophy or back on the prowl? Didn’t Nicole understand?

Obviously the detective didn’t since she kept walking. He was losing her. Kent had only one card left.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he called out.

Nicole stopped but did not turn around. What more did she want from him? What more did he have?

“To the morning briefing.” She still refused to turn around. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Nicole turned the upper half of her body, but kept her toes pointed toward the stairwell. Toward Ruben. “On time?” He couldn’t help but smirk. “Don’t push it.”

CHAPTER 17

Ruben watched Nicole drive away with Kent.

Why was he not surprised?

He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. He had come down to apologize. But then, imagine that, he found Kent standing right next to her. Just as he had predicted. Ruben had thought he was just being sarcastic during the fight with Nicole, but obviously a part of him feared that she quickened to the profiler’s ultra-dangerous aura.

Worse, Kent was not just a bad boy. The profiler was a downright awful boy. Harbinger did not just ride motorcycles, he would hot-wire one to bring on a date.

How could anyone sane compete?

When Kent had driven off, leaving Nicole standing there all alone, Ruben’s heart skipped a beat. For once, the profiler was showing his true colors. The deep selfish streak that for some reason seemed beyond anyone else’s comprehension to see was shining through.

Ruben knew he could never be Nicole’s knight in shining armor, however, tonight he had the chance to at least be a guy with a silver Lexus who could make sure she got home safe and sound.

Those hopes were dashed in their infancy when Kent backed all the way from the street to Nicole’s parking spot. An action that spelled the end to Ruben’s rescue fantasy.

He’d seen it in his partner’s eyes. Instead of being pissed that Kent had not only stolen her car but left her with no ride home, Nicole had somehow seemed content. Maybe even a little gratified. Maybe a lot.

After everything Harbinger had put her through, Nicole seemed ready, even eager, to get back on the profiler’s emotional merry-go-round.

Ruben knew a lot of men would just give up on her. Back off. But he was not most men. It was not arrogance or some masochistic urge that kept him in the game. No, Kent’s allure, ultimately, whether Nicole wanted to admit it or not, was that the profiler would hurt her. Not just hurt her, but jeopardize her career again. Ruin her life again.

And when that day came, Ruben would be sure to be there to catch her. Again.

CHAPTER 18

Nicole knew that assisting Harbinger was a bad idea. A really bad idea. Helping Kent break into the morgue was possibly the worst idea since…

Well, since the brain incident of 2010. But the truth was she never felt more alive than she did right now, knowing that Kent was somewhere in the shadows behind her.

Following her.

Unlike the profiler, she knew the door code and let them into the morgue without incident. They made their way to the intake desk, keeping to the back halls. Nicole in the lead. Kent trailing in the darkness.

Even she needed to avoid old man O’Fallon. He might be well past retirement age, but the security guard would know if she showed up at the morgue in the middle of the night, Kent could not be far behind.

Instead they targeted the new attendant. It didn’t hurt that the kid had a crush on her. While Nicole tried to avoid the morgue after the ugly incident several years ago, her job brought her here frequently. Between the memories and the rank odor, Nicole always had to go home and take a hot shower afterward. She had no idea how anyone could work here full-time. You would have to be a morbid son-of-a-bitch with a poor sense of smell.

Yet here she was approaching the desk, making certain that O’Fallon was not nearby before she showed herself. Luckily the elderly guard seemed to be off on one of his many catnaps he took during the long night shift.

Nicole came out of hiding. “Hey, Joshua.”

The younger man continued to stare straight ahead at the bank of security monitors. Well, they couldn’t have him doing that if Kent was going to break into the crypt. Nicole tapped the young man on the shoulder.

“Joshua.”

The attendant practically fell out of his seat. The kid jerked the buds out of his ears and the tinny sounds of death metal floated on the air.

“Detective Usher! I didn’t hear you buzz me.”

“Nah. I know the codes.”

Joshua fumbled with his iPod, trying desperately to turn it off as he spoke. “Yeah, duh. Of course you do.” Finally the music stopped. “Do you have a new body? Because I’m all about new bodies. I mean I’m—”

“I need to review the paperwork on Plain Jane.”

The attendant’s chest puffed up. “No worries.”

“Torres and I got our wires crossed, and we didn’t double-check it.”

“I’m telling you, everything is five-by-five.”

“This is the city’s most prolific serial killer, Josh. The documentation needs to be more like ten-by-ten.”

Nicole forced a flirty smile.

CHAPTER 19

Kent watched as Nicole leaned forward on that last “ten.” She had pushed some cleavage together.

The attendant’s eyes dilated and his cheeks blushed. Nicole didn’t have a lot going on in the chest department, but what she had, she knew how to use.

After several seconds completely slack-jawed, the attendant snapped back to attention. “Of course, let me get it.”

As Joshua turned away, Kent snuck down the hall, past the desk, and into the corridor to the right. Silently, up on the balls of his feet, he easily eluded the kid. Even in the pitch black, Kent made his way to the crypt without a single misstep.

Not hesitating, Harbinger pushed open the door and strode across the crypt to the rows of coolers. Rapidly, he read the names on the doors. The attendant had not been exaggerating, they had nearly a full house. Kent did not linger on any one name. These others did not concern him. The only one that mattered to him was Joann Forme.

The woman he had stalked for over a week. Nicole was not the only female whose bathroom he snooped around. He even knew that Joann was only two days from bleeding. That was how he knew the killer was going to strike tonight. Besides the trophy, Kent was beginning to form a theory that Plain Jane wanted his women at their sexual peak.

As much as Kent loved to cultivate the perception that his insight was near psychic in origin, it actually arose from long, boring hours of observation. Sometimes so many hours that other lives were lost in the interim.

You could not rush genius.

Kent had come so close to saving Joann because of the hundreds of hours he had logged on the last three victims. Claudia Simons, Julie Gamos, and Maria Villa. From them he had learned that it was not just their petite forms that drew the killer, but their pert breasts, high on the rib cage. The killer also required a fairly narrow waist sloping into full hips. A nice ass did not hurt, either.

All of those characteristics plus one other that still eluded Kent drew both the profiler and killer to Joann. It was then that the profiler realized he had been standing in front of the brunette’s crypt, a hand on the lever.

Kent did not have the luxury to brood. Nicole’s cleavage was not going to keep the young attendant fascinated forever. She just did not have that much to go around.

He jerked open the door and rolled Joann’s body out of its temporary tomb. The sound echoed in the small room, filling it, making it seem even smaller. Cool air rushing out from the interior gave rise to goose bumps along his arm. Or was it the sight of the woman’s pale face that stood out against the bright red slash across her neck?

The press might have dubbed these victims as Plain Jane’s, but to Kent each held their own beauty. Joann’s small button nose. Her baby-smooth skin, now marred by bloody hair matted against her cheek.

Despite his sense of urgency, Kent gently pulled back the unruly strands. Joann would have been horrified to have her hair in such a mess. Unlike Nicole, this woman only used one brand of shampoo and conditioner. A boutique brand, priced at over a hundred dollars a bottle, just like the celebrities used. A price she should not have been able to afford on a bookkeeper’s salary.

As if hiding some state secret, late at night, Joann would go online and buy the expensive products on eBay. Hell, just last night she had gotten free shipping thrown in. Kent could not help but grin. Joann had looked so proud. A small victory in a small life.

Pulling her purple scarf from his pocket, he draped it over her slashed neck. A small tribute to their bond.

Quickly the smile fell. This was not a wake. He had work to do. Snapping on a pair of latex gloves, Kent silently apologized to the brunette for what he was about to do.

CHAPTER 20

Nicole read the intake form again. For the fifth time. Where in the hell was Kent? A piece of paper tossed into the hallway was supposed to be the signal that she could wrap up this charade. Each time she glanced to the hall, still no paper.

She was not sure how much longer she could keep Josh distracted. For what seemed like forever, while she had been checking out the paperwork, she had made sure the attendant was checking her out.

However, there was only so much shifting and strutting in an underwire bra you could do before it began cutting off circulation. She needed a new strategy.

Then movement on the security screen caught Josh’s eye. Over his shoulder, Nicole could see the image of Kent moving around in the crypt.

The attendant pointed. “Oh man, that freak again!”

Before she could stop him, Joshua flew down the hallway. Nicole had no other option but to rush after him. She caught up right at the door to the cooler, praying they burst into an empty room, but they found Kent elbow-deep in the brunette’s belly.

The most shocking sight, however, was the sheer joy on the profiler’s face as he pulled pink tissue to the surface.

“It’s still here.” He urged the mottled tissue toward her. “He didn’t get it.”

Several moments passed before the surprise wore off and Nicole realized what Kent was showing her.

Joann’s uterus.

CHAPTER 21

Kent tugged at the ovarian ligament, trying to expose the womb better. Didn’t Nicole realize what this meant? The killer had been thwarted. Denied his prize. His trophy. Kent’s mind reeled with the implications.

“Dude, get another hobby!”

The attendant’s outburst brought Kent back to the present circumstance. “It’s still here.”

Joshua pointed. “Um, that’s against the law, right?”

“Uh, oh yeah.” This seemed to break the detective out of her shock. She drew her gun. “Step away from the body.”

Kent did not like taking orders, even if they were fake ones. “What? At least I put on gloves this time.”

Nicole tilted her head to the side.

“Um, you know how to use the gun, right?” Josh asked.

Oh, she knew how to use it all right, Kent thought as Nicole leveled her aim at his head. “Step away. Now!”

Not so much to obey her now that his job was done, Kent let the uterus slip from his hands, snapped his gloves off, and tossed them into the red-lined medical waste receptacle for three points, but strangely no one cheered.

“Hands behind your back.”

Playing along, Harbinger turned and was mildly surprised when he felt Nicole’s knee in his back, pressing him up against the gurney. She was getting into this role-playing gig a little too enthusiastically.

“Do you think…? Do you think he’s Plain Jane?” the attendant asked.

Efficiently, Nicole slapped the cuffs on his wrist, tightening them more than Kent would have liked. “No. The creep only gets up close and personal after they’re dead.”

“Oh, so he’s a necro…” The attendant stared at him with a new sense of revulsion and wonder. “Cool. I never met one face-to-face before.”

Nicole urged Kent toward the door. “Let’s go. You have the right to remain silent—”

Joshua looked to the bloody mess.

“This is the best job ever.”

CHAPTER 22

Once they were out in the parking lot, Kent tried to pull free of her grip. “You can take the cuffs off now.”

“I could…” Nicole shoved him toward her car. He was going to know who was in charge, at least for now.

“You have to,” Kent demanded.

Even though she tried to keep him facing forward, the profiler slipped from her grasp and turned around. For a guy who had never lifted a dumbbell, Kent was deceptively strong.

His entire posture changed, and even though he leaned against the car with his hands cuffed behind him, one would never know he was the one restrained. Who needed to actually be in control, when you could just act like you were?

“I interrupted him. He’ll be out again.” Kent implored. “Soon. Maybe even tonight. Maybe now.”

Nicole did her best to keep up. “He’s never struck so close. He’s gone at least a week between kills.” But she only ended up playing his foil.

“He’s never been denied his prize before. He needs it.”

“As much as you needed to stick your damned hands in Joann’s belly?”

“More,” Kent emphasized.

That damned hungry tone. A palpable need that radiated from the profiler like an irresistible pheromone. Even though she intellectually knew that the hunger was not for her, there was no telling her body that. Kent was never as charismatic as when he was honing in on a killer.

But she had walked this path before with him. One that lead to pain, self-destruction, and abandonment. If not for his sake, then for her own, Nicole needed to find a way to work this case differently. She wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

“If I un-cuff you, you’re going to ditch me, aren’t you? Not even bothering to come to tomorrow’s briefing, are you?”

CHAPTER 23

It was Kent’s turn to study Nicole. He had cranked up his rogue, lone wolf vibe to high, and still she resisted him.

There had to be a reason.

“What’s so important about this briefing?”

Nicole met his stare full on. “Every once in a while, you do need to participate with the department. With your colleagues. With me.”

“You’re not very good at lying, you know?” Her valiant effort to fool him amused Kent.

“Whatever,” she said as she pulled out the handcuff keys.

He rebuffed her attempt to turn him around. The one thing he knew how to do for certain was make Nicole squirm.

Her face flushed. “Don’t you want to be un-cuffed?”

Kent did not oblige an answer. Instead he locked eyes with her.

There could be only one winner of this little power struggle, and he certainly was not going out on the prowl for Plain Jane after being a loser.

Finally Nicole shrugged. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

Round one. Kent.

He pressed his advantage as she reached behind him to get to the cuffs’ lock, forcing her into close proximity.

Round two. Kent.

Their body heat mingled as the air around them cooled. The storm did not seem quite over. Kent bent his neck to bring his lips ever so close to her ear. “I repeat. What’s so important about tomorrow’s meeting?”

His breath upon her neck had the desired effect as she fumbled the keys. The only way she could unlock the cuffs now was to lean into him. Force their bodies together. His lips turned up into a smile as he felt the points of her breasts rub against his chest as she fished for the cuffs’ lock.

Round three. Kent.

He moved her hair back from her face with his chin, rubbing stubble across her cheek. “You always were better at putting them on than taking them off, weren’t you?” he said huskily.

The top of Nicole’s ear turned a bright red as her breath came at a quicker and quicker pace. Obviously she remembered the nights he referred to as well as he.

Leveraging her flustered state, Kent made his move. He grabbed her hands and with a shift of his weight, pulled Nicole around, forcing her back against the car. He stood over her, pressing the entire length of their bodies together.

Round four. Kent.

He could feel the heat of Nicole’s body through her thin silk blouse. Unbidden, his loins stirred. That was definitely not supposed to happen.

Round five. Nicole.

Worse, she had the presence of mind to continue working on the cuffs. It would not do to have Nicole less rattled than he by their close proximity. He had to keep his mind focused on why he had cornered her in the first place.

“Tomorrow’s brainstem-storming session, why is it so important that I attend?”

Nicole would not be deterred, though. She not only ignored his question but finally got the key in the lock. There was an audible click. When she tried to pull her arms from around him, Kent resolved not to be outdone this night.

Flicking the metal from his wrist, he grabbed Nicole’s soft hands before she could squirm free. With practice only gotten from a certain amount of illegal activities, Kent closed the cuffs around her wrists.

With a click, Nicole was now his prisoner.

TKO. Kent.

CHAPTER 24

Nicole tugged and tugged. Not only had Kent somehow cuffed her hands, he had locked them to her Mustang’s door handle.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You don’t like?” Kent asked, seduction warm in his voice. “Have you changed that much in two years?”

Desperate to ignore the pulse pounding in her ears, Nicole tried to free herself, but knew it was futile. There was no reason to scratch her chrome door handle.

Kent smiled. “Mellowed out to please Zorro?”

Nicole frowned. Kent had reached new heights of exasperation. She refused to play this game.

“Why do you want me at the meeting?” he asked.

Setting her jaw, Nicole mimicked Kent’s earlier behavior, staring ahead, as if this whole scenario just bored her. However, the strategy backfired as Kent’s eyes lit up. She forgot how much he liked a challenge.

“Well, if you won’t talk, then…” Kent’s finger traced her neck, along the edge of her blouse to the top button. “I’ll have to increase the stakes.”

Nicole could not keep her chest from heaving. Could not keep gooseflesh from rising in response to his touch. She could keep from speaking, though. Kent would be forced to stop before he’d gone too far by morgue security. She wasn’t worried. Was she?

Still, his fingers played with the top button of her blouse. Nicole stared defiantly into his eyes, but Kent did not hesitate to unbutton it. A gasp escaped before she could stifle it. The defiant stare was forgotten as she looked down at what Kent was doing. His fingers ever so tenderly opened the blouse to reveal the curve of cleavage.

“I’ll undo them all,” the profiler threatened softly.

Still she held strong.

Kent unbuttoned another, revealing the lace edge of her bra. “Let that Conquistador of yours find you like this.”

“You wouldn’t,” her voice trembled despite all effort to steady it.

Obviously he would, as he tugged the third button open.

Nicole’s will broke, and the words spilled out over one another. “If you can’t prove yourself at the briefing, Glick is pulling you off the case.”

Kent’s expression was unreadable as his finger traced down the edge of her bra. “See, that was not so hard after all.” Despite her acquiescence, he still unbuttoned another, exposing her front-loading bra. “Still trying to protect me, Nic? Just like old times? Hmmm?”

He pressed his thumb against her bra’s clasp.

She could scream, but did she really want someone interrupting him?

“Bored with your pedicured boy?” His index finger leveraged against the other side of the clasp. Just a little more pressure and the bra would spring open.

All this one-handed. She couldn’t do that, and there was no way Ruben would even attempt it.

He rubbed his rough cheek against hers. “Miss our old times, Nic?” Kent waited for a response, but Nicole no longer possessed language skills. It did not matter that she could not answer him, as she did not really know. What were their old times but a blur of passion and pain?

His thumb and forefinger worked the latch, straining the fabric, pulling it across her nipples, hardening them.

Nicole did not think it possible, but Kent leaned in even closer, bringing his lips next to her ear. Another millimeter and he would be kissing her. Telling her that he loved her, just like he used to. Only heightening the romanticism of the gesture, a light rain began to fall.

Kent’s tone was not altogether kind. “Don’t ever try to manipulate me, Nic.” He pulled back to look her in the eye. “You don’t have it in you.”

To complete his demonstration of power, Kent twisted the clasp until it almost opened, then let it fall back to her skin, still locked as he backed away. A mixture of relief and disappointment flooded through Nicole as she watched a man she once loved pull away from her.

Kent wasn’t just backing up, he was walking away.

Embarrassment replaced arousal. “You can’t leave me like this!”

The profiler kept walking as raindrops splashed on her face, making it hard to tell if she was crying or not. “Kent!”

He didn’t turn around. “The key’s up your sleeve.”

CHAPTER 25

Had any morgue attendant ever, ever, ever in the history of morgue attending gotten as lucky as he had tonight? Joshua wondered as he watched Detective Usher squirm to get out of her restraints.

First to have a Plain Jane victim come in on his shift. That put tonight on the map right out of the gate. Then some psycho broke into the morgue?

That was, like, the first time in over two years.

Joshua had thought the coup de grâce had been the perv sneaking back into the crypt and getting caught red-handed, literally, in the victim’s belly. Little did the attendant know that he would be treated to an off-the-hook peep show to boot!

For the seventeenth time, Joshua made sure the VCR recorded the parking lot camera’s feed. For once this antique electronic equipment came in handy. It provided a permanent recording of tonight’s parking lot action.

And it was not even over yet. Detective Usher still squirmed to unlock the cuffs. Her movements were kind of like a slow S&M go-go dance. Joshua could not have imagined a better scene. The unforgiving rain soaked through her shirt. And while he could not see them clearly, those dark nipples of hers stood out in stark contrast to the clinging bra.

How did he get so lucky? But he’d almost jinxed himself. When he first came back from the crypt after he cleaned up the mess, Joshua noticed the perv and Usher having a fight by the car. Being a generally good citizen, Joshua almost called O’Fallon to help her.

Then he realized that not only was the detective not putting up much of a fight when the perv made the cuff switch, he was pretty damn sure she was into it.

Hey, maybe that’s how cops blew off steam. Who was he to judge Usher’s lifestyle?

And did it get hot or what? Joshua was honestly surprised the rain did not turn to steam when it hit those two. Then the perv, right when it was getting good, walked off. Which simply confirmed the attendant’s opinion that the guy was cracked. Who walked away from a body like that?

Wet and hot?

Joshua watched Nicole struggle some more. He could hardly wait to get home and put some music to this show.

“Anything happen?”

The attendant jumped at the security guard’s voice. The old man should have been down until at least five.

Flicking off the monitor, Joshua answered, “Nope.”

“Thought I heard some clanging around.”

“You’ve been hearing things…again.”

O’Fallon’s face clouded. Joshua knew how it goaded the old man to think he might be going senile. Which usually accounted for most of the fun the attendant had on the graveyard shift. But not tonight.

Risking a glance to the VCR, Joshua made sure the red light still glowed brightly. Damn, wouldn’t the geezer go back to bed before Usher ended her live show?

O’Fallon yawned. “As long as everything is quiet.”

“Oh, yeah.”

The old man was not ten steps away before Joshua flipped back on the monitor, only to be disappointed that not only had Usher gotten out of the cuffs and re-buttoned her shirt, but she was already back in the car.

He could only hope that the tape caught the end of the show.

Hell, who needed Pay-Per-View porn when you got on-the-job-action like this?

CHAPTER 26

As a wan light shone through the bullpen window, Ruben tried to keep himself busy with his paperwork. After getting no sleep between Joann’s death and now, he had downed four extra-tall coffees in a row.

He had a caffeine buzz that urged him to pace in front of the packed house that had gathered for the briefing. Although nine-tenths of them weren’t here for his insights. They waited for Kent’s grand appearance.

Ruben glanced over at the near-to-bursting crowd. He had never seen so many cops, both uniforms and detectives, crammed into the bullpen.

Focusing on the board, he adjusted Joann’s autopsy report. Ruben wanted all the information to be perfectly in order. The backgrounds, original police reports, autopsy reports, and family interviews. Everything. The items needed to be assembled in the correct sequence so his talk went smoothly.

No matter Kent’s predilection for bizarre, unorthodox behavior, Ruben knew that he still needed to provide a commanding presentation for Glick to take the award-laden profiler off the case. And Ruben did not just want Kent playing second-string. He wanted the lunatic off the case completely. Out of Nicole’s life completely.

Out of their lives completely.

Ruben peeked to the clock again. 9:12. He looked to his captain, who looked at Nicole. His partner, in turn, looked toward the door. No Kent. No hint that Kent was even going to show up. Typical.

Wouldn’t that be perfect? The vaunted profiler simply forfeiting his position?

Glick would have to pull Harbinger from the case.

Ruben looked at his captain. How much longer was Glick going to give Kent? They had a lot of ground to cover.

“He’s late,” Glick demanded of Nicole.

Of course, she rose to his defense. “I’m sure—”

“He’s not coming.”

“Not coming?” a hidden voice asked. Ruben recognized the voice, but could not believe he had heard it. Kent continued, “I wouldn’t dream of missing this.”

Ruben sighed. There was no doubt it was Kent, but where in the hell was he? The room was filled to capacity, but no profiler. Then Ruben tilted the profile board to reveal Kent lying on a desk, reading a comic book.

Things definitely weren’t going Ruben’s way anymore.

CHAPTER 27

Kent stayed recumbent, seemingly intent on his comic as he soaked in the room’s reaction. Ruben was way too easy to read. If the detective were a cartoon character he would have steam coming out his ears and strange icons bulging in and out of his eyes in a distorted caricature.

Nicole grinned despite herself, and the rest of the room…well the rest of the room was abuzz.

Ah, he had not made an entrance this good since his first day teaching advanced profiling techniques at Quantico. In huge, bold letters, he had scrawled across the blackboard “Powers of Observation,” then hid up in the rafters. Students had filed in, clearly a little concerned that their new professor was not at the front of the classroom.

Concern turned too freaked-out when one brave student risked a journey up to the podium and found blood smeared across the syllabus and a trail of red footprints leading to the emergency exit.

He didn’t even reveal himself when the dean showed up to investigate Kent’s mysterious disappearance. The profiler didn’t even budge when security was summoned to the scene of the mysterious “crime.”

Harbinger had just sat up there, silently laughing his ass off at the supposed brightest and best scrambling around trying to organize a manhunt. Finally he couldn’t contain himself. It had been his own snort of amusement that had given him away.

Yeah, that had been a great entrance. Of course, shortly thereafter he’d been fired. But still. The look on the dean’s face alone was worth it. Okay, maybe he should not have lied to the students and told them he had used HIV-infected blood as the lure. But come on, the scare those students got would ensure that they never investigated a potential crime scene without gloves ever again. Unfortunately, the Bureau did not see it his way, and off to the think tank he went.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kent looked over the sea of blue uniforms and typical detective suits. They were all still trying to figure out how he had gotten behind the board and exactly when.

You know, sometimes fieldwork really was rewarding.

Glick recovered first. “Are you going to join us?”

Kent snapped his comic closed, very dramatically, as he swung upright. “And Miss Wunderkind’s solving of the Sphinx’s riddle?” He slapped the desk for emphasis as he rose. “Not on your life.”

“Enough of the drama, Harbinger. Get over here.”

He complied. Ruben didn’t even try to hide his glower. Therefore, Kent made sure to sit right next to Nicole. Far closer than polite society usually allowed. Ruben looked like he was going to intervene, then regrouped and turned to the crowd.

“Let me clarify. I am not going to solve anything—”

“Now that’s bold,” Harbinger chided. Ah, after the night he had, this was going to be fun.

Ruben tried to move on as if Kent had not just interrupted him. “I’m just here to take a fresh look at all the evidence collected so far…”

Torres glared, as if challenging the profiler to speak up.

Kent was going to enjoy this briefing more than he thought. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

Even through the detective’s naturally dark cheeks, you could see a flush of red. Before Ruben could retort, Glick stepped in. “Enough.”

Oh yeah, the profiler was definitely glad he showed up this morning.

The captain fixed Kent with a frown, then turned to Torres, “Go on.”

He could feel Ruben’s gaze, but Kent had already opened his comic book and was not about to give the detective the satisfaction of feeling like he had backed him down.

No one got that satisfaction.

CHAPTER 28

Nicole shifted uncomfortably next to Kent. She should have been pissed at him. He had left her handcuffed to her car in the middle of a downpour, for hell’s sake. It had been quite the stunt he had pulled, but in retrospect, what had she thought trying to play at Kent’s level of gamesmanship?

Last night he had simply reaffirmed himself as the master and she, the groveling student.

Now she worried for Ruben. Her partner had thrown down a king-size gauntlet at Kent’s feet. Just as she had done. Already, before the briefing even began, Kent had scored the first point. The people in the room craned their necks, not to see Ruben, but to watch the profiler.

Despite their fight the night before, Nicole still respected the effort Ruben put into living up to his gold badge. She caught his eye and nodded for him to proceed. Waiting for Kent’s acknowledgment was nothing more than a losing proposition.

Ruben started, then stopped and took a deep breath, then continued, “We have seen seventeen victims so far.”

“Wrong,” Kent chimed in.

“Seventeen confirmed victims,” he added.

“Nope. Thirty-one and counting.”

Rushing in before Ruben could retort, Nicole tried to soften Kent’s abrupt disagreement. “Only if you include the missing women who fit the victim profiles from the greater Boston area and Toronto.”

“Which I’m not.”

“Mistake.” The tone wasn’t aggressive, just definitive.

Nicole had to give Ruben credit. Instead of playing into Kent’s tit-for-tat game, her partner turned to their superior. “Captain?”

The older man frowned, his grey eyebrows nearly touching. “Harbinger, you will have to wait for your turn.”

In typical fashion, Kent did not acknowledge the captain as he read his comic book. The profiler could make compliance appear so very defiant. Nicole gave Ruben an encouraging smile. Kent could not keep up this juvenile behavior forever.

Seemingly poised, Ruben pointed to the long row of photos that showed both happy, smiling pictures of the victims and their gruesome crime scene photos, then lastly their autopsy shots. It was a brutal reminder of what was at stake. They were not here to salvage their reputations but to save another brunette from this violent death.

Ruben’s tone sobered. “All the women have been between the ages of twenty-nine and thirty-four. Natural brunettes, but a mixture of races. No children.”

Her partner could not help but look over to Kent.

The profiler showed Nicole his comic. “You know the meta-message that the red bow on Minnie Mouse’s forehead signifies, don’t you?”

Nicole cringed. Ruben needed to stop playing into Kent’s hand. The profiler could have shamed Einstein at a physics convention. To his credit, her partner seemed to sense this and decided to move on.

“There have been no direct or casual links between the victims.” Ruben pointed to the long sheets of police reports detailing their families, work history, and basically the victims’ entire lives. “We have run down their work histories and the places they frequented: grocery stores, restaurants, doctors, gyms, clubs, even fast food joints. Nothing connects them.”

Kent made a loud raspberry sound.

“Nothing. No common thread. No common connection. They must have been picked at random.”

“Wrong again, but thanks for playing.”

CHAPTER 29

There wasn’t much Kent ever regretted, however, that off-handed barb at Torres was one of them.

Not because he feared his rival’s brilliant repartee, but because it opened up a line of questioning that Kent did not want to go down at the moment.

“Really? And what is their connection?”

Keeping defensiveness from his voice, Kent answered, “I didn’t say I knew.” Then kicked up his arrogance quotient. “I know, however, that I should still be looking for one.”

Thankfully, Glick stepped in before Ruben could retort. “Then let’s keep the peanut gallery to a minimum.”

Acting his usual bastard self, Kent went back to his comic, this time to hide his frustration. While he might let Nicole think he came to the briefing to please her or that his ego drove him to go toe-to-toe with Torres, the actual reason was a little too raw for his taste.

Last night, after watching from the bushes to make sure that Nicole un-cuffed herself and left safely, Kent had roamed the city alone, on foot. The profiler knew that he needed to pick a new high-probability victim, but he did not have much hope that the outcome would be much better than Joann’s. He was missing something. Some vital clue.

The killer’s motive eluded him. How could he protect these women if he did not know why the psychopath wanted them? Kent knew the superficial characteristics of the victim types: their height, weight, and hair color, but the killer had a core need that the profiler could not identify—a slim piece of information that tied all the women together.

In the dead of night, wandering the city, Kent had come to the harsh reality that he was tapped out. Inspiration was fickle and had fled the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, Kent knew of only one way to jump-start it. He needed to be challenged. He needed to be forced outside his previous conceptions of the case. The profiler needed to push against someone. Someone almost as good as himself.

While he would never admit it, even under the threat of death, Kent knew that person to be Ruben. The guy was uptight, but thorough. If there was anyone who could jog his intuition into high gear it was going to be the detective.

Ruben continued with his analysis. “Based on the systematic, meticulous pattern to these killings, we can surmise that the killer is Caucasian—”

“Nope.”

“Between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-nine.”

“Not.”

Damn it, Torres, you’re better than this. Give me something to work with.

“And is highly intelligent and attractive.”

“Only because the ugly, stupid ones are easy to catch.”

Snickers arose, though Kent took little delight in them. If he didn’t figure out that small but essential missing link soon, another woman was going to die. Maybe tomorrow, maybe even tonight. If Ruben didn’t help him narrow his search, another woman’s blood would be on his hands.

Glick’s frown quieted the room to silence. “Torres, please continue.”

Ruben pointed to Joann’s autopsy report. “The coroner confirmed that the killer did not take his trophy last night.”

A collective gasp broke out as the captain looked straight at Nicole and Kent. “But two of us knew that already, didn’t they?” The detective squirmed under Glick’s gaze, then jabbed Kent with the pencil. That woman really needed to find another way to express disappointment.

Typical Nicole, after poking him hard enough to leave a mark, she then rose to his defense. “He did not get a chance to take the uterus because Special Agent Harbinger interrupted him. We might not be a step ahead of the killer, but at least we’ve pulled within a half step behind. This remaining uterus could be the key to solving the case.”

A part of Kent was warmed by Nicole’s confidence, but another part really did not want any more pressure.

Ruben paused, making sure his partner was done. He kept it pretty close to his vest, but Kent knew it drove Rubin rabid mad when Nicole stood up for him.

“By his choice of souvenirs, we know that despite the lack of rape, there is a strong sexual component to the crime.”

Almost on reflex, Kent disagreed. “No, there’s not.”

Something Nicole said stuck in his craw. The uterus. It was the one new piece of evidence they had. A piece he had yet to figure into the equation. Squinting, Kent read the coroner’s report on Joann’s uterus as Ruben droned, “We can assume that he expresses his sexual rage, since he is impotent.”

“No, he’s not,” Kent said, but his mind barely registered what Torres had actually said. He squinted harder. Was he reading the report right? Despite it being Ruben’s briefing, Kent walked over to the autopsy result.

Joann Forme’s uterus showed an abortion.

Kent quickly scanned the other victims’ medical histories. Another had an abortion. And another. And another.

CHAPTER 30

Nicole watched Kent intently. Ruben kept glancing over his shoulder as the profiler rapidly reorganized his ever-so-carefully arranged files.

“He takes his trophy to show power over the women.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Kent responded, but Nicole knew that the profiler was only dedicating a hundredth of his mind to Ruben. Instead, Kent fixated on the newly arranged files. He paced back and forth, mumbling in a way that either indicated schizophrenia or brilliance.

Still, Ruben tried to maintain focus. “Which indicates that he had a strong father, but a weak mother, most likely a victim of domestic violence.”

“Nopers.”

Flustered, Ruben had to look down at his notes before he could continue. “Um… The killer. The killer will have a medical background—”

“Not even close.”

“His career is intellectually based and requires a level of an exacting precision not normally—”

Kent turned. “Where do you get this crap?”

Glick strove for calm. “I must insist that—”

“Here’s the pattern.” Kent pointed to the rearranged files. “It’s been staring us in the face for months.”

“Harbinger!” The captain snapped, then regrouped. “If you can’t wait your turn respectfully, I will have to ask you to leave. Now.”

Nicole tensed, ready to intercede as Kent stared him down. Glick wasn’t going to put up with much more.

Surprisingly, Kent simply shrugged. “Fine.”

The room silenced as the profiler turned to leave. Kent did not even look over to her as he passed.

Ruben haltingly continued, “The killer power-reassures when he takes the victims from behind, then power-asserts when he cuts their throats.”

Suddenly, Kent grabbed Nicole by the hair to expose her neck. Exactly as the killer must have done. Everyone was on their feet, some even taking a tentative step forward, hands on their holsters.

But Nicole’s instinct to fight him off was suppressed by Kent’s almost soothing voice. Like a father explaining one of life’s little mysteries.

“He takes them from behind because he can’t look them in the face. In the eye.”

“Harbinger, let her go!” Glick demanded.

Kent grabbed a red marker and used it like a knife across her throat. By the shock on everyone’s face, Nicole knew it had left a bright red line.

“He slits their throats so they can exsanguinate slowly, though relatively painlessly.”

Despite his bizarre behavior, Nicole could see by her colleagues’ expressions that they were mesmerized.

“He needs them alive. At least for a few minutes.”

Ever so slowly, Kent’s hand snaked down her side, just missing the curve of her breast. With the care he would take when making love, he un-tucked her shirt to reveal bare belly.

“He needs her heart still beating when he cuts into her.”

Nicole gasped as Kent slashed the marker across her stomach. The profiler tugged on her skirt, pulling it lower and lower down past her belly button. Nicole had never been gladder that she had bikini-waxed.

“A cut which has gotten smaller and smaller. Cleaner and cleaner. Implying he had no medical experience. Instead he learned on the job.”

Kent knelt so his face was level with the slash he created. His tone was almost loving. “I understand now,” he said as he rubbed her belly. “What he takes isn’t a trophy. Not a souvenir to masturbate with later.”

With great care, Kent drew the outline of a uterus on her skin, then traced over and over again with his finger. “No. He doesn’t want a uterus. He needs a womb. He needs blood to still be flowing through the source of all life as he takes it.”

Everyone seemed too captivated to move, but Nicole’s hand, reached out and rested upon Kent’s head. “Why?”

Kent traced the outline one last time, then rose and pointed toward the board. “The coroner found evidence of an abortion within Joann’s uterus.”

Finally, Ruben found his voice. “So?”

“So?” Kent mocked her partner’s tone. “Nine other victims had a history of abortion as well.”

“But eight did not.”

Kent looked at Ruben. “That we know of.”

The profiler must have known he had the room’s attention and he used it to his advantage. “He took their uteri. He took away any evidence that would have proven that they’d had abortions. We only know about those other nine because their families told us.”

Kent turned to her. “We got lucky. Now it’s time to get smart.” Even though the bullpen was crammed, it felt as if it were only the two of them. “We did not ask the other families if the Vics had an abortion, because we did not realize it was the causal link. If we re-interviewed them…”

Nicole fed off Kent’s energy, the thrill of discovery setting her brain afire. “But abortion can be traumatic. The family might not even know if the woman had an abortion, especially if it was a while ago.”

“We need to subpoena their complete medical records.”

Nicole nodded. “Dig around their financials in case they paid cash at an anonymous clinic?”

Kent brought them nose-to-nose. “Exactly.”

No matter that they were surrounded by her colleagues: Nicole could feel the heat of Kent’s body. His gaze upon her. She knew the rest of the room squirmed. She knew that Ruben was squirming, she just didn’t care. The fire in Kent’s eyes held her entranced.

A forced cough from Glick brought the room back to reality. “Then you best get started on the paperwork.”

Kent didn’t look away from Nicole as he answered. “No can do. Let Rogaine-boy handle it. I’ll be out.”

“Where?” Ruben answered, his tone as bent out of shape as he most certainly was.

Again, Kent seemed to only have eyes for Nicole. “To find her. His next donor.”

“That approach hasn’t worked very well so far.”

“Before I was looking for a generic victim.”

“And now?” Bitterness tainted Ruben’s tone.

Kent’s hand found Nicole’s belly and rubbed it oh-so-slowly. She barely heard his response. “I know exactly who he’s looking for.”

“Who?” Her question was a rush of air.

The profiler kissed the red uterus. “Mommy.”

Breathless, Nicole watched Kent stride off. And it was not just her. The entire room was stunned. No one moved. It took the sound of the door closing for even Glick to rouse.

“All right, people. Let’s track down the families, subpoena the medical records—”

“Captain!” Ruben nearly shouted, then lowered his voice. “I didn’t even get a chance to—”

Glick pointed to the rearranged board. “Were you going to present anything more concrete than this lead?” Nicole felt a rush of sympathy for her partner as he shook his head. Seldom did anyone’s ego survive unscathed with Kent on the prowl. The captain raised his voice so the entire room could hear. “Then let’s get moving!”

The knot of cops scattered as if a strong wind had blown through. The energy of the room shifted. Where before there had been despair, there was now hope. Where there was disappointment, there was now determination. While not entirely founded, it felt as if the killer lay just beyond their fingertips. Almost within grasp. Or at least Kent’s grasp. And Nicole had to be there when he caught Plain Jane.

“Sir—”

“Go.” Glick seemed to know her desire. “Stick with him.”

Nicole did not need to be told twice. She snatched her keys and was on her way out.

The captain called out after her. “Make sure he doesn’t break the law, and if he does…” Glick caught her gaze. “Make sure you’re the one to arrest him…again.”

Nicole cringed. He’d just busted her for Kent’s little stunt at the morgue last night. But if Glick was not going to make an issue of it, then neither was she. “Of course, sir.”

CHAPTER 31

Ruben watched Nicole rush toward the door. Rushing after Harbinger. You’d think he’d get used to the view.

Beside him, Glick called out to Nicole again, “Usher.” The captain waited until she turned back to him. “Cover up.”

With a questioning glance, Nicole looked down, then realized that her belly was still exposed. Embarrassed, she tucked the blouse back in, disappearing down the stairwell.

Everyone else bustled about, fulfilling the captain’s orders. It seemed Ruben was the only one not energized by Kent’s dog and pony show.

“Where do you think he went?”

Glick shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Then how is she going to find him?”

The captain turned his gaze to Ruben. A look of sympathy crossed his face as he spoke. “She’ll know.”

Ruben wanted to argue, but there was no point. Glick was right. Harbinger could be in the Antarctic, and Nicole would find him. For Ruben, she could not even remember his street number half the time. He looked around at the room full of amped cops. And not just the young ones. Even the more seasoned detectives were intent, refocused, confident.

How many more women had to die before they all realized that Kent was nothing more than a charlatan? A peddler of snake oil? Harbinger would either get himself killed or run off, his tail tucked between his legs. At this moment, with the sting of his public humiliation still fresh, Ruben was not sure which he hoped for more.

CHAPTER 32

The work cubicles at the local DMV office were orderly and felt-lined, but cramped. Which made scooting his chair just a fraction of an inch closer to Dolores an easy sell.

The fifty-something DMV worker was more than a little flustered by Kent’s presence. Just how he liked his prey. This big-haired lifer at the DMV was putty in his hands. She would get him the information he needed, without a stupid, time-wasting warrant.

“I’m sorry…” Dolores gulped, then wet her lips. Kent had picked exactly the right distance between them. “We’re looking only at brunettes, five feet to five feet two, and…”

Kent had to help her. He feared she might just swoon if he made her concentrate any harder. “Ninety-five to one hundred ten pounds…” He nudged her, then winked. “A little too thin for my taste, but whatcha going to do?”

Dolores flushed brighter than her Moulin Red rouge and looked away. While he didn’t move closer, Kent leaned forward. Just enough to stir the air between them. Just enough to let the pheromones waft from his body to her nostrils.

By the wedding ring on her finger that pinched into her skin, Kent could guess she had been married for over four decades. Probably to a high school sweetheart. A boy who had aged into an overweight drinker. Dolores’s own nose was a bit bloodshot, most likely with hypertension, and statistically seldom did women drink alone. Which would mean those two probably had not had sex in months, if not years. In this cramped cubicle, a little pheromone went a long way.

“And the age range was?”

Kent smiled his rogue smile, implying they were doing something a little naughty, making them conspirators. “Let’s go for twenty-nine to thirty-five. Make it within the 63105.”

“That’s a pretty limited search range.”

He certainly hoped so.

Even though Dolores’s fingers were plump, they flew across the keyboard as she entered Kent’s request. Almost instantly the first picture was up on the screen. Even though this Mandy Pfizer fit the prerequisite stats, she was far too pretty. Plain Jane did not like his women made-up. “Nope.”

The next had too large a nose. The next too busty. The next too flat-chested. The next…

“Wait.”

This one had the look of the last girl left on the sidelines during the dance. She was shy. Her eyes were downcast in the picture, and she was slightly turned away from the camera, as if she could somehow hide from the lens.

“Maybe, just maybe.” Kent turned to Dolores. “Cross-reference County records to see if she’s had any live births.”

The DMV worker’s penciled-in eyebrows shot up.

“It’s a very detailed study.”

Dolores’s fingers moved more slowly. “You sure you don’t need a warrant for this information?”

Kent had to ante up from roguish to rakish grin. “Would I lie to you?”

Blushing scarlet, she hit the key. The search turned up two live births. Plain Jane took only childless women.

“Never mind. Next.”

“Sure you’re not using this database search as your own personal Match.com?”

For an overweight, square-dancing, DMV-lifer, Dolores was giving him a run for his money. He had to pull out the GQ smoldering vibe. “Do I look like I need any help from a computer dating service?”

Obviously Dolores did not think so, as she continued with the search. Kent rejected the next ten out of hand. He knew the killer’s preferences, and none of those women had them. Soon, poor Dolores was typing as fast as she could, the pictures flying by.

“Wait.”

Dolores stopped the search on the pretty brunette. Pretty, but not beautiful. Plain, but not boring. Kent studied the eyes, the nose, the lips.

“She your type?”

Kent was in another world when he answered. “More importantly is she his type?”

“His type?”

Abruptly, he said, “Print up her stats, then move on.”

Dolores sounded surprised. “You want more than one?” Kent realized he’d lost her. He went back to rogue.

“The more the merrier.” But this seemed to bother the DMV worker more. “Or at least that’s what my captain says.”

“Your captain?” Dolores sounded downright scandalized, but Kent knew her tone hid a piqued interest, so he shrugged, drawing her into their little escapade even further.

He made a point of taking in a deep breath. “And what is that lovely perfume you are wearing, Dolores? White Diamonds?”

The DMV worker was back to blushes and stuttering. She was firmly in his court, but was there ever any doubt?

CHAPTER 33

Nicole parked in front of the Out of This World comic book store. This was the third one she had hit, and still no Kent. As she walked into the tiny store, she really did not know why they bothered having more than one in the city. Each comic store looked exactly the same. Old and shabby. Rows and rows of comics. Posters of gaudy superheroes. Honestly, what did Kent see in these children’s toys?

Even the guy behind the counter looked just like the last three, a Shaggy look-alike, who was too busy reading the latest Daredevil to bother greeting her. His handwritten badge declared him to be Sebastian.

“Sebastian, has Kent Harbinger ordered anything through your store?”

The man looked over his Lennon spectacles. “And who’s asking?”

“Officer Usher. Now, do you have anything for Harbinger?”

Sebastian dug behind the counter, then came up with a sealed first-issue Archie comics. “Just got it in yesterday. A kid traded online for—”

“Did you tell Kent you got it in?”

“That’s what I get paid the big bucks for.”

Nicole breathed a sigh of relief. She had him. Kent would never let a find like this wait for long. “When did he say he was going to be by?”

“He wanted me to stay open late, but hey, I’ve got plans, you know.”

“Don’t bother covering for him.”

“Please, he boosts more books than he pays for.”

Nicole glared. He still had not given her the information she needed.

“He was heading to the DMV. Like he’s getting out of there before five. Right.” The clerk rolled his eyes.

“Thanks.”

Nicole turned to leave, but thought better of it. To have any hope of keeping tabs on Kent, she’d need some leverage. She turned back to Sebastian. “Let me have the book.”

“Whoa, woman, you may have a badge, but there’s a limit.”

Pulling back her jacket, Nicole showed off her gun.

“Okay, okay. Don’t go all Nazi Maus on me.”

“Just hand it over and put it on his account.”

More carefully than grocery store clerks handled tomatoes, Sebastian put the acid-free, cardboard-wrapped, and plastic-sealed comic in yet another bag. “Here you go, but don’t open the bag, or touch it, or breathe on it, or he’ll kill me, okay?”

Nicole smiled. She already had her plan. A little lie to Sebastian would not hurt anything. “Promise.”

CHAPTER 34

Kent leaned forward as he watched the pictures speed by, his right knee strategically placed, just barely touching Dolores’s stockinged leg. He had to keep her too preoccupied to ask many questions.

Dolores stopped on Nicole’s photo. “How about her?”

“Nope.”

“But she fits all of your… I mean your captain’s criteria.”

He grinned. “Trust me, she’s not a hundred and four pounds.”

Used to his idiosyncrasies, Dolores continued, but almost immediately, Kent found another possible victim.

“Her. Check her out.”

Dolores complied immediately and began accessing county records as a voice startled them both. “Well, well, you couldn’t hide forever.”

Kent knew that voice. Nicole.

The DMV worker looked up and recognized the detective from the photo. “Wow, now they’re coming to you.”

Kent winked. “Told you I didn’t need a computer’s help.”

Nicole wasn’t amused. “Can we talk? Privately?”

Rising, Kent urged Dolores to continue. The detective walked past several cubicles before she found an empty one. Luckily the walls were low enough that Kent could watch Dolores’s search while Nicole read him the riot act.

“This isn’t legal.”

“That’s pretty much my calling card.”

“Damn it! We don’t want to just catch this pervert, we want to convict him as well.”

The profiler shrugged. “That’s your problem.”

Several cubicles away, Dolores stopped on a plain brunette and turned back to look at Kent. He gave a thumbs-up. But the next screen showed that the brunette had four children. Definitely not Plain Jane’s type. He needed a womb that had an abortion but no live births. Kent nodded for Dolores to continue. A signal that was not missed by Nicole.

“Just give me an hour, and I’ll get you a warrant for—”

“Stop!” he shouted.

CHAPTER 35

Nicole took an unconscious step back. Kent had many affectations, but randomly yelling at her was not one of them. Even though they were in the back of the office, heads still turned at the outburst.

“That one!” Harbinger yelled as he rushed to Dolores.

Relieved that Kent had not completely lost his mind, Nicole followed as he studied the newest brunette’s picture as if he was certifying the Mona Lisa for the Louvre. And she could see why. This woman could not be more Plain Jane if she tried. The straight brown hair. The lack of makeup.

The profiler was so engrossed in the woman that he reached out and stroked her screen. “There’s my girl.”

The DMV worker raised an eyebrow but searched the county records.

“Hold on, let me get a warrant first.”

But she had already hit the key. “No live births.”

“I could have told you that,” Kent said. His voice a mile away.

“Yes, but that search may have—”

In typical fashion, Kent abruptly rose.

“Where you going, darlin’?” the worker asked.

“To find her.”

The profiler was in target acquisition mode. Nicole had seen it dozens of times before, but the DMV worker hadn’t. “Don’t you want me to print up her details? Name? Address?”

“No need.” Kent tapped his temple. “I’ve got them archived.”

Kent strode off as the woman shook her head. “Damn, but that boy is weird.” With a slight leer at his ass. “And hot.”

“Fax all the others he picked out to Detective Torres.”

“Torres?”

Nicole did not have time for one of Kent’s groupies. “Yes. T. O.—”

“Honey, I know how to spell it.” The woman still seemed confused. “But he just said he did not need them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Detective Torres?” The DMV worker looked down the empty corridor. “He just walked out of here, darling.”

“That wasn’t Ruben.”

“Sure it was, sweetie. He showed me his badge and everything.”

Kent must have pilfered Ruben’s badge. The profiler knew no limits. Nicole handed the woman her business card. “Just fax those other records to that number, okay?”

“You got it, sugar plum.” Dolores looked at Nicole. “You better hurry, or he’s going to give you the slip again.”

CHAPTER 36

Confident he had the information he needed, Kent closed his new cell phone and was about to make his getaway, in Nicole’s car of course, but the detective burst from the exit and rushed alongside the moving car.

“Oh no, you don’t.”

Kent slowed, but did not stop, forcing Nicole to trot alongside. “I promise to have the car back before its curfew.”

“Glick says I’m to stay on you 24/7.”

“As kinky as that sounds…” He sped up the car, but Nicole just would not give up.

“Don’t make me stop this car.”

Chuckling, Kent shook his head at the silly detective who thought she could bully him into compliance. He stepped on the gas and glanced into the rear-view mirror, mainly to enjoy the look of defeat on Nicole’s face, only to find her standing there, looking pretty darned confident. Then with deliberate care, she pulled out a comic book from her briefcase.

It might have been over a hundred feet away, but Kent could spot a number-one-issue Archie comic. His foot hovered over the brake. What was she playing at? Then to his horror, Nicole peeled off the seal and began to pull the comic from its protective cover. Did the woman not understand what even the slightest exposure to humidity could do to those fragile pages?

Slamming on the brakes, Kent put the car in reverse, halting, level with Nicole. “You wouldn’t.”

She was playing. “Watch me.”

“I’ll just buy another one.”

“No, you won’t.” Nicole smiled a smile that was very reminiscent of his own roguish grin. “Because you can’t. You’ve been looking for this for over five years. Maybe more.”

Damn, but she had him by the balls. That was not just a comic in her hands. It was a national treasure. More for the country than himself, Kent opened up the passenger door. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“About?” Nicole asked as she slid into the car.

“Blackmail.” Kent started the car. “You’ve taken your first step down that slippery slope.”

“I’ll take my chances. Where are we going?”

“You’re in the car.” Kent eyed his comic to make sure she had properly resealed the package. “Don’t expect cooperation, too.”

CHAPTER 37

Ruben tapped the pages of the report on the edge of his desk to straighten them before he put them away.

“Don’t tell me,” Glick stated. “Harbinger was right?”
Torres did not even try to hide his sigh. “We’re still waiting on the last two Vics’ history, but yeah, Kent does have as much gray matter as he claims.” Ruben hurried on before the captain could ask the next obvious question. “I’ve already cross-referenced all the victims’ abortion providers, doctors, nurses, janitors, and hell, even their accountants.”

“And no one in common?”

“Not a single telephone operator.” Again Ruben’s anger rose and made his teeth grind. The profiler had stumbled onto a hot lead, but now it was up to Ruben to follow it up.

It pissed him off to no end that he had run into dead end after dead end. “And I’m telling you. It’s like pulling teeth from some of these families to get confirmation of the victims’ abortions. We’re tracking down college roommates to confirm the last two.”

He handed over the folder, and Glick rapidly flipped through the neatly typed pages as Ruben continued. “Which begs the question, how in the hell did the killer find out that all these women had abortions?”

The captain shrugged. “Guess that’s another one for our resident savant to figure out.”

Always, everyone counting on Kent. Even the damn captain. Ruben turned to walk away, but Glick’s voice brought him back.

“You know, just because Harbinger is the Nobel Laureate of wackos doesn’t mean that he doesn’t still need us.” Glick looked over his reading glasses to Ruben. “Doesn’t need you backing him up.”

A tight smile crossed Ruben’s lips. “Thanks Captain, but we both know that isn’t true.”

Even Glick had to nod. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

CHAPTER 38

Sitting in the passenger seat, especially in her own car, felt strange to Nicole. How long had it been since she let someone else drive? When she and Ruben went anywhere they either drove separately, or she would drive. She didn’t like feeling out of control.

Even now Nicole struggled to figure out what the hell Kent was doing as they pulled into the shopping mall’s parking lot. She didn’t want to ask. She wanted to figure it out on her own, but could not. “So, we’re going to do a little shopping before we track her down?”

“Watch and learn.”

They pulled to a stop, then Kent removed his safety belt and slouched down into the seat, getting comfortable.

Nicole reviewed the file that Ruben had faxed over based on Kent’s lead. “This target, this woman…this Rebecca is a meter maid.”

“I believe they prefer to be called parking regulation enforcers.” Kent glanced at her. “You little sexist.”

The profiler’s mood had changed from night to day, literally. The night before, Kent had been sullen, angry. Even just a few hours ago he was snide and defensive. Now he was on a high. Harbinger had the scent. He was a hound on a fox, baying for the joy of it.

Nicole scanned the parking lot. “Whichever, there aren’t any parking meters for miles.”

Kent pulled the lever and brought his seat back to an even more comfortable position, ignoring her completely.

“Why would she be here?” she asked.

“Even ‘meter maids’ have to eat,” Kent said as he settled in and closed his eyes.

The detective looked into the glass-encased food court. Hundreds of people streamed in and out, but no sign of a meter maid. “Kent, there’s got to be seven hundred places to eat within her grid. Why would she—”

A meter maid’s cart driving past them stopped the detective in her tracks. Nicole hated it when Kent was so right that it made your head throb. “How in the hell did you know?”

“I told you. Watch and learn.”

Nicole watched, but Kent just lay there. Eyes shut, his breaths slow and regular. “You’re telling me you are just going to lie there?”

Kent put his iPod earbuds in.

The only thing Nicole could do was open the glove box to whip out a few items she kept handy for a stakeout. Getting out the binoculars, Nicole watched Rebecca head toward the Japanese booth.

Knowing they weren’t likely to get a lunch themselves, Nicole took out a couple of boxed juices and a large bag of Cheez-Its. It was not exactly the breakfast of champions, but on a stakeout they would make do.

Opening the bag, she offered Kent some, but his eyes were still closed and his head swayed slightly to the music. She could not help but grin. How many times had she seen him like this? Music was his retreat from boredom. If Kent even thought there was a whiff of tedium in his future, he would pop in the earphones and rock out until the world became more interesting.

The only problem was, the profiler also had a habit of losing the devices. At first it was Walkmans, then MP3 players. They had started buying them by the dozen.

Nicole’s eyes wandered down the earbud’s wire. It looked like he had upgraded to an iPod. A fairly expensive item to replace every other week. And it looked like Kent had even decorated this one. She tilted her head to read the sticker. “Morgue Attendants Get Stiffs All the Time.”

Jerking the buds from his ears, Nicole punched Kent in the shoulder. “That’s Joshua’s!”

“And even for me, there’s some pretty weird shit—”

“I can’t believe you stole it!”

“Especially track four. Ritualistic killings and—”

Nicole wrapped the ear buds around the iPod. “It’s not Joshua I’m worried about.”

Despite her anger, Kent looked at the Cheez-Its in her lap. “So is that how you snagged your goateed gaucho? With pre-packaged snack food?”

“Damn it, Kent!”

“Sorry. I’m not as susceptible to your charms, woman.”

After years of therapy, Nicole knew that his joking was a defense mechanism to disassociate him from feelings he did not want to experience, but at the moment she didn’t care.

“Kent, this isn’t funny. You have a problem.”

“Yes I do. Two, in fact. You ripped my earbuds out and you are holding my comic book hostage.”

Before responding, Nicole tried to reel in her temper. Yelling at him had never been successful. Actually, nothing had been successful with Kent, but she’d try one more time.

“I can’t keep lying to Captain Glick, telling him that these missing items—”

“Sure, you can.”

Nicole tried to rebuke his statement, but Kent talked right over her.

“Because that’s who you are.” Harbinger met her eyes. His gaze was not necessarily harsh. “You’re an enabler, Nic.” The profiler’s tone turned playful, and his eyes lit up. “Perhaps you should seek professional help.”

Nicole lashed out. “You know, Ruben was wrong about you.”

“Of course he was.”

Trying to find some way to keep from exploding, Nicole picked up the binoculars. “You really haven’t changed at all.” She stared out the lens, not daring to meet Kent’s gaze. “You’re the same selfish bastard you always were.”

CHAPTER 39

Kent couldn’t argue with that statement even if he wanted to. If anything he had become an even more selfish bastard in the two years they had been apart. What had caring about anyone else’s feelings ever gotten him? Stuck in a psych ward, that’s what.

He could blame her for that and so much more, but he never did. There had not been a single second in those padded rooms when he cursed her name. As a matter of fact, the only time he spoke her name was when he cried it out in the middle of a dream.

No, he was not going to think about what once was or what could be. Kent was not going to go there. But damn it, how could he not think about her, when she was so close that he could smell her mouthwash?

He watched Nicole watch Rebecca. She was trying so hard to stay mad at him, but he could tell in the corner of her eye that there was the slightest hint of a crinkle. She knew he was watching her. She not only knew it, but she liked it. They might have patched things up if the cell phone had not rung to the theme of Bonanza, no less.

Nicole answered it before he could snatch it, obviously knowing that the device was not his.

“Ya. Um, Dolores, it looks like I picked up your phone by mistake.”

Ever so carefully, Kent opened his car door while Nicole was distracted. He really didn’t need to hang around for this bitching out.

Nicole’s voice drifted out of the car as he hurried across the parking lot. “I’ll swing by later and drop it off.”

He had almost made his escape, but he heard the passenger door slam shut and the sound of Nicole’s heels as she raced to catch up. Kent pushed through the door of the food court, hoping that the crowd would tone down his lashing.

Almost to the Mexican food restaurant, Nicole caught up with him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Ordering a chimichanga, but the ‘wet’ burrito, now that sounds interesting.”

Nicole growled, “We’re supposed to be surveilling.”

“Even profilers get hungry.” Kent waited until the vein on her temple throbbed. “You’re going to draw suspicion if you don’t order.”

Nicole was livid, but she followed his gaze and noticed several people looking in their direction. “Fine.” She turned to the guy behind the counter. “Two steak tacos and an order of guacamole with sour cream on the side.”

Kent smiled. “You’re never going to get down to a hundred and four pounds that way.”

CHAPTER 40

Nicole stared as if he were a stranger. “Excuse me?”

He smirked. “Nothing.”

The more Kent ramped up the intelligence scale, the more indecipherable he became. She was about to press him, but their order was ready at the other end of the counter. Nicole grabbed her tray. “Now what?”

Again the smirk. “We eat?”

Not only did the profiler become obtuse when he was on a hyper-intelligent kick, but he was pretty damned pleased with himself as well. But that was the Kent package. If you wanted his awesome intellect, you better be willing to suffer the inflated attitude that went with it.

By the time Nicole looked up to see where Kent wanted to sit, he was gone. She spun around to find him walking in exactly the opposite direction of Rebecca. For the third time, Nicole had to trot to catch up to the profiler.

“You are heading the wrong way.”

“Watch and learn.”

Well, Nicole watched as Kent took them nearly all the way on the other side of the food court from Rebecca.

Nicole couldn’t hold her tongue. “But our mark is way over there.”

Kent not only took them as far away from the woman as possible but intentionally picked a table at an angle facing away from the brunette. He plopped down and began eating, but Nicole stood over him.

Finally he put down his burrito. “What is the average area a person can subconsciously process?” Kent hurried on. “And I mean sights, sounds, smells, the whole ball of wax.”

The detective shrugged. “Three to five feet?”

“No, that’s personal space. I’m talking about interpersonal buffer zones.”

Nicole sat down, both hating and loving these impromptu lessons. “Ten.”

Kent nodded. “For men? Married women in familiar surroundings? Single women in a grouping of three or more? Yeah.” The profiler nodded toward Rebecca, who had sat down with her sushi across the food court. “But a single woman, alone? She’s scanning and processing up to twenty feet of information. With an inverse relationship between how far away the stimuli is and the importance or weight her brain gives to that stimuli.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t you care more about something going on closest to you?”

Kent leaned forward. “Imagine you were sitting here alone. What would creep you out more? A guy walking by like that?”

Nicole looked up. She had barely noticed the bald man making his way to a seat only a few feet away.

“Or…”

The detective knew the answer before Kent had a chance to say it. Another man, about fifteen feet behind her, was crossing just out of the periphery of her vision. She had to stop herself from looking over her shoulder just to make sure he was really gone.

“Or the guy you think you saw, but aren’t quite sure?”

How Nicole hated it when he was right. Trying to salvage some dignity, she commented, “But we can barely see Rebecca from here.”

“That’s the idea,” Kent said as he leaned back in his chair. The profiler must have sensed her frustration and continued. “To be proficient at this, you have to know how the brain works.”

Nicole sighed and rolled her eyes a little. The profiler could be a bit preachy when he wanted to be.

Kent did not miss anything and leaned back. “Okay, Miss Too-Good-to-Learn-at-the-Feet-of-the-Master. What are the priority pathways the brain uses to differentiate friend from foe?” While Nicole blushed, he cocked his head from side to side as if eagerly awaiting her explanation. “Well?”

The detective tried to shrug it off. “Fine. Go ahead.”

“Excuse me? Go ahead, what?”

Okay, this was why just about everyone else on the planet hated Kent. He couldn’t just accept victory, he had to lord it over you. “Please…Great Master. Impart your wisdom.”

With a smirk, Kent began. “The brain identifies three main factors when determining a threat. Distance. Movement. Familiarity. Let’s take the tattooed gentleman from earlier. He was at the border of your zone, which should have made him less a threat, but he was moving and you had no familiarity with him, giving him a bullet up the charts. In addition, and this is what kicks you in the ass when you first start stalking chicks, the brain knows you got an incomplete look, which sets off an alarm in your head to fill in the picture.”

Nicole nodded. She had taken several surveillance courses, and they had explained this phenomenon. But, of course, Kent helped her actually understand it.

She reflected on the class. “The unconscious part of our brain wants to chalk up everybody as friend or foe. When it can’t make that call, it turns our conscious mind to the task.”

“Exactly. That primordial portion of our brain is really no more advanced than it was back in Neanderthal land. The more foreign and fast-moving a person is, the more dangerous.”

Nicole could tell where he was going with this. “So you use that knowledge to your advantage. Stay out on the periphery. Stay put.”

“Then ever so slowly move inside the perimeter,” Kent leaned in.

Nicole leaned forward as well. “Slowly enough that as you move in, you become more and more familiar.”

Leaning so closely that his nose almost touched hers, Kent whispered, “By the time you are right next to them, they don’t even notice you.”

Oh, Nicole noticed him, but that was not the point.

CHAPTER 41

Kent’s pulse was pounding in his ear as her scent filled his nostrils. Perhaps this wasn’t the best example to give her, as her pupils dilated and her breath came quicker.

Acting as if he didn’t notice the effect they had on one another, he said, “It’s called acclimation. If you do it slowly enough, they accept you. No red flags. No weird stalker-vibe.”

Nicole cleared her throat. “So how long do you think it’s going to take for us to get close to her?”

“About ten seconds.”

“What?” Nicole demanded.

Ah, how he loved to fluster her. It was almost as good as sex. Her cheeks flushed and even her lips darkened in color.

“What… What about the slow, creeping plan?”

“Oh, we don’t have time for that.” Kent savored having the detective in the palm of his hand. Savored her hanging on his every word. It was about time for another shock. “You’re going to walk over there and ask her if she’s had an abortion.”

Ah, there it was again. Nicole was so agitated that she couldn’t even form words. Yep, pretty much like sex.

“You’ll engage in small talk, then steer the conversation to abortion.”

Nicole found her voice again. “You expect me just to walk up and somehow segue into abortion?”

“You’re a chick. Chicks talk about stuff like that.”

“Kent!”

Clearly Nicole was past flustered. Time to reel her back in. Using his best scholarly voice, “Women react completely differently to a feminine presence. Especially if you can find some way to build rapport, common ground.”

“Why are we risking scaring her off? Why not wait for a background check?”

Kent settled back into his chair. This was his wheelhouse. “Because before you’re done with that taco, Ruben is going to call to confirm that the other victims have had abortions, but he can’t find proof that Rebecca has.”

He took a sip of his drink, then continued, “You two will wring your hands about how you’re going to get information from her family and friends without them asking awkward questions that you don’t want to answer.”

Pretending to be put upon, Kent continued, “At this point I would get up and refill my soda to give you time to realize the path of least resistance is to find a way to extract the information from Rebecca herself without tipping our hand.”

Dramatically he put a hand up. “But wait, Ruben would then insist that we warn this poor girl of her possible fate. At which time I get embroiled in the argument that if she knows that she is in danger, her altered behavior could tip the killer off and make him go outside his pattern.”

Kent ramped up to real storytelling speed. “After much wrangling, we all agree to find out about the abortion, then promise Ruben that we will tell Rebecca of the danger.” His tone dropped to a conspiratorial tone. “But secretly you and I agree to keep the information from her until I can see if I can’t pick out the killer first…”

CHAPTER 42

Nicole watched as Kent took an exaggerated breath, like he had just run a marathon. The man could put on a show. But a show was all it was.

“You are good, but not that good,” Usher accused.

“Oh, but I am.”

She raised an eyebrow.

Kent transformed cockiness into an Olympic event. “Remember, I’m the one who knew Rebecca would be here.”

How glad Nicole was that the profiler had chosen that fact to prove his point. She pulled out Dolores’s phone and flamboyantly hit the “last dialed” button. Two could play at this showmanship game.

A tiny voice answered on the other end. “Parking Regulations Main Office. How can I assist you?”

Nicole disconnected the call. “So much for your psychic abilities. You just called Rebecca’s office and asked where she was eating lunch.”

Despite having his legs completely taken out from under him, Kent smiled. “That Jasmine. She was quite helpful. Turns out that Wednesday is Rebecca’s sushi day.”

Knowing she had the upper hand, Nicole relished the rare victory. “Exactly my point. You can pull this swami crap with everyone else, but I know your limitations and—”

Nicole’s cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID.

Crap.

CHAPTER 43

From the way Nicole’s smug grin fell into a deep frown, Kent knew that it was Ruben, yet she let it ring again.

“Sure you shouldn’t get that?” he asked.

Nicole’s frown spread to the creases of her eyes as she answered the phone. “Yeah. Hi, Ruben.”

Kent didn’t need to eavesdrop, he already knew what Torres was saying. As did Nicole.

“All seventeen victims and at least another ten of the missing women from Montreal and Toronto had abortions?” She tried to look away from Kent, but their eyes locked. He wasn’t about to blink until the conversation ended.

“You can’t find any proof whether or not Rebecca has had an abortion, huh?”

Kent couldn’t keep his smirk from spreading and spreading as Nicole listened and shook her head, not believing what she was hearing.

Finally, she cut her partner off. “Ruben, I get it. We’ll find out on our end.” Kent could hear the hollow sound of Torres trying to argue, but again, Nicole stepped over him. “Ruben! I’ll figure out a way to get the information from Rebecca, quickly and quietly.”

Now was the moment of truth. Nicole looked up and held Kent’s gaze as she finished the conversation. “Of course I’ll tell her the danger she’s in if she’s had an abortion.”

As Nicole ended the call, Kent brought the straw to his lips and sucked until it made that annoying sound that meant it was empty. “I admit it. I was wrong. I didn’t even get a chance to get a refill.”

“Funny, Svengali.”

Kent smiled, but they’d had their fun. Now it was time to get to work. “You better get over there before she finishes her California roll.”

Nicole rose. “So what am I going to say to her?”

“Hell if I know.”

Even from across the table, he could hear Nicole grind her molars. “Kent, you’ve proven your mental superiority a thousand times over, so now is not the time to lord over us how much better you are than we lowly cops.”

“Hey, do you want to hone your deductive powers to the point where they seem clairvoyant, or not?” Kent asked.

CHAPTER 44

Of course Nicole did want that. She did want very, very, very much to glimpse into the mind of a killer. And worse, Kent knew it, so there was no point in lying.

Nicole simply nodded.

Instead of explaining himself, Harbinger handed her a food tray with chips on it. “You’re going to need these.”

Nicole stared at the guacamole. What was he thinking?

Kent, however, went back to his lunch. “No pressure, but Plain Jane is more than likely here.”

“What?” Nicole’s pitch had gone so high, dogs from miles away were probably responding.

He just shrugged. “If I’m right…well because I’m right and Rebecca is his next victim, the killer is here. Watching.”

Her pulse raced. Her heart was literally going to explode. Nicole had not thought past finding out if Rebecca had an abortion. Her hand flew to her phone. She needed to call Ruben, but Kent grabbed her wrist.

“We’ve got to lock the mall down and—”

“No,” Kent stated. “We can’t tip him off, anyway.”

“But—”

“If he’s here, he’s a hundred yards away. Up in one of those buildings with a telescopic scope.”

“How can you be so sure?”
He met her eyes. “Because that’s where I’d be.”

As he removed his grip, Nicole felt her hands shake, the gravity of her task double-fold. Her coaxing information from Rebecca was no longer simply a theoretical exercise, but was now a lifesaving operation.

“You’ve got to give me more to work with.” Unfortunately, Kent had gone back to his chimichanga. She wanted to shake him, rattle him from his superior cocoon but knew that she simply didn’t have the time. Bracing herself, Nicole gripped the food tray and headed toward Rebecca. The brunette read a book as she deftly maneuvered her chopsticks.

Nicole felt a tightening in her chest. The loud, pervasive chatter of the large cafeteria faded. Trays clattering on tables. Children begging for ice cream. The Hot Dog on a Stick girls churning away. Those and so many more sounds seemed to quiet as the world narrowed down to just her and Rebecca. This average, ordinary brunette could very well be Plain Jane’s next victim.

The meter maid looked so peaceful. So content. So oblivious to the danger she was in. Nicole had the sudden urge to not walk, but run to the table shouting for Rebecca to leave the city. To run for her life.

But she held her pace. Because if the meter maid knew of the threat, Rebecca would run. If not run, then hide. If not hide, then look over her shoulder every other step. And they couldn’t risk that, because the only thing they had going for them was Kent’s intuition. The only hope they had at stopping Plain Jane from taking his eighteenth victim was to follow Rebecca. Dangle her as bait.

Nicole could remember the look in the profiler’s eyes when he saw Rebecca’s picture. She had seen that look before. His posture radiated assurance. If Kent said this was the next victim, Nicole believed him, so she would stick to the plan.

With each step, though, she wondered: How did Kent do this? To have someone’s life in his hands, and the person not even know he existed? In this moment, Nicole realized just how much better a cop Harbinger really was. No one, not even she, had given the profiler credit for the extremely difficult choices he had to make every day, every victim, every killer.

Cell phone ringing, Nicole snapped out of her musing. She looked at the caller ID. Dolores Huffenfal. Instead of being pissed that Kent had stolen the DMV worker’s phone back from her, Nicole answered.

“Admit you liked being handcuffed out in the open last night, and I’ll help you,” Harbinger’s sultry tone even translated over a tiny cell phone connection.

She might be desperate, but Nicole wasn’t going to give in that easily. “Admit you like using people like puppets, and I’ll accept your help.”

CHAPTER 45

Kent felt a genuine smile spread across his lips. He could show his appreciation of Nicole’s spunk as long as she couldn’t see him actually appreciating it.

“Touché,” the profiler admitted. “Put in your earpiece and drop the phone in your pocket.”

Positioning himself behind a fake acacia bush, Kent had a great angle on the upcoming girl-on-girl action. The marionette strings were clearly coming off Nicole’s back. The detective would do as asked.

“Now what?” she asked.

He took a bite of a steak taco that Nicole had conveniently left. “Come on. Girls share everything. Clothes. Makeup. Gum. Figure it out.”

Kent watched the detective weave through the myriad of tables toward Rebecca. Even from this distance he could tell that Nicole’s shoulders were tense, worried that she was not up to the task.

To be honest, the profiler was a little worried himself. Strength, virtue, and the American Way were Nicole’s strong suits. Lying? Deception? Borderline psychosis? Those were definitely not in her wheelhouse. But at some point the detective had to leave the nest. She needed to figure out if she just wanted to be a gold shield or something so much more.

He watched as Nicole looked over her shoulder. He could see panic spread across her face as she searched for him.

“Kent?”

“I’m here,” the profiler answered, as a father might to a scared daughter in the dark of a storm.

“Where?”

“Don’t worry,” Kent intoned, no longer fatherly at all. “I’m watching.”

One last time, Nicole’s eyes scanned the tables.

“Move on, or people are going to notice a crazy woman talking to herself in the middle of the food court.”

A faint smiled crossed her face, then she moved on.

Kent had never been so proud.

CHAPTER 46

Nicole quickly closed the gap between herself and Rebecca. She wanted to get this over with. Confirm that the meter maid had an abortion and move on. Move on to something she actually had some experience with.

As her insecurities mounted, it felt as if the volume in the food court had been dialed up. The laughs were too loud. Voices pressed upon her. The end of lunch was nearing and people milled around as they cleared their tables, picking up their trash. Too much activity. Too much noise.

How could she concentrate?

She still had no idea how she was going to break the ice as she neared Rebecca’s table. Nicole tried to will the meter maid to look up. To say something, anything, to keep Nicole from having to make the first move. But the brunette kept her nose buried in her book, even when Nicole stopped directly across the table from her.

Gaining some strength from the fact that Kent was close by, watching, listening, suddenly Nicole realized why the profiler had given her the food tray. Without saying anything, Harbinger had given her the “in” that she needed.

“Is this seat taken?” she asked Rebecca.

The woman looked up, startled, “No, um.” But the meter maid seemed equally unwilling to be rude. “I mean, of course not.” Rebecca quickly gathered her things together to make room for Nicole. “Please, sit.”

Kent’s voice mocked her. “Okay, that was awkward. Be a chick, not a cop, for hell’s sake.”

Nicole set her tray down and sat on the hard plastic chair. “Sorry…” She was not sure if she was apologizing to Kent or Rebecca. “I just…”

“Girlie girl stuff,” the profiler prompted.

Lips turned down at the chiding, Nicole continued. “I just hate eating alone.” Wow, that sounded lame, even to her ears. “It makes me feel like a loser or something—” Nicole realized how that statement might be taken. She rushed, feeling embarrassed, flustered. “Not to say that you are a—”

“No. No. I get it. It’s nice to have company.”

Nicole returned the grin Rebecca gave her.

Harbinger’s sigh was as loud as if he sat next to her. “Okay, not bad, but next time try not to insult the mark right off the bat.” Only Kent could sound that irritated with someone who had just actually succeeded.

Nicole took a bite of her nachos as Rebecca deftly cut a California roll in half with her chopsticks, then with a subtle flick of the wrist tossed it into her mouth. The brunette was dexterous, she had to give her that much. Nicole was having trouble managing guacamole on chips without spilling.

“Hello?” Kent asked. “Is this thing working?”

Ever so slightly, Nicole turned her chin to glare in Kent’s general direction. The phone was working fine. It was just her brain that was having technical difficulties.

His tone softened. “Babe, we don’t have much time. You’ve got to build rapport and build it fast.”

Nicole could tell that he was trying to be helpful. Except she knew what she needed to do, she just couldn’t think of a single thing to say. How could she when she sat across from a possible victim? Especially after seeing Joann cut and bleeding to death in that alley?

“Common ground, Nic. Find similarities,” he prodded.

Working from the profiler’s suggestion, Nicole looked up and noticed Rebecca’s uniform. Finally, she found something they had in common.

“So, are you a policewoman?”

“No, no. I’m a parking regulation—” Rebecca stopped herself and chuckled before she continued, “Sorry, I’m basically a meter maid. And you?”

Kent’s patience sounded nearly up. “Not cop similar. Those breasts of yours are real, right? You’re not taking hormones to grow them? Chick similar, Nic. Chick similar.”

Rebecca’s smile turned nervous, the longer that Nicole took to answer the simple question. But she couldn’t tell the truth. Holy hell, she was a crappy liar. But that’s exactly what she had to do. Still, nothing came to her. She squirmed. She felt her hands begin to sweat.

What in the hell would Kent do?

Unfortunately she couldn’t ask him. How did he do this? All she could think of was Plain Jane watching them. Of her worry for Rebecca’s safety.

Then she noticed the book.

“I’m a writer,” Nicole blurted.

“Really?” The brunette leaned in, obviously intrigued. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who has published before. Maybe I’ve read something of yours?”

The meter maid was so sweet, Nicole almost felt bad about continuing the lie. “Oh, I did not say that I was a successful… I guess I should have said aspiring author.”

“What’s your genre?”

“Genre?” Nicole was back to floundering.

Shit, on the trail of serial killer, one did not have the luxury of reading for pleasure. She knew that she had talked herself into a corner. If she picked mysteries, for example, Rebecca was sure to ask questions about other mystery authors. Names and details that Nicole just did not know.

Nicole did not need Kent to prompt her, she knew she had to think of something, quick. “Um, yeah, right.” Then she had it. The perfect genre. Only Nicole announced it way too fast. “Nonfiction.”

Despite her answer, the meter maid still looked worried as she asked, “Is something wrong?”

CHAPTER 47

Hell yeah, something was wrong.

Nicole had completely lost her mind. Kent held his breath. The meter maid was on to Nicole, and if she did not do something fast, something really incredibly fast, the detective’s cover would be blown and so might the chance to catch Plain Jane before he killed again.

“No. Yes…” Even over the brittle connection, the profiler could hear the stress in Nicole’s voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t just stop by your table by chance, Rebecca.”

The brunette’s faint retort had some sting. “How did you know my name?”

“Ouch.” Kent could feel Nicole’s pain. “Beginner’s mistake, Nic. Too much, too soon. Walk it back.”

He rose and made his way toward the table. Nicole might need a rescue if she continued down this road.

“Well?” Rebecca demanded.

“Actually, I was hoping to find you here today.”

That’s it, Kent thought, as the brunette leaned back from the table, a sure sign she was disengaging from the conversation, putting up her social armor, cutting Nicole off at the proverbial emotional pass.

“Okay, now you’re really are creeping me out,” Rebecca said to the detective.

Between her body language and her tone, Kent knew that the meter maid felt vulnerable, exposed. Now a guy, a guy would think Nicole was a stripper sent by a couple of buddies for some afternoon fun.

But a woman? A single woman like Rebecca? She would immediately assume Nicole was there to hurt her. Betray her. Chicks and their damn insecurities.

Nicole was losing any foothold she had made, but he was still a good fifty feet away. Short of a sprint, Kent could not make it over there in time to stop the train wreck.

“I’m sorry.” It sounded like the detective could barely squeak the words out. “It’s just…well this is really awkward for me as well.”

“I’m lost,” Rebecca admitted.

So was Kent. What angle was Nicole working?

“I’m doing research for my new book.” She sounded stronger, more sure of herself. “And I thought you might be able to help me.”

Kent slowed as the brunette’s shoulders relaxed. Could she really be buying into Nicole’s aspiring author act?

“Okay, so this book is about the exciting and dangerous world of issuing parking citations?”

“No.” Nicole sounded back on her game.

“Regret after abortion.”

“What?” Both Kent and Rebecca nearly shouted.

No one seemed to notice the meter maid’s outburst, but a young mother near Kent grabbed her daughter’s hand and scurried out of the food court. Hopefully to go home and have a nice long discussion about how to avoid weird-acting strangers at the mall.

“Darlin’, put it in reverse,” he growled into the phone, trying not to scare off any other patrons, or, worse, alert security to his presence. He was still on their blacklist over a little lingerie “misunderstanding” from a few months ago.

But Nicole did not back down. “I’m writing a book about regret after abortion.”

“Wow. That was bold, Nic.”

“Abortion?” The brunette sounded horrified.

“Maybe too bold,” he added.

A painful silence hung in the air.

“Pull back. Reconnect before you lose her completely.”

“I’m sorry.” Nicole was back to stammering. “I was just under the impression…”

“Why would you think I could… That I had…”

“I know this information is of a private nature.”

“Private? How about taboo?” Rebecca shot back.

“Come on, Nic. Drop the damn intellect and show some compassion,” Kent begged.

“Taboo because it is too painful to talk about. Go find someone else to help you.” Rebecca tried to rise, but Nicole laid a hand over the brunette’s wrist.

The detective sounded so kind, so very persuasive. “Please, just talk to me.”

“Look, I’ve never…” Rebecca was up and out of her seat. “I’ve never had one of those…”

There was no way Kent was going to make it to the table in time. Nicole had to pull this one out of the fire on her own. “Deeper, Nic. Dive in.”

Kent was close enough to see that the detective meant business. Her shoulders were down and back. Her spine straight. Her voice full and uncompromising. “Nobody gets that angry unless they have, in fact, had one.”

Oh, there goes the game, Kent thought as he watched Rebecca’s face change three shades of red. He was pretty damn sure his face was undergoing such a transformation as well. Nicole constantly bitched about his lack of social tact? She was stumbling head over heel down the manners ladder and had nothing to show for it.

Rebecca was walking away.

Desperate, he appealed to the detective. Challenged her. “You want inside my head, Nicole? You want to understand me? What I do? Why it makes me the way I am?” Kent saw her eyes flicker over to him as he continued. “You need to be raw. As raw as she. You need to become who she needs right now.”

The meter maid was almost out of earshot when Nicole spoke up again. “I know, because I was that angry when my new GYN asked me.”

Rebecca stopped, but didn’t turn around. Kent held his breath. Nicole’s ploy was dangerous. If you were going to lie that boldly, you had to sell it. “Feed her what she wants to hear, Nic. Keep it up.”

Nicole’s voice sounded shaky. “It’s easy to pretend it never happened, but it still eats at you.”

Rebecca turned toward the detective as Kent coached, “You’ve hooked her, now reel her back in, Nic.”

“That’s why I’m writing this book. To help…” As the brunette took a step toward her, Nicole’s voice cracked. “To help myself.”

To his amazement, Rebecca made her way back to the table. You could not accuse a guy of having something as minor as jock itch and expect to talk him back to the table. You were more than likely to get punched for the effort. But there was the meter maid making a beeline toward Nicole.

Chicks.

The detective continued, “I did what I did because I didn’t have any other choice.”

Kent breathed a sigh of relief as Rebecca sat down.

“There’s always got to be another choice.” The brunette didn’t sound so sure of herself, though.

Now Rebecca was acting vulnerable, but felt safe. As others streamed out of the food court, Kent sat down again, confident Nicole had the meter maid back in the game.

And she did not disappoint him. “I was losing my job. The father was gone and—”

“Still. There was adoption.”

Even from his limited vantage point, he could see Nicole look up and hold Rebecca’s gaze. “The father checked himself into a psych ward.”

“Perfect! Cull enough from your personal history to make the story believable,” Kent encouraged.

Rebecca sounded shocked. “Checked himself in?”

“Yeah, right after he trashed my career, he decided he needed a ‘break’ from reality.”

A frown covered Rebecca’s face. “I was a teenager. I didn’t even know you could get pregnant your first time.”

Relishing yet another victory, Kent leaned back. “Damn, I’m good.”

Rebecca continued, “My mom went ballistic when she found out. Almost like I had betrayed her.”

“That’s usually a dad’s reaction.”

“Guess Mom was pulling double-duty. I didn’t really know my dad.”

Nicole patted the brunette’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“Okay, time to wrap up touchy-feely hour,” Kent said.

But the detective ignored his prompting and held Rebecca’s hand. “Was she equally upset when you decided to termin—?”

Kent didn’t even have to tell Nicole she should not use that term. The detective self-corrected. “When you decided to do it?”

“Okay, sharing time is really over.”

The brunette sounded ready to cry. “Actually she couldn’t wait for me to have one.” She wiped a stray tear from her cheek and tried to sound brave. “She said she wished she’d had that option when she was younger.”

“Ouch. That’s something a mother should never say.”

“Yeah.”

Kent shifted uncomfortably in his seat. There was a reason beyond her ability to form a female connection that he sent Nicole in to get the info from Rebecca. He couldn’t handle this much emotional honesty. He’d be breaking out in hives if he were sitting across from the meter maid.

“Okay, this is about all the soul-baring I can stomach. Let’s move on to chapter two of Stalking for Dummies.”

Nicole again ignored his prompting. “So, did you tell the father before you had the procedure?”

“He was already onto his next cheerleader. You?”
Kent sighed. Chicks. They just did not understand the concept of hit-and-run conversations.

Nicole shook her head as she answered, “With the meds he was on? I’m not sure if he would have even understood.”

Kent chimed in, “Okay, now you’re just having fun at my expense.”

Luckily Rebecca looked down at her watch. “Oh wow, I’ve got to get moving. Those meters on Third and Watt are about to roll over.”

The two women rose to their feet. Nicole fished around in her pocket, what in the hell was she doing?

CHAPTER 48

Nicole found her business card holder and opened it without thinking. She just felt so sorry for Rebecca. To open such a large wound, just to send the poor woman back out to work? She wanted to let the brunette know she was not alone. But when Nicole looked down, she realized the card would blow her cover. With a click, she closed it.

“Sorry. I’m out.” Nicole grabbed a napkin and jotted her number down, then handed it to Rebecca. “Call me anytime if you want to talk.”

She gave a slight grin. “I will. Nice to meet you.”

“It was my pleasure.”

Nicole watched Rebecca walk off.

“Finally,” Kent huffed in her ear.

But as she watched the brunette retreat, Nicole was suddenly unsure of their plan. How could she let Rebecca go, not knowing that a psychopath was on her trail?

It was one thing to keep the truth from Rebecca when it was just an intellectual exercise. But now that Nicole had spoken with her? Touched her hand and her heart?

Now it was not so easy at all.

She pulled her phone’s microphone close to her mouth so her words could only be heard by Kent. “We can’t just let her walk off ignorant of what may happen.”

“Oh, yes we can.”

Despite his words, Nicole found herself walking after Rebecca. “She needs to know the danger she’s in.”

“If she does, she’ll act differently. Tip him off.”

Nicole broke into a trot. “Rebecca!”

Kent either didn’t realize or didn’t care that his anger came through loud and clear. “Damn it! For her and every other brunette in this city, she can’t know, Nic.”

“Rebecca!”

The brunette finally turned around. “Yes?”

A little out of breath, Nicole caught up with her. “Rebecca…”

“Don’t!” Kent yelled in her ear.

Caught between betraying a new trust and protecting the city’s women, Nicole found herself speechless.

“Um, some other slightly disturbing revelation you’d like to make about yourself?” Rebecca asked.

“No. Just…”

The profiler rumbled in her ear. “Don’t you dare.”

As much as she hated to admit it, Kent was right. The only solution was to keep the secret, then watch Rebecca, protect her. Make sure she did not end up like Joann, Claudia, and Maria. Tonight they were going to catch a killer. And for that to occur, the brunette needed to remain naïve.

She patted Rebecca’s shoulder. “Just be careful out there today, okay?”
“This isn’t LA. Meter maid attacks are down one hundred percent from last year. Making the grand total zero.”

“Still…”

“I’ve taken self-defense classes, and the pepper spray is never far. I’ll be fine, promise.” Rebecca offered her hand.

Nicole hesitated before taking it. She was gambling on this woman’s life. How could she shake her hand? But if the ruse was going to work, she had to play along.

With a forced smile, Nicole shook the woman’s hand. Then Rebecca disappeared amongst the sea of patrons returning to their day. Only the brunette had a dagger precariously dangling over her head.

How in the hell did Kent do this every day?

CHAPTER 49

Kent stepped next to Nicole. “There’s hope for you yet.”

“Why?”

There was real pain in the detective’s eyes, but he couldn’t speak to that right now. All he could do was redirect her attention. “Using a fictional event like an abortion to leverage the real pain you felt over our breakup? It was postgraduate stalking behavior.”

He headed to the parking lot, but realized that Nicole wasn’t following. Obviously she was experiencing post-lying depression. “You did the right thing.”

“We are going to watch her like a—”

“No we. I’ll be watching her around the clock.”

“You really expect me to lie to Ruben and Glick about informing her of the danger, then let you go off on your own…again?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Kent knew Nicole was scared, livid, and worried, but he didn’t have time to babysit her mood. “Sorry, babe. Stalking is a solo sport.”

“That sounds a lot like last night. Joann. The Joann now in the morgue.”

Kent’s jaw tensed. His teeth ground against one another. Nicole shot below the belt. “I won’t lose her.”

Angry, he strode off.

“I’ve still got your comic book.”

Nicole had grown balls in two years, but she didn’t have the testosterone to back them up. “It’ll be fine.”

“I’m not afraid to spill coffee on it.”

“But you won’t.”

“Why not?”

Kent turned to face her.

How he hated emotional truths, but one, maybe just one would come in handy right now. “Because you haven’t changed in two years, either. You’re still the same old selfless Nicole you’ve always been.”

CHAPTER 50

Nicole watched Kent walk off. Just like he always did. And she without a decent retort. Just like always. How could the bastard know her so damn well in certain ways and so completely misread her in others?

Sure, she could catch up for the fourteen hundredth time and argue for fourteen hundred hours, but what would that accomplish? She had tried righteous anger, guilt, even extortion, and each, in turn, had failed. Nicole had run out of both ammunition and energy.

How did you reason with a man, a profiler who just did not give a shit? Didn’t care about authority, consequences, or even feelings? Before she could ponder such things, a practical concern rose.

Wait a minute. How was Kent going to stay on Rebecca’s tail without any transportation? Once outside, she realized she needn’t have worried. There Kent was, with her keys, driving off in her car.

“Of course,” Nicole said to no one in particular. Why did this situation feel so very familiar? Why did she let Kent bend her will every single time? Why did she yield each and every time?

Not up for an internal debate of that magnitude, Nicole turned to the man she always did in these situations. Picking up her phone, she hit speed dial number one. Torres.

Was she imagining things or did she hear his phone’s distinct Gipsy Kings ring? Cautiously, she walked around the corner to find her partner leaning against a railing.

“I figured you might need a ride.”

Nicole knew she should feel relieved, but instead she felt irritated. It was bad enough to be abandoned by Kent, but to have Torres witness it and rub it in?

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough.”

Her cheeks flushed red. Ruben knew she had agreed to lie for Kent as well. This day could not get much worse. “So you are going to tell Rebecca that she may be a target?”

“No,” Torres said as he walked toward his car.

Not certain if she heard him right, she asked, “Why not?”

“Because Kent, for all his glory, is wrong this time.” Her face must have registered her shock because her partner hurried on. “I know, impossible to imagine, but true.”

“Because?”

Torres unlocked the passenger’s door as he explained, “One of the women from Kent’s DMV search, a Nancy Halfer, fits the victim profile, has had an abortion, and complained of a Peeping Tom last week.”

“But that could have been—”

“We checked. Kent was busy getting frisked at the Krispy Kreme at the time she reported the lurker.”

As pissed off at Kent as Nicole might be, a part of her still rose to the profiler’s defense. Kent might be an asshole, but an asshole who was seldom wrong when it came to the criminal mind.

“That’s it? A scared brunette that Kent rejected as a victim is your best lead?”

Her partner handed her a folder. “And these.”

Ruben urged her into the car as he went around to the driver’s side. Nicole sat down but did not shut the door as she flipped through the large stack of security camera photos.

They all showed a young man, mainly from the back or other equally useless angles.

“And who’s this?”

Torres shut his door. Suddenly the car seemed too small. She knew she should shut her door but kept it open. Nicole needed to feel that she could leave if she wanted to.

Ruben laid several pictures out on the dash. “I combed through every frame of footage from the store that the previous victims had frequented.”

Nicole was in no mood for a presentation. “And this was the best you could come up with?”

“He obviously knew where the cameras were.”

“Or it’s not the same guy,” she asserted.

Her partner’s tone sharpened. “True, until I cross-checked the photos against the list Kent kicked out of the DMV’s computer.” Tapping each photo in turn, Ruben continued, “These were taken this week…at the pharmacy, farmers market, and gym that Nancy, my choice as Plain Jane’s next victim, frequents.”

Nicole had to admit the man’s presence seemed like more than just a coincidence. Just as she vacillated, Kent drove past them in her car.

A fact that did not escape her partner. “Harbinger has made his decision. You need to make yours.”

Nicole watched her taillights retreat into the distance. Kent had not even looked back. While Ruben had shown that even when he was pissed, he still had her back. In a moment of decision, Nicole closed the car door.

Torres nodded. He must have sensed the effort it took for her to cut Kent loose like that. He turned the discussion back to business. “Nancy has at least three teams of surveillance, 24/7.”

“You’ve told her then, the danger she’s in?”

Ruben gave her an “of course” look. “You joining me?”

She nodded, then remembered there were a few problems that Kent had left her. “We just have a few errands to run first…” She opened her purse and pulled out Ruben’s badge. “And here.”

Ruben looked quizzical. “Where did you find this?”

Nicole could not look him in the eye.

His face went from relief to pissed in 1.6 seconds flat. “Damn it all to hell! He can’t—”

“Ruben, please.”

“No, damn it. He has got—”

Nicole couldn’t take this right now. She was still too raw from the conversation with Rebecca. Too raw from Kent doing what Kent always did. So Nicole did the only thing she could to stop Ruben from continuing his rant against the profiler. She grabbed his hand. Like she used to. Back before Kent reinserted himself into their lives.

“I’m going with you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“But—”

There would be no “buts.” Not today. “Turn him in, and I’ll find another ride.”

Her partner fumed, but ultimately turned over the ignition. Nicole leaned back in the seat. Relieved that Kent was no longer the topic of conversation.

If the profiler wanted to be on his own, then he was going to get his wish.

CHAPTER 51

Kent lay back in Nicole’s bucket seat, looking like he was taking a late afternoon siesta, only with one eye peeled toward the parking regulations office.

Sure enough, Rebecca pulled her meter maid cart into the parking lot within seconds. The brunette was punctual. She gathered her things and went inside the angular building.

Unlike the morgue, someone had tried to get cute with the architecture of this building. What those snobs in the magazines called “a riddle for the eye.” Kent called it by another name…“ugly-ass office complex.”

Probably so ugly that actual businesses did not want to pay the rent, so most of the occupants were spillover government departments. Public works, Assemblyman Offices, Oversight committees. You know, crap like that.

The profiler knew all this because he had already done his homework. Rebecca’s office was on the second floor, west side. That’s why he had chosen this parking spot.

With winter coming on, everyone’s blinds were open to soak in the last bit of sunlight before dusk. He should be able to watch as she synched her Palm Pilot with the county’s databank, uploading all of her ticket information in a matter of minutes. Kent guessed she would then change in the restroom and head home in street clothes.

He made a mental note that if the surveillance lasted longer than a few days, he would have cameras placed in the changing room. Or more importantly, scan for other cameras.

Although he seriously doubted he would have the time. If his own apprehension was any indication, the killer must be about bursting. His need for a womb growing with each second. Her womb. Rebecca’s womb.

A snake of doubt slithered in the back of his mind. What if he was wrong? What if she was not Plain Jane’s next victim? What if Plain Jane stalked another woman?

Just as quickly the mongoose of arrogance snatched that doubting snake and shook it violently. His job allowed no room for error. No room for doubt. Whatever intangible quality Kent could not quite name but recognized instantly, Rebecca had in spades. Even more than Joann. The killer could not resist this one. Not with his frustrated desire demanding release.

As she entered her office, Kent abandoned his napping ruse and pulled out Nicole’s binoculars. He watched Rebecca greet her co-workers. She checked her messages. She logged on to her computer. If Kent was not mistaken she checked her personal e-mail before starting her data transmission.

Interesting. That was the behavior of a woman hoping a man had written. Was she dating? He would have Nicole pull her LUDs, both from her cell and home phones, and put up a tap on her e-mail.

Right on Kent’s timetable, Rebecca grabbed a bag from under her desk and headed toward the restroom. So she was going to change. Kent had that sense about her. Rebecca would feel self-conscious walking around town in her uniform if she was off duty. She seemed more the wallflower type.

Exactly the killer’s type. Shy. A little socially awkward. That’s the only way Nicole’s bumbling attempt at undercover work could have been successful.

Unbidden, a grin came to his lips. The detective had done a belly flop her first time out, yet had somehow managed to pull it off. What she lacked in experience she made up for in sheer guts. She’d not been afraid to screw up, and that’s what had made her successful.

Nicole had a gift he could never claim. The ability to accept the fact that she might be wrong. That she might make a mistake. She was not afraid of the possibility of failure.

Whereas Kent’s stomach torqued on itself at such a thought. He was gambling with Rebecca’s life. Exactly one day after he had gambled with Joann’s life and lost.

In his world, being wrong or failing did not involve embarrassment, it involved death.

An image of Joann’s throat slit and blood gushing from her abdomen filled his mind. The taste of her iron on his lips. The smell of death on his clothes. He forced it out. He couldn’t let that happen.

He would not let that happen to Rebecca.

Precisely on time, the meter maid walked out of the building, sporting loose-fitting jeans and a nondescript knit pull-over. She did not shop at the mall or high-end retail. More likely Marshalls. Maybe Target. Not Kmart or Wal-Mart, though. She had a little bit more ego invested in her presentation than that.

Kent’s brain kicked into overdrive. It was like a T1 trunk line had opened. Information flowed in so quickly that he did not have time to process it. He just let all the sensory input wash over and into him. Every second he spent watching this woman gave him hours of information to sort through. Her stride told him so much. Her Chevy Cavalier told him she lived within her means.

Each moment, each and every movement, reinforced his original gut feeling. She was the one. Even more than he had sensed it about Joann, Kent knew. Deep in his marrow.

Rebecca was the one.

CHAPTER 52

Nicole walked out of the elevator and searched the hallway for Apartment 302. Ruben had been reluctant, but she had insisted they run a few errands before they joined the protection detail at Nancy’s house.

She wanted to be rid of everything Kent. Nicole might be willing to put her career on the line for the profiler, but the man himself? Him, she wanted out of her life. And this was her first step toward such an independence. Returning the items Kent “borrowed” over the last few days would wash her hands of his eccentricities.

In front of the correct apartment, Nicole knocked, but no answer. She knocked again. Still no answer.

Nicole announced, “It’s Detective Usher.”

The door cracked open, the chain still on. An eye darted, checking the entire hallway from its narrow vantage point.

“Um… Joshua?” Nicole asked, not sure if it was the morgue attendant behind the door or not. “Work said you should be home.”

The young man’s voice squeaked as he spoke. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I called in sick, but hey, man, if they’re going to send the fuzz to check up on me, I’ll go in. No prob.”

“No, no,” she reassured him. “It’s about last night.”

“I didn’t see anything!” His words came out in a slurred flood. “Or post it on YouTube!”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He opened the door a little wider, but didn’t remove the chain. “Sorry. What about last night?”

Reluctantly, Nicole pulled the iPod out of her pocket. She had already returned Dolores’s cell phone. This little ritual never got any less embarrassing, though.

“Somehow this got mixed in with my things.”

The door slammed in her face.

Did Joshua somehow know the truth? Did he know that Kent lifted the item last night? Just as quickly the door opened and Joshua came out into the hall.

“I was going three shades of Tupac crazy trying to find this thing!” To prove it, he kissed the screen.

Nicole could not help but smile at the young man’s unbridled enthusiasm. “No prob.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

CHAPTER 53

Joshua suddenly realized he had left the door ajar behind him. He pulled the door as closed as he could. He had to ditch the detective, like now.

Usher smiled, somewhat sadly. “See you later.”

“Yeah, later.” Could he sound any more unconvincing? Joshua tried to slow his pulse. Slow his breathing. This chick didn’t make detective by affirmative action. She was smart and perceptive.

Luckily Usher turned and walked toward the elevator. He stood out in the hallway like some kind of dope, but he couldn’t risk her catching even a glance inside his apartment.

The detective pushed the button for the elevator then looked quizzical, the question obvious on her face. Why was he still standing there?

But what was he supposed to do? Desperate, he gave a little wave, like he wanted to watch her as long as he could. Which under normal circumstances might have been true, but today, well, he was just desperate.

After possibly the longest wait in recorded history, the elevator finally dinged. With an awkward half-wave, Nicole disappeared into the elevator. Collapsing backward, Joshua leaned against his door. That was a narrow escape. Too narrow for his bladder.

Checking the hall both ways as if he were getting ready to cross a New York street at rush hour, Joshua opened his door, slid his slim frame inside, then slammed it shut.

Inside his apartment, he clenched his eyes closed, and panted a few more breaths as he listened for any telltale noise that Usher or anyone else was coming down the hallway.

Satisfied that his getaway was complete, Joshua opened his eyes. What he saw, Usher never would have understood. His walls were lined with newspaper articles about Plain Jane. Each one a maze of highlighted text and cutouts.

Well, except for the wall that led to the bedroom. That one had his wall of honor. A Sigourney Weaver poster from Aliens. A Buffy wall scroll. And a pink Power Ranger just to keep things real.

But the thing he might have had to sedate the detective for was sitting on the center shelf above his television. His pride and joy. But in retrospect, maybe he should not have put it in quite such plain sight. Most would not have understood. Not like the way he understood.

Cautiously, Joshua removed the item from the shelf and ever so gently stroked the glass jar. What it contained was beyond precious, beyond beautiful. It was perfection.

A perfect uterus.

CHAPTER 54

Kent had already parked Nicole’s car two blocks away from Rebecca’s house. The giant exempt “E” on the license plate was sure to raise some eyebrows if he parked too near the meter maid’s home.

So he’d parked far enough away, then walked his way in, setting up in the neighbor’s hydrangea bushes. Luckily they were less prickly than the morgue’s azaleas.

From his vantage point, he watched Rebecca drive into her driveway, then unload the groceries she had bought at the store all the way across town.

A health food nut.

Kent should have known. It was probably another reason he and the killer were drawn together. The meter maid knew how to take care of herself. Arms loaded down with cloth reusable grocery bags, Rebecca climbed the steps to her house.

“Time to get up close and personal,” Kent mumbled as he pulled out of the shadows, making his way down the street at a leisurely pace. There was no need to hurry as the meter maid put her key in the lock.

Abruptly though, she stopped and set down her environmentally friendly bags. Without missing a step, Kent continued walking past her house as Rebecca headed toward the backyard.

What in the hell had made her change direction and abandon her task?

There was no way he could double back without arousing suspicion, so he continued to the corner, then turned right. As soon as he was sure there were no witnesses, Kent hopped a fence, raced across the yard, and hopped another fence diagonally from Rebecca’s house.

He didn’t even have to think about his route. Once the meter maid was in line at the grocery store, with enough frozen ice cream mint sandwiches to feed a battalion of vegetarian tree huggers, Kent sped over to Rebecca’s house and cased the neighborhood. He knew which yards had dogs. Which had children. Which had the nosy older neighbor with his hearing aid and binoculars.

So, without hesitation, Kent followed the hedge line to where the two yards intersected.

Wedged between a shrub and the fence, he found a knothole and peeked through. He couldn’t see Rebecca, but Kent heard strange sounds emanating from the alleyway.

Was it a struggle? Was that a strangled cry?

Damn it, he couldn’t take the chance. Yesterday he might have, but after Joann’s crimson makeover? Not again.

Kent agilely scaled the last fence, landing lightly on the uneven pavement. Another crash, and he took a tentative step down the alley.

If he were late again…

If the killer had already struck…

Bolder, Kent broke into a trot as a strange rumbling came from around the house. Nearly at a run, he skidded to a halt just as Rebecca backed into the alley, dragging a garbage can with a broken wheel down the alley.

Scrambling for cover, Kent landed in some pyracantha bushes. Luckily, Rebecca was so intent on the unruly trashcan that she didn’t seem to notice his presence as she stumbled past his hiding place.

He held his breath as the can nearly tipped over. Finally, Rebecca got the wheels aligned and continued down the sloped alley toward the curb. With his heart somewhere between his chest and his throat, Kent watched her finish with the trash, then head to the front door again.

Kent moved ever so slightly to the left, trying to extract his ass from a thorn, when Rebecca paused at the first step to her porch. Her gaze swept the area, lingering near Kent.

Damn, the woman didn’t have just a twenty-foot radius, but something akin to a thirty-foot zone.

Motionless, he ignored the pain from the scratches as Rebecca’s lips turned downward. Then, as if she determined the area threat free, she bounded up the steps and, without hesitation, picked up the groceries and headed into her house.

It took another ten seconds before Kent let out a hissing breath. Even then his hands shook. That had been close.

He had let his fear almost blow his cover. By overreacting to a perceived danger to Rebecca, he almost endangered her further. Maybe Nicole wasn’t the only one a little too close to the case to be one hundred percent objective.

Before he realized it, his cell phone was open and Nicole’s number was up on the screen. Kent knew he should call and apologize. There was no reason she couldn’t be on this stakeout with him. She had earned that place when she extracted the information out of Rebecca.

Still, he closed his phone. Even if he called Nicole, what would he say? I’m sorry?

Not very likely.

Those words did not come easily or very frequently.

CHAPTER 55

Sitting in Ruben’s car parked across the street from Nancy’s house, Nicole looked down at her cell phone yet again. And yet again it showed no missed calls. No Kent.

“He’s not going to call,” Ruben said as he watched Nancy’s house through binoculars. “At least not in this lifetime.” The second part he mumbled. Loud enough that she heard it but quiet enough that they could both pretend she didn’t.

Trying to keep her mind off Kent, Nicole surveyed the street. The dark van at the corner was theirs. It contained an array of surveillance equipment, including face recognition software. Torres was optimistic, unrealistically in her opinion, that when this mystery man of his showed up they could somehow, through shots of the back of his head, identify him.

Nicole sighed deeply. She didn’t even realize she had done it until he turned to her.

“Something wrong?” Ruben asked.

“No. Not at all.” She tried to sound convincing, but wasn’t sure if she had pulled it off. Probably because there was something wrong. Or at least something that felt wrong. Being cooped up in the sedan for hours had become stifling.

To just sit here and wait, and wait, and wait. Kent wasn’t doing that. He was out, rooting through Rebecca’s garbage or stalking her at the movie theater. Something, anything more exciting than this.

“Hey, are there any chips in the stash?” Ruben asked.

Nicole opened the glove box to find a stakeout kit nearly identical to hers. Food, plastic utensils, and napkins. She rooted through the items, but could not find any chips. “Sorry. We’ve only got peanuts left.”

Ruben took the food. “Kind of like old times, eh?”

Giving a shrug, Nicole gazed out her window. Ruben took the hint and went back to his binoculars. Seconds stretched into minutes. Finally, she couldn’t take it.

“Is this all we’re going to do?”

“Excuse me?”

“Just sit here?” she asked.

Ruben cocked his head as if she were speaking a foreign language. “Um…Sitting here, quietly, unmoving is pretty much the definition of a stakeout, Nikki.”

Before she changed her mind, she opened her door.

“Where are you going?”

Nicole was not sure, but she had to get out.

Ruben grabbed her arm. “Nikki, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to get some fresh coffee.”

Nicole was already down the street as Torres said, “Starbucks is the other way.”

She shrugged. “There’s one this way, too.”

The detective quickened her pace so that his next words were just a murmuring in the wind.

CHAPTER 56

Perched in a tree across from Rebecca’s bedroom window, Kent watched her disrobe. For a B cup, the meter maid’s bosom was not half bad. Not as good as Nicole’s of course, but whose was?

Shaking off the thought, Kent scanned the rest of the neighborhood. The street had settled into the quiet lull of suburbia. The stillness was punctuated by an occasional bark of a dog, or meow of a cat.

Every once in a while the loud sound of wheels screeching would echo off the pavement. Some stupid teenager thinking it proved his manhood because he could step on a gas pedal hard enough to lay rubber.

Kent sighed. Why didn’t serial killers target teens? Especially overly macho, testosterone-poisoned ones? If that were the case, he could easily retire. Oh, who was he kidding? Then he’d just be staking out the very teens that annoyed him.

Kent scrutinized the surrounding yards. If his instincts were correct, the killer would be lurking as well.

Watching. Waiting. Just like the profiler.

But the two men had very different agendas. If Plain Jane kept to his pattern, the psycho would be wearing a texturized vinyl overcoat. Something that on first glance would look like a normal coat, but on closer inspection it was made of a slick, low-transfer, water-repellant material. Just what the killer ordered.

Torres had tracked down manufacturers for months for such an outer garment, but had come up empty. The Internet had spawned too much untraceable commerce to be able to follow a lead like that anymore.

In one of the pockets, the killer would have a large scalpel blade. Stainless steel. No rust. Most likely even sterilized. This psycho didn’t take any chances.

There had been a great deal of speculation about the type of handle that could hold such a large blade, and the ME determined it was not a standard surgical handle. One of the junior beat cops had worked on a ranch and suggested the killer might be using an equine handle. Those were strong and rugged enough to cut through horsehide.

The entire squad had spent a month tracking down veterinarians, to no avail. This killer was too smart, too thorough to have left a trail as wide and paved in gold as that.

No, the only way to catch this psycho was to get to his victims first. Then lie in wait.

With such a strongly stylized killer like this, if you knew his end game, you had him by the balls. You had him, because he needed to kill again. And not just anyone.

No, Plain Jane no longer needed food or even oxygen. His sole sustenance was the feel of a uterus in his hands.

And any uteri would not do. This psycho needed a brunette of childbearing age with a history of abortion. These select women were his sirens. They sent out a call, to him and him alone, that the killer had to answer.

Kent hated to tell the wacko, but he’d picked up the frequency. He had Plain Jane in his crosshairs.

With all this knowledge, why didn’t he feel more confident? Kent knew, beyond a sliver of a doubt, that Rebecca was the next victim. He also knew that the killer would strike tonight. He knew this more surely than the fact that he himself would wake up alive tomorrow.

Kent’s trepidation had nothing to do with what he knew, but what he did not know. For all his trying, he had yet to nail the “why.” He could feel his pulse quicken at Rebecca’s picture, but he couldn’t verbalize why. And the “why” was the all, because the “why” completely consumed the killer.

The “why” was the only reason his heart still beat. And that “why” Kent did not know.

It left him uneasy. He was missing something. Some motivation important enough that it let Joann get killed last night. Something that endangered Rebecca right at this moment.

When he looked up again, the meter maid had already changed into her pajamas. His mental anguish had only gypped him of the money shot.

The brunette left the bedroom and moved toward the living room. He’d need to reposition soon, but not until the lights of the neighborhood were extinguished, as even those late night Jay Leno fans went to bed. Then the night was his. The street, his.

Tonight, this would end. Tonight, Kent would have a “talk” with Plain Jane and put things right.

CHAPTER 57

Nicole’s ankle hurt, yet she walked on. Perhaps if the detective had known the second Starbucks was quite this far away, she might have reconsidered the closer coffee shop.

She had wanted to stretch her legs to get some relief from the awkward truce with Ruben. But now she found herself far outside Nancy’s block. Closer really to Rebecca’s neighborhood.

The street was dark and more than a little menacing. Most of the businesses were long closed. If she were not armed, Nicole might have even felt a little spooked. The only thing that kept her moving was the bright green and white neon sign at the end of the block. Hot coffee beckoned.

Slightly winded, she entered the aroma-filled restaurant. The place was empty except for a lone employee mopping the floors. Her grandfather would have called this type of guy a beatnik. Nicole would say he was more of a heroin chic.

How looking like a junkie became fashionable, she would never know, but this young man fit the bill. Fine, straggly hair. Thin, almost to the point of gaunt. The forest green and tan uniform did nothing for his sallow complexion. Yet for all those faults, the guy was attractive.

As a matter of fact, the more she looked at him, the more he fit Ruben’s profile. Could the killer be someone this innocuous? There were so many Starbucks in town that he could transfer all over the city, and they wouldn’t know it.

Nicole chided herself for letting her imagination run away with her. The walk in the dank night had made her more than a little paranoid.

Clearing her throat, Nicole said, “When you get a chance, I’d like a tall latte.” Then thinking about the long, late night she added, “And a double shot of espresso.”

The employee turned. “Sorry, we’re closed.”

Confused, Nicole looked at the door. But he was right. The place closed at midnight. Her memory had failed her. It was the store just a block and a half away from Nancy’s house that was a twenty-four-hour one.

Okay, she wasn’t going back to Ruben without coffee.

“Look, I know you’re closed, but I just walked… Like a hell of a long way. I’ll take anything you’ve got.”

“It’s the bottom of the pot.”

“Even better.”

This got a brief smile from the brooding youth. “It’s your intestinal lining.”

“I’ll take the risk.”

Nicole rubbed her hands together, trying to prepare for the long walk back as the employee poured her a tall coffee. He was about to throw out the rest of the pot when Nicole spoke up. “Is there enough for a second cup?”

The guy swirled the pot. “If you count the sludge.”

“We’ll have to make do.” Nicole watched as he stirred in the hot milk. How she wished Kent were here. He could tell her everything she needed to know about this guy. Like why did he dress like a slacker when obviously he had some intelligence under that grossly over-moussed hair? Guess maybe he thought it would help him score with the hipster chicks? Nicole seriously doubted it.

“The same, then?” he asked.

“Yes.” Then Nicole thought better of it. “But no sugar.”

“You don’t want any sweetener?”

“Nope.”

The kid shrugged again and made the second cup.

Little did he know that he had just helped her have an epiphany.

CHAPTER 58

In the pitch dark, Kent fiddled with the lock on a neighbor’s car. It was getting too cold to stay out in the open, and he always liked Buicks anyway. With a final flick of the wrist, the car unlocked, and he opened the door, thankful it was an older model without an alarm. He was not in the mood to crack open the steering column and disengage one.

Settling in, he didn’t even flinch when the passenger’s side door opened. Nicole had tried to be stealthy, but he had sensed her watching him break into the car. She handed him a cup of coffee.

While he was not surprised by her presence, the peace offering seemed odd. Nicole had been pretty pissed off the last time he had seen her. Usually it took her days to come down off an anger buzz that high. Kent looked at the coffee with a certain degree of suspicion.

“Double sugar?” he asked.

“Like I wouldn’t remember.” She gave him that lopsided grin that got him each and every time.

“What’s your El Cid going to say about this?”

Waiting for her answer, the profiler took a huge gulp of the coffee, then started gagging.

Double sugar?

Shit, there was not a granule of sweetener in this sludge. If this had been Nicole’s car, he would have spit it out, staining the rug as a fitting punishment.

“That’s for ditching me,” she stated in a flat tone, then handed him four packets of sugar.

Tentatively taking the sweetener. “And this?” Checking the edges to make sure they had not somehow been tampered with. Kent asked, “What are these for?”

“For helping me out.” Nicole took a long sigh. “I know you didn’t want to…at least not at first…”

Kent couldn’t help himself. He knew she was struggling to share something, but he was happier when she was pissed at him. “And Ruben said you weren’t perceptive.”

“Yeah. Tonight I realized that I promised if you helped that you could work the case your way. No interference. No ragging. No second-guessing.” She looked up. Her eyes were just a little melancholy. “That’s what we agreed to.”

“I believe it was absolutely no interference, ragging, or second-guessing.”

His words came out harsher than he meant, for Nicole’s lips turned downward as she reached for the door. “I just wanted to let you know that I remembered the conditions of your assistance, and I’ll be honoring them from here on out.”

Kent didn’t know what to say.

This was uncharted emotional waters for the both of them, and not a life jacket in sight. Finally, Nicole broke the impasse by pulling his comic book from her jacket and offering it to him. “No more bribery. No more coercion.”

He accepted the first edition Archie comic. It was in mint condition. Double mint condition. UV-protected Mylar bag. Acid-free backing board, and not even a crease on the spine. It was one of a kind. By the time he was finished appreciating its pure beauty, she was halfway out of the car.

“Nic.”

His former lover turned back. Still sad, but a glint of hope. “Yes?”

“Have we discussed the skewed gender modeling of Veronica and Brutus?”

“No.” A look passed across Nicole’s face that he hadn’t seen in four years. “No, we haven’t.”

So much had happened between them, some of it painful, yet somehow Nicole’s expression had exactly the same amount of embarrassment and excitement as she did the first time he’d asked if she wanted help. Equally surprising was how good it felt to see that look on her face and have her sit back down next to him.

Letting that warmth reach his voice, Kent said, “Well, you obviously need some tutoring, then.”

Kent pointed out several subtle social cues on the cover and was rewarded by Nicole leaning her shoulder against his. The gesture didn’t wash away years of problems, but the profiler no longer felt cold.

CHAPTER 59

Ruben looked down the empty street, then at his watch, then at his cell phone, then back down the street. Nicole had been gone over an hour and a half. No one had heard from her.

If this were a few months ago, he would have been worried and called. No, that wasn’t true. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have needed to call because his partner never would have gotten out of the car.

Each and every time he thought Nicole had finally, finally, finally caught a glimpse of what an asshole Harbinger was, some invisible bell would ring and like Pavlov’s dogs, she would go running back to him.

What kind of hold did the profiler have over her? How much better in bed could Kent be?

Frustrated, Ruben rubbed his eyes. It was getting late, and so far this intensive surveillance had come up with squat. After hours of twisting Glick’s arm to throw his support and manpower behind his plan, it looked like they were going to leave empty-handed. Most of the attacks had taken place between eleven p.m. and two a.m. They were an hour outside that window.

The grand sum of their accomplishments this evening was having pulled over a guy in a Malibu and finding out he had an outstanding warrant for unpaid child support.

So while Ruben had gotten a deadbeat dad off the street, there was no sign of Plain Jane.

“Did you see that guy?” the squad’s resident techno-geek, Cody, asked into Ruben’s earpiece.

Startled, he sat up straight. He’d nearly forgotten the radio in his ear. “No. Where?”

“Ten o’clock. In a trench coat, if you can believe it.”

Ruben scanned the street quickly. Cody was right. A man, trying awfully hard to look casual, despite wearing a floor-length trench coat and baseball cap, walked down the street toward Nancy’s house.

Using the binoculars, Torres confirmed it was an Orioles cap. Quickly he looked down at the store video stills. Baltimore it was.

Adrenaline flowed through his veins. This was it. This was he. As he grabbed the radio, his finger shook just the slightest bit. Besides catching a serial killer, for a single night Ruben might actually be able to eclipse Kent.

“Blue and yellow teams be ready to move.”

CHAPTER 60

Nicole’s body felt nice next to him as Kent carefully used a latex glove to turn the comic’s page. It was already absolutely hedonistic to open the Mylar bag in a car without humidity control, but Kent wasn’t about to add skin oil residue to the damaging mix.

They had been analyzing Archie and his friends for an hour. Long ago they had watched Rebecca go to bed. He was rapidly running out of ways to keep Nicole close. Plain Jane had never struck so late, let alone inside someone’s home. He was more of a snatch-and-grab kind of guy.

Kent made sure to do his ten-point check of the perimeter before pointing to Archie’s shoe. “Now tell me that isn’t a metaphor for male impotence.”

Nicole nudged him in the ribs. Even that contact felt good, then she leaned away from him and looked around the car. “So why are we in the neighbor’s car?”

“Look at this angle. You could not buy better positioning.” Kent continued, happy to have another topic to keep her near. “The rear entrance to her house has a motion detector flood light. The yard to the right has a Jack Russell that doesn’t like men. The yard behind hers has a hot wire up for a Labrador, which means the only access left is the frontal portal into the house. Hence the car.”

“Did you get permission before you—” Nicole interrupted herself. She must have already known the answer. “Never mind.”

They sat in silence. A silence that stretched on. A silence that needed to be filled before it became awkward. He went to speak, but Nicole was already there. “Kent, I think we need to…I want to…”

How Kent wished he could hear all of her needs and wants, but off to the left there had been the slightest movement.

“Did you see that?”

Nicole’s head spun to look out the window. “What?”

“Don’t look over there,” he chided. “Feel over there. Use your peripheral vision. Bring that subconscious into play.”

“Is there movement down that alley?”

“Yes.” A knot formed in his stomach.

“Maybe it’s just a tarp caught in the wind.”

Shaking his head, Kent opened his door. “No. I’ve checked it out already. That was definitely someone moving.”

He had to give Nicole credit. She didn’t miss a beat. Pulling her gun, she got out as well.

“You take the front,” Kent instructed as he made his way to the alley.

CHAPTER 61

Ruben caught up with the blue team, his backup squad, at the staging area behind Nancy’s garage.

Stikle, the squad leader, looked behind Ruben. “Where’s Usher?”

“Called away.” Ruben tried to be brusque enough to halt any inquiry, but one of the squad, a younger guy, snorted.

“Yeah, right.”

“Excuse me?” Ruben turned. His ego wasn’t in the mood for a ribbing, especially from the Harbinger fan club.

The younger cop shrugged. “Nothing.”

Ruben turned back to the Stikle. “All right. We have to let him break in, but we are not, and I repeat, not going to let him hurt her. Understood?”

“Just give the word.”

He took the proffered night vision goggles. The trench coat was approaching from the west, the opposite side of the house from Nancy’s bedroom.

From this angle, he looked just like the man in the video footage, or was that wishful thinking on his part?

Glancing back, Ruben wasn’t surprised that Nicole was nowhere to be seen. She might have set out to get coffee, but Ruben knew his partner had found something else.

***

Gun drawn, Nicole cautiously made her way to the front door. She lightly tapped on the glass. “Rebecca?”

No answer. She knocked again.

Then peered into the windows. The house was dark.

***

Kent kept low to the ground as he made his way down the alley. It was clear. No sign of a break-in.

Keeping to the shrubs, the profiler made his way to the back door. A loud clunk from inside the house caused Kent to drop to a knee. He waited. Silence.

The profiler studied the lock. It didn’t look like anyone had tried to pick it, and he had seen Rebecca double-check it before she went to bed.

Still, Kent reached out and tried the door.

Unlocked.

“Shit.”

***

Nicole knocked again. No answer. She knew Rebecca had locked the door, but still she tried it.

Unlocked.

“Shit,” she whispered to herself as she whipped out her cell phone. Nicole hit the number one speed dial. Ruben. Her call went to voice mail. No backup.

She opened the door and stepped inside. “Rebecca?”

***

Ruben watched as the hooded man jimmied the window. This was too perfect. They had him dead to rights. You would be able to eat off this bust, the arrest was going to be just that clean.

The man pried the window open and slipped in.

“Move!” Ruben announced and his squad fanned out, covering the exits, storming the house.

***

Kent checked a closet. Clear. He continued down the hallway toward the bathroom. Was that a sound?

Was there a struggle? The profiler’s pace quickened as the noise got louder. “No!”

***

Nicole heard Kent’s cry and the sound of a muted shout. Without looking, she dialed the number to the station as she ran forward. She didn’t even wait for the person on the line to identify himself. “Usher at 1503 Windham Road, I need backup, and I need it now!”

***

Glass shattered inside the bathroom, but the door was locked. Kent pounded on the door. “Rebecca!”

Backing up, he kicked the door with full force, splintering it off its hinges. In the dim light, all the profiler could see was a smashed mirror and blood streaking the walls.

“Rebecca!”

Throwing back the shower curtain, he found nothing.

A sound from his left brought him swinging around, aiming at the new threat. But it was only Nicole.

“Damn it.”

***

Nicole spotted the blood and pushed past Kent into the master bedroom. They were too late. Again too late.

“Rebecca!”

A whimper from the closet caught their attention. She and Kent shared a look. The profiler backed up a step and to the side, aiming at the door.

Lowering her weapon, Nicole jerked the door open. She found the brunette crumpled on the floor.

“Oh, Rebecca,” Nicole nearly choked on her tears.

***

Kent couldn’t move as he looked over Nicole’s shoulder at the downed woman. That was five. Five women he had failed.

How in the name of all that’s holy had he failed again?

The meter maid’s frame rattled. Had Nicole moved her? Then the brunette began sobbing. If she could cry, she could breathe.

Rebecca was alive.

***

Nicole pulled Rebecca up to check for injuries. Except for a slash on the hand and a nasty scrape across the neck, the brunette was unharmed.

All that blood, yet she was still alive.

Bawling, but alive.

Behind her, Kent checked the room for Plain Jane as Nicole rocked Rebecca back and forth.

“It’s okay. You’re safe.”

***

Kent tossed the bed. He pulled the dresser away from the wall. No perp. A breeze moved the curtains away from an open window. He ran over as sirens sounded in the distance. Sticking his head out, Kent scanned the backyard. Nothing. No one. Plain Jane had gotten away, yet again.

“Bastard!” The profiler slammed his fist against the windowsill as he shouted at the empty night.

***

Ruben ran full tilt as a scream echoed from the bedroom. Bursting in, he found it wasn’t Nancy’s cries of distress, but the perp’s.

Glick slammed the suspect against the wall again. “Did you really think we’d leave her here for your sick game?”

Hands quivering, Ruben got out his cuffs. The ruse had worked perfectly. Hours ago they had snuck Nancy out of the house and left Glick here as their inside man. They had him.

They had Plain Jane.

With a snap of his wrist, Ruben cuffed the sicko.

“Good work,” Glick commented.

Ruben shook his head. “No, sir. It’s your bust.”

“We’ll split it,” the captain said as he patted him on the shoulder, then looked around. “Where’s Usher?”

CHAPTER 62

Nicole rocked the brunette back and forth, murmuring reassuringly, as the sirens got closer and closer.

“It’s okay, Rebecca.”

Kent had disappeared into the bathroom.

“You’re safe, I promise,” Nicole continued.

Rebecca finally lifted her chin. Her face streaked with tears. “Nicole?” The brunette swallowed. “What are you…?”

She smoothed back Rebecca’s damp hair. “I should have told you. I’m not a writer. I’m a detective.” Nicole met her eyes. “Rebecca, I need you to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t…” she stammered. “What?”

“We think it was Plain Jane who attacked you tonight.”

For the first time Rebecca seemed to focus, pulling her nightgown tighter around her shoulders. “He… He grabbed me from behind. Tried to cut my neck.” She showed her the large, red hand-sized splotches and shallow cut. “But I… I lashed out…” As if she had not noticed the wound before, Rebecca looked down at her cut hand. “I missed him but hit the mirror. Shattered it. There was glass everywhere, then…” Groaning, the woman doubled over, rocking again. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God…”

Nicole held her tight. “You’re safe, I promise.” She waited until Rebecca’s sobs abated.

“I need to know, though, did you injure him?”
“No. He just ran off.”

“Ran off?” Nicole looked up to find Kent standing just behind her. “Did we interrupt him?”

The profiler shook his head. “Nope. He’s desperate. He would have tried, just like last night.”

“Then why did he leave?”

Kent tossed an item to Nicole. She caught it in midair, then turned it over. It was a pregnancy test.

“It’s positive,” she realized, catching up.

“I don’t understand,” the brunette said, half-dazed.

Nicole hugged Rebecca. “You’re pregnant.”

“I know. I mean. That’s what I was doing—”

The brunette melted into tears, clutching Nicole as if her very life depended on it.

“He couldn’t take a womb that was already in use.”

Nicole’s phone rang, startling her. The caller ID showed it was her partner.

Brusquely, she answered. “I need you over here.”

She couldn’t believe her partner’s answer.

CHAPTER 63

By Nicole’s tone of voice, it could only be Ruben on the other end of the line. “What? No, but we—”

Harbinger knew it wasn’t good news by the blotches appearing on Nicole’s cheeks. She nodded several times, then obviously interrupted Torres.

“We’ll be there as soon as we’re—” Nicole listened, teeth clenched, then finally, “Okay, okay. Be there in ten.”

“More drama?” Kent asked as EMTs rushed into the room and quickly extracted Rebecca from Nicole.

The detective pulled him aside as the medics tended to Rebecca’s wounds. “They caught him.”

“Who?”

There was a gulp before she answered, “Plain Jane.”

“Where?”

“Over at Nancy’s house.”

That didn’t make any sense. Nicole must not have heard Ruben correctly. “But there is no way the killer could have made the thirty blocks in less than ten minutes.”

Any relief from finding Rebecca alive had completely drained from Nicole’s face. “He did not. Plain Jane hit Nancy’s house, not here.”

Kent backed away as the EMTs loaded Rebecca onto a gurney. “No way. No how. This was Plain Jane.”

“We need to head over to the station—”

“I can smell him, Nicole. Smell him. Just feel this room. He was here. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you?”

Nicole looked away. “They are taking the suspect in for interrogation. I suggest if you want answers, we should head over there.”

He watched Nicole head to the front of the house. Kent looked around the dim bedroom one last time. He would go with her. He would look at this supposed suspect, but his confidence was unshaken.

The killer had been here tonight.

Of that, Kent had no doubt.

CHAPTER 64

Ruben sat across from Plain Jane.

The Plain Jane.

The city’s worst serial killer in recorded history.

Sure, he had captured other murderers. Interrogated dozens of them. Extracted confessions from many of them. But he’d never actually been this close to a bona fide serial killer before.

It wasn’t quite the heady experience he had expected.

The guy looked like any other suspect. Maybe a little calmer than most, but still his eyes darted toward the door. Perps were always the same. Even though this one had declined counsel and signed his waiver, the creep still expected someone to come through that door and save him.

But the door stayed closed. Ruben let the guy stew for a bit. He let the drab gray cinder block walls press in. Let the guy study the cracked paint and that long red smear behind Ruben. It looked like clotted blood but was actually an old ketchup stain. They left it there for the effect.

For the same reason, Ruben had turned off the room’s heater. The northern storm’s cold air was quickly seeping through the walls and single-paned windows. The perp’s respiratory rate increased the longer Ruben just sat there. Let him get cold. Let his balls retract up into his belly.

They had him dead to rights on the break-in and even attempted murder. The DA could take this case to trial right now and have the jury come back with a guilty verdict in two minutes flat.

No, that’s not what this interrogation was about. It was about the other seven women. Joann, Claudia, and all the rest. For that they were going to need some solid forensic evidence, but even better, a confession.

Without Nicole here to play the good cop, he’d have to take a stab at it himself. Build rapport with the guy. He had studied enough texts, including Harbinger’s, on interviewing serial killers to know the stock barrage of questioning was not only unnecessary, but put them at the disadvantage.

Most serial killers wanted to tell their stories, you just had to give them their venue. Make them think you cared enough for them to share.

It galled Ruben. Cut across the grain to soften his tone, but he needed to show as much finesse as Harbinger. Even more.

“Martin. Can I call you Martin?” Ruben began.

The perp shrugged.

“Martin, where’d you get the scalpel?”

“It’s mine.”

“Obviously. Your prints were all over the handle,” Ruben commented. This was one interrogation he was going to relish. Even more so once Harbinger arrived. Let the profiler sit in the galley and watch for once. “Well, Martin, where did you get it?”

“A friend.”

“Really? Because according to your neighbors, you don’t have a lot of friends.”

“That’s not true!”

Ruben watched Martin’s eyes dart. This interrogation was going like clockwork. Now that he had gotten a rise out of the perp, Ruben needed to cajole him. “So? Prove them wrong. Who’s your friend?”

“A buddy. He works on Farmshire Ranch.”

Ruben couldn’t help but allow a small grin to form. He had been right this whole time. It had been an equine handle all along. Kent was going to eat crow for a month.

CHAPTER 65

Kent held the door open for Nicole, obviously surprising her with his newfound manners. When working a case, his gentlemanly skills usually suffered. Oh, who was he kidding? He never held much stock in chivalry.

Bending her head slightly in appreciation, she passed into the observation room, which looked like those in any other precinct. Really it was just a narrow hall looking over two one-way mirrors

Glick was the only inhabitant, and he didn’t even bother to look over to know who came in. “Good thing one of you stayed at Nancy’s.”

Nicole looked down, but Kent didn’t give a shit what the captain thought. The profiler was here to confirm that Ruben hadn’t accidentally hit the serial killer jackpot, then head back out. Clear his head. Completely wipe the slate clean of all preconceptions and find a new bead on the killer.

Plain Jane had given over so much of himself in the past few days. So many clues. So many tells. The genesis for his uterus craving. The fact that he could not take a ripe womb.

So much, yet Kent still grasped at tendrils of smoke. After he dismissed this suspect, he would go back to the beginning. The profiler would do some very specific research.

Arriving at the one-way mirror, Kent stared at the so-called “Plain Jane” killer. The guy scratched at his palm, eyes darting back and forth like he was watching a tennis game.

“So this is the mastermind that killed over thirty women?” Kent asked no one in particular.

“Plain Jane,” Glick proudly announced.

Kent chuckled. “Yeah, right.”

Nicole fired him a look, but he just chuckled as he turned toward the exit.

“Don’t you even want to talk to him?” Nicole asked.

“We caught him dead to rights breaking into Nancy’s house,” Glick chimed in. “Scalpel in hand.”

Kent sneered. “Do you really think that’s what a prolific serial killer acts like under interrogation? They’re cold as ice or warm as a peach on a spring day. They’re not nervous or worried or even the slightest bit out of sorts. They’re more in control than the interrogator.”

She took a step closer. “You say that all the time, but couldn’t one be different? Couldn’t one act just like Martin to throw us off?”

“How do you think Dahmer convinced the cops to give him back his captive? Do you really think he stood there with shifty eyes and itchy palms? Or Vansalez talked his way out of a speeding ticket with three torsos in the backseat?”

Even though he was answering Nicole, he glared at Glick. This was a waste of time. Kent didn’t need to go in there and prove Martin wasn’t Plain Jane. The evidence would do it for him while he was out actually catching the killer.

“But how?” she asked. “How can they stay so cool?”

As much as he wanted to get out of there, he couldn’t resist it when she looked at him with such respect and wonder. You might as well give him some crack.

“It’s called purposeful forgetting.” How many times had Kent taught the technique to FBI recruits and Special Forces alike? He taught it to special agents to break serial killers and soldiers to be able to endure torture. “How can the cop sense you’ve got body parts tucked under the backseat, if you, yourself, have forgotten? If you don’t remember you’re a serial killer, it’s a little hard to give yourself away.”

Nicole wanted to ask something, but Glick overrode her. “That doesn’t change the fact that we’re tossing his place as we speak.” The captain’s confidence grew. “They’ve already found human blood in the sink traps. Just waiting to match it to one of the victims.”

“Great,” Kent said as he turned toward the exit. “Call me when you do, otherwise I’ll be out catching Plain Jane.”

Glick blocked his departure. “You’re that sure Martin isn’t our guy?”

That sure? Kent asked himself.

Absolutely certain it wasn’t Martin from the moment he’d laid eyes on the puny man. He pointed toward the perp.

“Look at him. Nervous. Palms sweating.” Kent geared up as he pointed toward the man’s hand on the table. “Look at his nails, for Christ’s sake. Way too long to be fishing around in someone’s belly.”

“That’s it? This is where you impress us with your brilliant insight, then walk off, leaving us with the mess?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Kent said as he stepped around the captain.

“Glad to see history can repeat itself over and over again. With the same outcome over and over again,” Glick said as he moved to block the profiler again. “Oh, wait. Isn’t that the definition of insanity? Repeating the same behavior but expecting different results?”

Nicole stepped between them. “Captain!”

“What? Harbinger doesn’t get to act this crazy, then expect us not to mention the fact he’s a pain in the ass.”

“Sir!” Nicole might be freaking out, but Kent felt only amusement. Did Glick really think he could try some pop psychology crap and get Kent to comply?

“If you don’t believe that’s Plain Jane in there, then prove it, Harbinger.”

Kent threw a thumb toward the interrogation room. “I’m sure Desperado in there is well on his way to securing a confession.”

“Just don’t bitch if another woman dies. I don’t want to hear your ‘I told you so’ routine again.”

He was nearly out the door when Nicole grabbed his arm but directed her comments to the captain. “Can we please keep this conversation to the present problem?”

“What? Harbinger’s gotten really good at pointing the finger after the fact.” Glick stared the profiler straight in the eye. “But not so good at standing up for what he believes in.”

Okay, the captain had gone too far that time. “That is bullshit,” Kent snapped. “You can say all you want about my emotional veracity, but I speak my mind.”

Glick took a step forward, forcing Nicole out from between them. “Usually as you are running out the door.”

“Captain!” Nicole unsuccessfully tried to wedge in.

“If you are going to go contrary to the evidence, Harbinger, then make a stand. Make it here. Make it now.”

“Or?” Kent couldn’t wait to hear the answer.

“Or? You’ll stay fucked-up forever, son.”

CHAPTER 66

Nicole stood horrified. What had gotten into Glick? And Kent was no better. He looked ready to punch the older man, and she wasn’t so sure the captain didn’t deserve it, at least just a little bit.

Then Kent smiled. “Luckily, that’s how I like it.”

With that, Kent was out the door. She was too stunned to follow. He had abandoned her, again.

They had made such progress tonight. In the car she felt that maybe, just maybe, they could overcome the last two years. But now this. Typical Kent behavior. Why stick it out when he could run?

She should have been livid with Kent, but instead she vented on Glick. “What was that about?”

“He’s got to change. It’s not enough to just be a profiler, even if he’s a fucking-mind-blowing-brilliant one. At some point, he’s got to be a…”

“A man?” Nicole asked bitterly.

“I was going to say, ‘an adult.’ A citizen.” Glick’s face softened. “A partner.” When she did not reciprocate the look, her captain continued, sounding tired. “Until then, he’s just another Rasputin.”

While Nicole searched for a retort, Glick turned up the audio feed from the interrogation room.

CHAPTER 67

Ruben changed the subject, keeping the suspect off-kilter. “So, Martin, how did your parents get along?”

“Fine.”

“Fine?” Ruben hadn’t expected that answer. This guy was trying to jack him around. That just wasn’t going to fly. Not tonight. “Really? Because I just got this faxed over.”

Pulling out papers from a file, Ruben laid them all out in front of Martin. “Looks like the cops were regular visitors at your childhood home, breaking up your little family spats.”

The perp shrugged. “Parents fight. It was no big deal.”

Ruben shook his head and pointed to the emergency room photos. Some were pretty ugly. Others downright gruesome.

“Your mother was hospitalized three times for fractures and at least once for a concussion.”

The man averted his eyes and angled his body away from the photos. Shoving an especially explicit picture of a split lip, Ruben pressed harder. “So it didn’t have any lasting effect seeing your mom punched hard enough by your father that she swallowed three teeth?”

The perp squirmed. “It was a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, no. It was no misunderstanding. X-rays confirmed. It was three teeth. That time her lip took twenty-seven stitches to close it.”

CHAPTER 68

Despite her anger, Nicole couldn’t help being drawn to the window. Ruben was doing a pretty good job in there.

Glick dialed down the audio. “The guy’s pitch-perfect for Ruben’s profile.”

“But exactly the opposite of Kent’s.”

The captain indicated the door that led into the interrogation room. “So go in there and prove him wrong.”

“Which him?”

Glick sighed. “Whichever one needs it.”

With a set to her jaw, Nicole inserted the earpiece that Glick offered and entered the interrogation room. If Kent wasn’t going to hang around to prove this guy was a copycat, it was up to her.

Torres was in the middle of a question when Nicole walked in. “Maybe Martin would rather talk about how he feels regarding women in authority?”

Ruben went to stand up, but she put a firm hand on his shoulder. “No. Stay put,” she said, doing her best dominatrix impersonation. “I’m just here to watch.”

Nicole strode to the back of the room and positioned herself in the perp’s blind spot. She and Ruben had danced to this tune before. Usually he leaned up against the wall while she played the ‘good’ cop, trying to help the perp. But not now. Not with a possible serial killer. A killer of women. Tonight she got to put the pressure on.

Over their earpieces, Glick spoke in a somber tone. “Sorry, guys. It’s female blood all right, but it doesn’t match any of our victims.”

Nicole wasn’t sure if she felt pleased or upset by the news. It hurt Ruben’s case, but supported Kent’s arrogant assessment.

Glick continued, “We can’t count on the evidence to prove he’s Plain Jane. We’re going to need a confession.”

By the look on Ruben’s face, Nicole knew they had a hard road ahead of them. Torres was as good as anyone in the room, well, as good as anyone except Kent. But getting a serial killer to confess?

Unless you had a backbreaking tonnage of evidence, it was hard. Unless the perp was an attention seeker, it was nearly impossible. Nicole sighed. It was absolutely impossible if the guy didn’t do it in the first place.

Her partner rose to the occasion, though, and made a show of pressing his earpiece tighter against his ear, as if listening to a long discourse.

Finally Torres lowered his hand, shaking his head. “The case is just stacking up against you. You should have cleaned those drains better, Martin.”

The perp seemed genuinely unimpressed. “You don’t have anything or a DA would be here.”

Good one, Nicole thought, but Ruben turned it right back on the guy. “Who do you think just told me that he’d be seeking the death penalty?”

That got the perp’s attention. His eyes nervously flickered to the one-way mirror. “Then why aren’t they in here talking to me?”

Ruben wagged his finger at Martin. “If they were willing to cut a deal, sure. But how’s that going to play in the press? The new DA making a deal with a serial killer?” Torres leaned back in his chair. “I wouldn’t wait on them.”

Perhaps Ruben went too far, because the perp nearly peed his pants. “Maybe… Maybe, you know, I should think about getting a lawyer, then?”

Nicole moved in before he actually requested counsel and invalidated his signed waiver. “Need protection? Feeling a little guilty, are we?”

She hovered behind Martin, just out of sight. Yet the man seemed to gain resolve. Her eyes met Ruben’s.

They were losing him. Soon some high-profile lawyer would take the guy’s case just for the headlines, and not only would they never get a confession, but a conviction was equally unlikely.

Then a familiar, sultry voice came over her earpiece. It certainly wasn’t Glick.

“Lean forward,” Kent repeated.

Nicole’s eyes darted to the mirror. Had she really heard correctly? Had the profiler really come back? By the frown on Ruben’s face, he thought so as well.

“Do it,” Harbinger encouraged.

With a feeling slightly akin to a beer buzz, Nicole leaned in. Close enough she could smell the perp’s cheap cologne but was not quite touching his clammy skin.

“Ask him how that feels,” the profiler prompted.

She leaned in so that her lips were nearly brushing his ear lobe. “So do you like your women close?” The perp’s respiration rate skyrocketed. He did not answer.

“Closer,” the voice in her ear whispered as if it were Kent she snuggled up to.

Complying, Nicole brought her chest level with the perp’s cheek. “Or closer, Martin?”

Flustered, the guy tried to keep his eyes facing straight forward. Like a compass to the north, he kept sneaking peeks at her cleavage.

“Let that left breast just lean against him.”

Ruben’s head turned sharply toward the window.

A movement that was not missed by the perp.

“Tell him you found blood mixed with semen.”

Nicole did not hesitate. “No biggie. We found more blood in the shower drain pipes.”

“You did not.”

She tsked-tsked before she continued. “I was not done. It was mixed with jizz. I can only assume your jizz.” Nicole moved from the right side of his face to his left. “Did you go and beat off after you killed her?”

CHAPTER 69

“Get that left breast in play,” Kent urged Nicole even though he felt Glick’s disapproving presence. The profiler watched through the mirror as she leaned in.

But her voice was sexy even muffled over the audio feed as she whispered to Martin. “Does it excite you? Proximity? Being this close?”

The detective worked her magic, but this guy was scared. Even more scared than horny. They needed the big guns. And they needed them now. “I’m telling you, Nic. Get that left breast front and center.”

Kent matched his respiratory rate to Martin’s. As her chest glanced the guy’s shoulder, his breaths skyrocketed.

“Yes,” the man exhaled more than spoke.

The profiler could sense that Nicole knew she had the upper hand, for her tone was coy. Her words soft. “You just wanted to be close.”

The guy nearly shook with excitement. “Yes.”

Martin was theirs. He was nothing more than clay to be molded. “Told you. That left one has magical properties, doesn’t it, Julio?”

Kent smiled as Ruben glowered. Nicole, however, had overcome her reservations and was in such close contact with the perp that even he felt a twinge of jealousy.

Nicole sounded as if it were pillow talk. “Tell me.”

Breaking the mood that Kent and Nicole had so carefully cultivated, Torres cleared his throat loudly.

Martin’s eyes darted nervously. “I can’t.”

“You can,” the temptress encouraged.

“I’m not saying another word.”

As the perp crossed his arms, it looked like Nicole’s breast had lost its magic. However, Kent had more in his arsenal than just her mammary tissue. It would take Nicole trusting him, though. Completely. Unquestioningly.

“If you won’t talk to me…”

Nicole dutifully recited Kent’s words. “If you won’t talk to me…”

“Then show me.”

Again the detective parroted the statement. “Then show…” Nicole stumbled, then regained her footing. “Me.”

The harsh metallic scraping of his chair announced that Ruben was up on his feet. “That will be enough.”

Nicole must have known where Kent was leading and she seemed eager to follow. “Maybe you should leave the two of us alone?”

The tall Hispanic clenched his fist. A gesture Kent was sure was meant for him and not the perp. “Never.”

“Then sit down.” Nicole’s tone was dominating. It brooked no argument. Damn, but she had never been hotter, Kent thought.

The perp must have thought so, too, as his respiratory rate ticked up and his cheeks flushed red.

Once Ruben was back in his seat, Nicole continued in a cajoling tone, “We’ve got the evidence. We’ve got the break-in.” She sounded almost sympathetic, plus Kent couldn’t help noticing that the left breast was back in play. “You’re going to prison for a very long time, Martin.”

In a move that even impressed Kent, Nicole stroked the perp’s cheek. “When’s the next time you’ll be this close to a woman again?”

Martin looked at Ruben, who still fumed, then back to Nicole. He seemed uncertain, but at least he was not talking about getting a lawyer.

The perp mumbled something.

“Speak up, Martin. Tell me what you want.” Nicole encouraged like an experienced pro that wanted her money.

Martin cleared his throat. “You’ll need to un-cuff me.”

CHAPTER 70

Nicole looked toward the mirror. Toward Kent. What the perp asked was well beyond regulations.

“Is it any wonder people think I’m disturbed?” The profiler asked rhetorically in her ear. “If you want a confession, darlin’, you’ve got to go where the weirdo’s lead.”

With a harsh glare at Ruben to keep him seated, Nicole pulled out her keys. With a click, the perp was un-cuffed.

“There you are, Martin.”

The man rubbed his wrists, then looked at Ruben. She had to give her partner credit, he looked away rather than argue and upset the delicate rapport she had built with the creep. Finally Martin turned toward her, but did not approach.

“You’re going to show me?” Nicole asked

He licked his lips and nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

The perp did not move. Kent remained silent on the other side of the glass. She was on her own. “Do you like them facing you or away?”

“Facing me.”

With hands outstretched, the perp came at her. Obviously intent on groping her.

Nicole squirmed, waiting for Kent, but the profiler continued his silence. Had he abandoned her? Was she really going to let this pervert touch her? Her anxiety increased as the man inched forward, almost as surprised that he was going to reach the Promised Land as she was.

“Yeah, like he ever gets that action,” Kent joked.

Relieved, but slightly pissed that the profiler had let it go that far, Nicole knocked Martin’s hand away. “I don’t think so,” she said. “This needs to be just like you did it.”

The perp looked frustrated, and his jaw worked back and forth. The guy probably grew up with a retainer. Probably had a tooth guard at home by his bed. Nicole felt gratified. That was the type of insight that Kent might have had. Being this close to a psycho, the detective’s learning curve was steep. Nicole didn’t have to wait for Kent’s instructions. She knew what was needed next.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Nicole circled the perp, running a finger along his shoulders, then his back. “This is what you want but never get, isn’t it?” She came around to face him, her finger still lightly touching his chest. “So close. But they always say ‘no,’ don’t they?”

“Don’t forget the power of that left breast,” Kent reminded her.

As she passed by Martin again, she made sure her breast made contact with his elbow. When the perp spoke, it was so husky that you could barely make out the words.

“They shouldn’t have.”

“No,” Nicole tried to sympathize. “They shouldn’t.”

Martin’s voice firmed. “Turn around.”

Nicole hesitated, suddenly not so sure this guy wasn’t Plain Jane. A possible murderer un-cuffed and inflamed.

“Do it,” Kent’s instruction was blunt.

Nicole turned around. “You like them to be surprised?”

CHAPTER 71

Good girl, Kent thought as Nicole completely turned her back on the freak. For a second there, he thought she might balk, but Nicole had done her duty.

He knew how vulnerable the detective felt, yet those feelings just fueled this guy’s fantasy. In a few moments, Martin would completely forget he was in a police station, and they would see his true colors.

Martin was pressed up against Nicole’s back. His hips thrust slightly forward so his crotch was practically between the detective’s butt cheeks. Still Nicole held her ground, finally understanding how you had to deal with these psychos.

“You like to take them from behind?” Nicole asked again. Again, Martin didn’t answer. Instead his finger traced the length of her neck.

Nicole’s face was angled away from Kent, though he knew she cringed. The detective wasn’t the most comfortable with physical intimacy under the best of circumstances. This type of contact had to be excruciating.

“Draw him out.”

Nicole’s tone was a little flat. “Where’s your knife?”

“We’ll get to that,” Martin said as his hand slipped forward, down her sternum and toward her cleavage.

“Show me,” Nicole urged. “Show me how you did it.”
“Do you really want me to?”

Oh yeah, we do, Kent thought, but it was Nicole who voiced the answer. “Yes.”

With a violence that startled everyone else, Martin grabbed Nicole by the neck and started choking her, screaming hysterically, “You bitch! You’ll pay, just like she did!”

Very un-Plain Jane-like. If there had been doubt in anybody’s mind this was the man, it should have been completely dispelled.

In a single bound, Ruben was over the table, pulling the psycho off Nicole. Glick seemed agitated, but Kent was almost bored. “Told ya so. The ugly, stupid ones are easy to catch.”

The captain rushed in as Ruben struggled with Martin.

“Tell Nicole, next time she should believe me,” Kent said to Glick as he strode out.

CHAPTER 72

Nicole sat on the floor, still choking a little, trying to convince her throat it was safe to breathe again while Ruben was busy slamming Martin against the wall. Her partner was cursing vehemently in Spanish. Seldom did Ruben let his Latin roots show quite so colorfully.

“He’s not Plain Jane,” Nicole croaked out.

With another good shove against the wall, Ruben answered. “Maybe not, but he did kill someone.”

Glick called two other uniforms in. At this point they were there to protect Martin from Ruben rather than the other way around. Nicole knew she should be angry at Kent or even scared of Martin, but she was elated.

She could still feel the killer’s hands around her throat. Still feel the adrenaline surge as he closed off her windpipe. It had been a rush. A rush that wasn’t over yet.

Martin was no Plain Jane. His actions under stress had proven that. A serial killer still lurked. A smarter one. A true predator. One that she was now ready to help take down.

“Yeah, but he didn’t kill our girls,” Nicole stated.

Even with Martin re-cuffed and a uniform on each arm, Torres still shoved the man before releasing him into the other officers’ custody. “Still, we caught a murderer tonight.”

Nicole knew how badly Torres wanted to be the one to bring down Plain Jane. Sadly, it was not to be. That killer was well beyond either of their skills.

“Where’s Kent?” Nicole asked, as she tried to rise.

Dizzy, she had to plop back down. Glick and Torres rushed to her side. “Pulled his ‘who was that masked man’ routine,” the captain replied.

Nicole leaned back, exposing her bruised neck.

“That bastard,” Ruben growled. Nicole was pretty sure that he was referring to Kent rather than Martin.

Now feeling sillier on the ground than excited, Nicole tried to rise again. Ruben put his hands on her shoulders. “The EMTs are on their way.”

“I’m good,” Nicole said as she purposefully removed her partner’s grip. Glick offered a hand also. Nicole declined it as well. She was not a damsel in distress. She was one motivated, ready-to-track-down-a-serial-killer kind of damsel who was not going to let anyone get in her way. “Did he say where he was going?”

Glick shrugged. “Just a ‘hi, ho, Silver! Away.’ "

CHAPTER 73

Ruben watched as the woman he loved walked out, again. Could he blame Nicole, though? He had failed, yet again. Failed so very publicly. Failed right in front of her. It had taken Kent, riding in on his white horse, to save the day.

Within a matter of minutes the profiler had completely debunked his theory that Martin was Plain Jane and secured a confession regarding whomever he did kill.

But Kent had degraded Nicole in the process. A process that his partner seemed to not only tolerate, but enjoy as well. Ruben never could have put Nicole in that position. Using her body like that? Forcing her to seduce a killer? Then to put her in such physical danger? How he wished the profiler were here. Ruben would show him what physical danger felt like.

Glick cleared his throat, bringing Torres back to the problems still at hand. “You better check the rest of the names on Harbinger’s list.”

“We’re that sure Martin’s not our man?” Ruben asked, knowing full well the answer to that question.

With a frown, Glick answered, “Uni’s just found his landlady in the Dumpster. He got evicted after losing his job.”

“Damn it. Then why was he at Nancy’s?”

Glick walked out of the room, indicating that Ruben should follow. In silence, they made their way to the captain’s office. Glick made a point to shut the door before turning back to Ruben. Still, his supervisor didn’t answer his question.

“Well?”

“Harbinger was…” The captain couldn’t finish.

“He was right? Again?”

How could this be?

Maybe the damned profiler truly was psychic after all.

“Martin told one of his friends last week that Plain Jane was nothing compared to what he was going to do.”

“The ugly and the stupid,” Ruben murmured.

“Yeah, something like that…” The captain paused long enough for Ruben to search his face. What else could there be? “And we have a new problem.”

“Kent is running for president?” he asked, somewhat sarcastically, and somewhat hoping he wasn’t right.

Glick grunted as he sat down. “No, but almost as bad. The uterus from last night’s Vic, Joann. It’s missing.”

Ruben stayed standing. “I thought the coroner confirmed it was intact?” A glimmer of hope arose. Had Kent somehow been wrong about Joann? “Harbinger’s whole theory rests on that uterus.”

“Don’t get too ramped up. The uterus was intact last night. The ME removed it, weighed it, biopsied it, and put it in a jar marked as evidence.”

“And now it has miraculously disappeared?”

Glick rubbed his dark-circled eyes. “Yes.”

Ruben sat down hard on the chair. “Great. So we think the killer got his trophy after all?”

“Who else would want a cut-up uterus?”

CHAPTER 74

Through the window, Joshua saw the coroner’s wagon drive up. Dropping his stack of paperwork on the desk, he rushed out to the delivery bay. A new body. It was sights like this that made him glad he ended up coming into work tonight. Especially after the night he’d had.

Punching in the code, Josh pulled his lab coat around his neck. The night had gone cold. The sliding doors opened, bringing with them a rush of frigid air. The driver was already out of the vehicle, opening the back doors.

“Seriously, dude. Tell them to stop dying,” Josh joked. Another perk of the job was yanking this slacker’s chain.

“I don’t think she had any choice.”

The driver, in an unusual show of personality, opened the zipper and pointed to the badly beaten woman with dark purple bruising around her neck. Obviously strangled. Joshua could tell the cops that without a freaking autopsy.

“Fine, but tell the killers to hide the bodies a little better. We are way backed up.”

Snapping open the gurney, the driver sounded so very unimpressed by Joshua’s dilemma. “Sorry, they need the prelim by nine.”

Shocked, Josh asked, “Why?”

“They need to be sure the uterus is still in there.”

Okay, that was the stupidest thing Josh had ever heard. It was almost insulting that anyone in his right mind could think Plain Jane would kill like this. What did they think he was? A cretin?

“You are kidding, right?” Josh asked as the driver just shut the wagon’s doors. The attendant pointed to the body. “This broad was strangled and beaten.” Josh was nearly speechless, he was that upset. “This isn’t Plain Jane’s MO.”

Sighing as if he were bored with the whole conversation, the driver locked the back of the wagon.

“You can never be too sure.”

“What do they think?” Josh was not about to let this travesty go. “The guy forgot to take his Ritalin and just started hammering away?”

“Look, I just drive ‘em, and you load them on the slab. What do we care what they think? An autopsy is an autopsy.”

Josh sucked in a breath. That was sacrilege. Just straight-up sacrilege. It took him a few moments to form the words necessary to counter such blasphemy. “Oh… Oh, you are so wrong. They are like—”

“Okay, if you give me your delicate flower analogy, I’m going to hammer you.”

As Josh stood there stunned, the driver got back into his wagon and drove off. The man obviously didn’t understand that death was as important as life. He went to close the bag back up, but patted the woman’s cheek before he zipped it. “No one understands us, do they, love?”

CHAPTER 75

Nicole drove toward the seediest motel on the outskirts of town. The neon “L” in motel was burnt out, so the sign flashed “Mote,” which pretty much summed up the place. She parked in front of the lopsided sign that announced the office. Now no mystery why Kent had never let her pick him up.

Setting her car alarm, something that she seldom did, Nicole went into the office.

Immediately her nose cringed.

She’d searched sewer tunnels that weren’t as ripe. Surprisingly, there was actually an awake attendant. It appeared that besides offering weekly and monthly rates, the “mote” also had a lively late night “hourly” business as well. The man’s greasy nametag read “Arty, Night Manager.”

Even though the cowbells attached to the door had rung quite loudly, Arty didn’t look up from his “Max at Night.”

“I need to know which room Kent Harbinger is staying in.” Through force of habit she flashed her badge.

Arty just yawned. “I would have told you without that. I’ve got no reason to protect that freak.” He nodded to the left. “He’s in number four.”

“Thanks,” the detective said as she exited.

“And tell him I’m not giving him any other towels until he returns the last ones!” Arty shouted.

Giving a polite wave, Nicole proceeded to room number four. Or at least she was pretty sure it was number four. The metal number was long gone, leaving an outline of rust and faded paint in the outline of a four.

Because of the late hour, she gave a soft knock, although she doubted any of the other guests would hear or even mind if she started yelling at the top of her lungs. Unit number five had porn blasting so loudly that Nicole did not need any visuals to know it was a three-on-one scene.

It was a little disconcerting to know that this was where Kent spent his “down” time. She knocked again. “Harbinger?” Giving up on formality, she said, “Kent?”

Still no answer. On a whim, she checked the doorknob. Unlocked. What profiler didn’t lock the door? Especially in the middle of an intense manhunt for a serial killer?

Uneasy, Nicole drew her weapon and entered. She felt for the light switch and flicked it. Nothing happened. She paused, half in and half out of the doorway.

“Damn it, Kent! Answer if you’re in here.”

Keeping her eyes forward, Nicole fished around in her coat pocket for her flashlight. Turning it on, she swept the room with its beam, looking for an intruder, or worse, a body.

She found neither, though the walls glistened strangely in the low light. Taking a step inside, the detective quickly learned why. Every square inch of the room was covered in photographs. Photos of all the women he had been following. There was Joann. Claudia before that. Maria was there, too. All the women that he had “stalked” and lost. Picture after picture lined the walls.

“Oh, Kent,” Nicole whispered to the sad, pathetic room. It had not been the urine smell that had kept the profiler from inviting her over, it had been this bizarre, twisted shrine.

A sound prompted her to swing around.

“Hey, hey. It’s me,” Arty said, hands up.

Nicole lowered her gun. “What’s wrong with the lights?”

Turning on a dime, the manager went from anxious to pissed off. “Tell him no electricity until he returns the lamps!”

“That’s illegal.” Who did this guy think he was?

Arty stepped into the room and indicated all the walls. “I haven’t turned him into the mental health department, so I figure we’re even.”

Giving up on him, Nicole quickly checked the rest of the room. A small closet and even smaller bathroom. No Kent. Even these rooms were covered in pictures. She turned around to find Arty right behind her.

“And if this tape damages the walls, he’s paying to have them repainted.”

“I’ll forward the information… Once I find him.”

Arty seemed done with the conversation and headed to the door. “So, you staying or what?”

Nicole re-holstered her weapon. “Yeah, for a while.”

“Whatever turns your crank,” Arty said as he exited.

She wasn’t even sure why she was staying, especially when unit three had live-action sounds that put the porn in room five to shame.

As she studied the room in more detail, she realized that many of the pictures were marked as she had been in the briefing room. Red slashes marred many of the pictures.

“Oh, Kent…” she said as she plunked down onto the sagging mattress. Nicole lay back even though she had a lingering concern about what might crawl into her hair. She closed her eyes.

This was all her fault. After his release from the hospital, Kent had been in the psychiatric halfway house for over six months, and the doctors said he was adjusting well. Taking his medications without incident. Beginning to socially interact with the other patients.

A stranger might have taken him for a normal person, but no, Nicole had to go and trash all that progress.

Over the reservations of Ruben, Glick, four doctors, two social workers, and an assistant district attorney, she had asked the profiler to return to work. What concern was Kent’s tentative mental status with so many women’s lives on the line? Brashly, Nicole had thought she knew the profiler better than them all.

Opening her eyes, she found hundreds more pictures taped to the ceiling, and realized just how wrong she had been. Obviously, she didn’t know Kent at all.

Mainly out of a morbid curiosity, Nicole pointed her flashlight upwards. Which victim had won the coveted spot above his bed? But as she studied the photos, she realized these weren’t creepy stalker pictures.

These were photos of her.

Sitting upright, she craned her neck for a better look. The ceiling was covered with images of her. And these did not have the impersonal feel of surveillance photos. They were great shots. There she was with her friend, Lisa, at a movie. Both laughing in the picture.

Another of her with Monty, a detective from the two-seven. They ran the reservoir weekly. The layout looked like a huge photo spread for a magazine. There was even one of her sleeping. Taking in the scene as a whole, Nicole made a realization, Kent wasn’t coming back tonight.

Standing up on the bed, she reached up and pulled down the center photo, knowing pretty damn well where Harbinger was camped out.

CHAPTER 76

Ruben shook his head, then shook his head again. “You can’t expect me to make the call,” he said to Glick.

The captain looked around. They were the only two people left in the bullpen. After the flurry of activity surrounding Martin’s arrest, everyone was either back out on patrol or at home catching a few hours of shut-eye before coming back to work. They knew they still had a serial killer on the loose.

“Sorry. It’s you.”

“You could make the call.”

Glick shook his head. “There aren’t many perks to this job, but not having to make this call is definitely one of them.”
Sighing, Torres nodded. No one in his right mind would want to make this call to Nicole. Yet here he stood, hand on phone. Ruben dialed his partner’s cell phone.

It only rang once.

“Kent?”

He was unable to control his temper. “Wow, this must be a real disappointment.”

Nicole’s tone wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as her words. “Ruben, sorry.”

Trying to regroup, he took a breath before continuing. He had a job to do. “Look, the press is all over our arrest of the possible Plain Jane. Glick doesn’t want any dissenting comments until the autopsy confirms he’s not our guy.”

“You really called me at this hour to tell me to keep my mouth shut?” She sounded in no better a mood than he did.

Well, he’d had enough tonight. “Let me be more blunt. The captain doesn’t want Harbinger talking.”

“Tell him yourself.”

Who did his partner think she was talking to? He knew she was tired, they all were. He knew she was stressed. They all were. Ruben worried that Kent’s entitlement attitude had rubbed off on his partner.

“His voicemail is full, or I would.”

No answer. Ruben could hear the low rumble of the car engine as she drove. The soft sounds of the radio floated into his earpiece, so Torres knew he had not lost the connection. Why wasn’t she answering?

“Nikki?”

CHAPTER 77

It wasn’t her partner’s fault. As much as Nicole tried to make it his fault, it was not. As usual, it was Kent’s.

“Yeah, Ruben, sure. I’ll tell him.”

She closed the phone and mumbled to herself, “Who needs voicemail when you’ve got me?”

Nicole pulled up to her house to find a light on in the kitchen. At least she had been right about one thing tonight. There was only one person who would break into her house, then fix himself a snack.

Quietly she made her way into the house, then into the kitchen. Sure enough, there was Kent standing over the table. Probably making a sandwich.

“I knew I’d find you here.”

The profiler looked over his shoulder, an unreadable look on his face. Then he moved to the side, revealing that he was elbow deep into the abdomen of a pig.

A pig tied down to her kitchen table.

A pig whose belly was splayed full open.

“Bet you weren’t expecting this.”

“What in the…” Nicole couldn’t speak. What could she say? There was a dead, cracked-open pig on her kitchen table, for Christ’s sake.

Kent obviously didn’t have any problem, for he pulled up tissue to show her. “This is the uterus.”

He displayed the bloody organ like a cat who had caught a mouse and presented it as a display of affection. She could not respond.

“What? You wouldn’t let me practice on humans.”

Whatever connection she had felt back in the interrogation room, whatever sense of guilt and responsibility she had felt back at the motel room, Nicole snapped, “That’s it.” She heard herself say, “That’s enough.”

Nicole tried to pull him away from the pig, but Kent balked. “What’s your problem? I put down plastic.”

For the first time, she realized what had changed over the last twenty-four hours. “Damn it. Let me see your eyes.”

Kent tried to resist, but Nicole persisted. With his hands still inside the pig, she pulled his head back and pried open his eyelids. “I knew it. You’re not taking your meds.”

She physically pulled his hands out of the carcass and dragged him over to the sink like a small child who had been caught finger painting on the walls. Trying to regain her composure, Nicole silently washed his hands under the tap.

“Drugged, four women died. Almost a fifth.” Kent sounded drained but determined.

“The only reason the doctors let you out was because I promised, I swore, you would keep up with your meds.”

Finished washing the pig’s blood off, she grabbed a towel and dried his hands. Now he sounded angry as well. “You’re not my keeper.”

Nicole was no longer angry, she was livid.

“But you’re mine?”

She pulled out the candid photo of herself.

Kent actually grinned. “That’s a good one.”

Disgusted by so much this night, Nicole dropped the picture onto the kitchen counter. Surprisingly, the profiler tenderly picked it up and dried off the corner.

“Don’t you agree?”

“You broke into my house to take it.” Did the man have no more civility left in him?

“No, I didn’t,” Kent retorted.

This was all too much. Ruben had been right. The profiler was out of control. “Kent, don’t lie. The picture—”

“Was not taken here.” He sounded serious for once.

Confused, Nicole looked at the picture in his hands again. “But I haven’t slept anywhere else for…” How long had it been since she shared Ruben’s bed? “It’s been months.”

“Yeah, back when you were still having sex with Gaucho-boy.”

No. Kent couldn’t mean it. He could not. He would not. “You… You broke into Ruben’s house?”

The profiler casually nodded, like “duh.” The concept was inconceivable. Kent had broken into her partner’s house, no, broken into his bedroom to take pictures of her. It was something an obsessed stalker did. It was something people were arrested for.

She tried to express her horror, “Oh, that… It’s just…”

“His security system was a joke.”

“It’s perverse.” Nicole backed away from him. “You are sick.”

Instead of being insulted or even mildly upset, Kent’s tone was almost teasing. “That’s debatable, but tell me that you didn’t feel the most alive when you were drawing the killer out of that loser back there in the interrogation room?”

Nicole took another step back, less sure of herself. How could the profiler cloud her mind so easily? “Maybe.” How could he know her so well, only to violate her privacy? “I would never conceive of stalking you.”

Suddenly serious, Kent’s eyes gleamed in the low light. “You would if it helped hone your skills.” He took another step forward, forcing Nicole to back away again, only this time she bumped into the sink. She couldn’t go any farther back as the profiler smiled.

“Face it, Nic. As much as you are repulsed by my eccentricities, you want to grow up to be just like me.”

“In your medication-hazed, psychotic dreams.”

Kent closed the distance. Nicole had nowhere to turn, so she held her ground, glaring, but the profiler seemed unimpressed. As a matter of fact, he was downright seductive. “You want to be able to walk through the Valley of Death and not be afraid.”

Resisting his tone, Nicole held her chin high. “I think I was striding pretty confidently in that interrogation room.”

CHAPTER 78

Kent looked into her eyes. The detective was trying oh-so-hard to be brave. That made him want her even more. Only Nicole could balance being aggressively vulnerable.

He brought himself as close to her as she had gotten to Martin. Close enough that her left breast pressed against his chest. Close enough that his lips were nearly kissing her ear.

“Only because you knew I was in the shadows, whispering, keeping you safe.”

Nicole slipped from their intimate contact, and indicated her badly bruised neck.

“I would not exactly call this ‘safe.’ “

Ever so gently, Kent traced the outline of the bruise. He noticed she did not step any farther away. “A small price to pay for knowing exactly what a victim feels like.”

The sexual tension they had generated during the interrogation was pressing in on them, nearly smothering them. He took a step behind her, his left hand finding her belly. Her muscles tightened, which only served to excite them both.

“You must have wondered what it would have felt like if he had cut into your belly. Tugged at you from the inside while you were still conscious.”

Bringing his right hand into play, he let it slowly travel up her side, just barely missing the outer curve of her breast. He could feel her tremble under his touch.

She was his.

“Did you know that the hormones released in the fear response are exactly the same as those released during sex and even more so during an orgasm?”

Kent wondered how long it had been since she had climaxed. From what he had seen, Ruben got an A for effort, but a D for execution. Not that Nicole was not without her own set of skills.

From his memory, he knew she was pretty damn good at self-service. But both knew there was a world of difference between convincing your body to climax rather than surrendering to another and allowing them to coax you there.

“Well?” Kent asked.

Nicole tried to respond, but what came out was just a guttural response. No words. Just desire given breath.

“Is that why we did so well together?” Kent rubbed his five o’clock shadow against her neck. There were other soft, delicate spots where his stubble was going to come in handy.

“Were you a little afraid of what I might do?” He asked her as his left hand slowly made its way down to her waistline, exploring just under her belt for a window of entry. “Did the fear double your hormone release? Sweeten the sex? Heighten the orgasm?”

A moan was all Nicole could muster as he found an opening below her belt within the hollow of her pelvic bone. She sucked in a breath as his finger cautiously made its way along her panty-line.

“Feel the blood pounding,” he encouraged.

CHAPTER 79

How could she not feel it? Her pulse was just about the only thing she could hear. It roared so loudly that it almost drowned out Kent’s voice. It was not his words that drove her heart rate, though. It was his touch.

Despite the deep bruises up and down her neck, his light touch there made her nipples harden. So tightly that it almost hurt. Almost. Then his other hand was halfway down her belly. Just the thought of what he could do once he finished his travels sent a shiver through her body.

His hands slowed. His touch more firm. His murmurings had taken on an edge. Nicole tried to regain some semblance of control and listened more closely.

“The killer must have loved this moment,” Kent said, his seductive tone waning. “Right when the victim knew that something terrible had begun.”

Nicole’s pulse raced, only now hormones weren’t driving it. Worry was. She tried to break free, but Kent gripped her.

“The vessel of life would be engorged.” He murmured against her skin, “So perfect. So ripe.”

The profiler’s hand moved back up to her belly. Kneading his fingers as if he could touch her womb. This officially was not fun anymore.

“Kent.”

“You’re not… Not perfect. The womb had been lucky enough to hold life once, but then it was violated. The life ripped from it.”

Nicole squirmed beneath his steely grip.

He didn’t even acknowledge her anymore. Instead Kent pulled her tight against him. Not in sexual conquest, but in domination. Nicole could feel he wasn’t even hard against her. This erection was mental.

It was no longer the profiler talking, but the killer. “It was my right to take it. To reclaim it. These women didn’t understand the precious gift they were given, that they let be torn asunder.”

Nicole struggled against Kent’s restraint, however, her movement only fueled his mania. He didn’t know what he said anymore. Didn’t know how he’d hurt her.

“It’s my job to redeem the vessel.” His finger sought purchase as if he could reach the precious trophy. “My responsibility to make it pure.”

Nicole ripped away. “Stop. Just stop!”

CHAPTER 80

Kent snapped back like a switch had been flipped. He found Nicole shaking, holding her arms tightly over her belly.

“What?” Truly puzzled by her sudden change of mood, Kent smiled. “My intuition usually turns you on.”

He reached a hand out. Nicole recoiled.

Not her usual take-a-step-away-to-see-if-you’ll-follow kind of retreat, but a true rejection. “Not this time.”

Ever confident when it came to Nicole, Kent lowered his tone. “I’m sure we can recapture the mood.”

He tried to brush the hair back from her cheeks, but she actually pushed his hand away. What was up? They had just been on the cusp of making love.

Nicole certainly didn’t act like she had felt the same way. “Just go.” Her tone flat. Not even angry. Just frustrated past the point of caring.

Which only meant he needed to turn up the burner. Remind her of what they had just shared. “My dear, I was pretty set on coming.”

“Trust me. There is no sex on your horizon.” Nicole said it like a stripper who had been given a cheap tip. Said it like she actually meant it.

Kent’s mojo was in serious disrepair.

No, his mojo had been working just fine. He’d revved the engine, and she had purred. Something was up with Nicole. “Where is this coming from?”

“Just go,” she stated as she headed out of the kitchen.

“No,” Kent said, blocking her exit. “Not until you explain why you flipped an arousal U-turn.”

Nicole’s face registered shock, then anger. Big anger. Anger like the profiler had never seen from her. “Because you can’t handle the consequences. That’s why.”

“Just because a guy doesn’t want to sleep in the wet spot doesn’t mean that—”

Kent stopped mid-sentence as Nicole turned away from him, though not before he saw her eyes tear over. There was no joking his way out of this one.

There was something seriously wrong.

“Hey,” Kent said as he gently placed a hand to her shoulder. “What did Torres do to you?”

With the back of her hand, Nicole swiped away the tears. “So typical.” Her voice dropped, and her lips turned downward. “Point the finger at anybody but yourself.”

Wow. What had gotten into her? He was at a complete and total loss. He had tried seduction. He had tried humor. He had tried blanket compassion. The only thing left was honesty and that had never worked well in the past. But he knew he better try something or lose her.

“I usually pride myself on being able to follow twisted feminine logic, but I have to admit, I’m lost.”

Nicole sighed and hung her head.

For the slimmest moment, Kent thought he’d won.

“I know.” Then Nicole looked up with a sad stare. “That’s why I told you to just go.”

He hadn’t just opened himself up to have her turn him out. “No. I came here to—”

“Not to have any kind of honest relationship.” Anger rose again as she pointed at the gutted pig. “You came to fulfill your need to have a uterus of your very own, then you were hoping that if I did not notice how profoundly disturbed that was, you’d get your other needs met. End of story.”

Kent stared at the woman that he thought he knew. That he thought knew him. Is that what she deduced from all this? A little wounded by her outburst, the profiler pulled back into comfortable territory.

“If you are going to play the swami role, you’ve got to get a little more imaginative.”

Obviously that was exactly not what Nicole wanted to hear, for she lost her temper, lashing out at him. “When you left me jobless and—”

Well, Kent had enough of being her punching bag. “You weren’t fired.”

“They took my badge and my gun, Kent!”

“You got them back.” What in the hell was she going on about? Didn’t she know the sacrifices he had made? “You got everything back.”

“Not everything.” Tears rose again, making her eyes shimmer. “Some things can’t be returned.”

Unexpectedly, a feeling welled within Kent. He wanted to go over to her again. Pull her into his arms. Tell her whatever the problem, they could get through it together. But he did not. He could not. He could not even find the words to console her as she continued.

“It was not just being broke and jobless. It was…”

Was what? Kent almost verbalized the question, then wisely bit his tongue.

“I was alone and…”

The profiler waited for the end of the sentence. And waited. His empathy drained with each second.

“I was…”

Another eternal silence.

A silence that so loudly blamed him for his every inadequacy that Kent snapped, “Damn it all. How many times do I have to apologize?”

CHAPTER 81

Nicole stood in complete shock at Kent’s audacity. She had been trying, really trying to open up to him. Tell him secrets she swore she would never reveal, and he dared to complain? Dared to say he has paid his penance? How could he? He didn’t even fully know his crime.

She struggled to find words. There were so many of them. So many curses she wanted to hurl.

Finally she chose the one closest to the surface. “Once, damn it! Once would be a fucking start!”

His retort was instantaneous, “I’ve apologized plenty.”

“In your head? Probably,” she spat. It was time Kent had a little taste of reality. The gloves came off. “Role-playing with your therapist? Possibly.” Nicole shoved the snapshot in his face. “To a photograph? Maybe.” She threw the picture onto the floor. “To me? To my face? Never.”

Unflinching, Nicole stared into Kent’s eyes. Daring him to challenge her. Daring him to try and defend his actions. Daring him to say anything at all. As always, the profiler chose a silent, enigmatic response. It took a few heartbeats to realize that he really wasn’t going to answer.

More wounded by his current lack of participation now than his hurtful actions in the past, Nicole pointed to the door.

“Get out.”

“Gladly.” Kent stomped off, slamming the kitchen door behind him.

With one hand on the sink, Nicole took in each breath consciously, slowing them, guiding them. She stood strong. She wasn’t going to let Kent get to her. Break her. Break her again. It was best he left. Best he was out of her life. Then a wave of sorrow came up from her gut. A wave of hurt. A wave of disappointment. A wave of loneliness.

Once again she had gotten her hopes up. Hopes that Kent had finally realized that he needed her as much as she needed him. Hopes that he had missed her as much as she had missed him. Hopes that he would take her in his arms and tell her that he loved her as much as she loved him. That would never happen though, would it?

A sob arose from her very soul and erupted in her chest. She struggled to contain it. Struggled to hold the tears in, but it was effort in vain. Racked with sobs, Nicole couldn’t hold herself up. Even the sink became ineffective support. Nicole slumped to the floor, crying, rocking, and hugging herself. There was no one else to do it for her.

CHAPTER 82

Kent leapt down the steps and into Nicole’s car within seconds. Firing up the engine, the profiler squealed out.

He pounded his fist against the steering wheel. “Don’t take responsibility for my actions?” He hit the unforgiving plastic again. “I was voted best in group therapy for that!”

Oh, there was so much he had wanted to tell Nicole. Actually there was so much he had wanted to shout at her, yet none of it would come. What would it have mattered?

Swerving around a corner, the profiler hit the curb and just kept on driving.

Damn it, why couldn’t Nicole let go of the past? Wasn’t she always harping about carpe diem? She was like a freaking dog with a bone about it. But when push came to shove, she was the one who couldn’t let go. The detective had to rehash every detail of the implosion that was their breakup.

Kent couldn’t help himself, he shouted to the car as if it were Nicole. “Miss ‘I was alone. I was…” Anger built until it exploded again. “How about taking responsibility for finishing a fucking sentence?”

The profiler took a corner way too fast and nearly skidded out. Nicole really should check her tire pressure a little more often. Which reminded him of another affront.

“Oh, and broke? My ass. They didn’t even have time to foreclose on the house,” he yelled at the dashboard.

A fist pounded the steering wheel again. The woman had some nerve. Damn it, he’s the one who had been arrested, having blood drawn every hour on the hour to check for mad cow disease and somehow she was the one that went on and on about how crappy her life had been?

“Lost your job? You were on fucking paid administrative leave!” he shouted out the window.

Mildly aware he really was starting to act like he was off his meds, Kent rolled up the window. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him in lockup again.

CHAPTER 83

Nicole’s body spasmed one last time. She had no more tears. Her breaths came in erratic gasps. Her throat swollen and hoarse. She was truly spent.

All she wanted to do was curl up in bed, however, a splayed pig, courtesy of Kent, of course, stared back at her from the kitchen table. There was no rest for the weary. Or was it the wicked?

Shrugging off philosophy, she rose and picked up an embroidered dishtowel, one her grandmother had stitched for her when she first went away to college.

Then she took a good look at the mess. These stains would not come out. Putting the gift back into the drawer, Nicole grabbed an entire roll of paper towels.

This was a job for Brawny.

At least Kent hadn’t been joking about the plastic. He had in fact lined the floor with garbage bags before he hacked open the pig. Still there was the splatter. Nicole knew she should really get the pig off the table, but she just could not face that task yet. It was huge. It covered her entire kitchen table with the expansion leaf in.

Where in the hell had he gotten such a beast? She was about to ask how the profiler had paid for it, given that pork was about two bucks a pound, then realized that was a stupid question. Kent didn’t pay for anything. Ever.

Financially or emotionally.

The profiler had some contact somewhere that not only got him a carcass in the middle of the night, but probably drove it over here for him. Someone like Dolores, or even Nicole a few years ago. If someone as brilliant as Kent wanted a pig in the middle of the night, obviously it had to be important.

Finally done with the peripheral cleanup, Nicole could no longer avoid the large porcine mess that had taken over her kitchen. She rolled up her sleeves. Kent wasn’t the neatest surgeon. Well, at least it was good to know he wasn’t perfect at everything.

As she struggled to untie the pig’s front leg, Nicole found her eyes straying to its exposed abdomen. It was truly a disgusting sight. Guts hanging out. What looked like a bladder flopped over the side of the body wall. How did doctors do it? Stare at gore like this? Worse, medical examiners had to look at the most distorted and grotesque bodies imaginable.

Yet with all this repulsion, Nicole found herself pushing her sleeve further up her arm. She couldn’t help but wonder what it felt like. To plunge your hand into a belly like that. To find the uterus and hold it in your hand? She had seen Kent’s face. Twice. Wonder and satisfaction had radiated from his normally somber features.

Had the killer practiced like this?

Had he possibly even gotten the idea of taking his very specific trophy from visiting slaughterhouses?

Focusing on the victim always opened up so many new avenues of investigation for the profiler. It was Kent’s forte. Even though he had broken over a dozen laws in 2003 by eating the homeless man’s brain, it had been just such a bizarre feat that had led Kent to the killer.

How else besides eating fresh brain would the profiler have thought to look up exotic New Zealand spice importers?

Nicole was about to put her fingers into the belly when she remembered Kent hadn’t stopped there. He had gone on to eat the killer’s brain as well.

“No,” she said to herself as she rolled her sleeve back down. Kent had been right when he said she had started down the slippery slope by blackmailing him. If she stuck her hand in this pig, where would it stop? Obviously the profiler didn’t know where, but she did.

“I am not going there,” Nicole said as she freed the pig and slid the carcass inside a garbage bag. She didn’t need to act like a psycho to catch one.

CHAPTER 84

The killer watched as Nicole struggled to lift the pig by herself. Her man had driven off after the fight, leaving her with the mess. No great surprise. From the cracked-open door of the pantry, the killer had seen it all.

From the aborted seduction to the soul-tearing fight to the gut-wrenching departure. Through it all, the killer had eyes only for Nicole. Her former lover, the supposed profiler, was nothing. He strutted, and he patted himself on the back, but he wasn’t even close.

The profiler hadn’t even known the killer was only ten feet away. If this was the best opponent the police could find, the killer was not worried. Not a bit.

The detective walked back in, cheeks tear-streaked and flushed from the exertion of hauling the carcass outside. How perfect she looked. Masculine enough to clean up the mess the profiler had left, feminine enough to sob so hard the killer thought Nicole might hurt herself.

The killer snapped to attention as the detective knelt down on the floor. What was she doing? Slowly Nicole rose with the photo. Using the back of her hand, the detective wiped away some pig blood from the edge.

Would she keep it? The killer wondered.

Nicole went to throw the picture away, but the trashcan was completely full.

“Crap,” she said. “Garbage day.”

Setting the photo down on the counter, Nicole tugged the bag out of the can and turned away from the killer. The detective’s back was ever so perfect. It sloped gently into a full buttock. And her hair was the perfect length. Just past the shoulder. The otherwise straight locks, curved upward at the very end, made the whole of Nicole’s hair bounce and sway.

Just like Mother’s. Tugging at the ends of the latex gloves, the killer made sure they were on tight.

The time was almost at hand.

Could there be a more perfect final sacrifice?

CHAPTER 85

Kent drove fifteen miles over the speed limit. He needed to just go. As fast as possible. He had controlled the impulse to spontaneously shout out the window, but still he mumbled to himself. That was the one big drawback to being such a loner. When the only person you can talk to kicks you out, there is no one else to grumble to.

“Never told her I’m sorry? What a crock…”

With a glimmer, the profiler imagined making Nicole a tape. A tape of him saying over and over and over again that he was sorry. He’d put it to that old Thompson Twins song, “Hold me now.” Or maybe it was “The Gap?”

Whatever the song, it was the one where the singer laments that he’ll say he’s sorry even though he doesn’t know what he’s sorry for. Kent could relate to that guy.

A thousand apologies weren’t good enough for her.

Would saying it tonight, one more time, really have made a difference? Had it ever made a difference all the other times he’d said it?

Kent perked up. That’s right. She hadn’t accepted his apology before. He could throw that fact back in her face. His mind raced, trying to remember the last time he had said he was sorry. Oh, to be able to go back to her with proof of his rebuked contrition.

As he made another right turn, the profiler tried to picture it in his mind. The last time, or hell, anytime he had been rebuffed when saying he was sorry. Come on, just once was all he needed.

Kent had said those words to her before. Right?

Out loud, to Nicole, right?

With her in the same room, right?

The car slowed as his foot slipped from the gas pedal. In all this time he’d said he was sorry, right? He must have. Sure, he’d said it in therapy. Sure he’d said it to her picture, then kissed it with tears on his lips. The more his mind sorted through their history, the more and more certain he became that he had in fact never, ever, ever apologized to her.

No wonder she was pissed.

Flipping an illegal U-turn, Kent raced back to Nicole’s. It might not make a bit of difference. It might not matter at all. Yet at the very least, after everything he had put her through, he would actually say he was sorry.

With her in the room and everything.

Luckily his haphazard route had not taken him far from her home. A left, then a quick right brought him to her driveway. The profiler hopped out and took the stairs two at a time to her front door.

He had to hurry before he rationalized himself out of it. Like somehow an e-mail apology might suffice. Shoving those thoughts from his mind, he picked the lock and rushed inside.

“Nic,” he said as he made his way to the kitchen.

He arrived to find the pig gone, but blood still pooled in the plastic bags. Okay, Nicole was slacking. In the old days this room would have been spick-and-span by now.

Where had she gotten to? He crossed the room and noticed his favorite picture of Nicole tossed on the floor. It was smeared with blood. Had she desecrated it on purpose? Or was it an accident? And why did the answer to that question matter so much to him?

“Nic?”

Hearing a sound, Kent turned, but not fast enough.

A blow came, throwing him forward. He tried to torque to see his assailant, Plain Jane. He knew it had to be, even though his attacker was shrouded in shadow.

Feeling incredibly stupid, Kent lost consciousness.

CHAPTER 86

Nicole raised a hand. “Did you hear something?”

Ruben looked back at her house. He had heard something, but he wasn’t about to admit it. For once he had Nicole alone. Granted it was in the middle of the night, under the guise of official business, in her backyard out by the trash cans, and there was a huge hog carcass sticking up out of the trash. A sight they both chose not to mention.

But they were alone, damn it.

“No,” he said, trying to sound definitive.

He tapped her shoulder, pulling her attention back. He had no doubt Kent was back. He was like a fucking boomerang. Ruben knew this was probably going to be his only window of opportunity.

Getting back to the matter, he continued, “I’m here to talk to you about something you aren’t going to like.”

“Please, Ruben. I can’t. Not tonight.”

“We have to.”

Nicole wiped a stray hair from her face. She looked as beat as she sounded. “I’m sure you think we have to, but I’ve had a really shitty day.”

“Me too,” Ruben said before he thought it through. “You know, even before we became…” Given Nicole’s distant look, he decided that he best not get too specific. “More than friends, on a night like this we could go out for a beer and commiserate.”

“Those days…” Nicole could not look him in the eye. “And nights. They’re over, Ruben. I’m sorry.”

There was so much he wanted to say. So much he wanted to tell her. So much he wanted to warn her about Kent. But he had to face it. If she said their relationship was over, it was over. “I guess we got to resolve some things after all?”

“Yeah, I guess we did.” Her voice gave no inflection. Nicole looked as if she were sleeping where she stood.

“Look, that’s not what I came over for. Glick sent me on official business.”

“That could not wait until dawn?”

Ruben shuffled his feet. This was not going to go well. Not well at all. “We have two uteri missing.”

For the first time, it seemed Nicole had life breathed into her. “What are you talking about?”

“Both Joann and Martin’s landlady… Their wombs were stolen after their autopsies.”

Instantly, his partner was back on her game. “That means the killer must have access to the morgue.”

“Or…” Ruben hesitated. Almost wishing he was not the one discussing this with her. Let someone else get skewered once in a while. Unfortunately, it was his job. “Or someone ‘lifted’ them for his own personal amusement.”

Strangely, Nicole sounded more quizzical than angry. “And you are trying to blame Kent for this?”

Ruben indicated the dead pig sticking half out of her garbage can. “It’s not much of a stretch, Nikki.”

“Okay.”

Nicole started toward the house. Ruben followed. “What do you mean, okay?”

She shrugged. “If you think it’s Kent, then go get him. Interrogate him. Torture him for all I care.”

“But—”

“I’m done with men for the night. With you. With Kent. I’m going inside, by myself, and going to bed.”

Ruben watched her walk away. He had never seen her like this. He knew how to fight with her. He knew how to sway her to his side.

But how did you overcome complete and total apathy?

CHAPTER 87

Just before she entered her house, Nicole turned to Ruben. “If you are really feeling motivated, you can put out an APB on my car. He’s got it.”

Her partner’s face clouded over. Obviously confused by her behavior, he gave a curt nod, then left.

Actually, after she said it, Nicole realized she wouldn’t be displeased at all if they hauled Kent’s ass in for taking her car. The sight would give her a reason to get up in the morning. Perhaps he should be as inconvenienced as she was… constantly.

Of course, she’d be the one to bail him out, but still. Nicole was in the mood for a tiny bit of revenge.

Entering the kitchen, the detective found the floor smeared with blood. Damn it, she knew she had heard a noise. It must have been Kent, because the damn stain was in the shape of a uterus.

“Dear God, why can’t you just send flowers like every other guy?”

Grabbing the roll of paper towels again, Nicole started cleaning up the red design. She was halfway done when she heard a creak from upstairs. From her bedroom. Putting down the cleaning supplies, she rose.

It was time to get this over with.

“Yeah, this would be your warped idea of an apology.”

With little relish, Nicole climbed the stairs and entered her bedroom. Sure enough, there was a lump under the covers. A lump on the left side. Kent’s side. You had to give him credit, he had audacity.

“Honestly, Harbinger, your seduction techniques could use some updating.”

Or not. Wasn’t this how it used to be? They would fight. Fight so badly that they finally told each other to fuck off. Kent would take the car and disappear for hours. Then when it came time for Nicole to go to bed, there he would be. Naked. Warm. Inviting. He would open the covers, and she would crawl in beside him.

Her skin could still remember his embrace. They would just lie there entangled in each other’s limbs. Unspoken, each of them asking for forgiveness and receiving it. Then, well then, Kent would make it up to her. For hours sometimes. In ways that Ruben would never dream of.

That was long ago and an exceptional lay was not going to get the profiler back into her good graces.

“Kent,” she said as she walked over to the bed. “Damn it, this isn’t going to work.” Nicole shook the figure. Something was wrong. It gave no resistance. “What the—”

Pulling back the covers she found the lump was no more than a bunch of pillows. Why would Kent do this? Worse, they were streaked with blood. Had he finally lost it altogether? She found the note, writing scrawled all over it. Whatever Kent’s issues were, they were his. Still, curiosity got the best of her. She read the message. Then reread it.

It couldn’t be.

“I have him. Come alone.”

“No…” Nicole read it again. How could it be? How could someone have kidnapped the most efficient profiler the FBI had ever known? It must be a joke. Kent must have faked it. Was pulling some psychological stunt. Make her think he was in danger, forcing her to realize how much she cared. Even as she fleshed it out, the detective knew it wasn’t true. Kent was many things, but an attention seeker? Never.

That only left one possibility. The profiler truly was taken. She read the note again. “Come alone.” Where? Where was she to come? Nicole spun around. What was that noise?

Instinctively she reached for her gun, but the weapon was downstairs. Along with the sound. No, music. Not just music but “Spin Me Right Round.”

The tune for an incoming text message.

Running headlong down the stairs, Nicole snatched up her phone and read the scrolling message.

“Felter and Chayma Way. Convenience store. Alone.”

The alone was underlined, italicized, and bolded.

Nicole guessed Plain Jane meant it.

CHAPTER 88

Kent blinked his eyes, uncertain where he was or even when he was. The last he remembered, he’d been at Nicole’s.

Nicole!

Snapping fully awake, Kent searched the surrounding room. Dank. Dark. Moist. Subterranean, more than likely. Rough stone at his back.

The glimmering metal more than likely steel.

No Nicole.

Directly across the room, a blank screen stared at him. Kent tried to reach out, only to find his wrists chained to the wall. He tugged, then tugged again, hard. The chains were meant to last.

Craning his neck, Kent felt blood trickle into his eye. Good information. He hadn’t been unconscious for longer than an hour, otherwise, the laceration would have clotted. That knowledge did not diminish the throbbing. A ten-lager-out-until-four-in-the-morning kind of headache.

Blinking rapidly to get the blood from his vision, Kent reviewed his situation out loud, partially to check to make sure his verbal and auditory functions were still working, and partly just to fill the emptiness.

“All right. Let’s see…” He tugged at the chains. “I’m chained up…” His glance took in the small room again. “In a dingy basement…” Sighing, Kent finished, “By a killer who targets brunette women.”

He leaned his throbbing head back. “Nope. Definitely did not see this one coming.”

Kent didn’t feel terribly bad about not divining his fate. Who would have?

The reasons were incomprehensible. He had been seized by Plain Jane, of that he had no doubt. But why? More importantly, was Nicole safe? Had the killer already dispatched her and only took him to prevent any witnesses? Did Plain Jane have trepidation about killing a man?

So many questions rattled around his mind that they only made his head pound more. A sudden light from across the room brought all of this conjecture to a halt. The illumination came from the computer screen.

Once it bloomed fully, words typed as a mechanized Hal-like voice accompanied them. “How’s the head?”

How many times had the profiler wished for just this opportunity? An opportunity to talk to Plain Jane. However, he had visualized it under drastically different circumstances.

It was those circumstances that made garnering valuable insight into Plain Jane even more pressing. So against every grain in his body, Kent kept his tone light, almost casual, but inside he was anything but laid back.

“You know, concussed.”

“You’ll live.”

The profiler within him perked at the choice of the killer’s words. His own voice took on a more serious tone.

“Will I?”

“Someone has to survive to make them understand why I had to do this.”

Kent did not have to pretend to be relieved. “Absolutely, I am your guy. Give me a pencil and a piece of paper, and I’m your scribe.”

“Don’t play me. I know all the tricks you use to lure people out.”

Not only did the killer’s confidence not intimidate Kent, it galvanized the profiler to make sure he tricked the bastard. To ensnare Plain Jane in a tangle of psychological techniques. “So, no face to face? Man-to-man talk?”

“No. I don’t think that will ever happen.”

Quickly trying another tack, Kent acted as if he had given up. “All right then, shoot.” He looked up instantly. “Not literally, of course.”

The computer screen remained blank. The killer had not risen to the bait. Perhaps he needed to try an even more direct approach. “Why kill women, then take their uteri?”

Damn, Plain Jane could type fast. The words came faster than Kent could read them. “Why act crazy when you are saner than I am?”

Kent snorted lightly. “That’s faint praise coming from a man who’s chained me in his basement.”

“You know what I meant.”

Kent decided to use his strongest interrogation method. Arrogant indifference. “My head hurts, and I’m not going to do this tit-for-tat Clarice thing with you.” He shifted his weight, getting comfortable for the long haul. “You want your story told, tell it, otherwise, log off.”

“Trying reverse psychology on me?”

“Nope.” Kent didn’t even open his eyes. “I’ve just got a screaming headache, courtesy of you, I might add.”

There was a long silence. The profiler worried that he might have lost him. Perhaps acting bored worked well in an interrogation room, however, it might not be the best weapon to use when you were chained up.

“Picture loading.”

Kent kept his eyes closed.

“Picture complete.”

The profiler fought opening his eyes. Whatever the picture was, it was meant to throw him off-balance. Meant to rattle him. Horrify him. Throw him off his game. Kent could not let that happen. His life, and possibly Nicole’s life, depended on it.

However, he could not ignore it forever. Taking in measured breaths, the profiler opened his eyes and looked at the screen. At first he did not understand why the killer had bothered to show it to him. It was just the picture he had taken of Nicole sleeping.

Sure, it was blood smeared, but Kent already knew that. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust before he realized that there was a message.

“I have him. Come alone.”

The computer chimed again. “Copy of text message sent 4:05: Felter and Chayma way, convenience store, alone.”

“No!” Kent threw himself against his restraints.

“Oh, my. Do I have your attention now?” Plain Jane laughed. A tinny, hollow, computer-generated laugh that echoed off the barren walls.

CHAPTER 89

Nicole pulled up to the curb at the corner of Felter and Chayma Way, to find an all-night convenience store. Bars on the windows. Probably a shotgun under the counter. There were a dozen such in the city. Why had the killer picked this one? Was there some personal connection?

Was it near his lair?

Having none of the answers to those questions, the detective put the car in park and took in a few deep breaths. The car still held Kent’s aroma. It had only been an hour since he had driven off into the night. He must have come back while she and Ruben argued in the backyard. If only she had cut the discussion short. Could she have stopped the kidnapping?

There was no real point in torturing herself anymore. She needed to get inside the store. Nicole tried to peer inside. Not only were the windows covered in bars, but the inside of the glass was lined with beer sales. Beer advertisements. Beer models endorsing the beer. There was not a clear view inside. Maybe that’s why the killer had picked it? She was going to have to go in half blind.

Nicole picked up the stained picture. It didn’t seem such a travesty that Kent had taken the photo anymore. If anything happened to him, at least…

No, the detective refused to go down that road. It was time to be a cop instead of a woman.

Rising from her car, Nicole threw glances down the road. No one. The streets were deserted.

Confidently, or at least she hoped she looked confident, she entered the store. A greasy clerk grunted in her general direction, not even looking up from his exercise machine infomercial. Unless her instincts were totally off, he was no threat. Quickly she took the first aisle to her right, then proceeded to the back of the store.

Slowly she walked past each aisle, glancing down it as if she were looking for a hard-to-find item. Each empty except the row that housed car engine oil next to the soap and cold remedies. There, a tired mother tried to figure out which syrup would quiet her prepubescent son’s cough. He hacked and hacked, following Nicole with his eyes.

Continuing on, she reached the end of the aisles. There was a bathroom, locked. No light spilled under the door. So far, besides the clerk, there were only the mother and child.

No sign of the killer.

On edge, as the anxiety amplified in her veins, Nicole asked the clerk, “Do you have a restroom?”

The man grunted at a gold key attached to a large cardboard cutout of a toilet. Classy. Nicole took it and headed to the back corner of the store. Hidden from plain sight, she pulled her weapon.

Jerking open the door, Nicole quickly surveyed the tiny, cluttered, dirty restroom. No one. Another dead end. Re-holstering her weapon, the detective felt close to tears. She was rapidly running out of options.

CHAPTER 90

Kent struggled against his metal restraints. This could not be happening. He took very little comfort knowing that Nicole was still alive, because he was pretty damn certain her clock was ticking down. Obviously he had interrupted the killer. Plain Jane had no choice but to take him, then use him.

Use him as bait.

“Hey!” Kent yelled again, yet the computer screen only showed a peaceful underwater scene.

Ignoring the pain in his head and neck, Kent craned to look up at his shackle. Shit. It was a shiny new O ring, as thick as his thumb. His chains were older, but still solid.

Jerking on them again, he watched the O ring. It didn’t budge. Not a speck of dust indicating that it might be loose in the wall. As a matter of fact, on closer inspection, the damn thing had been cemented into the brick. Short of pulling a power drill out of his ass, Kent doubted there was any way he could break his restraints.

His anger grew. “Answer me, damn it!”

In response, the screen filled with twirling hourglasses and flashed, “Busy at the moment.”

Throwing all his weight forward, Kent only succeeded in nearly dislocating his shoulders.

“Don’t do it, Nic,” he whispered to the dank room. He knew his appeal reached deaf ears. Nicole would be racked with guilt. Racked with “what-ifs.” What if they had not fought? What if she hadn’t let him walk out?

With nearly a sob, he said, “Don’t go, Nic. Don’t go.”

CHAPTER 91

At the sound of the door chime, Nicole swung around. Could this new customer be him? Be Plain Jane? The shopper appeared to be a young male. It was hard to tell, as he wore his sweatshirt hood pulled up over his head, tied tightly around his face. Gangsta-style.

While his attire screamed “street cred,” his manner was nervous. His steps came too close together. His shoulders slumped too far forward. His chin dipped to his chest as he made a beeline for the magazine stand. Instead of taking a few seconds to scan the racks, he picked one, apparently at random.

Fairly certain he hadn’t seen her, Nicole slowly made her way across the back of the store, keeping the aisle displays between her and the new man. She stopped as she came to the last row. There was a good ten feet between her and the magazine rack. Ten feet where he could spot her. Ten feet and her cover would be blown. The man changed position, ever so subtly, shifting his weight to his right leg. His shoulder turned toward the front of the store. He was staking out the door.

Knowing this was her best chance, Nicole cautiously came up behind him, shoving her gun into his ribs.

“Where is he?”

He tried to turn, but she dug the barrel into his side. “Eyes forward.”

“Is that a gun?” the man asked. His voice high-pitched and crackly. Certainly not “gangsta.”

“Yes, and I will use it if you don’t tell me where he is.”

In a whirl of arms and legs, the man knocked the magazine rack onto her and tried to flee out the back door. Nicole slipped on a slick Playboy magazine and lost a good two steps on him. He was fast, sprinting for the exit like a rabbit. If he got out onto the street, he could easily disappear into the night.

That wasn’t about to happen, as Ruben burst in along with three cops. They easily subdued the suspect.

“Let me go!” he screamed, almost like a little girl.

These psycho bastards didn’t hold up too well under real- life circumstances. With a certain amount of satisfaction, Nicole re-holstered her weapon.

“Did you really think I’d come alone?”

She wasn’t Kent. Every once in a while she did things by the book. Especially when someone’s life was on the line. When Kent’s life was on the line.

Nicole walked up to the hooded man. Soon he could not hide in anonymity. Confidently she jerked the material away from his face, then took a step back. She knew him. Knew that face.

It was the morgue attendant.

“Joshua?” she asked.

“Detective Usher, what’re you doing here?”

“Me?” the detective asked perplexed. “What are…?”

Then it registered. She looked at Ruben, whose mind was obviously processing this new information as quickly as hers. The question was on both their faces. Could the killer have been right under their noses the whole time? Could Josh be Plain Jane?

“The missing uteri,” Ruben commented.

“The knowledge of police procedure.”

They both stared at the morgue attendant.

“What?” he asked, as if he had not just been apprehended at the rendezvous point picked by the killer.

“Joshua, you’d best come with us.”

“Are you arresting me?” the young man squealed. “For looking at soft-core? If the bondage stuff bugs you, I’ll quit. I promise.”

Ruben had obviously heard enough. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything—”

“I don’t want to remain silent!” Joshua squealed.

“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of—”

Josh hopped up and down. “I don’t want to go to a court of law!”

Nicole put her hand on his shoulder. “This is serious.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” he implored.

“Then why were you here tonight?” Nicole asked.

CHAPTER 92

Instead of answering Nicole, the morgue attendant squirmed. Ruben had seen enough. “I’ll call in for a search warrant on his apartment and locker at work.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa there!” Joshua shook his head violently. “That’s just crazy talk, that’s what that is.”

Both he and Nicole glared at the morgue attendant. So far all of this had been crazy talk.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Josh conceded. “But if he strikes because of this, it’s your fault. The blood’s on your hands.”

Nicole squinted. “What’re you talking about?”

The attendant went for his pocket, but Ruben was right there. He cranked the man’s arm up and behind his back. “That’s enough.”

“Ouch! It’s in my pocket. The printout.”

Ruben wasn’t about to let the attendant go, so he nodded to Nicole. His partner fished through his right pocket and came out with a condom.

“Jeez! The other pocket,” Joshua protested.

Nicole found a piece of paper carefully folded into quarters. She opened it and read it out loud. “I’m tired of all this. I can’t stop myself. If you wish to meet the real Plain Jane, come to the convenience store at…” Nicole skimmed a section. “Blah, blah, blah… Come alone or else you—” his partner indicated to the bottom of the torn page. “It’s cut off here.”

“I spilled Jolt on it. He said I wouldn’t make it home alive if I didn’t do exactly what he said.”

Ruben could tell that his partner was vacillating. She was considering believing him. He had to cut that impulse off at the pass. “He could have sent it to himself.”

“But I didn’t. I swear!”

“If this was real, you should have contacted either Torres or myself,” Nicole said.

Damn right, Ruben thought.

“Come on, like you would have taken me seriously.” Ruben tightened his grip on the attendant’s arm to let him know that excuse was not flying. Joshua hurried on. “I had a buddy of mine at Forensics trace the e-mail address, but the trail ended at an Internet café.” The attendant was nearly frantic. “Which didn’t have any security surveillance. I checked!”

Bored by the attendant’s tirade, Ruben glanced at Nicole, but she seemed to be buying it.

“So I thought I might as well try. I mean the meeting was at a public place. I thought—”

Ruben had had enough and shoved the attendant into one of the uniform’s custody. “We’ll see what the search warrant turns up, then have another chat.”

Joshua began to rant again, but Ruben turned to Nicole, but she was no longer beside him.

Instead she strode out. “Usher,” he called after her. She didn’t stop so he grabbed her by the arm, forcing her. “We’ll find Harbinger, but we’ve got to stay calm. Rational.”

But when Nicole turned to face him, tears welled in her eyes. “It’s a little too late for that.”

CHAPTER 93

Nicole turned away before Ruben could think of another clichéd, patronizing thing to say to her. She strode out and into the crisp night.

Despondent, Nicole leaned against the wall and slowly slid down until she was sitting on her heels.

Cops flooded in and out the door.

Too little, too late.

Or too many, too soon.

She had blown her one chance, and she knew it. Nicole had thought she was safeguarding Kent’s life by playing it by the book. Now she could see psychos did not follow any rules.

Kent would have shown up alone. He would have followed the creep’s instructions to the letter. Then in a fit of brilliance, Harbinger would have sprung a trap. Of what type, Nicole had no idea. She wasn’t that damn smart.

“You Nicole?” a young voice asked.

The detective wiped the tears away and looked up. It was the boy with the cough. “Yes.”

“The cop?”

“Yes. I’m sorry if I scared you in there.”

The boy shook his head. “Nah. He warned me that would happen.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

The kid acted like she was a little slow in the head. “He said you’d probably bring lots of friends with you.”

Sitting straight up, Nicole pushed her hair behind her ears as if that would help her comprehend the boy’s cryptic statement. “Who said that?”

“The man that gave me twenty bucks to pretend to have a cough so my mom would bring me down here.”

“What else did he pay you for?”

“To tell you to go down that alley, but this time, really come alone.”

Was it possible that she was being given a second chance? Was this really a message from Plain Jane? “What did he look like?”

The boy shrugged. “Some bum on the street. A guy gave him twenty to tell me from another guy.”

Yep, that sounded like the psycho. Covering his tracks seamlessly. Nicole looked down the alley. It was dark and stretched well beyond her field of vision.

Alone, huh?

Down there?

Nicole looked back into the store. Ruben was busy coordinating the cops. She couldn’t read lips, but knew procedure well enough to know he was rolling out a canvas of the neighborhood. Should she involve him?

“Alone,” the boy emphasized the word. “He said he’d be watching.”

The detective licked her lips. She bet the killer would be. Nodding, Nicole pointed inside to Ruben. “See that detective in there?”

“The mad one?”

“Yes, that one.” Rapidly, she tried to think like Kent. How could she spin this situation to her advantage? “He’ll be coming out to look for me in a little while. I want you to tell him exactly what you told me. Exactly. Okay?”

“Okay,” the boy said extending his hand. Nicole went to shake it, but he pulled back. “No, I want twenty bucks.”

Nicole gave a grim smile, then pulled out her wallet. She pulled out two bills. “Here’s forty. Make sure I’m out of sight before you tell him, right?”

The boy pocketed the money so quickly it was almost a sleight of hand. “Right.”

Without hesitation, Nicole walked away from the boy and into the darkened alley. Once out of sight, she drew her weapon and slowed her pace. This guy had taken Kent, and without much of a struggle.

What chance did she have against him?

As Nicole progressed down the alley, the light waned even further. She looked back over her shoulder. Safety was only forty feet away. Everything in her head told her to turn back. Get a strike team to assault whatever structure there was at the end of the alley, but her gut said to go forward. One step at a time. One foot at a time.

Halfway down the alley, a brick wall came into view. And up above that dead end was a small camera, its red light blinking ominously.

Her gut was right.

With more urgency, Nicole covered the rest of the distance to find a large, rusted metal door slightly ajar. She checked all around it. Nothing. The detective opened it further as the hinges screamed in protest.

She was going to have to squeeze through. Not the best strategic position to be in going into an unknown, hostile environment. But what else could she do?

Figuring it was exactly what Kent would do, Nicole shimmied her way through the door and found that it led into a large, dark warehouse. The rafters were so high that Nicole could not clearly make out the ceiling. A sniper could be up there. A net waiting to sweep down.

Anything.

“This is such a bad idea,” she whispered.

Taking her first step across the wide space, something scrambled under foot. Startled, Nicole tried to track the movement with her gun, but it was too erratic. Finally it stopped. Two yellow eyes blazed from under a desk.

A cat. A black cat.

A black cat had just crossed her path. She wasn’t normally superstitious, but come on.

“Why couldn’t he just have kidnapped me?”

Stilling the shake of her hands, Nicole continued across the cavernous warehouse. “Kent is so much better at this lurking crap than I am.”

CHAPTER 94

Kent tugged against his chains. Intellectually he knew there were at least four fulcrum points along his restraints where they were the most likely to break, but his chafed wrists were telling him it just wasn’t happening. Plain Jane wasn’t a risk taker. He wasn’t impulsive. Finally giving up, he slumped back against the damp wall.

“You should’ve kidnapped her,” he said.

The screen saver dissolved as letters typed. “Why?”

“Because, duh.” Kent rattled his chains. “This is a little uncomfortable.”

“So sorry to inconvenience you.”

Kent sighed and leaned back. If the psycho was busy talking to him, he couldn’t exactly be out killing Nicole. He needed to buy as much time as possible.

“So, why uteri?” Kent asked, slipping back into his I’m-not-laughing-with-you, I’m-laughing-at-you attitude. “Were you an overdue baby? Not breast-fed long enough?”

“You would like it if it were that simple.”

“Yeah, I would.” That was probably the first truthful statement he had made to the killer. This whole typing, mechanized-voice thing was not giving Kent the insight he needed. Tone of voice. Cadence. Eye position. Those were the needles on the compass.

“You’re going to have to do better than that before Nicole gets here, or I won’t let you watch.”

That got Kent’s attention. He sat more erect. His back stiff. Unfortunately by doing so, he was giving Plain Jane way more information than he was getting.

“You like watching her?” it asked. “Stalking her?”

Kent’s mind reeled. How long had the killer been watching Nicole? And him? Without these answers, it was difficult to know which tack to take. He chose cryptic. “We have a complicated relationship.”

“So she wanted you to take those pictures at her boyfriend’s house?”

It was bad enough to be criticized by Nicole and other cops, but to have a serial killer call you out on your eccentric behavior? “Hey, at least I managed to keep my psychosis within legal bounds.”

“Your habit of ‘borrowing’ others’ items?”

Wow, not only called out but bitch-slapped as well. “Okay, but at least I keep them under felony level.”

“That’s up for debate. For now, I must go meet my future mother…”

There was a pause, and the screen saver tried to come up, but another message flashed. “I should thank you, really. I never would have chosen Nicole if it weren’t for you.”

The screen blurred again. “No!” Kent yelled, then restrained himself. “Damn it, throw me a bone here.”

“Why don’t I show you?”

A loud sound came from across the room. The grinding, then catch of a motor. The room shook from the effort of the engine.

Kent plastered himself against the wall. What in the hell was happening? Then he realized that the far wall was not really a wall at all, but a door. A huge metal door that was rumbling open.

He squinted. His eyes were so used to the dark that even the soft light peeking in caused them to hurt.

Finally the door swung open completely. He blinked to clear his vision, then blinked again. What stood before him seemed impossible. Impossibly huge. Impossibly…

Well, just impossible.

CHAPTER 95

Ruben nodded as a uniform told him what he already knew. The canvas had turned up squat. Just like they did every time Plain Jane struck. He looked over as the sea of blue parted to allow Glick to enter the convenience store. “Captain.”

Glick glanced around the room. “Where’s Usher?”

“Cooling off.” Ruben indicated the front door.

“Well, when she hears this, she’s going to want to come back in and talk to our little Joshua, here.”

They both glared at the morgue attendant.

“What?” the kid asked.

The captain didn’t seem to believe the kid’s innocent tone either. “We found two preserved uteri in your apartment.”

Joshua squirmed. “Yeah, about those.” Clearing his throat, his words came out more panicked. “I can explain!”

Glick looked around. “Usher really should be here.”

Ruben pulled Joshua to his feet. “I’m through chasing her. If she wants to be a part of this, then she needs to stay put.”

“Your call,” Glick said, then turned to Joshua. “Now, you were going to explain?”

CHAPTER 96

Nicole reached the far side of the warehouse. Nothing. She’d found only abandoned machinery.

Rusted over, abandoned machinery. This place must have been deserted for decades. Then she noticed a shadow deeper than the rest in the corner. A trapdoor. By the lack of dust, it had clearly been opened recently. Nicole jerked it open. A long flight of stairs descended into darkness.

“Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”

The detective did a four-point check around the opening. She searched for any hidden trip wires or explosives. It appeared clean. Looking over her shoulder, Nicole could barely make out the door she had come in.

Should she go back? The detective looked at the stairs. Or should she go down? There was no question in her mind what Kent would do.

With a prayer on her lips, she carefully climbed down the steps. Once to the landing of the basement level, she spotted a dim light down the narrow corridor.

Still cautious, Nicole crept toward the illumination, keeping an ear open for backup.

What was taking Torres so long?

“Damn it, Ruben,” she grumbled to herself. “The one time I need you up my ass…”

To her shock, a bizarre mechanical voice answered her. “That’s your problem, always relying on men.”

Spinning around, Nicole tried to get a bead on the sound’s source. “Why don’t you come out here and face me like a man?”

“It is very unlikely that’ll ever happen.”

Nicole resumed her forward movement, but tilted her head, trying to get a bearing on the voice. “You can’t look me in the eye, can you?”

“Oh, I’ve looked you in the eye.” The voice was so distorted that Nicole couldn’t tell if Plain Jane was happy, upset, or proud of the fact. “That’s how I chose you. You will be the one to nurture me.”

Nicole couldn’t help snorting. “Bad call. If you knew me at all, you’d know I’m not the nurturing type.”

The detective spotted a door at the end of the hallway. A door that was bolted, apparently locked from the outside.

“Quite the contrary. You practically have Kent suckling at your breast, he’s that dependent upon you.”

With extreme caution, Nicole inspected the locking mechanism. It just looked like a simple bolt and latch.

“You are desperate to find him, aren’t you?”

Yes she was, but Nicole wasn’t going to admit that to psycho boy. Ever so carefully she unhooked the bolt and slid it back. No explosion. No flying daggers.

“Go on, go inside. See how low your man has been brought down.”

Clenching her jaw, Nicole’s mind whirred. Clearly it was a trap. God, how she wished it had been she who was kidnapped. Kent would know what to do. But he wasn’t here. Or at least on this side of the door. Resolved, she transferred her gun to her left hand and jerked the door open.

But it was empty.

There was a computer screen at one end and a set of chains at the other, but no Kent. No anyone.

“What?” Nicole asked as the mechanical voice echoed the question, sounding equally surprised.

CHAPTER 97

“Watch out!” Kent yelled as he tackled Nicole.

As they tumbled to the ground, the glint of a metal garrote narrowly missed her neck. While Nicole’s reaction was to fire into the darkness, Kent scrambled up and ran for the door, but it slammed shut in his face.

They were locked in.

Nicole looked down at handcuffs dangling from his wrist. “How did you get away?”

“Like I haven’t collected a pair of keys in my travels?”

Nicole’s hand flew to her belt.

“Not yours,” he reassured her.

“Then how?”

“Purposeful forgetting.”

Once Kent had realized he was handcuffed and he had the key, lifted from the meter maid’s house, he put that knowledge in the furthest crevices of his mind. He needed to believe that he had no hope of escape if he wanted Plain Jane to believe him to be captive.

Nicole seemed shaken, confused. “Then why the hell didn’t you just get out of here an hour ago?”

Like most goal-based serial killers, Plain Jane had realized that victory felt hollow without an audience.

Usually they reached out to the press rather than kidnapping their profiler, but the killer liked defying the odds at each and every turn. Kent had felt confident Plain Jane would take no action against him until Nicole arrived. There had been no real reason to escape until the moment was ripe.

“I knew he was bringing you here. Of course I wasn’t counting on getting locked in, but hey, I’m still batting five hundred…” He rushed on, “And by the way, I don’t take your stuff. Any of it.”

“Right,” Nicole said as she checked the locked room, as if he’d missed some obvious “open” sign.

“What have I ever stolen?”

“My car, for example.”

“That was borrowing,” Kent asserted again.

Nicole cocked an eyebrow.

“What?” he asked. “What of yours have I stolen?”

A strange look passed over Nicole’s face. It looked like she was going to say something, then pulled up short. Was she angry? Scared? Kent would never know because her attention became distracted as she coughed.

“What’s that smell?”

“That would be formaldehyde,” he said pointing to the other side of the room, at the opened metal door.

“What’s through there?”

There were no words to describe what lay beyond that door. Even if he somehow found the words, Kent knew they would sound ridiculous. And even if he could somehow make it sound plausible, Nicole would never believe him.

“You’ve got to see it to believe it.”

CHAPTER 98

Ruben watched as Joshua gesticulated wildly with his cuffed hands. He had only halfheartedly listened to the morgue attendant’s story. This was one of those wastes of time you just had to endure to make sure you covered all your bases.

“See? See? There’s no way I’m the killer!”

Glick didn’t seem any more impressed by Joshua’s lengthy, convoluted explanation than Ruben.

And the younger man seemed to sense it. “Come on. Why would I keep two wombs at home and leave the rest somewhere else?” Joshua jumped up and down in place. “I’m telling you. I just took those two after the women were in the morgue. I did not kill anyone!”

“Where’s Harbinger?” Ruben asked, already knowing what the kid was going to say.

“I don’t know!” Joshua squealed. “I told you! The only reason I came to the store was because of that e-mail!”

The attendant certainly seemed sincere. Where in the hell was Kent? Ruben wanted the profiler out of the picture, but not like this. Not a fucking martyr to the cause. Not a ghost to constantly haunt Nicole.

Glick looked around again. “Damn it, where’s Usher? We need her take.”

“Yes! Yes!” Joshua agreed emphatically, nodding his head over and over again. “Get Usher. She’ll tell you. I might collect body parts, but I’m not a sicko!”

Ruben was about to disagree with the guy when his cell phone rang. It was dispatch. He listened but couldn’t believe the news. Tonight really couldn’t get much worse.

He turned to Glick. “Joshua may, somehow, some way, be telling the truth.”

“He’s got two uteri on his bedroom dresser.”

“And I’m taking no consolation in being right.” Glick obviously didn’t understand, so Ruben continued. “But remember Martin? The guy Kent insisted was absolutely, positively not Plain Jane?”

“Yes.”

He indicated to his cell. “He escaped custody.”

“When?”

“An hour ago. About the time Kent disappeared.”

“Oh no! We’ve got to get Usher.”

Ruben put a hand on his captain’s arm to stop him from going outside to find her. “In her state, she’s no good to us. No good to Kent right now.”

CHAPTER 99

Nicole stood dumbfounded, speechless. The stench of the formaldehyde closing off her nostrils. Kent had not been kidding. The sight was unbelievable.

Perhaps if she had not seen picture after gruesome picture of the real organ, Nicole might not have known what she was looking at. But after being on this case for seven months? She knew exactly what this enormous monument was modeled after.

Before them stood a huge, no, gigantic womb.

The thing towered over them. It must have been at least twelve feet tall. An enormous metal scaffolding supported the structure’s weight.

“I don’t understand…” were the only words Nicole could find in a moment like this.

Kent, as always, had a different perspective. “Looks like he wanted one of his very own.”

On closer inspection Nicole realized that the structure was actually a patchwork of tissue. “Oh my…” She paced. “He stitched together the women’s wombs.”

“The mother of all uteri.” Kent made a dramatic gesture like a carnie. “I give you the über-uterus!”

Nicole didn’t bother to chide him. She knew the profiler kept emotions at a distance, using his wit to make himself feel invulnerable. But even he must have noted that it had taken a lot more than a few dozen uteri to create this massive womb.

How many women had this psycho killed? And Ruben had sneered when Kent had suggested Plain Jane had taken over thirty women.

Nicole would now have to double that number.

The two silently circled the monstrosity. So many women dead. And for what? To build this sick quasi-womb? This nearly completed, sick quasi-womb. At the very top she could see one small area of frayed tissue. The place for one last uterus. One last victim.

“Why would he do this?”

Kent shook his head. “Okay, not even I’m whacked enough to understand.”

That wasn’t very reassuring, though. If the profiler didn’t understand, then how could she hope to? Or was this just one of those aberrations that no one would ever understand? The more she studied this towering labor of psychosis, the more so many questions rose in her mind.

“And why pick only women who had abortions?”

“Talking to the wrong guy here.”

Finally irritated by his cavalier attitude, Nicole shot back, “Okay, if not you, then who?”

For once Kent sounded serious. “I’ve gotten so…” The profiler paused as if he had forgotten how to express true emotions. True feelings. “So close to him. To his mind. But I just can’t nail this guy’s core pathology.”

Despite the looming uterus, Nicole looked to Kent. That was the most honest she had ever heard him, so the detective took a risk and began speculating out loud, opening herself up to his potentially harsh criticism.

“It kind of made sense when we were going under the assumption that he thought that the victims did not deserve to have a womb after an abortion, but now this…”

They both looked upward. Besides the sheer horror of that much loss of life, you had to marvel at the audacity of it. How long had it taken the killer to so meticulously stitch together all this tissue? And to stitch the tissue so tightly that it was watertight?

The center of the uterus bulged, suggesting it was filled with some type of liquid. Almost as if the monstrous organ was pregnant.

“I mean if a guy wanted his very own womb, wouldn’t he pick an undamaged uterus? Maybe even a virgin’s?”
Kent seemed to feed on her comments. “Unless he somehow didn’t feel worthy of a pure womb. Unless…”

Nicole stood silently, anticipating the profiler’s next words with bated breath. This is when he shone, eclipsing the stars themselves. She’d seen that look in his eyes. That catch in his throat. His brain worked overtime.

You could almost hear his mind whirling at faster-than-light speeds toward an obscure conclusion. Like looking through an exotic spice importer’s sales records to find a cannibal. Or after taking a look at the type of makeup and how it was applied postmortem to a corpse, sending the cops out to pick up a Ferris wheel operator. It was a freakish talent, but a brilliant one.

“Unless…” Instead of finishing the sentence, he kicked at the base of the scaffolding. “Damn it! I can taste his pain. The confusion. The desire, but not the man.”

While she should have been crushed that Kent hadn’t solved it, Nicole instead brightened. Something the profiler had said.

Not the man.

“What if it isn’t a man?” Nicole asked before she thought, going purely on gut instinct.

“What do you mean?”

Nicole didn’t really know. She let her intuition guide her. “A boy. A transvestite. A transgender. Wouldn’t that contaminate the profile?”

Pacing, Kent pondered out loud. “It could… But then we should pick up intense emasculation. Suppressed rage at his gender…” finally the profiler shook his head.

“There’s none.” Kent pointed to the huge uterus.

“There’s just this.”

CHAPTER 100

Kent stared up at the grotesque perversion of motherhood. It was demented. It was sick. It was pathological. But…

But in an extremely perverted way, it was beautiful.

Somehow he had to bridge the psyche of a person who could kill dozens upon dozens of women, then spend hours upon hours stitching together an organ of life.

The two extremes didn’t seem like they could coexist in a single person.

Even before finding this mountain of flesh, Kent had considered the possibility of an extreme schizophrenic, a true split personality, though he had abandoned such thoughts. Maybe he had best reconsider.

This guy refused to be categorized. This psycho seemed conflicted, but the crimes were too consistent. Too thorough. The right hand definitely knew what in the hell the left hand was doing.

He’d also considered and thrown out the theory that Plain Jane was actually a two-man team with one member in the shadows. A true submissive, his personality so folded into the dominant partner’s that he was nearly invisible. But not quite. There was always some clue. Some ripple in the water as he glided through the killing. Kent had found none. He had been convinced he was dealing with a single, cohesive personality.

But standing before this terrible, ultimate womb, Kent wasn’t so sure anymore.

“What if it’s not a man?” Nicole asked, again.

Earlier Nicole had impressed him. She had shown insight, pushing him further, demanding him to think outside the box. Now? Why was she double-dipping? “Um… Refer back to my previous comments.”

But Nicole shook her head. “No. I mean not male.” Kent’s frown seemed to speed her words. “Look at the victims. All feminine. Look at this…”

She pointed to the enormous uterus. “A monument to femininity.” Kent’s eyebrow shot up as Nicole smiled. “A monument in her mind.”

She looked at him as if for praise, but Kent was too busy to offer positive reinforcement. It was as if his mind had been given an electroshock. Everything he thought he had known about the killer. A blur. He could trust none of his previous conclusions.

“Wouldn’t this all fit if it’s a woman?” Nicole asked.

Kent knew she wanted him to speak. To acknowledge or shoot down her theory, but his brain only had so much RAM, and it was devoted to resifting through each and every piece of evidence in light of this new theory.

CHAPTER 101

Nicole shifted nervously as Kent stared straight ahead. She felt awkward continuing without input from the profiler, but she didn’t know what else to do. “I know female serial killers only represent twelve percent of—”

“More like seventeen, because they are far more secretive about their actions,” Kent announced bluntly.

“And I know stabbing is the least likely MO—”

The profiler overrode her. “Actually drowning only accounts for six percent—”

Frustrated, Nicole cut him off. “Look, I may not know the stats cold, but think of it. Think—”

“No,” Kent stated flatly.

Like a child who had finally figured out two plus two equaled four only to get slapped in the face for suggesting such an answer, Nicole snapped, “Damn it, Kent, you need—”

The profiler put a hand on her arm. His tone was suddenly much warmer. “No, I’m not arguing that we’re after a woman, I’m trying to get you to shut up long enough so I can figure out which one did this.”

Feeling incredibly foolish, Nicole answered, “Oh…”

Kent was back in action, pacing, chewing his lip, having an entire conversation unto himself.

“Okay, women kill for very different reasons. She’s not taking these uteri to punish the women, she’s helping them. Taking on their guilt.” Speeding up, the profiler was an analytical machine. “She has a job that covers the city, access to public records.”

Nicole just watched him, remembering why she’d fallen in love with him in the first place. His face shone with a light not of this world. It was almost as if he was channeling an energy that normal humans couldn’t stand to touch without getting burned.

“Given her choice of victims, she must be physically close to their height, weight, and hair color.”

The profiler stopped pacing and turned to Nicole.

A slight smile spreading across his face.

“Oh my… We’ve met her, it’s—”

CHAPTER 102

Kent watched in horrible slow motion as a metal garrote slipped over Nicole’s neck and jerked her backward. The detective’s gun flew from her hand and clattered on the stone floor as she flailed. Finally she calmed as the garrote loosened ever so slightly.

“It’s Rebecca,” Kent finished.

The brunette meter maid poked her head around Nicole. “Surprised?”

Kent was not. “You’ve been logging license numbers from around abortion clinics for years. Then you faked your own pregnancy test to throw us off.”

Rebecca smiled. “Okay, maybe you’re not that surprised. But imagine my surprise when a cop came over and sat next to me in the food court.”

Nicole choked as the brunette tightened the garrote.

“Let her go,” Kent demanded.

“Oh, I thought you wanted me to take Nicole as my next hostage?”

It physically hurt Kent’s own neck as the detective struggled to breathe. “Only so that I got to be the one to shoot you, bitch.”

“Now, now,” Rebecca said as she slowly backed Nicole to the staircase that led to the top of the scaffolding.

Kent had to find a way to stop her and stop her fast. She was ready to kill. He had seen it in dozens of suspects. There was no fear. No hesitation.

“It’s over,” he said, but it didn’t even sound true to him.

Step by step Rebecca dragged the detective up the stairs. Up the steps to certain death. Kent bent down and picked up Nicole’s fallen gun. There was no way to cap the psycho bitch without endangering Nicole.

Rebecca leaned into the detective’s ear, speaking loud enough for Kent to hear. “I thought it was over when you started talking to me about regret after abortion.” The meter maid chuckled. “I nearly choked on my rice. Then I realized you did not have a clue who I was.” She tightened the garrote. “Then you told me you’d had one, too.”

Still looking for his shot, Kent responded, “She didn’t have an abortion, you idiot.”

The brunette acted as if she hadn’t even heard him. “It was in that moment that I knew.”

Kent aimed and re-aimed, but no shot. “She was just drawing you out.”

Rebecca spoke almost lovingly to Nicole, “I knew it was you that I needed for my grand finale. It would be you to help transport me from this world into the next.”

Kent sneered. “You’ve made your first and last mistake, Rebecca. Nicole’s never had an abortion.”

She tightened the garrote, forcing Nicole to choke and gasp. “Tell him. Tell him the truth, or I swear I’ll kill you here and now.”

Rebecca loosened her grip, but Nicole didn’t answer. She wouldn’t even look the profiler in the eye.

“Nicole?” Kent asked. Why wasn’t she arguing with the crazed meter maid?

“Tell him what he forced you to do,” Rebecca’s anger grew. “Tell him!”

Nicole took several gulps before answering. “I found out after you committed yourself to the hospital.”

Kent took a step back. It wasn’t true. It just wasn’t. “She’s just saying what you want to hear.”

Rebecca pinched off Nicole’s windpipe. “Convince him you are telling the truth, or die.”

He didn’t even let Nicole start. “We used protection.” His tone became less certain as he looked into her eyes. “There’s no way.”

Nicole’s tone was soft, as if it were only the two of them in the room. “Except for the time on the beach. We didn’t have a condom with us, remember?”

“But you said…” Kent’s breath was coming too fast. It was too hard to concentrate. Too hard to remember. “You said you were on the pill.”

CHAPTER 103

Nicole tried to turn away. She couldn’t stand to see Kent’s reaction, but Rebecca forced her face forward.

“I forgot…” Her voice gave out.

The meter maid hissed in her ear. “Tell him.”

“I forgot to take the pill. Then…forgot to bring the case with me…”

Tears welled. She had been so stupid. So enthralled that she and Kent were actually going away together that all else seemed unimportant.

“We were supposed to come home Saturday night…” Nicole made the mistake of glancing down.

The look of horror on Kent’s face was a thousand times worse than when he studied the uterus made up of dead women’s internal organs.

She had to look away. “We… We didn’t come home until Monday…”

How happy she had been. Kent had actually suggested they stay the entire weekend at the bed and breakfast. Screw his deadline for a journal article in The American Journal of Psychiatry, she was more important. They were more important.

At the time, Nicole had thought that life couldn’t get much better. Then, of course, reality hit. Kent was arrested for theft and then for a real dose of reality, cannibalism. In a whirlwind of events, Nicole lost her man, her job, and her sense of hope. Somehow the profiler had avoided jail time, then voluntarily admitted himself into a psych hospital. That was right about the time morning sickness hit.

“Well?” Rebecca asked Kent, drawing Nicole’s thoughts back to the even-worse situation they were in now.

Kent looked up, but didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. From his tortured look, he believed her. That much was clear. She had convinced him of the truth.

A truth she had hidden from all. No one knew. Not her co-workers. Not her mother. Most of the time, not even Nicole herself. She had almost successfully erased the abortion from her mind. Her own version of “purposefully forgetting” that she’d ever lain on that awful table with those awful metal stirrups.

Rebecca seemed gleeful. “See? Women know, they always know.”

Kent’s eyes brimmed with tears. A sight Nicole never thought she would see. “Why?” It was nearly a whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

It was no longer the garrote that closed off Nicole’s throat, just her welling emotions. Her own desire to never speak these words.

“You left me.”

CHAPTER 104

How could things have gotten this fucked-up?

Kent hurt as he had never hurt before. To think. A child. A family. How could he have been so close to that ideal and not even known it?

“You abandoned her,” Rebecca corrected Nicole.

Kent’s head snapped up. He and Nicole might have some issues to work out, but this bitch? He was pretty much done with her.

“No, I didn’t,” he stated flatly.

“Yes, you did. Look at her. Look at her face. Look what hell you put her through,” Rebecca demanded, then tightened the garrote. Nicole didn’t even struggle this time.

“Tell her how sorry you are.”

“No.”

The meter maid began truly choking Nicole. “Tell her how you inflicted wounds that will never heal!”

“I can’t,” Kent said as Rebecca nearly pulled Nicole off her feet. “I can’t because I didn’t abandon her.”

“Kent…” Nicole could barely get the words out. “Please, be honest for once.”

Unflinching, he looked into his lover’s eyes. All else fell away. He had nothing else to offer but the truth. Not his version of the truth or a spin on the truth, but the truth. “I made a deal.”

Confused, Rebecca’s grip slipped, letting Nicole breathe. “A deal?”

Kent spoke only to Nicole. “With Glick.” How long had he wanted to tell her? How long had he wanted to scream it at her? How long had he wanted to tell her of the sacrifice he had made for her?

“I’d willingly commit myself, and they’d…”

The meter maid became agitated at the notion a man might actually rise above his selfish nature. “Liar!”

“If I went into the hospital without protest he would remove all reprimands from your jacket related to your assisting me…”

Tears burned hot in his eyes as he watched Nicole’s own tears streak her face. He could see she still couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “If I went, Glick promised to give you back your badge and your gun.”

It had seemed like the right thing to do by Nicole. He’d fucked her career up beyond repair. He’d taken her livelihood away from her. And for hell’s sake he’d eaten a serial killer’s brain. Institutionalization seemed like a pretty damn good idea at the time, but…

“Had I known,” Kent found it hard to speak, “I would have made a different decision.”

For the first time ever, he spoke the words he needed to say out loud. “I’m sorry, Nic. I really am.”

Did he see forgiveness in Nicole’s eyes? He wouldn’t know, because Rebecca snapped out of her shock and dragged the detective up to the catwalk.

“How very touching. Too bad it doesn’t change the outcome. She and I are the same.”

Trying to get a clean shot on Rebecca, Kent watched as the meter maid prepared to jump into the uterus with Nicole. He couldn’t let that happen. “Let her go!”

Unfortunately, Rebecca held all the cards and was well aware of it. “Or?”

Luckily Kent had no problem pulling an ace out of his sleeve. He lowered his weapon, and aimed straight at the body of the uterus. Without hesitation, the profiler shot into it. Liquid squirted out the hole.

“Or I’ll do that.”

“No!” Rebecca screamed as the precious fluid left the bulging vessel.

“Oh ya. I’ll put in enough holes to drain it dry.”

The meter maid searched his face. If she had done her research as well as he thought she had, Rebecca would know that he meant it.

She swallowed before speaking. “If I let her go?”

“I’ll let you jump in. Alone.” Kent nodded to the uterus. “That’s what you wanted, right? To go back in?”

The woman seemed lost in her own world. “My mother… She said I never should have come out.”

Damn it, did psychos never tire of their own self-flagellation? “Yeah, yeah. Your poor sob story. I heard it already. How your mother wished she had aborted you.”

Now it was Rebecca who shed tears. He needed to leverage that emotional vulnerability and leverage it now.

“And how she forced you to have one.” The profiler indicated the enormous, adult-sized uterus. “Isn’t it about time we wrapped up this whole psycho quest of yours?”

CHAPTER 105

Nicole held her breath, not because she was being choked, by now Rebecca’s grip was almost loose. No, it was because of Kent’s bizarre strategy. How could he go from being emotionally stripped to the marrow, then suddenly taunt a serial killer?

Being downright mean to her?

But somehow it was working. Rebecca appeared distracted. Worried. Uncertain.

Nicole wondered if she should not throw an elbow and knock the meter maid off-balance, but this close to the edge of the platform? With a garrote around her neck? It seemed to Nicole more likely that she’d hang herself than reach freedom. Which meant that her life was in Kent’s hands.

And Kent’s hands were tight around her gun. With great showmanship, the profiler leveled the barrel toward the uterus and cocked his head to the side, daring Rebecca.

“No! Don’t!”

Nicole saw it in Kent’s eyes. He was going to shoot and keep shooting if the meter maid didn’t comply. Then he did the strangest thing, he winked just before he fired.

She knew a signal when she saw one. Her hands flew up to her neck, grabbing hold of the garrote just as Rebecca shoved her at the steps. Nicole hit her head on the railing, but managed to free the wire from around her neck. She tried to right herself, and might have succeeded, but Rebecca leapt from the platform into the gaping uterus.

The loss of Rebecca’s weight tilted the catwalk and Nicole lost her footing and tumbled headlong down the stairs.

CHAPTER 106

“Nicole!” Kent shouted as he ran forward.

The woman he loved sprawled at the bottom of the staircase. He skidded to a halt and knelt beside her.

“Talk to me, babe,” Kent murmured as he kept one eye on the uterus where Rebecca thrashed. “Talk to me.”

He smoothed back the hair around her face and quickly checked her limbs. They seemed intact. Nothing broken. At least not externally.

“Come on, Nic.”

Her eyes fluttered and her voice sounded pretty much like she looked. “Next time, it’s your turn to be the hostage.”

A faint smile flickered across Kent’s lips. She was going to be fine. “I need you to stay here, okay?”

Nicole grabbed his hand. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not. I’m not going far at all.”

The detective’s hand fell to the ground as Kent reached his feet and began firing fiercely into the uterus.

“What are you doing?” Nicole asked. “She’s drowning already.”

Kent kept up his barrage, taking a step closer to the womb. “No. That’s what she wants us to think.”

The thrashing stopped as the uterine walls began to undulate. Kent hated it when he was so fucking right.

“She’s giving birth…” he explained, then realized that wasn’t quite right. “Giving birth to herself.” Okay, that sounded even lamer. Kent shrugged as he looked back at Nicole. “Whatever. You get the point.”

By now the uterus was having violent contractions. Kent emptied the clip, and knelt down beside Nicole to get another one from her belt.

“I thought she wanted to end her life,” the detective said, her voice weaker than before.

Rapidly loading the clip, Kent returned to firing, then answered Nicole. “Female serial killers are neither fame seekers nor suicidal.”

“I don’t understand.” The detective was fading. Kent could hear it, but what could he do?

Rebecca was getting away.

Running forward, the profiler quickly emptied the second clip as the uterus collapsed on itself.

Grabbing the walls of the womb, Kent gained purchase in a bullet hole and ripped the vessel open. He wasn’t surprised by what he found.

A drain.

An empty drain.

Large enough for a woman to squeeze through.

“Damn it!”

He looked over his shoulder to tell Nicole to stay put, but her head was bent back at an odd angle.

“Nicole!” No response.

Rushing to her side, his heart stopped as he waited for a breath. “Don’t you dare do this to me.”

Finally her chest moved up and down. A good deep breath. He checked her pulse. Regular and strong. She was just unconscious.

Sounds from the sub-basement made him look toward the drain. A serial killer was getting away. The love of his life was knocked out, possibly critically injured.

Did he haul Nicole out or go after the nutty one?

Ruben would stay. The cop would never leave Nicole. But Kent wasn’t Ruben. He wasn’t that man.

Quickly removing his coat, he placed it under Nicole’s head. Kissing her forehead, “I’m sorry, babe, but I’ve got to go after her.”

He looked down the dark hallway that had brought them here. “Torres can’t be far behind.”

CHAPTER 107

Ruben was still wrapping things up at the convenience store. It was amazing how many details there were when not only did a profiler get kidnapped, but a city employee was caught with stolen body parts. Ruben wanted to be out in the field. Out of this damn store, but Glick had put him in charge. He couldn’t leave until everything was in order.

Yet another uniformed officer came up. “Have you got the western perimeter set?” Ruben asked.

“Sorry, no.”

Ruben groaned. Did he have to do everything?

“This kid stopped me before I could get it done. Says he has information.”

This was all he needed. Even the ten year olds were weighing in. Ruben walked over to the child and tried to be polite. It was not the kid’s fault it was nearly 4:30 in the morning. “Yes?”

“Look, for all this effort, I’m going to need another twenty bucks.”

The boy had guts, though Ruben wasn’t in the mood. “Sorry, we don’t pay for information.”

The kid cocked his head to the side. “Really? Even about the lady cop?”

Damn. Still, Torres wasn’t going to give in that easily. “I’m going to need a little more information than that before I part with a Jackson.”

“He told me to tell her to go alone.”

Shit. Plain Jane. Ruben’s wallet was out in a flash. He handed the boy a crisp twenty.

“She went down the alley.”

“When?” Torres asked.

“A while ago.”

A while ago? “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“She told me to wait outside. That you would come looking for her.”

Fuck.

“Glick!”

CHAPTER 108

Kent crept down the dark, dirt tunnel. He could hear muffled scrapes up ahead. Rebecca hadn’t gotten far. He must have winged her while she was “giving birth.”

Unfortunately the sub-basement was made up a patchwork of natural catacombs. Noises traveled through a tangled maze down here. Rebecca could be twenty yards away or right beside him.

“Was it worth it?” No verbal response, but the steps quickened. “All those lives for that loser experience?” He cocked an ear. Had she stopped? “You’re so not going to be able to sell tickets to that ride.”

“You would be surprised.”

Before Kent could turn toward the sound, Rebecca lashed out with her scalpel blade, slashing the profiler’s gun hand. The thin slice hurt like a bitch as he spun away, however, he held onto the weapon.

“That’s cheating.”

Rebecca was now the one to taunt him. “That’s why I have the upper hand. I know no rules.”

Kent stopped as he came to a juncture of tunnels. Which way? He needed to keep her talking. “Darlin’, you’ve got a lot to learn about me.”

The glint of the blade caught Kent’s attention. He pivoted out of the way as Rebecca lashed out again.

Continuing the arc, he fired three shots in quick succession. A muffled scream was his reward. With any luck, a body shot. Fuck hitting a leg to slow them down. A bullet in the kidney was much more effective.

The meter maid didn’t sound quite so cocky anymore. Blood loss and pain tended to do that. “You need me alive.”

The tables had turned. Kent could feel it. It was she who was unsteady now. Unnerved.

He planned to keep it that way.

“Don’t you know what I was hospitalized for?”

No answer. Kent spotted a thin blood splatter on the floor. “I was on the trail of another serial killer. A Lecter wannabe or House of the Dead groupie, anyway, he was killing people and eating their brains.”

“So you decided to see how it felt?”

Spinning around, the profiler realigned his shot. The voice had come from behind him. There must be smaller access tunnels. He’d have to be more careful.

“Yeppers. I went into the morgue, found some homeless guy’s body.”

Kent stopped and listened. Rebecca had to support herself along the wall now. Her pace had slowed. “I mean his brain was just sitting there on the scale. I figured, who’s gonna miss a few ounces?”

“But they did,” Rebecca said, but he had a hard time deciding which direction her voice came from. Sound traveled strangely in these convoluted tunnels.

“That time? No, but once I got it home and ate it, I had a revelation.”

He adjusted to the left as Rebecca spoke. “The power of consuming another’s center of reason?”

He had the bead on her. “No… It tasted bad. I mean really bad.” She had stopped again, so he paused his feet as well. “I figured nobody is going to eat three pounds of this crap, at least not like that.”

“So you went back for more?”

Kent was pretty damn sure she was up ahead about ten feet, down to the right. “Oh yeah. I figured the ME was done with it. We might as well progress behavioral science.”

He waited. No footsteps. No hands sliding down the wall. Her shallow breaths echoed in the tight space. “Anyway, I tried everything. Sautéed, basted, even deep-fried the stuff. No better.”

Movement. She was trying to backtrack again. Kent adjusted his course. “Then it came to me. The killer was following ancient traditions. So he was probably following an ancient recipe. So to make an extremely long story a little shorter, I tracked down an importer of exotic ingredients and ‘boom’ I’ve got my man.”

“Captured alive?”

Rebecca couldn’t have been further off. Kent snorted, “No, I shot him twice.”

“Oh, I’m so scared.”

“Once in each eye,” Kent clarified. “Just as he had done to his victims. You can imagine how hard that was to sell as self-defense.”

“That’s when they figured out your brain cravings?”

“No.”

Oh, she was so very close. He could feel it. Another step forward, turn to the right. Striking out, Kent grabbed Rebecca from behind, putting his gun to her temple.

He pulled Plain Jane close to him and whispered in her ear, “It’s when I stole a chunk of the perp’s brain…and was cooking it up at home when they found me.”

Kent tightened his grip on her neck. “So don’t think for a second I won’t shoot you.”

Rebecca lashed out with her knife, flailing, trying to hit anything she could. “And don’t think I won’t kill you.”

Keeping himself behind her and out of reach of the sharp blade, Kent couldn’t help himself. “But you promised you wouldn’t.”

“That’s before I got to know you.”

She struggled fiercely, forcing him to lower his gun. But that was exactly what she was angling for. With an expert lunge, Rebecca knocked the gun from his hand. It skittered away into the darkness. His hand slipped from her neck. The only one armed, it was Rebecca who now had the advantage.

“Guess you got a little rusty,” the meter maid commented as she lashed out again, forcing Kent back.

“Padded walls do tend to make you a little soft.”

Kent blocked her attacks over and over. She was a maniac with the blade. And well-practiced. He couldn’t find an in, but he was not about to admit that to her. “Fighting off the nurses at meds time? Now that was combat training.”

And there it was. His window. Kent realized whenever Rebecca was recovering from a backhanded downward slope, her follow-through was exaggerated. He just had to wait for it to come back around.

Kent hyper-focused not on the meter maid’s knife, but rather on her shoulder. She slashed down, than rapidly reversed direction and came back up. There was that hitch. That momentary shift of weight as she tried to bring the blade back around to bear.

Kent sent an elbow into her side, throwing her off-balance and with her shoulder already back, it opened up her abdomen. He jabbed at the bloodstain. Rebecca cried out. Each time she tried to slash, he blocked early, causing her to abort her swing, the knife now neutralized.

And he would have snatched the damn weapon, if he hadn’t slipped in a pool of blood. His left foot went out from under him at the same moment he had brought his right fist back to prepare for a punch. The combined momentum threw him backward, hard into the wall.

Rebecca didn’t miss her golden opportunity and leapt. Knife against his throat before he could recover.

“I’ll tell Nicole your last thoughts weren’t of her.”

The blade dug in. Kent’s skin screamed as the edge cut the most sensitive outer layer. In a moment he would be bleeding. A few more moments and he’d be dead.

Then Rebecca’s blade hand flew outward, away from him, her arms flailing like a wheelhouse. It was then that he saw the strange ligature around the meter maid’s neck. The “rope” was made of tissue.

Uterine tissue, if he was not mistaken.

CHAPTER 109

Nicole tightened the tissue around Rebecca’s neck. Let her know what it felt like to be strangled. “You know, at one point I actually felt sorry for you, bitch.”

The meter maid didn’t retort. She couldn’t. She was too busy choking, clawing at the ligature. The detective tightened it even more. Not to kill. Oh, Nicole would have loved to kill the psycho, but the cop in her was aiming to knock her unconscious. But the tissue began to fray. Nicole put her full weight into it.

Which meant she wasn’t prepared to defend herself when Rebecca raised her knife to the ceiling, then plunged it deep into Nicole’s leg. Before she could override her reflexes, Nicole dropped the bloody noose and grabbed hold of her injured thigh. Rebecca tried to bolt, but Kent was there, grabbing the meter maid by the hair. “Where ya going?”

Nicole began to slump. Her leg couldn’t support her weight. With his free hand, the profiler grabbed her elbow, propping her up.

The meter maid’s smile became savage. “What are you going to do, Kent? Let me go or prove to Nicole, once again, that’s she’s less important than your work?”

“Neither,” Kent said. A pretty damn confident grin on his face as well. “I’m getting myself a weapon.”

Nicole was surprised when Kent chose to release Rebecca and stay with her, but she should have known it wasn’t for long. Kent used his free hand to grab the handle of the scalpel, then jerked the blade from her leg.

Screaming from astonishment, Nicole fell to the floor.

Kent looked over his shoulder. “I’d put some pressure on that.” And then he was off chasing Rebecca.

Gone into the darkness again.

CHAPTER 110

With a single sweeping backhanded stroke, Kent sliced Rebecca’s throat. Deep, but not too deep. The woman stumbled backward, hands clutching her now crimson, pulsating neck.

“How’s it feel?” Kent asked as he circled his prey. It was one thing to threaten him, but to hurt Nicole? This bitch was going down.

“How does it feel to be losing your life’s blood between your fingers?”

In the distance a voice echoed, “Nicole!” From the frantic tone, it could only be Ruben.

“Help!” Rebecca cried out hoarsely, not seeming to care who it was. Anyone but Kent.

“Keep trying. Maybe he’ll hear you? Rescue you?”

Kent closed in on the meter maid. Rebecca staggered back. One hand still at her throat, the other trying to push the profiler away. Her strength seeping out along with her blood.

“Feeling light-headed?” Kent asked, already knowing the answer. “Room spinning?”

“Don’t,” Rebecca begged hoarsely. “Please, don’t.”

“Is that what they begged?” Kent asked, already knowing the answer.

How many times had this bitch heard that plea? Had it ever stopped her? Had she ever shown a sliver of mercy to any of her victims? Kent knew he could take her alive. He could subdue her right now. But what would that accomplish? She’d be deemed insane. And the mentally ill could not be executed.

Which made absolutely no sense whatsoever. It was the crazies who were the most fucking dangerous. Whack jobs couldn’t be reasoned with. They had spent most of their adult lives stalking people they picked out using their distorted mirror of the world, then torturing and ultimately killing them. No serial killer was sane. And no one was more dangerous than a successful serial killer. Yet they were never executed.

Go figure.

At least not by court order.

Rebecca lurched, nearly falling.

“That would be anoxia. You don’t have enough blood to carry oxygen to your brain.”

Kent closed in, his voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t worry. I’ll get to the coup de grâce before you lose consciousness.”

A look of horror crossed Rebecca’s face. For the first time she realized Kent really and truly was her equal. Letting go of her neck wound, she launched at him.

Kent was quicker. The knife sunk deep into Rebecca’s belly. Blood poured around his hand, yet he didn’t pull the blade out. The meter maid’s eyes jerked open. Her visage twisted in horror.

“There we go,” Kent whispered. “That was the look I was waiting for.”

Behind them a faint voice. “Nicole!”

He’d have to hurry before Ruben spoiled his plan.

“Feel that?” Kent asked as he tugged the knife upward, mimicking the wound she had inflicted on dozens upon dozens of innocent women.

He tugged again as Rebecca gasped in agony.

“That’s karma, babe.”

As if dropping a sack of potatoes, Kent let the woman fall from his grip. She slumped to the floor, motionless. He stared, watching, waiting for a breath. None came. Rebecca would not be gutting anyone else. Would not be stealing anyone else’s uterus.

He was victorious.

Then the rush was over, and his muscles betrayed him. Kent staggered back until he hit the wall. It was the only thing holding him up.

“Damn, but killing takes it out of ya.”

CHAPTER 111

Nicole tried really hard not to panic. Kent had been gone way longer than he should have, and, perhaps more topically, she could not get her leg to stop bleeding.

“Usher!” That baritone had to be Glick.

She shouted, “Here!” as loud as she could.

But it was Kent who rushed into the room. His hands were covered in blood, and his shirt streaked with it. Was it his or Rebecca’s?

As if reading her mind, he shrugged off his blood-soaked shirt. “Profiler, one. Psycho Bitch, zero.”

Relieved, Nicole hauled off and slugged him. “That stunt of yours fucking hurt!”

“Tell me about it,” Kent said as he shook out his wrist. “I think I gave myself carpal tunnel.”

Despite the continued oozing from her wound, Nicole still tried to push him away. For some reason, she didn’t want to seem helpless. She didn’t want him to see her weak.

Kent persisted. “Let me.”

He was actually gentle as he tended to her wound. Concern framed his features. Was this really Kent? Quickly he rigged a makeshift bandage, and the blood flow stopped.

Then he looked up, and their eyes met. So many life-changing moments had come to pass this night, and very few of them had to do with bringing a serial killer to justice. There was so much to say, yet, she couldn’t get her lips to work. Not when Kent was looking at her like that. Like he used to. Like he did that weekend they went away together to the beach. Like he did when she thought they might actually make their relationship work.

“Nikki!” That was Ruben.

“Here,” Nicole yelled back but not quite so enthusiastically as before. Could she and Kent just have a little time alone? Time to sort through the mess of their relationship before Internal Affairs got involved?

Kent patted her good leg. “I’m telling you, he’s no Magellan. I better go get them before they end up needing to be rescued.”

Nicole couldn’t let him go. Not yet. Not until at least one thing was cleared up.

“Wait,” she said as she took his hand in hers. “Before…” how could the feelings she had be so strong inwardly, yet so difficult to say outwardly? “Before when you said you’d never stolen anything of mine…”

Kent’s eyes searched hers, his expression unreadable as usual. It was up to her. If they were going to break this deadlock, it would be up to her to do it. Kent was absolute crap at expressing himself.

Not that she was all that much better.

“Nic, you need an ambulance.”

She ignored his words. “You did steal this…” Nicole brought Kent’s hand up to her chest and laid it gently there against her breastbone. “You stole this.”

Kent got defensive. “Your bra? No way… Okay, maybe one pair of underwear, but that was for—”

Nicole shook her head, quieting the nearly panicked profiler. She moved his hand over her heartbeat then looked up. She didn’t have the words. Would he understand?

CHAPTER 112

Kent could feel Nicole’s heart beating beneath his touch. So fast. So strong. Given the complete look of anguished sincerity on her face, he was a little ashamed about the underwear admission.

“Oh, that…”

More than embarrassment, he was tongue-tied. How many ways had he practiced telling her how he felt? His therapist had insisted that women needed to hear about a man’s feelings, not just be helped to have a lot of orgasms. Which to the profiler did not seem fair. Wasn’t that kind of attention proof enough? Obviously Nicole needed something more. Something he had never given another woman.

Kent squeezed her hand. “Then you’re quite the thief yourself.”

He leaned over as his lover tilted her head, parting her lips, ready to receive his kiss. His hand cupped her cheek and he held her eyes until the very last second when their lips met, then he could not help but close his eyes.

Everything he loved about her was summed up in that moment. Her soft lips, without a hint of shyness. The horrors of the day melted away, leaving only their kiss.

“Nicole!” Ruben shouted, sounding farther away than he did the last time. Leave it to the idiot to not only be lost, but ruin the moment as well. Yet Kent knew from the warmth of that kiss that they’d have plenty of time to work things out.

He pulled back and met Nicole’s smile. “I’ll go fetch him before we have to bring out the search dogs.”

She nodded bravely, but frowned. He knew that look. The look of well-deserved mistrust.

“I’ll be back.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise.”

CHAPTER 113

It took Kent five minutes and seven switchbacks to find the wandering cops. Not only were they lost, they were a very mobile bunch of lost cops.

Ruben didn’t even bother to apologize or ask what had happened. “Where’s Nikki?”

“Where in the hell have you been? We left you a blood trail as wide as the Mississippi.”

“Where’s Detective Usher?” Ruben growled.

“She’s been choked and stabbed, but, you know, other than that, stable.”

Ruben pushed past, but Kent was not quite sure where the guy was going. Wasn’t the point of this whole exercise that Ruben was directionally challenged? Kent turned to Glick and gave a friendly nod as if they had just met on the street.

“Why don’t we catch up with Ruben and collect Usher?” the captain suggested, but Kent shook his head.

“Sorry, if the detective wants to find the girl, he’s gotta learn to ask for directions.”

Glick glowered, “Harbinger.”

Given what they were going to find deeper in the tunnels, Kent realized maybe he shouldn’t piss off the captain right now. Kent would prefer to stay out of the psychiatric ward for a while.

“Okay, okay,” Kent said as he easily found Ruben. Once again off course. “She’s this way.”

Kent took a little too much pleasure in the look of embarrassment and frustration on the tall detective’s face.

Quickly Kent navigated the labyrinth-like tunnels. Which wasn’t too hard if you just knew what arterial blood looked like. Within a few minutes they were back to where he had left Nicole.

“Ta-da!” Kent announced with a flourish. “This is how you rescue a fair maiden.”

Great barb, only there wasn’t any maiden there.

“Damn it, Kent, this isn’t funny.”

He knelt over, searching the floors for clues to where she might be. “She was here.”

Kent knew he wasn’t lost. There was the torn uterine ligature. Nicole’s gun. A large blood pool and the remains of a tattered sleeve they had used as a bandage for her leg. Everything was here. Everything but Nicole…and Rebecca’s knife. Kent was certain he had dropped it near the detective. Kent had also been pretty damn sure Rebecca was dead.

“Nic!” he yelled as he rushed deeper into the tunnels.

Her response was pained, but close by. “In here.”

Ruben burst past Kent, reaching Nicole sitting next to Rebecca’s body. Ruben skidded to a halt when he took in the scene. Scalpel in hand, the detective looked like hell. Shit, they both looked like hell, but Nicole was alive, and her bandage looked like it had stopped the tide of bleeding.

“I told you to stay put,” Kent reminded her as he strode past the stunned Ruben.

“I just…” Nicole looked over at the body. “I had to make sure she was dead.”

As did the captain. He knelt down and felt Rebecca’s neck. Glick nodded. “She’s gone.”

Kent went to help Nicole up, but Ruben elbowed him a good one. He stumbled as Ruben offered his partner a hand.

A hand that Nicole declined.

“It’s okay,” she said as she reached out to the profiler. “Kent’s got me.”

In perhaps the single most satisfying moment of his life, Kent helped Nicole up, then supported her as they walked past the ruddy-faced Ruben.

“So if you don’t mind, I’ll get her to the hospital.”

Elbow that, ya prick.

CHAPTER 114

It was what Kent didn’t say that stung Ruben. The profiler didn’t have to give his feelings voice. His expression was crystal clear.

Fuck you. I won.

And the profiler was right. Ruben had lost. In so many ways that he couldn’t even keep track of them anymore. Kent had been right about Plain Jane. He had been right about Nicole’s feelings.

Still, his pride would not let Harbinger off the hook. Ruben stepped in front of the couple. “We’ll need statements.”

“The whacko’s dead, and we’re alive,” Kent said as Nicole moaned, a hand on her bandage. “In pain, but alive.”

Glick stepped in before it could get nasty. “It’s all right. We’ll get their statements at the hospital.”

Angry at his captain, but also a little relieved that his superior had stopped him from embarrassing himself further, Ruben stepped aside and let Kent and Nicole by.

He stared at their backs, Nicole leaning heavily into the profiler’s chest, until they disappeared around the corner.

“Don’t go facedown yet, Torres. We’ve still got another killer to catch.”

Crap. In the flurry of activity, Ruben had forgotten to relay the news. “No. I got a call. Martin went back to his place. Uni’s picked him up a few minutes ago.”

Glick shook his head and patted Ruben on the back.

“The ugly and the stupid.”

Yep.

Not surprisingly, Kent was right, yet again.

CHAPTER 115

The sun crested the horizon as Kent drove Nicole home from the hospital. She leaned back in the seat. Her cheek rested against the headrest.

Half asleep, half awake.

It took some effort for him to keep his eyes on the road when she had her bedroom eyes like that. Bedroom-and- morphine-for-the-pain eyes, Kent reminded himself. There would not be any makeup sex this morning.

“I just want acknowledgment that I was right,” Nicole said out of the blue. Was it the drugs talking?

“Right about what?”

Nicole smiled a broad, lazy, sedated smile. “You stole my car… Again.”

Kent kissed her hand. “It’s not stealing if it’s ours.”

Her lips spread into a full smile as the car stopped.

“We’re home.”

Normally not the gentleman, Kent thought stabbing victims might demand slightly more attention, so he hopped out of the car and ran to the other side, opening the door for Nicole. He then helped her up the steps, through the door, and onto an oversized chair.

“My, my,” she said as he lifted her leg and set it upon the ottoman, then gave her a selection of some of his very finest comics to read.

“Now don’t expect this kind of service forever.”

“Why not?” Nicole asked. “You owe me.”

That he did, Kent thought as he leaned over and kissed those lips one more time. Could life get any better?

“I’ll go fix us some breakfast.”

“The meat is from the store, right?”

Kent didn’t let his expression change.

“Funny. Now read up.”

CHAPTER 116

Ruben squinted. Where was that light coming from? He glanced over. Shit, it was the sun rising. He’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours, with no end in sight, as Glick approached. Ruben got up out of his seat and stretched.

“Turns out you were right, Captain.”

“How so?”

He pointed to the towering stacks of paperwork on his desk. That’s what happened when your profiler gutted your suspect. “Harbinger ended up needing me for something.”

Instead of giving a grin, Glick shuffled his feet. “Yeah… Well… Speaking of Kent…”

No. He couldn’t deal with anything else from that man. But his captain didn’t look like he was going away soon.

“What now?” Ruben asked.

“Rebecca’s uterus…”

“Showed signs of an abortion, right?”

“Well, we don’t know,” Glick said.

What was the captain getting at? And what did it have to do with Kent? “So the report isn’t back yet?”

“No, it’s back. It’s Rebecca…” Ruben’s look prompted Glick to finish his sentence. “She didn’t have one.”

Okay, that didn’t sound right. Rebecca’s abortion was the linchpin of Kent’s theory. It was the thread that sewed the entire case together.

“She’d had a hysterectomy, then?”

“Um, yeah. On the day she died.” Glick strongly emphasized the next part. “After she died.”

“Oh my…” The implications ricocheted. Kent’s last case. His self-admitted cannibalism. “He took it?”

Glick shrugged and toyed with a paper clip on Ruben’s desk. “There were a lot of people who had access to the body before the coroner got to it.”

Ruben just gave his captain a “you’ve got to be kidding” look. “So are we going to go over there and bust him?” When Glick didn’t answer, Ruben emphasized, “Again?”

But all the captain did was shrug.

CHAPTER 117

Kent nudged the meat with his spatula as it sizzled and crackled. Nicole wasn’t going to be too thrilled by his selection, but hey, he had to use what was on hand.

“Do you want OJ?” Kent called over his shoulder.

He waited for her response, but it didn’t come.

“Hey, Nic,” Kent said as he slid the meat onto a paper towel-lined plate. He didn’t need her whining about the fat content as well.

“Hon?”

Figuring she must have fallen asleep, the profiler buttered the toast and set it out on the table. The scrambled eggs and fruit were already in their serving dishes. It was a table even Martha Stewart would have approved of…well, except for the meat. Hopefully with all that food, Nicole would not notice that portion of the breakfast.

“Darlin’, the doctor told you to eat with that medication,” Kent said as he entered the living room.

Not only was Nicole not asleep, she was up, digging through her purse. He rushed over. Kent knew she wasn’t used to his new and improved knight in shining armor gig, though surely she must have known he would’ve gotten her purse for her.

“Babe, I’ve got it.”

Just as he came up next to her, he noticed she was cramming something back into the purse. His profiler senses began to tingle.

“Whatcha got there?”

Biting her lip, Nicole lifted the sealed baggie from her purse. The contents were pink, bloody.

It was a uterus.

To be more exact, it must have been Rebecca’s uterus.

Kent stood shocked. Pinned in place. His lips wouldn’t move. Nicole hadn’t gone back to check Rebecca’s pulse, she went back to take her womb.

Quickly shock transformed to pride. That was doctoral- level stalking in action.

He kissed her forehead. “Coffee, hon?”

Nicole’s worried look transformed into a grin. “Maybe some milk?”

“Whatever the lady wants,” Kent said as he walked back to the kitchen. Out of the corner of his eye, the profiler watched Nicole stroke the tissue through the plastic, then toss it into the crackling fireplace.

That was his girl, all right.

DARK LULLABY – the Post-Plain Jane short story

PROLOGUE

The man watched the people in the luxurious apartment through a crack in the door. Across the room, Carla Sutton sat with a rigid back, despite the extremely plush couch she sat on. Her husband, Raymond, instead leaned forward, listening intently to the police detective.

The woman was talking about many things, including him.

But the object of his true interest was not in the room. The man could see pictures of the young girl scattered across the high mantelpiece, along the coffee table, and high and low upon the wall. Her bright, young face shined out at him. She needed him.

No one else seemed to understand how desperately.

He imagined the months it took to find her. Following her from city to city. Hacking into her parents’ financial accounts. Disabling privacy settings.

Others, of course, had come before her. But she was the shining prize. All golden-haired and ruddy of cheek. None other would do now.

The man felt his palms sweat each time he thought of her.

Soon, she would be in his hands.

CHAPTER 1

Detective Nicole Usher glanced around the room. Everything seemed in order, yet something was very, very wrong. Still, she could not put her finger on it.

“Detective, I am still very worried about anyone interrogating Lyla. She’s been through so much,” Mr. Sutton said. Again.

Nicole gave a warm, reassuring smile before she answered. “We will only ask what is absolutely necessary.”

The husband did not seem satisfied by her answer. The mother was much harder to read. Like after this long ordeal, she had learned to just shut down rather than risk any more hurt.

Nicole could only imagine how these two parents felt. Already, a total of nine girls had gone missing. All blonde-haired and blue-eyed. All from schools that Lyla had attended. To date, not a single body had been found. But no one held out much hope for the other girls. A child missing after forty-eight hours was usually a dead child.

Luckily, the Suttons had the means to move far, far, away, but the nightmare did not end. Instead, it followed them from New York to Washington, D.C., to Boston, and to here.

But the killer’s patience seemed to be wearing thin. Now his threats to Lyla were more overt. A letter, and now an email, sent to the school. Normally, Nicole tried to quiet the parents’ anxiety. In this case, their near panic was pretty damned justified.

“I do not mean to be rude, Detective Under—”

“It’s Usher. Detective Usher.”

“Yes, sorry. Detective Usher. But we were promised the nation’s exemplary profiler, Special Agent Harbinger. We have waited an entire week to schedule this appointment with him. And now he is over two hours late.”

Nicole squirmed. Yes, Kent Harbinger might be the leading profiler in the nation, but that did not make him exactly punctual. If anything, it made him the exact opposite. But how could she tell these worried parents that odds were Kent was at a comic book store or playing video games and calling it “generational assimilatory processing” and insisting that he was “on the clock”?

She glanced at her watch. Even for the profiler, this was pretty late. The last time Kent had been this late, she’d found him handcuffed in an unsub’s basement. She pushed that horrific night out of her mind as she turned to the parents again.

“While we are waiting, I want to go over your security measures again.”

Mrs. Sutton sighed. Her eyes shifted to the ornate window.

The husband sighed as well. How many times had they been over this information with how many jurisdictions, and how many other detectives?

“That window?” he nodded to the pane his wife stared at. “That window probably costs more than your car, detective.”

Nicole didn’t doubt it. To the naked eye, the window looked like any other upscale etched-glass pane. Beautiful, but commonplace in this part of town, with its mansions built in the Roaring Twenties. But Nicole knew that this glass window was impregnated with lead to interfere with any infrared and other video surveillance equipment. Plus, the pane was as bullet-resistant as possible, with a full four-layer thickness of alternating glass and polycarbonate material. To boot, it was one-way bullet resistant. Meaning that the beautifully etched window could stop an armor-piercing sniper shot, yet she could easily shoot out the window with her pistol. The technology existed, but it was just extremely expensive.

“I am telling you, detective, that our house is as secure as the White House,” Mr. Sutton declared.

“Really?” a voice came from behind them. Everyone in the room turned as the closet door creaked open.

“Well,” a man’s voice said as he stepped out of the closet. “Then the president might want to be a little worried.”

Mr. Sutton jumped from his seat and dove for a side table drawer. Nicole leapt up after him, slamming the drawer shut before the husband could find his gun.

“Don’t,” Nicole said as she gripped the husband’s wrist. “That is Kent Harbinger. The profiler you requested.”

* * *

Kent relished the shock and horror crossing Mr. and Mrs. Sutton’s faces. Exactly the response that he wanted. He wanted to strip them of their self-created masks as the grieving parents. He wanted to see what brewed in their bellies.

“H-H-How long?” Mrs. Sutton stammered. “How long have you been there?”

“Five hours, give or take,” Kent answered.

He loved the way Mrs. Sutton’s eyes flickered back and forth as she tried to think of what she and her husband might have said before Nicole arrived. What dark secrets might they have spilled when they thought they spoke in privacy?

Oh, he heard plenty, all right.

“I still don’t understand how you got past our security,” Mr. Sutton blurted out.

Kent shrugged. “It was simple. I just had to wait for your cook, the lovely Maria, to come home with groceries. I waited for her to bend over just the slightest, so that I could see her punch in the code on the keypad. Then your maid, the svelte Antonia, rushed in once when the phone rang, so I was able to make a copy of her thumbprint on the pad.”

Fury covered Mr. Sutton’s face. “Fired. They are all fired.”

“Please,” Kent reprimanded the husband. “It wasn’t their fault. I could have gotten in half a dozen ways, and I wasn’t even trying that hard. If it weren’t for the fact that I just finished Halo and am waiting for the newest version of Gears of War, I probably would have shined on this meeting. Your attempt at the ‘Diet Coke’ of Witness Protection plans is pretty meager.”

“Kent,” Nicole rumbled, stepping between him and the husband. Her tone was much more conciliatory to Mr. Sutton. “Special Agent Harbinger is not meaning to imply that your security is lacking.”

“Um, yes I am,” Kent said as he stepped around her. “For spending all this time and money moving around, you haven’t changed your lifestyle at all.”

The husband’s face blotched with anger. “We have changed our names, routed our financials through Switzerland, severed all ties to—”

Kent nodded toward the large wine rack in the corner. “And where do you still get your excellent vintages? You still use the same sommelier in New York, don’t you?”

Mr. Sutton looked at his wife, who shied away from his glare, looking down as she spoke. “They are the only ones who import directly from Croatia.”

“And don’t get too pissed off, Mr. Sutton, because I believe you are using the same Cuban cigar procurer. I believe his name is Horace.”

The husband’s face flared a very interesting shade of fuchsia.

“You have left a breadcrumb trail, which really should be renamed a bread loaf trail, so wide a blind, catatonic, and legless man could have followed it. I mean, come on. You still use a driver. A driver—in this city? You didn’t think that was a bit obvious?”

As Mr. Sutton sputtered and his wife’s eyes dilated, Nicole stepped between them again. “Special Agent Harbinger has some fairly unconventional methods. However, he clearly has uncovered some very important facts,” Nicole gave Kent the evil eye as she continued, “and I am sure he will share with us how they all fit together.”

“So my suggestion is that we start over,” she said, although Nicole’s tone did not sound at all like that was a suggestion. It was more like an order.

She guided Kent toward the wife. “Mrs. Carla Sutton, this is Special Agent Harbinger.”

If Carla were this beautiful now, with her long, naturally blonde hair and athletic figure, Kent could only imagine the looker she had been back when the Suttons were first married. He held out his hand. To his surprise, the wife took it readily.

The handshake was firm, but sensual. It seemed that she took to another male, an alpha male, coming on the scene. Kent let his fingers slide off her palm as they separated. His little, “perhaps if this were a different time or place” signal. He wouldn’t call it a smile that flashed over her lips. It wasn’t that overt, but Kent was pretty damn sure that the woman was trying to figure out a place and time to make a rendezvous happen.

“And this is Mr. Raymond Sutton.”

Kent had to admit that the husband kept himself in shape. Was it a sincere desire to stay fit, or was he just trying to keep up with his stunning wife? Obviously the guy had family money, because that chick and this guy never would have hooked up otherwise.

The husband’s handshake went beyond firm into the realm of viselike. He seemed to have caught on to Kent’s and his wife’s nonverbal cues. Either that, or Kent had just called out the king in his own castle. Whichever, Kent made sure not to allow a painful grimace to come to his face. Let Mr. Sutton think that he kind of liked this manhandling. As a matter of fact, Kent used his thumb to stroke the side of the husband’s hand. The man jerked his hand back as if a black mamba had just bitten him.

Keep them guessing was Kent’s motto. The less potential witnesses knew about him, especially ones who had been through the police system as frequently as these two had been, the better.

Why? Because all people lie. Really, they lie with a capital “L”, but a family under duress? They were so busy lying to the police, their spouses, and especially themselves. After several years of this unrelenting fear, Kent doubted that they knew the truth themselves anymore.

The husband rubbed his hand unconsciously as he scowled. “So, are you going to tell us when this madman is going to try to take our daughter?”

Clearly, as much as Mr. Sutton did not like Kent, he feared for his daughter more.

“No,” Kent answered. “The question we should be asking ourselves is why he hasn’t already taken her.”

It was Mrs. Sutton who stepped forward. “She has twenty-four-hour bodyguards and—”

“If it were me, I could have taken her a hundred times over.”

“Kent,” Nicole rumbled again. But they hadn’t asked for the nicey-nice police department that had to worry about citizen relations. They had asked for someone who could actually solve their problem.

“Kids are the easiest to snatch. Small. Gullible. The proverbial candy and all.” He looked down the hallway that led to the girl’s bedroom. “Which is why I need to talk to Lyla.”

Both parents stumbled over the other, each trying to be the first one to object. Well, what he said next was going to blow their minds.

“Alone.”

* * *

Pandemonium swirled about the room.

Nicole tried to calm the Suttons. “Let’s just take a moment before we say anything we will regret later.”

“Over my dead body,” Mr. Sutton blurted out.

Kind of like that, Nicole thought.

For someone so good at his job, Kent certainly brought out the worst in people.

Mrs. Sutton tried to block Kent’s path. “Lyla’s therapist doesn’t want her constantly reminded of the threat she is under.”

“Okay, how about we remove the threat?” Kent suggested with a knowing smirk. “How’s that sound?”

The wife’s face clouded over. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, let’s catch the guy. Solve the case. Get our man. Pinch the collar. However you want to describe it.”

Nicole interrupted what more than likely would have been a list twenty metaphors long in five different languages. “I think they get your point, Kent.”

Mr. Sutton’s eyes closed down to slits as he glared at the profiler. “You are that cocky?”

Oh, God. The husband just directly challenged Kent. This was not going to go well.

“No,” Kent stated sharply. “I am cocky enough to say that if I can speak with her alone, then I can solve this in the next twenty-four hours.”

“What?” all three of them asked the profiler at once.

“Don’t let me talk to her alone, and it will take me, I don’t know, three or four days.” Kent shrugged. “Depends on how long it takes me to crack Gears of War.”

Nicole could strangle Kent when he got into this “scorched earth” mode. But even for the profiler, it was rare for him to give a time line for solving a case. Wasn’t he always the one preaching the unpredictability of serial killers? Yes, Kent could think like a serial killer like no one else, and leap ahead to pick out the next victim before the killer could, but how did that help him here? They knew the victim. Lyla.

Certainly, Kent’s arrogance knew no bounds. However, he backed it up with plenty of convictions. What other people might toss aside as hubris, Nicole knew that if Kent committed to a timetable, he had already figured out some aspect of the case that a hundred other detectives had not.

Which stirred both admiration and jealousy.

They had both read the same damn file. How could Kent be so far ahead of the game?

“Well?” Kent asked Mrs. Sutton as he looked down the hallway. The woman’s eyes flickered from the profiler to her daughter’s bedroom door, and then to her husband. The question was clear. Should she allow Kent to pass?

“A day?” the husband asked again.

“My soft target is thirteen hours, but twenty-four hours? Absolutely.”

Nicole could see the thoughts reeling through Mr. Sutton’s head. Could this really be over before the sun rose again? Could this really be over at all? Nicole had seen many a haunted victim, detective, and even a few police chiefs look at Kent with that mixture of hope—and then the dread that the hope might be false. Usually, they either gave themselves over to Kent or lashed out at him for daring to bring hope back into the equation. She prepared to intercede if Mr. Sutton was the latter.

Finally, the tall man’s shoulders sagged as he nodded. “We’ve got to try.”

A choking sob came from Mrs. Sutton. The woman looked as surprised as everyone else that she had acted so emotionally. Immediately her back straightened, and she gave a curt nod to Kent as she got out of the profiler’s path.

“Kent,” Nicole said. “She’s fragile. You’ll take care?”

But the profiler looked like she had insulted his mother’s virtue. “What? I’m great with kids.”

No, no you aren’t, Nicole wanted to say, but with both parents watching, how could she?

* * *

Kent went to move past Mrs. Sutton when her hand found his arm. “Please. Please…” The next words were more of a strangled cry than a statement, “It has to end.”

Before he could respond, Mrs. Sutton was striding toward the living room. Kent could still feel the heat upon his arm. The strong fingers that had dug into his flesh. That chick would be a killer in the bedroom. The wound-too-tight ones usually were. Then, of course, they usually tried to smash car windows in or shoot someone, but in the bedroom they were spectacular.

He glanced over his shoulder to Nicole, who was herding the Suttons back to the couch. Just one more reason he loved the detective. She knew how to run interference better than most pro linebackers, even when she itched to be in the middle of the case. But not this one. This one would take him somewhere he preferred that Nicole not follow.

Arriving at Lyla’s bedroom door, Kent opened it unannounced.

The girl sprang back, seeming more than a little startled. The pictures really did her no justice. With perfect skin and flowing blonde hair, Lyla looked ready for a Teen Beat photo shoot. Only the dark circles under her eyes marred her near-perfect beauty. He could see why the killer had chosen her.

“What? How? Don’t you knock?” Lyla finally blurted out in false indignation.

“I figured since you were busy listening to everything we said, that I wouldn’t catch you indisposed.”

Lyla crossed her arms against her chest as she sat on the corner of her bed. But as guilty and embarrassed as she was, her lips were stuck in a smile. It was odd to see the incongruence of the look in her eye and that grin. The image reminded Kent of the Joker from Batman. No matter how he felt, his lips were locked in a permanent smile.

Was this how she coped? Did she stuff all the fear and rage behind that smile? Did everyone else in her life believe the expression? He glanced around the room. It looked like the typical preteen girl’s room. Or at least what someone thought a preteen girl’s room should look like. Posters of the current boy band, bedazzled pillows, glitter, and feathered pens. There was lots of pink, with some blue and green mixed in. He seriously doubted if Lyla had picked any of it out. The walls were covered in bright dynamic colors to distract from the darkness hanging over the house.

“You wanted to talk to me?” she asked. Now her tone matched her smile. Like a doll, Kent thought. Saying and acting the way she thought she should.

Kent went over to her too-neat desk, turned the chair backward, and sat down. “You’ve talked to a lot of cops, haven’t you?”

The girl just nodded. They both knew the answer to that question.

“Well, I’m different,” Kent stated. “Actually, I only have one question for you.”

Lyla’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Only one?”

“Yep.” He watched closely for her reaction to his question. “Do you know who wants you dead?”

The girl blinked twice, opened her mouth, and then shut it again before she spoke. “If I knew, wouldn’t I have told someone?”

Kent shrugged. “You tell me…”

Lyla took a deep breath, and then grinned. A real grin. “I just answered a question with a question, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.” Kent leaned forward against the chair’s back. “Do you know what that means?”

“I was lying or evading the truth?”

“Or you were just taken off guard, and are a nervous twelve-year-old.”

He had already liked Lyla just from the case file. A tough, smart young lady. Meeting her, though, his respect only increased. Kent would never tell Nicole, but he actually liked working with kids. They had far fewer barriers than adults. Simply put, they had less time on this earth to learn how to lie effectively.

Adults put up artificial wall after artificial wall to mask their true feelings. Now, he could try to break those walls down, but Kent preferred to seduce his way around them, slipping and sliding between the cracks.

With children, though, there was an even more effective means. You simply allowed their own curiosity to expose their true intent. Even the most refractory child psychopaths usually were their own undoing. They had to know what you knew. They had to test limits. It was in their nature. And with a witness such as Lyla? It would do no good to try to storm her defenses. They were there for a reason. Far better to let her slip out the back door she had created for herself.

“No, I don’t know who is after me,” she stated, maintaining eye contact.

“All right, then,” Kent said as he scanned the room. “So, do you have a PS3 or Wii lying around?”

“No,” Lyla answered cautiously. “My parents won’t allow me anything with access to the Internet. You know, for ‘security reasons’,” she said, making air quotes.

“Oh, too bad,” Kent replied.

Silence stretched out. Kent rode with it. The more the girl drove the conversation, the better. And sure enough, Lyla finally asked, “Why?”

Kent rolled his head from side to side trying to get the kink out that he had gotten while watching the Suttons for four hours through the crack in the closet door. “I was just trying to find something to kill the time.” He pointed toward the door. “I can’t exactly go out there, so quickly. Your parents probably want to proverbially ‘get their money’s worth’.”

“You do realize that ‘different’ is not necessarily better?” Lyla asked, playfully.

Kent chuckled. “My partner could not agree more.” He cracked his neck. “No worries, though. I’ll just hang out for a few minutes, and then leave.”

The girl swung her legs back and forth like a metronome. He could practically see the gears cranking away in her head. Kent just pretended to study the walls when Lyla suddenly planted her feet on the floor.

“Well, I do have an iPod touch,” she said as she fished around under her bed then pulled the device out from between the bed frame slats. “It doesn’t have much on it, though.”

“Angry Birds?” Kent asked.

“Well, duh! Of course Angry Birds,” Lyla said, rolling her eyes as she turned on the iPod.

Absolutely no electronic devices? Airtight security, huh? What kid these days didn’t have one or more cell phones, MP3 player, or video camera at their fingertips? Was this iPod Lyla’s only act of defiance that threatened her security, or had there been more?

Kent held out his hand. “Great. We’ll take turns.”

“And why should you be first?”

Spunky. He liked that.

“No reason at all.”

The girl grinned and turned on the game. Kent watched the graphics reflect in her eyes. She seemed just an ordinary girl stuck in such an extraordinary situation. Her eyes flickered back and forth as she tried to kill the evil pigs by hitting them with flightless birds. Obviously one’s only option in the face of evil pigs. But it wasn’t the game he was interested in. It was her eye motion.

It was the reason video games were so addictive. Sliding eye movement could induce a trancelike state. Hypnotists had been using the principle for centuries. Psychologists used it to unlock buried memories. He was using it to lower her defenses. To allow her to speak more freely.

“No!” she yelled as the screen showed her loss. Lyla handed the game over to Kent.

He wasted no time digging in and perfecting his slingshot skills. One had to be on top of his game, no matter the platform. Kent didn’t bother to watch Lyla out of the corner of his eye. For one thing, he needed full concentration, since this level had armored pigs. But he could sense the second she was studying him. Weighing how much she could trust him.

“You didn’t even ask me about my suicide attempt,” she said softly.

“Nope,” Kent answered, barely salvaging his bird.

“You really don’t want to know?”

“Please. Just look around,” Kent said as he nodded to the walls. “Between the bedazzling and glitter, the retinal pain alone would have driven me to it.”

He risked a sideways glance. Lyla’s lips were turned up into a sad grin. At the least, they had broken down the habitual “everything is okay” smile.

“Honestly though, to be shut up in the house, with no hope of ever returning to a normal life?” Kent said. “I get it. I get why that would feel like an option.”

He didn’t share with Lyla that he had contemplated that option several times while locked up in a psych ward, but he really didn’t think she needed to hear about that now.

“Do you really think you can catch him? I mean, today?” she asked, her face pinched with worry. Clearly, she had overheard everything said in the living room. Like he said. Smart and tough.

“Yep,” he said as he won the level. “The white bird lays explosive eggs. Very helpful when the pigs are hidden in a bunker.”

She reached out her hand, but Kent did not give the game back to her. Lyla’s hand dropped. “You are going to have to tell my parents about the game, aren’t you?”

“No,” Kent answered. “But I am going to have to take it. At least for today.”

“I swear, I only text to my friends, and only about school stuff.”

“I believe you.”

Lyla cocked her head. “Then why are you taking it?”

“Because I am not altogether sure it is your friends who are always talking back to you.” Kent rushed on, “But I promise, I will not divulge any secret boy facts. If you like a guy in your algebra class, that will be between you and him.”

The girl was smart enough to know that she had no play here. The FBI profiler was going to take her game. But he didn’t like leaving her feeling vulnerable. Chastised.

He pulled a phone from his pocket. “And to keep me to my word, here’s this.”

Lyla held the phone in her hand as if it might bite her. “You are giving me a phone?”

“Sure. Just don’t answer it unless the call or text is coming from Detective Usher’s phone.” Kent stood up and stretched his slightly cramped left thumb. He had been playing way too many video games this week.

As he walked to the door, Kent turned back. “Oh, and you might want to change the ring tone. Gipsy Kings doesn’t seem to suit you.”

Lyla raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t elaborate. It was an inside joke. One Nicole probably wouldn’t appreciate.

* * *

Nicole was doing her best to keep the Suttons calm, but as soon as they heard the creak of Lyla’s door they both shot out of their seats and rushed down the hallway. Kent had his usual swagger on as he exited the room. Actually, he had an extremely satisfied look on his face, one that seemed to have little to do with the interview. She would have to bust him in the car about it.

Lyla lingered at her bedroom door as her parents approached. It was weird to finally see the girl in person after only seeing grainy snapshots.

“Are you okay?” Mrs. Sutton asked her daughter anxiously.

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“Honey, do you want to talk to your therapist?” the husband asked.

“No!” Lyla yelled, showing the most sass Nicole had seen out of all the surveillance footage of the girl. Hanging around Kent tended to do that to you.

“I’m going to study,” the girl said, backing away and shutting the door behind her.

Mrs. Sutton turned on Kent. “She never treats us like that. What did you say to her?”

Kent, however, ignored the woman’s angry words and came down the hallway toward Nicole. The Suttons followed hot on his heels.

“Yes, what went on in there?” the husband asked.

“I’m not a snitch,” Kent said as he walked past Nicole to the front door.

“Her therapist tells us everything that goes on in their sessions,” the wife protested.

“Great for her,” Kent stated, flashing Nicole the ‘what the hell does that have to do with anything?’ look that the profiler should have patented.

“Where are you going?” Mr. Sutton asked.

Kent turned and spoke very slowly as if he were speaking to someone mentally impaired. “I am going to catch the killer.” Even more slowly and exaggeratedly, he said, “It is my job.”

It was actually Mrs. Sutton who looked ready to smack Kent. And Nicole did not blame the woman one iota.

“Okay, obviously Kent has a lead. Let’s run it down, and we’ll be in touch.”

Nicole grabbed her coat as she followed the profiler out the door. Mr. Sutton joined her. The husband waited until Kent was out the door and down the front steps before leaning into her.

“He does know what he is doing, right?”

“Yes,” Nicole answered emphatically. Hoping she was right.

Quickly she caught up to Kent as Mr. Sutton closed the door behind her. You could hear the five locks clicking into place. The only problem, as Kent had demonstrated, was that those five locks were not nearly enough.

Nicole opened the car door and got behind the wheel. “Where to now?”

“Her school.”

Lyla’s private school wasn’t far. Just two blocks down, a sharp right, and they would be there.

“Pay dirt, already,” Kent exclaimed, and then read a text out loud. “How are you doing? Haven’t heard from you. Worried.”

Kent pointed at the screen. “Like some teenager is going to know precisely the moment that a detective and special agent walk out of Lyla’s house.”

Nicole glanced over as she waited for a streetlight. Kent was looking at an iPod touch. Except Kent did not own an iPod touch. “Where did you get that?”

“Isn’t the more important question, who is texting Lyla?”

Of course it was, but with Kent on probation for shoplifting, and the Suttons already on edge about the profiler, the iPod touch was an important issue. “Did you steal that from Lyla’s room?”

“I wouldn’t steal from a twelve-year-old,” Kent scoffed. “I got it in an exchange.”

“Kent,” Nicole warned as she made the right turn.

“Fine. I did get the iPod in an exchange.” Kent pulled a mechanical pencil from his pocket. “But this was the only thing in her room that wasn’t all encrusted with gems and sparkly.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. Of course he had stolen something from Lyla’s room. Luckily, a mechanical pencil they could work around. But wait. What exactly did Kent trade for the iPod? Before she could ask, Kent got animated.

“No, don’t turn into the school.”

“But you said—”

“Down the block. By that van.”

Nicole turned her blinker off and cruised farther down the street. The van was easy enough to pick out. Probably because it looked like one of the department’s vans. “What is our tech support van doing here?” she asked as she parked behind it.

“Um, giving tech support?” Kent answered as he had the Suttons. “It is their job.”

She gritted her teeth. The profiler was in one of those moods. Unfortunately, to catch a twisted pedophile, Kent had to be in one of those moods. As a matter of fact, they needed him to be every bit as smart as he thought he was.

They exited the car as a light sprinkle began to fall. Strange, she did not hear anything about rain today. However, Kent had his rain jacket on. Exactly how did he know that?

Kent opened the back door to the van, and then held it open for her. Nicole frowned. Chivalry wasn’t exactly his strong suit. Kent’s smile radiated back at her, though.

“Keep ‘em guessing,” he whispered to her as she climbed into the van. His breath caressed her neck, reminding her of another reason she put up with his moods.

“Wow!” the techie sitting at a bank of monitors announced, his eyes sliding right past Nicole. “Special Agent Harbinger. To work with you? To actually be on a case with you? I mean, you are like the pope of profiling.”

“Jimmi,” Kent nodded casually as he sat down next to the Korean technician. The profiler was used to such gushing praise. “How’s everything going?”

The techie’s fingers flew over the keyboard as Nicole shut the van door. She was already forgotten—if she had been noticed at all.

Kent grabbed a file on the metal desk. “These are the family’s financials?”

“Yep,” Jimmi said without looking up from the monitors. “I sorted them by large, sporadic payments like you asked.” The tech fiddled with a few more settings, and then announced, “If you take a look at the central overhead screen…”

A picture of an extremely nondescript man came up. He had short dishwater-blond hair and appeared to be in his forties, with brown eyes that looked down from the camera. Anyone would walk right past him on the street without noticing him.

“That is the Academy’s afternoon and weekend janitor, Ronald Abbott.”

“And?” Kent asked, his eyes sharp and focused on the picture.

“And,” Jimmi said with a flourish as he split the screen to bring up another picture, this time a mug shot of the man. “This is Harold Madison, who just happens to be a sex offender from New York.”

“All right,” Kent said. “Then let’s—”

The technician rushed on. “Wait, wait, wait. Let me finish. He didn’t work at Lyla’s school in New York. However, he was a teacher at a public school not two blocks from hers. And I can’t find any trace of him in D.C. However, he could have been using a different alias. And wait for it… his preference was prepubescent blondes.”

Jimmi’s face was filled with anticipation as he waited for Kent to answer. However, the profiler did not. Instead, he leaned back in his chair.

“Well?” the tech asked the profiler.

“I was just making sure you were done.”

The tech blushed while nodding vigorously. “Yes. Sorry, I am.”

“What I was going to say was that there is no way that Harold is our guy, so I wanted to move on to our other little project.”

“But…” Jimmi stammered, clearly not used to Kent’s ‘let’s move on past your stupid little theories’ approach. Nicole was just glad she wasn’t in the hot seat this time. The technician couldn’t let it go, though. “Harold fits the profile to a T.”

Nicole actually felt sorry for the exuberant technician as Kent leaned forward in his chair.

“Look at him,” Kent instructed Jimmi. “Look into his eyes.”

The technician did as instructed but kept glancing over at the profiler. “Okay…”

“What do you see?”

“I don’t know… I mean… he is looking down in both pictures.”

“Exactly.” Kent said as he hit the metal countertop. “Looking down in shame. The guy is a pedophile, but my guess is he has tried to reform, unsuccessfully of course, but he has tried.”

Jimmi still seemed confused, though. “Couldn’t he be faking that? Couldn’t he be looking away to try to hide his identity? You can’t be that certain.”

Oh my, Nicole thought. Either this kid had no idea how readily Kent liked to slice and dice his intellectual opponents, or the kid was packing some serious heat below the belt.

Kent smiled smugly. “But, my dear Jimmi, Harold has been caught before.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t that make him all the more cunning?”

“Oh, it has taught him some skills like changing his name, but to take on a multi-city, multi-victim killing carnival? No, the man, or woman, we are looking for would be staring straight into the camera. Daring us to find fault.”

The technician was like a dog with a bone, though. Nicole had to give the kid props for his persistence. “But we can’t simply dismiss him so easily.”

Kent shook his head and sighed. “Just watch.”

All heads turned to the live feed of the school’s entrance. Sure enough, there was Harold, but a woman joined him. A woman who Nicole recognized from Lyla’s school file. Apparently so did Jimmi.

“That’s the school principal!”

“Yes it is,” Kent sagely replied as the principal and janitor kissed. “Like I said, poor Harold is trying to reform. I figured we’d out him as a convicted pedophile after we nab the unsub, otherwise we might spook the real killer.”

Jimmi frowned. “You already knew all about Harold?”

Kent snorted. “Please. A mid-forties janitor who is living in a basement apartment with a comb-over like that? Clearly, he is disturbed, just not disturbed enough to be our guy. Now, how is the real project going?”

The tech shook off his disappointment and typed again. “I mean, the school has state-of-the-art encryption, but I have already broken through several firewalls. I should be at the heart of their mainframe within an hour or so.”

“Mainframe? What mainframe?” Nicole asked, suddenly not so amused with Kent’s show. “I thought you were only conducting external surveillance?”

Jimmi looked surprised that Nicole spoke—as if he truly did not realize that she was in the van with them. His eyes darted from her to Kent. “The Hartford Preparatory Academy. Where else would I be hacking into?”

She turned on the profiler. “And I suppose you filled out the paperwork to get a warrant for this?”

“You know, I feel like my authority comes from a higher power than the judicial system,” Kent replied casually.

“What?” Jimmi asked, his hands flying back from the keyboard. “You mean I just illegally hacked into a private school’s security network?”

Nicole patted him on the back. “How’s it feel to be in His Eminence’s presence now?”

The kid actually turned green as he swallowed. “They could sue not just the department but me personally.” Jimmi turned to Kent. “You said I had the green light.”

“Hey, I told you not to trip any alarms,” Kent said with a shrug. “Go in clean.”

Jimmi looked at Nicole. “What am I supposed to do now?”

Sure, now she was the go-to one, after incarceration and high-dollar legal settlements were on the table.

It was Kent who answered quickly. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

Nicole hated to admit it, but Kent was right. No matter what they did, anything they obtained from the school would be the fruit of the poisoned tree. It would never be admissible in court. However, if it helped catch a serial killer, a serial killer of children, it might be worth it.

Plus, she knew how Kent’s mind worked. Even if the case here were thrown out, there were two other jurisdictions in which to try the guy if they caught him. It was a calculated risk that Kent was willing to take. Unfortunately, he seldom filled anyone else in on who was taking the risk with him.

“What Special Agent Harbinger is trying to say is, you aren’t going to get in any more hot water by finishing the job. And the best defense against getting in trouble would be to save a little girl’s life. But it’s your call, Jimmi. You can stop now, or…”

Nicole couldn’t believe she was doing Kent’s dirty work. Had she forgotten the Brain Incident of 2008?

Kent picked up where Nicole left off. “Or you can grow a pair, and end a three-year reign of terror.”

“Man!” Jimmi exclaimed, looking at Kent. “They said you were a Svengali, but damn. How could I not be in?”

She shook her head. The number of people willing to follow Kent down the rabbit hole was simply astonishing. Nicole wasn’t sure if she was relieved or a little jealous that she wasn’t the only one.

“All right, then,” Kent tapped his file on the counter. “Detective Usher and I are going on a little field trip. Call Usher once you’ve broken into the computer lab’s server. I want every girl’s account looked at.”

“Without tripping any alarms, of course,” Jimmi followed up.

“You are catching on,” Kent said as he opened the van door and hopped out.

Nicole scribbled her number down as she rushed to follow the profiler. If she didn’t keep him in line of sight, he would ditch her in a heartbeat.

That’s just how Kent rolled.

* * *

Kent kept the window down even though a light rain was falling. He liked the breeze on his face. The moisture in the air clinging to his skin. He both loved and hated this phase of a case. He had so many impressions. So many leads, leads that no one else seemed to have followed, yet his theory was only half-formed. He was missing something, and he hated that feeling. Something that should have been so very obvious eluded him.

Kent did not like being eluded.

“Here, pull in here,” Kent instructed Nicole as they entered a rather seedy part of the city. Large brick buildings rose up around them, mainly industrial. A few brave souls had tried to create trendy clubs out of the mostly vacant buildings, but the bum urine and frequent muggings killed even that cottage industry.

Nicole put the car in park and looked up and down the street. “What’s here?”

Kent pulled out the file and pointed to several items he had highlighted. They all belonged to the “Everything’s Aglow Boutique.” The charges were large—over five hundred dollars—which would not be outrageous for couture fashion, except they were all large, round figures. No taxes. No $499. Plus, look at this address in this part of town. Boutique his ass.

“So, you are thinking this isn’t a fashion outlet we are looking for?”

“Nope,” he answered as he got out of the car.

“Are you going to share what you think it is?”

He just gave her that look. Of course he wasn’t. What would be the fun in that?

Kent strode up to the door and found a small intercom. He hit the button.

The speaker crackled to life. “Password?”

He leaned close to the intercom. “I was referred by customer number seven two eight one.”

There was a moment of silence, and then a loud clunk sounded as the door was unlocked. It swung open into the building. Nicole’s hand went to her holster, but he shook his head. Nudging the door open all the way, Kent peered into the darkened entry. A shiver passed down his back. Red brick buildings were not his favorite. But what had he said to the technician? A reign of terror had to be ended.

They cautiously made their way through the dark room as the door swung closed behind them. Only a dim light up ahead gave them direction. They reached a booth, screened in like a confessional. It was all very Catholic, except that the screen was made out of a sheer burgundy chiffon with lace trim.

A figure stood on the other side. “A little early in the day for a referral.”

The voice was smoky smooth, with a touch of southern grace.

Kent put his arm around Nicole, who stiffened under his sudden embrace. “She was finally in the mood to try something different and I, well, I want to watch.”

Nicole’s eyes narrowed as she realized where they were. She shot him that ‘we will talk about this later’ glance, but otherwise played along.

“Yes, my friend Carla—”

“We don’t use real names here,” the figure said. “You mean customer seven two eight one.”

“Yes. I was told to ask for her regular.”

“You’re in luck. She is still finishing up after a late night,” the sultry voice said. “We require payment first.”

Nicole looked at Kent, but he shrugged. “Sorry, I must have left my wallet in the car.”

She wasn’t buying it, but she pulled out her credit card. “How much is it?”

“For the two of you, twelve hundred.”

“Dollars?” Nicole asked incredulously, and then snatched the card back and gave the mysterious clerk a different one. “Here use this one.”

The card disappeared for a moment, and then was returned.

“Um, don’t you want me to sign anything?” Nicole asked.

“Darling, no one ever asks for a return,” the voice explained. “Door number seven. And today’s safe word is ‘honeysuckle.’”

Kent guided Nicole down the hallway as she put her card back in her wallet.

“You are enjoying this way too much,” she whispered.

Ah, but he was.

Kent had known that Mrs. Sutton was wound a bit too tight, but this, this club was an interesting twist. However, once you had seen one sex club you kind of had seen them all. Sure, some put on more glam, while others were more of the industrial vibe like this one, but they were all the same. They provided discreet sexual exploration, for a price.

Quickly, they arrived at door number seven.

“Are you sure I can’t be the one to watch?” Nicole asked.

“Sorry. I called shotgun first.”

He kissed her neck, though, to let her know he wouldn’t let it go too far. Or least not after she used the word “honeysuckle.”

Kent opened the door and even he was a bit surprised at the elaborate and quite extensive collection of sadomasochistic equipment. The walls were lined with it. Ball gags. Whips and chains. Oh, my.

Nicole hovered by the door. A tall figure emerged from the back of the room. Dressed in a black and red corset and fishnet stockings, she had to be at least six and a half feet tall and in those six-inch heels? She rose to nearly seven feet tall. Her head was shaved down to her mocha skin except for a flaming red Mohawk that must have added another ten inches to her overall height. She truly was a dark Amazon amongst men.

Of course, with that came a very prominent Adam’s apple. The dominatrix wasn’t really a she, but Kent got the impression that is how she liked to be referred to.

“Don’t be shy,” she cooed. “I am Darling, and if it’s your first time, we don’t need to use any of the toys.”

“Come on, honey,” Kent encouraged Nicole. “You know you always wanted to try the lifestyle.”

Darling dragged the edge of her whip along Kent’s cheek. Her long, fake gem-studded eyelashes batting. “Oh, so it seems you’ve taken a walk on the dark side.”

“You could say that,” Kent replied. The number of sex clubs an effective profiler had to explore was shockingly high. “But really, this is all about my baby.”

Nicole put her hand out for Darling to shake, and then must have realized that would seem silly, so she retracted it which made her look all the more nervous.

“I, I want whatever Mrs. Sutt—”

Darling shook her finger. “No names.”

Nicole sighed. “Customer number seven two—”

Darling chuckled. “No. In here she is known as ‘Queen S.’ “

“Queen S, then.”

Darling walked in a circle around Nicole, eyeing her up and down. “Girl, you’ve got some strut, but I don’t think you could handle Queen S’s indulgences. How about we just tie you up a little and start with some light spanking?”

Nicole backed away. “Okay, I am sorry, that’s it. Honeysuckle.”

Darling must have noticed the glint of gold at Nicole’s waist, as her voice got deeper.

“Of course in a totally nonsexual way.”

Kent raised a hand. “Don’t worry. We aren’t vice.”

The tall transvestite didn’t quite seem to believe him as she took another step back.

“We just need to know if Queen S talked about her daughter and what was going on at home,” Kent reassured her.

“No, no she didn’t.” Darling rushed on. “I am telling you, it was all business once she was here. There was a lot going on, just no talking. I mean, I feel sorry for her with the whole stalking thing, but she never talked about it.”

Nicole cocked her head. “If she never talked about it, how do you know about her daughter’s situation?”

Darling looked at Nicole, then Kent. “Um, King S, of course.”

“You mean they both come in?” Kent asked.

Darling chuckled. “No, no, of course not. He comes in through the gentlemen’s entrance at the back.”

“The Humidor Club and Bar,” Kent stated, almost hitting himself on the forehead. Off of Nicole’s quizzical look, he explained. “Another large, rounded, expense on their credit card.”

“This is a small city, and we are the only upscale club in the area, so we have two distinct companies so that husbands do not run into wives in the lobby.” Darling continued, “Of course, one day they nearly did intersect here. It was a bit of a cluster, but we managed.”

So both parents felt the need to indulge their lesser angels. Apart. Very interesting.

If they were keeping such secrets from one another, and Lyla was hiding an iPod, what else was the family hiding? The more you rattled their cages, the more they seemed to break apart. Was it just the long-drawn-out stress, or something else?

“What exactly did ‘King S’ say?” Nicole asked.

“Well, not so much ‘say’, but ‘sobbed’. The poor bastard pays nearly a grand to come in here and cry. Without my help. It’s kind of pathetic, really.”

“What exactly does he cry about?” Nicole asked as Kent’s mind whirred. The wife wants to be punished, and the husband is looking for absolution. This really was taking family dysfunction to a whole other level.

“Just how helpless he feels that he can’t protect his family. How he is worried that Lyla will try to kill herself again. How they can’t seem to conceive.”

Kent’s head jerked up. “Conceive? You mean they are trying for another child?”

Darling nodded. “Yes, it is why we seldom…‘finish,’ if you know what I mean. He is saving the swimmers for her.”

Were they trying to carry on normally and give Lyla hope, or had they written her off? Perhaps the killer hadn’t just picked Lyla. Maybe he had picked the whole sad family. This brought up a whole slew of new suspects. Was the killer truly targeting Lyla, or simply threatening her to get back at her parents?

Something itched at the edge of Kent’s brain. A piece of the puzzle. The main piece of the puzzle was still missing. And he wasn’t going to find it here.

“Thank you so much, Darling,” Kent said as he leaned over and kissed her hand. “You have been most helpful.”

“I can give you two a rain check if you want.”

“That would be delightful,” Kent answered playfully as Nicole elbowed him in the side.

“Actually, I need to speak with someone about reversing the charges on my card,” Nicole stated as Kent escorted her from the room.

He then winked at Darling. “Later,” he said.

* * *

Nicole elbowed Kent again as he closed the door.

“What?” he responded. “Even transvestite, bondage dominatrixes need love.”

She just ignored him. It was usually better that way. “The question is… did we get twelve hundred dollars’ worth of intel out of that interview?”

Kent waved his hand, dismissing her concern. Per usual. There was no one at the booth, but she was pretty sure the “Boutique” would credit her back rather than have a vice raid. Her captain definitely was not going to approve this expense.

As they moved toward the exit, her phone vibrated in her pocket. A lot. She pulled it out to find about ten texts from Jimmi. Rather than read them, she just dialed the number and put it on speaker.

“Detective Usher?” Jimmi’s voice was high and rushed. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

“Obviously,” Nicole answered, still slightly shaken from the club. “What is it?”

“I found…” Jimmi said as keystrokes came over the line. “I am texting you a screen capture of some documents.”

Within moments, her phone vibrated again. She loaded the picture. It was a copy of the threats made against Lyla.

“And?” Nicole asked.

“They were made from a fellow student’s computer. A Jennifer Stark,” Jimmi stated. “Only Jennifer was in London on vacation at the time.”

Nicole looked up to find Kent looking off into the darkened room. Only the soft glow of the cell phone’s light illuminated them. He was piecing together the puzzle. Nicole could see where this might be leading. Yet, she could not catch up with the profiler.

“But anyone could have used that computer. Even Harold, for that matter,” Jimmi answered even though it wasn’t him she was necessarily talking to.

Jimmi raced on. “Except I can tell that the sender actually spell-checked the item. Here is the original document before it was corrected.”

Nicole looked down to see that many of the words, especially with vowels, were misspelled. More specifically, they had the vowels out of order.

“Dyslexia,” Kent breathed softly.

Lyla was dyslexic.

But it couldn’t be. Why would she send herself threatening notes?

“Hold on, hold on,” Jimmi said excitedly. “I am downloading the security footage. The lab has motion-activated cameras for theft control.”

There was an agonized silence as Jimmi scanned the footage. “Holy crap! It was definitely Lyla at the computer.”

Nicole tried to wrap her mind around it, but still struggled.

“It gets worse.” Jimmi continued. “She tried to erase them, but there are multiple searches for paranoid schizophrenia and how the courts handle juvenile offenders.”

Nicole shook her head. There was no way. But Kent looked up.

“Call the Suttons,” Kent ordered. “Let them know that we are heading over right now.”

The profiler didn’t wait for Jimmi to even acknowledge the order as he cut off the call and strode to the door.

“Kent, wait,” Nicole urged as she caught up with him. “There must be another reason why she sent those notes.”

“The evidence would suggest otherwise.”

As they exited the sex club, Nicole grabbed his sleeve. “Child murderers are the least likely, and a girl? Serial killing? It is unheard of.”

“Until there is the first.”

“But she was only eight when it began,” Nicole argued. “You said yourself the crime was too sophisticated for even Harold. How could an eight-year-old do it?”

Furious, Kent jerked from her grip. “I’ve been wrong before.”

Nicole knew the guilt he felt. As much as the profiler liked to buy his own press that he was perfect, he was far from it. They had both seen the devastation when his intuition had led him wrong. The last time that happened, he’d ended up chained in a basement, and she… well, she had nearly died.

They were in the car and on the road in an instant as her phone rang again. Nicole hit speaker. “I’ve tried all the Suttons’ numbers,” Jimmi said, nearly out of breath. “There’s no answer.”

“Keep trying,” Nicole said as she hung up.

Kent put his hand out. “Let me.”

Nicole handed the phone over and watched Kent type in two words. “I know.”

Why would he send those two words? Especially to Ruben’s, her partner’s, phone?

Then it hit her.

“You traded Ruben’s phone for the iPod.”

Kent shrugged. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

But anger welled up in Nicole. “You just tipped off a suspect with another officer’s phone. Kent, this could come back to burn Ruben.” Typical Kent. He thought only of himself. “And why tell Lyla? Why?”

“The cage needed to be rattled.”

Nicole gripped the steering wheel. “Maybe you’ve rattled it too much.”

Siren wailing, it took them less than three minutes to cross the bridge and make it to the Suttons’ neighborhood. Another minute, and she pulled the car to a screeching halt outside their door. They were out of the car and bounding up the steps two at a time until they noticed the door was ajar.

The quadruple-locked security door with titanium bars was ajar.

With one hand she dialed Jimmi and with the other pulled her weapon.

“Jimmi, we are going to need backup.” As they stepped over the threshold, they found blood. Lots of blood. “And an ambulance.”

She hung up before hearing his answer.

“Help!” a woman’s voice cried from the living room.

Kent rushed forward heedless of the danger as she checked her corners. They found Mr. Sutton on the floor. It looked like he’d taken multiple stab wounds to the chest and neck. Mrs. Sutton was sobbing so hard that it was hard to understand her.

“I tried to stop her!” she cried.

Nicole sank to her knees. In the woman’s hysteria, she wasn’t holding off the gushing wound to the jugular. “Let me.”

But the woman’s hands slick with blood stayed hovering over the wound. “I was just trying to protect her.”

Well, her husband was about to die if that bleeding didn’t get stanched. “Move!” Nicole urged, and elbowed the woman out of the way. As she put pressure across the neck, she could feel Mr. Sutton’s pulse push back against her fingers. Almost as if the heart were trying to drain the body. She couldn’t let it.

“Where did Lyla go?” Kent asked.

“Downstairs,” the woman choked out, wiping her hair out of her face, but only smearing it with more of her husband’s blood. “This house used to be a speakeasy. I think that is how she was getting in and out.”

Kent charged down the hallway.

“No!” Nicole yelled. “Wait for backup.” Or a damned ambulance, but it was no use. The profiler was off, and nothing could stop him.

“Mrs. Sutton,” Nicole said trying to get the woman’s attention. She seemed transfixed by the retreating profiler. “Carla!”

Startled, the woman jumped, her whole body shaking.

“Carla, I need you to put pressure on that chest wound. Can you do that?”

Instead of helping, though, the woman shook her head. “I’ve got to find Lyla.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Nicole pleaded, but Mrs. Sutton took off down the hallway that Kent had disappeared down.

Grabbing a blanket off the couch, Nicole used it to put pressure on the chest wound while she gripped his neck wound. Alone and soaked in blood, Nicole cursed Kent’s name. Why was she always the one left to stanch the bleeding?

* * *

Kent breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. The tight, narrow, humid tunnels were a bit too much like a basement complex he frequented not too long ago. His tiny flashlight was not helping much. And the fact that he didn’t bother to grab Nicole’s gun.

Minor details. He’d caught killers with less. Not many of course, but he had caught them.

Sweeping his light, he noticed a glint down one of the passages. He backtracked and shone the light. In the thick shadows stood Lyla, a large knife in her hand, streaked with blood.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she said, sounding in shock.

He didn’t blame her. He was a bit surprised by it as well. Perhaps Nicole was right. Maybe he had rattled the cage too hard. He’d known something was wrong earlier. He should have ditched getting actual proof and simply acted on it earlier. All of this could have been avoided.

“It’s okay, Lyla,” Kent said as he inched forward. He did not want to antagonize the girl in any way. After all, she was the one with the weapon. “You can drop the knife.”

“I didn’t want to,” she said. “I didn’t want to.”

“I know, Lyla. I know.” He took another step toward her. The girl’s bright pink dress was smeared with her father’s blood. Even if she survived this night, it would haunt her forever.

Mrs. Sutton burst in from another tunnel, brandishing a butcher knife. “Lyla!”

The girl raised the knife again. “Stay back.”

“Oh my little girl…” Mrs. Sutton sobbed.

Crap. This was not how he planned it. Not that anything in the last hour had gone how he planned it. But this definitely was not on the schedule.

“Ma’am, I need you to go back upstairs,” Kent encouraged. “Let me get Lyla into custody.”

But the woman ignored him. “Lyla, honey, I can’t protect you anymore.”

“I know, Momma,” Lyla sobbed. “I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be, baby.”

“Get her to lower the weapon,” Kent whispered, but again Mrs. Sutton acted as if he hadn’t spoken.

“We talked about this. Someday it was going to have to end, remember?” the woman asked her daughter. Lyla nodded vigorously, wiping tears from her cheek. “The only thing is, Lyla, if the profiler is left alive, they will put me in jail for protecting you, Lyla.”

Kent’s head jerked around. Bitch.

“But if they find you both dead,” Carla continued, “then I can have this baby I am carrying and do better by her than I did you.”

“Really?” Kent commented. “Your kid is accused of being a serial killer and you somehow make it all about you?”

Neither seemed to notice his outburst as Lyla turned toward him with the knife.

“That’s right, baby. Just one last one, and then it will be over.”

As the blood-soaked girl took a step toward him, his flashlight shook. Probably because his hand shook. Could he pull this off?

“Lyla, do you remember what you asked me in your room? Why I didn’t want to know why you tried to kill yourself?”

The girl’s feet stalled. “Yes.”

“You weren’t asking me. You were asking yourself. Do you remember why you wanted to kill yourself?”

Confusion passed over Lyla’s face.

“You don’t remember, do you? You don’t remember taking your mom’s Valium or even getting into the tub, do you?”

“But I did.”

“No, someone gave you Valium. Someone slit your wrists.”

Mrs. Sutton’s eyes blazed with fury.

Oh yeah, bitch, two could play at this game.

“Mom?” Lyla asked.

“Honey, he is just trying to confuse you. You know how tricky these police can be. He doesn’t understand how sick you are.”

Lyla still didn’t move forward. “Did you do that, Mom? Did you try to kill me?”

Mrs. Sutton wrung her hands, tears streaming down her face. “Only because you wanted it to stop. You begged me to. Remember, when you are in a psychotic break, you can’t remember what happens.”

“It’s got to end,” Lyla sobbed.

“Yes, baby. Yes, it does.”

Kent held his ground as the girl turned to him. “You sent that message from the school. You tried to warn us.”

Lyla lifted the knife higher, its tip pointed at Kent. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“You don’t remember any of it, though, do you?” Kent asked. “None of it. Not your first kill. Not your last.”

Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. “It’s my fault. It’s me.” She took a step closer. “Tara was making fun of my boots. She said they looked like a possum had farted on them.”

“But that’s the last thing you remember, Lyla, isn’t it?” Kent probed. “You both walked home by different routes.”

“I remember seeing red. And wanting her dead. I wanted her dead,” Lyla sobbed.

“Of course you did,” Kent stated. “That was way rude.”

“Yes.” Lyla sniffed, menacing the knife toward him. “Yes, it was.”

* * *

Nicole heard sirens approach. Finally.

She could feel Mr. Sutton’s pulse weaken under her fingers. The cut had gone deep, slicing his jugular. Whatever had created these wounds had been large and sharp. And Kent was down there unarmed.

For being so damned smart he was an idiot at times.

The EMTs rushed into the house, trying to jockey her out of the way.

Nicole held on, though. Mr. Sutton couldn’t lose another drop of blood.

“No, there’s a gusher under my hand,” she said.

This time the EMT more cautiously took over the pressure as she backed away.

That was one hell of a wound on his neck.

And wasn’t Mr. Sutton like six feet tall?

Oh, crap.

As the EMTs called after her, she took off at a run down the hallway. Kent had no idea the trouble he was in.

* * *

Lyla took another step toward Kent. He swallowed hard. This was the moment of truth. Although sometimes the truth doesn’t always set you free. Sometimes… well, sometimes it got you killed.

His eyes flickered from the bloody tip of the knife that Lyla was holding to the rather large butcher knife the mother hefted with both hands. These were not the odds he was hoping for.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kent said to Lyla. “You have a choice.”

“No, I don’t,” she said as tears coated her eyelashes, making them glisten in the low light.

“You know what I am going to have to do?” Kent asked.

Lyla just nodded, biting her lip as she stepped forward and…

Handed him the knife.

“Lyla!” Carla shouted. “What are you doing?”

The knife handle was slick in Kent’s hand as Lyla glared at her mother.

“What I should have done four years ago,” she said, stepping beside Kent.

“How dare you!” Carla hissed.

“Okay,” Kent said before she could build up a head of steam. “I have dealt with some major whack jobs, but you, Carla? You take the cake.”

Carla stepped to her left, blocking the exit. “Enjoy yourself while you can.”

Kent positioned Lyla behind him, stepping to his right, keeping out of range, waiting for his moment. Like he said, he should have screwed getting evidence and just gotten Lyla out of this house while the getting was good. But now, now he needed to keep Carla distracted and that butcher knife away from the two of them.

“How could you hate your daughter so much that you not only killed her proxies but made Lyla believe she had done it?”

Carla sneered as she stepped to the left. “You try carrying a parasite in your body for nine months.”

Stepping to the right, Kent met her sneer and raised her. “But you had to carry the baby in order to land the Sutton heir, didn’t you?”

“Had I known it would ruin my racing career,” The woman’s face contorted with the memory. Her eyes shone brighter than the knife’s blade. The crazy eyes always did. “I never would have poked those holes in the condom.”

She looked at Lyla, not as her daughter, but as a source of contempt. Kent tried to shield the girl, but her mother’s words were sharp enough to probably slice through the walls.

“Then to have everyone ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over how beautiful she was, and how fast she could run?” Carla’s eyes narrowed, “She stole them. She stole every good part of me.”

“Good thing,” Kent said. “Cause you certainly weren’t putting them to much use.”

Okay, that might have been rattling the cage again a bit too far, as Carla’s cheeks flushed and her knuckles went white against her knife’s handle.

Kent had to do something, and do it quickly. He only needed to move a few more feet over and he could get Lyla out of the tunnel. The desire wasn’t exactly altruistic. He really could use Nicole and her gun right about now. Where was the detective? You would have thought after their last little adventure that Nicole would have taken “Navigating Convoluted Tunnels 101.”

But Carla and that knife were his primary concerns right now.

“So that was when you decided to kill Lyla? Once she started sprinting?”

“No,” Carla chuckled. That laugh that serial killers get when you don’t have any idea of how deeply their psychosis goes. “It was an accident, really…”

Her eyes lost focus as they flicked up and to the left. Kent let her access her memories. The chemical shift within the brain slowed reflex time and he could use that window.

One more step to the right. One step closer to freedom.

“I was driving home and saw that blonde hair, swishing back and forth as she walked…” Carla said, her voice trailing off. Then her features sharpened. “How many times had I told her not to walk home alone?” She shouted at Lyla. “How many times?”

Kent could feel the girl cringe behind him. He gave her hand a squeeze. They would get through this. Preferably with all of their body parts intact. Although that was not a given.

Carla moved another step. “But would daddy’s little girl get in trouble? Would she miss even a single dessert for disobeying me? So I got out of the car and followed her. I only meant to startle her, scare her, so that she knew why I had the rule.”

The woman stopped and reversed course. No, no, no.

“Then what happened?” Kent asked, trying to get her feet to stop moving in the wrong direction.

A smile, cold and soulless, formed on her lips. She bit down playfully. “I guess I was a little angrier than I thought, and hit her a little harder than I thought.”

“You mean you thought it was me?” Lyla stepped out from behind Kent. “You thought you hit me?”

But instead of any sympathy or kindness, Carla’s eyes crackled with a mischief unchecked by sanity. “And it felt good. So good.”

Kent willed her with his mind to step to the left. Just keep going to the left.

When her feet moved again, it was to the right. Kent had no choice but to move to the left, away from the exit.

“But it wasn’t Lyla you killed. It was Tara,” Kent said trying to string her along. Maybe she would work her way around to the other side if he just kept her talking.

Where in the hell was Nicole, anyway? Seriously?

“Yes, it was. I got rid of the body down in the basement,” Carla said, flipping the butcher knife around in her hands. “I thought, this is it. I might as well kill Lyla, too, so I put a Valium in her juice box and waited.”

Another step to the right. Keep going, bitch, just keep going.

“But once she was unconscious…”

“You loved me too much to kill me?” Lyla asked, hope so clear in her voice. Kent’s heart went out to the girl. Even now, she tried to believe the best of her mother. That somewhere inside that armored chest of hers beat a heart.

Kent knew better.

Carla’s snorting was her answer.

“No, your mom realized that if she killed you, it would be over.” He looked at Carla. “And you didn’t want it to be over, did you? You liked how it felt for all that red to cover up all that blonde.”

A savage smile upon her lips, Carla answered, “To just pound and pound and pound until I couldn’t pound anymore. It felt like I did on the track. So free.”

And so psychotic, but Kent didn’t add that. He’d learned his lesson.

But Lyla’s lip trembled and tears streaked her face. “Free? You’ve been killing and killing and keeping me a prisoner with this guilt.”

“I know,” Carla answered ever so matter-of-factly. “That was just an added bonus.”

Kent felt Lyla’s intent before her movement. He tried to reach out and grab her, but the girl screamed, running straight at her mother. While he couldn’t blame her, he did need to stop her.

Carla raised the butcher knife, preparing to end what she had started so long ago, but Kent flipped his knife, caught it by the point, and then flung it at Carla. The blade sailed over Lyla and struck her mother in the shoulder, just hard enough to spin the butcher knife away from her daughter.

Kent surged forward, grabbing Lyla around the waist, and then hurling her toward the tunnel.

“Run!” he yelled. Kent didn’t have time to see if she obeyed as he turned back to Carla, whose look of surprise gave way to fury.

She pulled his knife from her shoulder and came at him with both blades. Kent whipped off his coat and wrapped it around his hand. What protection it would give against German-hardened knives, he wasn’t sure, but it was all he had.

Hiding in that closet for four hours, Kent developed the sense that the perpetrator lived within that house. It had to be. The stalking was too intimate. The picking off friends one by one too specific. But was it the father? Or the driver? Or the mother? Kent couldn’t be sure. Next time he was taking the kid and just keep running. Let somebody else figure out which one.

Carla came at him with every bit of energy that her Olympics-trained legs could give her, the stainless steel glittering in the flickering light. His flashlight. It was tiny, but size didn’t always matter, right?

Dodging one knife, Kent let the flashlight slip from his fingers, catching it by the thin wristband. As the second knife sliced through the air, Kent slung the flashlight forward, smacking Carla right between the eyes.

That had to sting.

She stumbled a step, but Kent took every advantage of it to catch her arm and crank it back. Her muscles betrayed her and she dropped the knife. Kent caught it in midair and brought it back to bear, but the bitch was fast.

The butcher knife blade glanced off his arm, slicing a little filet of Kent off. German engineering, man. He held onto the knife though, coming back around as Carla lurched forward, knocking her forehead into his.

Either he was getting osteoporosis, or that chick had one thick skull as their bones cracked together and Kent stumbled backward. His vision blurred as he tried to keep his feet. Carla, however, raised the butcher knife overhead and swung downward with all her might. Kent braced for the pain. Braced for the blood loss. With any hope, there would be an ambulance close by.

But the blow never landed. Instead, Carla teetered to the side as her body shook from a blow from behind. The woman tipped forward to reveal Lyla, board in hand. She hit her mother again, knocking her to her knees.

Kent struggled to rise, fighting off double vision and rolling nausea. “Lyla, no!”

Lyla struck Carla again, the knives dropping harmlessly to the ground, but Lyla didn’t stop. She raised the board again and again.

Finally, he gained his feet, wrapping his arms around Lyla, keeping them at her side so she couldn’t swing again.

“Whoa, there, Lizzie Borden.”

Lyla fought to break free as her mother lay motionless at their feet. “But doesn’t she deserve it?” she asked, the whites of her eyes bloodshot, and her blonde hair matted against her head. “Doesn’t she?”

“Of course she does,” Kent answered. “But do you?”

Lyla looked into his eyes. He knew that line she wanted to cross. He also knew what it felt like to have to live on the other side of it.

He let go of her and backed away an unsteady step. “It is your call.”

The girl held the board like a bat, gripping the raw wood as if it weren’t depositing a thousand splinters in her hand. She gazed defiantly, almost daring him to go back on his word. When he didn’t, a shudder passed through her body, and the board pitched out of her hand.

“Kent!” Nicole yelled as she ran into the tunnel. “Carla’s the killer!”

Lyla looked at Kent as Kent looked at Lyla, and they both chuckled.

“Um, yeah,” Kent said as he put pressure on his arm wound. “We kind of figured that out.”

Nicole knelt down to check Carla’s pulse. She was still alive. Others poured out of the passageway. Uniformed cops, EMTs, and Kent even thought he spotted a firefighter in there. Where were they two minutes ago? He could have at least used the axe.

His partner tried to herd Lyla away. “Come on, hon.”

But the girl turned back, hugging Kent, burying his face in her chest. He smoothed her sweaty hair, careful not to drip blood onto it as he guided her to the exit.

Nicole raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Kent asked. “I told you I was great with kids.”

MY SOUL TO KEEP – the Post-Plain Jane short story featuring Nicole

PROLOGUE

Dean Henderson clipped his identification badge onto his shirt pocket. After working twenty-three years at the plant, you would think the guards could recognize him, but no. Each morning he had to put on a tie and this stupid badge.

“Roxy!” he heard his wife, Kerri, call up the stairs to their daughter.

He could smell bacon and, hopefully, hash browns. Yep, the best days of the week were when Roxy had late morning classes at the community college. You think his wife would make him a full breakfast? No such luck. Dean was lucky to get a cup of coffee and a burnt bagel when Roxy had an early class and caught breakfast at the school.

Straightening his tie, Dean stepped out of the master bedroom to find his wife now at the base of the stairs, craning her neck to see up to the second floor. “Roxy, honey, breakfast is ready!”

“Great,” Dean said as he attempted to kiss his wife on the cheek, but her frown, now ever present, warned him away. “I’ll just go serve myself.”

“No,” Kerri said. “We all eat together.”

Which really meant Roxy got her pick of the crispiest bacon.

“Let her sleep in,” Dean suggested. “If she wants to slide into class as it is starting, that’s her call.”

Kerri glared at him. “Did you even hear what time she came in last night?”

“No, but again, she’s over eighteen. We told her if she lived at home we would let her keep her own hours.”

His wife guffed like an offended lion. “We also discussed having a reasonable bedtime on school nights.”

He would never win. Not when it came to Kerri and her helicopter-mom mentality. Maybe he could sneak into the kitchen while she was distracted and snag some bacon. But even that hope was crushed as Kerri mounted the stairs one at a time.

“Roxy, up and at ‘em!”

Sighing, Dean followed his wife up the steps. If Roxy was home and hungover, she would need him to run interference. If his daughter had stayed out all night? Well, he would need to get Kerri a Valium or something.

But even he became mildly worried when Roxy didn’t answer the fourth, fifth, or sixth time Kerri shouted out to her. He pulled out his phone. No text from Roxy. Usually, if she was going to stay out late enough to freak out her mom, Roxy would give him a heads up.

Could something actually be wrong?

You could hear the concern in Kerri’s voice, as well. Urgency replaced playfulness as she reached a hand out and knocked on the door.

“Roxy?”

When there was still no answer, Kerri cracked the door open. “Baby, are you alright?”

Dean stood on his tiptoes to peer over his wife. Sure enough, Roxy was in her bed, the covers pulled over her face to block out the morning sun. Had she forgotten what day it was? Did she forget her physics lab?

Kerri crossed the room and opened the curtains wider, the chipper, cheerleader Mom tone back in her voice. “That’s it, sleepy-head. Time to get up.”

Dean was ready to head back downstairs when Kerri pulled back the covers and screamed. “She’s dead!”

The body was ashen, and the clouded eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.

He rushed over and hugged his wife as she screamed an anguished scream only a mother could produce. He, on the other hand, felt more shocked and confused.

This girl might be dead, but where was Roxy?

CHAPTER 1

Detective Nicole Usher’s feet pounded against the treadmill as she checked her pulse. A nice steady one hundred fifteen. She made sure to regulate her breathing—nice and slow, to optimize her workout. It turned out crack-heads didn’t need the gym. Chemically induced, they ran like the wind.

Not that she had been chasing any petty thieves or junkies lately. No, the predators she stalked were more about stealth and surprise. More than likely, she didn’t need to keep in shape to chase after a serial killer, but to run the hell away from one.

Nicole glanced down to her phone, which she had propped up on the treadmill’s computerized screen. No new calls or texts. But what had she expected? She knew Kent couldn’t tell her where he was going or how long he would be gone. It was part of the deal when you were a consultant for the CIA, DOD, and half a dozen other three-initial agencies. Though technically Kent was still a Special Agent with the FBI, he seldom found himself in an office. His skills were better put to use out in the field.

So this was what it was like to have a partner that wasn’t really a partner… in more ways than one. Lord knew he tried, but Kent just wasn’t cut out to be the “bring home flowers” kind of lover. He was more the “Hey, I picked up a cadaver arm so that we could practice dissecting the ulna nerve,” kind of guy.

After having a dozen or so “flowers” kind of boyfriends, Kent was actually refreshing. Disturbing, but refreshing.

The treadmill beeped as it started the cool down cycle. As her pace slowed, Nicole glanced around the nearly empty gym. It was late in the morning, so the “before work” rush had already bled from the exercise area. Since she was going over cold cases while Kent was gone, there really wasn’t much reason to fight the “before work” crowds. She might as well go in late and get home late if there was no one home to miss her.

Across the room, a woman about Nicole’s age worked on a “lat” machine. She smiled at Nicole. Before thinking, Nicole smiled back, then realized she didn’t think that smile was just a friendly one, as the woman winked.

Crap. What had she gotten herself into? Glancing away, Nicole tried to pretend the exchange didn’t happen. Not that she was homophobic, she just wasn’t interested.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Are you really going to pass up this opportunity?

She heard the memory of Kent’s whisper. He wouldn’t want her to take the woman up on the offer, but he certainly would want her to use this experience to fine-tune her seduction skills. Who knew that seduction was one of the most powerful ways to crack a suspect?

Nicole took a deep breath. Not from fatigue, but to work up the nerve. Non-verbal cues were not her forte. Which is exactly why Kent would want her to practice.

Glancing up, she found the woman concentrating on the proper form of her repetitions. Thank goodness. But then the woman looked up and a slow grin spread across her lips. The edge of one lip tugged up more than the other. Nicole knew that indicated interest, but could she replicate it?

Not replicate… she heard Kent correct in her head.

Respond.

What had Kent taught her? Channel her own experiences into the exchange. Forget that she was in love with the profiler. Forget that she was heterosexual. Forget that she would never pick up anyone at the gym.

Remember only desire. Want. With Kent gone for two months, that wasn’t much of a stretch of the imagination. What would her response be if Kent flashed her that patented “I’m only arrogant because I know I am that good in bed” smile?

Well, she’d flash him her “And I am one of the few who can keep up with you,” grins.

Keeping her eyelids hooded and letting the workout weigh down her features, Nicole smiled back hoping to emulate bedroom eyes. It appeared to work, as the woman’s smile grew and she worked the machine harder and harder. Clearly she wasn’t having to fake anything on her end.

Nicole’s phone vibrated on the handlebars as she worked up the nerve to walk over and talk to the woman.

Saved by the bell, so to speak.

She snapped the phone from its case and hit the “accept” button. Her fingers, slick with sweat, nearly dropped the phone. As she scrambled to catch hold of it, she could hear her partner’s tinny voice.

“Nicole? Nicole?”

Finally, her fingers got traction on the rubber backing and she brought the phone up to her ear. But not before noticing the woman’s stare. Her smile widened to show her pearly whites. She probably thought that Nicole fumbled the phone because of her. Nicole would let her keep that one. No reason to burst the woman’s ego.

“Yes, Ruben, I’m here.”

“Was starting to worry something was wrong.”

Most women would appreciate that a man was worried for them. That he cared and wanted to be there. To Nicole, though, it just annoyed her. Made her feel boxed in. That Ruben didn’t trust that she could take care of herself. For better or worse, Kent didn’t check in on her. He trusted that if she needed help, she would reach out.

“I’m fine, Ruben. What’s up?”

“We’ve got a weird one. I am texting you the address.”

The phone vibrated in her hand while a thin strip at the top of the screen showed the text. The address wasn’t far from the gym.

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

While the address was close, everyone would appreciate it if she took a shower first.

“And are you arriving solo or…?”

Nicole rolled her eyes. Ruben was never very subtle when it came to the subject of Kent. “Solo. He’s not back yet.” There was no reason to clarify who the “he” was in that sentence.

An audible sigh of relief came from the other end of the line.

“See you in a few,” Nicole said as she clicked off the connection. At the same time, the treadmill beeped, indicating that she was done with her workout.

She looked over to the woman, who had moved on to the bicep bar. Nicole nodded to her phone then shrugged, tilting her head to the locker room, indicating that she had to leave.

The woman, unfortunately, took that as an invitation. She got up from the weight machine and trotted over.

“Let me join you,” the blonde said.

Crap, what had she gotten herself into?

* * *

Ruben walked around the mass of techs in Roxy’s room and headed for the hallway. Nicole should be here any second. He’d been at the crime scene for over an hour, yet he would have little to tell her.

Beyond the fact that Roxy was missing and an unidentified girl was found dead in her bed. He hated the weird ones, whereas his partner quickened to them. Would she be so eager for this one without the help of Kent? Maybe, if they could solve this case without the profiling prodigy, she would realize that good old-fashioned police work was still effective. Maybe Ruben could help break the spell she was under.

Even Ruben knew, though, that he could never get her back. Once you fell in love with that amount of crazy, you seldom went back to a sane, stable relationship, but Ruben still cared for Nicole and wanted to see her free of the danger Kent represented to her career and even to her life.

“Ruben!” Nicole shouted from the bottom of the stairs. She couldn’t get up, with the EMTs, CSIs and uniformed police loitering around.

“Hey!” Ruben shouted. “Make way for the detective.”

The crowd parted and Nicole trotted up the steps. He noticed her wet hair was pulled back into a ponytail. More than likely, she’d just come from the gym. There was a time when they would have gone together. When they did everything together. They were so simpatico until, of course, Kent had arrived on the scene. Effer.

But Ruben let none of that show on his face as Nicole joined him at Roxy’s bedroom door.

“So the parents have no idea who the girl is?”

“None.”

Nicole frowned. “Did I hear right, that this girl used their daughter’s toothbrush and even dressed in her nightgown?”

“Like I said, weird.”

“No missing persons report?” Nicole asked.

“No, but it may be too soon. We may have to wait a full forty-eight hours for an official report.”

Nicole stepped up to the bed and looked down at the girl’s face. “She was so pretty.”

One of the female CSIs nodded. “We’re calling her ‘Sleeping Beauty’.”

“Which is inappropriate,” Ruben countered. They did their best not to sensationalize crime in their department. If this was a murder, and how could it not be, they didn’t want to give the killer any press if they could avoid it.

The woman, though, winked at him. “So you don’t want us calling you our ‘Prince Charming?’”

Ruben didn’t quite know how to respond to that. He looked to the woman’s name badge. “No, Mary, I don’t. I would prefer Detective Torres.”

Mary said as she shrugged. “Your loss.”

“If you two are done flirting,” Nicole said, moving forward, out of the way for the Medical Examiner to get into the small room.

That was the last thing Ruben wanted Nicole thinking. “Please, Dr. McGregor.”

The older coroner’s pot belly entered the room before he did. Ruben pushed himself back against the closet door, with the handles poking him in the back. You would think a man who saw the effects of arterial blockage every day would take a little better care of himself.

But no, the man chewed on the butt of a cigar as he entered. “Would we like me to actually examine the body, or am I expected to be a psychic…again?”

Now everyone either moved out of the room or threw themselves back, out of the ME’s way. McGregor was known for the fact that his bite was actually worse than his bark. He’d gotten more people suspended than anyone else in the department’s history, combined.

“Time of death?” Nicole asked.

“Well, aren’t we in a hurry, detective?” McGregor barked. “The liver probe isn’t instantaneous.”

* * *

Well, it kind of was, but Nicole didn’t voice this fact. She was already on McGregor’s bad side this morning.

The ME picked up the girl’s arm, which was pretty stiff. “She’s still in rigor.”

Which meant she had been dead more than four hours, but less than twelve.

“And the liver temp is 88 degrees.”

Nicole did the math in her head. Liver temp fell about a degree to a degree and a half per hour after death. This room was a stable 72 degrees, which should not have accelerated or decelerated that fall.

“So I would say she’s been dead five to six hours.”

Nicole nodded. That was what she had determined, as well.

“Help me turn her over,” McGregor said.

Nicole leaned over and, as gently as she could, helped the coroner get the girl onto her side. He pulled up the nightgown to look at her thighs.

“Lividity is fixed and consistent. Looks like she died here.”

So it wasn’t a body dump. Which made sense. Otherwise, this would be the oddest body dump in history. Not that it wasn’t a weird crime already.

“Thank you, Dr. McGregor,” Nicole said, trying to curry any small favor she might get with the man. The man just grunted, chewing at the stub.

“Any guess as to the cause of death?” Ruben asked.

“No petechiation, no bruising, no obvious fatal wounds. So your guess is about as good as mine,” McGregor answered, with his usual helpfulness.

“Any ETA on when you’ll have the autopsy done?” Nicole asked as non-confrontationally as she could.

“There aren’t many bodies in the cooler,” McGregor answered. “I should be able to get to her after lunch.”

“After lunch?” Ruben blurted.

McGregor stood up, absently rubbing his belly. “You have a problem with that?”

“No,” Ruben regrouped quickly. “It’s just it would be helpful to know how she died.”

“Really?” McGregor said. “Because I think you’ve got plenty to do before I have my pulled pork sandwich my wife packed for me. By my eye, you need to identify this poor child and find another missing girl.”

Ruben nodded, because what else could he have done? “Of course.”

There was no challenging McGregor. Not if you wanted to get an autopsy report ever again.

“Whoa, cool.” A voice sounded from the hallway.

Nicole thought she recognized it, but it couldn’t be who she thought it was.

Then the hipster coroner’s assistant sauntered into the room. “Joshua?” she asked.

“You know it, my favorite lady detective.”

“What are you doing here?” Ruben asked.

“Um… I’m a ME’s assistant? And there’s a body? Do I need to connect the dots for you?”

“You should be in prison,” Ruben stated, quite correctly.

Joshua shrugged. “No big thing. A cop decided to give me a tune-up. Broken nose and hematoma to my kidney. I could’ve have taken a boatload of cash from the city, but I told them my job was priceless, so here I am.”

“But you had a set of uteri on your mantelpiece,” Nicole said.

Again, Joshua shrugged. “Reduced to a biohazard misdemeanor. And I get to choose my own cases. How cool is that?”

“So cool,” Ruben answered his tone sarcastic.

“Trust me,” McGregor said. “I’m no happier about having a creepy klepto on my staff than you are.”

For once, they were in agreement.

“Looks like we’re gonna need to stretcher this one out,” Joshua said. “There’s no way we can get the gurney up those narrow stairs.”

Joshua was right. It was time to move onto the case. They couldn’t let Joshua’s appearance throw them off their game.

Nicole turned to Ruben. “Have you interviewed the parents yet?”

Ruben shook his head. “I was waiting for you. The mother is pretty shook up.”

Nicole could imagine. Not only was there a dead girl in her house, but her own daughter was missing. Was this some kind of sick kidnapping play? Leave one dead to up the ante to ransom for the other.

Trotting down the steps, Nicole found the father and mother on the couch. The father had his arm wrapped around the mother’s shoulders, apparently holding her up. The woman’s eyes were rimmed with red, her face puffy. She had been crying heavily for a while. No mystery why that was.

The husband rocked his wife back and forth, rubbing down her spine.

Ruben hung back at the doorway. As much as he tried to present himself as the more politically correct version of Kent, in some ways, he was just as bad as the profiler. Ruben let her take all the “touchy-feely” stuff. Bereaved parents, hysterical crackheads, and shut-down children.

The problem was Nicole wasn’t all that “touchy-feely” herself. She hated this as much as Ruben did, but she wouldn’t shirk her duty. Besides, there wasn’t room in that doorway for two.

She sat across from the parents. “Mr. Henderson, I am so sorry, but there are some questions I need to ask.”

“Please, call me Dean,” the man said. “And ask away. We want our daughter back.”

Ruben handed Nicole a garage door opener. “The only effect we found on the girl was this device. No key. Just this, so it must be how she got into the house.” Nicole said. “Didn’t you hear the garage door open in the middle of the night?”

Dean shook his head. “God, I wish we had, but it’s Roxy’s room that is over the garage.”

CHAPTER 2

Ruben watched as Nicole navigated the emotional minefields that were bereaved parents. The husband was trying to keep it together, but the effort was taking its toll. They really didn’t seem to have any idea of whom the girl was upstairs or where their daughter was presently.

“Like I said, Roxy usually gives me a heads up if she’s going to be out all night.”

“And no response from any of your own calls or texts?”

Ruben stepped forward. “The techs say that her cell is either off or out of power.”

“More than likely, the battery is dead,” Dean said. “She’s always forgetting to plug it in. And then with all that Facebooking? We bought her a car charger, but she never uses it. Shouldn’t you be out looking for Roxy?”

“We’ve already put out a bolo on her car and alerted all airports, train stations and ports.”

“But where’s my daughter? Where?” the mother screamed.

Nicole stood up. “I don’t know, but we’re going to do everything we can to find her.”

Ruben opened the front door for Nicole. They exited out into the street. Ruben took back the controller and hit the button. The garage door opened. “These older models only have 256 combinations. This device may not even be Roxy’s.”

So much for any lead there.

“We might as well head back to the station,” he said. Standing around a crime scene feeling helpless wasn’t his style.

Nicole headed to her car, reminding Ruben just how far apart they had grown. Ruben could only take solace in the fact that it wasn’t Kent driving a car stolen from the police lot.

The drive was quick—Nicole was a bit of a lead foot. Ruben kept to the speed limit in his car.

He entered the bullpen to find Nicole already getting settled at her desk. She really was a speed fiend. Another bad habit she had picked up from Kent.

“Anything?” he asked as he smoothed his tie and sat down.

“Nothing. With the battery dead, the techs can’t track Roxy’s phone,” Nicole responded.

Glick walked out of his office. “Well, I may have something.” Ruben swung his chair around to listen to his Captain. “A family has been harassing Missing Persons regarding their daughter, but the department can’t take an official report until forty-eight hours.”

“On it,” Ruben stated, navigating to the Missing Persons database. Just because they didn’t take a report didn’t mean that they didn’t take down the information. He retrieved the address of the Ash family and grabbed his coat.

“I’ll drive,” Nicole said, picking up her keys.

Another bad habit she’d picked up from Kent, but Ruben wasn’t going to fight her on it.

Ruben had to duck down to get into Nicole’s Mustang. She revved the engine, then shot them out of the parking lot and into the street.

It turned out that the worried family only lived a few blocks away from the Henderson’s. Ruben’s phone rattled. He picked it up to find a text from Jimmi, their techie. It showed a picture of the missing girl from the family that reported her missing. It was their sleeping beauty.

“This isn’t going to be an information gathering visit, it’s going to be a notification visit.”

Nicole sighed. These were the worst. At the least the Henderson’s still had hope. Nicole and he were about to crush the Ashes’.

It was a little spooky as Nicole made the final turn down the Ashes’ street. This development looked identical to the Henderson’s, down to the fake shutters. Like he said, eerie. Déjà vu, almost.

Once Nicole pulled up to the curb, Ruben got out, clicking the remote control in his hand. The garage door opened. The probability that the girl had gotten lost and opened the wrong house was now looking more and more probable. How that helped in solving her death Ruben wasn’t quite sure.

He followed Nicole up the path to the Ashes’ house. The door flew open before they were even half way there. A very worried-looking couple poured out.

“Have you found her?” Mrs. Ash asked, high-pitched and shrill.

“I’m so sorry,” Nicole said.

The woman slumped to her knees before her husband could catch her. “No, no, no, no.”

“When was the last time you saw your daughter?” Nicole asked the father.

“Last night at dinner. When she didn’t come home…”

The man started sobbing as well, doubling over his wife in grief. Ruben looked past the couple to find two little boys standing in the hallway, the look on their faces one of horror. Children should never see their parents in such a state.

Ruben edged past the couple and gathered the boys up, herding them to their rooms. “Let’s go find something for you to play with.”

* * *

Nicole watched as Ruben escorted the children upstairs. She knelt by the grieving couple. What could you say in moments like these?

“She didn’t suffer,” Nicole said.

“How could you know that?” The wife asked. “How could you know?”

“Where is she?” The husband asked. “We want to see our baby.”

“And we will take you to her, but we need to ask you a few questions so that we can find out who did this to her.”

The husband urged his wife up and into the house. Nicole followed, listening to their sobs, heart-wrenching, soul-shaking sobs. This was the worst part of the job. Having to interfere with people’s grief. To force them to relive the most horrible day of their lives. Over and over again.

The guilt, the shame, the fear, the remorse.

Grief laid people bare.

Nicole sat down in a high-backed chair. The wife lay in a near ball on the couch. The husband wasn’t much better. He didn’t even have the strength to hold himself up, let alone the woman, but rather than crying hysterically like his wife, instead, he sat staring straight ahead, not moving, not crying, not speaking.

Nicole had seen it before. Shock. Even though there were no physical wounds, the man was in as deep a shock as if he’d been shot.

But there was a killer out there who couldn’t be caught without more information.

“Did you know where your daughter, Megan, was going when she left last night?”

The father roused himself and looked, blurry-eyed, toward Nicole. “She had a study group. Her biology study group. She went every Tuesday night.”

“And what time did she usually come home?” Nicole asked.

“Around nine,” Mr. Ash answered.

“Always before nine,” Mrs. Ash said with a hiccup. “We called the police at nine thirty.”

“Did Megan have a boyfriend?”

Mrs. Ash shook her head side to side. “She was all about transferring to Harvard.”

“How about her girlfriends? Did you know anyone in her study group?”

“They should all be in her phone,” Mr. Ash stated.

“We didn’t find a phone with Megan,” Nicole said, texting Jimmi to find it ASAP.

“That thing is attached to her,” Mr. Ash insisted.

“We’ll find it,” Nicole reassured him. “Now I’ve got to ask, did Megan have any trouble with drugs or alcohol?”

Both parents this time vehemently shook their heads. But that was parents. The fact was, Megan was so disoriented that she not only went into the wrong house, but got dressed in someone else’s nightgown and even brushed her teeth with the wrong toothbrush. Drugs were high on everyone’s list.

But what parent wanted to admit their kid had a substance abuse issue? Especially after finding out their child was dead. The halo that they put on the deceased usually blinded the family.

Once they found Megan’s phone and her friends, they would get way more accurate information on the girl.

“Alright, well, let me get my partner and we can take you to view Megan.”

Mr. Ash pulled out his phone. “Dear God I’ve got to find a babysitter. Usually Megan…”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Clearly Megan watched the boys if the parents went out.

Nicole rose and headed up the stairs. Hopefully, Ruben had better luck getting better intel from the boys.

* * *

Ruben studied a perfect, to-scale model of the Millennium Falcon. “You built this?” he asked the older boy, Johnny.

The child shrugged. “Yeah.”

“It’s sick,” Ruben said, trying to use the child’s generational language. Apparently, it worked.

“Thanks,” Johnny said squirming in his seat. He paused, then asked, “We should always tell the truth, right?”

Ruben sat down across from the lower bunk bed where the two boys sat. “Yes.”

“Always?” the boy asked.

“Yes, especially when lives are in danger.”

The younger boy, Tommy punched his older brother in the arm. “Don’t, Johnny. We promised.”

Johnny shoved Tommy. “I have to do what’s right.”

Ruben could identify with Johnny. The older kid always picked up the slack. When Ruben was ten, he didn’t have a five-hour bike route to buy toys like the Millennium Falcon, it was to help pay the rent for his mom and his four siblings.

“Johnny, any help you could give us would be very valuable.”

The boy squirmed some more, but finally looked up into Ruben’s eyes. “Megan had a boyfriend.”

Tommy sprang from the bed, wailing on his brother. “Don’t! You promised!”

Ruben picked the younger child up by the waist, holding him close as he thrashed, his anger and grief fueling his young muscles. Ruben didn’t want the boy hurting his brother, or even himself.

“She’s gone, Tommy,” Johnny said. “She would want the police to know.”

“Mom’s going to be so pissed!” Tommy shouted.

“It’s okay,” Ruben said, as soothing as he could. “She’ll understand.”

Although Ruben couldn’t be sure of that. Parents reacted differently under these circumstances. But Mrs. Ash’s response didn’t matter. They needed to know who was close to Megan.

“What’s his name?” Ruben asked as Tommy settled down in his arms.

“Deacon,” Johnny said. “He’s in her study group.”

That just cut about an hour’s worth of research out of the way. An hour closer to finding Megan’s killer.

“Are you sure?” Ruben asked.

“Yeah,” Johnny said as he picked up a storm-trooper action figure. “One day Meg had taken my Gameboy away because I wouldn’t share with Tommy, and I went into her room to find it. She came back, so I hid in the closet. She was talking to Deacon and was all kissy face. ‘No, you hang up first’.” The boy pursed his lips and made a loud smacking sound. “I almost puked.”

Yep, that sounded like teenage love to Ruben. He put Tommy down as a soft knock came at the door. Ruben opened it to find Nicole with Mrs. and Mr. Ash right behind her. The husband was on the phone.

“Mrs. Ash?” Ruben asked, “Do you mind if we take a look in Megan’s room?”

The woman didn’t answer verbally, but she did nod her blotchy face several times. Tissues pushed up and under her nose.

Ruben guided Nicole down the hallway, leaning in to whisper. “Megan had a boyfriend.”

Nicole cocked an eyebrow. “Not according to the parents.”

“Ah, aren’t they always the last to know?”

* * *

If Nicole’s teenager years were any indication, Ruben was absolutely correct. This perfect “good girl” had another side to her. Didn’t they all?

They walked in to Megan’s room to find it immaculate. Not just clean but pristine. There wasn’t a book or sheet out of place. The girl had been living in a Better Homes and Garden ad. Sure, there were a few One Direction posters on the wall. But the most rebellious thing in her room was a Cheshire Cat night-light.

It didn’t feel like a teenager’s room. She’d felt this before. Kent had solved an entire case based on the lack of personalization before. But Nicole wasn’t Kent, much to her frustration, so all she could do was open drawers to find equally neat contents.

Nothing was out of place.

Nicole turned back to the door where Mrs. Ash stood watch. “Did Megan have a diary?”

The woman shook her head, dabbing her nose with tissue as Mr. Ash called out for his wife. “Cecily, what is Tiffany’s number?” Mrs. Ash left for downstairs.

“What teenage girl doesn’t have a diary?” Ruben asked.

“None that I know of. The question is finding it.”

“Psst,” a whisper came from the hall.

“Johnny?” Ruben asked, but the boy just indicated toward the dresser.

Nicole went over to it again and dug through the drawers. No diary. Before Ruben could ask for clarification, Mrs. Ash returned and urged Johnny downstairs. “The babysitter will be here in a few minutes.”

Nicole waited until Mrs. Ash left again before dropping to all fours.

“What are you doing?”

Nicole ran her hand under the dresser. Having a younger brother herself, she knew that anything as sacred as a diary would never be left to grubby little hands. Finally, her fingers met the edge of a book. She pulled the tape off and came out with a diary.

“Voilà!” she said, opening the tiny metal lock.

It was not a pleasant read. Someone identified only by the initial “D” had been doing awful things to the poor girl, plus she was terrified of a “W” and wanted to run away.

“The boyfriend’s name is Deacon,” Ruben mentioned.

“And Mr. Henderson’s first name is Dean. Maybe she didn’t just randomly wander into their house, after all.”

Ruben pulled out his phone. “I’ll have Jimmi track down Deacon and have uniforms bring him in.”

“I think another visit to the Henderson’s is in order,” Nicole stated.

Ruben frowned, but nodded.

They covered the three blocks quickly. Nicole pulled up to the Henderson’s’ house to find nearly an army of people streaming in and out of the house. Most held “Missing” signs. They had to elbow their way through the crowd.

Mr. Henderson rushed up to them. “Any word?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Nicole said. “But can we speak with you?

“Of course, anything,” he said, as his wife joined him. He draped his arm over her.

“In private?” Ruben suggested.

“We have no secrets,” Mr. Henderson said.

“Really,” Nicole insisted. “We should talk somewhere with less people.”

Mr. Henderson escorted them into his home office. The copy machine whirred as it produced more “Missing” flyers.

“What is it?” Mr. Henderson asked. “I’ve got another ten volunteers coming in a few minutes who I’ve got to brief.”

“You said earlier that you had no idea who Megan was,” Nicole stated.

“Is that her name?” the wife asked. “The dead girl? Her name was Megan?”

“Yes,” Ruben answered. “But we think your husband may already know that.”

“What?” the man said seeming genuinely surprised. But criminals were some of the best actors out there. Especially pedophiles.

“We have an indication that not only did you know Megan,” Ruben said, “but you knew her intimately.”

“I’ve never seen her before,” Mr. Henderson asserted. “Never.”

“In her diary she mentions a ‘D,’” Nicole added.

“Have you looked in the phone book lately?” Mrs. Henderson asked. “There are a lot of ‘D’s out there.”

“But Megan ended up here,” Nicole pressed. “Why?”

Mrs. Henderson wrapped her arm around her husband’s waist before she spoke. “I have no idea, and neither does Dean.”

“Maybe we should take this down to the station?” Ruben suggested, as a shout went up outside. Everyone poured from the office to find a group of people surrounding a young woman.

“Dad? What the hell is all this about?” the girl said.

“Roxy!” the parents shouted, rushing to their daughter.

Nicole looked over to Ruben, who shrugged. Could the case of the missing girl be this easily solved? Roxy just randomly walking home?

* * *

Ruben allowed the sense of jubilation to wash over him. The volunteers were happily going home, the missing princess found. He took a moment to enjoy the sensation. Seldom did his job as a homicide detective allow him this type of unqualified joy. A missing girl, assumed dead, was found.

You didn’t get a bigger win than that.

However, there was still a truly dead girl to bring justice to, so he stepped forward and Roxy extracted herself from her mother’s embrace.

“It was Megan in my bed?” Roxy asked.

“Shhh…” Mrs. Henderson said. “We can do this later.”

“No, Mom,” Roxy said. “I want to help.”

“Where were you last night?”

The girl blushed. “I went to a rave and did some weed, then fell asleep at my boyfriend’s house.”

“Roxy!” her mother shouted.

But the girl just shrugged. “What? My bad.”

Ruben could care less what typical teenage high jinks the girl was into. They needed to know about the victim.

Nicole guided them to the living room. “How well did you know Megan?”

Roxy shrugged. “Not very. I mean, she went to my community college, but she was all about studying. She never partied, so clearly, our paths didn’t cross much.”

Mr. Henderson shook his head. He didn’t seem to know his daughter quite as well as he thought he did.

“Were you a part of her study group?” Ruben asked.

“What, you mean geek central? Um, no way,” Roxy answered.

“Did you see her last night?” Nicole asked.

“Sorry, no. Me and my crew went to get a few slices before we headed out to party,” Roxy answered.

Nicole looked to Ruben. He nodded. It was time to get into some touchier stuff. Nicole leaned forward to the girl. “Roxy, I’ve got to ask you some hard questions, and I need you to answer honestly.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“No!” Mrs. Henderson cried out, shoving herself between Nicole and her daughter. “No.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Henderson,” Ruben said. “We can do this here or we can take Roxy down to the station. She’s of legal age, we are not required to have her parents present.”

Mrs. Henderson’s blotchy face screwed up even tighter, flaring a bright red. “And if we want a lawyer?”

“It just makes your husband look more suspicious,” Ruben answered.

“Dad?” Roxy said. “What are they talking about?”

Nicole leaned forward again. “We have some suspicions that your father may have had inappropriate contact with Megan and, therefore, with you.”

Roxy leapt from the couch. “No. No way. Dad may be a nerd, but he’s a good dad.”

Nicole reached out and touched Roxy’s arm. “I know how hard this must be, but we’ve got to be sure there isn’t a significant reason that Megan ended up at this house.”

Roxy crossed her arms. “She’s never been here. Never to visit or anything. I have no idea how she got here, but my dad had nothing to do with it.”

“Are you sure?” Ruben pressed.

“Yes,” Roxy said forcefully. “And if you want to ask me any other questions, I think I’ll take Mom’s advice and get a lawyer.”

Ruben sighed. He’d pushed too hard. Nicole looked up at him. He shook his head. Now that the girl had lawyered up, there was no point in taking the family down to the station.

Nicole rose. “We are so sorry to inconvenience you.” She put her hand out to Mr. Henderson. “But we are glad to see your daughter safe and sound.”

“Yeah, right, like you did anything to help us,” he said, looking down at Nicole’s outstretched hand.

Ruben wasn’t too thrilled with the man’s dis of his partner, but he could understand his attitude after they had just accused him of molesting not only a strange girl, but his own daughter.

The phone at Ruben’s belt jangled. He pulled it out of its hard case and read the text—”Deacon’s at the station.”

Before they could make it to the door, Nicole’s phone went off. “It’s Joshua. We need to stop off at the morgue first.”

“Good. Let Deacon stew for a while,” Ruben said. They had another “D” to interrogate.

CHAPTER 3

Nicole missed Kent. Not just to warm up the sheets on these cold winter nights, but to help bring clarity to the case. Oh, sure, he’d make her work for it, but at least when the FBI profiler worked, it felt like they were getting somewhere. Maybe somewhere bizarre, but moving forward. Sure, they had pulled the boyfriend in, but the way Megan described the molestation, it didn’t sound like it was being perpetrated by someone her own age.

Kent would probably have solved the crime already.

As they walked down the long hallway to the autopsy room, Nicole texted Kent, “Got a weird one. Right up your alley.”

She hadn’t expected an answer, not since she hadn’t heard from him in weeks, so she was a little surprised when her phone vibrated almost immediately.

“Email me the case files.”

Nicole should have been surprised, but she wasn’t. All of the ‘I love you.’ ‘I miss you’ texts had gone unanswered, but the moment a heinous crime was on the table, Kent was Johnny on the spot.

“Will upload as soon as I get back to the station,” Nicole texted back.

“Whatcha got?” Ruben asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Just Kent offering to help on the case.”

“Oh, so your wayward Holmes has decided to grace us with his presence?”

Nicole shook her head, wanting this exchange to end quickly. “No, he’s going to do so remotely.”

“Kent’s still out in the field?” Ruben asked with more than enough sarcasm for two. “Trying to be the next Bourne?”

“He got recruited, Ruben. I was there. They threatened to charge him with his break in at the Pentagon if he didn’t go with them.”

“Well then, maybe Kent shouldn’t do things that leave him susceptible to blackmail.”

Nicole ground her back teeth. Discussing Kent with Ruben never went well. Why did she even bother? “The point is he didn’t want to go.”

Ruben turned her to him. “Or that’s what he wanted you to think. How can a guy that tightly wound be content in our little burg?”

“He’s coming back,” Nicole asserted.

“When, though?”

That, she couldn’t answer, and Ruben knew it. “So are you just rubbing salt in the wound, or what?”

“No,” Ruben said, shaking his head slowly. “I just want to see you happy.”

“Well, I am.” Of course, she wasn’t. Kent had been gone for months, and who knew how much longer he’d be gone, but Ruben didn’t need to know that. “So you can stop worrying.”

He took a step back. “Never.”

Nicole groaned. This is why they would have broken up even if Kent hadn’t shown back up. Ruben didn’t know when to take a hint. A knight in shining armor got a little old when you couldn’t walk two feet without him riding in to sweep you off your feet. At that point, it was more like hijacking than rescuing.

Luckily, right then they passed through the glass sliding doors of the autopsy room, having them whoosh closed behind them. The cold air of the morgue was a relief, helping to cool her angry cheeks. The smell of formaldehyde, however, was not so welcome.

They came upon Dr. McGregor sewing up Megan’s “Y” incision.

“Well?” Ruben asked.

“Well, what?” McGregor countered.

“Joshua said you had something for us?”

“The kid’s a little liar,” McGregor grunted, then nodded to the assistant who stood in the back of the room. “No offense, you little shit.”

“None taken,” Joshua said, joining them at the autopsy table.

“The autopsy didn’t show anything,” McGregor said. “Medically, she is in perfect health.”

“Except for the part where she is dead,” Nicole commented.

“Yeah, except for that,” Joshua said, stroking Megan’s hair in a completely creepy manner. “Looks like she is just sleeping.”

The lab assistant looked up. “Maybe you should kiss her and see if she wakes up,” he said to Ruben.

“Joshua, you may have your job back, but let’s be clear, you will never get my respect back,” Ruben rumbled.

“Touchy much?” Joshua countered. “Look, I practically cracked the Plain Jane case. You might want to give me a little more respect.”

“Really? You were contacted by the serial killer and then irresponsibly went to meet her?”

“Which led Detective Usher to the FBI profiler who had been kidnapped, I believe right under your nose,” Joshua shot back.

Ruben clenched his fist next to Nicole. Never a good sign. Right about now, she wanted to track down the police officer who had given Joshua a hematoma on his kidney and give one to the officer for making them deal with the hipster.

Joshua sighed. “Besides, I just thought that, since everyone calls you Prince Charming, you’d like to put it to the test.”

“Who calls me that?” Ruben demanded.

Joshua shrugged. “Everyone. Or Mr. Straight-Laced, or Dudley Do-Right. Or Wet Blanket. But mainly from the ladies, Prince Charming.”

Nicole knew how embarrassed Ruben must feel, so she stepped between them. “If there’s nothing on the autopsy, Joshua, why did you summon us here?”

“Stomach contents,” the assistant answered. At least he didn’t say it was just to see her. “She had coffee, caramel, soy milk and sprinkles in her stomach, barely digested before she died.”

“So she was at a coffee shop?” Ruben said. “Not exactly an earth-shattering lead.”

“Ah, but she also had a splash of nutmeg,” Joshua said pointing to his nose. “I’ve got a gift for spices. And there is only one shop in the area that uses nutmeg, ‘Piping Hot.’”

“Oh,” Ruben said, sounding a little contrite. “Thanks.”

Joshua didn’t seem to have any skin off his nose about it. As a matter of fact, he downright beamed with pride. “You are very welcome.”

* * *

Ruben walked into the interrogation room still in a bad mood from the morgue. Thinking that people were talking behind his back was one thing, but calling him Prince Charming? That was a bridge too far. And Nicole hadn’t seemed any too surprised. There had been no outcry of “No, Ruben, no one has ever said that about you.” So, clearly, they had.

And this wasn’t just Kent. Being ridiculed by the profiler—that, Ruben was used to. To think that he was being mocked by other officers galled him. What were they, in kindergarten? Nice guys didn’t necessarily finish last, but by God they were absolutely humiliated for it.

Did anyone discuss that he had a conviction rate of nearly 94%? Did they chuckle about the fact that because he took such care with the rules and regulations, his arrests held up in court? No, of course not. All they could do was grovel at Kent’s feet. Who needed a conviction rate when you just killed the suspect while they “resisted arrest?”

No one wanted to talk about how Kent was just a serial killer with a badge and a “self-defense” shield.

His being called out of town for months was Ruben’s Christmas present. Who knew that Santa took wishes so seriously?

But now, this case. One in Kent’s wheelhouse. Ruben could feel Nicole missing Kent as if it were a physical entity. You could see her playing the “What Would Kent Do?” tape in her head.

How did they solve crimes before the sloppy savant came along?

“I’m Detective Usher,” Nicole informed Deacon. The kid looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Clean-shaven in a nice shirt and khakis, he certainly didn’t seem to be the killer. “And this is Detective Torres.”

“What is this about?” the young man asked, his fingers entwined in one another, fidgeting. “I’ve never been in a police station before.”

Ruben wasn’t surprised. The kid seemed stand-up.

Nicole sat down across from Deacon. Ruben took up position behind the kid to add just that little bit of pressure.

“Did you know Megan Ash?”

“Yes, of course,” Deacon answered, obviously not quite catching the past tense that Nicole used. “We’re dating.”

“For how long?” Nicole asked.

“About six months. Why? Is something wrong? I’ve been texting her this morning after she missed a midterm and she hasn’t answered.”

“I’m sorry to say that Megan was found dead this morning.”

All the color drained out of the kid’s face. His lip trembled as tears sprang to his eyes. “No. That can’t be. I just saw her last night.”

“Yes, tell us about that,” Nicole said.

Deacon shrugged. “We went to the library as usual. We were planning on putting in a late one to cram for the midterm, but she was feeling tired, so we drove her home.”

“We?” Ruben asked.

“Yeah, the study group. Nikki is the only one with a car, so she drives us all home.”

“She was found in a home several blocks away,” Nicole said. “Any idea how that happened, if you dropped her off at her house?”

“Oh, but we didn’t drop her at her home. We dropped her five blocks from her house. Like we always do.”

“You mean you let your girlfriend walk home in the dark by herself?” Ruben challenged.

“Trust me, I didn’t want to, but she insisted. She didn’t want her parents to find out about us. She wanted it to look like she rode the bus home.”

Damn it, but everything coming out of the kid’s mouth was ringing true. He seemed truly surprised and bereaved. Guilty people seldom seemed nervous. They were usually the calmest. This kid was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, his eyes darting about.

“She even texted me that she made it home safely,” Deacon said pulling his phone out of his pocket, handing it over to Nicole.

“Yes, she clearly thought she was home,” Nicole said.

“How…” Deacon sniffled. “How did she die?”

“We aren’t sure yet,” Nicole said. “Do you have any ideas?”

The young man shook his head. “I just know she was having a lot of headaches and had been tired for a while.”

“Maybe she was pregnant?” Ruben offered trying to keep the kid off balance.

Deacon shook his head. “Impossible. She was a virgin.”

Nicole’s eyebrow went up. “But I thought you said you’d been dating for over six months?”

“We both wanted to wait,” Deacon said. “Not even any under-the-shirt stuff.”

Ruben was pretty sure he could read Nicole’s mind right about now. In this day and age? A virgin? Ruben showed her his phone and started texting. They would confirm or deny Deacon’s assertion with a quick text to Joshua.

Within moments, the answer flashed on Ruben’s phone. He read it aloud. “Nope, her cherry wasn’t popped.”

* * *

So Megan really was a virgin. But that made no sense, given her diary.

“Deacon, are you sure Megan wasn’t sexually active in any other way than intercourse?”

“No way, no how,” the young man stated. “She was adamant.”

Doth Megan protest too much? She hated to do this to the kid, he obviously had a rosy picture of his girlfriend, but Nicole had Megan’s murderer to bring to justice.

“Would it surprise you then to know that Megan gave a fairly detailed account of someone molesting her for years?”

Deacon’s eyes dilated and he blinked several times. “Who? Who would do that to her?”

“She describes him only as ‘D.’”

“It isn’t me, I swear,” he said, his voice cracking. “I loved her. I respected her. If she’d told me, I would have done something about it!”

Nicole put her hand onto his arm. “I am sure you would have.”

“Why didn’t she tell me? Why?” Deacon asked.

More than likely, she didn’t want to tarnish his impression of her.

“Abuse victims feel a lot of shame,” Nicole said. “They are afraid everyone will blame them for their abuse.”

“No,” Deacon said. “I would have believed her,” he asserted, before he crumpled into sobs.

There were a lot of tears being shed over Megan’s death, but no clues so far.

“Do you have any ideas who this ‘D’ might be?” Nicole asked.

Deacon shook his head.

“What about ‘W’?”

“We don’t even know anyone whose name starts with a ‘W,’ sorry.”

“You’re sure?”

“I wish I could help,” Deacon said. “The only ‘D’ we know is Professor Danzai, but he is chill.”

Nicole flashed her eyes over to Ruben who was already Googling the teacher. A teacher would be a perfect candidate for a person of power the victim would be reluctant to tell on.

Her phone went off on her hip. She pulled it out to find a text from Joshua. “Hit me up, babe.” Nicole was about to answer it when another text came through. “And we really have something this time.”

She looked over her shoulder at the two-way mirror. She knew that her captain was behind there. He opened the door.

“Deacon’s study mates confirmed his alibi,” Captain Glick said. “Son, you are free to go.”

“I’m going to have Uni’s pick up our professor,” Ruben said.

“While they are tracking him down, we need to head to the morgue,” Nicole said. Ruben’s look asked the question for him. “No, seriously, supposedly they have something.”

Besides, it was kind of nice going to the morgue with an invitation rather than sneaking in like she had to with Kent.

* * *

Joshua spiked his hair, again. That rumpled bedhead didn’t just happen on its own. It took skills, man, and product, lots and lots of product. Detective Usher was a high class lady. Having just messy hair wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.

“Give it up,” McGregor grunted as he sat down in his leather office chair.

“You give it up,” Joshua countered back. Perhaps not the most original, but he was tired of the old man being up in his grill. Nicole was hot for a psycho profiler. Falling for an adorable, slightly off-beat coroner’s assistant wasn’t that inconceivable.

The detectives rushed in through the swinging doors, creating a loud “whoosh.” The air made Nicole’s hair fly around her face like she was a super model and Joshua was her photographer. As a matter of fact, he whipped out his phone and snapped a picture.

“What was that for?” Nicole asked.

“Nothin’,” Joshua answered.

“And what exactly was so exciting we had to drive all the way over here?”

“Well, I thought you would want to see this,” Joshua said as he picked up the sheet that covered Megan.

Both detectives took a step back.

“Why didn’t you tell us about this on our first visit?” Ruben asked.

McGregor stood up with a groan, clearly trying to avoid putting weight on his bum knee. “Didn’t think much of it. A college co-ed with a heart shaved in her pubic hair didn’t seem out of line until we checked and found out she was a virgin.”

“Her hymen was completely intact?” Nicole asked.

Joshua nodded so hard he felt like a bobble head. “Yep. 100%. Probably more than Mother Teresa’s was.”

Nicole frowned. Okay, so the nun joke might have gone too far.

“The abuser must have forced her to do that. But unless we find a shaver with the initial of the killer, I’m not sure how this helps,” the Buzz Kill detective said.

“Perhaps, but we found some trace material under her nails,” Joshua said.

“Such as?” Nicole said, clearly her interest piqued.

“Not sure yet. It’s proteinaceous, but no DNA, sorry,” Joshua said.

“The basic tox screen came back—you know, weed, cocaine, heroin. It is negative,” McGregor said. “However, there’re also some abnormalities of her blood cells, but that’ll take some time to sort out.”

“Thank you,” Nicole said to the ME, but Joshua was sure she meant him as well.

“We’re going back to the station, but keep us informed,” Nicole said.

Joshua winked and gave her a thumbs up. “You know it.”

With a strange look, Nicole turned from the room and exited in as large a rush as she had entered. Joshua snapped another picture. This side was nearly as appealing as the other.

CHAPTER 4

Ruben sat across from his captain. Nicole was seated to Ruben’s right. Just the two of them. No crazy-ass third wheel taunting them. Ruben kind of liked it. It felt like old times.

Glick read through their preliminary report.

“Calling this a bit thin would be a kindness,” Glick stated.

Nicole shrugged. “The professor checked out. He was leading a study group at the time of the death.”

“But this is looking more and more like a poisoning?” Glick asked.

Ruben nodded. “The ME is going to have a hell-of-a-time tracking it down, though. If it isn’t in our basic screen, he then needs to go down each and every cause individually.”

“But my point is that the killing blow wasn’t delivered at the time of death,” Glick said. “It could have been spoon-fed to her hours or days before.”

“That’s correct,” Nicole said. “And poison is a woman’s weapon, but the molester is clearly a male.”

“Get back to the ‘Stepford’ house. There’s got to be something going on there that wasn’t obvious on the surface.”

“Better yet, I think we need to bring them in,” Ruben said. “Put some pressure on them.”

Plus he just liked having them under his control. Having everything recorded for future reference and as evidence. Something a suspect tells you in their living room seldom held up in court.

Nicole shook her head. “I think it would be better in the home. Their guard will be down there.”

Ruben clenched his teeth. That was Kent talking through Nicole.

“Captain?”

“I agree with Torres. Get them in here.”

Nicole lowered her head in acceptance, but Ruben knew that she chafed at the captain overriding her. However, she would never outwardly register that complaint.

Maybe through sheer time and effort they could retrain Nicole to think like a cop, rather than an inflated-ego profiler.

* * *

Nicole knew the game being played here. Ruben and Glick were on the same page regarding “by-the-book” police work. They didn’t like it when she went off the reservation, even if it got results.

Her phone vibrated. She glanced to the screen. It was Kent. She had been feeding him the information as it filtered in. “The kids are your way in.”

“Fine, we’ll bring them in,” Nicole said. Two could play at this game. “But I want us to be the ones to pick them up at their home.”

Ruben shrugged as Glick nodded. “Fine. Just be sure to get all of the interviews on tape.”

It didn’t take them long to get to the Ashes’ home. Not when she made every light between the station and their destination. Nicole walked into the Ashes’ home. It smelled of grief. The dishes were unwashed, laundry was lying about. Clearly, no one in the house had showered since they heard the news. It did not result in a pleasant smell.

“I’m not sure why we need to go to the station,” Mr. Ash stated. “We’ve told you everything we know.”

“It’s just routine,” Nicole said. “We need to know as much about Megan as possible, and you knew her best.

“Well it is a good thing we already had a babysitter lined up to go look at caskets,” Mr. Ash stated, handing a package to the teenage girl. “Run these up to the boys. Johnny said they needed batteries for their Gameboy.”

The girl took the package and headed up the stairs. Mrs. Ash came from the kitchen, her eyes swollen and the skin under them looking nearly bruised. “We won’t be long? I want to get the boys to bed early tonight.”

“No longer than an hour or so,” Ruben explained.

An upstairs door opened and a young boy’s voice called out. “Thanks, ‘D!’ You’re a life saver.”

Both Nicole and Ruben’s necks snapped around as Mr. Ash smiled and yelled back. “No problem.”

“D?” Nicole asked.

Seeming not to know the hole he was digging himself in, Mr. Ash nodded. “It’s the kid’s nickname for me.”

Ruben looked to Mrs. Ash. “We might be a little longer than I first guessed.”

* * *

Ruben sat with his chair pushed back and his hands crossed over his midriff, glaring at Mr. Ash. Nicole stood behind the man, her turn to be the pressure point.

“I don’t… I don’t understand why you would accuse me of such horrible things.”

They had tried to break him with verbal pressure alone. The father had been adamant he hadn’t done anything wrong. They usually were.

Ruben pulled out the diary from an evidence bag. “Then explain this.”

Mr. Ash put a hand out to look at it, then drew back. He didn’t want to see what was in there. Ruben shoved it to him, clicking open the metal lock. He split the cover to open the diary up to a page.

“You say you didn’t hurt your daughter? How about you read that page then tell me how innocent you are.”

The man’s eyes scanned the page. His face screwed up, distorting his features, and then his eyes filled with tears which splashed down on the page. Nicole leaned over him.

“Well? What do you have to say now?”

“I don’t believe it,” Mr. Ash said, shoving the diary away. “We loved each other.”

* * *

“Define ‘loved’ for me,” Nicole asked.

The man’s stance changed from sorrow to fury. “We shared everything!” he shouted.

“Define ‘everything,’” Nicole pressed.

“But she wanted me to do it. She enjoyed it,” Mr. Ash insisted. “These are lies.”

Ruben pushed the diary back at him, flipping through the pages. “Really? Hundreds of pages in your daughter’s handwriting, talking about how violated she felt. How you marred her?”

“A father is supposed to teach his daughter things,” Mr. Ash tried to explain. “How to ride her first bike. Why not bring her to her first orgasm? You can’t see the beauty in that?”

Disgusted, Nicole pushed off the table. “No. No, I can’t.”

“Why did you kill her? Was she going to tell her boyfriend?” Ruben asked.

“I didn’t kill her!” Mr. Ash screamed. “I loved her!”

“Yeah, we got that,” Nicole said. “But then how did she end up dead?”

“I don’t know!” Mr. Ash insisted.

Nicole was going to push, but a knock came at the door and Captain Glick peeked his head in. “A word.”

* * *

Ruben exited the interrogation room with Nicole.

“The wife has lawyered up for both of them,” Glick explained.

Nicole kicked at the floor, scuffing her shoe. “At least we’ve gotten him admitting to molesting his daughter.”

“Not so fast,” Glick said. “She was of age, and without a complainant and with no penetration, that is going to be hard to make stick.”

“We’ve got the diary,” Ruben said.

“Hearsay,” Glick said. “And no way to authenticate it.”

“We can’t let him get away with this,” Nicole said. “He’s a medical laboratory tech. He has access to chemicals and poisons.”

“Unless we can put those in his hands, I’m not sure what use that knowledge does us. We are just going to have to wait for the expanded tox screen to come back and to find out what was under her fingernails.”

“This should be enough to get DFCS involved. Get those boys out of there.”

Glick nodded. “Yes, their threshold of involvement only need to be suspicion, it doesn’t require the “shadow of a doubt” standard.”

Ruben breathed a sigh of relief that those poor kids weren’t going to be in that twisted house any more. “I would like to be there when they are removed from the home.”

Nicole nodded. “And we’ve got to interview them.”

“Don’t you think they’ve been through enough?” Glick asked.

“They know something. Kids are so much more perceptive then we give them credit for.”

“Just make sure that there is a lawyer and child advocate in the room with you.”

“Of course,” Nicole agreed.

Ruben looked through the one-way glass to Mr. Ash, who had picked up the diary and now clutched it to his chest.

That was one sick bastard.

* * *

Nicole sat on one of the kid’s chairs as Johnny and Tommy colored in some Hot Wheels pictures. She’d learned from Kent to get down on the kid’s level and not rush them. No matter how she wanted to press, she had to let them come to her.

“So you guys like cars, huh?”

“I’m going to be a race car driver when I grow up!” Tommy exclaimed.

“Not unless you can stop crashing on the Gameboy,” Johnny chastised.

Nicole had to resist the urge to just ask her questions outright. Usually in an interrogation you went for the jugular, hammering suspects with questions to keep them off balance and make it difficult to remember their lies.

If Kent was right, it turned out that children wanted to tell the truth. You just had to give them the opportunity to do so.

“So your dad spent a lot of time with Megan?” Nicole asked, trying to keep the subject as non-offensive as she could.

Johnny shrugged, but he dug his crayon into the paper. “Yeah.”

“In her bedroom?” Nicole prompted, needing to get to the bottom of things without scaring them off.

It was Tommy who answered this time. However, he seemed oblivious to the undercurrents of what he said. “Yeah, it was ‘father-daughter’ stuff.”

Nicole looked to Johnny, who refused to meet her eye. “Do any of your other friends’ dads spend so much father-daughter time together?”

He just shook his head, still avoiding eye contact.

“Does he spend special father-son time with you two?” Nicole asked.

“No!” Johnny barked. “Never.”

“Okay, okay,” Nicole said, her hands up in retreat. She’d hit a nerve. Which confirmed the fact that Johnny was aware that his father’s attentions were not a good thing, but she couldn’t spook the kids. Who knew what else about the family dynamic he knew?

“And what about your mom? Did she spend any extra time with Megan?”

Tommy snorted. “Are you kidding me? The Witch doing anything fun?”

“The Witch?”

“That’s what we call Mom, only we usually say ‘W,’” Johnny explained. “She thinks it’s for Juanita.”

“But really it’s for Witch.” Tommy chuckled at the family joke.

Although it was no joke. Nicole looked through to one-way glass. Ruben was on the other side. Now they knew the “W” that Megan wanted away from. Rightfully so.

“Okay, thanks,” Nicole said. “You’ve been really helpful.” She turned to the children’s guardian. “You can take them now.”

“What’s going to happen to Mom and Dad?” Johnny asked.

“I’m not sure, but we need to get you somewhere safe until we figure it out.”

“Can Aunt Maddie come and get us?” Johnny asked.

The guardian nodded. “She’s been contacted. She is flying in from New Mexico.”

Nicole tousled Johnny’s hair. “See, she’ll be here by this afternoon.”

The boy gave a strained grin, but Tommy whooped. “Yes, that means ice cream sundaes!”

Nicole was glad to see one of them was happy. It was always tough taking kids into custody. You needed to get them out of a dangerous situation, but foster care could be fraught with its own dangers. Nicole was glad that a family member was coming to get them. Although, with this family tree, Nicole was a bit suspicious of Maddie. Could the sister of the man molesting his own daughter and thinking he was doing her a favor really be completely sane?

But she didn’t want to dampen Tommy’s enthusiasm and Johnny’s constrained optimism.

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Nicole said, watching them leave with the caregiver.

Ruben opened the door. “We’ve got our ‘W’ in interrogation room 1.”

Nicole took a deep breath. Inter-family crimes were, at times, the hardest to prove.

Glick followed Ruben in. “The lab results just came back. The substance under Megan’s fingernails and on her sheets was prostatic fluid.”

“Prostatic what?” Ruben asked.

“It is the fluid that the prostate creates,” Nicole said. “Usually, you only see it in pre-ejaculate, though.”

The Captain nodded. “We’ve got a subpoena to collect Mr. Ash’s fluids for comparison.”

“And how exactly are they going to collect those?” Ruben asked.

“Look, there are some things in this job I need to know,” Glick said. “This is not one of them.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nicole said. “As long as it proves Mr. Ash was in Megan’s bed. It corroborates Megan’s journal and his own confession,”

“Well, there’s a problem with that,” Glick said. “Turns out Mr. Ash was on anti-psychotics, surprise, surprise, which he stopped taking when he found out Megan was dead. His attorney is stating his client wasn’t in his right mind when he talked to you. He is petitioning the court to get it thrown out.”

“Whoa,” Nicole said. “He was perfectly lucid when we talked to him.”

“Did you ask him if he was on any meds?” Glick asked.

“No,” Ruben said. “It isn’t part of our SOP.”

“Well, it may have to be now. This is the second confession invalidated due to missed medication.”

Nicole loved the justice system, but sometimes, just sometimes, it was idiotic. If someone confesses to something that they actually did, what did it matter what meds they were on?

“So, we really need a confession out of the mother,” Glick stated. “She’s clean of meds.”

Nicole nodded. Although getting a woman living with a child molester for decades was going to take some work. Plus, it didn’t exactly make any sense that she would kill Megan. Usually, if a mother finds out her husband is committing incest, she kills the husband. Not the daughter.

Nicole had her work cut out for her.

* * *

Ruben stood outside the interrogation room watching Nicole question Mrs. Ash. She had been at it for over an hour. The woman refused to budge off her story that they had a perfect family. She shrugged off the diary. She didn’t care what her husband confessed to. Her lawyer had very little to say, given how vigorously Mrs. Ash defended herself and her family.

Glick entered from the squad room, voices and chatter floating in with him. “Tox just came back. Lead poisoning. They found it in Megan’s cereal, as well.”

“Like Nicole said, poisoning is a woman’s tool.”

Ruben texted Nicole the information. She pulled out her phone, read it, and then typed something, but it wasn’t back to him. Probably forwarding the information to Kent. How he could help in this from thousands of miles away, Ruben wasn’t sure, but that wasn’t going to stop Nicole from having faith in the profiler.

“Any match on the prostatic fluid?” Ruben asked.

Glick shook his head. “I guess they are having some problem.”

“Like what?” Ruben asked.

“I don’t know,” Glick said. “Joshua just sent me a bunch of frowny face emoticons.”

Yep, that sounded like Joshua.

Ruben watched through the glass as Nicole leaned back and folded her arms over her chest. Not a good sign. Knowing that the murder weapon was lead was of no real help. Or even the fact that it was in Megan’s cereal. Of course Mrs. Ash’s prints would be all over the box. She was the one who served breakfast. Unless they found a container of lead powder in Mrs. Ash’s house with her and only her fingerprints, they couldn’t prove anything. And, looking at the shrewd woman, Ruben doubted very much they would get so lucky.

It was down to Nicole, but at the moment, it looked like the momentum was in Mrs. Ash’s direction. She was leaning forward, her finger tapping the metal desk to make her points.

They had already gone through the mantra of suspects. “How dare you accuse me?” “How could you ask me these questions when my daughter’s body isn’t even cold?” “I am going to sue the department.” “If anything happens to my children while in your care, I’m going to kill you.”

All the normal stuff. Self-righteous indignation pretty much ruled the day.

* * *

Nicole felt like she was stuck in a room with a broken record. Mrs. Ash had denied any involvement in every possible way, giving alibis when none were needed. Her lawyer had tried to shut her up several times, but clearly Mrs. Ash was used to running the show.

She had hoped the woman would run off at the mouth, but so far, Mrs. Ash had stuck to her story, however lame the denial may have sounded.

Nicole’s phone vibrated at her hip. It was a call, though, not a text. She ignored it. It would roll over to voice mail. Sure enough, a few seconds later her phone pinged, indicating that there was a message waiting. Then the phone rang again.

If it were an emergency, Ruben would just walk in the door, which pretty much left only one other person to phone urgently.

“Sorry, I need to get this,” Nicole said, grabbing her phone. Sure enough, “unknown caller.” She answered it. “Hello?”

“Stalemated, I take it?” Kent’s smooth voice asked.

“You could say that,” Nicole said, smiling at Mrs. Ash’s lawyer. It was very poor interrogation form to take a call.

“Pretend to hang up but leave the phone on the desk so I can hear.”

“Okay, goodbye then,” Nicole said, setting the phone down and turning off the screen but leaving the call intact.

“You know after this, you really are going to have to admit how much you need me,” Kent said.

Of course, Nicole couldn’t answer him, and keep their cover up.

“We need to strike at the heart of the motive,” Kent explained. “So repeat everything I say.”

Nicole’s skin crawled with gooseflesh. There was something so wrong and yet so provocative when she was the one to act out Kent’s mental traps.

“How did it feel?” Kent asked. Nicole repeated the question to Mrs. Ash.

“What feel?” the woman responded, perhaps for the first time slightly off balance. That was how fast Kent worked.

“To have your husband spend his nights in Megan’s bed. Did your sheets get cold?” Kent coyly asked in her ear.

Nicole tried to convey the same oily quality to her voice.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Mrs. Ash contended, but Nicole noticed that the woman pushed off away from the table. As Kent would say, distancing herself from the truth.

“How did it feel to know that your husband preferred your daughter over you?” Kent demanded. Nicole echoed the words.

“She was young and hot. And what were you? A shriveled up old woman?”

Mrs. Ash’s cheeks blotched with color and her fingers balled up into a fist.

Nicole took it from here without Kent’s help.

“Do you know what that ‘W’ stands for? It isn’t for Juanita, it’s for Witch. That’s what your boys call you every day. Even your boys hate you. They use ‘D’ for Dad, but ‘W’ for you.”

“They do not!” Mrs. Ash shouted, slamming her fist on the table. The motion bounced Nicole’s phone nearly off the edge. She caught it just in time.

“Mrs. Ash,” her lawyer tried to soothe. “The detective is just trying to bait you. Don’t rise to it.”

The woman took in a deep breath and smoothed her blouse. “Of course.”

“You shared a wall, didn’t you? Could you hear your husband as he made love to Megan? Coursing his hands over her curves?”

Nicole pressed on.

“Could you hear her moans of ecstasy?” Kent asked.

Nicole stopped short on that one. Not willing to sully Megan’s memory quite so much.

“My dear, we have got to go there. We’ve got to dig deeply into this woman’s jealousy to override her desire to protect herself and her family.”

“Could you hear her moans of ecstasy?” Nicole asked.

Again, the woman’s face blotched, and the vein at her temple throbbed, pounding against the skin. So Nicole didn’t hesitate to repeat Kent’s next question.

“Could you hear her orgasm over and over again?”

“That whore!” Mrs. Ash shouted, coming out of her chair at Nicole. Only her lawyer’s quick grab saved Nicole from a punch to the face.

“Ah, you have to love the crazies. Once you hit their leverage point, they can’t keep the crazy in,” Kent chuckled in Nicole’s ear.

“After everything I did for her,” Mrs. Ash sobbed, “She still took him away.”

“What do you mean everything you did for her?” Nicole asked.

But the woman crumpled into a chair. “And now she was sullying herself with that biology boy?”

“So you knew about Deacon?” Nicole asked.

“It was only a matter of time before it came out about Megan and Roger. And then our family would be ruined by that little whore.”

“So you poisoned her?” Nicole asked over the lawyer’s protests for Mrs. Ash to shut the hell up.

“What else could I do?” Mrs. Ash said, her eyes brimming with tears. “She’d betrayed me. Betrayed us all.”

Nicole’s phone vibrated again. This time it was a text from Joshua.

“Mr. Ash is not packing the family jewels. I repeat, he has no cojones.”

Nicole had to read the text several times to understand what he meant. She sent it to Kent, who seemed to get it right away. “No testicles?”

She texted quickly back to Joshua. “Are they undescended?”

His response was lightning fast. “No, man. He’s got the basket, just no eggs in it.”

“Oh my,” Kent said. “Her crazy runs deeper than even I suspected. You’ve got to give her credit, though. The woman doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk.”

Kent’s admiration of Mrs. Ash was not helping anything, though.

“When you said ‘you’d done everything,’ Mrs. Ash, did that include castrating your husband?”

Mrs. Ash looked up, and for the first time seemed clear-eyed. Present. Connected with reality. “I found out years ago. Like you said, we shared a wall. I insisted he stop, but he wouldn’t. Even tried to sedate me at night so he could carry on his dirty work. Well I showed him.”

Nicole gulped, imagining what was coming next. The woman was an RN, after all.

“So I skimmed some Propofol from the hospital and did what I had to.”

“You thought neutering him would stop the abuse?”

Mrs. Ash nodded. “But Megan must have been asking for it. The whore took my husband away. The whore ruined our family.”

How the woman got from her daughter being abused to it being Megan’s fault was the leap of an unstable mind.

“So you admit to surgically castrating your husband and murdering your daughter?”

“Yeah, she’s going to have to give back all of her best wife or mother coffee cups,” Kent said.

Mrs. Ash slowly nodded. “What else could I do?”

The woman actually seemed to believe that she was the victim in all of this.

“Okay, well, this has been fun, but it looks like the insurgents are at it again,” Kent said. “See you soon.”

The click of the disconnect sounded loudly in Nicole’s ear. Somehow, this victory felt a little less bright without Kent to share in it.

Nicole had a job to do, though. She couldn’t mope over Kent.

She rose from her chair. “Mrs. Ash, you are under arrest for the murder of Megan Ash.” Nicole got out her cuffs. “You have the right to remain silent…”

* * *

Ruben opened the door as Nicole escorted Mrs. Ash out of the room, finishing up her Miranda rights. Glick moved out of the way as they passed.

“If you book her now,” the captain said, “we should be able to arraign her this evening.”

“Yes, sir.”

Glick turned back to Ruben. “That was quite the feat your partner just pulled off.”

“Yes, but I’m not sure if she can claim it for her own.”

Glick’s eyebrow went up.

“I think she got a call from Kent…”

“Ah,” Glick said. “While we may hate the man, we must respect the profiler.”

“Must we?” Ruben challenged. He resented that fact that even his captain deferred to Kent. “That tactic could have completely backfired.”

“But it didn’t,” Glick said. “Just like it never does.”

What was worse was that the captain was right. Which only proved to Ruben how disturbed the profiler really was. How could you think that much like a psychopath and not be one yourself?

“And just in case you were worried, the boys are fine.”

“What do you mean?” Ruben asked.

“I mean,” Glick said, indicating to his groin, “They’re fine. Mom hadn’t gotten around to them yet.”

“Well, there’s a silver lining, then.” Not much of one, of course. The boys were going to have to live with the fact that their father was a sex offender and their mother was a murderer. Having their testes was probably going to be only a small comfort.

“When is Harbinger due back?” Glick asked.

“Only God knows,” Ruben answered, hoping the date was far, far off.

* * *

Nicole got into her Mustang and put the key in the ignition but stopped, leaning back into the leather seat. It had been a long day, but a good one. They’d gotten a molester and a killer off the streets. That had to go down as a win in anyone’s book.

But damn, the case had wiped her out. It was hard to know that people like that not only existed, but couldn’t be picked out of a lineup of normal people. How long had both Mr. and Mrs. Ash kept their secrets? Decades? They had gone to PTA meetings and bake sales, no one knowing the horror going on under their roof.

“Need a shower to wash it all off?” a voice from the backseat asked.

Nicole twisted around. “Kent!”

Instead of her eyes going to his chiseled features, she was drawn to a long and ragged cut that went all the way across his neck. The wound was stitched together, however its edges were still swollen, and the wound oozed. The injury had happened less than twelve hours ago.

“What happened?”

Kent shrugged. “A little disagreement with some locals. You know how it goes.”

No, no, Nicole didn’t. It looked like the wound was meant to take his head off.

“What’s a little decapitation between friends?” Kent said, confirming her fear.

“You should be in the hospital,” Nicole said.

“Naw. I missed my girl,” he said.

If anyone else in the world had called her “girl”, Nicole would have punched them. However, the profiler with the ragged wound could get away with it.

“I missed you, too.”

“Yes,” Kent said, slipping back into his arrogant demeanor. “I could tell from all the texts. I certainly hope that you have an unlimited plan.”

So that was it. Their reunion after months apart.

Nicole turned the key in the ignition and enjoyed the roar of the engine.

Time to get them both home and into the shower.

WALLFLOWER – The full length sequel to Plain Jane

CHAPTER 1

The knife sliced the air, barely missing Kent’s chin. Okay, maybe

that time he’d let the killer get a tad too close. As the man stumbled and missed,

Kent took the opportunity to take a step back, keeping himself just out of slicing range.

“You think you’re so good,” the killer challenged.

“No,” Kent corrected. “I am that good.”

The young man with his slicked-back hair was all arrogance and pomp. Just because he had a knife and Kent didn’t. As long as Kent had his tongue, he always had a lethal weapon.

They were in an abandoned warehouse. But didn’t confrontations with serial killers usually end up in these dank settings? Seldom did one track a twisted murderer to a lakeside estate or amusement park. From the looks of it, this warehouse used to store paper towels, or some such sundry. It had long since been out of use, though. Dust was layered on five-ply.

“You’re the one working so very hard to prove yourself,” Kent stated.

That got a flare of the nostrils.

“You are like a mini serial killer. The Diet Coke of murderers,” Kent went on. “Waa…Waa…Waa all the way home.”

The killer took another poorly-timed swing at Kent. This time, he danced out of the way easily.

“You couldn’t stop me, though,” the murderer challenged. “I killed six before you found me.”

“I’m sorry, was that supposed to make me feel insecure?” Kent scoffed. “Remember, I wrote the book on modern profiling. It isn’t uncommon for a serialist to kill dozens before being identified.”

“Because we’re so smart,” the guy insisted.

“No,” Kent corrected, “It’s usually because you are killing hookers or other high-risk individuals. Those that the cops don’t investigate too eagerly. So, basically, you’re just an opportunist, taking the low-hanging fruit.”

Oh, that got a nice flush to the cheeks.

The guy swung again, even more off the mark than the last time. Adrenaline was great in a fight, unless you had too much of it. Then it just messed with your reflexes, making you too jumpy, too eager.

Kent regulated his breathing, making sure the adrenaline was working for him, rather than against.

“You’re so young,” Kent pressed. “You think you can play with the big boys?”

The killer wiped his brows with his sleeve. “I’ll be known as the guy who took down the famed Kent Harbinger, FBI profiler extraordinaire.”

“Oh, my. You are shooting for the moon here,” Kent said. “And you think you can do that with just a knife?”

“Where’s that backup you said was coming?” the killer asked.

“On its way,” Kent answered.

“No, it isn’t,” the killer stated.

“Eventually,” Kent said as he shrugged. You never wanted to flat-out lie to a subject, they could always tell. At some point, the police would find their location. In time for them to intervene here? Kent seriously doubted it.

The killer seemed to puff up at the thought.

“You do realize my capture rate, right?” Kent asked.

“The highest in the country,” the killer replied, as if he got off on taking on the best.

“And my conviction rate?”

The guy cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

Kent took a step to the right. The killer was a righty. He needed to get in position for the takedown, which meant staying out of the guy’s wheelhouse.

“I mean, out of how many serial killers I’ve caught, how many were convicted and sent to jail?”

Again, the killer seemed a tad confused. “I don’t know.”

“Zero,” Kent said. “You want to know why?”

The killer’s silence told him that he did.

“Because, typically, I usually end up in a situation such as this, and the killer ends up dead. Self-defense and all,” Kent said, then pressed. “Because once I get that knife away from you, I’m going to flay your skin off. With you awake, nice and slow.

“You wouldn’t,” the killer hissed.

“I brought ear plugs and everything,” Kent explained, taking a set out of his pocket.

“Doesn’t that make you a murderer, too?”

Kent shrugged. “Tomato, tomahto.”

“How exactly are you going to claim self-defense? If you skin me?” the killer demanded.

“Oh, you’d be surprised the latitude I am given when going up against a sick pervert like you.”

That statement really got under the guy’s skin, so to speak. The killer lunged, opening up his left side. Kent sprang into action, knocking the guy’s right arm up and out of harm’s way. A knife couldn’t do much damage if it were dangling there in the air. Kent used the heel of his hand and slammed it into the guy’s solar plexus.

A loud grunt was his reward, but Kent didn’t stop there. Instead, he brought his elbow up and caught the guy under the chin. The killer’s head snapped back with a crack. Reversing his movement, Kent brought his elbow back down into the side of the killer’s head.

The guy reeled away, tripping over a box. In the act of catching himself, the killer released the knife, and the blade skidded under a packing crate. Now, not having to worry about the knife, Kent went at the killer with gusto. He used a right hook to shove the kid back even farther. A left uppercut sent the guy sprawling onto the cement floor.

The killer put his arms up in front of his face. “No, please.”

On no, he didn’t get off that easily. It truly was amazing how sissy these stone cold killers got once they were unarmed. Like he said. Waa...waa…. Kent hauled the killer up by the collar and put his arm against the guy’s neck, squeezing off not only his trachea, but his jugular, as well. The killer’s face puffed up, turning an unseemly shade of purple.

“No!” Nicole screamed from behind him.

He ignored her. This guy needed to be taught a lesson.

* * *

“Kent!” Nicole shouted, rushing over. “Stop it!”

Of course, the profiler didn’t listen to her. But when did he?

This was a “Psychology of Hand-to-Hand Combat” training exercise that had gone seriously off the tracks. There were half a dozen academy recruits behind her. Not one had moved. They all stood there slack-jawed, staring at the profiler who had his protégé by the neck.

A few years ago, she would have been here standing there with a sick fascination. However, she was used to Kent, and how immersed he became in whatever task he was involved in. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard. Perhaps the physical contact would help him come back to reality.

Right now, Kent wasn’t suffocating a serial killer, but his own protégé, who was only playing the role of a serial killer. A young, up-and-coming FBI agent the Bureau had sent to Kent for training. Which wouldn’t do a lot of good if the kid ended up dead.

“Kent, let him go,” she demanded, pulling on his shoulder.

He didn’t let up. Nicole wasn’t surprised. The mentor and protégé had not really bonded. Yvent was not the easiest guy to get along with, and his constant challenging of Kent’s methodology? Even Nicole had felt like strangling the punk a few times. However, certainly not in front of a class full of new recruits.

“Kent, he gets it,” Nicole hissed in the profiler’s ear. “You win.”

Finally, Kent let up, and Yvent took in a wheezing breath. His face was still blotchy, and an unnatural reddish purple.

Like a switch flicking back on, Kent smiled, released the younger man and turned to the group.

“And that’s how you disarm a man with a knife.”

CHAPTER 2

Ruben reluctantly walked into the warehouse. He knew Kent was here, but he really needed to speak with Nicole. And this was one of those things that needed to be discussed in person.

“So what would you say of my technique?” Kent asked the group of completely mesmerized recruits.

“Wicked,” said one.

Ruben held in a deep sigh. Just another group of impressionable young law enforcement professionals swayed by Kent’s charm. None of them seemed to see or care that a young man was sitting on the ground choking and wheezing. Nicole was rubbing his back, trying to get him to breathe normally.

What had Kent done this time?

Ruben definitely did not want to know.

This was supposed to be a routine, “how to disarm a man with a knife” type of demonstration, one that was given all around the country every day. It normally took about ten minutes and was over with. Kent, of course, had turned it into a traveling circus, and had the recruits somehow worshipping at his feet.

“Yes,” Kent said, bowing his head. “It was wicked. But what made it wicked?”

Ruben ignored the gushing of compliments that followed. He’d heard them all before. How brilliant Kent was. How intuitive the profiler was. How infallible.

After a while, make that a day, it got old.

Ruben bypassed the profiler savant and headed over to Nicole.

She was helping Kent’s protégé up to his feet. “Yvent, Just take a few deep breaths,” she encouraged.

The guy looked like he was going to live. However, you could already tell that his neck was going to bruise. Badly. What the hell was Kent thinking? No, never mind, Kent was never thinking about anyone else but himself, so this was all quite predictable.

“Detective Usher,” Ruben said, as he stepped next to Nicole.

She turned around, seeming surprised to see him. Usually, he tried not to come within a mile of the profiler.

“Ruben, hi.”

“Detective Torres,” the young profiler said, extending his hand even as Yvent rubbed his bruised throat with the other.

Ruben had to admit a certain fascination with Yvent. He was almost a window into Kent at a young age. Although Ruben seriously doubted the vaunted profiler would have had his ass kicked so thoroughly, no matter his age.

“We have a new case,” Ruben said to Nicole. “Captain wants us at the crime scene ASAP.”

“Another of my serial killer victims?” Kent asked.

Ruben had to force himself not to roll his eyes. The profiler was insufferable—however, Ruben did not want to lower himself to Kent’s level.

“It’s a dead woman, if that meets your criteria.”

“It depends,” Kent said, as all the recruits gathered around, hanging on the profiler’s every word. “Was she shy? Introverted? Single? Kept to herself?”

“We don’t even have an identity on her yet, so how could we possibly know all of that?” Ruben said, then regretted it immediately.

“I can,” Kent said, that spring in his step predicting that he was really going to be a pain in the ass today. “I’ll come along and show you.”

For joy.

* * *

Kent stepped out of Nicole’s Mustang, feeling every strain from the earlier fight. He was loath to admit that he was getting older, but damn. Twenty years ago, he could have whipped that little snot and not felt a thing. He would have run a half marathon afterward. Now? Now, his left knee throbbed and he could still feel the impact in his elbow from when he’d struck Yvent in the jaw.

Kent knew that he wouldn’t be playing racquetball any time soon, as he rotated his forearm around, wincing.

From Ruben’s black SUV, Yvent exited the passenger side door. Those two had been thick as thieves for weeks. Alas, people always gravitated to their skill level, even if they did not want to admit it.

“You should go easier on him,” Nicole said, joining him as they walked across the street to the empty lot with the yellow crime scene tape.

“Ruben?” Kent snorted. “I think he’s learned how to take one for the team.”

“No, I meant Yvent. He’s got talent, and he needs to spread his wings.”

Kent shook his head. “No, what he needs is to be taken down a notch or three. That boy’s arrogance is going to get him killed.”

“By you?” Nicole said with a smirk.

“Very funny, but no,” Kent replied. “Had Yvent gone up against any of the serial killers I have, that boy would be dead ten different ways. You’d then have to tell his body bag how gifted he was.”

“There’s got to be a way to get him ready for the real world without crushing his larynx.”

“Not that I’ve found,” Kent said as Nicole reached out her hand to stop traffic as they crossed the street. Soon, all four of them were at the crime scene tape.

The uniformed police officer got out his clipboard.

“Names and ranks,” he said. He was clearly in charge of the crime scene log.

“Seriously?” Kent retorted, and lifted the tape and ducked under it.

“Oh, sorry, Special Agent Harbinger,” the officer said. “No introduction necessary.”

* * *

Nicole could feel Ruben groan from the other side of Yvent. And this time she kind of agreed with her partner. Kent did not need any encouragement. His ego was out for a spin today, that was for sure.

“Detective Nicole Usher, fifth precinct,” Nicole informed the officer, then joined Kent on the crime side of the tape. There were very few bystanders, but it was early, and cold outside. Only a small television crew seemed to be taking interest, as they prepped to film some “B” roll.

Graffiti on the wall. Drug dealers on the corner. The kind of stuff that made everyone else in town feel safer. A hideous crime like this couldn’t have occurred in their nice neighborhood.

Nicole hated to tell everyone, though, that even from here she could tell this was a body dump. There just wasn’t enough blood here for it to be the primary crime scene. The killing could have taken place anywhere. Even the beloved suburbs.

“Knife wound,” Kent said. “Right beneath the armpit, straight into her pulmonary artery.”

“Then where’s all the blood?” Yvent asked as he joined them.

“Probably at the primary crime scene for all four victims.”

Ruben straightened to his full height as he shook his head. “We have absolutely nothing to suggest that the three murders over the past five months have anything to do with one another.”

“Go ahead, get it out of your system, Torres,” Kent said. “Prove me wrong.”

“The MOs of the killings are all over the place,” Ruben said “The first victim died of a rifle wound. The second from a handgun. The third from a hunting arrow, and now a knife wound.”

Kent just smirked. Nicole felt sorry for her partner. Ruben was in way over his head, yet he didn’t seem to realize it yet.

The profiler nodded to his protégé. “Yvent, why don’t you tell your friend here the evolving pattern that is linking them?”

“The cause of death is becoming more and more intimate,” Yvent answered. Nicole hadn’t thought of it that way before, but the kid was right. Something Kent had already figured out two murders ago, when he called these murders the product of a serialist’s work.

“So the FBI didn’t send me a complete moron,” Kent said. Nicole was pretty damned sure that was the closest thing to praise Kent had given since Yvent got here. “Also, he takes a trophy at each killing.”

“But a different one each time,” Ruben interjected. “A toe ring at the first murder. A lock of hair at the second. A one-square-inch patch of skin from under victim number three’s arm, and now it looks like he took the tip of her pinkie finger.”

Nicole felt sorry for Ruben. Even in arguing that these cases were not linked, he’d numbered the victims in the order that Kent predicted. This could only go one direction, and that was down.

Kent turned to Yvent. “Would you like to field this one?”

The profiler’s protégé shrugged. “Again, more and more intimate trophies from each murder, which have become more and more personal to the killer.”

Nicole stepped forward to stop Ruben from digging himself into an even deeper hole.

“But I thought that the first crime was always the most personal to the killer?”

“The most linked to the killer, yes,” Kent said. “Many times, that first victim was personally known to the killer. However, this guy is getting a taste for what he’s doing, and wanting a token that is more representative of the crime so that he can relive it with more accuracy.”

Yvent nodded. Like Kent needed any feedback. Yvent ventured into dark territory. Trying to think like Kent and, therefore, a serial killer. “Which is why this killer’s profile needs to be created almost backwards. His most recent killing is telling us the most about him, rather than the first.”

“Exactly,” Kent agreed.

“But so far, the women you have identified as this serial killer’s victims have absolutely nothing in common,” Ruben argued.

“Ah, but they have a type,” Kent said, nodding toward the body.

Nicole knew that it was her turn. Hopefully, she could do as well as Yvent, who was half her age. The kid did seem to have a knack for this stuff. Nicole studied the woman. “She dyes her hair, but the roots are at least a month old.”

“Yes,” Kent said, encouraging her. “But go deeper.”

“She’s wearing some makeup, but no foundation,” Nicole commented. Ruben looked frustrated as she continued. “That’s a Nordstrom business suit, but my guess is that we’ll find out she bought it at the discount store, Nordstrom Rack.”

Ruben snorted. “And how would you know that?”

“It’s last season’s style, yet the clothes look new. She purchased them recently, which means she got them from a clearance rack.”

“And the shoes,” Yvent said. “Nice, but not flashy. Studies show that the most accurate predictor of a woman’s personality is in her shoes.”

Was that true? Nicole looked down at hers. A set of comfortable, low-heeled, strapped mules. They looked nice, but you could run in them for blocks after a perp. She guessed Yvent was right. Fashionable, but practical. She’d take it.

“The rest of the victims are very similar. Fashion conscious, but on a budget. Minimal makeup,” Kent explained. “All in professional, but low-key jobs. I’m sure this woman will fit the profile. An executive assistant, or receptionist at a law firm—something along those lines.”

Nicole looked down at the poor woman. She’d just been trying to get by. And here her frugality had gotten her killed. It was always like this, though, wasn’t it? The victim of a serial killer seldom deserved it.

At least Nicole could take comfort that they knew why the woman had died and, with any luck, they would be able to catch the killer to prevent more from dying. There probably wasn’t another cop or profiler who would have picked up this pattern at all, let alone so quickly.

“So we do have a serialist on our hands,” Yvent said, with a sense of wonder.

A small parking enforcement electric cart whizzed up to them. A young woman, looking of Pacific Rim descent, gave a broad smile. “Fancy meeting you here, Ruben.”

Nicole looked to Kent, but he just shrugged. Clearly, the profiler didn’t know what was going on either.

* * *

Ruben gulped and stepped forward. They’d been so busy with so many cases that he hadn’t exactly had time to tell Nicole of his current situation.

“Paggie, hello.” He couldn’t be rude to the meter maid, though.

The woman’s smile widened, showing her perfect teeth. “I was down the block and heard some handsome detective had shown up, so I could only assume it was you,” she teased. “My Prince Charming.”

How Ruben hated that nickname. And especially now. Kent was enjoying himself way too much, as he took a sip of hot chocolate from his cup. Even though his lips were busy, his eyes had a glint to them.

Paggie got out of her cart and came straight for Ruben. Under the scrutiny of the rest of the group, he opened his arms and accepted her into a hug. He did avert his mouth when she came in for a kiss, though, so that her lips landed on his cheek.

“Something wrong?” Paggie asked.

“No,” he gulped. “Not at all.”

“Seriously?” Kent said. “A meter maid? Are you just tempting fate, or what?”

Ruben tried to ignore the profiler. “Paggie, this is Nicole Usher, my partner.”

Paggie put her hand out and Nicole shook it. “No introduction needed. I would have recognized you just from your fingernail polish.”

“Really?” Nicole said her eyebrow shooting up. “Funny, because I don’t know anything about you.”

Instead of getting mad, Paggie patted Ruben on the chest. “He’s all worried what you guys will think. I know all about your last big case, Plain Jane. Trust me, I’m not Rebecca.”

Yvent asked, “Should I get her fingerprints?”

“Naw,” Kent said. “They’re already on file at the department.”

The profiler’s eyes crinkled at the corners. Ruben was going to pay for this later, he just knew it.

“So how long have you two been dating?” Nicole asked.

“A few weeks,” Ruben answered.

Paggie fake-punched him in the chest. “More like twelve weeks.”

“Twelve?” Nicole blurted, then seemed to regroup. “Well, that’s a long three months of lying to your partner.”

Nicole crossed her arms over her chest. Usually, that judgmental stance was reserved for Kent.

“I thought she knew, Rubi?” Paggie asked.

“Rubi?” Kent scoffed. “Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”

“No,” he said, pulling Paggie deeper into his arms. “I was just hoping to avoid this awkward moment.”

“No secrets?” Nicole said. “Remember that pact?”

“Really?” Ruben shot back. “Really? You’re going to try and take the high ground on this one, Nicole?”

“What have I lied to you about?” his partner retorted.

“Do we have time to list them all?” Ruben responded. “How many times have you snuck off with Kent, helping him do something illegal?”

“That’s different,” Nicole argued. “That’s for a case.”

“So ‘no secrets’ is just about me and my love life?” he countered.

Nicole’s cheeks flushed red. He guessed he should feel some satisfaction that, down deep, Nicole still cared something for him. Otherwise, why would she be so pissed?

“Not exactly an auspicious start to a relationship,” Nicole commented.

“Oh, and you two doing it for the first time in the morgue was a great marker for success.”

“As much as I would love to hang around and have you two work out your unresolved issues,” Kent said. “We really do have a case to solve.”

“Oh,” Paggie said. “Don’t let me stop you.” Playfully, Paggie walked her fingers up his shirt’s buttons. “I’ll be seeing you later.”

He adored Paggie, but she really didn’t seem to get how uncomfortable this was. Sure, Kent and Nicole flaunted their relationship, but that wasn’t Ruben’s style. He liked to keep his private life private.

“See you at seven?” Paggie asked.

“We’ll see,” Ruben said. “It could be a long night.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Kent said. “We’ll be sure to get him home to you.”

“Wow, thanks,” Paggie said. “You’re not all like Ruben said.”

Kent chuckled as Ruben tried to sink inside of his suit. “Good to know,” the profiler commented.

Luckily, Nicole turned to Kent. “So what’s next?”

“We work the case,” the profiler answered, much to Ruben’s relief.

* * *

Nicole had to give it to Ruben—he swallowed his pride and embarrassment, and loosened the knot of his tie. “I’m going to assume that we’re going to find as little forensic evidence at this crime scene as the other three, so do we need to take a closer look at victim number one to see about your theory that all of these deaths were the result of one killer?”

Kent shook his head. “Nope. We need to look at victim zero.”

“What are you talking about?” Ruben asked.

Nicole was equally surprised. She didn’t know of any other murder that fit their criteria. Once Kent had made his announcement after the last victim, a mid-20s African American woman, that there was a serial killer on the loose, Nicole had gone over all open homicides, looking for a pattern. How had Kent found one that she hadn’t?

That was a stupid question. Of course Kent had found one. It was his gift. If only instincts could be taught. Nicole was starting to get confidence in hers, but then something like this would happen and she would feel as inexperienced as Yvent. It made it even harder to know that women were dying while she was trying to catch up with the profiler.

“Check your email,” Kent responded. “Once I realized we had a serialist on our hands, I went back through the unsolved homicides for the past few years. One in particular stood out to me.”

“No way,” Yvent said. “I combed through those records.”

Nicole was glad to see she wasn’t the only one.

“Watch and learn,” Kent stated. Like she said, his ego was on a bender.

CHAPTER 3

Ruben checked his phone, and sure enough, there was an email from Svengali2013—Kent’s account, of course. Was it just a coincidence that Kent sent the email before they found another body?

Would he ever know the truth? Probably not. He might as well just read the damn thing.

Ruben opened the document to find that it was a police report regarding the murder of a known prostitute, Trudy. Ruben vaguely remembered the case. It wasn’t his, but he’d seen the crime scene photos. The woman had fallen off the roof of a building. Absent any other evidence, the investigating officers chalked it up to a trick gone bad. The woman was known to take her johns up to the roof and if they paid extra, they could do it at the edge of the roof, for a little extra thrill. For all they knew, her death was nothing but an accident.

“So why this crime?” Ruben asked.

“The purse was missing.”

Ruben shrugged. “In that neighborhood, it would have been shocking if the purse was still there.”

Nicole looked up from her phone. “But the credit cards were never used.”

“Nope. Not even her Wal-Mart gift card,” Kent commented. “I mean, come on. If you are going to steal a purse and you don’t even go splurge on fifty bucks of ammo at Wal-Mart? There’s something seriously amiss there. It doesn’t hold at all to the suspected robbery MO.”

Ruben could feel his ears burning. He didn’t want them to turn red. He didn’t want everyone standing around to know exactly how embarrassed he was. Not necessarily for himself, but for his fellow investigating officers. They should have checked on those cards. They should have raised a red flag that the death wasn’t a robbery. But, as Kent had pointed out, it was a prostitute’s death. And the reality was that those were just a low priority on the docket.

Kent constantly spouted that many serialists honed their craft on high-risk persons. The profiler’s supposition was that if a serialist just stuck to prostitutes, the vast majority of them would never be caught. Unfortunately, Ruben couldn’t disagree with that cynical assessment. This murder was a case in point.

“So he killed this first prostitute, then got a taste for it?”

Kent shook his head. “No, I think he killed Trudy on accident.”

Yvent stepped forward. “What evidence do you have of that?”

“There’s no bruising on her upper body. None on her arms or torso. Her panties were down, and there was evidence of consensual sex. I think they were just practicing risky sex on the roof when she accidently went down.”

Yvent nodded sagely, as if he could keep up with Kent. “Then he got a taste for it?”

* * *

“It being an accident would make sense out of the nearly year-long cooling off period between kills,” Nicole stated, finally feeling like she had caught up with the profiler. Usually, a killer went through several stages. The first was directly after a murder. He felt remorse and shame. Horror at what he’d done. This was the cooling off period. But then, as time passed, he would relive the thrill of the crime over and over again, getting more and more worked up at the thought until he couldn’t contain himself any longer and killed again.

“Yes, but now that he has crossed the line into murder, he is devolving, his cooling off period shortening and shortening,” Kent replied.

That was the problem. Each subsequent killing just didn’t satisfy as well as that first one. Therefore, they cooled off faster and faster, killing at a more rapid pace.

“So he’s just getting started,” Ruben said, stating the obvious.

To her surprise, Kent didn’t jump on Ruben. Instead, he took in a long breath. “I’m afraid so.”

With his flippant attitude and penchant to criticize, it was easy sometimes to forget why Kent got into profiling in the first place. To save lives. Lots of them. It was a dagger to the heart each time a killer struck before he could catch them.

The body at their feet mocked Kent and his ability.

Before she could ask what happened next, Joshua, their odd morgue attendant, bounded into the crime scene.

“Whoa, Detective Usher, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Joshua said, inclining his head. “I heard this was a mugging that went sideways.”

“No such luck,” Kent said, causing Joshua to spin around.

“Special Agent Harbinger! And Detective Torres? Wow, we’ve got the Holy Trinity of crime solvers.”

* * *

Joshua couldn’t believe his luck. He’d taken this call out of boredom. There hadn’t been a lot going on at the morgue. Just one heart attack victim from an old folks’ home. Like he said. Boring.

But now? If Nicole, Kent and Ruben were here, then this was going to be a real humdinger. He looked down at the body. The woman was of average height and weight, a dirty blonde dressed in business casual.

A handsome news reporter stepped up to the crime scene tape. “So is she a victim of the Wallflower killer?”

The rest of the group turned to the Ken-doll reporter, Mitch Pederson. That jaw could not naturally be that square, and that cleft in his chin? Clearly, only surgery could produce one so deep and perfectly placed.

“Wallflower?” Ruben asked.

“Yeah, I came up with it,” Joshua said, happy to have contributed to the case.

The young protégé of Kent’s frowned. “We don’t give nicknames to serialists. It only feeds into their delusions.”

Joshua never had liked this guy with the weird name. He’d gotten all cozy with Joshua’s peeps. “But it describes the victims perfectly,” he said. “All of them are shy and retiring.”

Kent stepped between them. “Wallflower it is, then.” He turned to the reporter. “But sorry, we can’t comment on an ongoing case.”

Frowning, which only made Mitch’s cleft stand out more, the reporter moved on.

A loud grunt behind them announced Dr. McGregor’s arrival. “If I’d known it was going to be a block party, I would have brought my wife’s famous coleslaw.”

The group parted to allow the ME’s rather rotund midriff through.

“You,” he said to Kent. “One hundred feet away.”

“But this’s a crime scene,” the profiler objected.

The old coroner shrugged. “The restraining order is for my person, not just the morgue. Now, scoot.”

The profiler frowned, but Nicole urged him away from the crime scene. “Just give him some room.”

“This isn’t fair,” Kent protested.

“No, not fair is putting formaldehyde in my coffee. That wasn’t fair.”

“Only because Joshua challenged me to,” Kent shot back.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Joshua said, putting his hands up. “Keep me out of this. I just said that Dr. McGregor’s sense of smell was so bad that I didn’t think he could detect formaldehyde in his coffee.”

Kent smiled. “And we do know how I like to scientifically prove such statements.”

“One hundred feet, Harbinger,” McGregor growled.

“Come on,” Kent protested, and pointed to the morgue assistant. “Joshua stole body parts and you let him hang around.”

“Only by court order,” McGregor stated. “And, so far, he hasn’t eaten anyone’s brain, so there’s that.”

Yeah. Joshua thought, but would never voice to the profiler.

* * *

Nicole watched Kent’s back as he walked away from the crime scene. Actually, stormed off from the crime scene. A look of sheer satisfaction beamed from McGregor’s face. It was possibly the happiest she’d ever seen the older man.

He was now able to lord over the crime scene as its master. Guess there wasn’t enough room within the yellow tape for both him and Kent.

“Alright, let’s get her bagged and back to the morgue.”

McGregor was known not for his skills as a forensic medical examiner, but for his hatred of being out in the field. Nicole wasn’t even sure if he’d looked at the body before he ordered it bagged.

“But, Doc, I think there’s something wrong,” Joshua said, pointing to the woman’s belly. “There’s movement.”

Again, McGregor didn’t even look down—he just bit harder into his unlit cigar butt. “Just gaseous movement from decomp.”

“No,” Joshua said. “Dude, that is not gas.”

Nicole leaned over Joshua’s shoulder, peering down at the body. Joshua might be odd, but he was right in his observation. The belly undulated up and down in progressive waves.

Ruben tugged her arm. “Back up.”

“Why?”

Then the skin split open and maggots poured out of the belly. More like burst out of the woman’s stomach. Thousands of maggots tumbled from the body and spilled out onto the pavement. Some landed on Joshua’s shoe. The morgue assistant jumped up and down, shaking his foot violently.

“That’s why,” Ruben said.

There were so many maggots that collectively you could hear their mandibles gnashing, looking for new tissue to eat. There was a sickly sweet aroma. Nicole had to stifle a gag.

“What the hell?” Joshua screamed. “That is wrong, just wrong!”

Kent trotted up to the crime scene, but even under the bizarre circumstances, McGregor pointed. “One hundred feet, Harbinger.”

Nicole waved the profiler off. She was grossed out, but fine.

* * *

Talk about unfair. The body just exploded with maggots, and the old coot wouldn’t let him inside the tape. He knew McGregor, though. He would have Kent arrested, so Kent backed far enough away that McGregor seemed content. It wasn’t nearly one hundred feet, though. At least he could eavesdrop on the crime scene conversation.

“There’s no way those maggots were naturally there,” Yvent said.

Nicole turned to Ruben. “How did you know?”

“I spent some time on my grandparents’ ranch. Sometimes the livestock died out in the field, and you didn’t find them until they were bloated and the maggots would eat through the flesh.”

Kent had never taken Ruben as a farmhand type. Although, in some ways, it did explain a few things. Like how he liked to ride in on his white horse to emotionally rescue Nicole.

“But according to her liver temp, she’s only been dead for a few hours,” Joshua said, still shaking out his pant leg.

Kent watched as people gave the body a width berth. That was a lot of maggots. The killer could have kept her warm, increasing the maggots’ life cycle and keeping the liver temp warm to throw them off time of death.

“He injected fly eggs,” Kent said, coming to the only logical conclusion.

“But maggots should only eat dead flesh,” Nicole said.

“Harbinger,” McGregor grumbled.

Kent was feeling lucky today. “Which, of course, begs the question of whether Wallflower did so to the other bodies.”

Nicole frowned. “Something that you would have found on necropsy, right Doctor?”

McGregor gnawed on his cigar. “When first laid, the eggs are nearly microscopic.”

“So, depending on the species and ambient temperature, the other bodies might have had eggs injected in them, as well?”

The burly man just shrugged. “Who would look for fly eggs in a closed abdomen?”

“What are you thinking?” Nicole asked, although she must have had an idea of his answer. Not that she or anyone else was going to like it.

“Harbinger,” McGregor barked. “What did I say?

“I’m thinking we need to exhume a few bodies.” Kent backed up a few steps as he replied to Nicole.

CHAPTER 4

Ruben took in a deep breath, enjoying the smell of fresh cut grass. Many people found cemeteries creepy, but Ruben appreciated the fresh air and cloudless sky. Usually, cemeteries presented such peace and quiet—the present rumble of the backhoe notwithstanding.

After showing the judge photos of the maggot eruption, getting a warrant to exhume the first victim had been pretty much a foregone conclusion. Even with McGregor arguing that he had completed a thorough and exhaustive autopsy. Again, the maggot explosion kind of undercut his argument.

“I get that he could have injected fly eggs,” Yvent said. “But why?”

“Why did serial killers do anything?” Ruben wanted to reply, but didn’t. It was a bit early in the day to get shot down, again, by Kent.

“Remember, this guy was a good guy just a year ago. Sure, he sucked at getting women, which is why he turned to a prostitute. There was something wrong with him, but at his core he probably believed he was a ‘good guy.’”

“I still don’t get it,” Yvent said.

God, Ruben was glad that Yvent was here. Someone else to ask the stupid questions.

Kent looked to Nicole. “Any idea?”

Her jaw clenched as she shook her head, looking down. Ruben hated it when Kent cowed Nicole like that.

“And you do?” Ruben challenged, even though he knew he probably shouldn’t.

“How does a ‘good guy’ reconcile killing someone?” Kent asked.

“A psychopath doesn’t have to reconcile,” Yvent said.

“Ah, but our guy isn’t a psychopath. Our guy has guilt and shame. Look at the long interval between the prostitute’s death and his first real kill. Something stayed his hand for over a year.”

Damn, Ruben wished he had the answer, just to wipe that smug look off of the profiler’s face. Yvent’s brow furrowed. You could almost see the wheels turning inside the young man’s head.

Ruben didn’t even bother trying. He’d given up a long time ago attempting to think like a serial killer. He just couldn’t. And you know what? He thought he was a better person for it.

Their captain might disagree, as he liked Kent’s closing rate.

And once again, the profiler was light-years ahead of them all. Even his supposed prodigy, Yvent.

Kent sighed as if he were in front of a class of kindergarteners. “He’s got to justify his kills. He has to not only justify them to himself, but to the forensic team that he knows will examine the body.”

Yvent’s eyes scanned back and forth as he took in this new information. He so obviously, desperately wanted to reach the conclusion before Kent announced it. In the end, though, he sighed loudly. “I got nothing.”

“He wants us to know that even though from the outside all of these women seem to be upstanding, they are all…”

“Rotten on the inside,” Nicole finished for Kent.

Kent nodded sagely, which appeared to be the only way the profiler nodded. “Exactly. He wants us to know that the women deserved it. He is trying to get out from under his cloud of guilt.”

Damn it, but that did make sense out of a pretty senseless situation. Maybe, just maybe, Ruben could see why Nicole put up with all of Kent’s eccentricities. These flashes of pure genius were impressive. Again, damn it.

As the backhoe rumbled to a stop, Ruben felt a knot form in his jaw muscle. There was a sound that had set up in the back of his brain and was burrowing in. It was jangly and set his teeth on edge. He’d assumed that it was the backhoe’s motor whining, but now that the thing was off, something else was making that noise.

Kent indicated to Yvent. “Get down there.”

“Why me?” the younger man whined.

Kent just glared at his protégé, making it pretty clear that this was what protégés did.

They all gathered around the edge of the dug-out grave as Yvent jumped in beside the coffin. It was a cream color. It took a moment for Ruben to realize that the coffin was one of those new eco-friendly ones, made out of recycled materials. Which meant that the body had not been embalmed.

Ruben didn’t have time to explain or even shout a warning as Yvent went to open the coffin. Ruben only had time to grab Nicole and throw her back from the edge.

* * *

There was a pop as Yvent opened the coffin. From the corner of his eye, Kent saw Ruben take Nicole down. Then a buzzing filled the air. Actually, it seemed to replace the air, and a torrent of flies burst from the grave. Millions of them. A black swarm obscured Yvent. The swarm blocked the sky.

Suddenly the entire world was consumed by large, black, ugly, angry flies.

Kent tried to block his face with his arms, but the determined flies crawled between the cracks and onto his nose, and eyelids. They even tried to find a way into his ears.

Yvent’s screams suddenly stopped. Kent was certain it was because a fly had gotten into the young man’s mouth.

Reeling backwards, he tripped over Nicole and Ruben, landing on his ass. He put his arms into motion, flapping and flailing. Anything to keep the insects at bay. The flies, though, seemed to be really enjoying their freedom.

Then a gust of wind carried the buzzing horde away. A huge black splotch on the sky moved as one downwind.

Kent scrambled up, swiping flies off of his jacket and especially out of his hair.

He cautiously made his way to the side of the hole in the ground to find Yvent puking in the corner of the grave. Kent did not blame the kid. There was a lifetime worth of nightmares in what the kid just experienced. Even Kent was slightly worried about what tonight’s sleep might bring, and he’d seen some stuff. Actually, a lot of stuff.

There was just something inherently present in a human’s DNA to hate flies. This was like death was attacking them full on. That feeling wasn’t going to go away quickly.

“Oh my God,” Nicole said next to him as she rose.

Kent ducked. What was next? Killer butterflies? But she was looking down into the grave.

Against the bright red muslin lay a perfectly cleaned skeleton. The woman had only been in the ground a few weeks, yet the maggots had picked her clean.

“Oh no,” Nicole groaned. Yes, this was all gross, but usually she had a stronger constitution than that.

Kent wasn’t the best at comforting behavior, but he gave it a try. “It’s going to be okay,” he said as he put an arm over her shoulder.

“No,” Nicole said, shrugging off his arm. “Victim number three. Ashley Rohnart. Her funeral is today.”

Ruben shook his head. “There’s no way—she was killed two weeks ago.”

“But they were having trouble finding her family,” Nicole explained. “She was kept in the cooler at the morgue until Wednesday.”

Yvent climbed out of the grave, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, then spitting fly wings out of his mouth. “The lower temperature could have kept the larvae at bay.”

* * *

Nicole slalomed through traffic, racing to the funeral home. They had tried to call ahead, but the phone had rang and rang. Who didn’t have a freaking answering machine these days? And a funeral home? Why didn’t they have an answering service?

Ruben had sent patrol cars ahead—however Nicole wasn’t sure what they were going to do about the situation.

“What is the point of having a muscle car and not using the muscle?” Kent complained.

Granted, they did have lights flashing, and the siren screamed in her ear. She stepped on the gas, speeding past a Ferrari. God, how she loved her Mustang. Good old-fashioned American craftsmanship.

It was only luck that Nicole had remembered about Ashley’s funeral. Sometimes if a case really got to her, she would attend the ceremony. The funeral homes were used to informing her of any upcoming funerals in case she wanted to attend.

Nicole hadn’t planned to attend Ashley’s funeral. Did that make her uncaring? But at the time, she hadn’t even been aware that Ashley was the victim of a serial killer. At the time, they still thought she’d been the victim of a mugging gone wrong.

But why did the manner of her death matter? Shouldn’t Nicole feel just as bad for the victim of a random violent crime as for a serial killer’s victim? Perhaps she should, but she just didn’t. They were pretty sure from the crime timeline that the killer held his victims for a few hours.

They didn’t know why until now, of course. It was to inject the insect larvae. So, yeah, Nicole had way more sympathy for those type of victims. They had endured hours of torment, only to die.

Nicole realized that her fingers were gripping the steering wheel as if her life depended on it. Relaxing her hands, Nicole took the last turn toward the funeral home.

Yvent pushed his head forward from the back seat. “I am not going in first,” he announced.

“Noted,” Kent said, surprisingly not giving Yvent any crap about being a chicken or having to toughen up for the job. That grave had been rough.

The tires squealed and she turned into the funeral home parking lot. They all sprang from the car, but at this point there was no real hurry, as people ran out of the front door, crying, flailing their hands and many of them heaving.

Yeah, Nicole knew what that felt like.

“Silver lining,” Kent said. “Should be easy to get the exhumation order for the second victim.”

As people fled, screaming from the funeral home, swatting at a swarm of black flies, that was an understatement.

* * *

Kent watched the pandemonium play out. He’d allowed Nicole and Ruben to take the front lines, explaining to the traumatized families why their precious Ashley had exploded into maggots and flies.

There were grief counselors, PTSD counselors, and half a dozen exterminators on site by now.

So much for McGregor’s thorough and complete autopsies.

However, while all of this insect activity was disconcerting, Kent wasn’t sure that it advanced their understanding of the killer. If anything, it just reinforced Kent’s initial impressions.

Wallflower was highly intelligent, and more than likely worked in the law enforcement industry or one of its peripheral support companies. He also liked his women a bit subdued. Not at all bold or flashy. Wallflowers did seem to suit them. Even the prostitute had been remarkably toned down. No gold lamé or fishnet stockings.

What did that say about the killer? A lack of confidence? He’d gone for a hooker first. Perhaps he didn’t feel confident enough to date a woman who expected dinner and flowers. Yet the killer had some ambition. After his first accidental kill, he’d leapt to premeditation and non-working girls.

And his kills had become more and more confident. Their little boy was growing up, becoming a full-fledged serial killer. Learning on the job, as it were. Yet the victims had stayed the same. Clearly, this dowdy person meant something to the killer. A mother? Sister? Some very strong female bond that had gone awry was driving the killer.

And now the maggots and flies?

Death and sex had somehow gotten mashed together in their serial killer’s youth. An unnatural fascination with creepy crawlies.

One thing was certain. This guy had a screwed up childhood, if this was how he worked out his issues.

* * *

“I think we need to head to the first crime scene,” Kent said.

Good—anywhere but here sounded good. Ruben was drained trying to comfort Ashley’s family. Because, really how could you comfort someone after seeing their loved one explode into maggots? You just had to pray that you could move past it.

Ashley’s grandmother was still with the paramedics. He felt torn. Yes, the first crime scene was important. Actually, Ruben was pretty sure that Kent was talking about his victim zero. The prostitute.

However, these people had suffered a grievous crime, having their loved one so molested. His instinct was to stay and comfort.

Then a fly buzzed around his head. Decision made.

Yvent nodded as he got into Ruben’s car. “If the killer had made any error, it would be there. Especially if he was in shock at what happened to the prostitute.”

The kid wasn’t wrong. Which meant Kent wasn’t wrong. Big surprise there.

The drive across town was a blur as Ruben tried to make sense of the killer. Kent had seemed to shrug off the bizarre fly egg ritual. Just like he shrugged off all other normal, human emotions. The guy wasn’t a robot. Robots had better boundaries and social skills.

Ruben could almost get how such a traumatic event as watching your prostitute plummet ten stories might mess a guy up. A guy who already had no problem paying for sex. And not just any kind of sex, but exhibitionist, dangerous sex.

He didn’t understand it, not a single point along the logic line, but he got it. He’d seen enough heinous crimes to be able to follow a criminal’s evolution. The fly eggs, though, went way beyond anything that Ruben could “get.”

Kent would call it the serial killer’s calling card. His signature. And the signature always indicated what the underlying psychosis was.

Good luck with that one, Ruben thought.

“We’re so lucky,” Yvent sighed beside Ruben.

“Really?” Ruben questioned. “You just got maggots on your shoes, flies in your mouth, and now we are heading to skank town.”

“I mean to be working a case like this with Special Agent Harbinger.”

“Oh, that,” Ruben replied. You’d think, with how Kent treated the kid, he’d hate his mentor. But that was the magic of Kent. He lived in opposite world. “So you want to grow up to be just like him?”

“Yes,” Yvent said, nodding vigorously. Okay, maybe Kent wasn’t all that fond of the kid after all. “He is able to inhabit a killer’s mind, yet still carry on a normal life.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ruben said. “Kent’s life is anything but normal.”

“What?” Yvent asked. “He’s got a hottie for a long-term girlfriend—” then the younger man frowned. “Sorry. I know that you and Detective Usher used to date.”

Ruben ignored Yvent’s mention of their previous relationship. “You should maybe ask Nicole how normal it all feels to her. I doubt he could find anyone else to put up with him.”

“Even to live life alone, knowing that you are taking down some of the most vicious killers in world. That would be worth it.”

Wow, the kid had really drunk the Kool-Aid.

“You do know that profilers retire the earliest and have the highest suicide rate, right?”

Yvent shrugged. “Only because they burn out, because they can’t catch their unsubs. Kent, and therefore I, won’t have that problem.”

Maybe Ruben had been wrong. Maybe Yvent was as arrogant as Kent must have been at this age.

CHAPTER 5

Nicole had to hold her hand to her mouth to keep herself from gagging at the conditions on the rooftop. She’d thought the gravesite had been bad. This place reeked of not just stale urine, but just about every other bodily secretion. Used condoms were strewn all around her feet.

This is how poverty begat poverty. Depression caused people to not care about their surroundings, which descended them into filth, which was depressing, and so the cycle went until you ended up with a rooftop like this.

How could anyone come up here to have some “fun”?

Joshua, however, seemed like he was a kid in a candy store. “There’s got to be at least two hundred condoms up here.”

“And each one,” Kent explained, “will need to be tested for both the female contribution and male contribution.”

“You know it,” Joshua said, carefully labeling each one in its own evidence bag.

Okay, Joshua could get a bit annoying with his exuberance—however, that unbridled excitement was working in their favor today. Most other lab techs would have scoffed at Kent’s time-consuming request. Instead, Joshua took it as the equivalent to searching for the Holy Grail. Finding the condom the killer had used.

Yvent peered over the side of the building and whistled. “That’s a long way down.”

They were ten stories up an old tenement building in the worst part of town. No one had even heard or admitted to hearing the prostitute scream as she fell to her death in the early morning hours. It took a trash man the next morning to find her. They were lucky that he even reported it.

Kent shook his head, making a circuit around the rooftop.

“There’s something wrong,” he said.

“Besides a guy killing woman for no apparent reason?” Nicole asked.

Kent turned to her. “Oh he’s got a reason, we just haven’t found it yet.”

“Aren’t we all ignoring a pretty obvious conclusion?” Yvent asked.

“That our unsub is law enforcement?” Kent answered.

“Or military,” Yvent said with a nod. “Someone who knows their way around a wide variety of weapons and forensic countermeasures.”

“But look at his immaturity,” Kent said. “He can’t even have sex right. And it takes him a year to get up the nerve again? Does that sound like a sophisticated law enforcement killer? Like I said, something is off.”

Nicole breathed out through her nose, trying to ignore the stench all around her. “He’s also starting pretty late in life. Don’t most serial killers begin their evolution as a teenager? Acting out? Animal cruelty?”

“None of that will hold up here,” Kent said, frowning. “This guy is an anomaly. Serial killer by accident. The only thing we know for sure is that he’s an outlier.”

“Someone with forensic knowledge but emotionally stunted?” Nicole proposed, just as Joshua whooped.

“That’s right! Found one in the drain pipe!” he announced.

All eyes turned to the morgue assistant. The strange young man with an unhealthy fascination with serial killers had briefly been a suspect in their last major serial killer case, Plain Jane. It turned out then that he was just a sucker, a pawn of the murderer. Could Joshua have graduated to an actual serial killer?

Kent shook his head. “This guy on the outside is put together. I would guess above average looks. He lured these women to a secret location, killed them, and then was able to transport the bodies to the dumping grounds. Joshua has a hard time matching his socks.”

Nicole looked down to find Joshua with one white sock and one green sock. She felt a sense of relief. The morgue attendant was weird, but in his own weird way, a kind guy. He needed about a decade of therapy, but someday he might actually be a contributing member of society.

* * *

Kent allowed the scene to wash over him. He stepped to the edge where Trudy, the prostitute, had fallen. How had their man felt? Was he horrified or gratified? Did he flee or stay and soak up the sensation?

This guy was so all over the map, Kent was having a fair amount of trouble nailing him down. Those 17-24-year-old antisocial serial killers were so much easier to profile. Their rage was right at the surface, bubbling over. People noticed them. The ugly and the stupid.

Wallflower was neither.

Kent also preferred psychopaths to sociopaths. Psychopaths, due to the complete lack of empathy, usually followed a specific set of rules. Their kills were logical, in their own way. Their trophies were equally logical.

Sociopaths? They were far more variable, and this guy was hopping all over the map. Kent was starting to get a feel for the killer, but still not quite.

To know there was a serialist out there but not having his scent gnawed at Kent’s gut. He hated this phase of the investigation. The part where you knew there was a killer out there, and you couldn’t do anything to stop him. He needed more data. Unfortunately, the most revealing data was another dead woman. The ultimate irony was that death was what saved lives.

Kent needed more of a pattern to emerge before he could hone in on Wallflower.

He didn’t even try to understand the fly egg curveball the killer had thrown them. Eventually, that too would make sense. Or at least they would have an explanation from the killer’s perspective.

Nicole stepped up next to him. “Trying to channel him?”

“Want to try?”

She gulped, but nodded. Nicole closed her eyes, breathing in. She grimaced and her nostrils tightened down.

“Don’t resist it. You need to experience the scene just as he did.”

* * *

Nicole had to override her revulsion and take a deep breath. Could despair have a smell all to itself?

But the killer had come up here willingly. No, he’d actually paid for the privilege of coming up here. Had he been nervous? Was he a virgin? Had he scouted Trudy for a while?

“Well?” Kent prompted.

“I think he would have been really nervous,” Nicole said.

Kent wagged a finger. “To know our man now, we need to know where he came from. What type of childhood would have forged a sociopath with these tendencies?”

Nicole nodded. She always wanted to rush into the profile. She wanted it to be like magic, where the answers just came to you. But, as Kent repeated ad nauseam, profiling was a tedious gig. You had to pick through the evidence, piece by piece, then layer them over each other to create the picture of the killer.

“He is killing women, so that implies the abuser was a woman. I would guess absent or deceased father. No one to protect him from the mother or to pattern normal male behavior.”

Kent nodded. Nicole shouldn’t have felt that flush of pride, but she did, and she liked it.

“The women are a proxy for this dominant female figure.”

“Yes. If these guys just had the balls to kill their abusers, we would be out of a job.”

“Except for this crime, the killings have been so asexual that they almost feel hypersexual. Like because he doesn’t have the self-esteem to date these women, he has to kill them.”

“Good pick up. Many times, the absolute lack of sexual markers indicates a deeply sexually repressed killer who is acting out his sexual frustration by killing.”

“That’s why this crime scene is so important?” Nicole asked. “To show us definitively that his motivation and therefore his primary abuse as a child was sexual?”

“Right again. Heck, I may be able to retire soon.”

Oh my, Kent was in a good mood. That much praise in a row? Nicole was certain he was going to fall over of an aneurism.

Nicole brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Okay, so he was emotionally and probably sexually abused, ashamed of his sexuality, and probably punished for masturbating.”

She looked to Kent, who nodded. “So this wasn’t an easy step. There must have been a trigger that brought him up on this roof.”

“And what would those triggers usually look like?”

“Loss,” Nicole stated confidently. “Death or the loss of a job or house, but my money would be on the death of his dominant female abuser.”

“And you would probably win that bet,” Kent said, encouraging her. “Now is this his usual environment?”

Nicole shook her head. Their profile so far had the man well educated enough to employ forensic countermeasures and avoid detection by the bulk of the police department. Everything about this killer, from his choice of victims to his methodology, screamed upper middle class.

“No,” Nicole said. “This was his walk on the wild side. I think normally…”

She was having a hard time putting words to how she felt. After all of that abuse, it felt like the killer would want to be in control. That was how he survived his horrific childhood and went on to be college educated. By controlling as much of his life as he could.

“He’s controlling,” Nicole said. “Detail-oriented. Wound pretty tightly. Maybe OCD?”

Kent rubbed her back. “Very good. I don’t think he has to wash his hands a thousand times, but I do think his paperclips are in a neat row on his desk.”

“Hey, can I play?” Yvent asked.

Nicole hated to admit it, but she wanted to say no. To have Kent all to herself in this mood? That was a treat. But Kent waved his protégé over.

“As a matter of fact, we need you for the next stage of this profile.”

Kent indicated to them. “Nicole, you’re Trudy. Yvent, you’re Wallflower.”

“And what are we supposed to do?” Nicole asked, knowing that she wasn’t going to like Kent’s answer. Not one bit.

“Why, we are going to re-enact the crime.”

Nicole could only guess that her face had the same look of horror as Yvent’s.

“What?” Kent asked. “It’s how the French solve crimes.”

* * *

Yvent stepped back, wishing that he had never opened his mouth.

“But I’ve never used a prostitute,” Yvent said, trying to think of anything to get him out of this situation.

“Oh please,” Kent said with a smirk. “You haven’t had sex, period.” He didn’t wait for Yvent to confirm or deny. “We need that awkwardness to get a feel for how this went.”

“But, but…” Yvent stammered. “Shouldn’t you do this with Nicole?”

“No,” Kent said. “I’m good, but even I can’t fake that level of insecurity.”

Nicole nodded her head. Yvent guessed if it was okay with her and okay with her boyfriend, he should take this as a learning experience.

“Now, go,” Kent demanded.

Yvent held out his hand to Nicole, who looked down at it with suspicion. “I don’t think prostitutes hold your hand,”

“Oh yeah, right,” Yvent said, shoving his hand into his pocket.

“See? You can’t buy that kind of awkwardness,” Kent said.

Yvent was so glad that he was fulfilling his role.

“It feels like Trudy would have led him to the wall,” Nicole said, walking up to the edge. “According to the other girls on the street, the johns only got 10 minutes up here, so my guess would be Trudy would pull down her panties, because I don’t see Wallflower doing it.”

“We… we are doing this with our clothes on, right?” Yvent asked with a gulp.

“Yes, of course,” Kent said snidely.

“With you, though?” Nicole chided, “That was a completely legitimate question.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, point taken,” Kent replied. “This is a dry run, but we do need to get you two into position.”

Yvent, though, was paralyzed. For one thing, he didn’t like heights, and for another thing, Nicole intimidated the hell out of him.

Luckily, the detective leaned against the wall and grabbed the edge. “Trudy had soot and mud and concrete under her fingernails. I think this is how she hung on.”

“Good, good,” Kent encouraged. “Now Yvent, you’ve got a panties-less woman waiting on you, what do you do?”

“I would, I mean,” Yvent said with a cough.

“Yes, you probably would sputter and panic. Good,” Kent said, then turned to Nicole. “But Trudy wants her money, so she’s going to encourage him over.”

It was Nicole’s turn to squirm. “Come on, baby. Let’s get it on.”

“Okay, it’s a really good thing that you don’t have to earn your living like this Nicole,” Kent said, then adopted a feminine voice. “It’s okay. Everybody’s nervous on the first time,” Kent cooed, actually making Yvent feel a little better. “Nobody’s here to judge. We’re just here so that you get what you want. You want it, right?”

* * *

Nicole wasn’t quite sure if she was more upset she didn’t play a good prostitute, or that Kent made such a good one.

Kent urged Yvent forward. “Come on now, you did come here to do something, right? I think even Wallflower would have been more decisive.”

The younger man stepped forward. His cheeks were flush and all of that arrogance back at the warehouse was replaced by fear, and was that a flash of shame?

“Number 100!” Joshua shouted from the other side of the roof, waving over his head a pink condom. “I think we’re going to set a record.”

Yvent turned to Kent. “Are you sure we shouldn’t consider him a suspect?”

“No more than you, Mr. Sissypants,” Kent answered. “Now screw my girlfriend!”

Nicole opened her thighs to allow Yvent to bring his hips to her pelvis. Yvent didn’t know what to do with his hands, so Nicole let go of the ledge for a second and placed his hands on her waist.

“Wait,” Yvent said. “Are you sure that you’re safe?”

No, she wasn’t. However, Trudy had done this for years and never fallen before. How did she keep herself stable? Then Kent grabbed her calf and brought it over Yvent’s thigh. Nicole followed suit with the other leg and wrapped them both around Yvent’s legs. She wasn’t going anywhere now.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Kent asked. “Let’s get this party started.”

* * *

Yvent held his breath as Nicole began rocking his hips, forcing them too close together. He had that feeling as blood rushed from his head to further south. The same feeling he had if he turned on Cinemax a little too late in the evening.

Baseball. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to think to avoid an unwanted erection? Unfortunately, he was not that fond of the sport, and for the life of him couldn’t think of a single stat or game to take his mind off of Nicole’s smokin’ hot body.

This was wrong—so wrong. Even if the detective and the profiler had signed off on it, it was still wrong.

“How is this going to help us, exactly?” Yvent asked. “Don’t you usually worry about the victim, and not the killer so much?”

Kent cocked his head. “I need to know a baseline about the killer to understand who he hunts.”

“Then why not try to target the killer, rather than the victim?”

“That’s so been done before,” Kent said with a roll of his eyes. Yvent needed to keep the profiler talking, though, to distract him from how Nicole’s body was affecting his own.

“The killer seems like a smaller pool,” Yvent said.

“Really?” Kent challenged. “Trying to find a fairly attractive but uptight, sexually repressed guy who’s ashamed of masturbating?” Kent nodded his head to the other detective. “We might as well bring Ruben in.”

“Kent,” Nicole chided.

Even though it wasn’t his name, Yvent’s body reacted to her warm breath on his neck. This was crazy. He wouldn’t be able to hide his body’s natural response much longer. All he could think was, not again. Please not again.

Nicole, though, seemed to have no problem as they dry humped. She reported coolly, “I am really digging my shoes into his calves to stay secure. Trudy had five inch heels, didn’t she?” Nicole asked Kent.

“Yes,” the profiler answered.

“I think we should have CSI really go over the tips of those heels. There may be trace from his pants, or even skin, if she ripped the cloth.”

“I’ll take care of that as soon as we are done,” Yvent said, desperate to think of anything but Nicole’s soft thighs and beautiful neck.

“So what went wrong?” Kent asked. “Right now, this is just a standard trick.”

Yvent felt pressure building up in his chest. Well, in other places too, but it was making it hard to breath. Even faking it was too close to the real thing, and he’d promised his grandmother he’d wait until marriage before sex. The one time he had tried, well, it hadn’t gone so well. Like American Pie level not well.

Nicole’s legs were like vices, driving his pelvis into hers. He couldn’t do it. Not without his attraction being clear, not only to Nicole but to Kent as well. Breathing faster and faster, Yvent had to get out of the situation.

“No,” Yvent said. “That’s enough.” But Nicole’s legs wouldn’t let him go.

* * *

Nicole wasn’t sure if Yvent was faking a panic attack, or actually having one. His eyes were dilated to the point of black, and he was shaking his head even though Nicole wasn’t sure if he knew that he was.

“No,” he moaned, grabbing hold of her thighs and trying to push them aside. “Let me go.”

But Nicole used to go to the gym regularly, and had excellent abductors. She held firm as her fingernails dug into the concrete ledge.

But Yvent’s reaction became even more exaggerated. He forced his hands between her knees and his waist and shoved her legs apart. No leg machine was going to overcome a full-grown man’s panicked action.

The sudden, jarring motion threw Nicole off balance, and her upper body, already tilted back, fell backward. Her hands lashed out as Yvent tried to reach her before she fell over, but it was too late. Her fingernails raked down his arm.

This was it. She was falling to her death.

Then a hand caught her, steadying her on the ledge. “There ya go. I’ve got you.”

Trembling from the adrenaline rush, Nicole allowed Kent to pull her back over the ledge. He kept his hand on her waist as she found her footing.

“Well,” Kent said, sounding way more chipper than he should after her near miss. “I think we figured out what happened.”

The profiler turned to Joshua. “Focus on the condoms with pre-ejaculate fluid and no semen.” Kent turned back to her. “I don’t think he finished the deed.”

“I am so sorry,” Yvent said.

Nicole shook her head. “We never should have put you in that position.”

“What are you talking about?” Kent said. “That was perfect. Pitch perfect.”

And Nicole really couldn’t argue. From those few uncomfortable moments they had learned so much. To go back and check Trudy’s heels. To recheck Trudy’s fingernails and, possibly most importantly, to check for a condom that wasn’t full. That would probably drop the pool of condoms from several hundred to maybe a handful.

Maybe the French did have it right.

* * *

Well, this had been an unmitigated success. Kent now had more insight into Wallflower than he ever had before. Kent could feel him now. And now that he had Wallflower’s emotional core, he could much more successfully hunt his victims.

He helped Nicole away from the wall as his phone buzzed at his hip.

Kent looked down at the text. “Jimmi just confirmed that the flies inside the victims were of two different species.”

Another fascinating aspect to the case.

“What does that mean?” Yvent asked.

“It means we get to go for a ride to the bug farm!” Kent announced, although, strangely, no one seemed to be very excited about it.

“Are you kidding me?” Nicole said.

“What? The killer’s selection of fly type might be very important on building our profile.”

“The college’s entomology department makes the gravesite look like Disneyland,” Yvent stated.

Since no one was quickening to the idea, Kent just started walking toward the exit. They would follow in his wake. They always did.

Kent trotted down steps for ten floors until he hit the ground floor. Who needed a gym while you were hunting a serial killer? They seldom took the straight, easy route.

Just as he had predicted, Nicole, Yvent and Ruben had followed. Joshua was still documenting and logging all the condoms.

Just as well. Kent feared what Joshua’s copious honeysuckle hair gel would attract at the entomologist office.

Kent got into Nicole’s car as Yvent loaded into Ruben’s SUV.

Based on the look on everyone’s face, this was going to be fun.

CHAPTER 6

Yvent felt his stomach clench as Ruben drove them up to the college’s entomology department. It wasn’t like there was a cloud of flies around the building. As a matter of fact, it was as short and squat as the rest of the building. However, just knowing what was going on inside of this one made even the unadorned concrete walls appear ominous.

Like every other little boy, Yvent had had a fascination with insects as a child. He’d had an ant farm and grown flies from maggots, but he’d outgrown it. Especially after earlier. He could still hear the buzzing in his ears. That was a sound that was going to wake him for years to come.

Ruben pulled the SUV into a parking stall. “You don’t have to come in, you know.”

Yvent raised an eyebrow. “Really? And still be an intern of Kent’s?”

“You can’t live your life trying to constantly please a man who is, at his core, un-pleasable.”

“Yet, look at you,” Yvent said. “You could have requested a transfer from this station. You could be off, happily solving crimes on the other side of town.”

The detective’s jaw worked up and down. “Your life,” he said as Ruben opened the door.

Yvent felt temporarily sorry. Ruben’s ego had clearly been bruised by this case and it wasn’t his place to remind the detective of everything that he’d lost. But Yvent was also very tired of people treating him like a child. He’d graduated from Quantico, for goodness sake. That was not an easy feat, especially given that he couldn’t study for a whole twenty-four hours during the Sabbath.

He’d been one out of only three students from the academy to be put up for this internship, and Kent had chosen him. He was not going to disappoint his mentor.

So even though the building looked like the gates of hell to Yvent, he followed Ruben through the door.

The hallway looked like any other college hallway. Nondescript tile floors and walls lined with corkboard bulletin boards that were so crammed with school flyers and band gig announcements that they looked like multi-dimensional art, all the colors a garish reminder that they were on college grounds.

Yvent wished that he could say that this all calmed his nerves. It did not. As a matter of fact, having one of his favorite places in the world, a college, be home to a bug collection felt like a violation. Like he could never walk down a university hallway again without thinking of bugs.

“Still time to turn back,” Ruben said.

But no way. No how.

The only sound in the hallway was the click-clack of Nicole’s heels on the tile floor. He should probably feel worse that he had nearly killed the attractive detective, but his takeaway from that experience was that it had unfolded exactly how Kent had hoped. Which, in turn, should make him mad at the profiler. To have used his emotional vulnerability like that was unprofessional at best and downright cruel at worst.

Yet he wasn’t upset at Kent at all. If anything, it made him respect the profiler even more. The guy would go there. If it furthered the case, he’d simply go there. That was why Yvent was walking down this damned hallway. He needed to go there as well.

If he’d thought he’d found his calling at Quantico, Yvent had been wrong. He’d found it here with Kent. Just like at Quantico, all of the personality quirks—studious, withdrawn, contemplative—that had separated him from his peers all his life had suddenly become a boon. Even now, his lack of sexual experience had helped them gain insight into a killer.

What would these flies give them?

To be honest, Yvent was a little loath to know.

* * *

Nicole could hear the buzzing even out in the hallway as they made their way to the professor’s office. She looked back at Yvent, whose face was as white as a sheet. She didn’t blame him. Even though she’d only gotten swiped by the periphery of the swarm, she was none too eager to go into this guy’s office.

Kent, however, had a spring to his step and showed absolutely no hesitation as he opened the door labeled “Head of the Department of Entomology.”

The smell was the first thing that hit Nicole. A smell so strong you could taste the decomposition. Her eyes scanned the walls to the large laboratory. Each was lined with huge enclosures that contained thousands of flies each. And their food? Rotting meat.

How lovely.

“Dr. Schlesinger?” Kent asked of the man sitting at a dissecting microscope. The guy didn’t look like he heard the profiler. But who could hear over the constant, pressing buzzing all around them?

They had to get close enough for Kent to tap the professor’s shoulder for him to even notice. The doctor jumped at the contact, nearly knocking over his microscope.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, looking over the four invaders of his lab.

Kent put his hand out. “Special Agent Harbinger. I believe our CSI tech spoke to you about us coming over to discuss a case.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the man said. He might have been attractive if it weren’t for the tiny, tiny John Lennon-esque wire rimmed glasses. As Nicole looked closer, they weren’t spectacles, they were magnifying glasses. So odd.

Odder yet was the man’s wardrobe. His clothes looked like they were three sizes too large, as if they had fit when he’d put them on, then he’d lost fifty pounds and forgot to change. Plus, they were wrinkled enough that it looked like he’d slept in them all week.

Which wouldn’t be far off, given all of the empty takeout containers strewn around and over in the corner was a small cot.

Nicole asked before thinking, “You sleep here?”

The professor shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “My little darlings have such a short lifespan. I’d hate to think they were alone during any of it.”

“What exactly do you do here?” Yvent asked, the horror plain on his face.

“I study the effects of temperature, humidity, and food sources on insect growth to more accurately determine forensic entomology.”

He pointed to the enclosures lining the walls. Then it was as if the professor saw the mess around him for the first time. He suddenly hopped up from his stool and began cleaning off the counters.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized. “We’re not used to having much company around here.”

“How can you stand the smell?” Ruben asked, frowning and taking a handkerchief to cover his nose.

“I had a bicycle accident as a child,” The professor said. “Hit my head. When I woke up, I had no sense of smell.” The man shrugged. “So it doesn’t bother me at all.”

Kent had that look he always got when there was too much small talk. That look that said, “I am the only one interested in solving this case any time soon.”

Nicole redirected the conversation back into the clinical arena. “Did our tech send you the information regarding the flies and maggots?”

The man’s head bobbed up and down a little like he was his own bobble-headed doll. “Yes. Fascinating. Such an interesting use of the fly’s life cycle.”

Not exactly how she would describe it, but Nicole didn’t interrupt him.

“And is there any significance of the species of flies he choose?” Kent asked.

“Not really. The first was Musca domestica.” When no one seemed to know what he was talking about, the professor explained, “The common housefly.”

“And the second?” Kent asked.

“Fannia Canicularis,” the professor stated, then filled in the blanks all by himself. “The lesser house fly.”

“So nothing special about them?” Nicole asked.

“Nothing special?” the professor said, his voice going up an octave. “They may be common, but they are special.” He pointed to an enclosure filled with buzzing flies. “Did you know that the Musca has a longer orgasm than most human males?”

* * *

Kent was certain that that fact brought down the house at entomology conferences. Unfortunately for the professor, they were not at one.

“Illuminating, and I’m certain the flies appreciate it,” Kent said. “However, not helpful to the case.”

“Did you also know that the female regulates the sex of her offspring?”

“Again, not helping me zero in on the killer.”

Ruben stepped forward. Kent had practically forgotten that the tall detective had been with them. “And the means of injection? Anything that you can tell us about that?”

The professor picked up a large-barreled plastic syringe attached to a blunt needle.

“We use these to transfer eggs from one enclosure to another,” the professor explained. “While we use blunt needles, the barrel tip fits any regular hospital needle. The eggs are small enough they would have fit though a 27 gauge needle.”

The guy looked like that was supposed to be significant.

Yvent spoke up from the back of the room, although it sounded as if he were gagging a bit, which wasn’t surprising, since the room was buzzing like a high-frequency tower. “That’s the gauge they use in insulin needles. Small enough that they don’t really leave a mark unless you are looking for one.”

The professor nodded his head. “Perhaps if I had samples from the other victims so that I might see a pattern in the species, I might be more help.”

Ruben nodded. “We will get you those as soon as we collect them.”

Kent hated it when a lead didn’t pan out. “Any idea why he might change species? I mean, if he were trying to denigrate the bodies, why switch flies?”

The professor’s eyes dilated and he practically jumped back a step. “Why in the world would you think that he was trying to denigrate the bodies?”

“Um,” Kent said, “because there were maggots?”

“Do you realize that without maggots, the world would be overrun by rotting corpses? That maggots provide an essential function to the ecosystem? Your killer might be trying to simply bring the bodies back into the natural lifecycle faster.”

“Yeah, serial killers are usually not eco-friendly.”

“Remember, maggots are also used to clean dirty wounds. The killer might have been trying to purify the bodies.”

“Again,” Kent said. “You weren’t at the funeral. There was nothing pure about it.”

The professor shrugged. “I am just saying, keep an open mind regarding the killer’s motive around the fly eggs.”

Always good advice. Was the killer as much a bug lover as the professor? Did he see himself fulfilling a higher calling rather than just grossing everyone out?

“Thank you,” Nicole said, offering her hand to the professor.

“Sorry I wasn’t more help,” the man said. “I can hardly wait for those other specimens.”

Kent could hardly wait either, if it meant a return trip to the laboratory. Just the look on Yvent and Ruben’s faces would be worth it.

The tall detective’s phone rang and he stepped out into the hallway. Kent was pretty damned certain it wasn’t because he couldn’t hear the call.

* * *

Nicole followed Kent out into the hallway just as Ruben shut his phone. She felt like she could finally breathe again. She could only image what Yvent felt like.

“I just talked to the detectives that were working victim number two’s case,” Ruben stated. “Her boyfriend is an avid hunter. Well-versed in using a rifle, handgun and hunting knife.”

“His alibi?” Nicole asked.

“Supposedly, at the time of victim two’s death, he was out drinking with buddies, but no one could remember them at the bars they said they had been at.”

“So, possibly good old boys providing a false alibi?” Yvent proposed.

“You’re all kidding right?” Kent said. “That some hillbilly committed these crimes?”

Ruben’s jaw clenched like it did whenever he was around Kent. “He’s a viable suspect.”

“Yeah, right,” Kent said, shaking his head.

“Are they bringing him in?” Nicole asked. Ruben nodded. “Alright. At least let’s go to the barn and rule him out.”

Kent didn’t look any too happy about it, but there were times when you had to do straight up police work. Your due diligence. Not exactly Kent’s specialty.

CHAPTER 7

Ruben sat across from the suspect, Jasper Harkenson. It was like he was wearing a hick costume, right down to the checkered flannel shirt and cowboy hat. There was a ring of sweat at the scalp line. The guy lived in a trailer park with his aunt and five cousins.

As much as Ruben hated to admit it, Kent seemed right. The concept that the guy spitting tobacco into an old Sprite can could have pulled off four murders was becoming more and more ludicrous. Plus, the word from the exhumation just came through. Annabelle, as well, had been injected with fly eggs.

“The skanky bitch had it coming to her,” the man said. “Annabelle was whoring around. No wonder someone wanted her dead.”

Nicole leaned forward. “You do realize that your statement gives you motive?”

“Please, I’m dating Chastity now. She’s seven years younger than Annabelle and a whole cup bigger. Plus, she’s fun.”

“And the other women that were murdered?” Nicole asked. “Where were you on March 13th?”

Jasper spit into his pop can. “I told you already, we were out huntin’.”

Nicole pressed him, though. “But you said you were too drunk to know what time you arrived or left the camping grounds.”

“Being shit-faced isn’t a crime,” Jasper countered with a laugh. “Otherwise, I’d be in for a life sentence.”

Ruben wanted to punch the insufferable man, but that wouldn’t look very good, now would it? Besides, the ranger was well aware of Jasper and his yahoo friends. They routinely hunted outside of season and took more than the law allowed. They were even implicated in a hit-and-run last season, so the ranger knew them not only by sight, but by their truck’s broke-ass transmission. The ranger put them getting to the campsite by 7pm and leaving at 11am the next morning. Well within the TOD timeframe. So being total dicks confirmed their alibi.

“What did you mean by Annabelle was whoring around?” Nicole asked.

Jasper shrugged. “I just heard through the grapevine she was dating someone.” He held out his hand. “But don’t bother asking, because I don’t know his name, address, career, or his car’s license number.”

Ruben studied the hick. Now would have been a perfect time to try and throw them off the scent. He could have offered up a completely reasonable suspect right then. Yet he’d thrown away the golden opportunity.

But Jasper had means and motive. Could this moron really have planned such an alibi, then snuck out of the campsite to commit the murder? As the guy tapped his keychain with a confederate flag on the table, Ruben seriously doubted it.

This guy was the type to strangle someone barehanded. Or find his girlfriend in bed with another guy and shoot them both. No elaborate set up. No forensic countermeasures. Just straight-up crimes of passion. At some point, this hick was going to end up in jail, just not for these killings. And the skill to acquire a variety of different fly eggs, then carefully inject them into his girlfriend’s abdomen? Not so much.

However, they had to do their due diligence and be absolutely sure they could rule Jasper out. Ruben tried to get comfortable in his chair. This could take a while. And it didn’t help any that he knew that Kent and Yvent were behind the one-way glass, watching this train wreck of an interview.

* * *

Yvent scrolled down his email. “The other two friends are backing up Jasper’s story. Although their alibis are remarkably vague, yet consistent.”

The profiler next to him nodded. “They’re too stupid to come up with anything else.”

Stupid or wasted, Yvent thought.

“Ask him about Annabelle’s taste in music,” Kent said into his mic. Nicole repeated the question in the interrogation room.

The profiler was using the interview not to suss out the suspect, but to mine for information regarding the victim. Clearly, Kent was still trying to figure out how the women were related.

Unfortunately, Jasper took little interest in Annabelle. The guy couldn’t name a single song she liked.

“How exactly did he meet Annabelle?” Kent asked in her ear. She repeated the question.

For the first time during the interview, Jasper squirmed. The guy clearly had some experience in an interrogation room. He’d been picked up for half a dozen juvenile offenses when he was younger. All petty stuff. Tagging. Vandalism. Fighting on school property. Since then, he’d been hauled in for bar fights and drunk and disorderly.

Plus, clearly, he didn’t do this crime, so why should he be worried?

But now, with that simple question, the guy was squirming in his seat, pointing his toes toward the door, his hands in his lap. Kent was on to something.

“I…” Jasper said. “I met her at church,”

“Church?” Nicole repeated. “You’re kidding me?”

The guy shook his head. “After my last arrest for that scuffle at Duke’s bar, my aunt told me I either started attending her church, or she’d kick me out.”

Jasper lowered his eyes, fiddling with his keychain.

“Okay, but why date Annabelle?” Kent asked into his mic.

Once Nicole had repeated the question, Jasper answered. “My Auntie May said I either got a good girl, or she’d take back her truck.”

Kent smiled. The profiler knew something. Something that Yvent couldn’t possibly understand yet. That kind of pissed him off. He’d chosen Kent as his mentor and had to pull a thousand strings to make this internship happen, but the experience had turned out to be as exasperating as it was educational.

He went back to his phone to look over all of his documents on the case. “But the other three victims didn’t even attend church.”

“That’s not the point, kid,” Kent stated. “I don’t think the killer found his victims at church, but a religious upbringing is a major key in the case. You honestly don’t see it?”

Yvent had to shake his head, as much as he resented it.

“We have an extremely emotionally immature killer who somehow coaxed at least three extremely shy women to his killing grounds. Where did he get that skill set?”

“It wouldn’t be work. He could be highly proficient at his job without having any emotional IQ.”

Kent nodded. Which, Lord knew, he should. The profiler was a walking example of someone with a high IQ and grossly low EQ.

“Ah, but church,” Kent said. “Church teaches you social manners. At least the superficial kind. Saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Using the term ‘ma’am.’”

Yvent nodded. It did make sense. “Social graces can take you pretty far with women.”

“My guess is that if we dig deep enough, the victim’s friends are going to say that the victims had too high an expectation for their men. They expected the door to be opened for them, chivalrous stuff like that.”

“For the guy to pay the dinner bill?”

“Exactly.”

“This guy is preying on these women’s traditional values.”

Yvent looked to Jasper. No wonder Annabelle had only dated the guy for three weeks. Even though he went to church, he certainly didn’t have any of the characteristics a good church girl would be looking for.

“I’ll have the unis re-interview the friends for the victim’s dating habits,” Yvent said as he sent the text. Then he noticed the time. “I’ve got to get going.”

“You’ve got a lead?” Kent asked.

“No,” Yvent said with a shake of his head. “It will be sunset soon, and I have to get home before then.”

Kent frowned. “You do realize that serial killers don’t observe the Sabbath?”

Yvent had heard this a thousand times during his schooling. How he could never be an FBI agent and a devout Jew. He’d had to threaten a lawsuit just to get into the academy.

“I’ll be back on the clock at sunset Saturday,” Yvent said. It nearly killed him to take the next twenty-four hours off, but he had promised his mother. And since her death eight years ago, he had kept it. Up until now, his choices had not impacted his work. Now, though, in the real world with real criminals, Harbinger wasn’t all wrong.

But he could remember the feel of his mother’s hand in his. The tears streaming down both of their faces when he made the promise. It was his promise to God and to her to keep their traditions alive.

He couldn’t start making compromises now, or he’d never stop.

And he really needed to get going, otherwise he’d have a hell of a long walk to his house if the sun set before he drove home.

“And no technology, right?” Kent asked. “No email or texting?”

Yvent nodded. As a matter of fact, he would need to walk to the synagogue in the morning. This was why most orthodox Jews lived in the same neighborhood. They had to so that they could walk to temple.

“I must live as my ancestors until the Sabbath is over.”

“Shouldn’t you have long curls and a hat or something?” Kent asked.

Even though Yvent was pretty sure the profiler knew the difference, he still answered the question as he had a thousand times before. “You are thinking of Haredi, most associated in the media with the diamond trade.” With a sigh, he continued. “There are many, many orthodox Jews who are not a member of that sect.”

“Well, you better get off then,” Kent said. “But don’t expect to get the collar if you aren’t around when I catch the guy.”

While not exactly supportive, Yvent would take it. “Tomorrow evening then,” he said as he headed out.

* * *

Kent dispassionately watched the train wreck of an interview unfold. There was something profoundly beautiful about watching an interrogation through the one-way mirror. So much about character was revealed. Not about the suspect—although sometimes that was helpful. However, Kent preferred to do his questioning outside the box. If he really was honing in on a suspect, he’d far rather interrogate them in their comfort zone. Once they were in the box, their defenses went way up.

No, Kent meant about clues to the interviewers’ character.

Poor Ruben had so wanted to prove Kent wrong. His initial body language was all confidence and aggression. Ruben had been leaning forward, hands balled into a fist on the table in front of him. His questions had been spit out like nails.

Within five minutes, Ruben had leaned back, relaxed his hands, and was basically throwing softball questions at the guy. His feet were even pointed to the door. The detective had checked out of the interview long ago. His shoulders were slouched, and several very telling glances to the two-way mirror told Kent that Ruben knew he was wrong, again. That must suck.

Nicole, on the other hand, was still trying to make something of the interrogation. She’d never seemed intent on proving Jasper had killed Annabelle. Instead, she had properly aimed her questions at revealing Annabelle’s character. Although Kent was not quite sure if Jasper here could pick up on any true habits of his ex-girlfriends. Beyond her bra size and the time of the month to avoid her, Jasper was a bit of a dead end.

So Kent’s mind wandered to the trophies. They had to make some kind of sense to the killer. Why, then, couldn’t he discern the reasoning?

As the voices droned on from inside the room, Kent sank deeper and deeper into the killer’s mind frame.

* * *

Nicole cocked her head. Kent hadn’t chimed in over the last few minutes. And, to be honest, she was a little lost. About the only thing they had figured out definitively during this interview was that Jasper was a douche.

She hated to admit it, but she found herself flailing a bit without Kent’s whispering in her ear. Had he left? Or was he about as bored with this interview as she was? The odor of stale beer and weed was only making it worse.

“Tell us more about Annabelle. You said she wasn’t fun. What does that mean?” Nicole asked.

“She didn’t drink or smoke weed,” Jasper said, his eyes darting between Ruben and Nicole. “And sex? You’d better turn out the lights and not have beer breath.”

No great surprise there. Still, Jasper had dated the girl for three weeks, so he must have something to add to the victimology. Some insight that would help them hone down the suspect pool. Otherwise, this hour was simply time she was never getting back.

Nicole glanced to Ruben. His eyelids were at half-mast and his lips in a half-pout. He so wanted Jasper to be involved. If he spent half of the time he spent pushing against Kent in helping the profiler, they might actually catch Wallflower before he kills again.

The thought brought Nicole’s resolve back. This interview couldn’t just be about running through the motions. The killer selected Annabelle for a reason, and Nicole needed to find out what that single special something is.

“Where did Annabelle like to hang out?”

“Stupid book clubs and helping out at the Boys and Girls Club,” Jasper said, as if helping underprivileged youth was somehow abhorrent. How had Annabelle ended up with this guy in the first place? Of course, they’d only dated a few weeks, but really? How did this relationship get past the first date? Jasper shrugged. “Plus, she was all into bike riding. The bicycle type. She said it brought her closer to nature. Whatever.”

“Had she mentioned anyone new after you two broke up?” Nicole asked. She was certain that Kent would have more germane questions to ask, but at the moment, he was silent and Ruben looked like he was halfway to clocking out already.

“Do you really think I listened to her while we were dating, let alone afterward?” Jasper asked. “Can I go now, or do I need to call my aunt?”

Ruben sighed next to her. They both knew there was no point in questioning the hick any longer. As much as Nicole wanted to make a silk purse out of this pig’s ear, it just wasn’t going to happen. Sometimes all you could do was get out while the getting was good.

“You may go,” Nicole said as she shut her folder.

* * *

Kent leaned up against the wall as Ruben and Nicole exited the interrogation room. “Well, the only good thing about that interview was that it was so boring that I got some good thinking in.”

“And?” Nicole asked.

She was so cute when she was behind the curve. “I’ve been trying to make sense of all the trophies. Trying to boil them all down to one pathology.”

Captain Glick walked into the observation hallway. “Where’s the kid?”

Both Nicole and Ruben’s head swiveled, searching for Kent’s intern.

Kent shrugged. “He’s got all of that Jew-y stuff to do.”

Glick grunted. “I get it, but I don’t get it. How does he think he’s going to survive in law enforcement? Taking every Friday to Saturday night off?”

“Just because his electronics are turned off doesn’t mean his brain is,” Kent said.

Which surprised Nicole. He was actually supportive of Yvent’s religious practices? That certainly did not sound like Kent. The “Jew-y” remark was more in his ballpark.

“You were about to be brilliant?” Ruben said, with only a tinge of bitterness leaking into his tone.

“Ah, yes, my deep thoughts,” Kent said. “I think our serial killer is a churchgoer.”

“Why?” Glick asked.

“His social skill set. I think he got it from church.”

“How does that help us, though?” Ruben challenged. “We’ve got over five hundred religious organizations in the city. How does that narrow down our suspect pool?”

Kent shrugged. “It doesn’t, but it does help in my victimology. He is looking for girls he could, under other circumstances, bring home to Mommy. Or Auntie.”

“Again, I’m not seeing how this helps,” Ruben stated.

Nicole wished that Ruben could see how he looked when he decided to face off against Kent. It was not a pretty sight. Nitpicking at every single word of Kent’s was just making Ruben look petty. And since Kent usually ended up right, it also made Ruben look a little thickheaded. Which he was, around Kent.

“I think I also resolved our questions about the trophies,” Kent said.

Nicole wasn’t even aware they had any questions about the killer’s trophies, so this was news to her. Ruben’s look of surprise seemed to indicate he hadn’t even thought of it either.

“Come on. A purse, a toe ring, a lock of hair, and now a piece of skin? Does no one else find that weird?” Kent challenged.

Again, Nicole hadn’t even given it a second thought. Although now she was kicking herself for not thinking harder about the killer’s choice of trophy. The trophy usually was the best indicator for the serialist’s underlying motive. The emotional reason he committed the murders.

“Besides becoming more intimate, they don’t make a whole lot of sense,” Nicole admitted.

“Exactly,” Kent said. “But I think that is because we’ve been looking at them the wrong way.”

“And which way would that be?” Glick asked, his salt-and-pepper eyebrows knitting together.

“Usually, you try to unify all of the trophies together and make sense of them.”

“Yes,” Ruben said. “That’s how it’s done.”

“But I am telling you, this guy breaks the mold.”

“How so?” Glick asked, sounding not nearly as skeptical as Ruben.

“I think the first three trophies were simply objects of opportunity. I don’t think we’ve really seen his true intent until this last one. The patch of skin I feel is important. The rest were simply easy objects to grab.”

“A non-specific trophy would be very rare,” Ruben stated.

“Rare, but not unheard of,” Kent countered.

“Why would you take a one-inch square patch of skin from under the victim’s arm?” Nicole asked.

“I have no idea,” Kent admitted. “But at least I have enough info about the victims to go out hunting.”

“You mean surveilling,” Nicole corrected in front of the Captain. She so wanted the profiler to be more normal than he was.

“No. I mean hunting,” Kent corrected.

“Let me get packed up,” Nicole said as Glick moved toward the door to the bullpen.

“Sorry,” Kent replied.

“Stalking is a solo sport,” Nicole finished for him. He gave her a smile.

He patted her on the back. “Your skills are best used trying to track down any connection between the victims. Where they intersected the killer would be helpful.”

“But I’ve already done that,” Nicole stated, knowing that she sounded more than a little disappointed. “There’s no connection. None. Not even dry cleaners. They did not know one another.”

“There must be some intersection. You’ve got to think out of the box,” Kent encouraged.

“What about if he is choosing them at random?” Nicole asked.

“Then he certainly wouldn’t have chosen four quiet wallflowers, now would he? Our killer has a type—we just need to figure out where he is picking them out.”

* * *

Kent had some ideas. Bookstores, libraries, and coffeehouses, but there were like a thousand of those in the city. It would be nice to have less ground to cover. But alas, that was his burden.

“I’ll walk you out,” Nicole said, even though Kent hadn’t made for the door yet. He was certain it was to give him an earful of how he wasn’t respecting her, or how he should to be nicer to Ruben, or not act quite so crazy in front of Glick.

So he was somewhat shocked when they rounded the corner and she laid a lip lock on him. Not that he was complaining. He snaked his arm around her waist, pulling them close. This was so much better than nagging. He wanted to reward her for such an interesting choice.

It was actually he that broke off the kiss. There was an interlude, and then there was a distraction. He didn’t think the killer was sexually aroused when he was hunting his victims, so therefore, Kent couldn’t be either. And with a few more moments of Nicole’s hand wandering south, he could be not just aroused, but satiated as well.

“What was that for?”

Nicole shrugged. “You’re pretty damned sexy when you’re profiling.”

Good to know.

“I don’t think anyone is in the overnight room,” Nicole said. The room had several bunk beds and was used by officers or detectives who didn’t have enough time or energy to go home. Normally, Kent would have taken her up in a heartbeat for having moderately high-risk-for-exposure sex.

Unfortunately, today was not the day.

“Sorry to be such a prude,” Kent said as his body ached to follow Nicole wherever she led. “But I think our guy is sexually repressed.”

Nicole trailed her finger down Kent’s chest. “So maybe I was helpful? Getting you all sexually frustrated?”

“You know I wouldn’t say no to you unless it had to do with the case.”

She put her hand over his excitement and gave it a squeeze. “Yeah, I’m not feeling insecure at all.”

With that, she gave him another long kiss just as Joshua rounded the corner.

“Damn, where is my video camera when I need it?”

Nicole pulled away from Kent. She’d already had a rather risqué video of her handcuffed to her Mustang that had made the rounds on YouTube. Clearly, she didn’t want another.

“What is it, Joshua?” Kent asked. He, on the other hand, didn’t mind a little internet exposure.

“I just wanted to get you all that info you asked for.”

The morgue assistant handed over a large file to Kent. He’d expected it to be involved, but not Tom Clancy novel length. Joshua had been thorough. Maybe a bit too thorough. However, the information in the file should help him stalk the killer’s next victim before he could get to her.

“I’m off then,” Kent said, giving Nicole’s hand a squeeze.

“Don’t wait up, right?” Nicole said with a grin. He didn’t even bother to answer.

* * *

Yvent hadn’t been more resentful of his religion’s Sabbath rules since he was a teen. No radio, no TV, no internet. There was a murderer out there. And Kent was after him, yet Yvent had to sit here and “reflect” on God’s love.

Didn’t God want him to solve this case? Didn’t he want Yvent to save lives?

Yvent had decided that yes, God did. So he was spending his “reflecting time” to reflect on the case.

Before the sun had gone down completely and put the ban on all “work,” Yvent had laid the crime scene photos out in order. He’d also gotten a large map of the city.

In theory, there was no technology in use. And he made sure to think of God at least every minute and pray for guidance to catch the murderer. To Yvent, that made his efforts in line with God’s plan.

He studied each photo of the victims. Kent was right. With the exception of the prostitute, they did look like they were “good girls” from his temple. They weren’t unattractive, yet no one would call them “hotties.”

Yvent made sure to say a quick prayer after that. His mother would be most disappointed with him if he didn’t. Not even keeping up the family hobby of rare orchid collecting would help her spirit rest in peace if he were breaking the Sabbath.

He looked to the variety of flowers blooming right now. The understated but beautiful Bulbophyllum acutiflorum, better known as the butterfly orchid. That plant line had been kept up since his great, great grandmother. His grandmother had kept the orchid alive even during her time in the concentration camps.

Then there were the more recent plants that he had collected. One far more flamboyant then the butterfly. It was one of his prize possessions. Yvent was one of the few horticulturists who had been able to grow Dracula chimaera domestically. It was in its dark phase right now, which meant its leaves were blood red.

How had he done it when no other could? He’d gone back to nature. Most orchid enthusiasts took orchid breeding into their own hands. They collected orchid sperm from the plant’s male pollen and transferred it to another plant’s female stigmata surface, thus artificially inseminating the plant.

Even though all of that technically sounded great, it yielded very poor reproductive rates. So Yvent had gone old school, placing the delicate plants out on his patio during high pollen season. He allowed the bees to naturally transfer the semen to the female reproductive organs of the other plants.

Did the flowers require the weight of the bee on their leaves to stimulate proper reproduction? Yvent didn’t know. All he knew was that he had five of the highest award-winning Dracula orchids in the world.

He’d applied reverse science to the problem. He’s used his scientific knowledge of the plant’s natural breeding strategy to avoid scientifically breeding them to get better results.

It was almost the equivalent of Kent’s method. To just about any outsider, the profiler’s techniques seemed backwards, at best. To go after the next victim instead of the killer sounded ludicrous to most. Yet Kent proved his technique over and over again. He used reverse science. Just as Yvent could fluently recite how to artificially inseminate an orchid, it did not mean that he had to use the technique.

Kent was well aware of current profiling techniques. Hell, he’d written half of them. But then he went back to the source. The victims. The profiler, however, had his highly refined instincts to go by. Yvent did not. So he was using science tonight.

He would leave the victimology to Kent. No, tonight he was doing geographical profiling.

He had plotted each of the dumpsites. They were scattered all over the city. There was no common pattern. Some were close together. Others were far apart.

But what did a dumping ground usually imply?

His cat, Neshika, jumped onto the map. She arched her back and petted herself against his shoulder, then, like her name, butted him on the nose, then licked him. She was the strangest cat. She was more like a dog, preferring to give kisses than purr.

When he didn’t respond, the cat flopped over onto the map, sprawling herself across the paper. He gently pushed her off, but of course she saw that as a pet and got up, repeating the self-pet, nosing, kissing ritual.

“Girl, I’ve got—”

Yvent stopped himself short of saying the word, “work.” In theory, there was no work performed on the Sabbath. And Neshika seemed to know that, as she wove back and forth, asking for pets. Like keeping the cat satisfied wasn’t a job in and of itself.

At least he could see the map as she rubbed the side of her face on his arm.

He thought of dumping grounds and why a killer would use one. It certainly could be a forensic countermeasure. Not having the primary crime scene did make it more difficult to solve the murder. However, the women’s methods of death had been pretty straightforward, and the bullets had been collected out of both bodies. The slugs hadn’t shown up on any database.

“So, if you aren’t covering up the method of killing, why dump the body somewhere else?” he asked the cat rhetorically.

She got up on her back feet, though, and patted his cheek with her paw, as if encouraging his line of thought. Petting her all the way from the top of her head to the tip of her tail, he picked her up and set her on his lap. Perhaps she would be satisfied with that. Then she walked over to his Eria orchid and petted herself on its planter. Of course, the delicate plant almost tipped over.

After he shooed her away from there, she kneaded her paws against his leg as Yvent surveyed the map. Another reason to use a dumping ground was to cover up the actual location of the murder sites. Many times, serialists liked to kill within their comfort zone. Usually, that was close to where they lived or worked. By concealing the murder site, they were protecting their private life.

Yvent had an idea. However, he had absolutely no way to get it to Kent. Either it would have to wait until tomorrow evening, or he would have to hoof it.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Yvent asked Neshika. She jumped down from his lap and ran to grab her leash. Like he said. More dog than cat.

CHAPTER 8

Kent stayed low in the car seat. He didn’t want to stir up any interest as people made their way down the street. Okay, not ‘people,’ but hookers and their johns.

He was staking out the area that the dead prostitute had worked, trying to get a feel for how the killer felt as he stalked her. It must have taken the guy a while to find a sex worker who was up to his standards. The rest of the women and trannies were decked out in tacky animal prints, pink boas, and six-inch neon heels.

Clearly, that was not something that appealed to the killer. He liked his women a bit homely. Trying to find a hooker who used that as her brand was a bit challenging. But Trudy could dress down, since her thing was the rooftop sex. She had cultivated a following, and wasn’t so much about picking up random guys on the street corner. Trudy had her regulars.

Kent opened his phone—well, not actually his phone, but a phone—and dialed a number.

A very groggy and pissed off voice answered. “Hello?”

“Jimmi, I need you to search all traffic and ATM cam footage for a two-block radius around Trudy’s murder site for the several weeks before her death. We’re looking for a newer model car with a clean cut john.”

“Yeah, sure thing, in the morning.”

“No,” Kent said. The killings were getting closer and closer together. He needed this information now. “Tonight.”

“Dude, do you realize it is 11:55pm?”

“Yes,” Kent answered. “I do. Do you realize the killer is set to strike in less than forty-eight hours?”

“Ugh,” Jimmi groaned. “I should know there’s no arguing with you.”

“Yes, that would make all of this easier,” Kent said. Nicole had submitted to his genius, why shouldn’t Jimmi?

“But who the hell is Paggie?”

“Long story,” Kent said not wanting to explain how he got Ruben’s girlfriend’s phone. “Text me if you come up with anything.”

Kent closed his phone as another prostitute stepped out onto the curb. Unlike the rest of the messed up women with daddy issues walking the street, this one did not look strung out. Her eyes appeared to be properly dilated, and her teeth didn’t look like they were about to fall out at any second.

Kent got out of the car and strolled up to her, passing several other woman who offered him things that would have made Ruben blush.

“Appreciate the offer, doll, but I’ve got my own handcuffs,” he said to the six foot tall Latina woman in short shorts with a nice big Adam’s apple.

He finally made his way to the woman in question. “Hello.”

“Nice try, Five-O,” the prostitute said. “But you ain’t entrapping me.”

Kent smiled. He liked an observant witness. “I could care less how you make your money or whom you do it with,” he said as he shrugged. “Personally, I think as long as porn is legal, basically filming people having sex for money, having sex for money should be legal.”

“Exactly!” the prostitute said as she extended her hand, “Natilda at your service. What do you need?”

“I want to talk about Trudy.”

“What, a cop taking an interest in a hooker’s death? There’s got to be more.”

Kent nodded. “While we think her death was most likely an accident, we believe that the man that was there has gone on to kill other women.”

“You mean non-hooker women. Women in the suburbs or women who have husbands. So now you care.”

“Look, we can discuss the disparity in social strata all night long, and I mean all night long,” Kent explained. “Or, we can try to figure out what happened to Trudy and save some lives.”

Natilda sighed. “It just ain’t fair.”

“No, it’s not,” Kent agreed. “Did Trudy have a handler?”

Natilda shook her head. “Naw. Neither one of us have a pimp. Johnny Boy has got most of the girls on this street, but he gets them hooked on whatever poison they like to keep them tame. He keeps seventy percent of the trick. For what? You’re the one on your back, and he takes seventy percent?”

“So Trudy was clean?” Kent asked. It was unusual—most prostitutes were addicts, using the drugs to cover the pain of their lives. He did remember seeing in the report, though, that no drugs had been found in her system. Now it was confirmed that it wasn’t just a fluke, but a lifestyle choice.

“Both of us,” Natilda said. “With no habit to feed, we can work shorter hours.”

“What do you mean?”

“We only hit the pavement between 11pm and 2am,” Natilda stated. “Our guys know our routine. Gives us less exposure out here.”

Kent nodded and opened his phone. He dialed Jimmi again. Again, the tech answered surly. “What?”

“Well, if you were up doing as I asked, I wouldn’t have woken you again, now would I?” Kent asked. People, think things through.

“Fine. I’m up now.”

“Great. You can narrow your search time to 11pm to 2am for the dates in question.”

“Lucky me,” Jimmi said, then hung up.

What had gotten into the tech? Maybe it was that whole illegally hacking into the private school’s computer thing. The guy really needed to learn how to let things go.

Kent turned his attention to Natilda. “So if you’ve got regulars, why are you out on the street?”

The woman shrugged. “Attrition. The wife finds out. He loses his job. Or, more likely these days, he loses his unemployment benefits and can’t afford to take a girl out on a date.”

“So you need a fresh stream of strangers?”

“We try to be careful with newbies,” Natilda said. “We take a picture of every new guy’s license plate and send it to each other for insurance.”

Kent perked up at that. “Did you get Trudy’s last customer’s license plate? I’m pretty sure he was a newbie.”

“Sorry, no,” Natilda said. “I was out on a date when she left. She should have texted me the pic, but never did.”

Kent leaned back against a light pole and pondered what this meant. Did Wallflower know Trudy’s routine well enough to either stop her from taking the pic or somehow charming her out of sending it? This really upped the unsub’s social skill set. Or implied an extremely long stalking phase. Either way, this guy was smart and careful.

A pain in the ass set of skills for Kent to try to decipher.

* * *

Ruben walked Paggie down the street past a row of brownstones. This was an older part of the city. The architecture was original. No graffiti. No gangs. Hopefully, no stalking serial killers.

“So, what was up with this afternoon?” Paggie asked.

“Sorry, it was just awkward.”

“What? Because I’m not cool enough to hang with you detectives?”

Ruben shook his head. “No, because you are too sane to be around their dysfunction.”

“So you are trying to sell the fact that you didn’t tell anyone about us to spare my feelings?”

Ruben chuckled. He knew how it sounded. But it was true. “Look, you don’t know Kent. You would have found him in your shower or something. And Nicole would have run your background and credit check. I’m worried she still will.”

“Not big into boundaries, your friends.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Ruben answered. “I just wanted you all to myself as long as possible.”

“I think we should go out on a double date with them,” Paggie suggested.

“You what?” Ruben said, hardly believing his ears. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was sit down with Kent and Nicole in a social setting.

Paggie shrugged, though. “Let them quiz me. Do it in person, like normal human beings. Maybe that will prevent the awkward shower encounter.”

“A double date?” Ruben questioned again, just to make sure he’d heard her correctly.

“Yep,” Paggie said, playfully grabbing his jacket lapels. “Tomorrow, for brunch. I’ll make the reservations,” she said as she stood on her tiptoes to give him a kiss. This time, it landed on his lips.

He wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her up against him. There was no hesitation in her kiss. No slight delay as she thought about Kent, like Nicole would have. Just a warm, lingering kiss.

Ruben could get used to this. Even enough to go on a double date with his least favorite person in the world.

“Text me the details,” he said as he took her hand and walked her to her basement apartment.

* * *

Kent had to admit, Natilda really wanted to help catch Trudy’s killer. She’d given him detailed information about the block, the girls, the johns—anything that might help him figure out who was with Trudy in those final minutes.

Had Wallflower known all this, as well? Had he researched Trudy as well as Kent had?

Hopefully, Jimmi would find something on the footage. Although it wasn’t Kent’s style to just sit around and wait—especially when the night was so young.

Instead of going home to Nicole, Kent set off for the other side of town. The side of town with functional streetlights, parks, and actual police patrols. Although none of that had saved Annabelle.

Annabelle was extremely environmentally conscious and wanted to keep her carbon footprint as small as possible. Therefore, she rode her bike to work. She’d even moved closer into the city to avoid the commute.

Kent pulled up to her apartment building. The lit-up sign said there was a vacancy, along with washers and dryers in each unit and a community spa and sauna. There was something just wrong to Kent about sitting and sweating with strangers.

And people thought he was weird.

Getting out of the car, Kent immediately noticed the differences between this area and where Trudy and Natilda worked. The smell, for one. This street had just been cleaned, so it smelled a little of rain and sanitizer. Whereas the other side of town—well, let’s just say it didn’t smell sanitized. Here, there was no trash in the street. No tossed-aside peepshow pamphlets. He strolled down the road, following Annabelle’s route to her work. There was even a bike lane. On the other side of town, bicyclists were lucky not to get rolled for their tires.

This felt more like Wallflower’s part of town. He’d only gone to the other side of the tracks to fulfill some need he couldn’t get filled here. Clearly, before his killing spree, the guy had not been lucky with the ladies. Had he even tried? Men like this usually weren’t all that up for rejection. There were paralyzed by it, as a matter of fact. Which is why they, many times, turned to prostitutes. The money made them invulnerable to rejection.

He imagined Annabelle pedaling by Wallflower every day. Did the unsub live or work around here? Was she truly victim zero? Was she the one Wallflower had coveted all along, and Trudy was just a pale substitute? After watching Trudy die, could he finally take action against the woman he really wanted but couldn’t obtain?

Kent flipped open the phone again.

“What now?” was the response. Although, this time, Jimmi didn’t sound as tired as he did cranky.

“Also check the route Annabelle took to work, and cross-reference with any license plates from Trudy’s hood.”

“You do realize I have to do this by hand?” Jimmi asked. “Watch each and every frame and compare them by eyeballing it?”

“You do realize I am out in thirty-degree weather retracing the killer’s steps, right?” Kent countered. “While you are sitting around your apartment in your Spiderman pajamas, drinking Fanta and eating pork rinds?”

“Hey, how did you know about—” Jimmi said, then changed tactics. “Never mind. I’m on it,” the tech said as he hung up.

Kent came to Annabelle’s office building. The ride probably only took her five minutes a day. How many times had the killer watched her cycle past? Had he ever “accidentally” run into her? How long did he stalk her before making his move? How had he sold the encounter? Did he act interested in her bike? Did he work in the same office building?

Kent looked up to find the building over ten stories high. How many businesses were up there? How many workers?

This guy was meticulous, though. That would stand out.

Flipping open his phone, Kent knew someone who could figure that out for him. Jimmi, though, was not the lucky recipient this time.

“Hey babe,” Ruben answered the phone.

“Hey to you too,” Kent said.

“Kent? What the hell are you doing calling on Paggie’s phone?”

“Long story,” Kent stated. “Look, our guy is fluent in forensic and anal-retentive. My bet is that he has inserted himself into the case. I need you to run down everyone on the crime scene logs, especially if they have any connection to Annabelle’s office building.”

“You really do like to push it, don’t you?” Ruben asked.

“You have no idea,” Kent responded. Although Ruben probably had a fair idea.

He flipped Ruben’s girlfriend’s phone off. So antiquated. Interesting, though, that Ruben was dating a woman without a smartphone. Exactly what did that say about her and, more importantly, Ruben?

Kent turned on his heel to head to his car when he could have sworn he saw someone duck into the alley. Was he being followed? The thought thrilled him just a little. How glorious would it be if the killer was stalking him and Kent caught him before, you know, Kent got clocked in the head and kidnapped?

Eyes forward, Kent made for his car. He could feel someone else’s presence. It was intoxicating. The predator becoming the prey becoming the predator again. He counted out the steps as he approached the alleyway. If he was going to make a move, it would have to be quick. Lightning quick. Now that the killer had shown he knew what to do with the business end of a knife, Kent couldn’t take any chances.

Just as he was about to pass by the alley, Kent changed course abruptly, turning into the alley. Sure enough, a figure lurked. Kent grabbed the stalker around the neck and shoved them against the wall, eliciting a squeak of surprise. His other hand coursed down the stalker’s body, making sure no weapons lurked.

Wait a minute, he recognized those curves.

“Nicole?”

* * *

Nicole shoved Kent away. “Yes, and that was quite a thorough frisking.”

That lopsided smirk made its way to Kent’s lips again. “You never can be too careful.” He became more serious. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“The same thing you are,” she said. “Retracing the killer’s steps, trying to figure out how the victims are connected.”

“I thought you understood stalking is a solo sport?”

“Which is why I didn’t come with you,” Nicole said. “I can stalk all by myself.”

“Yes, well,” Kent responded, “If you are going to do that, you need to get a little better at it.”

Nicole didn’t back down, though. “It took you nearly two hours to spot me.”

Kent’s eyes squinted down to narrow slits. He clearly did not like the idea of being followed for that long without spotting her. “I don’t smell your perfume,” he said.

Nicole shook her wet hair. “No. I took a shower at the squad and used men’s shampoo, conditioner, and even aftershave.”

Again, that squint. He might not say anything, but he seemed impressed. He clearly thought her actions had been smart. One of the human’s greatest peripheral senses was smell. She’d completely negated his olfactory memory of her. The profiler’s arm made its way around her waist as he pulled her close.

“Who knew Old Spice would smell so sexy on you,” Kent said, nuzzling her neck. “I think you started something back at the office that we need to finish.”

Nicole would have to agree, yet she pushed away. “So should we go in the same car, or do you want me to stalk you all the way home?”

Kent’s lip tugged up. “I’d like to see you try.”

However, before they got to establish the rules to the game, Kent’s phone beeped as a text came in, and Nicole’s phone rang.

Joshua.

She answered it. “Yes?”

“Hey, Nicole, I mean Detective Usher, we’ve got another body and I thought you two would like to be the first to know about it.”

That they would.

CHAPTER 9

Kent walked slowly up to the scene. The alley smelled just like the other alley. The graffiti looked to be of the same Latino origin. Ladies of the night haunted all four corners of the intersection.

Their boy Wallflower was starting to get a type, at least when it came to dump sights. The way all the CSIs were crowded around a dumpster, Kent could guess where the body was.

“Dumpster drop?” Nicole said next to him. “Interesting escalation.”

Yes, it was. Not that Wallflower had been any too kind with his previous victims, but now he threw this one out like trash? Very interesting. Could the killer feel himself devolving?

And this move helped prove Kent’s theory that Wallflower wanted to denigrate his victims. The entomologist’s utopian vision of the killer wanting to connect back to the earth seemed more and more ludicrous as the case unfolded.

Their boy was on the move. Evolving, devolving, driving Kent crazy with his erratic behavior.

Kent was sure there would be no slip-up forensic-wise at this crime scene. Their unsub was well trained in sterile techniques. That was baked into his DNA. No, he would never leave them any trace physical evidence, but psychological evidence, that seemed to be in abundance here.

“Should we call Ruben?” Nicole asked as she opened her phone.

“I wouldn’t,” Kent said “Paggie looked like she needed a bit of comforting after meeting us, and we both know that Ruben needs a long wind-up time, so…”

Nicole shook her head, yet a grin still played at her lips as she closed her phone and then checked them into the crime scene. Kent tried to wash all of the hubbub away and imagine the scene an hour ago. There would have been booming rap from the local gang’s crib down the street. There would have been a dozens of slow-moving cars—johns getting up the nerve to pick out their date for the night. There would have been whispers on the wind. A few junkies shooting up down the alley.

Their boy would know that they would check traffic cams and any building with CCTV coverage. So how did he slip in and out unnoticed?

Had he done his homework as well on the dumpsite as he had on stalking the women? Could he have left any kind of digital trail while checking the dumpster?

Kent flipped open “his” phone.

“Yo!” Jimmi answered. Clearly, the guy had ingested some caffeine since the last time Kent had called.

“Yeah, we’ve got a body down on Maple Ave.”

“All over it,” Jimmi said. “I’ll have the surveillance footage to you as soon as I can load and burn it.”

“No,” Kent said. “Well, yes, but I want you to do a different search, as well. Check to see if anyone checked into those cameras within the week before the killing.”

“What?” Jimmi queried.

“I think this guy might be scouting the areas ahead of time.”

“Wow, genius,” Jimmi said, then hung up.

Kent wasn’t sure if the tech was talking about him or Wallflower. He would take either.

Joshua popped his head out of the dumpster. “Tosha Jamel,” he said, holding up the woman’s wallet. “Librarian at the Central Library.”

Well, you couldn’t get much more Wallflower than a librarian, could you?

“Cause of death?”

The morgue assistant wasn’t nearly as tightlipped as his boss. He actually gave out important, vital information.

“From the bruising around her neck, I’d say strangulation.”

Nicole’s head spun toward Kent. “That’s quite a leap in MO.”

Yes, it was. While stabbing someone was intimate, the cause of death was an inanimate object. Now, the killer wanted to be that instrument of death. He’d killed poor Tosha with his bare hands.

“Don’t get too excited,” Joshua said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to lift prints from the bruises.”

“He wore gloves?” Nicole asked.

Joshua nodded. “There’s talc on her neck and hair,” he said as Nicole climbed into the dumpster with him. “But good news. She doesn’t look like she’s going to go all Alien on us.”

Kent would just wait, thank you very much. He’d done enough dumpster diving during his career to last a lifetime.

This escalation was significant. This killer was coming into his own. “And the trophy?”

It was Nicole who answered. “Looks like he cut off the tip of her left pinkie finger. And there looks like there are four tiny puncture wounds at the edge of her abdomen.”

So the guy had gone all-in on all four aspects of the murder. He’d killed with his own hands. He’d dumped the body like garbage, and he’d taken an actual part of the victim. Not just a patch of skin, but a tangible part of the body. Then, of course, the maggots.

Oh, this guy was gearing up, all right. He was liking it too much. Forget cool-down period. The only break between killings would now be how quickly he could stalk and kill again. The only reason there wouldn’t be another body tonight was because of how meticulous the killer was. Otherwise, the guy would go on a spree just about now.

“So, you likey?” Joshua asked.

“Likey what?” Nicole responded.

“How quickly I got you guys here. The body is still warm to the touch.”

“Yes, thanks,” Nicole said awkwardly, but then again how else did you respond to Joshua’s odd enthusiasm.

Although, he was correct. The crime scene tape was still being strung and the ambulance wasn’t even here yet.

“How did you get us here so quickly?” Kent asked.

“Oh, I’ve been listening to the police scanners,” Joshua said. “As soon as they rolled on a 10-54, possible dead body, I was on it.”

The morgue assistant nodded toward a young couple, huddled together with a ring of police officers around them. “They found the body when they went to the dumpster to empty the bar’s trash. They even think they heard footsteps, that’s how close they came to seeing Wallflower.”

Wouldn’t that have been a welcome break in the case? This would not have been the first time a major serial killer case had been broken open by blind luck. Serial killers were people, too, and were struck with random bad luck like everyone else. Only this time Wallflower skated. Did he know how close he came to being caught? Those two bartenders were lucky they hadn’t caught him—Kent was pretty sure that Wallflower had now graduated to killing witnesses. Not at first, but now? Now, he needed to protect his secret.

With that first victim, Kent was pretty damned sure the guy would have peed himself if caught. Practice did make perfect, though, even in serial killing. The guy had gained and gained in confidence. Hopefully, too much.

That was another major way that serial killers got caught. Cockiness. They lost their edge. They lost that fear of capture and thought that they operated with impunity.

Kent doubted that would happen with this guy, though. He was too regimented. That usually happened with lay killers. Killers that had no law enforcement training. They thought they were better than the cops that chased them, forcing them to get bolder and bolder.

This guy knew one of the great truths about law enforcement—that no matter how much Kent liked the flash and the bang of it all, the smoke and mirrors, it was actually a long game. It was an accumulation of evidence. A honing process. The longer the killer killed, the more likely he was to get caught.

If anything, tonight’s near miss would make their boy more cautious. It had reminded the killer of the dangers.

* * *

Ugh. Nicole stepped on an old banana peel. The pulp squished over the side of her shoe and pressed against her ankle. Gross. Why that should gross her out as she stood over a dead body with maggots growing in the belly she wasn’t sure, but it still did. Perhaps it indicated that she still had some humanity left after all these years on the job.

Something this poor girl didn’t have any longer. Joshua was right. This was an exceptionally fresh kill. Tosha’s eyes hadn’t even clouded over yet. They were as bright and clear as Nicole’s. Except for her neck lying at an odd angle, Nicole felt like she could reach out and just shake the girl awake.

Why, out of all the women in the city, had he chosen this woman? That was Kent’s specialty. Sensing the killer’s need in a woman, and then finding her before the killer could. “Cutting them off at the pass” was Kent’s term for it. Most people thought it was magic.

For several years now, Nicole had been trying to develop her own form of magic. Trying to see all the intricacies that Kent did. Trying to feel like the killer felt.

It was hard, though, especially right now, when all she felt was a heavy heart. This woman might be alive if they had caught Wallflower in time. Now, though, her death needed to mean something. Her death needed to help save lives.

So Nicole had to push down her sorrow and revulsion, even of the banana peel, and get down to work. What about this woman was so fascinating to the killer?

“Anything of note?” Kent asked from the side of the dumpster.

Nicole held her hair back as she leaned in and sniffed the woman’s head. “Her hair is wet,” Nicole noted.

Kent’s eyebrow went up. “So did he wash her down, or had she just taken a shower?”

Nicole shook her head. “It wasn’t him.” She leaned even closer, taking a sniff. “There’s a hint of chlorine.”

“Chlorine?” Joshua repeated.

Nicole nodded. “I think she’d gone swimming earlier tonight.”

Kent reached out his hand and helped her down from the dumpster. After brushing off the stray gum wrappers from her pant leg, she looked up into his eyes.

“You see some significance with that?” he asked.

Nicole was hesitant to speak her theory. It felt odd to have an insight before Kent. Like it couldn’t be true if he hadn’t noticed it already.

“Spit it out,” Kent said.

Before she could, Ruben entered the crime scene. “Starting without me?”

“That’s what she said,” Kent muttered under his breath.

Nicole elbowed him. “Just thought you’d like the time off.”

“So you didn’t bother to call me about another body?” Ruben said, his cheeks flushed.

“We figured Paggie needed the company,” Kent said, making Ruben flush even more.

“I can take care of my own relationships, thank you.”

Kent shrugged, nodding toward Nicole. “Evidence to the contrary.”

She stepped between the two men. A common occurrence, unfortunately.

“Ruben, just like the others, there probably isn’t going to be any evidence left behind.”

“Yet, here you two are,” Ruben said. “I expect this juvenile crap from him, but you? Aren’t we still partners?”

Nicole felt stuck in the middle, literally. But hadn’t she made her choices? “We are. I swear, Ruben, no offense was meant.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kent interjected.

The profiler really did not help in these situations. She could see Ruben’s hands ball up into fists. The last thing they needed was a physical encounter between these two, again.

Luckily, Joshua was just socially maladjusted enough to not feel the friction.

“So, you were saying, about the chlorine?” the morgue assistant asked.

Now it felt even more awkward to state her opinion. She had another person to be humiliated in front of. But she wasn’t a schoolgirl, and this wasn’t her first rodeo. She had to buck up.

“Obviously Tosha, our newest victim, was an avid swimmer. My guess is she had a membership to a club that she used frequently.”

Unlike herself. Nicole had been remiss recently, not going to the gym. Honestly, since breaking up with Ruben she hadn’t been as consistent, but after hitting on that woman at the gym to practice her seduction skills, she’d been downright absent from there. Another thing she needed to buck up. If she saw the woman again, she would just need to deal with the consequences of her actions.

“How do you know that?” Ruben asked.

“The blonde in her weave has a hint of green. That’s chronic chlorine exposure.”

Nicole glanced over to the profiler. No wonder he was so messed up. Having to think and act like a killer took its toll. But now it was Nicole’s turn.

“Anyway, we know that Trudy wasn’t just a streetwalker—literally. She had a treadmill at home. She walked at least ten miles a week.”

“And?” Ruben asked, but Kent’s eyes darted back and forth. He clearly was already processing her theory.

“Annabelle was a bicyclist. Victim number three ran marathons…”

“So they were all athletic,” Ruben stated. “But not the same sport, or even the same gym.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kent mumbled in agreement. “A wallflower that is athletic, now that is a specific type.”

That’s what Nicole had thought. One usually thought of a wallflower as being soft, unassuming, yet each of these women had been dedicated to a sport.

“Very interesting,” Kent muttered. “That changes everything.”

Nicole knew that she shouldn’t take such pride in surprising Kent, yet she did. So seldom did he leak out praise, you kind of had to take it to heart when he did.

“Impressive,” he said. “I don’t know if I would have made that connection.”

Again, pride beamed in Nicole’s chest. Maybe she would become a profiler herself one day.

“Where’s Yvent?” Ruben asked. Speaking of the profiler in training.

“Sabbath,” Joshua said. “Personally, I think God wants us to catch a killer more than meditate, but hey, that’s just me.”

Only Joshua would say something so incredibly politically incorrect. Not that she didn’t agree with him, but say it out loud? Not very likely.

“What do we do with this information?” Ruben asked.

Kent’s eyes seemed bright and sharp in the dim light. “Nothing tonight. Any wallflower worth her salt is home in bed.”

“What about tomorrow, then?” Ruben asked.

“I already had the instinct to go to a college library. It felt like wallflower central, but now that I know she is also an athlete? Priceless.”

“He also hasn’t taken a woman that enjoys the same sport twice,” Nicole mentioned. “As of now, he’s pretty much taken the common sports.”

“Which means a college, with its plethora of collegiate activities, would be the next step,” Kent agreed.

Nicole couldn’t help but notice that Kent had already honed in on an extremely viable location before he even had a clue about the sports angle.

This was why she put up with all of his eccentricities.

“So,” Kent said to Ruben. “We are going home to our own extracurricular activities. Want to tag along? Take notes?”

Okay, it really was a good thing he was the best profiler in the world, or him baiting poor Ruben like this would so not go over well.

“Kent, stop it.”

“What?” he said in feigned shock. “I’m just trying to help.”

* * *

Nicole elbowed Kent. You’d think his left fourth rib would get used to it. She did it often enough.

“Whatcha guys up to now?” Joshua asked.

Kent’s first instinct was to say go home, but then a thought struck him. “What weekend is this?”

Nicole frowned. “May 8th.”

“No, I mean what happens on Monday at most campuses around the country?”

“Finals!” Joshua chimed in.

Kent winked at the odd morgue assistant. Even he deserved a gold star on occasion.

“What has that got to—” Nicole stopped herself. “The one time when wallflowers might be up late…”

“Studying hard at the library,” Kent said, touching his finger to his nose. She’d hit it perfectly. “Would you like to join me?”

“Would I?” Nicole said, taking his hand. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Joshua waved as they walked away. “No worries, I’ll stay here sorting through trash until McGregor decides to show up.”

“You do that!” Kent encouraged as they headed to her Mustang. For the first time on this case, Kent felt truly hopeful. He was starting to get a real feel for this guy’s type. The athleticism revelation helped fill in many of the blanks. And it helped to significantly narrow the victim pool. This guy had looked hard and long for his specific phenotype. Which was good. The more specific the serial killer’s victim, the easier it was to intersect him. And, let’s be honest, searching through a bunch of coeds was certainly more pleasant than his usual trolling grounds. Not that he was going to share that little insight with Nicole.

CHAPTER 10

Nicole had to suppress none too happy memories as she entered the university’s library. She wasn’t all that good at school. She got good grades, but that was more by brute force than by any kind of actual smarts.

She’d worked for each and every “A” she’d ever gotten. The number of hours she’d spent in the library was by no means voluntary, and the amount of caffeine she’d ingested? Let’s just say she wouldn’t be surprised if one day she had kidney failure.

Glancing around at the various students with their heads down and noses in their books, she found it hard to believe that anyone did this by choice. She glanced over to the profiler, who looked as if a library was a foreign land. Of course, Kent had sailed through college. He didn’t even go to class, let alone the library. Just one more reason for people to hate him. No one liked it when something came easily to someone else, especially when they flaunted it.

And if she were being honest, there were times it pissed her off how seemingly effortlessly everything came to him. Of course, there was a cost to that gift. She knew how hard it was for her to barely skim the surface of a serial killer’s twisted thoughts. Kent was usually neck deep in them. Like now, she could tell he was hunting already. He’d dropped her hand. His pace slowed, and his gaze lingered on those they passed. The profiler was weighing each and every one of them as a possible victim.

Nicole tried to do the same. Who would she pick? Which once of these students would arouse the killer’s interest?

They all looked so similar, though. There were so many college sweatshirts in here that it looked like a sales kiosk. Just about every girl wore a neat ponytail and had a huge jug of coffee beside her.

The only ones that Nicole could immediately eliminate were the one with a dragon’s tail tattoo along her neck and another with pink highlights in her hair. Other than that, the women seemed interchangeable. Some had glasses, some didn’t. But the killer didn’t seem attracted to or repulsed by eyewear.

Kent, however, guided them through the maze of tables to the back left corner, where he sat down. “Grab a book.”

“Right,” Nicole said, snatching a large volume off the re-shelving stack. It was bad enough that they were far outside the age range of the rest of the students, they didn’t need to be looking like they were loitering, as well.

Sitting down, Nicole opened the book and thumbed through it.

“Well?” Kent asked.

“Well, what?”

“Have you picked your favorite?”

Nicole had barely surveyed the students, let alone settled on one. Why, oh why was Kent always so far ahead? Honesty was the only way through this. “No.”

The profiler pushed up his sleeves. “Okay, let’s work it through.”

Nicole both loved and hated these times. She hated having to be walked through situations like a child—however, it was an opportunity for her to see inside of Kent’s mind. And the guy was pretty good looking, but it was his brain that set her on fire.

Her gaze passed over the library. “A hint?”

“If the haystack is too big, then figure out a way to make it smaller.”

That wasn’t so much of a hint as it was a challenge. There was a mixture of blondes, brunettes and redheads. However, the killer had targeted each. It didn’t seem to be so much hair or eye color, but something else.

“Target the largest common denominator,” Kent suggested.

That would have to be attire. The sweatshirts. Then it hit Nicole. “He wouldn’t pick someone with a lot of school spirit. That would be too forward a characteristic.”

Kent nodded sagely. “See how easy it is?”

Without his prompt, Nicole wasn’t sure if she’d have ever made that connection, but now that he brought it up, it made perfect sense. Now that they had eliminated three quarters of the women studying, Nicole focused on the handful left.

There were five women who were sitting alone. One had an engagement ring, so that took her off the list immediately. The rest had that lonely, single look about them. When the front door opened, none of them looked up. They were not expecting anyone to join them.

“The one at the front?” Nicole suggested. She had the vibe of the other victims.

“Listen to yourself,” Kent said. “The one at the front?”

Nicole sighed. Of course not the one at the front. Wallflower wouldn’t want anyone that bold. He was looking for someone in the middle of the pack.

“Which eliminates the woman at the far back corner?” Nicole asked.

Kent nodded. “He doesn’t want an outlier.”

That left only the two women in the center of the library. Each looked equally nondescript. It sounded horribly un-politically correct, since beauty should come from within, but Nicole struggled to study them. Her eyes kept slipping over them and wanting to look at the stunning blonde near the checkout desk.

Patting her hand, Kent reassured her. “Don’t feel bad, we are hardwired to appreciate beauty.”

How had he even known she was struggling? Unless he was himself. How did that make her feel?

“Did you know that babies will look at pictures of stunning women longer than their own mother? It is that genetically baked into us to seek out attractive women. This is both baby boys and girls. Interesting, eh?”

“It does explain a lot,” Nicole agreed.

“Like reality television,” Kent said with a smirk. “Now, which of these two is our woman?”

Nicole got back down to it, but she couldn’t decide. “They seem like identical Wallflower material.”

“Really?” Kent said. And, by his tone, she knew she was missing something. Something big. “Would you sit where the one near the copier is?”

Nicole looked to the woman. She had her back to the door. “Never.”

“Exactly,” Kent said. “She doesn’t have very refined self-protective skills.”

“Easier to stalk and catch…” Nicole said.

Kent pointed “his” phone at the woman and took a picture of the woman near the copier, then took a picture of their other possible victim.

* * *

“Yo!” Jimmi answered, a whole lot more chipper.

“I just texted you a couple of pictures. They are students at the university. How quickly can you get me their personal info?”

“Depends,” the tech said. “Do we have a warrant?”

“Of course we do,” Kent lied.

“For real?” Jimmi pressed.

“When have I ever lied to you?”

“Um, just every time I’ve ever asked you if we had a warrant,” Jimmi responded.

“Nicole is on the other line getting one,” Kent admitted. He liked it so much better when Jimmi just blindly believed him.

“Have her text me once you’ve got it,” Jimmi stated.

The tech had gotten so touchy after getting exposed to a possible multi-million-dollar lawsuit. The guy needed to get thicker skin.

Nicole clicked her phone shut. “The warrants are in the works. Now what do we do?”

“Arrange for round-the-clock surveillance of our girl,” Kent said. “But we need people who look like college students. Anyone who looks even vaguely like law enforcement is going to scare our guy off.”

Nicole frowned. “That could take a while to find someone to fit the bill.”

Kent cocked his head in that way that he did when he thought she wasn’t thinking hard enough. “Come on, I think we both know someone who doesn’t look at all like law enforcement.”

* * *

Joshua nearly dropped his phone into some old spaghetti sauce.

“Yes, yes, of course I’d love to stalk her!” Joshua nearly shouted, causing everyone at the crime scene to turn their head toward him.

“Please, just ignore him,” McGregor said. “Don’t encourage him.”

“I mean provide surveillance,” Joshua corrected himself. “I’ll be right over!”

He didn’t care who stared as he hopped over the side of the dumpster and pulled off his stained booties.

“Who’s going to help me with the body?” McGregor asked. “Or does ever-so-special agent Harbinger expect the body to levitate at his command?”

Joshua pointed to two uniformed officers hanging around the periphery of the crime scene. “Load the body for him, okay?”

The two men looked to one another. Clearly they wanted to say no, but equally clearly, they were rookies. Rookies didn’t say no to anyone for anything.

Joshua snapped his fingers. “Now.”

The two rushed over to the dumpster. He’d learned a thing or two from McGregor. Say something with enough disdain and force, and you usually got your way.

Joshua sniffed himself. He was a bit ripe. Perhaps he should go home and take a shower. But then he realized that he was supposed to be acting like a college student. He pretty much smelled like stale pizza his entire six years on campus.

So forget the shower. He was pitch perfect for the assignment.

He checked the weapon at his hip. Okay, so it wasn’t a gun, but it was an uber-powerful Taser. More than enough to take down Wallflower.

Young criminalists dreamed of a big break like this. To be intimately involved in a serial killer case. Normally, Joshua took satisfaction in being there with the victims during the autopsy, but this one, just like the others, would be super boring. Joshua needed to be where the action was.

It was just his nature.

To think, out of every person on the department, Kent had picked him. Take that, Yvent. He might be Kent’s protégé on paper, but it was now clear who Kent’s favorite truly was. He had started to worry that the bond that he and Kent had, beside the fact that they were both deeply in love with Detective Usher, was starting to fade. Now he knew it was as strong as ever.

Joshua’s phone vibrated. The text read, “Stop gloating and get over here.” Even though it came from Ruben’s girlfriend’s phone, Joshua knew it was from Kent.

He just got the profiler that much.

* * *

Nicole watched as Joshua kind of shuffle-swaggered his way into the library. He gave a nod in their direction. The librarian put her hand to her nose as he passed by.

“Are you sure Joshua is up for this?”

Kent just shrugged at her concern. “He’s an obsessive borderline sociopath.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Nicole said.

“What? That’s exactly what we need for this job. At least the first shift of it.”

Joshua strutted over to the magazine rack, picked out one on muscle cars, then headed to a table, where he proceeded to sit down and put his feet up on the table.

“Nobody is going to pick him out as a cop,” Kent said with a chuckle.

With that Nicole couldn’t argue.

“Home, then?” she asked.

“Are you kidding me?” Kent said. “We’ve got to get you up to speed.”

“What do you mean?” Nicole asked, worried, very worried, about what he had planned for the rest of the evening.

“We’ve got to get your reflexes up to par,” was Kent’s only explanation.

* * *

Ah, the smell of sea air. It always invigorated Kent.

“What are we doing at the docks?”

“What do you think?” Kent countered.

“No idea,” Nicole said with a sigh, sinking into the driver’s seat, rubbing the back of her neck. “It’s been a long night.”

“Hardly,” Kent said. Although he sometimes forgot she wasn’t used to these all-nighters.

“Seriously, Kent, tell me what we’re doing here or I’m heading home.”

“You know about the city’s underground urban fighting ring?” Kent asked.

“Yes,” Nicole sighed.

Kent shrugged, “Then you should know what were are doing here.”

She finally seemed to catch on. “No. No. No.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” Kent said. “I infiltrated the gang.”

Nicole leaned forward and put her head on the steering wheel. “Of course you did.”

“It’s kind of fun,” he said. “Plus, good money if you win.”

“How many bouts have you fought in?” Nicole asked.

“Four,” he answered. From her dilated eyes and the shaking of her head, that was not the number she was looking for.

“And you were going to tell me about this when?”

“Never, if you are going to get all uptight about it,” Kent shot back.

“So I was just supposed to just find your body in some scummy warehouse and never know that you were in danger in the first place.”

“Oh please,” Kent scoffed. “These are just punks who are trying to show how tough they are. The fight club for the current generation.”

CHAPTER 11

Nicole got out of the car to follow Kent. This sounded like a horrible idea, but per usual, she had no choice but to follow. The vice department had been trying to get someone inside this gang for months to no avail. They smelled undercover cops at first whiff.

As they approached the large warehouse, Nicole realized it was a laser tag place. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“So we’re playing laser tag?”

Kent nodded. “Except with knives.”

“What?” Nicole blurted.

“Same principle. We wear Kevlar vests instead of the sensor vests. If you get bloodied, you’re out.”

Nicole grabbed Kent by the sleeve and pulled him to face her. “Kent, we can’t go in there. Operational undercover cops are allowed a certain leeway in illegal activities. But this is serious. Attempted murder serious.”

“Oh please,” Kent said, waving away her concern. “I let them slice each other up, then swoop in at the end to win it.”

Nicole rubbed her temples. Tonight wasn’t going at all the way it should have.

“Why exactly are we doing this?”

Kent smirked. “I told you, we both need the practice.”

He walked up to the door and knocked twice, then paused and knocked three times. The door swung open.

Instead of the usual neon light show, the interior was dark. Only the low red emergency lighting was on. Off to the right was a table filled with every type of bladed weapon imaginable. Kent picked up the ax, feeling its heft in his hand.

“Told you this would be fun,” Kent said with a wink.

Nicole chose a large machete. She figured the larger the sharp area, the better.

Although Nicole wasn’t above bringing a gun to a knife fight. Her hand went to her hip holster, only to find the weapon gone. Kent was all smiles across the room. He showed her the gun, then tucked it into his waistband.

“Couldn’t have you cheating, now could we?”

Yes, yes they could have.

There were two entrances. One to the right, the other to the left. Kent pointed to the left one. “You take that one. I’ll take this one, and we’ll meet up at the end.”

“Hopefully,” Nicole muttered, not minding that she sounded just a tad bitter. How did she get talked into this crap? This was such a bad idea. Like worse than breaking into the morgue bad.

But here she was with a machete in her hand.

She was about to argue that they should go together when a knife came arcing over Kent’s head. He must have seen her pupils dilating, as he used the handle of the ax and shoved it backwards, hitting the assailant in the gut. The guy grunted, his arm dropping useless at his side.

Then Kent turned the ax’s blade flat, hitting the guy in the face. The crack of his nasal bone breaking filled the small space. Kent finished him off by turning the ax backward, slamming the end of it onto the back of the guy’s head.

He fell to the ground, unconscious.

Nicole hadn’t even had time to move. She stared at the man at Kent’s feet.

“See?” Kent said sweetly. “Not that hard.”

If she’d thought this was a bad idea before?

“You’re just scared,” Kent commented.

“No,” Nicole said, feeling her back stiffening. “I am just realistically sussing the situation and doing a risk assessment.”

“That’s just what scared people say,” Kent commented.

With her pulse keeping time in her ear, Nicole really couldn’t argue with him.

* * *

Kent knew that Nicole’s sensibilities were offended by the very notion of this underground fighting ring. But if she had any hope of catching serial killers, she really needed to get rawer. Open herself up to challenging experiences. Get her heart pumping.

“Okay, the first rule of knife club is…”

“Never talk about knife club?” Nicole asked with her hand on her hip.

“No,” Kent said. “Don’t get stabbed.”

“Great,” Nicole said, not seeming amused.

Kent cocked his head. “You are constantly bitching that I don’t let you in on my process enough, and here I give you the Golden Ticket, and you are all pouty. Seriously.”

She seemed to regroup, gripping her machete with both hands. “Alright. I’m in.”

“Good. See you in about half an hour,” Kent said, but saw that momentary look of panic in her eyes. “Just call out if you get in trouble.”

“Yeah, right,” Nicole snorted.

That was his girl.

Without looking back, Kent entered the “play area.” He felt perhaps just a little bit bad about not filling Nicole in on his strategy more. It was ineffectual to try to fight your way through the gauntlet of knife-wielding idiots. No. Kent would go around the periphery, set up at the end, then take on whoever had made it through.

Many people would consider that cheating. Kent considered it smart. If you tried to play by the rules with a sophisticated serial killer, you would be dead before you could say “unfair.”

He also didn’t tell her that he had an ulterior motive. Yes, he wanted to keep his skills up. However, a knife club like this was also sure to attract a serial killer or two. Not Wallflower, of course, but any city of this size had a minimum of 4-5 active serial killers. This event was like serial killer bait. Glory seekers or power asserters couldn’t stay away. It was like crack to them.

So Kent had been haunting the club trying to suss one out. He didn’t tell Nicole because she would have gotten all Law & Order on him. Asking if he had a warrant. How the case wouldn’t stand up in court. All that crap you had to worry about if you cared about your conviction rate.

Which, of course, he didn’t. Not with an ax in his hands.

Even though he had a gun, he’d never use it. He knew the weapon was like a pacifier to Nicole. She felt like it evened the odds. That it was her power center when, really, it was her brain.

Back in Afghanistan, Kent had over two dozen highly trained Special Forces soldiers protecting him, yet a stray shot had alerted the drug lord to their position and voilà, Kent was nearly decapitated. His finger went to the ragged scar that ran along his neck. He’d learned then that a knife could be equally as effective, and stealthier, than a gun.

Kent kept his back to the wall, avoiding the vaguely post-apocalyptic interior of the laser tag arena. There were overturned boxes, steel scaffolding. A veritable maze. Occasionally you would hear a shout or scream. So far, none of them were Nicole’s.

Up to this point, no one had been killed, since the goal was to only bloody your opponent, but running around with knifes was eventually going to end in a fatality, intended or not.

Kent vowed it wouldn’t be him.

He paused. A pile of crates stacked nearly to the ceiling blocked his way. They were covered with a crude rope net. Either he had to head deeper into the maze, or go over the pile. Neither option was very appealing. The other side of the pile would be a perfect place for an ambush, as would be right beyond the turn in the maze to the side.

Ultimately, Kent chose to go up and over. At the least he would have the high ground. He had to give it to the organizers. They changed the course each time. You couldn’t plan out your strategy ahead of time. You had to figure it out anew.

Tucking the ax into his belt, Kent grabbed hold of the thick rope and began to climb.

* * *

The machete didn’t seem all that large in her hands as the darkness closed in around her. She jumped at every little sound, a scrape of boot or clunk of metal. So far, so good. No one had killed her yet.

Figuring this was like any other black box situation, Nicole had taken to the periphery. A shout came from deeper within the gaming arena. There was no corresponding cry, so it was hard to tell what had happened there.

People really did this for entertainment. Nicole didn’t get it. She tended to avoid activities that might land her on life support in the ICU. Kent, though? This was right up his alley.

He’d probably do it even if he didn’t need the practice.

Nicole pulled out her phone and used the light to guide her way. While it was out, she really should call Ruben. He wouldn’t be happy about it, but he would come as backup in case things went south.

She didn’t dial, though. Kent had been through this four times and hadn’t needed backup. But she wasn’t Kent. Which was exactly why she needed to go through this maze without any back up. She needed to have as much faith in herself as Kent had in her.

Was that a scuff behind her? Nicole turned off the phone. It was like a freaking homing beacon in the dark arena.

Then another scuff. Was someone following her? She gripped the machete tighter. Who was there? Had Kent doubled back around, or was it one of the participants bent on making her bleed?

* * *

Kent crested the peak of the unnatural mountain. He stopped and listened. Was that someone’s breathing? Squinting, he searched the debris below. Sure enough, there was a small pocket under the metal where someone was hiding. Kent guessed that he hoped that Kent would walk over him, since it was the straightest path down, and he could stab Kent. The guy must have chosen a spear or some other longer-shafted blade.

The guy didn’t seem all that confrontational. Hiding, using a weapon that didn’t get him up close and personal with his victim. Certainly not a serial killer. Although he had to give the guy props for trying to make it work, even though he clearly was a coward.

The only problem with his plan was all the mouth breathing in anticipation of his victory. Talk about counting your chickens before they were hatched.

Kent tried to act natural, heading down the pile. He acted as if he were going to step over the guy’s hiding place. Only, at the last moment, Kent pulled back. The spear tip was shoved upward.

Grabbing it by the shaft, Kent used the long handle to whack the guy in the face. He then jerked the spear out of the guy’s hands, then using the blunt end, hit him again and again. Everyone here was so about the sharp point of the blade, when really the blunt ends were equally effective.

Finally, the guy went down, which was Kent’s gift to him. The guy clearly wasn’t here for the thrill. He’d probably agreed to come to impress someone, an older brother or girlfriend. Kent had just saved him a potentially life-threatening injury. He was going to be banged up, but alive.

Checking around him, Kent continued down the pile and headed toward the exit.

* * *

Nicole tried to slow her heart rate as she hid behind a pillar of steel struts. What did Kent always say? Get control of the adrenaline before it got control of you. Well, with heavy footsteps approaching, Nicole was losing that battle.

A long shadow passed in front of her hiding place. Kent would never allow his shadow to announce his presence, so it was one of the participants. The shadow made it seem as if he was carrying a broad sword. Some guy that fancied himself Lancelot?

What were her options? His sword gave him greater reach, but she had surprise on her side. However, she didn’t want to kill him. Kent would have seen that attitude as a disadvantage, but Nicole wasn’t quite as deluded as him. She was a cop. It was bad enough she was participating in this knife club. To kill someone during it? That would go on her permanent record.

To say that Glick would be upset would be an understatement. Nicole did not want to be the cause of his fourth heart attack.

So what options did that leave her? The guy was crossing right in front of her. Could she just let him go, then avoid him as she made her way to the exit?

Would Kent consider that stealthy, or cheating? Cheating, that the profiler would probably approve of.

The choice was taken out of her hands. The guy must have smelled the aftershave she’d used to fool Kent. The shadow turned toward her. She had a split second to make use of her advantage.

She led with her shoulder. Nicole slammed into the guy, pinning his sword hand against a metal pipe. The guy was no slouch, though, and he swung a punch with his other fist. Nicole ducked it, feeling the air swish by over her head.

That’s when the guy must have noticed that she was a woman. He looked confused momentarily. That’s when Nicole went for a knee to the groin. The guy was heavy enough, though, that when he doubled over, he nearly knocked her over, as well.

She slammed her body weight into his shoulder again, trying desperately to keep the sword pinned. The guy was nearly twice her size, though, and recovered quickly. This time he backhanded her, snapping her head to the side. Vision blurred, Nicole was running out of options. Well, options if she wanted to stay alive. She couldn’t help but stumble to the side, releasing his sword arm.

The broadsword swung up and over her head. She’d tried to keep from using the machete in her hand, but now there was no other option—or at least she really hoped that Internal Affairs would see it that way.

The machete was a slashing weapon, so that’s how she used it. Nicole aimed for above the sword. She took a nice chunk out of the guy’s forearm. He screamed, clutching his arm. The sword clanged to the ground. She kicked it away, holding the machete out almost like her gun.

“Just back off,” she said, but the guy’s nostrils flared. “You’re bloodied. It’s over.”

“It’s never over, bitch,” the man said as he hurled toward her.

Nicole hadn’t been prepared for such a bold and reckless move. Kent would have a field day with it, if she survived to tell the tale. He slapped the machete away, tackling her around the waist. They both flew backwards, finally slamming against a wall. The wind knocked out of her, Nicole couldn’t stop the guy from wrenching the machete from her hand. Instead of slicing her, though, he punched her again, knocking Nicole to her knees.

The guy grabbed her by the ponytail, jerking her head back.

“I’ll show you bloodied,” he said as he raised the machete above his head.

The blade was on its way to her neck when it suddenly stopped and the guy twitched. A thin silver object stuck its way out of his chest. Nicole scrambled out of the way as the man pitched forward, a spear in his back.

“Okay, so longer shafts do sometimes come in handy.”

It was Kent.

Nicole tried to shake off the near miss. “I had it under control.”

“Yeah, because being on your knees, head back, sobbing are all characteristics of a person in control.”

Nicole was way too hyped and shaken to argue.

“This is going to be slightly hard to explain,” Nicole said.

“Not really,” Kent replied with a shrug. “Look at his neck.”

Nicole bent over the body to find a large skull tattoo on his neck. She also took the opportunity to pick up her machete. “I don’t get it.” More than likely, gangbangers were common players in the arena.

* * *

“You haven’t seen that tattoo somewhere before?” Kent prompted. “The red eyes? The body of a snake?”

Nicole’s brow furrowed. “It does seem familiar.”

Kent so wanted to prompt her, but she needed to figure it out on her own.

“It was in a briefing…” Nicole said, clearly trying to jump-start her memory.

“What kind of briefing?”

Nicole took a step back, inhaling sharply. “This guy is on the FBI’s Most Wanted. It’s Death Eater.”

Kent nodded. “Yep.”

Then her eyes narrowed and she glared at him. “You knew he was here?”

“Suspected that he would be drawn to a competition pitting blades against one another, of course,” Kent said. “Knew he was in the arena tonight, no.”

Nicole put her hand on her forehead. “Oh my God, we just stopped a guy who had killed over a hundred women.”

“Feels kind of good, doesn’t it?”

Nicole breathed out a harsh breath. “Yeah, kind of.”

Kent heard something behind him. Before he could turn, Nicole’s machete flew through the air, nailing the guy who thought he could attack Kent with impunity right in the shoulder. The man’s tiny switchblade fell to the floor, looking awfully silly.

“And you’re welcome,” Nicole said as she headed toward the exit.

CHAPTER 12

Nicole gulped, trying to swallow all the saliva that her mouth was still producing. Her heart rate was up at peak Stairmaster pace. And that was after an hour or so with the Captain and IA. Luckily, she had only wounded her guy, so she didn’t have to go on enforced administrative leave. And because she didn’t use her gun, she didn’t even have to fill out a “discharged weapon” report.

It appeared that the regulations were a bit more loosey-goosey when using a bladed weapon. Which, of course, Kent probably already knew, which was why he’d taken away her gun.

So all she got was a good scolding from Glick about using her better judgment and then the mention of a possible accommodation for helping take out a notorious serial killer. It was a very schizophrenic discussion.

The police department had no jurisdiction over Kent, so they’d bumped his consequences over to the FBI, who must have had some kind of rubber stamp “Justifiable Homicide” for Kent. The decision that he’d used appropriate lethal force had come within minutes.

So what should have been an all-night ordeal with the shooting board had turned out to be a fairly concise debriefing.

Still, Nicole was wired. Now she knew what Kent was talking about. The high of the hunt and the kill. How many times had he come home late at night or early, early in the morning ready for sex? His intensity had always surprised her. Now, though? Now, she got it.

In some ways, she knew that she should be upset that he had used their lovemaking as some kind of PTSD therapy, but right now she wanted the kind of therapy that only Kent could give.

They had barely entered the house when she took his hand and led him up the stairs to their bedroom.

“I am liking the direction this is going,” Kent said as he nuzzled the back of her neck.

They didn’t even make it to the bed before she turned around and wrapped her arms around his neck. Their lips met as they fell to the bed. Her jaw was a little sore, but she didn’t let it stop her as they kissed. The rhythm of their tongues coursed down to her groin, which was more than ready to pick up the call.

Her leg hooked over Kent’s, bringing their pelvises together. His lips left hers and coursed down her neck to her cleavage. His palm cupped her breast, gently squeezing it while his thumb stroked at her nipple through her shirt and bra. Despite the padding, her nipples tightened, creating the most luxurious pain possible.

She arched into his ministrations, soaking them all in, giving her body permission to respond in full. His fingers were already working her belt. Her body wouldn’t have long to wait.

Then his lips came to her ear. She was surprised. Kent wasn’t big into whispering sweet nothings. He was more a fan of letting his body do the talking.

His words caressed her ear. “We’re being watched.”

* * *

Nicole’s body stiffened under his, and not in the good way.

“No, we need to act like nothing is wrong,” he whispered, going back to her chest. Using his thumb, he pulled at the fabric until her full breast popped from its restraints. The nipple was dark brown, erect and begging for some attention.

Nicole squirmed a little, clearly not all that fond of them really continuing in the face of an intruder. Right now, though, all they had going for them was the fact that the Peeping Tom didn’t know they knew he was there.

His mouth sought her nipple, licking and sucking in equal measure. Coaxing her to relax into his embrace. Finally, her fingers found his hair and interlaced between the strands, pulling him into her.

That was his girl. Put on a good show.

Kissing his way up her sternum, he sought her ear again.

“Go with me. I’m going to make our way to the armoire and surprise our guest.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she murmured in response. She sounded so into it, Kent wasn’t sure she had actually heard the plan. Then she kissed him, long and slow.

He had to stay focused, though. Picking her up around the waist, he lifted her from the bed. With his free hand, he cleared the dresser top and set her there. Nicole arched back, encouraging him to kiss all the way down to her belly button. Normally, Kent would have gone much further down, but their guest hadn’t paid any admission. He wasn’t getting that good of a show.

Kent then picked her up again and slammed her up against the armoire. She gasped, almost giggling as he worked on her belt. Even though Nicole was doing everything she should to convince the intruder that they were still into it, he could see concern in her eyes. Like exactly how far he was going to take this.

She didn’t have to worry. While he might be tugging on her panties, he was really getting in position. Kent went in for another kiss. Using the sound to cover, Kent grabbed the handle of the armoire and jerked it open. He then shoved his hand inside and grabbed whatever was closest. He hoped it was the intruder, rather than one of Nicole’s dresses.

“Hey!” a shout came as the subject tumbled out of the armoire and landed at their feet.

* * *

Nicole gathered her shirt up and tried to get her boob back in its proper place, inside her bra. But even as she did that, she recognized the figure.

“Yvent?”

With a mixture of horror and surprise, she watched Kent’s protégé get up and dust himself off.

“Where the hell were you guys? I was waiting in there for hours.”

Nicole was too busy sputtering to answer him. Kent, of course, recovered smoothly.

“A better question might be why the hell you were inside our closet?”

The younger man shrugged. “You are constantly talking about thinking out of the box and using every opportunity to hone your stalking skills. So who better to practice on than a profiler and his detective girlfriend?”

Kent nodded his head like that made sense. Which in Kent’s twisted world it might, but to Nicole, no way.

“That does not give you permission to B&E into my house,” Nicole snapped.

Yvent shrugged again. “I didn’t do anything that Kent hadn’t done before.”

Nicole could feel her cheeks flush. “That’s different.”

“How?” Yvent asked, all innocent.

Kent looked to her so she elbowed him, hard.

“Um,” the profiler said. “Because I’d seen her naked before.”

“So that gave you permission to break into her boyfriend’s house and take pictures of them while they were intimate.”

She really didn’t think this could get more humiliating, but per usual she was wrong. Nicole glared at Kent. “What, he’s right?”

The profiler was never any help in these situations. She gave him a glare that told him tonight would be the last time he saw her breast in a very long time unless he supported her here.

They had been together long enough that Kent seemed to get the message.

“What?” Kent challenged Yvent. “You can’t read a text during Sabbath, but you can go all Peeping Tom?”

“I walked over here and used no electronic devices. According to scripture, I’m good. Thanks for worrying, though.”

Yvent seeing Nicole half naked didn’t seem to fluster Kent one bit—however, the kid being sarcastic, that just wasn’t to be tolerated by the profiler.

“Let’s go ask your grandmother about that, eh?”

It was Yvent’s turn to have his cheeks flare red. Apparently, Kent had struck a nerve.

“Look, I originally came over here to tell you I think I have a break in the case.”

“And then what?” Nicole challenged. “You decided to crawl into my armoire and get a little show?”

Yvent lowered his head. “No, I just wanted the props for breaking in and getting out unseen. I had no idea you two were going to be intimate.”

“Um, dude,” Kent said. “It’s Nicole and me. What did you think we’d be doing?”

“Yeah, I didn’t realize…”

Now Kent was frustrated with the kid, not over breaking in, but over doing it poorly. “Kid, you have got to know your subjects better. This is another great example of why you aren’t ready to be out in the field. If you weren’t picking up that Nicole and I are sexually active nearly daily, you really have poor radar.”

Nicole just really wanted to melt through the floorboards at this point. She was raised never to talk about sex, let alone have someone watch you, then discuss it all afterward.

“But maybe I make up for it in book smarts?”

“That is still to be determined,” Kent scolded.

“Look, can we move past this so that I can tell you why I came here originally? I have a long walk home.”

Nicole finished buttoning her shirt as Kent looked to her. She gave a sigh. They might as well hear the kid out.

“Fine, spill it,” Kent said.

* * *

Yvent had to keep his eyes down at his toes. Otherwise, he feared what might happen if he looked at Detective Usher. Her face was still flushed with desire. And now, all he could do was picture her breast outside of her bra. Why did he look? Why?

Having not yet had sex, or really any kind of action with a girl, Yvent had been intrigued. As an orthodox Jew, he’d never seen or even heard porn before. Once they came in and started, he’d wished he hadn’t hidden in there, but what could he do? He’d decided to ride it out and then slip out later. He should have known that Kent would find him.

“Well?” Kent said. “Or was all this case talk just a ruse to see my girlfriend’s titties?”

“No,” Yvent blurted. “No.”

He gathered his thoughts and restarted. “Our primary goal right now is to try and figure out where Wallflower’s killing ground is. If we can find that, then we have a much higher chance of finding him.”

Kent rolled his eyes. “Statement of the obvious isn’t helping you out here.”

“And we know that each of the women, with the exception of the prostitute, must have been at the killing ground.”

“Kind of how they got dead,” Nicole added.

“Yes, but my point is, since they did not know each other at all, the killing ground would be their only common point of intersection.”

“Again, Mr. Obvious, move this along,” Kent said, leaning back against the dresser, which of course reminded Yvent of their interlude over there. Before his body could respond, Yvent hurried on.

“So if we can find some evidence that is similar on all the victims, we can find his killing ground.”

“But there wasn’t any trace on any of the bodies,” Nicole reminded him.

“Not on, but in,” Yvent stated.

“What are you talking about?” Kent said, his eyelids narrowing.

“I’m talking about pollen,” Yvent said. “It’s the new DNA.”

“What do you mean?” Nicole said, leaning forward, making her cleavage all the deeper.

Looking away, Yvent answered. “With every breath we take, we inhale pollen. Nearly every foot we travel, we inhale a different pollen profile. What we inhale is dependent upon the vegetation in the area, whether we are indoors or outside, the ambient temperature, and wind velocity.”

“And what does this have to do with our victims?” Kent asked.

“If we take mucous samples from all the victims, whatever pollen they share in common could only be from the killing ground.”

“Great, so we know what plants they were next to. How does that help us find the killer?” Nicole asked.

“That’s why pollen is being called the new DNA. It is that unique and exact. A pollen expert can usually place a person’s travels within a few hundred yards based on the foliage around them. It is that precise.”

“Example,” Kent barked.

“We are lucky enough to have one of the most preeminent pollen experts in town. He runs out of the university labs. He helped catch both the I-5 killer and the cross-country serialist, Hobo, by identifying where the victims were held during their abduction.”

Kent grunted but nodded. Nicole frowned, though. “So why isn’t everyone using this technique?”

“It is brand spanking new,” Yvent said. “Most don’t even know about it, let alone how to use it.”

* * *

“And you do?” Kent asked, hating it when the younger generation was onto something he wasn’t. He liked being on the bleeding edge. To find out science was advancing faster than he was simply unacceptable.

“Yes,” Yvent stated flatly.

Oh, the kid knew how to get under his skin. “So we’re going to have to get samples from the earlier bodies? Luckily, they are already exhumed. However, how much nasal tissue they still have is questionable.”

“No,” Yvent said. “That’s kind of the ironic part. We already take nasal swabs of all victims looking for trace inhaled particulates. We can use those same swabs for pollen.”

“Well, let’s get it ordered, then,” Kent said.

“I won’t be able to until Sunday,” Yvent said, but offered something. “But here is Dr. Rodden’s info. He’s usually in the lab on Saturdays, so you can get him going in the morning.”

Kent accepted the contact information. “Well, looks like it is bedtime for all of us. Do you want a lift home?”

Nicole elbowed him, but what? The kid lived practically on the other side of town. Sure, he’d hidden in their closet. But what young aspiring profiler hadn’t?

“No—thanks, though,” Yvent said. “I really do have to walk home.”

Nicole showed Yvent out. Kent still didn’t like the kid, but at least he was showing a bit more spark, and this pollen could turn into a real lead. Clearly, Kent had to catch up on his journal reading. It wasn’t good to have your protégé catch you with your pants down. Either figuratively or literally.

Nicole came back, grabbed her granny nightie off the bedstead and went into the bathroom to change. If that wasn’t the most obvious cock-block move ever. You would think after her walk on the wild side at the knife club that she could get over a little voyeurism.

But as she came out of the bathroom in the full-length frilly nightgown with anti-wrinkle cream all over her face, clearly she wasn’t going to.

Well, this night certainly didn’t end the way Kent had hoped.

CHAPTER 13

Ruben wasn’t quite sure what he was doing standing in a university waiting room. But at the least Nicole was keeping him in the loop, he hoped.

Clicking of heels told him that she was on her way. Nicole rounded the corner, a bundle in her hand. “Oh, there you are.”

“Eight AM, as instructed,” Ruben said, hoping that didn’t sound quite as douche-y as it might have.

“Look,” Nicole said. “I’m really sorry about last night. I really meant no offense.”

Ruben shrugged it off. “And I overreacted. We’re good.”

Nicole smiled and handed over a phone. “And here’s Paggie’s phone back. Again, sorry.”

Of course, it wasn’t Nicole who should have been sorry, but Kent. He was the one that pinched his girlfriend’s phone. The guy had a compulsion that no one else but Ruben found offensive and disturbing.

But that wasn’t a discussion for today, so he just said, “Thanks,” and tucked the phone into his jacket pocket. He’d take it to Paggie as soon as he finished up here.

“What exactly are we doing here so early?” Ruben asked.

“Pollen,” Nicole responded. “Yvent thinks we might be able to narrow down the killing grounds based on the commonality of the victims’ nasal pollen profile.”

Ruben nodded. “I read something about that in a journal. I wasn’t sure how to apply it, so this should be interesting.”

“Ah, and here is the doctor.”

Ruben turned to find a man in a long white coat approaching. The guy seemed way younger than a guy should, as an expert in his field. The guy looked like he should be going to school here, rather than teaching. And he looked like he should be lettering in lacrosse or something. Handsome didn’t do the guy justice. It seemed rather unfair. To be that attractive and that brainy? What chance did that leave guys like Ruben?

He also noticed that Kent hadn’t shown up. The guy wasn’t exactly a fan of sharing the spotlight. Ruben hoped that Yvent knew that the most credit he’d get out of this would be a non-starred footnote in Kent’s article if they caught Wallflower. Even this doctor would only get a passing mention if they nabbed the serial killer with his technique.

Nicole put her hand out for the doctor. “Thank you so much for meeting us so early, Dr. Rodden.”

“No worries,” he said. “I’d just gotten done with my rowing practice when you called.”

Of course the guy got up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday to go out rowing. Guess those Ken-doll looks didn’t just happen.

Nicole handed over the large bundle. She pointed to the evidence tape. “To keep the chain of custody, you need to cut the tape once. Date and initial it.” She handed him a roll of the tape. “You do that for each sample. Then, when you are done, you re-tape the sample, date and initial again, and then bundle them, repeating the process.”

The doctor nodded. “I understand. I’ve worked on a few cases before.”

Nicole grinned. “Of course. It’s just my responsibility to inform anyone working outside of the crime lab of our procedure.”

“When can we expect some results?” Ruben asked.

The doctor looked to the bundle, counting the samples. “I would say by Monday morning.”

“That soon?” Ruben said. Usually when he asked any of the lab coats back at CSI, they gave him a three-week window.

“Once my team establishes each individual pollen profile, it should be easy to cross-reference them. Then it is a matter of tapping into the National Meteorological Society and the National Council on Allergies to map out the spot where the victims inhaled that profile.”

Again, Ruben was used to a fifteen-minute lecture on how difficult, arduous, or time-consuming a request was. He’d never been told before it would be “easy.”

The sensation was weird.

Nicole put her hand out again to shake with the doctor. “Excellent. I’ll be awaiting your call.”

“More than likely, I will just email you the results,” the doctor said. “If that is alright, detective? The results are usually pretty self-explanatory.”

Again, Ruben was surprised. Usually, when results came in, they were called to the lab and given a full multimedia show that included slides, video, red pointers and, many times, a soundtrack.

Did this mean they could always just get an email with the answers? How much time and gas would that save?

“Yes, of course,” Nicole said. “That would be…”

“Refreshing,” Ruben finished for her.

* * *

Kent tried to get comfortable, but that was a little hard when you were crammed into a tiny air vent above the women’s locker room. It was also steamy and vaguely smelled of wet socks.

But that was the price one paid for their craft. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was watching about a half dozen coeds shower. Not that he would share that with Nicole. Otherwise, he’d be seeing granny nighties and kiwi-apricot exfoliating face cream for a week.

Besides, he took very little pleasure in it. The Wallflower killer would not stalk like this. He did not get his thrills from the stalking like many killers. No, Kent guessed he took his greatest pleasure standing over the body. That moment of glory when he’d done it. Done what he’d been told his entire life that he couldn’t. Finally, he was in control.

Besides, the killer was no spring chicken, and these vents were really a pain in the ass. But at the least Kent had learned that Sophia was an avid tennis player, having just come off of two singles sets this morning and being scheduled to play a set of doubles later this afternoon.

Even in the shower, girls were chatty. And, it turned out, flirty, as well. They splashed each other, laughing, giggling. Were they just playful, or flirting? Kent could barely sort it out. No straight guy would dream of splashing another guy in a group shower.

It just wasn’t done. But with women, the line was so much more blurred. Like right now. One of the girls was washing the other’s hair. Were they lovers, or just utilitarian?

Chicks, man. If Kent didn’t get them, he could only imagine how confused the killer was. Starting later in life, Wallflower had probably spent his early life trying to figure out what women wanted. Which was hard enough for the average guy. But Wallflower wasn’t a normal guy. He was a sociopath. He just didn’t understand even basic social practices, let alone the mystery that women presented.

Kent proposed that Wallflower didn’t realize that he was so different until Trudy fell off that roof. Probably in the moment, when he looked over the side and saw her body, his life finally made sense. Until then, Wallflower likely hoped that he was just on the long end of the curve. But once Trudy died right in front of him, he must have known that his reaction was abnormal. Wallflower didn’t even make an anonymous 911 call. He took her purse and phone and ran off.

That night, he’d finally come into his own.

His life’s goal crystalized on that cold winter night.

So, no, Wallflower would not be stalking his victim in the shower. Which meant that Kent could leave anytime. But what was the harm in just a bit more research?

* * *

Nicole looked to her phone as she walked out of the university lab complex and into the parking lot. Kent had gone dark for over two hours. He hadn’t told her where he was headed, probably because she would disapprove. In her defense, she would probably be right. More than likely, the profiler was violating someone’s constitutional rights.

But that was how Kent rolled.

“Um,” Ruben said, kicking a pebble across the pavement. “It feels like we’re at an impasse.”

Nicole’s phone vibrated. She checked the text from Kent. “Yes, but at some point, I have to run home and get my tennis racket and gear and meet Kent at the university’s courts at 2pm.”

“Oh,” Ruben said, sounding subdued. Usually, he was all twenty questions about things like this. “Well, that gives us several hours with not a lot to do on a Saturday.”

Nicole looked at her partner. What was going on with him?

“Spit it out, Ruben.”

He took a deep sigh before answering. “Paggie wants to do brunch this morning.”

“Great,” Nicole said. “Go for it. I promise to let you know if anything comes up.”

“No,” Ruben said, shaking his head. “She wants you to come along too.”

“What?”

“Not just you,” Ruben hurried on, “but Kent, as well. She wants to do a double date for brunch this morning.”

Okay, this was probably the last thing in the world Nicole expected when she woke up this morning and checked her armoire for a young Orthodox Jew.

“It’s okay,” Ruben said, shuffling his feet. “I’ll let her know.”

Nicole put her hand on Ruben’s arm. “No,” she said. “I’d love to. Kent? Kent we’ll have to wrangle.”

“Great,” Ruben answered, his face blossoming into a full smile. “I’ll let Paggie know.”

* * *

Kent showed up at the corner that Nicole had very cagily texted to him. She got out of her Mustang in a dress. Yes, a dress. In pastel colors. Wasn’t this breaking one of the seven seals? Nicole never wore pastels. Her wardrobe was black and gray and more black and gray. Nicole came up and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“What’s going on?” Kent asked. “I thought you said you had a break in the case?”

“I lied,” Nicole said with a smile on her face. “It was the only way I could think of to get you to the restaurant.” Nicole nodded to the pricey, frou-frou establishment behind them. He could see a maître d’ through the open door.

Groaning, he shook his head. “You know how I feel about brunch.” He used his hands to add a visual aid. “There is breakfast, and there is lunch. The twain should not meet.”

Nicole hooked her arm through his and turned him toward the restaurant. “Oh, but Ruben and Paggie invited us on a double date.”

“What?” Kent blurted. He seldom liked to be surprised, and certainly didn’t like to let it show.

“I know, right? Something normal couples do. Think of it as a research project.”

Kent’s instincts were to dig his heels in. If he started indulging Nicole in double date brunches, who knew where this could go. Super Bowl parties? Thanksgiving at their house? He’d been very cold on the subject of “couple” outings. But this was Ruben and Paggie. This could get very interesting. And his stomach was rumbling. When was the last time he’d eaten?

Not that he could be satiated here. Kent honestly didn’t understand the appeal of these upscale brunches. Oh sure, the champagne was nice, but everything else? Yuck.

Nicole guided them up to the maître d’ and gave their name. The rail-thin man nodded in that way that made it clear that the only reason he was dealing with such cretins was the fact that he was getting paid to do it. The only thing that could have made the encounter even snootier was if he spoke in a Pepé Le Pew accent. Now that, Kent would have paid to see.

Then they made their way through the restaurant past the buffet table. It was exactly as Kent had feared. Food weirded up just to make it sound more expensive when, really, it was stuff they couldn’t get away with selling during a normal meal. Who really like salmon soufflé, anyway? And gluten-free French toast?

Again, Kent could delve into the minds of some of the most twisted man-monsters in the world, but this he just didn’t get.

Finally they made their way to the booth where Ruben and Paggie were already seated. A booth. Great. Now they were trapped. And the other two had already polished off a few Mimosas.

Paggie popped out of her seat, extending her hand. “Oh my gosh! I am so happy you could join us. This is going to be so much fun!”

As Paggie pumped his hand up and down, Kent knew that he really should have dug his heels in outside.

* * *

Ruben was glad that, for once, Kent was the uncomfortable one. He was using his fork to play with his saffron-infused scrambled eggs. As Nicole came back with her second helping. Kent eyed his barely touched plate.

“Eggs Benedict? Really?” Kent queried Nicole. “You’ve got a tennis match at two.”

“Oh, let her indulge,” Paggie said, waving Kent’s concern aside. Up until now, they had stuck to the first date-approved subjects. The weather, sports, and favorite television shows. No economy, politics or religion. So far, so good.

They might just get out of this brunch unscathed.

Nicole looked to her phone. “Looks like our girl has reported three times to campus security that she is being watched.”

“What can I say?” Kent said with that shrug of his. “I am that good.”

Paggie frowned next to Ruben. “You guys never stop, do you? Always on the case?”

“That’s what life is like with a detective,” Nicole said. “You probably should get used to it, Paggie.”

Ruben shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The faux leather squeaked. This was a touchy subject between him and Paggie. Perhaps they could navigate around it.

Then Paggie opened Pandora’s Box. “How long have you two been together? You make such an interesting couple.”

Ruben and Nicole both tried to jump in, but Kent beat them to it. “That depends,” he said.

“On what?” Paggie asked in that innocent tone of hers.

“On whether or not we count the time I was locked in a mental institution.”

“Oh,” Paggie said, looking down at her napkin. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that it was a touchy subject.”

“It’s not,” Kent said. “But I think you knew the answer to your question before you asked it.”

Okay, this is where Kent could drive a perfectly normal conversation into a bloodletting frenzy.

“So how about spring training?” Ruben asked. “Some very interesting developments in a lot of the teams.”

Nicole nodded vigorously. “Yes, some of those triple-A pitchers that were brought up are really shining. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the season is going to shape up.”

Paggie and Kent, however, held eye contact.

“I was just trying to make small talk, get to know you guys better,” Paggie said, clearly unable to let it go.

Kent leaned forward. “Paggie, my dear. You do realize that passive-aggressive behavior is aggressive behavior for cowards, right?”

* * *

Okay, Nicole’s eggs Benedict were forgotten, as Paggie apparently decided to square off against the king of conversational conquest, Special Agent Kent Harbinger.

Not good. Not good at all. On the other side of the table, Ruben was trying to divert Paggie.

“I think maybe we would all like to take a breath and just enjoy this wonderful morning?” Ruben put his hand over Paggie’s, but she pulled it away.

“No, I would like very much to know what Kent meant by that.”

“Oh, you know exactly what I meant,” Kent replied. “You’re just used to saying snarky, invasive things and, with that little smile and girly tone, getting away with it.”

Paggie’s jaw clenched and a little vein on her brow throbbed. “What are you accusing me of?”

Kent shrugged, leaning back in the booth which now felt way too small for four people. “Oh, just setting up this little brunch to probe Nicole and my relationship to figure out exactly how worried you should be that we are going to break up and have Ruben rush to her rescue, leaving you high and dry.”

“I never!” Paggie puffed out, her cheeks going red.

“Don’t start something that you don’t want to finish,” Kent said.

It was Nicole’s turn to pat Kent’s arm. “It takes two to tango, my dear. So how about you lay off the inquisition.”

“That’s up to her,” Kent said with that overly-gratified smile. They both knew someone as passive-aggressive as Paggie couldn’t let it go. They were the type that always needed the last word. Passively, of course, they aggressively had to control the conversation.

“Well, I think Paggie could agree to disagree on this, right?” Nicole tried.

Sometimes appealing to their higher nature worked.

Not this time, though.

“No, I’d like to hear this out,” Paggie said, her cheeks a bright red.

“Fine by me,” Kent said, putting his hands behind his head.

Nicole just closed her eyes and hung her head.

* * *

Kent normally played with psychopaths. And Paggie thought she could go up against him? This was going to be fun. And make up for the non-carb chocolate cake thing.

“There is something wrong in your relationship. I mean, on paper everything seems fine, but it isn’t going anywhere. Ruben is holding back and, for the life of you, you don’t know why. Until you started noticing Nicole’s name popping up over and over again. You realized that he was still madly in love with her, and for some reason, you are okay with that, but you just wanted to make sure that Nicole didn’t feel the same way.”

The woman’s cheeks puffed in and out. “Well, aren’t you a mind reader.”

Kent turned to Ruben. “And the only reason you agreed to this farce was to check to see if Nicole was bothered by your relationship with Paggie. You were trying to see if you still had any shot left at all.”

The big man took in a breath, clearly to repudiate Kent, but Kent turned to Nicole. “And you, trying to act all innocent over here. You only wanted to come to see how in love Ruben was with Paggie. You needed to be sure your backup man was still available if I wigged out.”

Now all three of them were red cheeked and fumbling for words. Ah, how Kent loved a good brunch.

“Tell me I am wrong, about anything, and I’ll shut up.”

No one stepped forward to take him up on his offer, so he continued. “So Paggie, I’m sure that you wanted me to be way more sane than I am. You were hoping that I was perfect and dashing and ideal for Nicole. Sorry to disappoint on the first two—however, Nicole and I are solid.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t take that to the bank,” Nicole muttered next to him.

“However, my bet is that Ruben doesn’t even have a toothbrush stored at your place.” Paggie’s eyes darting to Ruben and him looking away confirmed his suspicion.

“And you, Ruben,” Kent said. “Paggie is perfect for your whole Paladin personality. Or is the problem that she doesn’t need to be rescued often enough? Unlike Nicole here, who routinely gets herself in deep trouble.”

“And I wonder why,” Nicole said, elbowing him in the ribs, again. He really needed to start wearing protective gear over them.

“So, Paggie, you’ve got to start figuring out if you are okay with being Plan B. But remember, being as stand-up a guy as he is, having him as your Plan B is a whole hell of a lot better than being most guys’ Plan A.”

He then turned on Ruben. “And dude, you’ve got to let Nicole go. Even if I end up in an institution somewhere, she’s grown way past you, buddy. She’ll never fall into your arms again, as much as she’d like to think she could.”

Kent pointed to the woman across the table. “Paggie here represents everything you want. Emotionally available. Ready for a family. Accepting of your job. Get off the fence before you lose her.”

Patting Nicole’s knee, he turned to her. “And you, my darling, need to figure out that you could survive on your own without a man. Because while I have no intention of going anywhere, the next serial killer face-off might be my last. And we both know that you are not going back to that…”

Kent indicated to Ruben’s rather bright yellow shirt. Some men could pull that color off, but Ruben was not one of them.

Glancing around the table at the shell-shocked looks, Kent knew his job here was done.

He raised his hand for a waiter. “Check!”

CHAPTER 14

Nicole walked up to the tennis courts, hardly believing she was back in a tennis skirt. How many years had it been? Yet, the racket in her hand, the rough leather against her palm—it felt right. Why had she given up the sport?

Oh yeah, life. Not a lot of time to hit the ball when you were in the Police Academy. Then, once out? Your life was about patrol and trying to stay alive. Once you made detective, it didn’t get any easier. Cases were worked around the clock.

Usually in seedy back alleys and raunchy by-the-hour hotel rooms. So stepping out into the bright sunlight and gentle breeze was quite the treat. Of course, this game wasn’t at all about entertainment. She was here to try to see if she could spot the woman’s stalker.

Kent was out somewhere in the facility watching, as well. She couldn’t see him, but that wasn’t surprising. He was an expert at blending in anywhere—even a tennis court complex. Although she seriously doubted that Kent was wearing white shorts. The thought of the profiler in classic tennis attire made her smile.

The phone rang in her ear. She had her phone strapped to her arm by a Velcro band. Nicole figured Kent would call at some point. Mainly to taunt her.

“You are looking pretty damned confident, Billie Jean.”

“You could always join me down here,” Nicole teased. She probably should be more pissed at him after the brunch debacle—however, everything he said was right on track. It was embarrassing to admit that she didn’t want Ruben enraptured with Paggie. That it was disconcerting to think that Ruben might not be there for her.

But in the end, it was freeing to recognize that about herself and to start to put it behind her. Would Ruben and Paggie feel quite the same way about their revelations? Nicole wasn’t sure.

The other positive thing that had come out of the brunch was Kent’s casual ease in talking about their relationship. Clearly, he felt it was rock solid. Which, of course, with Kent, that was more what other people would call choppy seas, but it warmed her heart that he was that comfortable about their coupledom, to challenge her like that.

Kent so seldom talked about his feelings that Nicole had to take what she could get.

“So do you have some game, or am I going to watch a thumping?”

Nicole spun the racket in her hand, remembering the feel. “Oh, I’ve got game.”

“Good, because you are up against two people who are on the university’s tennis team.”

Crap. She thought this was just a casual match. Maybe she didn’t have that much game.

“We’ll see.”

Nicole clicked off the call as she approached Rhonda. She put her hand out. “Rhonda Winslow?”

The woman looked confused but took her hand, shaking it.

“You partner, Eliza, isn’t feeling well.” Nicole told the cover story with precision. “And she didn’t want to leave you in a lurch again, so she called me to fill in.”

“Okay,” Rhonda said, checking her phone. She must have found the text that they had asked Eliza to send. “So you’re a family friend?”

The next part hurt Nicole’s pride just a little bit. “Yes, I’m a friend of her mom’s.”

It was slightly disconcerting that she could no longer pass as college aged.

“You play, though?” Rhonda said.

“In college, yes. I’ll try not to embarrass either one of us.”

“Alright then, should we take the court?”

Nicole followed Rhonda out as she explained her strategy. “I’m best at the net, so even if I start in the back court, I try to get up there as soon as possible.”

Nicole nodded. “My old partner was just like that. I’ll back you up.”

Setting up at the back line, Nicole watched the other team take the court. One of the girls was a stunning African American woman. Like Naomi Campbell stunning. She should hang up the racket and go on America’s Next Top Model. Looked like she enjoyed the net as well, spinning her racket in her hands.

The other girl was a bit dowdier. Limp dishwater blond hair pulled back into a severe bun. She looked serious about her back game, though, as she bounced from foot to foot, gripping her racket.

Yes, this was going to be an intense game.

* * *

Kent watched as Nicole received the first serve. That player that wasn’t the Serena wannabe got some good topspin on the ball. Nicole barely managed to get some strings on it. But she avoided an ace her first time out and got the ball back over the net.

A forehand from the girl at the net and they had a nice rally going.

He was proud of Nicole. What she lacked in skill, she made up for in tenacity. There was no ball too far away for her to get. While Rhonda held the forecourt, Nicole was running to and fro like a mad woman in the back.

How he wished he was recording this. He found, however, using a recording device divorced you from the events. It put you behind the lens, rather than immersing yourself in the moment.

And to catch a serial killer, you had to be immersed.

Take the tennis pro on the other side of the complex. That guy was clearly banging each of his “students.” And they were paying him for the privilege. This tennis pro gig was really just a front for his gigolo business. Did the women pay him like a trick? No, probably not. But he didn’t buy that Rolex himself. Or that three-hundred-dollar haircut. Those were all “gifts” from his appreciative clients. But nobody ever got Rolexes for their service on the court.

Then there was the set of men playing a singles match, desperately trying to hide the fact that they were lovers.

In this day and age, why did they bother trying to be on the down-low? And he should give the guys a heads up that no straight men would high-five quite so often at the net. But sports were the last real bastion of homophobia. That somehow, preferring to put your penis into a vagina made you somehow a better athlete.

Lesbians, however, abounded, but what did you expect when you hung out at a fairly liberal college’s tennis courts?

The threesome playing with Nicole all seemed straight. Which was good. If Rhonda had been serving for the other team, Wallflower’s victim profile would have been way off. He so far had chosen only straight victims.

Watching the game, Kent felt more and more certain that he was watching Wallflower’s next victim playing out on the court.

* * *

Nicole nearly missed the cross-court backhand as she thought she caught something out of the corner of her eye. Was that someone watching them from the tree line? The courts backed up to a wooded area, a perfect place to be able to observe but have a concealed getaway.

Fortunately, her racket connected with the ball and it was over the net and someone else’s problem. The hairs that were up on the back of her neck were her problem, though. Kent lectured frequently regarding that sixth sense of being able to know when someone was watching you.

They had worked on it for months, trying to hone Nicole’s ability to pick up a stalker. Right now, her Spidey-Sense was jangling like crazy.

The closest she could equate the sensation with was actually the feeling of all those flies swarming her at the gravesite. There was something sickly about the attention. As if the person watching wanted to crawl underneath her skin and stay there.

Vaguely nauseated, Nicole hit the ball again, charging to the right. Was her stomach doing a topsy-turvy due to exhaustion, or a stalker? Normally, when trying to determine if someone was watching her, she and Kent would practice sitting at a café or something.

Nicole could clear her thoughts, concentrate. Here? She was running around like crazy, grunting at each hit. Could she still trust her instincts, or was her mind playing tricks on her?

After everything that had happened recently, Nicole would not be surprised. But Rhonda’s life depended on her, so Nicole tried to split her attention between the ball zipping toward her and that almost subconscious concern about the tree line.

Did she just see a metallic flash from the trees? Was Wallflower using binoculars? Was there a weapon?

Nicole had to simply trust Kent for now. Her gun was all the way back at the locker room.

A ball whizzed past Nicole. Rhonda loudly sighed. “Focus, Nicole.”

I would love to, except, you know, I’m trying to save your life, Nicole wanted to say, but bit her lip. Kent was very adamant about Rhonda not knowing so that she acted naturally. And, apparently, being a sore loser came quite naturally to her.

“Sorry,” Nicole said as she swayed back and forth, waiting for the serve.

The dark Grecian goddess must have served at over ninety miles an hour. Nicole blinked and it was past her.

“That’s love-forty,” Rhonda groaned.

The competitor in Nicole was equally frustrated. The cop in Nicole was still concerned, though. Then she looked over to the tree line to find Kent emerging. He shook his head. Obviously, he had been drawn to the same area. Unfortunately, equally clear was the fact that Kent hadn’t found anything.

The only benefit was that the nape of Nicole’s neck finally calmed down. She walked up to Rhonda and gave her an ass slap. “Let’s kick their asses!”

Rhonda smiled. “That’s better.”

* * *

Ruben stopped the car at the curb. Neither he nor Paggie had said a word on the drive to her place. They both obviously needed to process what had happened at brunch.

“I am so sorry,” Ruben said. He needed to say something to fill the silence.

“For what?” Paggie asked. “The fact that Kent said any of that, or that he was uncannily right?’

“Both,” Ruben sighed. Damn the profiler. At least he was sure that Kent and Nicole were going to have some equally uncomfortable conversations today, as well.

“Look,” Paggie said. “If it helps at all, you aren’t my Plan A, either.”

Ruben frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I lived with a guitarist for five years. I was sure he was the one. Then, earlier this spring, he and his band finally got a gig at Coachella. Well, he decided not to come back,” Paggie said, then took a deep breath. “He decided to set up in Los Angeles for his career and all. And maybe some groupies, right?” she said with a pained laugh.

“I really am sorry,” Ruben said.

Paggie shrugged. “So unless you’ve got a leather wrist cuff and nipple ring I don’t know about, you’re my Plan B, as well.”

Ruben chuckled. “No, definitely not.”

Somehow, knowing that Paggie had other life plans actually made him feel better. Also, at brunch, Nicole’s devastating silence had come through pretty clear. She was Kent’s. Voluntarily. Even if the profiler vanished off the planet, Ruben could never fill that crazy void. He needed to accept it.

“So I guess the question is,” Paggie said, “are we really ready to move on with our lives, even if they aren’t the same as we imagined they would be?”

“I guess it is,” Ruben said. It was hard letting go of the dream with Nicole. It had felt so perfect. From his side only, however. “Can you really be happy with a guy without nipple rings and a drug habit?”

“Depends,” Paggie said with a grin. “Can you fall for a girl without a gun and daddy complex?”

Ruben took her hand and kissed the back of it. “Yes, I believe I can.”

Paggie leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek, but he reached up and guided her lips to his. Pushing aside the memory of Nicole’s smell, Ruben kissed Paggie with purpose. Not just a ritualistic goodbye peck. He didn’t hold back.

“Oh my,” Paggie said as she pulled back. “I guess you can.”

“So I’ll see you later?” Ruben said. “With my toothbrush?’

“That will be great,” Paggie replied as she got out of the car.

Feeling better than he had in a while, Ruben pulled away from the curb as Paggie waved him away.

* * *

This could be the best day in Joshua’s life. Seriously. He could barely contain his excitement. First of all, he’d been called back to the university to babysit Rhonda while she studied. So Joshua was on the inside of the case. Way inside.

Nicole nodded to him as she walked by with Rhonda. The younger woman was frowning.

“I’m sure that I just imagined the man,” Rhonda said. “Everyone is making way too big a deal out of this.”

Nicole put her hand on the student’s shoulder. “You need to take your safety very seriously.”

The younger woman, though, seemed to be done with the conversation, as she set her books down on the table to Joshua’s left.

“I will,” she said, although she didn’t seem sincere. “But I’ve got to study now.”

Nicole gave a wan smile. “Alright, but if you need anything, just call.”

As Nicole walked by on her way out, she squeezed Joshua’s shoulder. Take that, Yvent!

Now he had the trifecta of a perfect day. One, he was out in the field. Two, Nicole had touched him. Three, he’d actually scored the slutty library attendant’s phone number.

Like wow. He got to be on a stakeout, then out tonight for a hookup.

Life just didn’t get much better than that. And this was on top of having all the responsibility of sorting through those condoms. He’d drilled down to the condoms without sperm and handed the analysis off to one of the other assistants in the lab. The hard work was done. Now they just had to test the DNA of each condom against the databases. If they were lucky, they could get Kent a viable suspect.

Which took the sting out a little bit of Kent going outside the department for a consult on the pollen. Joshua knew it was that stupid Yvent’s idea, but still, it stung.

But now, Joshua had the opportunity to prove himself. He wanted to work more out in the field, but he needed a detective to give him a reference. And a famous FBI profiler? Even better.

Trying to get his excitement more under control, Joshua looked down at his table. There were action figure collector magazines and Mad Libs all over them. What could he say? He was a Renaissance man. Probably one of the reasons that the librarian chick had given him her number. She must have liked a guy with diverse interests.

Joshua looked over to Rhonda. The girl had her head buried in the books. She was studious. No, she was like boring studious. She studied and studied, then studied some more.

But it was up to him to keep her safe until Nicole and Kent took over later tonight.

Joshua looked down at his skull-and-angel-winged T-shirt. He guessed if the librarian had given him her number while he was wearing it, it would be good enough for a date tonight, right?

CHAPTER 15

Nicole scowled as they walked into the biker bar. “This is not going to count as our date night,” she informed Kent. Why couldn’t he be normal, just for once?

“Didn’t say it was going to,” Kent answered. “However, I will allow you to reserve judgment until after the evening is over.”

Nicole squinted, trying to peer through the smoky, barely lit interior of the bar. The only thing she could make out for sure was a flickering “Budweiser on tap” neon sign.

Beyond that, it was a cloud of smoke and murmurs. The place smelled, well, old. Tired. Decades of smoke and stale beer had permeated the walls.

“So are we stalking another serial killer?” Nicole whispered into his ear.

Kent shook his head. “Although I would not be surprised if a sadist frequented this place, no, we are here to enjoy ourselves.”

“Shouldn’t we be with Rhonda?”

“Joshua has got it covered,” Kent said, then followed up. “Besides, the earliest abduction has been ten o’clock. We’ve got plenty of time to get back before then.”

Kent nodded to the bar. “Besides, they have Austrian light ale and the best buffalo wings in town.”

Looking at the messy counter and dirty plates stacked at the end, Nicole seriously doubted that.

After placing their order, Kent guided them expertly between high bar tables and the multitude of tattooed biker patrons to the pool table. The profiler grabbed a pool stick and began chalking it.

“So, do you play?”

Nicole shrugged. “A little in college.”

“Alright then,” the profiler said. “Let the best player win.”

* * *

Kent racked the balls as Nicole prepped her stick. She seemed pretty comfortable with that chalk. She looked beautiful, of course, as well. Even though she was dressed about as casual as you could get, in skinny jeans and a well-fitted white T-shirt. The clothes suited her figure well. Nothing flashy, but oh, so sexy.

Especially when she leaned over, lining up her opening shot. He had a perfect cleavage view from the other side of the table. Then she pulled back with the stick and hit the ball, hard.

The crack of the break resonated through the bar. A lot of heads turned in their direction. She sank three balls with that break. Two striped and one solid.

That was no lucky shot.

“A little, eh?” Kent challenged.

Nicole shrugged. “Compared to Jeanette Lee, a little is accurate.”

Kent smiled. That was his girl. Very few other players would know the name of the number one female pool champion all through the nineties.

“Number ten in the side pocket,” Nicole called. With a finessed tap, the ten ball rolled right into the pocket. The thunk as it landed told Kent that he was about to be sharked, and he thought he liked how that felt.

She chalked her cue again, walking around the table, checking angles, tilting her head, causing her hair to spread out over her shoulder. Kent wasn’t the only one noticing. They had gathered a fair number of spectators.

“Fourteen ball, corner pocket,” Nicole stated, nodding to the ball. The only problem? The one ball was right in front of it. How the hell was she going to get around that solid to get her striped into the pocket?

Sitting up on the side of the table, Nicole raised her pool stick nearly vertical, then hit the ball on the side. It jumped off the table, leaping over the solid ball, then rolled into the pocket.

A smattering of clapping came from all around them.

Kent put a twenty down on the corner of the table. “That’s if you can control the table the whole time.”

Nicole smiled as she indicated to the table. “Twelve ball banked to the side pocket.”

The shot seemed crazy. The banking angle was nearly one hundred twenty degrees, and the ball would have to pass exactly between two other balls. There was probably only a few millimeters leeway.

Yet, with a tap of her stick, the ball banked, threaded the needle, then made it into the side pocket. Another round of applause.

More money went into the pile at the corner of the table.

As Nicole passed Kent, she bumped him with her hip. “How do you think I paid for college?”

* * *

Joshua got up to stretch his legs. There were only so many Mad Libs you could do while trying to insert the word “poopy.” He needed to prime his pump. Joshua walked through the maze of tables and came up behind Rhonda.

Not too close. He’d studied Kent’s book very, very closely. He knew how sensitive women, and especially single women alone, were to strangers. Joshua didn’t want to scare her. They needed her acting as normal as possible.

As bait for a serial killer, of course. Other people might have problems with that. Not Joshua. This was all part of the course.

He was close enough, though, to look over Rhonda’s shoulder. She was studying inorganic chemistry. Just looking at all of the diagrams and charts, Joshua’s head began to spin. How he passed that class back in his undergrad days, he would never know. He never wanted to see an equilibrium equation ever again.

Shaking his head, he noticed the naughty librarian staring at him. Did she think he was checking out Rhonda? He popped off a little wink to let her know he only had eyes for her. Who wouldn’t want to kiss those bright red lips?

Goth-lite was his wheelhouse.

Wait. Was there movement over by the exit? A shadow passed a stack of books. That was definitely someone over there. And it didn’t seem like a student. Otherwise, they would have just walked out from the stacks. Someone was lurking back there.

Joshua couldn’t go straight at him, though. He had to be as stealthy and as patient as the stalker. A little thrill went down Joshua’s spine. Was he really about to track down Wallflower? Maybe he’d get mentioned at the press conference. How awesome would that be? Standing up there at the podium when the police chief announced the end to the reign of terror…

But he couldn’t think like that. He had to catch the guy first.

* * *

Nicole walked around the table again. This last shot seemed downright impossible. So impossible that there were probably several hundred dollars on the corner of the table saying that she couldn’t do it.

That would only make this victory all the sweeter. She was down to the eight ball. She either sank the ball after running the table all night, or she lost. It was that simple. And she played by the rules that the eight ball couldn’t even touch another ball on its way to the pocket.

Which was slightly inconvenient, since there were two balls in the way of that corner pocket. She could see the look of satisfaction on Kent’s face. To lose without ever getting to hit a ball, that was going to sting the profiler’s ego.

They had attracted quite the crowd. As a matter of fact, everyone in the bar, including the bartender, was gathered around to watch this—hopefully—last shot. The only person not in attendance was a biker with a long handlebar mustache. He wore traditional biker leather gear with fringe on his sleeves. The guy looked way too serious to be a fanboy at the pool table. It looked like he was nursing a whiskey, neat.

But back to the pool table. She really should just pass the shot off and avoid a scratch and instant defeat. But that’s not how Nicole rolled.

Instead, she got down to business. She traced the path with the tip of her stick. “Double bank shot into the corner pocket.”

“You are kidding, right?” Kent said.

“Nope,” Nicole answered. She set her splayed fingers up, sliding the stick in and out, getting up the courage to take the shot. Laser-focused, Nicole hit the ball. It hit the side at just the right angle and bounced off, heading in a new direction. It missed the number three ball by a hair, then hit the other side of the table. It still had enough velocity to zip across the table. It hit the pocket at an angle, though, then bounced against the pocket three or four times like a pinball, then finally dropped into the pocket.

A whoop went up around her. Kent was even smiling. Nicole took a little bow, then got out the rack. “Anyone else want to play me?” she asked as she grabbed all the cash on the corner of the table and tucked it into her back pocket.

Surprisingly there weren’t any takers.

As the crowd dispersed, Kent kissed her on the cheek. “Congratulations. And thank you.”

“For what?” Nicole asked as she picked up one of the buffalo wings. Taking a bite of the spicy hot wing coated in the cool ranch dip, she realized that the profiler was right, they were the best wings in town.

“For identifying that loner over in the corner. I’ll get his name later and run it.”

“So this was a surveillance gig,” Nicole shot back.

“Of course it was. Did you really think I’d bring you here romantically?”

“Since I don’t have a lot of information on what you consider romantic, yes I did.”

Kent shook his head. “Oh, ye of little faith. No, I’ve been staking out this bar for months, but couldn’t isolate anyone being antisocial. I needed the feminine touch.”

“You could have just told me that.”

Again, the profiler shook his head. “The observer effect occurs.”

Nicole sighed. She’d heard this before. The phrase originally came from physics—however, Kent applied it to investigations. “If the person knows they are being observed, they change their behavior.”

“Exactly,” Kent said, giving her another kiss on the cheek. “Would you really have been so showy and bold had you known a serial killer might be lurking nearby?”

No, she probably wouldn’t have. She would have been worried that she was broadcasting her intentions and held back. Nicole really hated it when Kent was right. She took a sip of the pale ale—he was correct about how smooth the finish on the beer was.

Then her phone vibrated on her hip. She snapped the phone free of its holster and read the text from Joshua.

“Possible stalker spotted. Going in for a look.”

Kent read the message over her shoulder. “Did I not tell him to observe only?”

“We’d better get over there,” Nicole said.

“Now.”

* * *

Joshua paused at the edge of the bookshelf. If he took another step forward, he would be exposed in the aisle. But, at some point, he needed to see if the guy was really there, or if it was a figment of his Mad Lib-scrambled imagination.

Finally, after taking a deep breath, Joshua stepped from behind the rack of books and into the back aisle. He looked up and down the passage, but no one was there. However, he heard the side door click shut. The guy must have gone out that way.

Joshua rushed to the door, opening it and stepping into the stairwell. Was that a scuff above him? Didn’t serial killer types usually go down? Like into the basement? However, this one may be smarter than that. If he went up, he could access the bridge between the library and the dorm block on level three.

Dang it. He couldn’t lose the guy, not after he’d texted Nicole.

Charging up the steps, Joshua made good time. The guy couldn’t have gotten very far. He paused at the third floor landing, cocking an ear to hear if the door had just shut. But there was nothing.

Joshua opened the third floor door and looked out over the glass-enclosed walkway. No one was there.

Had the guy gone up even further? What was his plan? The roof? The buildings were close enough together—maybe he planned to jump over. Whichever, Joshua needed to stay on the trail.

Climbing the steps, he passed the fourth floor landing. No activity there. He went past the fifth. There were only two more floors to go.

The sixth floor was equally boring. Then he was at the roof’s door.

This was some bad mojo here. Joshua wasn’t all that fond of heights, and there were plenty of places to hide on a roof. How many rooftop crime scenes had he processed?

Would he be a part of another one?

You couldn’t run with the likes of Kent and Nicole and not take a few risks, so Joshua put his hand on the door and pushed the bar to open it. The door swung out, way too fast.

The stalker must have grabbed the handle on the other side and jerked it open. Joshua stumbled forward, right into a bladed weapon. The sting of the puncture wound made him yelp. The injury was into his flank, though, so it shouldn’t be life threatening.

Joshua reached out and grabbed the skinny man, flinging him to the side. The blade slipped out of Joshua’s little belly fat and dropped onto the gravel rooftop. The guy wouldn’t stay down, though. He launched at Joshua again, slamming into him and knocking them both to the ground.

They wrestled there for a moment, until Joshua saw his opportunity and guided them toward the thin blade. Once Joshua got his hands on it, it felt like nothing more than a letter opener. Not exactly the bold weapon for a serial killer, but perhaps it was a weapon of opportunity?

It didn’t matter. What did matter was the fact that Joshua had it in his hand. The stalker had a deadly grip on Joshua’s wrist, though, preventing him from bringing the opener around and using it on the stalker.

The guy elbowed Joshua in the nose. Dang, that hurt. Almost worse than the stab wound. That was okay, two could play at that game. Kicking out, Joshua nailed the stalker in the kneecap. That gave him just enough leverage to wrestle his hand away from the stalker.

Unfortunately, that appeared to be a ploy on the stalker’s part. He slammed his forehead into Joshua’s. He literally saw stars. When his vision cleared, the guy was straddling Joshua with the letter opener raised above his head, ready to strike.

“Police!” someone shouted. “Put it down!”

Joshua craned his neck to find Nicole aiming at the stalker.

The guy’s beady eyes flickered back and forth. Sweat rolled off of him. A drop splashed into Joshua’s eye. Gross.

The guy didn’t stop. “Maybe it’s better this way,” he said as he raised the knife higher.

A shot rang out, loud and clear, and then red spread across the stalker’s grungy T-shirt. His mouth opened as if he was going to say something, then blood ran past his lips and he tilted over backward.

Nicole and Kent ran up. Nicole kneeled next to him. “Joshua, are you alright?”

He nodded toward his side. “Just a flesh wound.”

Nicole opened her phone. “Badge number sixteen eighty-four. We need a bus at the university library, roof level.” She snapped her phone closed. “They’ll be right here, Joshua,” she said as she picked up his hand and held it.

Crap, he’d get shanked any day if it got him this kind of Nicole attention.

Kent knelt next to the stalker. “Damn it, we needed him alive.” He felt for a pulse. “It’s there, but barely.”

“Look, Joshua’s life was in imminent danger, yet I only shot him once instead of three times like I’m supposed to, so let’s celebrate my restraint.”

Kent snorted and held off the guy’s wounds. “Joshua there would have taken another one for the team, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d like to think so,” Joshua said, then flinched. That wound, although small, still hurt like a mo’.

“Hang on,” Nicole said as sirens sounded in the distance.

Oh, Joshua was going to do just that.

CHAPTER 16

Ruben rushed into the emergency room. He found the first nurse he could find. “I heard Detective Usher was brought in?”

Nicole came from the visitor’s area. “No, Ruben, it was Joshua. He got stabbed in the side. And I had to shoot the stalker from the library.”

“Is it the Wallflower killer?” Ruben asked, trying not to show exactly how relieved he was that Nicole had not been the victim.

Nicole shrugged. “Kent just looked at the guy, said, ‘he’s got a goatee,’ and went off to the cafeteria.”

Yep, that sounded like Kent.

“Do you need me to track down any information on the guy?”

Nicole shook her head. “He had his wallet on him. He’s been arrested numerous times on Peeping Tom charges and stalking in the third degree.”

“That’s a big leap to serial killer.”

Nicole frowned. “I know. He really doesn’t fit the profile at all.”

Not that profiles were one hundred percent. Even Kent made mistakes, but with this audience, Ruben didn’t bother to bring that up.

“What’s Kent’s plan?”

“The guy is in surgery and expected to be out in two hours. Once he’s awake, Kent wants to question him.”

“But I thought that Kent didn’t think that he was Wallflower?”

“No, but Kent thinks that if the guy was stalking Rhonda, he might have noticed Wallflower.”

That made sense, in a weird kind of way.

“Who is on Rhonda right now?” Ruben asked.

“At this point, we couldn’t exactly keep the truth from her any longer. She’s got two uniformed police officers on her now until we catch Wallflower.”

“Good.” Ruben was never a fan of the “let’s leave the victim out there as bait” plan. Although it was one of Kent’s favorites.

Nicole sat down hard on the cold plastic seats that lined the waiting room wall.

“Did you get cleared?” Ruben asked. How Kent could have left Nicole was beyond him. She had just shot someone then was hauled into the shooting board. If they found that she used excessive force, she could lose her gun and badge and end up on suspension for who knew how long.

Nicole nodded. “I already gave my statement. They said they would have a ruling by Monday. Until then, no weapon.”

“So administrative duty only?” Ruben asked.

She nodded again, hanging her head down. This was never easy for anyone. No matter what the media made it look like, shooting someone else always took its toll. Then, to have your actions scrutinized over and over again just made you relive the horrible experience ad nauseam.

“I’m sure you’ll get cleared,” Ruben said, trying to reassure her, but nothing but that final report clearing you could ever make you feel better.

Again, where the hell was Kent in this equation?

* * *

Kent sat in the empty cafeteria. Even the stale donuts had been picked over. No one had been down here the entire time Kent had been in a light meditative state. With the low lighting, along with the gentle hum of the refrigerator units, this was the perfect place to re-center himself.

So much had happened in a relatively short time-span. For one, he had probably identified a new serialist at the biker bar. That one, though, he was going to have to table for the moment. Second, this new suspect had not just emerged, but had attacked Joshua, forcing Nicole to shoot him. Nicole had been hauled away for an inquest while other detectives searched the attacker’s apartment.

It turned out his name was Reginald Hardy. Reggie, for short. A very interesting guy. Not Wallflower, of course, but interesting.

Kent had taken the time the man was in surgery to put all of this new information in some kind of order in his head. While he wished that his process was instantaneous, it really was more akin to a percolating system. The information went in and Kent’s subconscious sorted through it all, allowing only the pertinent facts to rise to the surface.

While Reggie was not Wallflower, Kent felt certain that he held vital clues to Wallflower’s identity.

“Kent?” a soft voice called out from across the room. The click of her low heels and the faint smell of jasmine let Kent know that it was Nicole.

He opened his eyes to find her looking like a vision, crossing the cafeteria, her hair floating around her face. Some women’s walk just naturally created their own wind machine. Nicole was one of them. She looked a little sad and worried, which only made him love her more.

Nicole needed to learn to worry only about the things that would still matter in five years. This little shooting incident would blow over in a few weeks’ time. If he asked her five years from now the exact date of this inquiry, Nicole would probably not even remember the month.

“Reggie is out of recovery,” Nicole said. “As long as we are ‘gentle,’ the doctor said we could question him.”

Kent’s lips spread in a smile. Right. Gentle.

“Of course,” Kent replied.

Yeah, Nicole didn’t look like she believed him, either.

* * *

Nicole led the way into the hospital room. Technically, she really shouldn’t be here, but Ruben was here to represent the department, and Lord knew he didn’t want to be in here with Kent alone.

Reggie was hooked up to half a dozen machines, all of which were beeping along happily in the green zone. She allowed herself a single sigh of relief. She had no doubt that she had acted properly, but it certainly was better to be looking at a non-fatal shooting than a fatal one.

Kent went around to the far side of the bed and shook Reggie’s shoulder. The man’s eyes drifted open, looking sleepy and unfocused.

“Reggie,” Kent said, shaking him again.

“Yeah?” he answered groggily.

“We need to talk about your little extracurricular activities,” Kent said. This time, Reggie’s eyes dilated and he pointed to her with a finger covered in a pulse oximeter probe. “She shot me.”

Kent patted the man’s shoulder. “Yes, so maybe you should pay attention and answer my questions.”

“Shouldn’t I have a lawyer?” Reggie asked.

“Of course, if you formally ask for one, we will be obliged to get one for you,” Kent said, then leaned over and whispered into Reggie’s ear. Nicole could barely hear him. “But we both know you want to be on my good side.”

Reggie gulped once, then nodded.

“You were stalking Rhonda for how long?”

“I only watch them,” Reggie answered.

“Yes, I understand, but how long did you watch Rhonda?”

“A couple of weeks, but I only watch.”

“Thou doth protest too much?” Kent asked. “Because we both know that you don’t just watch. The police found your colorful thong collection. Just watching wasn’t cutting it anymore, was it Reggie?”

The heart monitor above the Peeping Tom beeped faster and faster. “What do you want from me?”

“We believe someone else was watching Rhonda,” Kent explained. “And we think you might know who that was.”

“I only watch them,” Reggie repeated.

“Yes, yes,” Kent murmured. “We know that’s what you want to believe.”

“It’s true.”

“Except it’s not, Reggie. We know that you broke into at least a half a dozen girls’ dorm rooms and apartments and stole their underwear. You were even getting brazen enough to do it with them in the bedroom. So you can quit the ‘I only watch them’ mantra.”

Reggie’s heart rate spiked, turning his sensor a bright yellow. Nicole did not want that going into the red.

“Kent. Gentle, remember?”

* * *

Ah, yes. Gentle. Kent stood back up and moved to the foot of the bed. He took Reggie’s chart off the hook and pretended to read it, giving the guy a moment to realize that there was someone way smarter than himself in the room. The kid clearly had been caught for being a Peeping Tom before. Unfortunately, Reggie was evolving, the “just watching” phase of his obsession long over.

“You do realize that, beside the malignant stalking charges, they also have you for breaking and entering, along with theft and attempted murder of a law enforcement official,” Kent said. “Add all those charges together, and you’ll be going away for a very long time.”

“But if I help you, what?”

Kent shook his head. “Oh no, there’s nothing I can do about the total number of years that you’re going to do. But imagine the difference if you served that time in a maximum-security prison versus a minimum-security prison.

Reggie’s eyes scanned back and forth. He was imagining it, vividly.

“Now imagine if no one knew about the Peeping Tom charges at the prison. Everyone would recognize you only for your upper charge of attempted murder. And you’ve got a bullet wound to show off. That would give you some serious cache in a minimum security prison.”

“I was just protecting myself,” Reggie said. “I didn’t know that guy was a cop.”

“Oh,” Kent murmured. “The only problem with that is that you stole that letter opener from the librarian’s desk on the first floor, then ambushed Joshua on the roof. I think the jury is going to see it as a premeditated attack. And the judge? The judge is going to give you the max. They don’t like to see law enforcement attacked.”

Reggie closed his eyes. “I’m tired.”

“I bet you are,” Kent said as he urged everyone out of the room. “But my offer to intervene expires once I walk out this door. Twenty-five to life in minimum security without all of that wimpy Peeping Tom stuff on your rap sheet. Instead, you’ll be in for attempted murder of a cop. Think about it.”

Kent followed Nicole and Ruben as they exited the room. Just before Kent’s foot crossed the threshold, Reggie spoke up.

“There was someone,” Reggie said as Kent turned around. “I’ve got a camera and memory stick with about a thousand pictures of Rhonda.”

“Were you at the tennis courts this morning?” Nicole asked.

“No,” Reggie said. “I had a women’s studies midterm all morning long.”

Well, if that wasn’t ironic. But Kent understood the look of concern on Nicole’s face. If it wasn’t Reggie in those trees, it must have been Wallflower.

“The police didn’t find any camera or memory card,” Ruben announced.

Reggie shrugged, then winced. “I threw the camera away in the garbage can on the third floor near the staircase, and the memory stick is on my desk.”

“They searched there,” Ruben pressed.

“There is a Yoda action figure next to my computer screen. You pull the head off. It contains a memory stick.”

Ruben nodded and flipped open his phone as he walked out of the room. He would take care of the search and seizure of the camera and memory stick.

“Don’t get too excited, though,” Reggie said. “I never got a picture of his face. Lots of shoulders and shoes. You’re still going to help me though, right?”

As much as it galled him to help a rapist in training, Kent did make a promise. “I will let the DA and judge know that you cooperated.”

That seemed to be enough for Reggie, and he laid his head back and closed his eyes. His heart rate returned to normal.

* * *

Joshua stared at the LED results screen for a good two minutes before it really registered what it said. He’d found a match to the DNA in the pre-ejaculate condoms. But who it was, was blowing Joshua’s mind.

So he’d run it again. And again. He probably would have run it until he didn’t have any sample left, except for the fact that he needed to leave enough fluid for the defense team to run their own independent tests.

Hands trembling, Joshua picked up his phone and dialed Detective Usher’s number.

“Hello?” Nicole answered.

“Hey, it’s Joshua,” he said, sounding stupid.

“Yeah, I’ve got caller ID,” Nicole added.

Okay, now he felt even more stupid. “Look, this is going to sound just weird, but I got a hit on our condom samples.”

“And who is it?”

“I’ve double- and triple-checked the findings,” Joshua warned her, knowing the grilling he was going to get once he gave over the name.

“Yes, Joshua, I believe you, now who is it?”

With a gulp, Joshua answered. “Mitch Pederson.”

“The newscaster?” Nicole asked.

“Yes.”

“The one who was at the crime scene the other day?” Nicole pressed.

“Yes,” Joshua answered.

“And you are sure?” Nicole pressed.

Jeez, why did she think he’d done that long wind-up? “Yes.”

“And pre-ejaculate only?”

Joshua might be a little eccentric, but he was accurate. “Yes.”

“That’s great, Joshua. That might be the break in the case we needed. I will let Kent know.”

The line cut off abruptly. It felt like someone had turned off the sun. But Joshua had captured enough in his heart to light his darkest hours.

“Are you going to clean the instruments?” McGregor asked. “Or is that part of your settlement, too?”

Like he said. Enough to light even another four hours with McGregor.

* * *

“No,” Ruben said, actually stomping his foot.

Nicole looked to Kent. If she was annoyed by Ruben’s attitude, she could only imagine that Kent was planning to kill the detective.

“We need her to go in alone. No cuffs. Before he lawyers up,” Kent insisted. “I’m shocked a lawyer from the station isn’t already down here. We have to stop circle-jerking and get on with this before it is too late.”

“I don’t like it,” Ruben rumbled.

“You don’t have to,” Nicole said. “I’m going in.”

Before he could protest any more, Nicole reached out and turned the knob, opening the interrogation room door and walking in. If she stayed out there any longer, Ruben would just find another excuse for her not to go in alone.

“Be strong,” Kent said. “It will make him uncomfortable.”

Leaving the men behind, Nicole flashed a friendly smile at the reporter. They’d had enough interaction over the years that he wouldn’t find that disingenuous. Mitch smiled back. It was iridescent. Forget the annoying fluorescent lights. It was as if heaven had just opened up and spilled its precious light onto her.

She had to stop in her tracks to shake off the feeling that Adonis himself had blessed her. He was a suspect like any other. That cleft chin and perfect dimples were nothing more than a tool that he had used to get close to his victims.

Nicole dropped the case file onto the metal table from waist height. It hit hard, the sound echoing in the small room. She pulled the chair out, scraping the metal legs against the cement floor. Mitch winced. Good. She needed him off balance.

She sat down across from the reporter, making sure that her earbud was properly seated. Nicole knew that Kent would have something to say during this interview. His lack of protesting that Mitch couldn’t be Wallflower spoke volumes. This man might actually be their killer.

“Mitch,” Nicole started. “You’ve been around enough investigations—you know how they go.” The man who would be a god nodded, so Nicole continued. “I am not going to pussyfoot around with you.”

“Thank you,” Mitch said.

Men always thought they wanted the truth, but when it hit them? Not so much.

“We’ve got your DNA in a used condom from the roof where the prostitute Trudy fell to her death.”

That got his tanning-bed golden face to go sheet white.

He cleared his throat before he spoke, Nicole guessed to try to clear the shock from his tone. It didn’t work.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Would you like to explain?”

“If I’d rather not?” Mitch said.

Nicole cocked her head, opening the file, laying out the crime scene photos. Not the original ones, but the ones after the maggot/fly invasion. “This isn’t about solicitation, Mitch. This is about Wallflower. We checked with the station. You have no alibi with them for the times of the abductions-murders-body dumps.”

“Whoa. Okay, maybe I use prostitutes, but kill anyone? No. Just no.”

“You do realize that I can’t just take your word for it?”

Mitch leaned forward. “I’d be under arrest if you actually had any proof. So let’s not get ahead of yourself, detective.”

* * *

So it turned out that their suspect was a bit of a bully. No great surprise there. When cornered, he turned all that self-rage out onto the world. Time to take him down a notch or two.

“Ask him why he uses a prostitute.”

The guy was good looking, wealthy. He either liked the power, or had some other, more personal reason. Kent was betting on the latter.

Nicole pointed to the picture of Trudy—actually, it was a mug shot of Trudy. “Why did you go to her?” Nicole asked.

Mitch shrugged. “I don’t have the time or inclination for a relationship. It’s just easier.”

“Really?” Kent said into the microphone. “Because we’ve heard that Trudy was quite the nurturer. High-risk sex, but she’d cuddle afterward.”

As Nicole repeated this statement, Mitch shifted in his seat. A tell. That implication bothered him. Which meant they needed to follow it all the way.

“Why, out of all the prostitutes in the city, would you seek out Trudy?”

Mitch’s answer seemed well rehearsed. “Someone referred me.”

“Who?” Nicole asked without prompting.

“I’m not telling you so that you can arrest him.”

Nicole smiled. “We have no interest in him. Tell me, and he won’t face charges.”

Caught in the lie, Mitch shifted in his seat again. His feet pointed to the door. He wanted the hell out of Dodge.

“You are a big strapping guy, you must be packing some heat,” Kent said.

Nicole looked over her shoulder.

“Just say it.”

Looking none too happy, Nicole repeated his words. Not quite as sharp as Kent would like, but it got the job done. Mitch frowned.

“What has that got to do with anything?”

Oh, everything.

“You didn’t answer the question,” Nicole said, taking the interrogation into her own hands. Kent had given her the in—now it was her chance to pop the hood on this guy’s psychosis. She glanced down at his feet. “Those are size thirteen, aren’t they? That would make you at least five inches. Maybe six?”

Oh, that got Mitch squirming. “I really don’t see what this has to do with poor Trudy’s death.”

“Not much,” Nicole said. “But it has everything to do with Wallflower. We’ve been banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out why he is so useless with women. Why he is so sexually ashamed.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Nicole smiled again as his heel started to bounce against the floor. “We spoke with Trudy’s roommate. She didn’t have a pimp because she liked her freedom. She liked to hang out with her tricks. She actually thought of them as people, rather than johns.”

“She was exceptionally kind,” Mitch confirmed.

“About what?” Nicole probed. “We are going to find out, Mitch. You might as well tell me. Once I go to her roommate with your name, she’s going to tell me.”

Mitch’s eyes darted back and forth, his hands wringing in his lap. If he’d been a regular of Trudy’s, her roommate would indeed know all about it and, more importantly, would tell them.

Mitch must have known that, as well. He sighed heavily and leaned back.

“Just promise me this won’t get out.”

“That depends on if it has anything to do with the murders.”

“It most certainly does not,” Mitch insisted. “I am only asking for discretion here.”

* * *

Nicole knew they were looking for a high-functioning sociopath, but Mitch seemed sincere. He wasn’t flashing those dimples anymore. His features seemed heavier somehow. His eyes didn’t twinkle quite so blue.

“Why, because you are transgender?” Kent asked in her ear. Even though it was horribly un-politically correct, Nicole repeated it. “Did you use to be Michelle?”

Mitch shook his head. “I won’t tell you until I have some reassurance.”

“We only care about Wallflower,” Nicole reassured him.

“I don’t go to prostitutes because of some bizarre deep psychological reason. I go because…” Mitch gulped, looked to the one-way mirror. “How many people are out there?”

Nicole wasn’t about to lie. Not when it seemed they were so close to the truth. “Probably four or five. But they are after Wallflower, and won’t breathe a word of what you tell me unless it is connected to the killings.”

Finally he sighed. “I go to prostitutes because I have micro-penis.”

“I’m sorry?” Nicole said. She’d never heard that word before.

“It is a genetic anomaly. Normally, you would be correct—the length of digits in particular should be related to penile length. In my case, it is not. Definitely not.”

“I’m sorry. I still don’t think I understand what you are saying.”

“My penis is 2.5 inches long, erect.”

“Oh,” Nicole said as Kent chuckled in her ear.

Mitch waved her off. “We realized something was wrong in middle school and they gave me testosterone injections, but since my testes were fine, it didn’t help. Then they gave me growth hormone, which made me tall, but again, didn’t help my phallus. After so many humiliating exchanges in college with woman, I turned to pros. They don’t laugh. They actually appreciate it. Trudy used to say, less mileage on the odometer.”

Nicole sat there for a moment trying to process everything that had just been revealed. The most important question was did this make him more or less likely to be Wallflower?

While obviously embarrassed to have to tell them this most personal detail, he seemed very self-aware, which didn’t come across like a serial killer would.

“Tell me why there was only pre-ejaculate in the condom,” Kent prompted. He clearly had recovered faster than she had.

Nicole repeated the question.

“Trudy was on her period, and I could see that she wasn’t enjoying herself, so I stopped.”

“That’s awfully considerate,” Nicole said.

“Like I said, the girls like me. I am not there to act out any perversion. I just need to fulfill my needs without being laughed at.” Mitch put the crime scene photos neatly back into their folder. “Do you know what they used to do with my kind?” Mitch asked.

“No,” Nicole answered honestly.

“They would perform gender reassignment surgery. They would neuter us and give us a vagina whether or not we wanted it.”

“That’s horrible,” Nicole said.

“My mother refused to let them,” Mitch said. “She wanted me to live my life as a man, as I was born to be,” Mitch said. “I would never betray her trust and respect by killing anyone, and especially not a woman. I love women. I don’t kill them.”

* * *

“And Trudy’s roommate is going to back you up on that?” Nicole asked.

Oh, this was just too good, Kent thought. Micro-penis. He hadn’t worked a case like that for a while. All those girls that kept insisting that size didn’t matter were exactly the ones to humiliate someone like Mitch. That could really scar a psyche.

Mitch, though, seemed calmer, more at ease as he answered Nicole. “Yes, Zalonda will confirm the fact that I treated Trudy with respect. After the roof, I usually took Trudy to a nice hotel and let her order all the room service she wanted. Zalonda would many times join her for breakfast.”

Well, that kind of took the wind out of their sexually repressed serial killer sails.

“Does he have any kind of alibi for the murders?” Kent asked.

Nicole repeated it and Mitch nodded. “I found another regular,” he said. “I was with her most of those nights. It’s Tamara. Just ask her.”

An alibi. It seemed to be a good alibi. So while he would love to dive into Mitch’s issues, he wasn’t their guy. It was time to cut him loose. Unfortunately.

“Nic, you can come on out.”

“We aren’t even going to check his alibi first?” Nicole questioned.

But Kent could see from Mitch’s body language that he was telling the truth. There wasn’t a speck of concern in his expression. Tamara was going to alibi him out, that was for certain.

“Nah. Have the unis check it out, but you’re done.”

Quickly, she informed Mitch that he was free to go and opened the door. Mitch walked out, his head held high. Kent actually kept from making any jokes at the man’s expense. He’d been through enough.

Ruben walked back into the room with a frown. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Which is?” Kent asked.

“They found another body.”

“Rhonda?” Nicole asked, her hand flying to her chest.

“No,” Ruben said. “But you aren’t going to like it.”

* * *

Nicole skidded to a stop and jumped out of the Mustang. Kent was right behind her. Ruben pulled his SUV to the curb, as well. She had to see the body for herself.

Instead of greeting the myriad of support staff surrounding the crime scene, Nicole blew past them, lifting the crime scene tape without even registering with the officer on the watch. She rushed to the body just as McGregor was turning her over.

With a gasp, Nicole stumbled back. No, it couldn’t be.

“Do you know her?” McGregor asked.

“Yes,” Nicole said, holding her arms around her waist. “I played tennis against her this morning.”

Ruben stepped up next to her. “Looks like her name is Emilyn Stanford.”

The flesh of the young woman’s belly undulated. McGregor flew back faster than Nicole had ever seen him move before.

“Someone get a tarp over her before she blows.”

Nicole turned on her heel and ran from the scene. Not because of the imminent maggots, but the very present guilt.

Kent met her at the crime scene tape and caught her by the waist as she tried to get past.

“Whoa there,” he said, pulling her into his embrace.

She pushed away and headed back to her car.

“Nic,” Kent said, keeping pace with her. “It’s not your fault.”

“Of course it is,” she snapped back. “I should have protected her. We were wasting time with Mitch while this…” Nicole indicated to the body. “This was happening.”

“No,” Kent said, grabbing her by the arm and jerking her around to face him. “We should have protected her, but you know what, this is not an exact science. You know that.”

“I was there with her,” Nicole retorted. “I shook her hand over the net. I should have known.”

“You don’t think I feel this way after each murder? That I should have been faster, smarter, braver?”

Nicole didn’t know what he felt, let alone how she felt. She just wanted to get away, as far away as possible from this feeling of someone clutching her heart with sharp nails.

Kent pulled her into his arms again. “Nic, you can’t let this get under your skin.”

She used her hand to push away from him. “We joked about her backhand. She was alive this morning.”

Kent nodded. “And Nic, I should have realized that Rhonda was way too aggressive on the court for Wallflower.”

“Whereas Emilyn was more passive on the back court,” Nicole stated.

“Exactly,” Kent said. “I’m not even sure if Wallflower wasn’t at the tennis court for Rhonda, but then found Emilyn. We might never know. All we do know is that we were close. Really close. We are within an arm’s reach of him. You have to take comfort that Emilyn’s murder will help save another woman.”

“You might be able to,” Nicole said, leaving his arms completely. “I need to get away.”

Kent’s eyebrows pulled together as she got into her car. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole said honestly. “I just need to get away.”

“But what about the case?” Kent asked.

“I’m officially off of it until at least Monday,” Nicole said, never so glad to be on forced administrative leave.

Kent’s expression grew even more concerned. She patted his hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you later at home.”

“Later, then?” Kent asked.

“Yes,” Nicole said, then chuckled a sad chuckle. “Now get back on the job, Harbinger.”

With a half-hearted wave, Kent stepped back onto the sidewalk, allowing Nicole to rev the engine, feeling the power of the one hundred horsepower engine. She squealed away from the curb, trying to put Emilyn and her guilt long behind her.

* * *

Ruben watched Nicole peel away and Kent walk back toward the crime scene. He stopped the profiler at the yellow tape. “One hundred feet, remember?”

The profiler stopped, frowned, then looked back over his shoulder.

“She going to be alright?” Ruben asked.

“Yeah,” Kent breathed out. “She just needs some room to figure out she’s just human. Not Supercop.”

See? That was the difference between Ruben and Kent. Right now, if he were dating Nicole, he’d be in his SUV, running sirens and lights trying to catch up with her.

Long ago, during a fight, Nicole had told Ruben that she felt suffocated with him, and with Kent, she felt like she was flying free. He’d never really understood what she meant until now.

Ruben’s instinct was to protect Nicole, even from herself. Kent’s instinct was to trust her. Put that way, Ruben hated that Kent was actually the more mature one on this. Could he change, though? Did he want to change to be more like Kent?

Um, hell no. So maybe Paggie was the right fit for him. She’d not only appreciate him driving after her sirens blaring, she would kind of expect it. Maybe that’s what relationships were about. Not who was better than whom, but who simply fit better, naturally, with whom.

Kent seemed to shake off his melancholy. “Anything on the pics?”

“Joshua is working on building a mosaic of Wallflower,” Ruben answered.

“Joshua?” Kent asked. “I thought he was in the hospital?”

Ruben shook his head. “The wound didn’t penetrate into the peritoneum, so they released him about an hour ago. He went straight to the lab to help out with the camera and memory stick and finish up with the condoms.”

“Gotta give it to the weirdo, he is dedicated,” Kent said with a chuckle.

The morgue assistant made Ruben’s skin crawl, however even he had to admit Joshua was extremely helpful. Maybe too helpful.

* * *

Joshua was on his third espresso. He needed to jumpstart his brain after the morphine they’d given him at the hospital. Kent needed him. Nicole needed him. Hell, the whole city needed him. He couldn’t be all groggy and high in some bed.

Now he was tired and wired at the same time. Not a great combo.

Not that it didn’t sound nice, but he was running with the big dogs. His days of being stoned just for the hell of it were over.

“What do you have?” Kent asked as he walked in. Most people might be put off that the profiler didn’t engage in small talk or niceties, but Joshua appreciated it. He was no good at all the polite stuff, either.

Joshua nodded to the large screen in front of them. He hit a button and the composite of all the different pictures came up. It formed an image of a man from the back.

“No face?” Kent said.

“Sorry, no,” Joshua said. If he could have delivered a face, he would have, but he couldn’t produce an image that wasn’t on the film. “This is the best that I could do with what Reggie took.”

“Not much to go on,” Ruben said. Always the spoilsport. Joshua could see why Nicole had ditched him for Kent.

“Well, I can tell you the guy is about five-ten. Caucasian. And he buys cheap suits.”

“Basically my profile,” Kent said.

“But look at this,” Joshua said, zooming in on the guy’s left wrist. There was a cufflink. It was the crest of Yale University.

“So he’s a bulldog,” Kent said. “I’m going to need you to cross-reference everyone who graduated, what, from two thousand to twenty-oh-eight?”

“Ahead of you,” Joshua said. “Based on the lack of gray hair and scalp thickness, I age this guy out at twenty-eight to thirty-two. I’m already scouring Yale’s yearbook database for matches.”

Kent grunted, which was the profiler’s equivalent to praise. Or, at least, Joshua hoped so.

“Anything else?” Ruben asked.

Why did the tall detective always make him feel so inadequate? “From the photos, yes. I had them take a fresh nasal swab and will personally take it over to the university in the morning to compare to the others.”

“Alright,” Kent said. “Feels like that’s all we can do tonight.”

He nodded to Ruben. “Tomorrow morning at the station, then?”

Ruben nodded back, then turned to Joshua. “Text me if you find anything else.”

Yeah, right. Like he’d tell Ruben first—but Joshua knew enough not to say that to Ruben’s face. “You got it.”

* * *

Nicole’s eyes burned from un-spilt tears. She really didn’t know if she could do this anymore. She so tried to be just like Kent.—impervious to the deaths, letting them fuel her rather than empty her tank.

She couldn’t get the sight of Emilyn’s awesome backhand out of her mind. Nicole could still feel her sweaty palm in hers as she took the win so graciously. The young woman’s handshake had been firm but kind. No lording the victory over her, or insulting Nicole with some kind of lame, “great game for somebody of your age.”

Did Emilyn’s parents know what an amazing daughter they had raised?

And to have some madman steal all that Emilyn was seemed so incredibly pointless.

Nicole really wanted to go to Emilyn’s parents and express her condolences, but how could she? Not without revealing her guilt. They were bound to ask Nicole how she knew Emilyn. How was she supposed to answer?

“Oh, I met her while protecting another girl, sorry.”

She knew what Kent would say. That if anyone was to blame for Emilyn’s death, it was him. He was the experienced profiler. That it was on his shoulders to have identified Emilyn as Wallflower’s next victim.

But he had been on the outside, looking in. Nicole had been on that court. She had spent nearly two hours with the young woman. She should have known. She’d known that Wallflower was there, watching them. She should have known his interest had shifted.

Those tears that had threatened since she’d heard the news of Emilyn’s death decided to gush out. With blurry vision, Nicole pulled her Mustang to the curb. She sobbed long and hard. Having someone else’s life in her hands no longer felt comfortable. Nicole now felt like, instead of them being safe, she was more likely to bobble it without even realizing it.

She’d walked away from that court feeling proud of playing a pretty damned good game of tennis, rather than worried for Emilyn’s life. How far off the mark could she be?

Finally, the tears and rib-aching sobs stopped—at this point, probably from dehydration.

Where in the hell was she, anyway? Wiping tears away, Nicole looked out the windshield. She didn’t even recognize the neighborhood. How far had she driven?

Then she spotted a bar. O’Malley’s Irish Public Place.

Nicole patted her Mustang’s steering wheel. “Good job,” she told the car.

This was her old haunt when she was on patrol. It was a popular cop bar. She hadn’t been back since she made detective. That was just how it worked. Blues didn’t mix with golds. Detectives had their own bar across town.

How many beers had she nursed here in her first few years on the beat? Each time a domestic violence victim yelled at her for breaking up the fight. Or the kid she’d vouched for with the DA went on to rob another convenience store.

How maudlin she’d been back there. She’d taken all those petty insults to heart. She’d questioned whether she was cut out to be a cop. If only she’d known the true weight of the job, Nicole wouldn’t have given pimps’ insults a second thought.

Where better to drown her sorrows tonight?

Nicole got out of the Mustang, locked her up, and went into the bar.

She would let Kent worry about Wallflower. Tonight, she just wanted to forget.

CHAPTER 17

Kent awoke with a start. Light streamed in through the window. Clearly, he’d forgotten to close the curtains last night when he fell into bed, clothes on. Kent had expected Nicole to awaken him when she came in. He’d changed the password on the security system so that she couldn’t sneak in.

Blinking several times, Kent scanned the bedroom. No Nicole. Was she that much in a funk, that she somehow made it in quietly, then slept on the couch?

Rising, his head complained. It had been several nights since he’d gotten enough sleep. Why was it that you felt worse once you did get some sleep? Not exactly nature’s way of positive feedback.

He flared his nostrils. No aroma of brewing coffee, so the chances that Nicole was in the house were slim to none. That girl liked her java. He raced to the guest room and sneaked a peek, just in case she had slept in, as well.

No Nicole.

He trotted down the stairs, “Nic?”

This was so not like her. She was as steady and constant as the Northern Star. She said that she would come home. Ipso facto, she should be here.

He made it to the main level and rushed into the living room. The couch’s pillows were undisturbed. She hadn’t slept there, either. Getting more and more worried, Kent went into the kitchen. There wasn’t a dish out of place. He checked the trash—no Starbucks cup.

Closing his eyes, he tried to tamp down the growing panic.

If she didn’t come home, where in the hell was she?

* * *

Nicole’s mouth tasted like ass. She hated to be so crude—however, she also had to call it like she tasted it. Her brain felt fuzzy, yet raw. She could barely keep one thought in her mind. Yet it was a big thought.

Where the hell was she?

The last thing she remembered was walking into O’Malley’s bar. No, she remembered ordering a Guinness—then the world went blurry. Nicole felt the ground in which she lay. It was cool to the touch, and grainy. A dirt floor, then. Given the wan light, she must be in a basement of some sort.

Not a great start to her day.

How could she have been abducted and not remember it?

Given the throbbing of her head, she must have been drugged. So was it Wallflower, or not? He didn’t use drugs. Or, at least, not yet. The serialist was evolving at such a rate, using drugs to subdue his victims was not out of the question.

Then her hands flew to her belly. There was one way to find out. Slowly, she lifted her shirt to find four tiny needle marks on her belly.

Gulping air, Nicole tried not to panic. He’d injected her with fly eggs just like the rest. How long ago? How many hours did she have before her belly burst with maggots?

Freaking out isn’t going to make them grow any slower, Kent’s voice said as a disembodied voice.

Even the imaginary profiler in her head was annoying. Annoying, but right.

Nicole steeled herself. Okay, so she’d been kidnapped and injected with fly eggs. It wasn’t so bad, right? She was still alive. Which was a bit of a mystery, but she would take it.

What would Kent do right now?

Unfortunately, the profiler would probably have a stolen chainsaw or something up his sleeve. Nicole had nothing. No gun. No handcuffs. Nothing. Wallflower had stripped her of her police belt.

Great.

She knew that last year she had wished that Plain Jane had kidnapped her instead of Kent. Now, though? In a dirty cellar with fly eggs in her belly, Nicole was re-thinking that wish.

* * *

Ruben knew there was something wrong even before he opened his eyes. His hand flew to his waist, but of course, in bed, he didn’t have his gun on.

“She’s gone,” a voice said above him.

How Ruben prayed that the voice wasn’t that of the profiler. Then he opened his eyes, and lo and behold, Kent stood over him.

“Is Nicole here?” he asked, as if this was all normal.

“No,” Ruben said, shaking his head, sitting up in bed. “This is Paggie’s place. Why would she be here?”

Kent frowned. “This is going to sound weird, but I was really, really, really hoping that she was cheating on me with you. Maybe a threesome to burn off some grief.”

“What’s going on?” Paggie asked in a groggy tone from beside Ruben.

He rubbed her shoulder. “Don’t worry. It’s just Kent.”

“Kent?” her tone sharpened as she rolled over and witnessed the profiler for herself. To his surprise, she shook her head. “I guess I did get fair warning.” Then she rolled back over.

“What the hell are you doing here, Kent?” Ruben asked.

“Nicole—she didn’t come home last night. I already checked your house, and she isn’t there either. And we both know that she is too cheap to rent a hotel room. Wallflower has her.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not jump too far ahead,” Ruben said, wiping his face, trying to shed the last webs of sleep. “In the mood she was last night? She might have just gotten hammered and is sleeping it off somewhere.”

“Jimmi checked. Her phone is not just off, but the battery has been removed.”

That was not good.

“Besides, if she was drunk, she could have called a cab or just hail any cop on the street and they would have given her a ride.”

Kent was right. As a detective, Nicole had the largest designated driver pool in the world. All one hundred and seventy-five police officers on duty last night would have helped her get home without question.

As Kent paced, Ruben began to get worried, as well.

“But how?”

“I don’t know,” Kent answered, a bit more shrilly than usual. “But it’s the only explanation for her disappearance.”

The profiler reached over and pulled the covers off Ruben. “We’re meeting everyone down at CSI headquarters.”

Ruben’s hands went to his groin. He’d been sleeping in the nude.

“Oh, well,” Kent said, turning away. “Glad to see you and Paggie are moving forward.”

Ruben gathered up the comforter and wrapped it around his waist as he made his way to the chair where his clothes were draped. “Jimmi know her last known location?”

“He is tracking that down, along with traffic cam footage of her car.”

Crap, that was right. Her Mustang was a classic. No GPS transponder.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Kent harassed him. “We’ve lost too much time already.”

Slipping his pants on, Ruben looked over his shoulder as Kent paced and muttered.

“I slept in. I never sleep in. Never. How could I have slept in?”

Ruben was pretty sure that Kent wasn’t talking to him, nor expecting an answer. He’d never seen the profiler so agitated.

“We’ll figure this out,” Ruben said.

“Yeah, right. You mean, I’ll figure this out.”

Okay, that sounded a hell of a lot more like the old sanctimonious Kent. And right now they needed that prick. Nicole needed him to be as much of a dick as humanly possible.

His dickishness was their secret weapon.

* * *

Joshua fidgeted in his chair. Jimmi was busy doing all the tech stuff, leaving Joshua to just sit there. He was used to being the one to do stuff. In truth, he probably didn’t need to be here, but after Kent’s frantic call earlier this morning to check to see if Joshua had heard from Nicole, Joshua couldn’t sit it out on the sidelines.

He’d told Jimmi that he was here in geek solidarity, but with Nicole missing, the fact was that Joshua needed to be on the front line. Although that front line was a bit uncomfortable at the moment. Captain Glick was pacing behind them, asking for updates every few seconds. Didn’t he understand that Jimmi couldn’t miraculously make the CPU run any faster? If Captain Glick wanted faster data, he needed to find it in the budget to upgrade their computer systems.

“Well?” Kent asked, even before he was in the room.

Jimmi pointed to the screen. “Detective Usher’s last known whereabouts were in this general area. I’ve triangulated the position from her cellphone’s last ping off the network.”

The profiler’s eyes scanned the map. “That’s all the way across town. I don’t think we’ve ever even been over there, let alone someplace Nicole would go voluntarily.”

“Hold on,” Ruben said. “Glick, isn’t that where O’Malley’s is?”

“O’Malley’s?” Kent questioned.

Joshua could handle this one. “It’s a cop bar. Amazing, amazing potato skins. The bacon is perfectly crispy, and they give you a huge scoop of sour cream.”

“Good to know,” Kent said. “But why would Nicole go there?”

“It’s where we used to hang out when we were on patrol,” Ruben explained.

“Nicole loved that place,” Glick said. “She hated giving it up once she got her gold badge.”

“Okay,” Kent said. “So Nicole was upset and went back to an old, comforting haunt. Wallflower must have been watching the crime scene and followed her there. Jimmi.”

“On it,” the tech said. “I’ve already tracked Nicole’s path through traffic cams. Now I just need to look for someone shadowing her. There!” Jimmi shouted, pointing to a dark van. “That car is showing up in nearly three quarters of the same intersections as Usher.”

Joshua may not have all the fancy computer skills that Jimmi did, but he could run a DMV search with the best of them. “The van was stolen yesterday,” he reported.

“Crap,” Ruben said behind them.

“Alright,” Kent said. “We need to figure out who was on last night at O’Malley’s and find out where they live so we can question them.”

Just as Joshua went to start the search, Ruben stepped forward. “No need. The owner, Gilly O’Malley, is always on at night and lives above the pub.”

“Go,” Glick said, nodding to the door. “I’ll call him and give him a heads up.” The captain glanced to his watch. “By now he should be setting up for lunch.”

“What can I do?” Joshua asked as the men headed out.

Kent turned to him. “Check on Dr. Pollen. We need that common ground he thought he could find with the nasal swabs.”

Joshua nodded. He was all over it. Flipping open his phone, he called the university.

Then Yvent walked in, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with a broad smile on his face. “So what did I miss?”

Oh, no he didn’t just say that.

* * *

Nicole’s eyes had adjusted to the dank light. She was in a cellar. Past her metal enclosure were rows and rows of onions on a rope, and potatoes were stacked in a pile in the corner.

She was being kept some place rural. Really rural. Which sucked. Right now, the search for Wallflower was an urban hunt. How did they not see this rural connection?

A loud clunk announced that a door was being opened above her. Bright sunlight blinded her for a moment. Her hands flew over her eyes to block out the startling light. The sound of birdsong swelled from outside.

Then a figure was thrown in. Nicole stepped to the left and caught the woman as she tumbled inside. Then the door closed again, slamming metal against metal.

“Are you alright?” Nicole asked.

The younger woman with dull red hair and huge freckles nearly screamed in her ear. “No! No, I’m not alright.” The woman dug at her belly. “He injected me with fly eggs! Why would someone do that? Why?”

“Shh,” Nicole said, smoothing the woman’s hair. “Breathe, just breathe.”

“Why?” The woman demanded. “I’m going to have maggots in my belly in a few hours.”

“I know,” Nicole said. “I have them too, but panicking isn’t going to make them grow any slower.”

The woman blew air out of her mouth, then sucked in a nice big breath, blowing it out again.

“What’s your name?” Nicole asked. “I’m Nicole.”

The woman seemed to calm down a bit. “I’m Megan.”

“Okay, Megan, good. We just need to keep it together, okay?”

“No, it isn’t okay,” Megan said, escalating again. “What is okay about any of this?”

“I know, I know.” Nicole tried to settle the woman down. Nicole needed to stay calm and collected. She needed to be ready for any microscopic chance to break out of here, and she couldn’t do that with the other victim freaking out. “It sucks to be captured by a serial killer.”

“A serial killer?” Megan nearly screamed. Damn, that girl had a loud voice, and a tone that could cut through cement. “You mean he’s done this before?”

“No,” Nicole said, then corrected herself. “Well, yes, he’s killed before. However, it was different.”

Very different, actually. Wallflower was way off script.

“Usually he killed the women right away, then injected them with the fly eggs post-mortem. It seems like he is evolving.”

“Evolving?” Megan asked with a sniffle.

“Yes, if a serial killer begins to get sloppy or increase his kill rate, we consider that devolving. If, however, he changes his pattern to become more refined, we consider that evolving.”

“Well, he did try to kill me.”

“What do you mean, try?” Nicole asked. “Start at the beginning.”

Megan took in another deep breath. “I was at this stupid dating mixer. There were no interesting guys, so I was about to leave when I spotted this cute guy at the bar. We hit it off right away.”

“What was his name?”

“John Smith,” Megan said, then lowered her eyes. “I know, I should have gotten the hint that wasn’t real with that name, but he was nice and polite and pulled out my chair for me.”

Nicole remembered Kent saying that good manners went a long way. He wasn’t wrong.

“Anyway, he offers to take me for a ride in the country.” Megan hurried along. “I know I shouldn’t have gone, but he had a Mercedes, and by then, I was a little tipsy.”

Nicole put her hand on Megan’s arm. “No matter what you did, you didn’t deserve this.” The last thing Nicole needed was for Megan to go into some kind of shame spiral, along with being panicked. That was not a good combination.

“Then?” Nicole prompted.

“Then we parked up on a hill and looked at the city lights. It was great. Nice. He leaned over and I assumed we’d make out, but then his hands were on my neck, choking me.”

“What stopped him?”

Megan shook her head. “I don’t know. He just stopped. I was choking and sputtering. Then he brought me here, tied me down, and stuck fly eggs in me.”

Nicole put an arm around Megan, trying to keep her from going hysterical again. “We’re going to get out of here.”

“Why?” Megan challenged. “Has anyone else ever escaped from him before?”

“No, but I am a police detective,” Nicole answered.

“Yeah, who is down here with me, so nothing personal, but I’m not liking our chances.”

Nicole pulled Megan close and stroked her hair. “Ah, but my boyfriend is an FBI profiler.”

“And that’s supposed to impress me?” Megan snorted.

At the least the girl had fire. That was going to come in handy.

“Yes, actually it should,” Nicole replied. “He will find us.”

“How can you be so sure?” Megan sniffled, melting into Nicole’s arms.

“Because he knows if he doesn’t, he’ll never find another girlfriend that will put up with his crap.”

Nicole was rather proud of herself. That was a joke that Kent would have made in such a dire situation. Now she just had to pray that the profiler was as good as she said he was.

* * *

Kent felt helpless, and he hated feeling helpless. Ruben was driving as fast as he could across town. But every minute they didn’t know where Nicole was, was eating into Kent’s soul.

He never should have let her walk away. He should have followed her. He should have kept her safe.

“It’s not your fault,” Ruben said, like somehow he had graduated to mind reader. “Nicole is an adult.”

“When I want your opinion,” Kent said, “I’ll ask for it.”

Ruben shrugged. “Nicole would tell you the same thing.”

“At this point, I seriously doubt it,” Kent said. If he could talk to her right now, she’d probably be ragging on him that he wasn’t attentive enough. That was his girl. Fiercely independent, yet expecting him to be there for her no matter what. He normally loved that about her. It kept him on his toes. But the fiercely independent side of her had gone off the rails last night.

“Let’s give that brain of yours something else to think about,” Ruben said as he swerved around a car and ran a yellow light. “This is way outside of Wallflower’s comfort zone. I mean, he didn’t even take Rhonda because she was too aggressive at the net. Why take a cop?”

Kent had actually been wondering that ever since this morning, when he realized that Nicole hadn’t come home last night voluntarily.

“I think he was worried that maybe she saw him yesterday at the tennis courts?” Kent ventured.

“Then why haven’t we found a body?” Ruben asked. “We’ve got patrols checking every single dirty alley in the city.”

“I don’t know. I think that Wallflower may be as confused as we are.”

Kent could only hope so. Hopefully, Wallflower had abducted Nicole in a panic, but now that he had her, maybe he was liking the feeling of having a cop under his thumb. Maybe he would keep her alive to keep the sensation going.

That is what they had to hope for. Otherwise, Nicole would be the next body they found.

CHAPTER 18

Ruben couldn’t catch up with Kent, even with his longer stride. The profiler was out of the car and barreling toward the pub. He was at the door, banging on the glass, demanding to be let in.

“Alright there, lad,” the owner said as he opened the door.

They rushed inside. Kent didn’t wait until they were settled, he started peppering the owner with questions. “Did you see her last night?” Kent flashed a picture of Nicole to the man.

“Sure. It’d been a while, I will tell you that, but there she was in all her glory. Missed the lassie these years. Hard when they grow up and move away.”

“Was she with anyone?” Kent asked.

“You certainly expect an old bartender to remember a lot, don’t you?”

Ruben stepped between them before Kent punched the old man. “Do you have any CCTV in here?”

The old man shook his head.

“Which is why I need you to start remembering a little faster,” Kent pressed.

“Not at first. She came in alone, pretty upset. She ordered a scotch, straight-up, before her usual Guinness.”

“And?” Kent demanded.

“She met up with a bloke she seemed to know,” the barkeep said, nodding to the corner of the bar. “Next thing I know, she looks hammered and he’s helping her out to her car.”

“It didn’t occur to you that something was wrong?” Kent said. Ruben made sure that the profiler didn’t do anything that he would regret later.

“The girl usually could hold her liquor, but she clearly knew the guy, and he looked like law enforcement. I thought the scotch had gotten to her.”

“Clearly she was drugged, and you just let a serial killer walk out with her!”

Kent spun away in disgust. Ruben put his hand out, though. It wasn’t the old man’s fault that Wallflower had outflanked them. “Can you come down to the station and work with a sketch artist?”

“I could, but he had a cap and glasses on—not sure what good it would do.”

Kent threw his hands up in the air. “Thanks—just thanks.”

The profiler wasn’t exactly at his best right now.

“Even so, you might remember something, even if it is tiny, that could help us.”

The barkeep nodded. “Anything to help Nicole out.”

For some reason, that made Ruben choke up, but he couldn’t lose it, not with Kent punching the wall.

Ruben went over. “Kent, I really need you to be an arrogant prick right about now. Tell me why he drugged her.”

“Clearly, he didn’t feel like he could subdue her. He is scared of her.”

“And does that help us or hurt us?”

“How the hell should I know?” Kent shouted, heading for the door.

Ruben grabbed him by the arm. “Because everyone puts up with your crap because you can think like a serial killer, so get to it.”

Kent’s face clouded over and Ruben was pretty sure that the next punch was coming his way, but then the profiler blew out a long breath.

“It helps us. The killer has been looking to increase his high. The kills just aren’t as gratifying as they were. I think he’s digging the challenge.”

“So that buys us time?” Ruben asked.

“Yeah. Until he works up the nerve to take a run at her, I think it does.”

“Alright then, let’s get back to the station and see what Jimmi and Joshua dug up.”

* * *

“What’s going to happen to us?” Megan asked. At least the pitiful sobbing had stopped. Although Nicole shouldn’t judge the young woman. That’s how most people would react. But after spending a few years with Kent, that just wasn’t Nicole.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“What do you mean?” Megan questioned. “I thought this guy had done this a bunch of times.”

“He has,” Nicole answered. “But not like this. If he had, you’d be dead.”

Oh, there went the sniffles again. What would Kent say? Be a chick, Nicole.

“But he didn’t,” Nicole reassured the girl. “Every minute we are alive is a minute we could get rescued.”

“Or maggots could eat their way out of our stomach,” Megan added, descending into tears again.

Nicole had tried to ignore the feeling, like someone was walking on her grave. Ignore the rumblings in her abdomen. She was pretty sure that if she just didn’t think of the fly eggs, they wouldn’t hatch.

“Hey, hey,” Nicole said, lifting Megan’s chin to force the younger woman to look at her. “I need you rested and ready, okay? We don’t necessarily need a knight in shining armor. We may get our own chance, but I need you on board. Can you do that for me?” Nicole asked.

Megan sniffled again, wiping her eyes with the back of her arm. “Yeah. I can do that.”

“I just need like five minutes of bravery out of you,” Nicole said, knowing that this would be a stretch. The problem was that Wallflower had picked Megan for her demure qualities. The girl just didn’t have a lot of fight in her.

Which gave Nicole some insight into Wallflower. In a flash, she realized why Wallflower hadn’t killed Megan last night. It would have been too easy. It wasn’t giving him the thrill he was craving.

Nicole gulped. Which meant she was the thrill he was after now.

* * *

Yvent got out of Kent’s way as he rushed into the media room. Screens lined the place, making it look just a little sci-fi. Yvent didn’t make the mistake of making any kind of inappropriate offhanded remark this time.

How could he know that Nicole had been taken? Except for from the dozens of emails he hadn’t read yet.

Jimmi was totally prepared, though, and got his multimedia show on the road. “Alright, so Nicole went straight to the bar last night. Then she was headed east before her phone got shut down. Now, they didn’t take her car, but they were in this one.”

Jimmi showed them a nondescript van. “Unfortunately, that van was stolen last night, so that was a dead end.”

“You’ve got nothing, then,” Kent said, his head hung low, looking at his hands.

“I didn’t say that,” Jimmi said. “I backtracked the car and found an ATM camera with an angle on the car theft.”

They watched a tall man with dark hair break into the car and drive away.

“That was pretty useless,” Kent said.

“Then I backtracked the guy, though. And voilà!” Jimmi hit a button and showed a late-model dark SUV. “Now the plates are really blurry, but I am going pixel by pixel to try to get the license number.”

“I thought of that!” Joshua announced, kind of awkwardly.

“Thanks,” Kent said, nodding to the group.

“Well?” Captain Glick asked as he entered.

“Nothing concrete yet,” Kent reported, “but they are working on it.”

“We’ve got another possible victim,” Glick reported. “A girl didn’t come home from yoga class last night. A Megan Wheeler.”

“But no body?” Kent asked.

“Not yet,” Glick said with a shake of his head.

“Well, finding Nicole is the best way to find Megan.” Kent turned to Joshua. “What’s going on with the pollen?”

“He wasn’t in yet, but his students said to expect the report after nine.”

Everyone looked to the clock. It was 9:05.

* * *

Kent felt a phone vibrate on his hip. It wasn’t his, of course. It was Ruben’s. He found an email from the university. His hands shook as he opened the file.

“The guy found a lot of non-specific pollen, but the standout in the samples was a lot of orchid grains.”

“Orchids?” Ruben asked.

Kent’s eyes narrowed and he turned to Yvent. “At least fifteen different species of orchids, including the Bulbophyllum and Dracula species.”

Yvent looked around like Kent was talking to someone behind him.

“Which I believe is one of your hobbies, isn’t it Yvent?”

The younger man backed away to the door, but Glick cut him off. “Maybe…”

“How could you know that, Kent?” Ruben asked.

“It is the most pretentious plant in the world,” Kent answered. Plus, he’d heard his protégé boast about his prize-winning jewel orchids.

His usually cocky, insufferable protégé suddenly was all stammer and pasty faced. “It’s not me,” he protested. “There are plenty of orchid enthusiasts in this city.”

“But how many of them knew Nicole? How many had all the time in the world last night to stalk and take her?” Kent pressed. He could get the kid to break.

“Someone is setting me up!” Yvent protested.

“And exactly who could that be?” Kent demanded. “Who could know your exact orchid inventory?”

“Anybody!” Yvent practically squealed. He rushed over to the keyboard. “Look, if you google my name, my orchid articles come up before my FBI ones.”

To prove that fact, the search engine did find plenty on Yvent. The entire first page was devoted to orchids.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Kent countered. The more he thought of it, the more Yvent being Wallflower gelled.

“You know the drill, Yvent. If you are so innocent, then give me alibis for the murders.”

“Why don’t we read him his rights?” Glick said. “And take this into interrogation?”

None too happy about being interrupted, Kent allowed Ruben to Mirandize Yvent. His only comfort was that, if they had Yvent here, he couldn’t be killing Nicole somewhere else.

* * *

That loud clunk sounded again overhead. The trapdoor opened, flooding the cellar with sunlight. Nicole gripped Megan to her, whispering into her ear. “Just five minutes.”

A hand reached out and grabbed Megan by the hair and pulled her forward, up a stepladder.

“No!” Nicole shouted, jerking Megan back. The young woman was freed, but only after the killer had a chunk of her hair. Megan screamed, but Nicole shoved her to the far side of the cellar, out of Wallflower’s reach.

“Take me,” Nicole said, stepping forward into the warm sunlight. “You know it’s me you want.”

There was a moment when the killer paused—cocked his head, then beckoned her up the stairs. Five minutes, Nicole reminded herself. She just needed to be brave for five minutes.

Where the hell was Kent? Couldn’t he just smell the fear and find her? Usually he was so in synch with the killer that he was two steps ahead of him. But, in the profiler’s defense, Wallflower had gone completely off book here. None of it made any sense.

The killer waved for her to hurry.

Five minutes, Nicole reminded herself as she stepped onto the first rung of the stairs. Her foot slipped and the killer reached out and caught her, sparing her a nasty fall.

So their profile was right about one thing. He was a gentleman. Up until the moment he killed you.

* * *

Ruben watched Kent pace back and forth behind Yvent as Joshua rushed into the room. The tech seemed winded.

“It’s confirmed. The list of pollens matches Yvent’s exactly.”

“Of course it does!” Yvent exclaimed. “It isn’t much of a setup if you miss a few.”

Ruben wasn’t feeling it, and he worried if Kent wasn’t just too close to see it, too. Yvent was twitchy and worried. Serial killers, when questioned, were usually calm, cool, distant and disdainful. As if they were above the questioning.

“Alibi?” Kent pressed though.

“You know I live alone,” Yvent sighed. “I don’t have one for any of the murders.”

“Besides,” Yvent said. “Do I honestly seem like I could seduce five women into my car? I can’t even get a date to the orchid ball, and I am a superstar in that field.”

The kid was right. He was too young and too inexperienced. As crazy as it seemed, Ruben believed the fact that Yvent was being set up. But how?

Kent wouldn’t let it go, though. “Get tired of tracking down the killers? Decide to find out what it felt like to squeeze the life from someone?”

“No!” Yvent argued. “No. Like I said, I couldn’t have pulled off the kidnappings.”

“I notice how you don’t protest too much over the killings,” Kent said. “I notice how you don’t say you couldn’t have shot someone.”

“Because we all know that I could do that,” Yvent said, then hurried on. “Not to an innocent, but we’ve all been trained to kill. We all know that I have the skill set to do that.”

“Again, not helping your case, exactly,” Kent said.

Ruben wasn’t so sure why Kent was beating this drum so hard. If it was clear to Ruben that Yvent wasn’t the killer, then why was the vaunted profiler so far behind the curve?

* * *

Kent watched Yvent practically pee himself. The kid was not the killer, damn it. But Kent was certain that the killer was one of their own. Kent was certain that he had attracted quite the crowd on the other side of the one-way glass. The killer might even be out there. And the longer the killer thought that Kent was focused on Yvent, the better for the investigation.

Although to Ruben it looked like Kent had gone mad. Like Kent couldn’t see that Yvent was flashing every “I’m really innocent” micro-expression in the book? Seriously.

No, instead, Kent was letting his brain percolate. Who could have set up Yvent? And why Yvent? The kid was a pretty easy mark. Like he’d said. He was single, so establishing an alibi would be difficult.

So who? Joshua came to mind, but he had some pretty tight alibis, one of them being stabbed at about the time the last victim was taken. Plus, he didn’t have the social graces to pull this off, either. Someone else in the lab? Someone who could have tampered with the swabs?

Joshua burst into the interrogation room again.

“You’ve got to see this!” he announced.

“What?” Ruben answered.

Joshua put his iPad on the table and hit play. “There aren’t any orchid spores in the nasal swabs!”

Kent frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, there isn’t a spec of orchids in the victims’ nasal passages!”

“But,” Ruben stammered, “The expert listed them all.”

“I know!” Joshua exclaimed. “Kind of suspicious, right?”

“How did you figure this out?” Kent asked.

“You know how you are always telling me to expand my skill set?” Joshua asked. To be honest, no, Kent didn’t remember telling the odd tech anything like that at all, but that wasn’t the point.

“Yes?”

“So I thought, I can become a pollen expert. I got on the internet,” Joshua said. “I started looking through the extra swabs I had and couldn’t find a single orchid grain.”

A shock like a lightning bolt coursed through Kent. This was the break they were looking for. This was the error the killer had made.

* * *

Joshua had never felt so proud. His irrational jealousy had once again come through. If he hadn’t been trying to prove he was as good as Mr. Fancy University Pants, he never would have found this clue.

“It’s not just that,” Joshua said. “There are like a dozen other pollens that aren’t categorized by the ‘expert.’”

“Such as?” Kent asked.

“Huckleberry, for one,” Joshua said. “You don’t find much of that in the city.”

“Let’s go,” Kent said, heading for the door.

“Wait,” Ruben said. “What are we saying?”

“That either the doctor or one of his staff is Wallflower,” Kent said, like it was so obvious. He turned to Joshua. “Can you get us a more exact location based on the mixes of pollen?”

Joshua was both thrilled and terrified that Kent has asked that question. He wasn’t exactly an expert on pollen yet. But he had to try. It was Nicole, after all. “I’ll give it a shot.”

Kent turned to Ruben. “You coming?”

“Where?” Ruben asked.

“The university. Let’s go check in on this professor.”

* * *

Nicole had to lurch a bit to miss a pile of sheep poo. She seriously hadn’t thought that would ever be a concern in her life. Raising her hand to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight, Nicole surveyed her surroundings. For as far as the eye could see, there was rolling pasture. Waves and waves of tall green grass. The landscape was dotted with sheep and baby lambs. There seemed to be a blooming orchard to the south and long rows of berries to the north.

All and all, if she weren’t following a serial killer to an ominous-looking barn, the scene would have been idyllic. There was something vaguely familiar about the figure ahead of her.

Something strangely kind about him. After saving her from the fall, he’d helped her up the stairs, and even now hadn’t tied her hands. She had to keep reminding herself that the guy had drugged her and injected fly eggs into her belly. She hated to say it, but if he was her neighbor, she’d probably be one of those people that said, “But he was always so nice.”

He’d just assumed that she would follow him. Of course, what else could she do? He knew that she knew that he was a good shot with a rifle. There were no other houses within running distance. Nicole would rather not get shot in the back, thank you very much.

Although taking her chances in the sketchy-looking barn didn’t sound so fun, either.

Wallflower strode forward though, opening the squeaky barn door.

“After you,” he said.

Even now, he was the consummate gentleman.

Did she recognize his voice, though?

“Dr. Rodden?” Nicole asked.

Wallflower turned, taking off his sunglasses and hat. “Nice to see you again.”

Nicole didn’t know what else to say but, “Why?”

“You looked right at me while you were playing tennis. I thought for sure you’d recognized me.”

“No,” Nicole said. “You were hidden in shadow.”

A wide smile crossed Rodden’s face. “Oh well, a happy accident, then.”

Peering around the doctor into the barn, where all manner of creepy farm tools hung from the rafters, Nicole wasn’t so sure that’s how she would describe it.

CHAPTER 19

Ruben gripped the wheel, speeding as he’d never sped before. Not even Kent was egging him on. He had to shove it all down. The fear for Nicole. His mistrust and hatred of Kent. None of that mattered. Just getting Nikki home safe did.

If anything, Ruben had to buy into the Kent mythology and pray that the profiler had something up his sleeve that Ruben just couldn’t comprehend. That Kent really did have magical powers.

“You met him,” Kent stated. “And you didn’t notice he was a psychopath?”

Ruben’s jaw ground together. Wasn’t Kent enough of an über-deductionist to know that Ruben had played that exchange with the doctor over and over again in his head, trying to figure out what he missed?

“Nicole didn’t either,” Ruben growled.

“Ah, blame the victim?” Kent snapped.

“We’re not all you,” Ruben said. Actually, he was usually quite glad that most people weren’t like Kent. Today, though, he was wishing he could have picked up that glint in the pollen doctor’s eyes even if it cost him his sanity as it had Kent.

“Nothing threw any red flags?” Kent pressed.

“Isn’t that the point of a sociopath?” Ruben shot back. “That you can’t tell? They’ve masked their behavior so carefully that they blend in.”

“He’s not a sociopath,” Kent replied. “I believe that he’s a psychopath who has manners. There’s a difference.”

Ruben was pretty sure that he was white-knuckling the steering wheel so tightly he was cutting off the circulation to his fingers. “You also said this guy was breaking all the rules. So I’m not even sure that you could have picked him out.”

Although, odds were, Kent would have. He would have smelled it on him.

Ruben skidded the car into the university’s parking lot.

They both hopped out of the car and raced into the botany building.

Kent streaked ahead of him, jerking open the glass door, then hauling ass down the hallway. He only stopped when he reached the door of Dr. Rodden, head of the forensic botany lab.

By the time Ruben caught up with him, Kent had intercepted several students. “Where is Dr. Rodden?”

The students shrugged. The younger woman answered. “He didn’t come in today.”

“Is that unusual?” Kent asked.

“He’s usually here seven days a week,” she answered.

Ruben searched for Rodden’s desk. “Look at this,” he said, pointing to a bundle of nasal swabs on the professor’s desk.

“Yeah, he told us not to touch those.”

“The seals haven’t even been broken,” Ruben noted. “He never even looked at them.”

“Why bother when you knew exactly what you’d find?” Kent commented. He turned to the students. “Where does Dr. Rodden live?”

They both shrugged. Yes, this was the generation that was going to save them. Right.

Kent bolted for the door and was headed back to the car. He called Joshua. “Anything?” Clearly Joshua had answered him in the affirmative, as Kent climbed in the car. “Head east of the city.”

Ruben broke some kind of speed record following Kent’s odd instructions. They were heading out into the middle of nowhere. At least they were doing so quickly.

“It’s the next right and it’s onto a dirt road,” Kent said, abruptly changing the conversation as he usually did. “So you might want to lay off the gas.”

However, Ruben didn’t. Kent wasn’t the only one with some hidden skills. Ruben took the corner at full speed, only taking his foot off of the pedal as he spun the wheel to the right and slammed the parking brake on. The SUV skidded in a ninety-degree turn. He kicked at the brake, releasing it as he straightened the wheel, then hit the gas as they streaked down the dirt road.

“Or you could do that,” Kent muttered.

After hitting enough potholes in the road to dislodge a stubborn kidney stone, they arrived at the farmhouse. It looked so quaint. Ruben hadn’t even stopped the car completely before Kent jumped out and headed for the front door.

“The warrant isn’t signed yet!” Ruben yelled, to no avail. Kent turned and, like a firefighter, kicked backwards to break open the door. Well, now that was done, there was no reason Ruben shouldn’t follow.

“Nicole!” Kent shouted as he checked the house room by room. “Nic!”

After clearing the ground and second floor, Ruben and Kent met at the basement door. Ruben set up on the right side and nodded, aiming his gun at the impending opening.

Kent jerked open the door, racing down the steep steps, not waiting at all for Ruben to get set up. The profiler could be running headlong into a trap, heedless of the danger to himself, Ruben, or even Nicole.

But all they found was a dank, onion-filled cellar. No sign of the women.

“There was a barn,” Kent said, and took off up the stairs again. Ruben didn’t even bother warning him that they still didn’t have a warrant.

They raced across the grassy field to the large red barn. It wasn’t locked, so Kent just opened the door. Wool was found in large rolls off to the side, and the upper loft was filled with hay.

“Nicole!” Kent yelled, then started kicking the dirt. “There’s got to be a hidden door…”

Ruben added in the search, but no door was to be found.

Kent kicked a wooden post. “They’ve got to be here.”

Flipping open his phone, Ruben called Joshua. “There’s nothing here.”

“Ask him if any other properties met the pollen profile.”

Ruben repeated the question to Joshua, then came back with the answer. “No, not really, but I’ll double-check. The weather service uses an averaging program, so I’ll have to drill down into their data to find discrete points.

“Then drill away,” Ruben said as Kent sat down on his heels, hanging his head.

“This is my fault,” the profiler lamented.

No, this was not acceptable. “Bullshit,” Ruben said, grabbing Kent by the jacket and hauling him to his feet. “You can indulge in self-pity and recrimination after you find Nicole.”

* * *

Kent stared at Ruben. But what the detective didn’t know was that Kent had felt his mojo slipping. It had taken a pollen profile to geographically locate the perp. Kent had totally and completely missed the rural connection in the profile.

His arrogance fed his abilities. Without it, what was he but a rather overly posturing FBI agent? Kent was shaken to the core, feeling that sense of purpose and rightness slip away from him.

At the moment he needed it most.

“Walk it off,” Ruben said, giving Kent a good shove to the barn door. “Our backup and warrant should be here any minute.”

Like either of those things was going to do them any good. Nicole wasn’t here, and he didn’t know where else to look. However, Ruben was right—walking, getting moving, was probably the best thing at the moment.

And it was an absolutely beautiful day. Nicole would appreciate it—if she was going to die, it should be a on a fine spring morning.

The baaing of sheep and the bleat of lambs drew his attention. They were all crowded around a gate in the fence. Kent walked amongst them, petting one on the head, then another. They all seemed intent on the fence, though. The lead sheep—which was almost an oxymoron—was nudging the gate with his nose.

Kent looked around at the sheep surrounding him. They wanted to go home. Which meant this farm wasn’t their home.

He waved to Ruben. “I’m following the sheep!”

The detective waved him off, turning to talk rather urgently into his phone.

That sense of peace that came with walking the right path swept over Kent. The sheep were his guides. He unhooked the gate and the sheep charged through it.

The sun was setting. Would this be the time that the sheep would be fed? Or did they just want their own barn?

Kent’s mind wandered through this intriguing development. Why would the sheep be on that farm? And the wool?

He opened his phone. “Joshua, find out about sheep farming.”

“I am sorry,” Joshua said. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you say sheep farming?”

“Yes,” Kent answered, following the herd. “I know it sounds weird, but humor me.”

“No,” Joshua said. “It is weird because I identified sheep spores in half the victims’ nasal passages.”

Even more sure of himself, Kent waved his arms, trying to get the sheep to move faster. Some had stopped to eat some dandelions, while an ewe paused to nurse her lamb. While heartwarming, it was slowing down their journey. He really needed to know where these sheep lived.

Joshua rang back. “Hey, just like dogs and cats track in pollen from outside, those sheep could have carried huckleberry pollen with them.”

“Yeah,” Kent said. “Way ahead of you. Where is the nearest farm?”

“That would be a half a mile to the southwest,” Joshua answered.

“Send me the location,” Kent said, pulling ahead of the herd. His phone dinged and Kent processed the address through his GPS. Using his phone rather than the sheep, Kent headed over a ridge to find a house and barn nearly identical to the last property.

Yet this one felt different. There was a pall cast over the green rolling fields.

It was official. His mojo was back.

* * *

Nicole tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. “What are we doing here?”

The doctor smiled as he circled her. “I think it’s clear. I am pitting myself against a worthy opponent.”

“We don’t have to pit anything against anything,” Nicole said. They had gone down into a sub-basement below the barn. Why was it always a dank, smelly sub-basement? There was another steel-barred cage in the corner. Had he brought other women here?

She knew from the lack of defensive wounds that Wallflower certainly hadn’t let them fight. As a matter of fact, he had taken the others like he had Megan. A blitz, a surprise attack.

This killer certainly was evolving quickly.

“Oh, I think I do,” Rodden said. “I read the file. Special Agent Harbinger called me impotent. A coward. A serial killer groping to find his identity. Well, I think I’ve found mine.”

Nicole remembered Kent putting those taunts in the file. He believed that the killer had inserted himself in the case and wanted to bait the guy. It had been brilliant, of course. Unfortunately, Nicole was going to pay the price for antagonizing the killer.

“We aren’t exactly evenly matched,” Nicole said, trying to buy time. “You outweigh me by fifty pounds and I’m still weak from the sedation.” Oh, and the thousands of fly eggs floating around in my belly.

Rodden shook his head. “Please, detective, I am a doctor. The sedative effects burned off hours ago from all the adrenaline coursing through your body. And I might have the weight advantage, but you have the experience. I think we are perfectly matched.”

So this was happening. She really was going to have to fight a serial killer with her bare hands. Wouldn’t Kent be so smug, always going on and on about how she over-relied on her gun.

Nicole hoped that all the training Kent had given her had sunk in. One of the first things he’d taught her was to keep the opponent distracted and, hopefully, off balance.

“So what happened, Rodden? You were a normal-looking guy until last year.”

The doctor tsked at her. “Detective, you don’t think that I read up on the mind games you were going to try on me?”

Nicole suppressed a smile. By answering her at all, she had done her job. Kent would have completely ignored her. Engaging at all was keeping Rodden distracted.

“Usually, there is a trigger of loss,” Nicole went on. “Clearly not your job. So family. Home. I take it from your using a hooker that you weren’t married. So who died?”

Rodden threw a punch, missing wildly. Nicole ducked under it easily. The miss-aim told her that she’d struck a nerve.

“Father?” Nicole asked, but got no response. “Mother?”

Oh, that got a sharp intake of breath and a dilation of the pupils.

“Your mother died? What did she mean to you? What did she do to you?”

Rodden charged, arms spread to tackle her, but left himself vulnerable. Nicole straightened her arm, hitting him in the solar plexus. The guy never got the chance to close those arms around her. She danced back out of the way.

Nicole was really guessing here, but what did Kent always say? Guessing was your subconscious’s way of expressing itself. She was going to trust her gut here.

“Were you her little man?” Nicole asked, making sure that Rodden got the intimation.

The doctor ground his teeth. So her gut was right. Early sexual abuse was perhaps the most common marker for a serial killer who preferred sexually mature women. It would explain a lot.

Nicole had done a fair amount of work with abused children. She knew the complex relationship they had with their abuser. On the one hand they were terrified of them, but on the other they loved them. They were their parents. Many times, they lied, defending their abusers. If they lost their abuser, who would they have?

“How did it start?” Nicole asked.

Rodden came at her, this time his arms tight across his chest. Nicole stepped out of the way, kneeing him in the groin. The doctor doubled over, sputtering.

“I can do this all day long,” Nicole said, trying to channel the profiler. Of course, she couldn’t do this all day. Nicole gauged that maybe she had another hour, tops, before he finally wore her down.

Where in the hell was Kent?

* * *

Kent charged up the steps to the farmhouse. He knew that he didn’t have a warrant, or even probable cause. All he had was sheep. But you know what? He’d take it. He’d cracked cases on less.

Just as he went to kick down the door, he heard a pounding. And sobbing. Was that sobbing? If ever there were exigent circumstances, it was now. Kent leapt over the steps and hit the ground running. He circled around the farmhouse to find a trap door for a storm cellar.

Someone pounded on the doors from the other side.

“Nicole?”

“No,” a sob came. “Megan.”

The missing girl. Kent grabbed the pin that was holding the lock together and pulled it out. A young woman stumbled from the cellar, raising her arm to shield her eyes.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” Kent said.

The young woman wrapped her arms around him. “You must be Kent?”

“Yes,” he answered. “How did you know that?”

“Nicole said you’d find us. She swore it.”

Kent allowed the girl to put all of her weight onto him. She seemed on the verge of collapse. But he needed answers before she swooned.

“Where is Nicole?”

Megan shrugged. “He took her a few minutes ago.”

Kent felt dampness on Megan’s side. “Did he inject you?”

The girl nodded, sobbing again.

“Did he inject Nicole?”

Sobbing harder, Megan nodded again.

Kent pointed to the hillside where the sheep were just now cresting. “Head over that hill and there is help.”

For a moment, she didn’t let loose of him.

“Go!” Kent urged, giving her a good boost in that direction. The girl got her feet under her and headed toward Ruben.

Kent surveyed the landscape. There was a large barn to the left, a smaller outbuilding to the right, and what looked like a carport for a tractor. Farms.

He chose the barn. In a few strides, he was to the barn. There didn’t appear to be anything here, but that’s how the house had looked, as well. Kent stared at the floor.

“Nicole!”

* * *

“Kent!” Nicole yelled back while avoiding a roundhouse kick from Rodden.

Instead of being upset, a smile spread across the serial killer’s face. “Finally. I feared that your Kent wasn’t quite as proficient as his book made him out to be.”

From his pocket, Rodden pulled out a knife and brandished it toward her. Nicole flew back. “How is this fair?”

He slashed at her, forcing her deeper into the corner as Kent kicked at the ceiling above her. Nicole had no other option than to back into the small cell. Once there, Rodden eased up and closed the cell door with a clang. He then locked it.

Nicole tugged at the door. “What are you doing?”

“Did you really think that I was going to be satisfied by taking you down?”

She really should have been insulted by that, but at this point, feeling the creepy crawlies in her belly, she was more than happy to be protected by the bars.

“Oh no,” Rodden said. “My dominating you will come in the form of forcing you to watch me kill your boyfriend the preeminent profiler.”

A board came crashing down from above, streaming sunlight in. Another kick and Kent had another board out. Soon, very soon, he could fit through the hole.

“Don’t!” Nicole yelled. “It’s a trap.”

Kent kicked again, then jumped through the hole, landing gracefully before her. “Of course it’s a trap,” he said with that smile of his. “It’s always a trap.”

“Behind you!” Nicole yelled as Rodden slashed at Kent’s back.

The profiler stayed low, spinning on his heel, sweeping his leg out, knocking the serial killer to the ground.

“He’s got a knife,” Nicole warned Kent, but he seemed to already know that, as he took off his jacket and wrapped it around his right arm.

Rodden came up swinging, but Kent blocked the blow. The blade sliced through his jacket, but did not draw blood.

“The trigger was his mother’s death last year,” Nicole informed him as the two circled one another. “And it seems that she sexually abused him.”

“Oh how pedestrian,” Kent said with a roll of the eyes. “Abuse, blah, blah blah.”

Rodden swung and missed because Kent had read the intent and stepped out of the way, then punched the doctor so hard that his head snapped to the side.

“You serial killers are so maudlin,” Kent said, dancing out of the way of another swing. “You all have to build your little drama plays and act them out.”

Another swing, but this one left a line of blood across Kent’s chest. “Seriously, if you guys would just audition for some actual plays, you might get some of this melodrama out of your system.”

Rodden’s cheeks flushed red as he charged forward. Nicole hoped that Kent knew what he was doing. There was keeping a suspect off balance, and there was just enraging him.

* * *

Kent’s primary emotion wasn’t fear, or even relief that he’d found Nicole alive. It was pride. Pride in his girl. Despite having a belly full of pre-maggots and being attacked by a vicious serial killer, she’d kept profiling the suspect. Now that had taken some stone cold balls.

He wanted to rush over and heap Nicole with praise, but, you know, he was facing the same vicious serial killer with a knife, so there was that.

Whatever doubt Kent had had before melted away. A psychopath in a basement? That, Kent could do. Even against a knife, with his eyes blindfolded.

Time to turn up the heat, though. They needed to get Nicole to the hospital as soon as possible.

“So was she a whore?” Kent asked. That got a good eyebrow raise from Rodden.

“No,” the man said, but that was a lie. His expression couldn’t hide the shame and guilt.

“And she took you with her on her tricks? Is that how rural whores roll?”

Rodden’s jaw clenched. Another affirmative.

“You watched?” Kent asked, already knowing the answer.

“Dirty sheep,” Rodden spat.

Kent was assuming that wasn’t a metaphor, but actual dirty sheep. He’d met a few of them himself. “What about the sheep?”

“No,” Rodden blurted. “You aren’t going to psychoanalyze me.”

“Sorry, buddy, but I already am.” Even Rodden’s denial helped him build the profile.

The killer’s eyes glazed over as they always did. As much as they hated their pasts, the events created the perfect storm of psychosis so that they couldn’t help but want to share their story.

“When Mother would go on her dates, she would take me along and have me play with my trucks on the other side of the ridge.”

So that was the rural equivalent to stuffing the kid in the closet while you turned tricks.

“But, one day I heard her crying out and ran over…”

Rodden didn’t need to describe what he saw. They all knew.

“I ran, ran as far as I could,” Rodden said. “Then found one of the missing ewes. She’d been dead for several days…”

Again, Kent could fill in the blanks. A young child’s first sexual images wrapped together with a bloated, rotting corpse. So much dovetailed together.

“And you somehow think that justifies what you’ve done?” Kent challenged.

The man’s eyes cleared and he smiled. “What else could I do?”

“Besides not kill people and inject fly eggs into their belly, oh, I don’t know. A lot,” Kent said as he continued to circle the psychopath. “Look, yours is a sad story, no doubt, but go to any women’s shelter or sexual abuse hotline and you can hear a hell of a lot worse. Abuse doesn’t equal killer.”

“Ah, but you must admit it does forge us. Gives us our particular flare.”

That, Kent couldn’t argue with. Would Rodden have turned out like this if his mother hadn’t been turning tricks out on the back forty? Would he have been as traumatized if he hadn’t stumbled onto that carcass right after he saw his mother having sex? Would he have hated women as much if his mother hadn’t taken him into her bed?

Probably no, to all those questions. But Kent believed in self-determination—otherwise, they were all in trouble.

Rodden lunged with the knife thinking to catch Kent off guard. Hardly.

CHAPTER 20

Nicole watched as Kent avoided the knife yet again. How did he do it? And while, at the same time, agitating the hell out of the suspect?

After hearing Rodden’s story, Nicole could almost sympathize with him. Almost, but not quite. Not as her belly rumbled. Was it hunger, or the newly hatched maggots? Nicole was going with hunger. When was the last time she’d eaten?

Serial killers were seldom big on room service. Not that she would have eaten anything that Rodden had given to her.

“You and I,” Rodden said to the profiler, “are one and the same.”

“You guys always say that,” Kent said, cocking his head. “Yet here I am, always the only one with a badge.”

“Underneath, though—underneath, we are the same,” Rodden insisted. “I knew from the moment they brought the nasal swabs to me that I had a target on my back. I’ve read your file. I knew you were coming to kill me.”

Kent snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. I came to neutralize you.”

“See, we are the same. You can’t even admit to what you truly are—a state-sanctioned serial killer. Just because you kill serial killers doesn’t make you any different from me. You stalk us. You kill us. What’s the difference?”

Kent pointed to Nicole. “The difference is I never want to see the look that Nicole is giving you. Never.”

At this point, though, she wouldn’t mind Rodden just a little bit dead.

“So you aren’t going to kill me?” the doctor asked.

“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Kent replied. “We’ll just have to see how this rolls.”

Kent undid his belt and then, holding onto the buckle, lashed out, using it like a whip. Rodden jumped back, surprised by the maneuver. That was classic Kent, though. Rule number two was use your surroundings, with the codicil that you use what you have.

Kent cracked his belt again. “Okay, now this officially just got fun.”

* * *

Ruben waved the patrol cars to the area just outside the barn. As the uniformed police piled out, Ruben pointed to the house “I need every square inch of this property searched.”

The men stood and stared at him for a moment. “Now!”

The cops scattered.

Ruben turned. Did he hear a scream on the breeze? Searching out over the farmland, he found a young woman coming over the crest of the hill, sobbing and crying. Ruben raced across the grassy pasture and caught her just before she fell.

“Megan?”

She was covered in dirt and mud. Her blonde hair was plastered to her face and there were tear streaks down her grimy face.

“How did you get out?”

“Kent came,” Megan said with a gulp.

Of course Kent came. Last Ruben had seen, he was following some sheep. But then again, of course the sheep led him to the victim. Didn’t they always?

“Where were you?”

Megan had to swallow several times before she could answer. “The farmhouse just over there.”

Ruben waved the nearest beat cop over. “Get your men to that house. And get me a bus.”

If Kent had found the victim, where was Nicole? “Where did Kent go?”

“To find Nicole,” Megan answered, sinking deeper into his arms.

Why in the hell hadn’t Kent called it in? Why hadn’t he called for backup? Unfortunately, Ruben knew the answer to that all too well. Kent wanted to be alone when he found Rodden. He wanted the fewest witnesses possible to see what came next.

What Kent liked to call “saving the taxpayers’ money.”

Kent’s belief was that serial killers were unredeemable. That truly there was something broken inside. The only way to neutralize their threat was to kill them. And Ruben had no problem with the death penalty in cases like that—however, he didn’t believe any one person should be judge, jury, and executioner.

Ruben waved the next cop he saw over. “Make sure she gets treatment, ASAP.”

The man nodded, taking Megan off of Ruben’s hands. He drew his gun, heading over the ridge. Whether he would have to use it against the suspect or Kent was yet to be seen.

* * *

Kent let Rodden take another swing. The guy sure liked his knife. Kent cracked the belt, catching the doctor on the cheek. A thin line of blood drizzled down his cheek. Rodden dabbed at it, then stared for a long while, as if he couldn’t believe he’d been bloodied.

“How does it feel?” Kent asked.

“Exhilarating,” Rodden replied.

“Yes, we know,” Kent said. “You are all superior. Beyond the concerns of ordinary mankind. You are the next step in our evolution.”

“See?” Rodden said. “How can you understand us so well if you aren’t one of us?”

Nut jobs, man. They all roll the same.

“Repetition,” Kent answered. “Rote learning. You hear the same grandiose speech enough times, you can simply repeat it.”

“If that’s what you need to think,” Rodden said. “I’ve read your papers, you know. Put them all together, and do you realize that they sound a lot like a manifesto?”

Rodden was getting on Kent’s last nerve.

Time to give the good doctor what he so desperately wanted.

Kent faked a charge to the left. Rodden responded by guarding his left. Kent snapped the belt, wrapping the tail end around the doctor’s knife arm. With a jerk, he brought them face-to-face, yet Rodden’s knife was out of commission. Before the pollen expert could process what had just happened, Kent grabbed the hilt of the knife, twisted it around, and buried it in Rodden’s belly.

The doctor gasped, his eyes dilating to the point of black.

“How’s it feel now?” Kent asked, leaning his body weight forward, keeping the knife up to the hilt in the killer’s abdomen. That wasn’t enough. Rodden’s knees weakened. Kent let the man slump to the floor as he got his belt ready for its next task.

He wrapped the leather around Rodden’s neck until it was choking him, then cinched it down, keeping the strap taut. The doctor clawed at the belt as he was being asphyxiated.

“See? Now this is flair,” Kent said. “I’m not even touching you.”

Even though Rodden couldn’t speak, Kent liked to think that the killer was impressed.

* * *

Nicole couldn’t believe that she was begging Kent to let Rodden go. “Kent, he’ll get the lethal injection for this. Let up.”

“I broke in without a warrant,” Kent explained as he strained to keep the tension up as Rodden fought for his life. “He could get away on a technicality.”

“No,” Nicole said. “You had exigent circumstances.”

“Which may or may not play in court,” Kent said, and he wasn’t wrong. But this, this felt even more wrong.

“Remember that look you didn’t want me to have?” Nicole challenged. “Well you are about two seconds away from it.”

Nicole would never know if she’d broken through to the profiler, as Ruben shouted from above them. “Kent, let him go!”

Her partner jumped down, then drew his gun. “Now, Kent.”

The profiler let go of the belt and put his hands up. “He’s all yours.”

While Ruben loosened the belt and started CPR, Kent came over and unlocked Nicole’s cell.

He smoothed her hair back. Such a tender gesture from a man who had just been choking a serial killer. “How are you feeling?”

“Maggoty.” Nicole said, rubbing her belly. Her sympathy for Rodden dissipated as she realized that wasn’t a joke.

Yvent jumped down, as well. He went over to the door and leaned his ear against the wood. “I think something’s in there.”

Before anyone could stop him, Yvent opened the door. About a million flies buzzed out, filling the small space. Nicole choked and gagged, trying not to hurl. Once some of the flies cleared out, they found a long-picked-over skeleton wearing a pink dress and bow.

“They can just never let go of their mommas,” Kent commented as a cop, holding a hand over his mouth, threw himself down a metal set of stairs.

To think, that could have been her in that closet.

As flies swarmed all around, Kent took her into his embrace. “Hold on tight,” he said.

So seldom was Kent her knight in shining armor that Nicole let him carry her up the steps. An ambulance waited just a few feet from the barn. Its red and blue flashing lights seemed so out of place in such an idyllic setting.

The EMT helped her onto a gurney and rolled up her sleeve to place an IV catheter. The sharp prick caused her to frown.

“Come on, Nic,” Kent chided her. “After everything you’ve been through, you’re going to wince at a needle poke?”

Kent evidently had gotten off his white horse and was back to being himself.

“How is Megan?”

The EMT nodded to an ambulance racing away from the farm. “She’s on her way in. They’ve got the ER set up for both of you,” he said, nodding at Nicole.

“What does that mean?” Kent asked.

“Well”, still looking toward Nicole, “first they are going to ultrasound your belly. Then, based on those results, they will take you to surgery to lavage your abdomen of the fly eggs or maggots.”

Nicole gulped and Kent squeezed her hand. “Okay, that you can be worried about.”

She was glad to know he still had some compassion for her situation.

The EMT injected something into the IV line. “Just pushing some IV antibiotics. As long as an infection hasn’t already set in, you should be fine.”

Kent smiled and smoothed back her hair. “See?”

“Alright sir, I’ll need you to get out,” the EMT said. “You can follow us.”

Kent smiled. “Let’s skip the posturing. I’m staying, so why don’t you shut those doors?”

The EMT studied Kent’s face as he continued, grabbing her hand. “I’m not leaving her. Period.”

The guy must have believed the profiler, which wasn’t surprising. Kent could intimidate a serial killer. The EMT shut the ambulance doors, then knocked on the window and the ambulance took off.

* * *

Kent stayed seated by Nicole’s bed, holding her hand as the doctor finished up the ultrasound, when he really wanted to be pacing back and forth. Was it just Kent, or was this ultrasound the longest in recorded history?

“Well, that’s interesting,” the doctor said as he wiped the gel from the ultrasound probe.

“What’s interesting?” Nicole demanded as she pulled down her shirt.

“You’re clean,” the doctor said.

“Exactly what does that mean?” Nicole pressed. Kent knew how she felt. MDs were maddening. They held your life in their hands, yet were about the most obtuse bunch.

“You are clean of fly eggs. I don’t think that he actually injected you with them.”

“But the needle marks,” Nicole said, pointing to the four red dots that outlined a square on her belly.

“Oh, he injected you,” the doctor said. “And there are small translucent bubbles at the end of the track mark, but my guess is that he injected you with sterile saline. I took a fine needle aspirate of it, but there is absolutely no tissue reaction around it, so you should be fine.”

Nicole blew out a breath, and it whistled as it ended. Then she laughed. “You are kidding me? But what about all the movement I’ve been feeling?”

It was the doctor’s turn to chuckle. “Trust me, you’ve got a lot of gas in there, but I think your mind was just giving you the symptoms you thought you should have.”

While Kent didn’t allow his relief to be quite as blatant as Nicole, his insides were doing a happy dance. To think of her so violated, only to have it be a bluff?

“How’s Megan?” Nicole asked.

“Not so fortunate. He did inject her with eggs. Thousands of them. They are prepping her for surgery.”

“Is she going to make it?” Nicole asked.

“Oh, yes, of course. They are still in the egg stage. It is mainly the infection we have to worry about after we clear them out.”

Nicole put her hand out. “Thank you, doctor.”

The doctor shook Nicole’s hand. “It was my pleasure.”

As he walked away, Kent took Nicole into his embrace, lifted her off the table, and spun her around. Her legs latched around his hips. Then their lips met. Love, relief, horror, and devotion met all at once in a kiss flavored by salty tears.

“I take it that was good news?” Ruben asked as he walked up with Glick.

Kent could feel Nicole wanting to distance herself from him, but he held on. These two could just deal with their PDA.

“Glad to hear it,” Glick said, “But I’ve got to ask Kent a few questions.”

“Shoot,” Kent said, nuzzling against Nicole’s neck.

“Perhaps the station would be a better place?” Glick suggested.

“No,” Kent said as he set Nicole down on the bed. He drew the curtain so she could get her pants on. “Here will be just fine.”

Glick cleared his throat. “This is about possible excessive force.”

“I figured,” Kent replied. This wasn’t his first rodeo. If he could convince his superiors that two gunshots through the eyes was self-defense, he wasn’t too worried here.

“Rodden is in surgery right now for the knife wound. They don’t expect him to make it, since his renal vein was sliced in two.”

“And?” Kent asked.

“It isn’t the knife wound that we are concerned about,” Glick said.

Ruben stepped forward. “But the belt around his neck.”

Kent just shrugged. The less he spoke in these situations, he found, the better.

“He was defenseless,” Ruben went on.

“No serial killer is defenseless, ever.” Kent said. “Now if I’d put ten bullets in his chest, if I’d had a gun and shot until the threat was completely gone, that you’d be okay with?”

Glick’s eyes flickered to the assortment of nurses and cops standing around the ER. Kent let that uncomfortable silence work in his favor.

Ruben, of course, didn’t seem to mind making a scene at all.

“The suspect was subdued, though. There was no need for excessive force,” Ruben said.

Kent took a step forward and glared at the tall detective. “What you call excessive, I call prudent.”

“Prudent?” Ruben snorted. “Prudent would have been in calling for backup once you found his lair.”

“Doesn’t it get old standing on that soap box, Torres? It’s going to give you varicose veins.”

The detective’s nostrils flared. This was nearly as much fun as going up against a psychopath. Dudley Do-Rights were nearly as rigid and uncompromising as psychopaths—and equally prone to violence, as Ruben’s hands balled up into fists.

“Do it,” Kent urged. “Show me what restraint looks like.”

Glick put a hand on Ruben’s shoulder and backed him up a step just as Nicole came from around the curtain. “Perhaps Detective Usher can be the tie breaker? After all, she was there for the whole thing.”

Nicole demurred. “It was dark, and half the time they were turned away from me…”

Glick wasn’t letting it go, though. “Nicole, was it excessive force resulting in a near execution, or was it justifiable force resulting in the suspect being subdued?”

Nicole looked to Ruben, then to Kent.

She spoke to Ruben. “You can’t know what it’s like unless you are in the room.”

“No,” Ruben said. “Don’t lie for him.”

“I’m not,” she replied, then turned to Glick. “It was justifiable force, Captain.”

He clapped Ruben on the back. “I guess that settles it.” He then turned to Kent. “Unless, of course, Rodden lives and tells a different story.”

“I’m not worried,” Kent said. Mainly because renal vein injuries were nearly all fatal.

Yvent walked up slowly from the ER waiting room, almost as if he was worried he shouldn’t even be there. Kent nodded at his protégé.

“Sorry about the whole accusing you of being a serial killer thing.”

“Sorry for being such an obvious target,” Yvent said with a smile. “I think I’m going to get a dog and wife as soon as possible. Get me out of that serial killer sweet spot.”

Kent smiled back. For the first time ever, he actually liked the kid. Someone who could live though one of his interrogations and still come out with their sense of humor demanded his respect.

“Anything I can do?”

The kid was clearly surprised when Kent nodded and handed him a sketch. “This guy was at the Chopper Hell bar last night. I need you to interview everyone who was there for his name and possible domicile.”

Yvent scanned the typical biker guy. “Why are we looking for him?”

Nicole was the one who answered. “Lucky 37.”

Yvent’s eyebrows went up. “He’s on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.”

“Yes,” Kent said. “And I believe that he is in town for the next two weeks.” He caught Yvent’s gaze. “Ready for the big leagues?”

“With you to get my back, yes,” his protégé answered. The correct answer. The kid had learned humility, after all. Kent doubted if the kid was going to go charging into any dark warehouses alone.

“Just get a name and then we’ll coordinate,” Kent stressed though, just to be sure.

“Recon only,” Yvent answered. “You got it.”

Joshua trotted up, a frown on his face. He, if possible, disliked Yvent more than Kent had. He held a small bouquet of yellow daisies. “I should have known the gang would all be here,” he said, handing the flowers over to Nicole.

She sniffed them. “How sweet, Joshua. You’re the only one who thought to bring flowers.”

Kent took the hint. He wasn’t too worried, though. He’d just rescued her. She would have to take that as a token of his affection.

“Well, I’m giving her the weekend off,” Glick said, then patted Ruben’s back. “All three of you have the weekend off. Good job, everyone.”

The rest basked in the glow of their Captain’s pride. For Kent, it was just another Friday.

They were all alive, though, and he’d take it.

EPILOGUE

Kent held Nicole’s hand as she made her way down the church steps. People surged around them, exiting the funeral. It was a sea of black swirling all around them. All somber. All in mourning.

The area around them seemed to feel exactly the opposite. Green lawn rolled out before them. Calla lilies bloomed all along the church’s walls. The grounds screamed “spring,” “life,” and “hope.” Maybe it wasn’t such a bad place to spend eternity.

“You didn’t have to do this, you know,” Kent murmured.

No, she didn’t. Most detectives didn’t attend the funeral of victims. Many times, it could stir up bad memories for both the family and the cop. But Nicole felt compelled to come to this one. She and Megan had survived. Emilyn was not so lucky.

“Well?” Kent asked.

She knew what he meant. She’d said she didn’t know if she could keep working with him, putting herself in a position where she could fail another young woman. Kent had been patient with her. He believed that giving up failed every other young woman that any of the five or so serial killers in their city would kill in the future, but he hadn’t pushed it. Once again, he’d given her the space to figure it out for herself.

Which she loved and hated about Kent. After their initial conversation, he hadn’t brought it up until now. Nicole had worked through most of the guilt, shame, and recrimination of losing Emilyn. But did she want to go through it again?

“I’m not sure,” she answered honestly.

“Good,” Kent said. Which was weird. Why would he say that? Then he got down on one knee. “The conversation at brunch got me thinking…”

Ruben walked out of the church, assessed the situation in a heartbeat, and said, “Oh. My. God.” And then walked right back into the church.

“I know this isn’t the time,” Kent said. “And even I know this probably isn’t the best place, but Nicole Sasha Usher, will you marry me?”

Nicole’s hand went to her mouth to cover the shock as Kent opened a small black velvet box to reveal an unusual, if not gorgeous, engagement ring. The center stone was a large emerald, surrounded by golden petals encrusted with what looked like light blue, glistening labradorite. An ancient, extremely rare stone. The ring looked like something the Queen of Sheba might have worn.

“It’s… it’s… it’s…” Nicole didn’t know what to say.

“It’s not diamonds, but if you want diamonds, I will get you all the diamonds you want.”

“No,” Nicole said. “No, I love it.”

“So that’s a yes?” Kent said with that damned smirk on his lips.

“Yes, that’s a yes,” Nicole said, laughing and almost crying. She’d never thought Kent the marrying type. And certainly not the specialty ring-buying type.

Kent took the ring from the box and slid it onto her finger. The cool metal felt just a little odd against her skin.

“Where did you get it?”

“Afghanistan,” Kent said. “From a local master artisan. I didn’t just bring back this lovely scar.”

He pointed to the ragged pink-red tissue that nearly encircled his neck. He’d missed getting decapitated by only a few inches.

“Afghanistan?” Nicole said. “That was months ago.”

“I know,” Kent said. “I bought it, but was waiting until the right moment.”

“And all the sudden you thought, ‘hey, why not a funeral?’”

“No,” Kent said. “I thought, why not ask before you decided whether or not to continue profiling. This way, you know I love you no matter what you decide.”

That was possibly the sweetest, most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. She urged him up and hugged him. “I love you,” she whispered.

“And I want you happy,” Kent answered.

A glow radiated from her core and beamed outward. Nicole swore that it could eclipse the midday sun.

As other mourners streamed out of the church, Kent moved them off to the side.

“We are going to do this again so that I have a story to tell my father, right?” Nicole asked.

“Sure,” Kent said. “As long as you plan it. I’m tapped out on romantic gestures.”

She should be upset, but with the brilliant emerald sparking in the sun, she found it impossible to be mad at the profiler.

“I’m going to go pop some tags,” Kent said. “Want to join me?”

“Do you even know what popping tags is?” Nicole challenged him, interlacing her fingers in his.

The profiler shrugged. “No, but I mean if rappers are doing it, I can figure it out.”

Nicole shook her head. So typical Kent. Propose one minute, go to the thrift store to exchange discount price tags on higher-priced items the next.

“So?” Kent asked. “You coming?’

“With you?” Nicole said. “Anywhere.”

* * *

Lucky 37 watched the funeral party break up from his Harley.

At first it had been disconcerting to know that someone was hunting him. He was used to being the hunter. And to have the hunter come so close? To walk into his den? It had taken everything he had to stay calm and not bolt when he realized that an FBI profiler and detective were playing pool just a few feet away.

He’d already heard that some young kid was passing around a sketch, asking the patrons at the bar if they knew him. Like his namesake, he was lucky that he didn’t really socialize.

Although he had to allow for the possibility that they would find out his name. He’d already gone by the junkyard and stolen another bike’s plates, so his bike was safe.

He’d also done his homework on the profiler. He hadn’t caught the attention of just any G-man, but the profiler with the most captures in FBI history.

On some level, that made him proud. He’d killed at will for over a decade. It turned out his papa hadn’t been right when he said that Lucky wouldn’t amount to anything. It turned out that not only did he like raping and killing, he was damned good at it. World-class, even. He’d gone out for a nice cold beer when he’d made the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

That was an abstract thought, though. It meant very little to his day-to-day life to know that every FBI agent in the country was looking for him. To have a single, determined FBI agent was a whole other ballgame.

The profiler broke off from the crowd, bringing his lady with him.

Did he know he was the one being hunted now?

Lucky knew that he should just pull up stakes and go to a new hunting ground, but this profiler intrigued him. Could it get any better than to be hunting a hunter? And that woman of his. She’d make a good lay, he was guessing.

The only thing he knew for sure as he revved his hog was that this was going to be a very interesting few days.

SHALLOW GRAVE – the bridge short story between Wallflower and Buzz Kill

CHAPTER 1

Nicole tried really hard not to step on any branches, but being out here in the deep forest, that was a little hard. The ground was branches. Kent, of course, was ahead of her, coursing silently through the underbrush.

Every sound startled her. Lucky 37 could be behind any tree. As a matter of fact, the probability was that the serial killer was behind one of these trees.

Kent had found the woman he was shacking up with, a Loma Milan. A waitress from the biker bar. Lucky had dropped off the grid the day after Yvent passed around his sketch at the bar. He had, though, told Loma that he frequently camped on the road, and she reported that Lucky liked the smell of cedar. Hence why, on a Friday night, when most couples were out to dinner, they were trekking around this spooky cedar forest.

Of course, Yvent wasn’t here, since he was on Sabbath. Lucky kid.

There was no moon, and Kent had refused to use flashlights, as well as making her leave her gun behind. She certainly would feel safer with it. However, wasn’t that Kent’s point? That her gun gave her a false sense of security? That she needed to learn to operate without it?

Well, that didn’t mean she had to like it.

Kent reached back and grabbed her hand, his thumb sliding up her left hand’s fourth finger. “Still not wearing the ring? Eh?”

Even in the near pitch black, Nicole was certain that Kent could see her cheeks blush. She pulled her hand from his, despite how warm and reassuring it had felt.

“Are you sure you don’t want a diamond?” Kent whispered into the night.

“No,” Nicole said. “I love it.”

“You just don’t like wearing it?” Kent retorted.

He had every right to be frustrated. They’d been engaged for weeks, yet Nicole hadn’t officially announced it. Ruben and a few others knew, those who had attended the victim’s funeral. So why was she so reluctant to wear the engagement ring? She was going to marry Kent, so that wasn’t the issue. So what was?

Kent pulled to a stop and cocked his head, waiting for something, but when it didn’t materialize he looked to her. “Are you embarrassed by me?”

“Usually?” Nicole replied. “Yes, but that’s not it.”

“Then what is it?” Kent asked.

Nicole had no idea. She just knew that every time she went to slip the beautiful ring onto her finger, she found one reason or another not to put it on. Like she was going to wash dishes soon. Yeah, right.

Kent, God love him, let it go and headed back out into the forest. Most other men would pester her about her reasons. Kent gave her the room and space to figure it out for herself. Which was great, but a little lonely. She almost wanted him to demand she wear it so she didn’t have to fret about it any longer.

But she couldn’t think much more on it, otherwise Kent would disappear into the trees. Nicole hurried to catch up.

They’d been out here over an hour, trying to find Lucky 37’s campsite. Her shoes were probably ruined, and she needed a shower. The longer they were out here, the more impossible it seemed that they would find Lucky. Wasn’t this the equivalent of trying to find a needle in the proverbial haystack? This state park, however, was no stack—this section of the park alone was over a thousand acres.

Kent had narrowed that down to areas that allowed camping and were accessible by Harley. Still, they could search a thousand nights and not find Lucky. That was, unless Lucky wanted to find them. Kent hadn’t been any too subtle back at the ranger station. Actually, he had made quite a show of their investigation and his intent to search the park.

Nicole assumed he was trying to bait Lucky to come out to play. One of Kent’s patented moves. He liked to appeal to their egos by throwing down the gauntlet.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted Lucky to take the bait or not.

Then the crisp sound of a branch breaking filled the night air. That was not her. It had come from ahead of them. And a campfire flickered in the distance. Could they really have found Lucky’s campsite?

Nicole looked to Kent, who seemed nearly as surprised as she was. He always seemed so cocky. It was nice to know that even he had his doubts.

He put his finger to his lips and moved out. The going got easier as they approached the fire. Imagine that. Light helped in the dark. A revelation.

Kent indicated she should go to the left as he went to the right. Great. Now they were splitting up. And her without a weapon. Kent’s tongue was the only weapon he usually needed. The man was a word ninja. What did she have?

Nicole picked up a large stick from the ground as she made her way around the periphery of the campfire. There was no evidence of Lucky. At least, not yet.

The forest creaked and groaned as a coyote cried in the night. Nicole didn’t want it to, but a chill went right up her back and settled at the base of her skull. Something was wrong here.

Were those signs of a struggle in the dirt around the fire? And if this was Lucky’s camp, why wasn’t there a tent, or a campfire stove? It did not look like someone was living here. The flames looked more like they were from a bonfire than a small campfire.

She didn’t need Kent to tell her this was all wrong.

Then Nicole saw it. Blood. Lots of blood. It glistened ominously in the firelight. She took a few more steps to find a girl. She was on the ground, her dress torn, her panties down.

Nicole rushed forward, throwing her stick into the flames. It crackled and snapped as it caught fire. She dropped to her knees beside the teenage girl. There was little doubt what happened here. Multiple stab wounds to the belly, along with the word “whore” carved into her chest.

She’d seen enough not to be horrified or nauseated. That didn’t mean she wasn’t affected. Carefully, she reached out and checked the girl’s pulse. There was none, but the body was still warm to the touch. She couldn’t have been dead long. Less than an hour. They had been only minutes away from saving her.

Kent watched from the forest, brushing debris from his coat. “They’re gone.”

“They?” Nicole said. “Isn’t this Lucky 37?”

The profiler shook his head. “Look at the footprints,” Kent said, indicating to the ground. “There are at least four distinct prints. Lucky works alone.”

“But the rape…”

“She’s too young for him,” Kent said. “He likes his woman older and, well, skankier. My bet is that this girl was a virgin.”

From the cotton candy pink dress and Hello Kitty watch, Nicole knew that Kent was probably right.

“There have been a few cases like this,” Nicole said. “None with the word ‘whore,’ but teenage rapes and deaths.”

“Yes, but over a three-state area,” Kent responded.

“Do you think they are connected?”

“There are no coincidences in investigations.”

Nicole cocked her head. “Well, then what are the chances that we were looking for Lucky 37 and stumbled upon a whole other crime?”

“None,” Kent said. “Because we didn’t stumble upon anything.”

A coyote cried, this time closer, setting Nicole’s teeth on edge. She really wanted to get back to the urban jungle she was used to. This getting back to nature thing wasn’t working for her.

“What do you mean?” Nicole asked, trying to stop obsessing on how many animal eyes were on her right now.

“I mean that Lucky 37 led us to this crime site. He’s just that good.”

“How would he know where this body was if he didn’t commit the crime?”

“Have you forgotten already?” Kent asked.

How Nicole hated it when she didn’t perform up to Kent’s insanely high standards. She thought hard, scanning her brain for what was already so obvious to Kent.

“Serial killers many times are aware of other serialists working in their area,” Nicole stated.

Kent nodded. “Exactly. They are surveillance experts. Like two tigers hunting in the same forest. They know their territory and don’t cross into the other’s killing zone.”

“But why would Lucky 37 lead us to a crime? Is there no honor amongst serial killers?”

“No,” Kent said bluntly. “So why would Lucky 37 draw us here? Think it through and answer your own question.”

Ugh. Again on the hot seat. Where was Kent’s intern, Yvent, when she needed him to take some of the heat? She swallowed hard, standing up, moving away from the body, trying to leave as little contamination to the crime scene as possible.

Why would one serial killer point the finger at another serial killer? It made no sense.

“Sorry,” Nicole said. “I’ve got nothing.”

* * *

Nicole, Nicole, Nicole, Kent thought. She so badly wanted to be a profiler, yet gave up so easily. Her basic good nature refused to let her follow a serial killer’s mind down the rabbit hole. Kent, on the other hand, usually jumped in with abandon.

“All right. Forget about Lucky 37 for a moment. What can you tell me about these murderers?” he asked, throwing her a softball question.

“Well, there is a group of them,” Nicole said. “Apparently male,” she went on. “I would guess similarly aged to the victim. A gang rape?”

Kent shook his head. “A gang rape is usually a spontaneous event, a frat-party-gone-wrong kind of situation. If these boys have done this before, the crime is premeditated, so that makes them…”

He studied the poor girl’s body. To have met an end so cruel. He even forgave her the pink dress. Youthful infractions.

“Them what?” Nicole asked.

“We are looking for a pack.”

“A pack? How is that different than a gang?”

“Again, a gang rape is spontaneous. Usually, young males get caught up in the moment and act out their worst aggressions. There is usually a ringleader in a gang rape—someone who initiates the rape, then encourage the rest to follow suit. However, a pack has a well-established alpha male that can control several other beta males over a long period of time and distance. In many ways, a pack is easier to locate, due their predictable predatory habits, but far harder to break.”

“So it feels like we are looking for maybe a team? That would be a pre-packaged alpha-dominated pack,” Nicole suggested.

Kent nodded. “Exactly. Like I said, usually easy to identify, but once we get them in the room, they usually hold up under interrogation. Prolonged peer pressure like that induces an almost cult-like level of loyalty.”

“At least we know what we are looking for.”

Nicole had proven herself here. Maybe she was ready to tackle their solo rapist again.

“Lucky 37 has been raping and killing for, what? How many years?” Kent asked.

“As best we can tell, he started in the eighties and has been active ever since,” Nicole answered, correctly.

“Then Lucky realizes that I am onto him. He could have left town, but chose not to. I think his ritual is too engrained. Once started, at this point, he must finish it,” Kent explained, but that light didn’t go off on Nicole’s face. He was practically spoon-feeding her the answer, yet she still couldn’t see it.

Sometimes it really was annoying to be such a visionary. Not only was everyone so far behind, but then you had to take precious time to explain everything before you moved forward.

“So, you’re a serial killer with a profiler on your ass,” Kent continued. “You can’t leave town, so how do you throw that profiler off your trail?”

“By giving him another case to investigate?” Nicole said, not exactly sounding sure of herself.

“Correct.”

“But how does he know that you’ll follow this new case instead of him?” Nicole asked. “Lucky 37 is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.”

“Again, think it through,” Kent urged. “He kills middle-aged, crack-addicted whores, and now we have a case involving pristine high school virgins? Which one do you think Glick and the Governor are going to want us to investigate?”

Nicole nodded, this time seeming to get it. “He really is smart.”

“Yes, this guy is a biker Einstein. Now I can see how he’s remained at large for so long.”

“That and because you weren’t on the case yet?” Nicole said with a smirk.

Ah, finally she was starting to catch on.

CHAPTER 2

Ruben sat down and rubbed his face, trying to wake himself up. It was four in the morning. His palm felt the prickle of his stubble. He’d forgotten to shave. Actually, he’d forgotten to bring his electric razor to Paggie’s.

Even though they were spending way more time together, his razor seemed to always be at the wrong house. He should just buy another one. Was the reason he was reluctant to get a second was that the razor in question had been a gift from Nicole all those years ago?

She’d given it to him because, for the life of him, every time he shaved with a dual bladed razor, he always nicked himself. Nicole had said it wasn’t exactly a present for him, but to keep all those trees from being felled to provide him with the scraps of tissue he used to stop the bleeding.

Had it been the most romantic present in the history of presents? No, but it had been thoughtful, and saved him a ton in tissue costs, plus the embarrassment of constantly having red-centered dabs along his neck every morning.

As the heaviness in his chest increased, Ruben realized that he was right. That was the reason he hadn’t simply bought another razor. Well, on the way home tonight, he was stopping at a pharmacy and picking another one up. It was time to move on.

Which could not have been a more appropriate realization, as Kent and Nicole walked in. The profiler’s arm was draped casually over Nicole’s.

She had never been a big fan of PDA, yet with Kent she didn’t shrug off his touch as she had Ruben’s.

One more reason to get that other electric shaver.

Glick entered from the other hallway. He, too, was unshaven, his beard bristling white across his chin and cheeks. Had Glick always been that gray, or had Kent done that to him?

“This had better be important.”

Joshua and Jimmi rushed in. Joshua, of course, was the one to pipe up first. “Oh, it is.”

Jimmi rolled a large screen over for them all to view, then went to work on his laptop.

“First off,” Joshua said. “I’ve confirmed that poor Cecily was a virgin.”

Ruben knew that McGregor certainly hadn’t gotten out of bed for this case—make that any case. So how had Joshua confirmed that? The visual image was quite disturbing. Ruben knew that he wasn’t going to get that out of his head all day. He didn’t bother to ask Joshua how. Ruben now did not want to know.

“And I’ve mapped out the other killings that are similar,” Jimmi said.

Bright red dots showed up on the map showing the previous killings.

“Now each of the bodies was found within a few miles of their high schools,” Jimmi said as new dots showed up. “And here is our newest victim.”

Another set of dots showed up.

“Are we sure this is the same killer?” Glick asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Yes,” Jimmi said. “The shoe prints are the same at all the crime scenes.”

“Why wasn’t this pattern noticed earlier?” Ruben asked.

“The crimes happened across state lines. It was only luck that Detective Usher saw the bulletin from Kansas City and linked them.”

“Well, at least we now know where to look,” Kent said.

Ruben was glad that he wasn’t the only one to look like he had no idea what Kent was talking about.

“Spit it out, Harbinger,” Glick said. “It is way too early for your usual dog-and-pony show.”

Kent pointed to the area in the middle of the dots. “Our killers arise from this high school.”

“And how did you deduce that?” Glick asked. Nicole bit her bottom lip. You could see her trying as hard as she could to catch up to the profiler.

“Don’t you have a bit more information?” Kent asked Jimmi, who looked to his screen, then his keyboard, then back to Kent.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Ruben wished that he knew what Kent was talking about and could beat him to the punch, but realized that was probably never going to happen.

* * *

“The timeline of the murders?” Kent prompted. This really was like pulling teeth. The information was in front of them all, but only he could see it.

No one rose to the occasion.

Then Joshua’s face lit up and shoved Jimmi away from the keyboard. “The deaths all occurred on the night of a football game!”

Kent nodded. At least someone got it. No surprise, actually, that it was Joshua. Even though the guy was in his late twenties, Kent didn’t doubt that the morgue assistant hit a few high school football games himself.

“And who were the away teams playing on each of those nights?” Kent asked.

“St. Mary’s High School,” Joshua answered without hesitation. “And they won each of the games. Other cities, where they lost, there were no rapes or murders.”

Joshua really was quick at catching on. By the frown on Nicole’s face, she wasn’t too thrilled that the odd tech was way ahead of her.

“And just look at that pattern,” Kent said. “They are so desperate not to kill inside of their geographical area that they have simply painted a bull’s eye as to where they are located.”

Again, this all seemed too obvious to Kent.

Why wasn’t it obvious to everyone else?

“So we are looking at St. Mary’s football team?” Nicole asked. “Trying to find the pack that did this?”

“What pack?” Glick asked.

Kent sighed. He really didn’t have it in him to explain that concept again. He nodded to Nicole and she filled in the room as to who they were looking for. It took her a good ten minutes—possibly the longest ten minutes of Kent’s life.

Glick’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve got to be careful when you go in. All of the city’s elite’s children go there. Tread carefully.”

“When do I tread any other way?” Kent demanded.

Then the room broke out into laughter.

Okay, maybe he deserved that.

* * *

Nicole chuckled softly as Kent was still busy protesting. “What?”

“Let’s go home and get a nap in before the school opens,” Nicole suggested.

The rest of the group was dispersing as Kent followed her out. “When have I stepped over the line?” Kent demanded.

“You don’t even know where the line is,” Nicole responded. “And you are just trying to bait me, and I am not rising to the occasion.”

“Fine,” Kent said. “What time does the principal get in?”

“From the website, it looks like 8am. I think we should be on his doorstep when he arrives for work.”

“Agreed.”

Nicole stopped in her tracks. “What? You ‘agree?’ When has that ever happened? You don’t want to drag me out to an all-night retro speakeasy or illegal street race? You don’t even want to go after Lucky 37?”

Kent shook his head. “No, we’re going to need our rest.”

“Why?” Nicole asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Because Lucky 37 doesn’t know, despite how smart he is, that I am going to clear this case in twenty-four hours. It might be a long twenty-four hours, so we need to get our rest now.”

From just about anyone else, that would have sounded like hubris. However, from Kent, it was pretty much fact.

“So, when do we get the invites?” Joshua asked as he crossed the bullpen to stand next to them.

“What invites?” Nicole asked.

“Um, awkward. To your wedding?” Joshua asked. “Kent did propose at the funeral, right?”

Nicole could swear that everyone looked to her ring finger. Which, of course, was bare.

“Didn’t the guy even get you a ring?” Ruben asked.

Okay, Nicole was having a hard enough time with this all. She didn’t need Glick giving Kent the stink eye.

“Yes, a beautiful one, but it’s out being sized.”

That was a lie, but she didn’t want to have to stand here and explain her existential angst at why she didn’t want to put it on.

“So?” Joshua prompted. “A date, have you set a date so that I can put it on my calendar?”

Kent shook his head. “We’re playing that one by ear. But, Joshua, you will be the first to know.”

That seemed to please the morgue attendant—however, Ruben was the one who looked like the cat that had eaten the canary. He seemed far too pleased with himself. He clearly knew that all was not right in paradise.

Damn him.

CHAPTER 3

Kent really hadn’t gotten much sleep. He was way too wired. Having an open case like this where he couldn’t immediately rush into the investigation always left him restless.

Now they were finally on the move. A quick trip through a drive-thru for breakfast and Nicole’s prerequisite morning coffee, and they were on their way to the high school.

As Nicole pulled the Mustang up to the campus’s curb, Kent was a little surprised how different this high school looked from the one he had attended. First off, at his, there weren’t tall iron gates. Second off, they didn’t need an armed guard at said gate. And they certainly didn’t have a metal detector to get through. The way the students were patted down was more thorough than at LAX airport.

What the hell happened to the school system that they needed this kind of screening? Damn.

Nicole got out of the car, unsnapping the gun at her hip. As they approached the guard, she flashed her badge and handed him her gun, then went through the metal detector. The guard turned to Kent.

“Your weapon?”

“He doesn’t carry one,” Nicole said.

The guard’s eyebrows went up, but he waved Kent through the metal detector. He passed with flying colors. Nicole hooked her holster back onto her belt. “The way to the principal’s office?”

The guard pointed to the left and they set off in that direction.

Students bustled past, either carrying extremely heavy backpacks, or those without backpacks, simply carrying their iPads. Kent could guess who was more likely to find gainful employment in the next decade.

Soon they reached the principal’s office or, as it was called, the “Administrative Complex.” A secretary—sorry, “administrative assistant”—sat behind a large “U”-shaped desk. It looked like three or four people used to work back there, but after budget cuts, the workspace was down to one. Maybe the cuts had been for all the wrought iron fencing, or the state-of-the-art metal detector.

She looked about as harried as a high school’s administrative assistant should. “May I help you?”

Nicole showed the woman her badge. “Yes, we’d like to speak with Principal Fregler.”

“Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked.

Nicole looked down at her badge again. “I think that’ll do.”

The woman snorted. “Please. Do you know how often we have police show up? I asked if you had an appointment.”

Nicole didn’t get knocked back, though. She came at the woman with equal intensity. “I have five high school girls raped and murdered, so again, I think we don’t need an appointment, unless you’d like me to tell the press how uncooperative your school has been?”

The administrative assistant blanched and shuffled some papers before buzzing the principal. “Alan, there are two detectives here to see you.”

Interesting. Calling her boss by his first name. Did that mean that “Alan” had a laid-back, new-age approach to management, or did it indicate a more personal relationship between boss and secretary?

Kent loved these little mysteries almost as much as he loved solving the bigger, overlying crime. How much people told him in a few short sentences truly was staggering.

Take Alan Fregler. The man came out of his office looking ready for the beach. He wore light linen pants and, Kent believed, Birkenstock sandals. His shirt wasn’t quite Hawaiian, but looked like it was from somewhere in the South Pacific or, at the least, from the Tommy Bahama collection.

The guy tried to exude a calm, unconcerned air, which, of course, belied the whole armed-guard-outside-the gate reality.

Plus, Alan’s clenched jaw told Kent he was not nearly as Zen as he wanted everyone to think. The principal knew something was wrong. Did that have anything to do with the murders? Too soon to tell, but this guy was hiding something. Something big. Good to know.

The principal and secretary exchanged a look. She tilted her head to the phone, but he gave a super subtle shake of the head. Obviously, Nicole picked up on the little exchange.

“Feel free to call the district’s lawyer if you like,” Nicole said. “If, of course, you think you need to.”

Alan swallowed hard. “No, not at all. Why don’t you come into my office?” he said as he swept his hand toward the door. Did that pseudo charm work on other people? Or was he used to not being called on his crap because he had a chiseled jaw and perfectly salt-and-peppered hair?

The guy looked like a cross between George Clooney and Matt Damon. Like they had a full-grown love child.

Which worked for Kent. Most attractive people were less accustomed to being put under pressure. They tended to buckle much quicker, since life had just come too easily for them. They weren’t accustomed to having to actually work through a problem. Not when they had that one-hundred-watt smile at their disposal.

Alan sat down behind his desk. Kent was surprised. He half expected that Alan was the “I’ll sit on the edge of my desk so that we are equals” kind of guy. As a matter of fact, Kent was certain that if he interviewed the staff and students, he would find that ninety-nine percent of the time Alan did sit on the edge and exude empathy.

Now, though? He sat behind his desk in an attempt to play up his superiority and to put some distance between them. However, he had guessed wrong.

“Have a seat,” he encouraged.

Nicole, though, put her palm down on her holster. “I’d rather stand.”

That was his girl. She knew a power seeker when she saw one.

Alan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. They hadn’t said a word yet about what the crime was, but the guy was already in trouble.

Nicole looked to Kent to start, but he shook his head. He was going to let her handle this one. A dominant female seemed the best choice here. Every time Nicole bore her stare into the principal, the guy shifted again.

“We have five high school girls brutally raped and killed, and it is looking like your school may be the source of the perpetrators.”

“May be?” the principal shot back. Oh, yeah, he was looking for any way out of this. Most people would have been more stuck on the whole brutally raped and murdered part.

“We are early in the investigation, however all evidence is pointing to this school being the source.”

“I’m… I’m, not sure how I can help you.”

“Really?” Kent said, jumping into the conversation. A little alpha male seemed appropriate here. “Because I’m pretty sure that you are thinking of a set of boys just perfect for this crime.”

“No, I mean… No…” Alan sputtered.

“And since you didn’t give them up right away, I can only assume that these boys are important to the school and its stature. Let me venture a guess and say they are on a sporting team?”

The man’s face went white as his full lips trembled. “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

“Hmm… that’s odd,” Kent said. “Because as soon as I said that, your eyes flickered over to that football trophy case.”

If at all humanly possible, the man’s face drained of even more color. Now his skin had an almost blue cast to it. His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

“I think… I think I will wait for our lawyers before we speak further.”

“Good idea,” Kent said. “Because once those victims’ families learn that the school knew ahead of time that you had dangerous students and did nothing about it, I can smell a multi-million-dollar lawsuit coming your way.”

As the man’s eyes dilated, Kent knocked his knuckles against Alan’s desk. “But, hey, thanks, you’ve been a great help.”

CHAPTER 4

Nicole walked alongside Kent as they headed to the football field. They didn’t exactly need direction, since the stadium loomed large on the other side of the campus and the typical football sounds—shouts, grunts, and yells carried on the wind.

She was pretty proud of herself back in the principal’s office. If Kent’s reaction—allowing her to conduct most of the interview—was any indication, she’d read “Alan” correctly. And once Kent got his claws into him? She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d wet himself just a little bit. That surfer-dude persona just didn’t stand up to Kent’s laser-focused interrogation.

More than likely, the district’s lawyer was on his way, so they needed to get to the football field before then. She quickened her pace across the grassy quad. Kent had no problem keeping up.

The grass gave way to gravel, which gave way to pavement as they passed mobile home units, which served as classrooms. Times really had fallen hard on the school. And by all of the football booster signs and banners all around the school, football wasn’t just a sport, it was a vital income source for the school. That was more than likely why the principal nearly stained his shorts when Kent suggested the players may be the killers they were looking for. There went his ATM machine.

Kent led the way through the tunnel that led into the football stadium’s interior. For a moment, they were in near darkness, their only guide the pinpoint of light at the end. Her eyes hurt from the near full dilation, then full constriction as they walked out onto the sunny field.

The scene looked like a professional NFL practice field. The ramming machines, the sleekly designed uniforms. This was so far beyond the level of most high schools, it was ridiculous, but the team had won State for three years in a row. Guess this is what it took.

So these football players would be treated as royalty at this school. The coach saw them from across the field and trotted over right after he yelled at a player to hit the blocking machine harder.

“I’m sorry, but we’re a closed practice field.”

Nicole pulled her badge out. “I’m Detective Usher, and this is Special Agent Kent Harbinger, BAU division.”

She always added that part, but more than likely, if anyone called Washington, they would disavow any knowledge of Kent. For now, though, it helped back the football coach off. If these kids were treated like little princes, this was their king.

“I’m sorry, what do you need?”

Kent pointed to several students. “We need to speak to him, and him, and him.”

“I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to go to the office and wait for their parents to come in.”

“No we won’t,” Kent said flatly. “You are a private school that has a zero tolerance policy for drugs and violence. Because of this, all parents must sign a waiver giving up their rights to be present at any police interviews. All we require is a school official to be present, which is you.”

The coach seemed none too happy that Kent knew the school’s policy. Plus he’d already been trapped in a lie, so he didn’t look very comfortable.

“So why don’t you call the boys over?” Kent prompted.

The coach had no other choice but to comply. Anything else would be akin to hindering an investigation. The players in question trotted over, taking off their helmets.

“You’re the quarterback?” Kent asked, even though there had been no indication of that from the practice field. The kid had been hitting the machines just like his teammates. “And captain of the team? Reggie Halfort?”

The kid nodded twice. Nicole looked for any insignia or patch that indicated the player was captain of the team. His number was fifty-two, which didn’t seem very captain-like. How had Kent known? Maybe he’d researched ahead of time—which didn’t sound very Kent-like.

Kent jumped right into the questioning. “Where were you all last night?”

The player shrugged and looked away from the coach. “After we won, we went out to celebrate.”

“Which included?” Kent asked.

“Partying?”

“Drinking?” Kent prompted.

Reggie looked down at his feet. “There may have been a keg or two.”

“You know underage drinking isn’t allowed,” the coach growled.

“Which he gave up pretty easily, didn’t you, Reggie?” Kent said. “I find when someone admits to a lesser crime—which, come on, he knows you aren’t going to do anything about—it is usually to cover for a larger crime.”

Reggie’s cheeks flushed. “How dare you…”

“Me?” Kent said. “You raped and killed five girls.”

Nicole put a hand on Kent’s arm. “What my colleague means to say is that we need proof of your alibi. We need to know exactly where you partied. We need to see empty cups with your DNA to be able to clear you.”

Kent pulled his arm away. She almost reminded him of what Glick had said about treading carefully, but that would probably make the profiler push even harder.

“Yeah, how about you talk to my dad’s lawyer about that,” Reggie said, tossing the football between his hands.

Kent went to open his mouth when a smaller teen stumbled out onto the field, dropping a large water bottle. The plastic cracked and the gallons of water spilled out onto the field.

“Smooth move,” Reggie sneered. “And you want to be on the team? Why don’t you go try out for something more your speed, like girls’ gymnastics?”

Nicole waited for the coach to say something, but when he didn’t, she piped up. “I thought the school had a zero tolerance policy on bullying, as well?”

“What?” The coach said. “The kid is a klutz.”

Perhaps the first step in implementing a non-bullying policy would be to actually explain to the staff what bullying was. Then, maybe it could be enforced.

Kent reached his hand out and the coach looked at the appendage suspiciously before finally shaking Kent’s hand. “I have to say that everyone at this school has been so incredibly helpful. Thanks.”

The coach looked downright shocked as Kent pumped the man’s hand up and down. Then the profiler turned on his heel and headed toward the exit.

“Yes, thanks, and we’ll get in touch if we need anything else,” Nicole said as she hurried to catch up with Kent.

“What was all that about?” Nicole asked. “They didn’t tell us anything.”

* * *

Kent loved Nicole even when she said such incredibly naïve things as that. “Are you kidding me? Reggie practically confessed. He is the pack leader—now we just need to prove it.”

“Right. Just prove it,” Nicole mumbled. She always had such little faith.

“Evidence is the easy part,” Kent said. “Honing in on the killer is the hard part. So, see, we’re on the downhill slope toward a capture.”

Apparently, Nicole did not see that, as she lagged behind, checking her phone. “Where are we going?” Nicole asked.

“Where else?” Kent challenged.

“Kent, I don’t have enough caffeine in my body to do this. Just tell me.”

She really was being a spoilsport this morning. Perhaps she should lay off the double shot espressos. Not that he was going to broach her caffeine addiction any time soon. That was like telling an elephant he was fat. There was just no upside.

So until they got her some more serious caffeine, he was going to have to placate her a bit.

“The guidance counselor,” Kent said.

“What for?”

“We need to look for a history of bullying.”

“So we can…?”

“Nicole, really,” Kent chided. “Even without a jumbo mocha latte you’ve got to get your brain working.”

Nicole frowned. “Even if we prove the boys are bullies, that doesn’t help build a murder case.”

Kent sighed. “Think this forward. Most bullying isn’t just verbal, especially with those muscle-bound footballers. They usually pull pranks, stunts, acts of humiliation.”

It was like a light bulb went off right above Nicole’s head. Her eyelids parted, yet her pupils constricted as her cheeks flushed. The look of someone having an epiphany was nearly as good as an orgasm. Nearly.

“Which, in most cases, constitutes assault,” Nicole said, catching up. “If we prove assault, we have cause for a warrant, and more than likely these boys aren’t sophisticated murderers, so we will find evidence of the murdered girls on them.”

Kent touched his nose. “Bingo. Yes, see you don’t need a Frappuccino to solve crimes.”

Again, that frown. Nicole was a bit sensitive about her caffeine habit.

“What if they don’t have a bullying history?” Nicole asked.

“Please, did you see the way they treated the water boy? And that didn’t even make the coach flinch,” Kent stated. “Plus, one doesn’t suddenly become a rapist murdering pack. They graduated to the big leagues after spending some time inflicting pain and getting away with it.”

“Bullies are twice as likely as the average population to become murderers,” Nicole noted.

“It is worse than that,” Kent said. “Statistics show that nearly 75 percent of all violent crime is perpetrated by those that bullied in school.”

“But doesn’t a lot of that start at home?” Nicole asked.

Kent nodded. “That’s unfortunately why bullying is so hard to uproot. Usually, the parents are the ones showing the bullies how it is done at home. The child then comes to school and acts out the behavior, identifying with his abuser rather than his victim.”

“And so the cycle goes,” Nicole said, shaking her head.

They made their way across the campus as a bell rang. Class let out and hundreds of uniformed students poured out of the classrooms and headed to their next class. Kent had to stop as a kid ran right in front of him. The vice principal, a burly looking woman, blew a whistle.

“Kenneth!” she yelled. “Half an hour detention.”

The kid stopped running, kicking at the dirt. “Dang it.”

Perhaps if the school were quite so on top of their bullying problem, five girls wouldn’t be dead.

Kent bet that the football team could run through this quad all day long and not a single whistle would be blown. They made their way through the maze of student flesh and arrived at the administrative office.

“The principal is out,” the secretary stated.

Sure he was. Lucky they didn’t need him. “Actually, we were looking for the guidance counselor. I’m assuming you have them stashed in some ridiculously small office around here?”

“Down the hall,” the woman said. “Last door on your left. Not right, that’s the broom closet.”

Like Kent said. Nicole led the way and knocked on the door. A surly “Enter,” followed. Kent looked to Nicole, who raised her eyebrow. Already not exactly a welcoming presence, this guidance counselor.

Nicole opened the door to find a tidy—too tidy—office with a whip-thin woman sitting behind a desk far too large for the room. The counselor was what Kent’s mother would have called a spinster. Lips pressed down so firmly that you couldn’t see the flesh, the woman looked like she’d never known a brief flirtation, let alone love. Her graying hair was swept up into a tight bun and her eyebrows had been plucked into a severe line.

This was the face of a woman who was not getting some, but dear God, needed it.

A healthy, active sex life prevented nearly everything. Psychosis, heart disease, diabetes—like he said, everything. Being as tightly wound as this woman, Edna Puinesh, was, could not be a good sign for this interview.

When she finally looked up over her reading glasses, her lips turned down. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

Nicole introduced them.

Edna pulled off her reading glasses and let them dangle from their beaded necklace. “What has Wayne done now?”

“Wayne?” Nicole asked, shooting a glance to Kent. None of the footballers were named Wayne. He had no idea what the counselor was talking about.

“Yes, Wayne Carter. He usually keeps his acting out to non-violent misdemeanors such as tagging and shoplifting.”

“Trust me,” Nicole said. “A detective and FBI agent wouldn’t be standing here for vandalism or sticky fingers.”

Edna put her glasses on again as she waved to the chairs in front of her desk. “Then why are you here?”

“Five girls have died.”

“None from here?” Edna asked.

“No,” Nicole said. “From other schools, but we have backtracked the killers to this school. We are looking for students who might have exhibited bullying behavior.”

Edna shook her head. “This school has a zero tolerance policy for bullying.”

“Yes,” Nicole said. “We saw exactly how zero that tolerance is out on the football field, where the quarterback verbally harassed the water boy, and then the coach, instead of intervening, called the water boy a derogatory name. So please spare us the school’s mantra.”

Edna’s eyes shifted from Nicole to Kent, then back. She knew something.

“You must have complaints on file,” Kent prompted.

“Not for bullying,” Edna said. “There are very specific requirements a complaint must fall under for it to be categorized as bullying.”

“Then what do you have?” Nicole pressed.

“Inappropriate Interpersonal Interactions. Triple ‘I’s, we call them.

“Kind of like No Child Left Behind,” Nicole commented, “Where the lower-performing students are kicked out of school to keep the averages up.”

Edna shrugged. “I don’t implement the policies of the board. I just enforce them.”

Ah, the “they told me to do it” defense. Hope that helped her sleep at night.

“Well?” Nicole said, holding out her hand.

Edna turned around, unlocked a file cabinet, and handed Nicole five files. The detective flipped through them. “Can you call these students to your office right away?”

“No,” the counselor said, leaning back in her chair.

“No?” Nicole responded, arching her very real eyebrows. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“I mean that I can’t… at least not four of them,” Edna said. “Four of them have transferred to different schools.”

“All of these reports are about the football team,” Nicole informed Kent as she flipped through the files.

“Surprise, surprise?” Kent commented. “Four out of five complainants no longer go to this school. Who arranged that?”

The counselor shrugged again, as if nothing could stay put on her shoulders. “There was no arranging. Students transfer schools.”

“Hmm… and exactly how many students besides these four have transferred in the last two years?”

Edna frowned again, bringing her drawn-on eyebrows together. “None.”

“And how many the two years before that?”

“None,” Edna answered, looking down at her hands.

“So, statistically speaking, having four students transfer out in the same year after being bullied sounds pretty significant. You didn’t notice this pattern? Or did you create it? Talk the parents into transferring, rather than pursuing the complaints? Shooting for guidance counselor of the year award?”

“Perhaps the parents realized that their children participated in the event and decided to start fresh elsewhere,” Edna suggested.

“Getting strung up on the flag pole in their underwear?” Nicole pressed. “Or getting their head flushed in the toilet?” Nicole looked to Kent. “These four all suffered typical bullying.”

“Not according to our bullying oversight committee,” Edna said.

“That is made up of what? Football boosters?”

The blanched look on Edna’s face told Kent he’d hit the nail on the head. The people most invested in the football team were the ones who decided if they crossed any lines. Not exactly an impartial panel.

“I really don’t see what this has to do with the girls’ murders.”

“Of course you don’t,” Kent said, standing up. “Which is why those girls died.”

Nicole stood up as well. “Can you call this last one, the one still attending this high school, this Dell, to the office?”

“Delia,” Edna corrected.

“I’m sorry, what?” Nicole responded.

“The kid started out boy, but now wants to pass as a girl.”

“A transsexual then?” Nicole asked.

Edna nodded. “Little freak is always a problem. Expecting us to protect him against the inevitable response to his decision.”

“Ah, there it is. Your keynote speech for guidance counselor of the year.”

CHAPTER 5

Nicole trotted to catch up to Kent. They were headed to the school’s executive conference room to meet with Delia. Her father was already there, expecting to pick her up.

“Kent, remember this child is not just traumatized, but usually these transgender children are brutally traumatized.”

“What?” Kent said. “Haven’t I proved that I’m great with kids?”

“Like the football players?”

“I never get along with sociopaths,” Kent said.

“Just be gentle, okay?” she begged.

They entered the room to find a guy who looked like he worked in a factory of some sort. His gray overalls were stained in shades of brown. Perhaps a furniture manufacturer? A young girl sat next to him dressed in a bright yellow dress with a matching yellow hair band. Her fingernails were painted an equally vivid yellow.

“Delia?” Nicole asked, extending her hand to the girl.

“Dell,” the father grunted. “Don’t contribute to his delusion, please. It’s bad enough the school lets him wear a dress. He’s got a gender identity crisis.”

Kent sat down across from Delia, though he spoke to the father. “Actually, nearly every psychological association in the world has declassified transsexual behavior from a crisis to simply a state of being. You aren’t confused, are you Delia?”

“No, sir,” she answered sweetly.

“It is just a case of a soul being put into the wrong body,” Kent said with a grin. “I totally get that.”

Delia grinned back. Okay, maybe Kent was good with kids, Nicole thought as she sat down across from the father. “Where is Delia’s mother?”

“It broke her heart to see her boy like this. She died three years ago.”

Delia rolled her eyes. “Heart attacks run in my mother’s side of the family. Her cholesterol was over three hundred from the bacon and eggs you made her make every morning,” she said, looking sideways at her father.

Wow, this girl was a fighter.

“Mom was supportive of my transition,” Delia said, finishing up her point. “She bought me my first dress and taught me how to put on lip gloss.”

Kent put a hand out to Nicole. She gave him Delia’s complaint file. He scanned it quickly. “It says here that the football team cornered you in the showers and tried to give you a cold water enema? It was only the janitor that rescued you before they did?”

“I don’t remember,” Delia said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Don’t remember?” Kent pressed. “You don’t remember being mobbed by a bunch of boys, stripped naked, then bent over?”

Nicole was about to intercede when Delia sighed.

“As bad as that was, reporting it was the worst thing I could have done,” Delia said, starting to play with the ends of her belt.

“We think the boys have moved on to rape and murder. We need your help to put them away. You are already so brave, coming out as you have. I just need you to be a little bit braver.”

Delia shook her head. “They are finally leaving me alone. No way am I going to say anything more.”

“Leave him alone,” the father grunted. “We’ve got enough trouble. We don’t need to invite anymore.”

“Mr. Sherrer, did anyone suggest to you that Delia should be moved to another school?”

“Are you kidding me?” the father said. “From day one they wanted us gone, but he’s here on a scholarship. I couldn’t afford this kind of education on my own, so he stays and everyone just sucks it up.”

No kid should have to suck anything up, but Nicole didn’t waste her breath on this guy. He clearly was way past listening if he treated his daughter this way.

“Thank you,” Kent said, putting his hand out to Delia. “Call me if your memory improves.”

Nicole stood up as everyone else did, not sure why Kent was quitting so quickly. She was sure he had a reason—she just didn’t know which one.

Delia and her father made a beeline out of the room. Nicole turned to Kent. “Why such a short interview?”

“She isn’t going to trust easily. I think it’s better if I go for a slow build rather than a short circuit approach.”

Well, that was pretty restrained of Kent. Usually, he went for the jugular. But then again, they were talking about a kid, and it turned out he was pretty good with them.

“I think we’ll drop in on her later today and separate her from her father,” Kent said, “And see if I can’t get through that armor of distrust.”

* * *

Ruben hung up the phone. Joshua had just informed him that there was no forensic evidence to be found on any of the girl’s bodies. No DNA to compare to the football team.

Kent and Nicole walked into the bullpen. Ruben noticed that she still wasn’t wearing her ring. How interesting.

“Find anything at the school?”

“Maybe,” Kent said, but Nicole looked more doubtful.

“We talked to the boys. They are certainly arrogant and entitled enough to do something like this,” Nicole stated. “But nothing to prove it.”

“No, they used condoms, and by the lack of pubic hairs, Joshua thinks they all shave their scrotums,” Ruben added.

“Is that more organized than you thought, Kent?”

“No,” the profiler said. “Not in the day and age of CSI. These boys pressed the limits at school with their bullying. Sorry, ‘Three ‘I’s,’ they were testing the waters, so to speak, on how they could escalate and get away with it.”

Ruben had no idea what it was, but it didn’t sound good.

“Reggie has a long, financially successful career ahead of him,” Kent said. “He isn’t about to jeopardize that. Reggie did some homework so that they didn’t get caught right out of the gate. Their forensic knowledge only makes them more arrogant.”

“I’m still not sure how they leapt from bullying to rape and murder,” Nicole said.

“You really don’t understand the male brain, do you? Especially the teenage male brain?” Kent said. “With all of that testosterone hitting the hypothalamus, it is downright shocking we don’t have rape/murders on every high school campus. The cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that determines right and wrong, in males is especially under-formed in the teenage years. Impulse control is at a minimal, and the understanding of their actions causing consequences is about a decade away.”

Kent took in a long breath, all part of his show to Ruben, and continued. “Then add in testosterone, a hormone that is primarily present to make men brave enough that they don’t run away from saber tooth tigers. A hormone to make you feel like you have a shot against a big cat outweighing you by four hundred pounds. Now, that is a dangerous combination.”

“Just make sure the defense attorneys don’t hear you talking like that,” Ruben commented. “You make it sound as if the boys aren’t responsible for their actions.”

“No,” Kent said. “But their impulses are natural. As much as it is un-PC to say, rape is instinctual.”

“Whoa,” Nicole said. “Walk that one back.”

“No can do,” Kent said. “In nature, rape is essential to keep any one gene pool from getting too inbred. I’m not saying it is right, I am saying it’s something that is baked into our DNA that we have to override. Given the right environmental factors, that is impossible for some.”

“And where does personal responsibility come in?” Ruben challenged. “It isn’t all brain chemistry.”

“And who taught them that concept? Of personal responsibility?” Kent shot back. “For you and me, it was our mothers. For Nicole it was her dad. These kids’ parents are off skiing in Europe most of the year.”

“Not every latchkey kid resorts to violence,” Ruben countered.

“But these aren’t latchkey kids. They are spoiled, pampered, nannied kids with no moral compass. Add in male teenage brain chemistry, and we’ve got violent felons in the making.”

Ruben grunted. Not that he necessarily agreed, but to end the argument. He could never win with Kent, so why bother trying?

Kent’s phone dinged. He read the text. “It’s from Delia. She just asked me, ‘Do you want to really know the truth?’”

Kent typed back what appeared to be an enthusiastic “yes.” “Told you I got along with kids,” he said, giving himself a much-needed pat on the back, apparently. The profiler turned to Nicole. “What’s our schedule this afternoon?”

“We’re re-interviewing the victim’s families, trying to build some connection to St. Mary’s.”

“Alright,” Kent said, and kept texting. “How about 6 pm? I’ll bring the pizza.”

* * *

Nicole got into her Mustang, exiting the house of another grieving family. This was, by far, the hardest part of her job. And when it yielded no clues? It felt like a pointless exercise for both her and the families.

They learned nothing new regarding the killers. So far, the two families they had met with did not know anything about a St. Mary’s connection. Their girls had been socially active only at their own high schools.

Kent frowned as he looked to his phone. At least it was actually his phone this time.

“What’s wrong?”

“Delia hasn’t texted back what kind of pizza she wants. I would imagine Hawaiian, but I’m getting worried. Can we swing by the Sherrer place next?”

“Sure,” Nicole said, gunning the engine. That always made her feel better.

Delia’s home wasn’t far from the next victim’s house. They would only lose a few minutes with the new detour. Not that she was a slave to a schedule, but she didn’t like to leave people hanging.

She pulled up to a house with a large Ram pickup truck in the driveway. It looked like Mr. Sherrer was home.

Kent beat her to the door. He knocked twice, firm, loud. No answer. Kent knocked even harder, ringing the bell next to the door even though Nicole didn’t hear any corresponding ding on the inside of the house.

Peeking in the window, Kent pointed to Mr. Sherrer passed out in a recliner, a beer bottle dangling from his hand.

“Well, that explains that,” Nicole said.

“But why isn’t Delia answering?” Kent asked, pulling out his lock pick instruments.

“Kent, we don’t have exigent circumstances.”

“My gut does,” he responded, clicking the lock open. He pushed the door and entered. What other choice did she have but to follow? Well, Ruben would probably argue with her on that one. He’d say that she should call it in as it was. A breaking and entering.

But Kent had his heart in the right place. Besides, the owner of the property was passed out. He might never know they were here.

Kent bypassed the kitchen with a huge stack of dirty dishes in the sink that sprawled out onto the counters. He headed down the hallway and knocked on the door with a bright red sign, “No entry!”

No answer. Kent knocked again, then tested the doorknob. Locked. He jimmied that one, too, and opened the door.

There Delia hung from the ceiling.

CHAPTER 6

Kent rushed forward, “No!”

He grabbed the dangling body around the waist and hoisted Delia up to take the pressure off the neck.

“Cut her down!” Kent yelled to Nicole, even though she already had her utility knife out, ready to do the deed.

Once the rope was cut, Delia slumped over Kent’s shoulder.

He tenderly laid her on the ground, checking her pulse. It was thready, but it was there. She wasn’t breathing, though. Kent started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as Nicole called for a bus.

“Don’t do this, darlin’,” Kent begged, kicking himself for not seeing this coming. He’d put Delia in an unconscionable position. If she worked with him she’d be a leper at her school, but her instinct was to help, and worrying that another girl could die because she wasn’t brave enough to help. Neither option must have felt livable.

“Come on,” he urged, then gave Delia another breath.

Nicole picked up a piece of paper from the desk. “She even did the hangman’s calculation…”

His partner was talking about the equation that hangmen had used to calculate the ideal length of rope for a hanging. Too short a fall, and the neck didn’t break and it took minutes to strangulate the prisoner. Too long a fall, and the head snapped right off.

Delia must have given herself not enough rope—otherwise, she’d be dead.

“Hand me that,” Kent said, just before he gave another breath. He watched to make sure that his efforts lifted her delicate breastbone, but not so much to blow out a lung. With children, you had to be careful not to give them too big a breath.

Nicole handed him the paper. Kent scanned it quickly, then chuckled.

“What’s funny about this?”

Kent handed her the page back. “Delia miscalculated the rope’s length because she used her ideal weight, rather than her true weight. Vanity saved her.”

He gave the girl another breath, and this time Delia coughed and sputtered.

Kent rolled her onto her side and patted her back. She needed to cough out all the secretions that had built up. Once she stopped gagging, Kent rolled her back.

“You came…” Delia said.

Kent smoothed back her hair. “Of course I did. I knew something wasn’t right.”

A smile flickered over her face as the bruising on her neck turned a bright red.

“You should have let me finish it,” Delia said, rubbing at her neck.

“Never,” Kent said. “I know it seems impossible, but high school does end, and you can move on with your life.”

“You think I took the coward’s way out?” Delia asked.

While Kent had some pretty strong opinions about suicide, this little girl didn’t need to know that. Besides, those circumstances didn’t apply to her. What else had she known but pain and suffering, having her entire identity rejected by society?

“Never,” Kent said. “I’m sorry. I never should have tried to pressure you like that.”

“I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time,” Delia said. “It wasn’t you.”

Even in this moment of crisis, Delia was thinking of him. His throat constricted. He wasn’t all that fond of caring for other people. It just complicated things.

“Let’s get you to the hospital and get you the help that you need,” Nicole said.

“You mean psych meds?”

Kent shook his head. “Again, never. There’s nothing wrong with you that acceptance can’t help.”

He helped her up into the sitting position. “I want to help,” she said shrugging off his assistance.

Nicole kneeled down beside Delia. “You don’t have to. We don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“But those other girls…” Delia said.

“We’ll figure it out,” Kent reassured her, although, at this moment, he had no idea how that was going to happen.

“No,” Delia said, shaking her head. “When I kicked the chair out and the rope caught, my only thought was, ‘why didn’t I just help?’”

“Because you were scared, and rightfully so, of the repercussions,” Nicole answered.

“But those girls are dying. You were right. I just needed to be a little braver.”

Kent pushed her hair from her face and cupped her small chin. “I promise you that we will get you somewhere safe.”

“Where, though?” Delia asked. “We can’t afford another private school, and did you see how they beat that other transsexual girl to death at the public school in Virginia?’

“Do you trust me?” Kent asked bluntly.

The girl’s eyes scanned his features. “Yes.”

“Then trust that I will find you somewhere safe.”

Delia nodded. “It was Reggie and his thugs in the shower. I’m sure if I asked I can get the janitor to testify as well. He’s a nice guy. He’s got five grandkids and one is gay, so he’s all about the rainbow flag. The only reason he didn’t say anything is because I asked him not to.”

“Alright,” Kent said. “You’ll need to press charges,” he explained as he nodded to Nicole, who was already on the phone, most likely to the assistant district attorney. They needed to press charges, then apply for a search warrant to collect evidence that would hopefully link the boys to the murders.

Delia nodded. “Whatever you need.”

Kent turned to Nicole. “Alright, Reggie is the ring leader, so we need to put pressure on him first. I doubt if we can crack him, but we’ve got to try before they kill again.”

“He’s not the ringleader, though,” Delia said.

“What do you mean?” Kent asked.

“Sure, Reggie is at the forefront of being a douche, but when they cornered me in the locker room, Reggie was going to let me go. He said that they’d scared me enough.”

“Then what happened?” Nicole asked.

“The water boy, what’s his face, Archie, pulled Reggie to the side and said ‘I really hope that it doesn’t come out.’ Then Reggie got all riled up and told them to strip me. Archie is the one who calls the shots. All those other kids that got bullied were enemies of Archie’s, not Reggie’s.”

“Oh my,” Kent said. “We’ve got ourselves a manipulative sadist. Isn’t this job just the best?”

* * *

Nicole wished that she could feel the same as Kent, but with so many lives destroyed, she was having a hard time seeing the silver lining here.

“The ADA is applying for all the paperwork—an arrest warrant for the boys for assault, and the search warrants.”

Kent helped Delia up, but she was upset. “Could we please not tell anyone about this?”

Nicole shook her head, “I’m sorry, but I have to. I’m a mandatory reporter.”

“Perhaps, though, we could make an exception?” Kent said, putting his hand on Nicole’s shoulder. She removed it.

“No. This is serious, Delia,” Nicole said. “You need help so that you don’t end up in this place again.”

“But then people will look at me even weirder than they do,” Delia explained. “Now not only will I be that ‘queer’ shim, but that queer shim that tried to commit suicide.”

They all sat down around the kitchen table. Delia’s father was still snoring away in the recliner, not even knowing that his daughter tried to commit suicide. Nicole doubted if he would even care. Now if his son had tried, that would be a different story.

“What if Delia promised to go to a therapist every day for the next month, then weekly thereafter?” Kent asked. “It is the same protocol for a suicide attempt, just without the red tape?”

Nicole frowned. The rules were there for a reason. But looking into Delia’s eyes, she found herself wavering. “But she needs to be checked out at the hospital.”

“Does she?” Kent challenged. “She’s doing fine. Delia, do you have any spinal pain?”

The girl shook her head, then rotated it around. “I’m good.”

Nicole sighed. She was never going to win two against one. “I want reports from the therapist. If they are at all worried, we report it.”

Delia jumped from her seat and launched into Nicole’s arms. Nicole’s family wasn’t exactly a huggy family, but she returned the gesture.

“Now we are not going to leave until you promise us you aren’t going to hurt yourself,” Nicole said.

“I promise, I promise, I promise,” Delia said, burying her head in the crook of Nicole’s neck. “And, Kent, you are going to set up the therapist appointment?”

Kent took out his phone and dialed.

Delia pulled back from the hug. “Did someone mention pizza?”

* * *

Kent leaned back in the kitchen chair. Delia was sitting in his lap with her head against his chest. It was like the girl had never gotten any healthy physical affection before, and couldn’t soak up enough.

She toyed with the pineapple on her pizza slice before taking another bite. The girl had downed four large slices already. How frequently she was being fed was of serious concern. Nicole had opened cupboards around the kitchen and looked inside the fridge. There was nothing but beer and more beer.

Neither Kent nor Delia had complained when Nicole had called child protective services for an inquiry into Delia’s father. No one wanted to see Delia removed from her home. They all knew how well Delia would probably fare in the system, but this type of situation went way beyond Kent and Nicole’s ability to fix. They needed the professionals to come in and put pressure on the father to step up as a parent.

Kent rocked back and forth, feeling Delia’s heartbeat against his chest. Nicole looked over, seeming a little surprised, then grinned. When would she learn he really was great with kids?

“What’s going on?” Kent asked.

“Ruben is executing the search warrants for us,” Nicole said. “We should know within the hour or so.”

* * *

They both should have been with Ruben, of course, but neither had wanted to leave Delia alone in such a fragile state. Nicole had to suppress the urge to wash the dishes and vacuum the floor. But her contact at DSHS told her that everything had to be left as it was for the social worker who was coming in the morning.

It nearly killed her, but Nicole obeyed. What to do until tomorrow, though? She’d made the decision not to take Delia to the hospital and report the suicide attempt, but that made Nicole responsible.

Her only comfort was that Nicole didn’t really think that the hanging had been a tried-and-true suicide attempt. She thought that something more than just vanity had caused Delia to miscalculate the hangman’s equation.

Nicole thought it was a much-needed cry for help, and Kent and she were answering it. “Would you like to spend the night at my house?” Nicole asked.

She hated the thought of leaving Delia here in this dirty house overnight with a passed-out drunk.

Delia nodded her head up and down.

“Alright,” Nicole said. “We’re going to need to leave for a few hours, but we’ll be back for you later.”

“I’ll be packed,” Delia said, rushing off to her room.

“That was kind of you,” Kent said to Nicole.

“Hey, I get along with kids’ fine myself.”

CHAPTER 7

“What do you mean they didn’t find anything?” Kent demanded. Nicole must have heard them wrong.

Nicole shook her head as she drove them back to the precinct. “I’m telling you that they went to each of the boys’ homes and there was no evidence of the crimes. No blood, hair, or fibers. Nothing.”

Kent frowned. It was exasperating, but given the new information that Archie was the ringleader, it made a little more sense. He wasn’t pumped up with testosterone and violence. He was cold and calculating, inflicting the most amount of pain on the girls and the boys. Kent’s guess was that the others were probably wanting out of the pack about now, but Archie wouldn’t let them. He couldn’t commit the crimes on his own. He didn’t have the physical prowess. He needed strong proxies to make his fantasies come to life.

“Did they pull the guys financials?” Kent asked.

“Yes, and let me tell you there are a lot of new shoe and clothes purchases,” Nicole said, showing Kent the file on her smartphone.

“So they are sophisticated enough to have a rape kit. They bring fresh clothes and shoes along so they can change so they don’t track home any evidence. It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.” He turned to Nicole. “Which means they dumped the contaminated shoes and clothes. Have Ruben search the dumpsters around the stadium of last night’s murder.”

Nicole nodded and put the phone bud back into her ear.

It was so frustrating knowing exactly who was committing the crime, but being unable to find the evidence to convict. This was why Kent so much preferred catching them in the act. Then—well, then, nature took its course.

“Ruben is on it,” Nicole said, “but we’ve got a new problem.”

“What?”

“The boys weren’t brought in,” Nicole stated. Again, clearly confused.

“But we got the arrest warrants for the assault on Delia,” Kent said. “Those warrants were independent of what we found with the search warrants.”

“The judge, though, has a son who goes to St. Mary’s, and they have a playoff game tonight, so he won’t sign the warrant until after the game.”

“They are playing tonight?” Kent asked. “I’m not huge football fan, but I thought they played once a week.”

“They normally do, but it is high school and they are in the playoffs, so they are playing tonight.”

“Did the judge not read the crime reports? They kill after the game. Not during it. Not before. Are there uniforms at the game waiting to snag them once the game is over?”

Nicole put on her clicker, then spun the car around in a highly illegal U-turn. “Let’s do better.”

* * *

Ruben hated dumpster diving. He had thought he was at the point in his career where he was past it. Apparently not. It didn’t help that Joshua was in the other dumpster, having the time of his life.

“It is amazing what people throw away,” Joshua said, holding up a leather belt with vomit on it.

“Yes, it sure is,” Ruben said, then took a deep breath before he picked through the stadium’s dumpster again. There was plenty of puke, and enough half-eaten corn dogs and torn-apart foam fingers to fill a garbage dump.

All of that, yet not one bloodstained shoe or shirt.

“Nothing,” Ruben said, climbing out of the dumpster, then snapping his gloves off. This was the last of the twelve. “How about you?”

“Besides an old Depeche Mode CD and a leopard-print lighter?”

“I meant to do with the case?”

“Oh, no, sorry,” Joshua said, climbing out of his dumpster. “Maybe they took the clothes home and dumped them there?

“No, uniforms checked their trash, as well. Nothing.”

“Where would they dump them?” Joshua asked, although Ruben was pretty sure that was a rhetorical question. Then the morgue attendant got a weird look on his face. “Unless they hid them in plain sight.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Ruben stated.

Joshua nodded to the homeless shelter across the street.

Could it be? Ruben followed Joshua into the shelter. There were a surprising number of homeless men with upscale, brand name tennis shoes. Joshua came up to one, sprayed the shoe with phenol, then stepped back as the toe of the shoe glowed a nice bright purple.

“Blood,” Joshua confirmed. “Human blood.”

Ruben flagged down a man who looked like the manager. “Where did these come from?”

“They were left in the donation box at the door last night. Lots of really good stuff.”

“Well, we are going to need it all. It’s evidence of a murder.”

The man’s eyes dilated as he vigorously nodded yes.

“I’m going to need those,” Joshua said, but the homeless man shook his head.

“What are you going to give me for them?” the man asked.

Joshua popped a checkerboard shoe off. “How about my pair?”

“Please,” the homeless man frowned. “Those are Vans knockoffs, these aren’t the real things.

Ruben pulled out his phone to call Nicole with the good news, while Joshua negotiated for their evidence.

* * *

Nicole disconnected the call from Ruben. “They found the boys’ clothes.”

“So maybe the judge will sign that warrant now?” Kent asked, looking like he was half joking, half serious.

“He already has, but the game already ended, and the boys were gone when the beat cops showed up.”

“Damn it,” Kent said. “Did they win?”

“I’m not sure,” Nicole answered.

Kent went to his phone and started looking up the game score. “If they won, they are on the prowl. If they lost, we have some time.”

He scrolled down some more. “Crap. It was a blowout. 28 to 7. They are definitely going to want to celebrate the only way they know how.”

Nicole stepped on the brake and took the first right. She slapped the red light onto the top of her car and hit the sirens, speeding toward the stadium.

“How are we going to find them, though? They were playing Greensborough, weren’t they?” Nicole asked.

“Yes,” Kent said, “And apparently they don’t have a great defensive line.”

“But they do have a forest surrounding the entire school. Even with dozen of patrol officers, it is going to take us hours to scour the forest.”

Kent’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out and read the text. “Why aren’t you following the victim?” The profiler paused. “Get here quick.” Kent cocked his head. “Then he left these coordinates.”

“Plug them into the dash GPS.”

Kent did so and a route came up on the map. Nicole took the next left and raced down an alley, popping off the curb as she took a right. They should be to the edge of the forest in a few minutes, and then they’d have to hike in the rest.

“Who sent it?” Nicole asked.

“Lucky 37,” Kent replied, turning his phone so she could see the text log.

“Why in the hell would he do that?” Nicole asked. “He hates women.”

* * *

“No,” Kent said. “He hates a specific woman, and is killing her proxy. Whoever was a chain-smoking, bleached blond, buxom biker chick in his life—mother, aunt, teacher—is who he hates. Women in general he has no problem with.”

Nicole frowned. “But why save this girl?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kent asked. It was so crystal clear in his mind.

“No,” Nicole groaned. “No it isn’t.”

“Lucky 37’s got a teenage daughter,” Kent explained.

“How did you get there?”

“The woman that he was shacked up with this time had a daughter, as well. Fourteen. Both she and the girl said they’d never been treated so well. And now, giving us coordinates to save this girl? He’s got to have an archetype of his own. Saving this girl as a proxy to the daughter he is missing.”

The scenery was flashing by as Nicole really put that Mustang horsepower to work. Kent’s hands balled into fists, then relaxed, then balled again. This was going to be close. Hopefully, the boys kept to their ritual of partying for a bit before getting to the main attraction.

“Why didn’t he save the girl last night, then?” Nicole asked.

“Who says he didn’t try? He led us straight to the body. I thought it was simply to distract us, but what if he genuinely tried to save her, too? The ME confirmed what you suspected, that we only missed them by minutes.”

Kent relived last night. He’d thought his tracking skills were superb, but in retrospect, Lucky 37 was leading them around by the nose.

“Amazing, simply amazing,” Kent murmured, finding himself even more fascinated by this subject than he was before.

“Do you need a moment?” Nicole jeered.

“So, maybe I do have a man crush on him, so what?” Kent countered.

“So what?” Nicole repeated in a huff. “The man has killed, by your account, over a hundred women. Not just killed, but kidnapped, raped, then killed.”

Kent shrugged. “You so want to make this black and white. That serial killers are only bad, evil people.”

“Because they are,” Nicole retorted.

“No, they are complex human beings with their own sense of moral code. The more we understand that, the more likely we are to bring them to justice, and isn’t that what we want?”

“Yes,” Nicole murmured. “But I don’t have to like them.”

“I don’t like Lucky 37,” Kent corrected. “I respect him. Two totally different things.”

Nicole took a right and pulled to a stop at a parking lot for a nature trail. “They should be straight out that way,” Nicole said, pointing into the dark woods.

“Backup on their way?” Kent asked.

“Ruben’s got a team heading here now.”

Oh, well if it was Ruben, they would never get here in time. Kent didn’t bother to voice it, though. Nicole was annoyed enough with him right now for daring to suggest Lucky 37 might have some honor in him.

“Let’s go,” Kent said, stepping over the curb and feeling the pine needles under his shoes.

* * *

Nicole was once again trekking through the woods. At least this time she had her gun with her, and wasn’t shy about using it. Especially if Lucky 37 was roaming the same trails. She intellectually understood how Kent could respect the killer, but emotionally? Especially as a woman? No way. No how.

Was that a flicker of light up ahead? Kent moved more quickly, therefore it must have been. The campfire provided a beacon to the crime scene. They hurried through the trees as sounds of a struggle reached them. Dr. McGregor had said that the girl’s mouth had been gagged before death, which was why they didn’t hear any screams.

They burst into the clearing to find the five members of the football team and the water boy surrounding a young girl. She’d already been ravaged and stabbed at least once.

“Police!” Nicole announced. “Hands up!”

The boys backed away from the downed girl, but only a few put their hands up. Each one had a knife. Kent had been right. The alpha made sure that each raped and then stabbed her to make them complicit in the crime. Kent rushed forward and checked the girl’s pulse.

“She’s still alive!” he announced. “But barely.”

He picked the girl up and brought her over to Nicole. “You’ve got to get her out of here and to the ambulance.”

Nicole’s eyes flickered to the boys, who were still very armed. “I can’t.”

“You have to,” Kent emphasized, “or she is going to die.”

Nicole took the girl into her arms. “At least take my gun.”

Kent just frowned. Of course he wasn’t going to take her gun, what a silly suggestion.

She couldn’t worry about him, though, the girl’s face was so pale. Without another word, she turned on her heel and hauled ass out of the woods.

* * *

Kent was so proud of Nicole. She’d come so far. Maybe she wasn’t to the point of feeling sympathy for a serial killer yet, but she was on her way. If that girl lived, they would have Lucky 37 to thank for it.

“And what do you think you’re going to do, old man?” Reggie asked from behind Kent.

He turned to face his five serial killers. Archie didn’t have a knife in hand because he had five of them at his disposal.

“Oh, I think you know…” Kent responded. He wanted to feed into their egos. Let them think they had the advantage. Let them get comfortable with their win.

One of the other boys came at Kent, a blatant, straightforward attack. Kent knocked the attacker’s arm away, then landed his fist into the boy’s solar plexus. He dropped to the ground gasping. Brawn wasn’t going to win this battle, brains were. As always.

“Who else?” Kent challenged. Another boy took up the call, yelling as he came.

This time Kent sidestepped the attack, then brought his elbow down on the boy’s neck. He went sprawling into the pine needles.

“And another?” Kent asked. Reggie nodded and the third boy came at Kent, but slightly more subdued. He slashed his knife in front of Kent, as if to scare him? Kent wasn’t sure, but he removed his jacket, and spun it like around like a fan. When the boy finally did lunge, Kent flicked the jacket, caught the boy’s arm in the material, and jerked him forward.

Kent grabbed the knife’s hilt and, using the boy’s shock and confusion, twisted the knife around and buried the blade in his belly. As he slipped to the ground, Kent relieved him of his weapon.

Now glistening with blood, Kent raised the knife toward the two boys who were still standing.

Reggie gulped and nodded to the fourth boy, but he ran off into the woods.

“How awkward,” Kent commented. “Now it’s just you and me.”

* * *

Nicole tripped over a branch but managed to stay upright as she reached the parking lot. She could see the ambulance’s lights flashing. More cars pulled into the parking lot as she approached. Ruben and Joshua hopped out of Ruben’s car and ran to her.

The EMTs beat them.

“Knife wound to the belly. She’s lost a lot of blood,” Nicole informed them as they took the girl from her arms.

Ruben put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her as she tried to catch her breath. So many things had happened so quickly.

“Are you okay?” Joshua asked, hovering behind Ruben.

“Yeah, just damn that was a wind sprint.”

“Where’s Kent?” Ruben asked.

“Out, unarmed, against five armed teens.”

Ruben frowned as Joshua’s hand went to his mouth. “Those poor boys.”

The morgue attendant was right. No one here was worried about Kent. It was the football players they needed to be worried about. So, despite the stitch in her side, Nicole turned back to the woods.

“This way,” she said as she guided them into the forest.

* * *

“Not so easy, is it?” Kent asked. “When you aren’t facing a terrified young girl who weighs ninety-five pounds soaking wet.”

Reggie and he were circling the campfire. Archie was checking on his friends. Kent would get to him soon enough. Reggie was wary, but hadn’t run off into the woods, at least not yet.

Reggie lunged, making a slashing motion. Kent responded with a slash of his own, slicing Reggie’s forearm nearly down to the bone. His blow wasn’t meant as a lethal wound, it was meant only to create pain and uncertainty.

The quarterback clutched his arm to his chest, putting a hand over the wound to staunch the bleeding.

“You are ruined,” Kent said. “No matter what happens here, you are done.”

“You obviously haven’t met my father’s lawyers,” Reggie responded.

“No,” Kent responded. “I didn’t mean legally. I meant that I am going to cripple you. You’ll never play football again.”

Horror, true horror, crept into the boy’s eyes. He’d never thought of that. He’d possibly thought of incarceration. But being a cripple? That clearly frightened him more than anything else, even death.

“You wouldn’t,” Reggie retorted. How little the boy understood.

“I would, and I would enjoy it. I’m thinking a slice to the hamstrings next.”

Reggie’s lips twitched as his eyes dilated. Fight or flight. Which would the kid choose?

Ultimately, the boy dropped the knife and ran off.

Good for him.

Kent turned to Archie, who still seemed oddly defiant.

“You might want to pick your serfs a bit more carefully next time,” Kent said.

“Reggie always was a wimp,” Archie sneered. “Ever since kindergarten. A real crybaby.”

“But you?” Kent asked. “You’re the strong one.”

“And the smart one.”

“Really?” Kent queried. “Because right now you look pretty damned defeated.”

“You aren’t going to kill an unarmed boy,” Archie taunted.

“Clearly you haven’t read my case file,” Kent responded.

“Oh, you might want to, but you aren’t going to be able to.”

“And why not?” Kent pressed.

Then a figure stepped out of the woods, holding a gun. “Because I won’t let you.”

“Edna?” Kent asked as the mousy guidance counselor came closer to the firelight. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“After decades of listening to pretty young things complain about how unfair their lives were? Please, I was forced to do this.”

Kent should have recognized the butt-ugly coral lipstick on Archie’s collar. “You psychopaths always find each other, don’t you? And Archie, you could have done so much better.”

“We were meant to be,” Edna said, looking over to Archie, whose eyes softened, as well. A downright Hallmark moment.

“So you are the one who strategized all of this?”

“And provided the cocaine for when the boys needed a little urging, yes.”

“Really going for that counselor of the year award, then,” Kent commented.

He’d literally brought a knife to a gunfight.

Sounds from the trail drifted toward them. A faint “Kent,” as well. Nicole and the rest were on their way.

You could see the decision on Edna’s face. The sense of clarity. That she really was going to shoot an FBI agent. Kent was equally ready. As the shot went off, he side-arm threw the knife. Then, as with all people who had never shot a gun before, Edna hadn’t compensated for the kick and shot wide, hitting Archie right in the chest.

She looked more concerned for the teen then she did for the knife sticking out of her belly.

“Kent!” Nicole shouted as she burst into the clearing.

Kent held up his hands. “She shot him and I was only defending myself.”

Nicole didn’t look too convinced as she went over to check Archie’s pulse.

“Last man standing, again?” Ruben commented.

Hey, it wasn’t Kent’s fault that he was just that good.

Epilogue

Nicole rubbed her eyes. It had been a long night, but they were here to pick up Delia. No matter what happened, she wasn’t about to break her promise to that little girl. And a lot had happened. Four dead, two arrested, two on the lam.

Kent had broken the case wide open, per usual. The fact that she was still surprised was silly, really. And the fact they’d gotten help from a vicious serial killer—that really did put the cherry on their hot fudge sundae night.

She raised her hand to knock, but the door opened before she even could. Delia rushed out and wrapped her arms around Nicole’s waist. “You came!”

“Who’s there?” a burly, slurred voice asked. Guess the beer buzz had worn off from Mr. Sherrer.

Nicole walked, stilted, through the doorway with Delia still attached. “It is Detective Usher and Special Agent Harbinger.”

The man just grunted and put his chin back down on his chest.

“No, no, no,” Kent said, crossing over and grabbing the man by the elbow. “You’ve got to hear this, too.”

“Hear what?” Delia asked. Nicole might have said the same thing. Kent was always full of surprises.

Once the four were settled around the table, Kent began. “I spoke with my lawyer.”

Since when did Kent have a lawyer?

“And, especially after the revelation that a gang of serial killers were on the football team assisted by a staff member,” Kent emphasized, “He thinks you have a great case, especially if the victims from the other schools join on, along with the other bullied students.”

Mr. Sherrer rubbed his hands together. “Finally the kid is worth something.”

“Not so fast,” Kent said wagging his finger. “All money from the suit goes into a trust for Delia. She is in control now. She decides if she wants to start hormone therapy. If and when she wants reassignment surgery.”

“Over my dead body,” the drunken father growled.

That only made Kent smile further. “While I would love to see that, it is actually simpler than that. My lawyer is also drawing up emancipation papers for Delia so she doesn’t need you to die or do anything to have her life in order.”

Delia beamed. “Really?”

Kent rubbed her arm. “Really. And once the money comes through, which should be soon—the district should want to settle quickly—you, Mr. Sherrer, are going into an in-patient rehab and not coming out until they say you are ready.”

The man frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. “We’ll see about that.”

“Well, your other option is to go to jail for child endangerment, so your choice, dude.”

Obviously, Delia’s father didn’t want to go to jail… again. The man had done some time for drunk and disorderly. Guess he’d gotten enough of jail, as he simply pouted in his chair.

Kent continued. “And Delia’s coming home with us tonight, and we’ll be back in the morning to meet with the social worker, and then we’ll take her to our place for the weekend while you get yourself and this place cleaned up.”

Delia’s father looked at his feet, not arguing a single point.

There were times when Kent surprised her mainly because he was acting completely inappropriately. Then there were times when he surprised her because he was being completely awesome. This time it was the latter.

Kent rose, took Delia’s hand, and headed to the door.

Nicole rose, as well, but put her hand into her coat and pulled her engagement ring out of her pocket.

She realized now why she had waivered about putting it on. Kids.

Nicole also understood why she’d stayed with Ruben so long. It wasn’t that it was comfortable or convenient, it was because of kids. As a lover or husband, Ruben was a snooze fest, but when she thought about having kids, that’s when Ruben shone. She could see him holding up their imaginary son, tossing him and catching him. She knew that despite being a homicide detective, Ruben wouldn’t miss a single Little League game or ballet recital. Hell, he’d probably be the baseball coach. He’d be with the kids each and every second he could.

Compared to Kent? Their last go around hadn’t gone so well, and she feared the profiler would be a distant father figure. Nicole had lived through that herself, and didn’t want that for her children.

But now? With his arm draped over Delia’s shoulder, bumping her with his hip as he made a joke about Justin Bieber? Nicole saw him in a completely different light. Sure, he might miss a few birthdays or family movie nights because he was out chasing down a psycho, but when the kid needed him, really needed him, Kent would be there.

The decision was made. She slipped the ring onto her finger.

She was ready to announce to the world that she was Kent’s fiancé.

Buzz Kill- the final book in the Harbinger trilogy

CHAPTER 1

Kent could feel his attacker’s fingers dig into the flesh of his neck. The guy was super strong. Chemically strong. The guy must be on some kind of cocaine, PCP, methamphetamine cocktail.

Lights flashed before Kent’s eyes as his brain started to feel the crimp in the oxygen pipeline. It would all be over soon if Kent didn’t figure out how to get his neck out of this guy’s iron grip.

He’d tried clawing, punching, elbowing and a good swift kick to the groin, but nothing fazed the gangbanger. And not even a high level banger, but some street middle-management banger.

That was not going on Kent’s tombstone. “Killed by an idiot nobody banger.”

No, if his career and life ended it would be at the hands of one of the most elite serial killers in the world, not a 50 Cent wannabe punk.

Time to go back to nature. The guy might be pumped on some serious chemical enhancements, but there were a few things chemicals couldn’t override.

Like the instinct to protect your eyes.

Kent stopped trying to pry the man’s clench-like hands off of his neck and instead used his thumbs to press against the man’s eyes. Kent’s vision began to tunnel as his brain prepared to shut down like a computer whose battery was about to run out.

He kept his focus sharp though and poured every ounce of oxygen he had left toward gouging out the man’s eyes. He really was high because despite the fact that Kent had turned his fingernails inward, slicing into the man’s eyelids, the guy didn’t let go of his throat.

Effer.

Kent doubled down, digging his fingers into the chollo’s scalp, giving his thumbs even more leverage. He could feel the man’s eyeballs flattening under the pressure. No one, no matter how high should be able to withstand that kind of danger to the eyes.

The reptilian brain should take over, overriding both the man’s desire and his drugs.

Come on, reptilian brain, wake up!

Just as the world was about to go black, the man’s fingers loosened, letting sweet air past them. Kent kept up the pressure on the eyeballs until the man completely let go of his neck.

Sucking in a second gulp of air, Kent went for another anatomical hot spot. He brought his hand down, flattened the palm and jammed it right in the man’s solar plexus.

No amount of drugs could stop his diaphragm from contracting. With his attacker doubled over, Kent could now get back at the chollo. Using both hands, he hit the man over the back of the head knocking him down to his knees. Next a nice kick to the gut.

He would normally feel mildly bad about attacking a half unconscious man, however Kent’s vision was still swimming and those pressure points on his neck were going to leave a mark.

Just when he thought he was safe, his attacker on the ground, hugging his belly, another gangbanger burst into the warehouse. Kent barely had time to drag his attacker up to act as a human shield before the guy opened up his automatic weapon.

Kent could feel the impact of each bullet in the man he was holding. Then he heard the door open again along with numerous footfalls. He was going to go with the safe bet and guess Vans.

By his count they were at least five other gang bangers in the warehouse now.

This little standoff of theirs wasn’t going to last that long.

As much as he hated to, Kent grabbed his first attacker’s gun and squeezed the trigger, spraying the room with bullets. Screams answered along with a whole hell of a lot of “putas” and “cabrones.”

There, see? Nicole was always saying he was too stubborn and set in his ways and here he just fired a gun. That would show her.

Which gave Kent a small measure of satisfaction.

This wasn’t even supposed to be his case. He shouldn’t even be in this warehouse. Sure the guy who just ate up a bunch of bullets for him had killed nearly twelve people, but he’d done it for profit, thinning the ranks of the gangs. Therefore he was just a psycho, not a serial killer.

But Kent had been bored. Lucky 37 was laying low. And every other case he was working on had hit a wall. So he’d taken Glick’s challenge to do some “real” police work.

Which, of course, ended in a Mexican standoff, literally.

Kent dragged his body shield with him as he tried to get behind some cover. This warehouse apparently stored fabric. Bolts were stacked high, plus many were crisscrossed like they were in some kind of bizarre Escher pattern.

He couldn’t make it to the high, thick stacks so he had to hide amongst the stray bolts.

Shouts in spanish, mostly cursing filled the high ceilinged warehouse. There were a few directions. Out of the ones that Kent could recognize they were trying to circle him.

The bastards might be drug dealers, but they weren’t stupid. They were more like classic predators, running off rudimentary instincts to capture and kill. Luckily Kent wasn’t just any prey.

He had a gun against three men still standing.

Not bad. Certainly better than filling out another crossword puzzle to keep his mind alert during this lull.

Shouts rose again, more footsteps. Now there must be at least five to six bangers. Not so good.

Kent ducked his head out from a lovely bolt of yellow taffeta. The back exit was a good thirty feet from him with no cover. Granted these guys weren’t sharp shooters. They relied on quantity rather than quality, however sometimes quantity did the job.

Damn it.

If only he had an incendiary device. If only he had run into a cleaning supply warehouse instead of this fabric factory. He couldn’t exactly choke them with silk now could he?

The firing started again, as the gang tightened the noose, firing like they had seen Scarface a few times too many. Firing that quickly their guns were likely to jam. All five at once, probably not so likely, but Kent would take any help the universe decided to give him.

Bullets zinged between the bolts, singeing the light yellow into a dark brown.

It wouldn’t be long now.

Then a shout came from the catwalk. “Police! Drop your weapons.”

Before the men could re-train their weapons, a single shot went out. The closest banger’s head snapped back, blood spraying from a wound to the forehead. He couldn’t even crumple to the ground before another shot rang, dropping another banger. Then a third.

She’d never been so hot.

That was his girl. All that time at the range had honed Nicole’s skills to a fine point. Kent took out the other two while they were distracted.

The warehouse was plunged into silence. Smoke rising from his and Nicole’s guns, snaked up into the filtered sunlight from the skylights.

Nicole, still armed and tense, made her way down the metal staircase. She went up to the first banger as he climbed out from the bolts. She kicked away his gun, then leaned over and felt for a pulse. With the blood seeping from his forehead, Kent felt it was a pretty safe bet the guy was dead. Way dead.

Nicole repeated the procedure each time, in perfect academy form until she confirmed they were all dead. Only then did she holster her gun as sirens clamored in the distance. Her engagement ring glistened on her finger. Boy, had she deserved that one.

She hadn’t waited for back up. So she was learning a thing or two from him.

“You’re welcome,” Nicole said with a slight smirk.

“For what?” Kent protested. “I had it under control.”

“Come on, it was five against one. And you didn’t even have adequate cover.”

“Which is what legends are made of,” Kent stated. “I was trying to broaden my mythos.

* * *

Nicole rolled her eyes. That was Kent for you. If she’d wanted a thank you, she should have stayed with Rubin. With Kent you got what you saw. And despite not getting the kudos she would have liked, she had to say Kent looked about as sexy as he could.

That line of sweat along his brow, his eyes still dilated from the fight, only enhanced his sex appeal. Even the black and blue marks along the scar on his neck made him the silverback of all time.

Kent pulled her into his arms, pressing their hips together before he leaned in and kissed her. It was an unhurried kiss. As if they were at a picnic out in a field. The only minor detail to disturb that image was the taste of blood on his lips. Whether it was his own or someone else’s she wasn’t sure and quite frankly didn’t care.

The world melted away as their lips explored one another.

“Nicole!” a shout came from the warehouse door. Only one person could sound that concerned in the wake of safety.

Ruben.

“We’re fine!” Nicole yelled back. Still Ruben and about a dozen other cops charged into the warehouse, guns drawn on non-existent danger.

“Them, though,” Kent chuckled as Nicole helped him up. “They aren’t doing so great.”

Ruben stumbled to a halt as he came across the bodies. They littered the floor.

“What the hell…”

Then he looked to Kent and Nicole.

“But I should have guessed when you sent me that 911 text.”

Nicole shrugged. “Kent got his man.”

“And that man, and that one…” Ruben frowned his disapproval, but you could already hear the whispers behind him as the young uniformed cops started gossiping, expanding Kent’s already bulging portfolio.

Kent coughed and gagged a bit, his one concession that he had nearly been choked to death.

“I’m not letting you drag me to the hospital,” Kent complained.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Nicole stated. “I actually only came because another body has turned up.”

“I was thinking a nice hot bath before heading back out to a murder site,” Kent explained, pushing off of her, trying to stand on his own which didn’t go so well.

“This isn’t just anybody, it’s one of Buzz Kills.”

“Buzz Kill’s?” Kent repeated. “Don’t tease me.”

“I’m not,” Nicole insisted. “The body was hacked up by a chainsaw on the other side of town.”

“Well, then what are we waiting for?” Kent asked as only he could.

“For you to be able to stand on your own?” Nicole suggested.

“I’m good.” The profiler took several steps that would never pass a DUI check point, however he did stay on his feet.

Nicole followed slowly, staying close enough she could catch him, but far enough behind he didn’t feel like she was hovering. He hated hovering, even if it was for his own good.

She passed Ruben.

“I take it you are giving your report tomorrow?” Ruben asked, already knowing the answer.

Nicole handed over her and Kent’s gun to him. “Those are the rules. I have twenty-four hours before having to give a statement on a police involved shooting.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to wait for the shooting team and clear it up now?”

Normally Nicole would agree, especially with this potentially racially charged shoot out. However another Buzz Kill victim had been found, and catching Buzz Kill was the police commissioner and the mayor’s priority.

Having women torn up by a chainsaw was definitely not helping tourism.

“It’s alright, Ruben,” a voice said from outside the warehouse as Captain Glick walked in. “I’ve already cleared it. Nicole will sit down with the shooting team tomorrow morning.”

Nicole nodded. Kent didn’t even acknowledge the Captain had spoken. He wasn’t required to meet with the city’s shoot team since he was FBI. The bureau certainly had procedures for after-action reports, but apparently Kent killed enough people in the line of duty that his shootings just got rubber-stamped.

Plus, he did have those dark bruises on his neck. No one was going to argue with self-defense on this one. On others, sure. Like shooting a serial killer’s two eyes out. That had been a stretch, but this one? This one had actually pretty much been by the book.

“Thank you, Captain,” Nicole said, extending her hand. Glick shook it then nodded toward the parking lot.

“Better hurry up before he gives you the slip again.”

Her captain wasn’t wrong. Kent, in the short span of time it took her to thank Glick, had already made it out to the lot and gotten into her car and even revved the engine.

Nicole trotted over. “You wouldn’t.”

Kent grinned, really stepping on the gas. “Was that a challenge?”

Dear lord, no it wasn’t. Why? Because Kent would rise to any challenge. Nicole wasn’t stupid enough to stir the pot like that. Instead she grabbed her Mustang’s stainless steel handle and opened the car door, slipping into the custom leather seats.

Kent peeled out, zigzagging through the nearly army of emergency vehicles.

“Do you even know where you are going?”

“Across town?” Kent answered.

“Yes, but where?”

Kent’s lips fell from their grin. She could always tell when he was actually thinking and not just spouting off. Even the vaulted profiler had to engage his brain occasionally. His deductive ability wasn’t as magical as most people thought.

“We’re on the east side so that indicates the body was found on the west side, the upscale part of town,” Kent said.

He scowled. Nicole knew that his huge brain was now collating all of the data from the other two body dumps and everything they had deduced about the murderers. Which wasn’t much unfortunately.

“I am guessing they found the body in a park.”

Nicole’s eyebrow shot up despite her not wanting it to. He was spot on. Again. Sometimes his accuracy was infuriating. “Why would you say that?” she said, trying to keep cool and act like Kent hadn’t just hit the nail on the head.

“The first was behind a grocery store, although it wasn’t fully disarticulated. The last was in the suburbs and fully dismembered. It feels like they are moving away from urban areas to more natural setting so the most logical conclusion would be a park, if they were sticking to the city limits, which since you indicated it was across town, left a park.”

Would she ever be able to do that damn it? When she’d gotten the call that there was another body dump, she’d simply asked the detective where. If she’d paused long enough she could have figured out it was a park.

Kent wasn’t perfect though. “Okay, smarty pants, which park?”

“On the Westside? There aren’t a whole lot of options and I’m going to guess that it is the most remote on that side of town, so Faust.”

Damn him. “It’s a big park though,” Nicole stated.

“Yep, over two hundred acres, your point?”

“I’m just seeing if your psychic abilities are firing on all cylinders or not.”

“You want me to blindly pick the exact point of the body dump?”

Nicole shrugged, “Only if you aren’t too scared to try.”

Kent’s eyes slid over as he glared at her. Nicole smiled. If he wanted to maintain his vaulted status with her, he was going to have go out on a limb.

“Fine,” Kent said. “The park has four main areas. The covered picnic arena, the trails, the carousel and the playground.”

Jesus, did Kent have every park in the city memorized? Nicole didn’t even bother to ask him, since yes, he did have them memorized. Parks were a common crime and body dump area. Of course he would know them intimately.

She’d had to look up on her smartphone even the park’s general location, let alone what area of the park.

“I think the killer wants the attention so he wouldn’t dump out in the trails. He is starting to like the attention, killing earlier and more publically each time. And if he wants shock value he is going for carousel. I am assuming the killer thought that the body would be found tomorrow morning by the early morning kiddie crowd.

* * *

Kent could tell by the frown on Nicole’s face and her lack of response that he had nailed it. Again.

Why did she look surprised each and every time? Seriously?

She really shouldn’t poke the bear unless she really, really wanted him awake, should she?

“Alright, the good news is that Buzz Kill is starting to establish a pattern.”

“And once you can establish a pattern, then you can start to pick out possible new victims and intersect the killer before he can kill again,” Nicole said with more than a little sarcasm in her voice. “Yah, yah, yah.”

Kent glanced at her. “Okay, hot shot. Tell me about the victim.”

Nicole went to get her phone out.

“Oh no, my darling. I mean, tell me about what you think the new victim is like.”

It was Nicole’s turn to frown. Again, don’t poke the bear unless you have a foolproof bear trap ready.

Finally she sighed. “So far the other two victims have been women. Young women. Mid-twenties. Dark haired. They could have been sisters.”

Nicole always so factual and not abstract enough.

“Good, but wrong.”

Nicole sighed heavily. He knew that she hated this part. The part where you had to forget about linear thinking and think like a serial killer. She was just too good a person. She wanted to think the world ran off of law and order rather than impulse and psychosis.

She had to leave behind her white picket fence thinking and submerge herself in the brine of man’s lower instincts.

“Back in the 40s, maybe,” Kent stated. “But now with CSI and freaking unsolved murders? Only the stupidest or most compulsive murderers are going to stick to a strict type.”

Nicole came out of her funk and turned to him, seeming to understand where he was going with this. “And because he has been using forensic countermeasures, we haven’t found any hair, fibers, prints or even illuminating trace, he isn’t stupid and the length of time between killings shows he isn’t compulsive.”

Kent nodded. “I think they may even go so far afield this time as to kill a man. He is actively going to try and throw us off the scent, however…”

Nicole smiled. “The first few killings are the most important. The most personal. The most revealing of the killer’s character.”

There were times he was so proud of her. Like now. Forcing herself out of her comfort zone. Really digging deeply to connect with the serial killer on some level. She just had a few more steps to go to catch up with him.

“Ding, ding, ding. Correct.” Kent answered then continued, “Whatever they do from here also reveals character since they are working at cross-purposes to their compulsion. He won’t get as much satisfaction from these killings so he will have to kill sooner and sooner.”

“Not great for the victims, but helpful to us?” Nicole stated. She hated this lag period when the killings were ongoing, yet weren’t giving them enough information to catch the killer.

Nicole nodded. “There’s a reason it normally takes five to six killings to get a bead on the killer. Each killing reveals more and more of the killer to us.”

Finally she was understanding.

“Until I can hunt his victims as effectively as he is hunting them.”

CHAPTER 2

Nicole hung back as they entered the crime scene. Outside the carousel seemed normal. Garbage cans overflowing with the remains of cotton candy and snow cones.

Inside the carousel though?

She’d already seen it, thank you very much. She really didn’t want to have to see it again. Besides isn’t that what crime scene photos are for?

Kent, however didn’t break stride as he climbed up onto the carousel, cutting between a horse and a dancing cow. Even his feet stalled though as he made his way to the interior of the platform.

Nicole didn’t know why she didn’t just join him. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see the crime scene as if she were standing there.

There wasn’t just blood splatter everywhere. It looked like someone had taken a bucket of blood and spun around with it. Nicole had never seen so much blood and that included the exsanguinate killer. Somehow using a chainsaw seemed to quadruple the amount of blood.

Probably because it wasn’t just blood flung onto the ceiling, ride and floor. It was tiny bits of flesh. Well, more than flesh, it was organs, sinew and bone as well.

Nicole’s stomach did a roll as she remembered seeing the pancreas on the lion seat. There was just something so very wrong to have such an innocent place so defiled. She knew that Kent would tell her that was the point of this murder location.

The killer was going for the shock value.

Well, they’d hit that nail on the head.

As much as she postured to Kent, right now she had to admit she kind of understood the common serial killer. The ones that killed prostitutes and homeless people.

She understood that most serialists were either sociopaths or psychopaths. That they lacked empathy. That they could experience pleasure at killing but not understand that it hurt the other party.

But really, there wasn’t another way to get their rocks off? Plus many of these killers employed anti-forensic measures like this killer. If you didn’t know it was bad, why cover your tracks?

She and Kent had gone round and round about this conundrum. Let’s just say she never won that discussion. Even with all of that though, she had some glimmer of understanding. The killers enjoyed themselves and like any addict, they were always chasing the high. Death was their crack.

But this? This was just inhuman. How could one human being do this to another. How could anyone enjoy doing this to another human?

Nicole shuddered. She really, really didn’t want to know the answer to that question. She worried for Kent. Once he delved deep into a case, he had to descend to the level of madness of the killer. Seldom did he come back unscathed.

What would this case cost him? What would it cost their relationship?

* * *

Kent went to step forward, but Joshua backed him off. “Sorry, that area hasn’t been processed yet.”

Normally that was one of the CSI’s line, but today, Joshua, being the coroner’s assistant was charged with collecting all of the body. Which in this instance was nearly a herculean task.

Kent respected Joshua’s boundaries. He had as much invested in gathering all the body parts as Joshua.

“Any ID yet?”

Joshua looked up. His perfectly coiffed hair not moving at all as the morgue attendant raised an eyebrow. “Are you kidding me? I doubt if we’re going to retrieve enough to fill a shoe box, let alone a coffin.”

Kent had no doubt. This was one of the more gruesome crime scenes he’d attended. Normally he would tease and chide Nicole for hanging back, but in this instance, he really couldn’t give her any crap.

“But we are certain it is a male?”

Joshua nodded. “Yeah, the first thing I bagged was his… well you know.”

“It was cut off?” Kent asked.

“Oh yah,” Joshua said, his face scrunching up like a kid that just ate a sour patch kid. “Along with the rest of the package. I found one up on the top of the lion’s head.”

“Refresh my memory,” Kent asked the morgue attendant. “There wasn’t any damage to the other two victim’s sexual organs?”

Joshua shook his head. “Nah. The breasts were cut, but only because it was a sixty degree arcing cut. The pubic bone was severed in half, but you didn’t feel that was sexual either.”

The morgue attendant was one of the few people that were as familiar with the victim’s bodies as Kent was. Joshua had a nearly perfect memory of every crime scene.

So was this cutting off of the genitals a new found hatred of the male gender or was it simply an evolution of the killer’s zeal and love affair with the chainsaw? This crime scene certainly had more “gusto” than the last two.

The killer was hitting his stride. Unabashed. Reveling in the carnage.

And said carnage was also a fairly effective forensic counter measure. With all this gore, it was almost impossible to tell what came first. There was no void in the splatter so apparently the killer moved around a lot, hacking and sawing as he went.

This kill had taken commitment and some pretty amazing upper body strength. Chainsaws weren’t light and even a chainsaw cutting through a human backbone was no easy task.

Kent knew that Nicole hated it when he respected a killer, but this one he really did have to take his hat off to. This was a level of obsession and physical prowess that might never be matched again.

Looking at the blood soaked carousel, all Kent could say was, damn.

* * *

Nicole paced outside the carousel. Kent had been in there longer than she had expected. Usually he was in and out of there so fast it seemed impossible that he had actually viewed the body.

He chose this one to lollygag around?

A light caught Nicole’s eye as a cameraman and a gaggle of reporters rushed toward the carousel.

“Officer Tandy!” Nicole barked. The crime scene officer hurried over, blocking the group.

“I’m sorry but no reporters allowed,” the officer stated.

The woman, tall and stunningly beautiful strode forward. She had chiseled features. A jawline that seemed to go on forever. Perfectly shaped eyebrows. And those lips? Blood red and luscious.

Nicole was not usually one to notice features on anyone, let alone a chick, but come on. This chick was the blond version of Angelina Jolie. She was so tall, she was statuesque and could probably compete with Barbie for measurements. Ample breasts and narrow hips.

The reporter was dressed in what Nicole considered a power suit. Dark blue skirt and jacket with a cream blouse. Four inch heels only added to her Amazonesque stature.

“We’re not reporters,” the woman said blowing past poor Officer Tandy. Nicole stepped in front of her.

“No cameras allowed,” Nicole growled. She had barely met the woman and already she did not like her arrogant, entitled attitude.

“This is an active crime scene,” Nicole added feeling like a dwarf, a not very attractive dwarf at that, in front of the tall woman.

The woman snorted. “Which is exactly why we are here.”

Okay, this was bullshit.

Nicole nodded to Tandy. “Escort them outside the tape.”

The woman puffed up though and pulled out a piece of stationary, handing it to Tandy.

“We were guaranteed full access.”

Tandy scanned the paper, frowning, then handed it over to Nicole. The first thing she noticed was the letterhead. It was official police station paper. Rapidly she read the letter then skipped down to the signature.

Captain Glick.

What the hell?

The paper was in fact giving this documentary crew, from the show “Infinite Justice” full access to their current investigations and specifically to Kent.

“Can you please escort us to Special Agent in Charge Harbinger?” the woman asked, showing exactly how little research she had done on Kent.

“First off, Kent isn’t even officially a Special Agent anymore,” Nicole informed them. The woman’s creaseless face sagged a little. “And no one in their right mind would put him in charge.”

“But he is on scene,” a shorter, frumpier, bespectacled woman asked.

“Of course,” Nicole said. “Did he agree to this?”

“Does it matter?” the woman in glasses asked. “The mayor, chief of police and your captain have.”

Nicole smiled. None of that mattered. If Kent hadn’t agreed, this film crew was in for quite the ride.

She stepped out of the way. Why bother to argue with them? She’d let Kent fight his own battles on this one. “He’s right through there.”

Even though she really had no desire to see the crime scene again, Nicole stayed hot on their heels.

She would pay to see the show that followed.

* * *

Kent made his way past a unicorn and a manatee to exit the carousel only to find himself blinded by a camera’s glaring light. He’d known something was up when he’d heard Nicole’s pitch go up about three octaves.

A woman strode toward him like she owned the place. Kent could swear that he recognized her, but couldn’t place how or why.

Then he saw it. The tiny marks that other people would guess were just fine lines at the edge of her eyes, lips, and temple. But Kent knew better. They were the tiny scars left by plastic surgery. By all accounts it looked like the woman had an eyebrow lift, a chin implant and a nose job.

Not many people would endure so much plastic surgery and fewer even could afford the type of plastic surgeon that left so little marks.

So? Kent’s conclusion? The woman was in the film industry. On-air. That’s when it hit him. She starred in the basic cable show “Infinite Justice.” He’d spent enough nights awake in front of the television to see a handful of her re-runs once animal planet went dark.

And she was here, with her crew, lights blazing.

Bridget, that’s what Kent thought her name was, was also holding out a piece of paper as if it could shield her from any recrimination.

Right.

Kent waited until she was up in his face, pointing her mic in toward his mouth.

He could guess what the paper said. Someone higher up the food chain than him had given her permission to film her skanky show. Of course, no one had bothered to inform him.

Glick was probably giggling all the way home to his gin and tonic.

“What case are you working on?” Bridget asked him.

“First, we need to finish up some paperwork. Releases.”

Bridgit waved him off. “We already signed the release forms from the department.”

“Oh no, I need you to sign mine. I need a waiver that none of your heirs will sue me.”

A shorter, brunette woman who looked like she shopped at Wal-Mart rather than Neiman Marcus stepped forward. “Why? Why aren’t the departmental waivers enough?”

“Oh,” Kent replied. “Because you are going to die. All of you. And I don’t want to have to defend myself, personally from your heirs.”

The shorter woman, whom Kent could only guess that was the show’s producer giggled nervously.

“No, I am serious,” Kent replied. If they knew him at all, they would know that. “You morons are used to following around idiotic detectives who are looking for low risk criminals --”

“Low risk?” Bridget said with a sharp intake of breath. “I will have you know that we have filmed the capture of pedophiles, murderers and serial killers.”

Kent turned to Nicole. “What do I always say?”

Nicole wore a smirk to match his own. “Anyone can catch the ugly and the stupid.”

Kent turned back to Bridget. “Exactly. Your pedophile was a florist. The ‘murderer’ killed his ninety pound soaking wet wife with sleeping pills and your ‘serial killer’ was offing people in comas…Heady stuff, really.”

However, instead of being pissed, Bridget smiled. “So you’ve watched my show.”

“Only to remind myself of how stupid the rest of the world is.”

This brought a tiny frown to her lips. Kent really didn’t think she could move her facial muscles any more than she was currently.

He looked to the producer. Bridget might be this little gaggle’s front man, but the homely chick really ran the show. “I am serious,” Kent insisted. “You still need me to sign off on allowing my image to be used. I won’t allow it unless you sign my waiver.”

Bridget’s expression changed ever so slightly. Her eyes though remained calculating. You could tell she wasn’t used to being told what to do. Too bad, guess she was going to have to get used to the sensation.

“Fine,” the woman spat. “But I want to be able to film the crime scene tonight. You don’t have to be in the shot.”

You know, this chick might make a good dominatrix, she drove a hard bargain.

“Sure,” Kent said shrugging, waving his arm like a game show host.

“Kent!” Nicole barked. What was he thinking?

“No, please, be my guest,” Kent encouraged.

What was his angle? What was he playing at?

The television crew passed by as Nicole caught up with him. “What are you thinking?”

Kent draped his arm over her shoulder. “Oh, just wait for it.”

* * *

Nicole didn’t have to wait long. The short producer woman was the first to burst out of the carousel, puking between a dog and a fish. The cameraman was next, gagging and retching, his camera still on his shoulder, bouncing around, probably still recording.

Last out was the anchor. She stumbled in her high heels, her legs like rubber. She clutched onto a giraffe, keeping herself upright as her other arm wrapped around her abdomen. Her face was green, literally green. Not even her pancake makeup could hide the color.

Nicole wasn’t such a nice enough person not to take a little glee from the woman being taken down a peg or two.

The woman burped once, loud, as her hand flew to her lips. “Excuse me,” she said although her voice was a little shaky.

To Nicole’s surprise the woman recovered fairly quickly. First the color came back into her face. She went from green to flush. Then she stood straighter, smoothing her blouse with the palm of her hand.

And with that she was back to normal.

“Alright, get it together,” the woman said to her team, patting the cameraman on his back. “We’ve got to get back in there.”

The guy seemed to gain some strength from his boss’ touch and stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “On it.”

The woman’s face split in a smile. “This is so going to get a TV-MA rating.”

Then she was gone as well, back to the crime scene. Only the producer hung back, dry heaving. The woman seemed horrified down to her bone marrow. She just didn’t seem to be able to stop her stomach from clenching up. One of the police officers was helping to hold her hair back as she retched.

This was not pretty. Nicole felt for the poor woman. No one should have to see what they both did. It was unnatural.

Which pretty much summed up Buzz Kill.

The serial killer had burst onto the scene, rattling the city. The viciousness of the crimes had gotten the media really going. Buzz Kill was on everyone’s lips. You couldn’t go into any coffee shop in the city without hearing the name dropped.

And equal disdain for the police for not being able to catch Buzz Kill.

TV had taught people that serious crimes could be solved in under an hour, with commercial breaks. That wasn’t how it worked. A sophisticated serial killer like this might take months or even years to catch.

Profiling was slow methodical work.

The producer wretched again. The sound made Nicole’s stomach twinge in sympathy.

The work could also be gross at times.

“They so don’t pay me enough for this,” the producer slurred, but then she too got up and returned to the carousel. She was a little weak on her feet but that didn’t stop her from returning to her team.

Nicole kind of respected her for that. Bridget not so much. She seemed to be a fairly cold and calculating person. Nicole wasn’t all that fond of that. She had one of those for her very own. Kent was enough of a handful. She didn’t need another one.

The thought of having to run interference between Kent and Bridget sounded like getting a root canal without Novocain.

“You’re really going to let them follow you around during a case?” Nicole asked Kent.

“Oh hell, no,” Kent said. “But it’ll be fun keeping ahead of them.”

Wasn’t that typical Kent?

Always surprising her.

Why fight when you could screw around with someone’s mind.

She would have expected him to throw a big hissy fit. Something a kindergartener would really have been impressed by. But he was too smart for that. A tantrum would not go over well with the mayor. But pretending to go along, then going about his business was the far smarter move.

Which meant that Kent was far more in control of his emotions than he let on.

Good to know.

CHAPTER 3

Ruben drove up to the carousel crime scene after putting the warehouse disaster to bed. It really was amazing how many forms you had to fill out after wiping out an entire gang crew. It simply added insult to injury. But he had finally dotted all the “I’s” and crossed all the “T’s.” Then sent copies of it to every department who had requested one, which was quite a long list it turned out. Homicide, the Gang Unit, Vice, and even for some reason Homeland Security.

The only thing he was missing was Nicole’s report to the shooting team, which she would give in the morning and, of course, Kent’s statement. That one he didn’t expect for weeks. He would have to harass and harangue the profiler before Kent would deign to write the statement. And even then sometimes Kent didn’t turn it in until moments before the grand jury. The prosecutors had gotten used to it by now.

But if Kent was really in a mood then Ruben would get Kent’s statement texted to him, line by line. For joy.

It was late, but with such a prominent crime scene, he figured that Nicole might still be lingering around and hopefully be able to catch him up on the case. He hated feeling left behind.

Which was a common occurrence these last few years. Nicole was so wrapped up in keeping up with Kent that it left her very little time to catch him up. And when you were the guy responsible for doing all the paperwork that left you running to catch up all the time. But so was his lot in life. Glick kept reminding him how lucky he was to be working with such a prestigious team. That Ruben got credit for every collar in his record as well and that would look excellent when Ruben went to climb the bureaucratic ladder.

This captain did know him. Ruben wasn’t destined to be a detective forever. He was already eyeing the lieutenant’s exam. One day he wanted Glick’s position or even higher.

Was this indignity at the hands of Kent worth his future promotion? For right now it seemed it did. For all his complaining, Ruben had yet to put in for a transfer. The thought of starting over at another precinct truly was depressing. And knowing that he would have to field a thousand questions about what it was like to work with Kent downright gave Ruben a stomachache.

Better to work with the bastard than have to explain working with the bastard.

The phone at his hip vibrated. A text message from Paggie asking when he might be coming home.

Ruben hit the “dial” button rather than texting back. If he was going to give bad news, he’d rather say it rather than type it.

“Sorry, we’ve got another Buzz Kill victim,” Ruben said. There was no point in sugar coating it.

“Oh no, that’s horrible,” Paggie said. “So I won’t wait up.”

“Don’t even try,” Ruben said as he surveyed the multitude of crime scene vehicles and personnel. He was going to have to account for each and every one of them. “I’ll try to be quiet when I come in.”

“Okay, be safe, love-bug,” Paggie said, her voice already sounding sleepy.

“I will, snuggle-bunny,” Ruben said quietly so the other officers didn’t hear him.

As the phone disconnected, Ruben realized how lucky he was. Paggie never complained about his late hours or got jealous like many of the other officer’s significant others did. Would that change after the wedding? Would she become tired of his schedule and more possessive of his time once they were man and wife?

He hoped not. They had a pretty perfect thing going right now.

As he passed the crime scene officer, Tandy he thought, Ruben was blinded by camera lights. Ruben raised his arm to protect his eyes. What the hell was a news crew doing inside the tape?

A tall, Amazonian woman came at him with a mic pointed at him. “Detective Ruben Torres?” she asked even though it was pretty clear that she knew who he was.

“Yes, and you would be?”

The woman extended her other hand. “Bridget Fairweather, host of Infinite Justice.”

Ruben’s brain scanned the name. It sounded like one of those docudrama shows on cable. Then the bells went off. The Captain had him sign some waiver last week. Glick had mentioned that there would be film crews. He just left out the crime scene part.

Ms. Fairweather’s hand was still extended. Ruben shook it cautiously. She seemed about as trustworthy as a snake in the grass. He straightened his tie. Thank goodness he still had one on.

“And tell our viewers what your role is in the department.”

“I am Detective Usher’s partner,” Ruben answered.

“Really?” Ms. Fairweather said as her well plucked eyebrow went up. “I thought that Special Agent Kent Harbinger is her partner.”

“No, no,” Ruben explained. “First he is a former Special Agent and technically Nicole and I are still partners on homicide squad.”

“But they are romantically involved? Lovers?”

Ruben suddenly didn’t like the bright lights and the line of questioning. “You would have to ask them about that.”

“Detective Nicole Usher is wearing his engagement ring, isn’t she?”

You mean the one he gave her at a funeral? Ruben thought but did not say. “If you say so,” Ruben said trying to get past the host to get to the actual crime scene.

“So you’re late on the scene,” Ms. Fairweather stated.

“I was finishing up another crime scene across town,” Ruben replied not liking the tone the woman used. “Six gang bangers were taken down.”

The host’s eyes dilated at that. “Six? You took down six all by your lonesome?”

Crap, why had he brought up the warehouse? “Well, not exactly. It was former special Agent Kent Harbinger and Detective Usher.”

“You mean the two that aren’t partners?” Ms. Fairweather stated, apparently trying to bait Ruben. Well, Ruben had two long years of getting used to the odd arrangement and Kent’s constantly taunting him about it. This host didn’t rise to Kent’s manipulations.

“That is correct,” Ruben stated smoothly.

“So they left you to clean up the paperwork while they rushed over to the high profile crime scene?”

Even though she was accurate, Ruben wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of him affirming it.

Instead he brushed past her and the cameraman and made his way to the crime scene. Someone had placed a bucket next to the carousel that said “For the pussies.”

Ruben wasn’t quite sure what all of that was about.

That was until he made his way through the animal seats to find possibly the bloodiest, goriest crime scene he’d ever seen and he’d seen a lot. Bile tried to come up, but he forced it back down. He did not want him puking into a bucket labeled “for the pussies,” being filmed thank you very much.

Instead he thought of baseball and puppies. Anything but the scene in front of him. He tried very, very hard not to think of how the body came to be this way. That someone was actually alive when the process was started. Thankfully the coroner assured them on previous victims that after the second or third strike, the victim could not possibly have been alive.

A very, very thin silver lining.

“Well, what are your thoughts?” Ms. Fairweather asked, sticking that stupid mic in his face again.

“I think we should back up and let the crime scene analysts do their job.”

“So you aren’t familiar with the case then?”

“I am completely in the loop,” Ruben retorted getting more than a little tired of the host and her camera.

“Then your thoughts on this being male?”

“The victim is a male?” Ruben blurted out before he realized his err.

“I thought you were up to date?” Ms. Fairweather stated with a smirk. This is how this chick got her ratings. Usually making the police look like fools.

“I think I’m done talking,” Ruben said, walking away.

“Just as well,” Ms. Fairweather stated, “Since you have little to add to the conversation.”

Then she winked at him. Winked.

Jesus, was she related to Kent?

* * *

Kent had not only ditched the camera crew but Nicole as well. He had some serious thinking to do. And he could only do that alone. And even better alone at a greasy spoon restaurant. His new favorite greasy spoon restaurant.

“Want another piece, lovey?” the well-past middle-aged waitress asked.

“No,” Kent replied, “I’m good.” He shoved the clean plate to the edge of the table. Magg whisked the plate away as only a waitress of thirty years could do.

For a moment he regretted not ordering another piece. That really had been the best cherry pie he’d ever had. Not to say that the restaurant had the best pies. They didn’t. The apple pie was too sweet. The pumpkin pie was a little lumpy and the rhubarb pie was a little too rhubarby.

But the cherry pie? Ah, the cherry pie was perfect. The crust was as buttery and flakey as it should be. The cherries were just tart enough to hold your interest without overwhelming the sugary syrup they floated in.

Perfection.

Which was why he didn’t tell Nicole about the place. She would come in and want a la mode and then proceed to eat the crust off the back of the slice, ruining the perfect balance of savory and sweet.

No way, José. This was his place. His pie.

He only came here when he was stymied. He hated being stymied. Three murders in let you know you had a serialist but didn’t give you enough information to actually catch him.

Tomorrow morning, he would be expected to give a profile and explain the murder board and what did he have?

Nothing.

A whole lot of nothing.

And people expected a whole lot of something from him. He’d trained them to be accustomed to his brilliance. He wanted them to rely on it until, like now it was failing him.

Kent pulled the crime scene photos, which really showed nothing but splotches of blood. Almost a Rorschach test of blood and guts. There was nothing really illuminating about them at all. Normally the crime scene gave you something. It was usually a window into the murderer’s soul.

Not this one. It might be a window, but it was painted black. Opaque. Probably like the serialist’s soul. You couldn’t have any empathy and do what Buzz Kill did.

Most people thought there were normal people and then there were psychopaths when really there was a spectrum of psychopathy. Just like autism there was a spectrum of empathy. Buzz Kill was at the rank bottom of that scale. But did that help Kent catch him?

No. Unfortunately not. Sophisticated psychopaths could pass. They had learned to fake their empathy. To pretend to the world that they cared as they planned their next vicious murder. This would not be a person who was smelly at the back of the diner, picking wings off of flies.

This would be a clean, apparently upstanding citizen like the guy in Dockers over in the corner. The serialist would look like your Joe Blow. Just an average guy sitting having an average meal at an average diner.

Yes, Buzz Kill had switched to a man, but that to Kent that was a forensic countermeasure not a true evolution of the killer’s MO. And yes, the killer had gone more public with the body display, but again, that was not a common escalation.

If anything the staging of the latest victim, if you could call him that after what Buzz Kill did to him, only boded poorly. This killer was just getting started. Clearly he was beginning to enjoy himself. The hesitation and nerves were gone, now he was just living the life, a serial killer’s wet dream.

With no forensic clues whatsoever, Kent felt like he was back in the 1800s trying to solve a crime by his instinct alone. From experience, Kent knew that it did not end well.

Unfortunately he was going to have to be patient. Wait for other deaths. Wait for the killer to reveal something to Kent. Something about his victims before Kent could hope to intersect him.

Or did he have enough already?

Kent put the crime scene photos back in his pocket, before the waitress noticed them and fainted. Instead he took out the pictures of the first two victims. The ones that could be sisters.

Nothing else bound them though. They had nothing in common. Living in completely different parts of the city, living completely different lives.

Kent stared at the first victim. She should tell him the most about the killer. Many times the first victim was known to the killer. That one day the killer’s murderous rage just boiled over and they took it out on the person they blamed.

Some trigger happened. Getting laid off, divorce, the death of a parent or child. Then boom. The lid blew off and the victim was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the second murder did not hold up this theory. The killer went after an archetype. A person with very similar features. Which usually meant they didn’t want to kill the first victim for who they were, but for what they represented. That the first victim did not necessarily have to be known to the killer. That they could have been picked out of the crowd based on their phenotype, their external features.

So the killer wanted to kill a prominent female figure in their lives. Mother, sister, teacher, lover, wife. Someone who was mentally or physically abusive to them.

They couldn’t kill this woman usually for one of two reasons. The first being that the person was already dead and the release of killing them had been stolen from the killer or they didn’t have the balls to actually kill their abuser. They were working up to it.

Kent seriously doubted if that second reason fit Buzz Kill. After going at a body with a chainsaw, Kent didn’t think the killer would be intimidated by anyone.

No, more than likely whoever this brunette woman with dark eyes and a button nose was already dead. Whether by the killer’s hand or natural causes the archetype was dead.

The problem with that scenario was the killer could never get satisfaction they so desperately craved. The proxy he killed could never satisfy his lust for revenge. The killings would go on until he was stopped.

Kent put the pictures side by side. He’d already run a full DMV check for anyone who had similar facial features and had come up empty.

He got his phone out though and dialed a number.

“Yes? Captain Glick?” the groggy voice on the other line asked.

“Nah, Jimmi. It’s Kent.”

“Jesus,” the tech cursed. “Do you know how late it is?”

“Sorry, doing some brainstorming.”

“Ugh,” Jimmi responded. “Which usually means a whole hell of a lot of work for me.”

“Hey,” Kent said. “I can call Joshua and see if he can help me out.”

“No, no,” Jimmi rushed in to say. Kent wasn’t above leveraging the two’s competitive streak to get him what he wanted. “I just need to know. Do we have a warrant this time?’

“We don’t need one,” Kent explained. “I want you to pull all of the pictures from the obituaries that look like our first two victims.”

“How long back?” Jimmi asked.

“Five years.”

“Oh, is that all?” Jimmi snorted. “Tell Joshua to have at it.”

“Fine. How about six months, then?” Kent tried.

“I’ll try to work out some kind of facial recognition on the newspapers online obits, but I’m not promising anything.”

“That’s the spirit,” Kent said, hoping that his sarcasm dripped through to the other end.

“Maybe if you called during business hours, you’d get a slightly more excited response.”

Kent clicked the phone off before Jimmi could drone on.

“Your winning personality making you another friend?” a voice called out from behind him.

Damn it, he was busted and it was Nicole.

He turned to find her walking down the long narrow aisle of the restaurant to his booth in the back. She had a Cheshire cat smile. She was even beautiful when she was gloating.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“I’m a detective, a damn good detective, remember?”

Kent cocked his head. “I only pay cash and I take a different taxi company here each time.”

Nicole slid into the booth across from him. “Oh please, I just looked up a few cop foodie sites, and found the restaurants that said they had the best cherry pie.”

Damn those bloggers. Always ruining a good thing.

“How many did you hit before you found me?” Kent asked.

Nicole shrugged. “None. I figured out of the three listed, there was no way you were going to the downtown one with all of those hipsters hanging around writing their latest screenplay. And the other only served Pepsi products.” She took a sip of his Coke then smacked her lips. “That soda is from Mexico, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” Kent said. “They use real sugar rather than corn syrup.”

“Um, you can taste the difference,” Nicole replied, this time taking a nice long gulp.

The waitress came over. “You want anything for yourself, darlin’?”

“I’ll take a slice of your cherry pie, heated with a scoop of ice cream, please. Plus another soda.”

“You got it, honey,” the waitress answered and went to walk off.

“Wait, and a knife,” Nicole yelled after the waitress.

“A knife?” the waitress clarified. “For pie?”

“Yes, please,” Nicole stated and turned back to Kent.

See? She was ruining everything. And now his cola was half empty and he’d barely begun his meditation.

“So what brilliant conclusion have you made so far?” Nicole asked.

“Guess you’ll have to wait for the morning to find out, like everyone else.”

Nicole kicked him under the table. “And here I was thinking you might get some tonight.”

Kent rolled his eyes. “On your first night of your period? I don’t think so.”

“You, the great Kent,” Nicole smirked. “Gift to all women is put off by a little menses?”

“Not me, you, my dear. You complain that I get your lady parts all too hot and bothered and then you get crampy, remember?”

Nicole shrugged. “Maybe I’m willing to risk it,” she said as her shoe traveled up his leg, tugging up the hem of his pants.

“Really?” Kent was unimpressed. Seduction was not one of her strong suits. “You tracked me all the way down here to make sure I would come home for a booty call?”

Nicole dropped the siren act. “I just need you to get some sleep so you’re fresh for tomorrow.”

“Why?” Kent asked.

His fiancée, her ring glistening on her finger squirmed in her seat. You could tell she didn’t want to tell him but also knew what he’d do if she didn’t tell him. Being handcuffed in the rain probably brought back some memories.

“The film crew is going to be there.”

“Duh,” Kent replied. She really needed to also work on her lying skills.

Nicole shuffled some more, took another swig of his cola then licked her lips. “Well, because of the film crew the Chief of D’s, the Police Commissioner and the Mayor are going to be there.”

“Sounds about right,” Kent stated, glad to see surprise flash on Nicole’s face.

“You knew?”

“No,” Kent said, “But I guessed. The cameras really bring them out of the woodwork.”

“And you’re okay with all of that?”

Nicole cocked her head then reached for his Coke.

Kent grabbed his cola back before Nicole finished it off. “There will be a lot of political posturing, but what do I care? I’m never going to run for office. And like I always say, I should be able to explain my theories to the janitor and make him understand so I’m good.”

CHAPTER 4

Nicole leaned back in the booth, the plastic squeaking as she did so and squinted her eyes. Could Kent really be serious?

“It’s your ex-Latin lover that is going to be apoplectic tomorrow,” Kent continued. “All that power concentrated in one place? Cameras to record it all? It’s his panties that are going to be in a bunch tomorrow, mark my words.”

In some ways it sounded like Ruben and in others it didn’t. However if he got the chance to show Kent up, the more public the better. It usually didn’t end well for Ruben, but the man never quite seemed to learn.

The waitress brought her cherry pie, steaming just a little with a nice big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, already starting to melt. Nicole spun the plate around, grabbed the knife that was provided and tackled the sucker from the back, slicing the crust away and dipping the strips in the ice cream.

“You are a sick, sick woman,” Kent commented. “I’m really not sure how much of a leap it is to massacre that pie and chainsaw someone.”

“Not far at all, I’m sure.” Nicole shot back, not wanting to let Kent spoil her enjoyment of her pie. “Some people eat the middle out of Oreos before they eat the cookie part.”

“Those poor souls are simply misguided… you are… you are the butcher of Sam’s Moonlight Diner.”

Nicole smiled. That’s why despite the fact he was a kleptomaniac and overall ass, he could make her laugh at the most inopportune jokes. That and he knew her menstrual cycle.

Kent raised his hand. “I really can’t watch this travesty. Waitress. Check please.”

Nicole responded by taking a huge spoonful of ice cream and dropping it into her cola then swirling it around.

“No, no, no,” Kent said seeming truly distressed. He hadn’t batted an eye at the Buzz Kill crime scene, but make his Coke into a float? That he’d react to. “Now we are approaching war crimes.”

“Ah, you’ll visit me in the Hague won’t you?”

“Not if I have to watch this sight,” Kent chuckled, nudging her foot under the table.

The waitress walked over. “There ain’t no bill, sweetie.”

“What do you mean?” Kent asked. “As a law enforcement official I can’t take a gift of even food.”

For all of Kent’s railing “against the man” Nicole knew that the profiler was a stickler about keeping himself untangled from any whiff of scandal. He created enough problems on his own, he didn’t need to look like he was playing favoritism.

“Ah, nah, darlin’ I’m too broke to be not only buying you pie but losing my tip,” the waitress explained. “Nah, a biker guy came in and paid for your pie and soda and I might add left me a hefty tip. Now your girl is going to have to pay for her own.”

Nicole sucked in a breath, her eyes darting to look at Kent’s face. That couldn’t just have happened could it? The way his cheeks drained of color, he too was thinking exactly what she was. Lucky 37 had not only been in this restaurant, but paid for Kent’s meal?

Had she walked by him? Had she missed one of the FBI’s most wanted serial killers?

“Here ya go,” the waitress said. “He wanted you to have this, sorry, it completely slipped my mind.”

The waitress handed Kent a green and white ticket then turned and walked off like it was no big deal. Maybe in the course of the waitress’s life, it wasn’t. But to Kent and she? It was everything.

Kent’s hand even shook a bit as he unfolded the ticket. He laid it out on the table between them. Kent didn’t bother to try and preserve any evidence. Lucky 37 always used gloves.

On the front appeared to be only the waitress’ handwriting, documenting Kent’s order. The total was scrawled at the bottom, a red line through it to indicate it had been paid.

Kent flipped the ticket over.

There were only two words. Tomorrow Night.

Huh?

Kent flipped the ticket over again, then back again.

“What does it mean?” Nicole asked.

“Hell if I know,” the profiler responded.

Okay, this wasn’t good if Kent had no idea.

“Is he going to kill tomorrow night?’ she queried. If Lucky 37 kept to his schedule, he needed to make two more kills in the next week. Nicole hated to admit it, but she had kind of hoped that Lucky had moved on. She had hoped that he had gotten spooked by Kent’s attention and had abandoned his schedule, striking for greener pastures.

The ticket laying between them shattered all of her hopes. Lucky was still in town and apparently still stalking them. It made her skin crawl to think of a serial killer watching her every movement. She’d had one before and it didn’t end well.

“Well?” Nicole prompted Kent who was staring at the ticket as if it were the only thing that existed in the world.

“No idea,” Kent said. “He could also be telling us that Buzz Kill is going to kill tomorrow night.”

“Buzz Kill?” Nicole parroted back. She knew Kent hated when she did it, but she couldn’t help herself.

“He could be trying to help again,” Kent stated.

“Why?”

“Why does Lucky 37 do anything?”

“You said he helped last time because he had a teenage daughter. Why would he help catch Buzz Kill?”

“Because he’s found a new high?” Kent suggested. “I think he was getting bored with his routine. Our interactions have given him new purpose.”

“And what if he tires of that?” Nicole suggested. “And decides that going after a profiler and his girlfriend are his new high?”

“Fiancé, you mean?” Kent retorted.

Kent could seem so distracted, then snap back into focus so quickly that it gave Nicole whiplash.

“Yes, fiancé,” Nicole agreed, looking down at her engagement ring. She might have slipped up, but at least Kent hadn’t.

“We’ll have to see,” Kent said as if he was talking about the possibility that the Cardinals could make it into the World Series.

Kent waved the waitress back to their table. “You said the guy was a biker. Was he dressed in leathers?

“Oh, no. He was in khakis and a long sleeved knit shirt.”

That didn’t sound at all like Lucky 37, but that’s what the point was Nicole supposed.

Kent pulled out a sketch of Lucky 37. “Did he look like that?’

“Oh heavens no. He was clean shaven with short hair.”

Nicole frowned. “Then why did you say he was a biker?”

“When he reached out for the check, his sleeve fell back and a big honking Orange County Choppers tattoo was on his arm.”

Kent leaned back, his finger to his lip. That meant something to him. Why didn’t it to her?

The waitress shuffled a bit, not knowing what to do next. Kent was in the zone so Nicole stepped in.

“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.” Nicole pulled a business card out of her wallet and handed it to the waitress. “If you see him again, give me a call, okay.”

The woman scanned the card. “Detective, huh? And he’s a cop too?”

“No,” Nicole answered. “He’s an FBI profiler.”

The woman’s eyes dilated. “Really? I thought for sure he was some kind of artistic weirdo.”

“A common misperception,” Nicole said with a chuckle. She looked over to Kent, his face was still stitched up in concentration.

“Am I in danger?” the waitress said, putting her hand on her chest.

“Depends, do you ride Harleys?’

“Goodness sakes, no, not at my age and stage of osteoporosis.”

“Then you should be fine,” Nicole stated. “Lucky 37 only goes after biker chicks.”

The waitress took a step back. “You mean the real Lucky 37 was in my diner?”

“We believe so yes,” Nicole answered.

“Oh my,” the waitress said fanning her face. “I’ve got to go update my Facebook status.”

Damn but social media had suckered even an old coot like their waitress into posting their lives. Nicole couldn’t be concerned about that. She had Kent to worry about.

“What’s going on?”

Kent fluttered a hand, waving her off.

Fine. Nicole got comfortable. They could be here a while.

What was she missing? The Orange County Choppers were a Harley biker “club.” To avoid harassment and arrest these bikers no longer called themselves a gang. They were even on sites like Meet up. They tried to project a more family-friendly image these days.

That didn’t mean they still didn’t run guns, dabble in prostitution, and human trafficking.

The problem was the Choppers had branched out from California. They were worldwide, let alone countrywide. Just like the old school gangs, they kept no membership roster. So why was Kent so consumed by this new information?

* * *

Kent was not used to having his mind blown. It was a most unwelcome sensation, yet at the same time it felt incredibly stimulating. To have not just one, but two whole new avenues of investigation. It was like Easter and Christmas hit on the same day.

The note. Ah, the note. Just a tease. Again, if Lucky 37 wasn’t one of the most prolific and brutal serial killers in the nation, Kent might have liked him. The man had a dry sense of humor and was willing to let the silence do the speaking for him.

And now to find out he had a Chopper tattoo. It was like Kent had been handed Lucky’s personal diary.

In khakis and a knit shirt. Damn, but Kent had seen Lucky and skimmed right over him. What had he been thinking at the time? Those psychopaths could copy normal, average. So there Lucky 37 sat, mocking Kent. Taunting him. They had been in the same diner and Kent hadn’t even picked up on it. He was getting rusty. Too rusty.

“Kent?” Nicole whispered.

“Just give me a few more minutes,” Kent asked.

“It’s been over an hour,” Nicole shot back, her lips turned down.

Really? Had it been that long?

“Want to come up for some air?” Nicole asked.

Really she meant sanity, but that was okay.

“So? What’s the big deal about the Orange County Chopper tattoo?” Nicole queried.

“You tell me,” Kent replied.

Nicole’s frown deepened. Well, she shouldn’t have bugged him if she didn’t want to talk.

“The OCC is a biker group.”

“Wrong,” Kent stated.

Nicole’s eyebrow shot up. “I thought they had a television show?”

“They do. Actually they have three shows, but the original OCC is actually a custom motorcycle company. Clubs have been formed by owners of OCC bikes or those that appreciate them, but the actual OCC is a company.”

“So?” Nicole stated.

“So?” Kent shot back. “So everything.”

Nicole threw her napkin at him. “Don’t be such a jerk. Just tell me what I’m missing.”

“Ah, but that wouldn’t be quite so fun, now would it?” Kent answered.

His fiancé’s frown warned him if he didn’t cough up something he was not getting any dessert tonight, or any other night for that matter.

“Do you think that ink got laid down on Lucky 37s arm before or after he started killing?”

Nicole’s lips turned up just a little. “Before. He’s too smart. Once he started killing, there’s no way he would put anything that identifying on his body.”

“Exactly,” Kent praised her. “Now when did the OCC blow up?”

“No idea.”

“I don’t know either, but I am assuming it was the early 2000s.”

“Which means?” Nicole asked.

“Think about the timeline. Where does it point you?” Kent asked.

Nicole’s brows knit together. “Lucky started killing well before 2000.”

“That’s right. Which means?”

“He didn’t get turned onto the OCC because of the television show because if he got the tattoo before the killing that puts the tattoo before 2000, before the show.”

Kent nodded vigorously. “Which means we can infer?”

Nicole’s features brightened. “He was a part of the original OCC Company’s crew?”

“Either a mechanic or test rider,” Kent said with another nod. He flipped open his phone and dialed.

“Dear god, I don’t have anything yet,” the voice on the other side of the phone snapped.

“Hello to you too, Jimmi,” Kent replied. “I’ve got something on Lucky 37. We have reason to believe he worked for the OCC between 1997 and 1999.”

“What?” Jimmi asked, sounding still a little groggy. “How did you figure that out?”

Kent sighed. “Never mind. Just get me pics from the company employees during that era.”

He clicked off the phone before Jimmi could engage him in small talk. He turned to Nicole, snatching the ticket up and putting it in his pocket.

“No one can know about this,” Kent stated.

“Why?”

Kent gave her that look. “This is between us. Period.”

Nicole frowned but nodded. “You know this is going to blow back on you.”

Kent shrugged. “When doesn’t it?”

She didn’t look too convinced, but when was she?

“So what’s next?” Nicole asked.

“Hopefully Jimmi will cook up a photo overnight so that I have something to present tomorrow morning. Until then, I thought we were going to get some rest.”

“Rest?” Nicole replied back. “I didn’t think rest was what was on your mind earlier.”

Kent smiled. That was his girl. Other people might find it weird that they were both in the mood, however most people didn’t have a serial killer stalking them or having to stalk down other serial killers that hacked people to pieces for fun.

You had to take your comforts when you could.

“Well, then, I’ll let you drive,” Kent said rising from the booth.

CHAPTER 5

Lucky surveyed from a discreet distance. It had been a huge risk. A huge risk to deliver that note and now to wait in the shadows?

But it had been worth it as he watched Kent walk out, his arm draped over Nicole’s shoulder as she nibbled at his neck.

This profiler was the most fascinating person Lucky had ever studied. And he had studied many, many people. Would the profiler figure out his warning? Or would it be too late?

It was out of his hands now. He had done his duty. He’d even shaved off a beard that he had been growing for over twenty years. And cut his hair. He hadn’t even done that for his mother, God rest her soul.

But he was running out of time. He would hate to break his track record so he needed to finish up all his business in town within the week. Could Kent rise to that challenge?

He certainly hoped so. He did not want to waste all of this grooming.

The game was afoot.

He felt a thrill that he hadn’t felt since his twenties. Lucky sucked in the night air, relishing the tang of auto exhaust and the smell of freshly baked cherry pie.

It was a good night to be alive and on the hunt.

Lucky waited until Nicole’s Mustang retreated into the distance before firing up his customized Fire bike. The engine rumbled satisfactory between his legs. He gunned the engine.

With his work done. It was time to go play.

* * *

Ruben tried to enter the bedroom as quietly as he could. Just because his night’s sleep was ruined didn’t mean that Paggie’s had to be as well.

“Super late night?” Paggie asked as she rolled over. There was never any sneaking up on her.

“Yeah. Kent not only caught the gangbanger serial killer but another five of the gang.”

“Pretty, typical right though? Par for the course?” Paggie asked, stroking his arm as he got into bed.

“Yah, but then there was the other Buzz Kill murder.”

All the sleep seemed to go out of Paggie as her lips formed a perfect circle. “Was it as bad as the last one?”

“Worse,” Ruben said with a shake of his head.

“From what you described, how could it be worse?” Paggie asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Ruben said, patting her arm. “Go back to sleep.”

“Are you sure you are okay?” Paggie asked, kissing his bicep. “You seem off.”

Ruben shrugged. “Oh and did I forget to mention that the whole thing is going to be taped by ‘Infinite Justice?’”

Paggie sat up in bed. “You mean the one with Bridget Fairweather?”

“That’s the one.”

Paggie’s face beamed. “Oh my gosh. That’s my favorite show.”

He guessed if you were a meter maid, you’d be fascinated by Bridget and her show filled with smoke and mirrors.

“It won’t air until after the case is closed.”

“Oh,” Paggie said, sighing then brightened. “I’d love to see my man on the TV though.”

Ruben cringed. His performance hadn’t exactly been his best. Hopefully they would edit around it. He kissed Paggie on the forehead. “And maybe someday you will, but let’s get some sleep? Shall we?”

Paggie didn’t lay back down. Instead she gathered the covers at her chin. “I had a pretty busy day too.”

“How so?” Ruben asked, already ready to doze off. Humiliating yourself on camera really took it out of you.

“I found a body today,” Paggie said, her tone going up into little girl territory.

Ruben sprang upright. “When? How? Where? Why didn’t you call me?”

“Okay, in order. This late afternoon. I was handing out tickets on Meadowview and noticed a car parked illegally in an alley. And I did call you but it went to voicemail and when I called the station, Glick said you are busy with the gangland case.”

Ruben pulled her into a hug. “I’m so sorry. You should have told him it was an emergency.”

“But it wasn’t. It was a little freaky and disturbing, but there’s nothing you could have done about it. I found the woman, called it in and gave my statement.”

“Do they know what happened to her?” Ruben asked.

“The officer said that it looked like an overdose, but they wouldn’t know for sure until after the autopsy.”

Ruben hugged her tighter. “I’m so, so sorry. You shouldn’t have to see anything like that.” He tried hard to shield that aspect of his job from her. She just wasn’t cut out for the gruesome stuff. She still got nightmares if they watched Friday the 13th.

Paggie leaned her head onto his bare chest. “I hope it’s okay, I mentioned your name. The officer said if it was ruled a homicide, he’d give you a call.”

“Of course, of course. Again, I wish you’d told Glick why you were calling.”

“I just thought if I had to give my statement again, it could be to you.”

“I’ll make sure of it,” Ruben reassured her.

He tucked her under his arm and laid back down, kissing the top of her head. “Now rest.”

“I’m not sure if I’m going to be up to the catering tasting,” Paggie said. “I don’t know when I’ll get my appetite back.”

Ruben shushed her. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out.”

“But with the wedding coming up so soon…”

Right now that was the least of Ruben’s concerns. “Just get some sleep and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Paggie snuggled against him, laying her palm on his chest, playing with his hairs like she did whenever she was nervous. He laid his hand over hers.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he whispered, but with the Buzz Kill’s latest murder fresh in his mind, Ruben wasn’t quite sure that was true.

* * *

Nicole leaned against her desk as everyone assembled for Kent’s briefing. It wasn’t really to deliver a profile, they were way too early into the case for that, but for him to give them some direction on how to continue the investigation.

Officers and street patrolmen alike filed in. A Harbinger-run briefing was like the opening of Cirque de Soleil show on the Vegas strip. Everybody, but everybody wanted to be there.

Faces she hadn’t seen for months were piling in. Especially after yesterday. Nearly single handedly, no one really cared about her contribution, an entire gang had been taken out, had upped Kent’s stature even more. Everyone wanted a piece of the profiler.

At the back of the room, the television cameras were being set up. Bridget was fussing with her red suit, trying to get her cream blouse to open at just the right amount of cleavage. Just south of Katie Couric but north of Cinemax at Night.

Although Bridget looked like the type that might give Cinemax at Night a try if this gig didn’t work out. She was going to be on screen, damn it, come hell or high water.

Ruben was off to the side, frowning. Apparently he still couldn’t comprehend how Kent attracted this kind of crowd. Normally a briefing of this insignificance would get maybe a handful of detectives with maybe a few patrolmen who were looking to work their way up to their gold shield. And if Ruben led it? Maybe some of the girls from the crime scene unit.

He was their Prince Charming. Kind of like law enforcement groupies. That was not enough for Ruben though. He wanted a crowd like this, filled with high level officers, the mayor and police chief. Her partner probably had wet dreams about it.

Not that he was a bad guy, but Ruben really liked positive reinforcement rather than conjecture and conniving. He liked real, solid, fact-based police work. And he wouldn’t be wrong. Kent was simply a showman, even though he wasn’t trying to be.

Which is what burnt Ruben the most. Kent came by it naturally.

Nicole watched as Ruben straightened his tie, eyeing the cameras. She’d heard through the grapevine that his first meeting with the crew hadn’t gone exactly according to plan. He’d been caught behind the curve and Tandy said that Bridget had made Ruben look like a tosser. Nicole wasn’t quite sure where the mid-west officer came up with the British slight, but Nicole knew what he meant. Ruben could really get his back up if he was embarrassed.

Nicole hated to tell him, but she seriously doubted if Ruben was going to get much air time at all. A kind of good news, bad news thing.

She studied her partner’s body language. His posture was ramrod straight. His head had been shaved this morning and his beard, perfectly groomed. He’d picked a dark suit, light shirt and striped tie.

The guy was ready for the cameras today.

His jaw was also clenched in a way that it only clenched when he thought about Kent. Nicole feared that Ruben was going to try something this morning to redeem himself from last night.

Not a good idea.

Ruben was probably going to challenge Kent or something even more stupid. If Ruben would just let go of competing with Kent. Ruben was a great cop on his own. He did really solid police work. And got about the amount of kudos you would expect for being slow and steady.

It was Ruben’s need for acknowledgement that undid him. Nicole had long ago given up trying to share the spotlight with Kent. Just like the gangland take down.

She had rescued Kent, but did that show up in any of the papers? Would her name ever be spoken in reverent tones as Kent’s was? No, and it never would be. So be it. As long as she learned at his side and helped take down some of the most ruthless serial killers in the world, she was content.

If only Ruben could see it her way.

The cameras only seemed to exacerbate Ruben’s sense of competition.

As the minutes ticked by and the room got restless. Bridget was doing a lot of eye rolling and looked at her wrist watch.

Yah, honey, get used to it.

Then the doors to the back of the room burst open and Kent strode through along with Jimmi and Joshua. It was like he had his own backup band. The room oohed as he entered, making a path for him. Much like she imagined that the Romans did for Caesar.

With a flourish, Kent made his way to the murder board, which he promptly turned around, leaving only a blank slate.

“Today I was going to give some lame ass briefing on how little we knew about Buzz Kill, however with the help of the crime lab and morgue, I think we might have blown the case wide open.”

The room took a collective gasp. Breaking cases wide open seldom happened. Police work was usually at about Ruben’s pace. Slow and steady. You crawled your way to the resolution.

But to this crowd, if Kent said it, it might be true. Bridget especially looked eager to hear more.

Jimmi handed him several photos. The first two were pictures of the first two victims…before they were hacked to death.

“As you can see, these woman have many traits in common. Too many in common to be a random picking.”

Ruben stepped forward, “But we ruled out a familial connection.”

Why couldn’t Ruben just keep his seat?

“That we did,” Kent stated. “But we never counted on adoption.”

Ruben’s expression soured. “Neither victim was adopted.”

“No,” Kent ceded. “But victim number two’s grandfather was. So there was no paper trail to connect the two families.”

Ruben’s frowned deepened so much that Nicole feared it would leave scars. Why did he challenge Kent? Kent was a lot of things but unprepared he was not. If he said the victims were related, then they were. Perhaps distantly, but related.

Her partner’s cheeks flushed. “And what does that have to do with the case?”

“Oh, just everything,” Kent said playing to the camera. He nodded to Joshua.

“I noticed some similarity between gene clusters of the two victims,” the morgue attendant explained. “Not enough to make a familial link, since they were generations apart, but enough to tell me there was a connection.”

Kent nodded, taking over. “As we know the first victim is the one usually the closest to the killer personally. We also know that there is usually a trigger for the serial killer. Many times a death that launches the killer into his cycle.”

The room murmured its agreement.

“So I had Jimmi search the obituary listing for the six months that proceeded the killings for another victim with similar phenotype.”

Jimmi stepped forward and put up a picture of a woman who could be the victim’s third sister, only about thirty years older. “This is Tanya Wyant. She died exactly three months before the first killing.”

“So we think Buzz Kill is a relative of the first victim?” Glick asked.

“Supposedly she died without a husband, children or living parents, but Jimmi is digging into her history, trying to find the buried connection between her and the other two victims. This can’t be a coincidence.”

Ruben snorted. “So not exactly wide open then.”

Kent turned on his heel to face Ruben. The profiler cocked his head.

Nicole cringed. This was not going to be pretty.

“Let’s see, we are only three killings into a serial killer who has switched up MOs and left absolutely no forensic evidence so far, yet we have just uncovered a link that gets us into the mind of the killer before he started killing. I’d say that’s pretty wide open.”

Bridget called out from the back of the room. “Does this help you in any way in regards to victimology? Can you tell us who will die next?”

“If I knew that, I’d be waiting on her doorstep, now wouldn’t I?”

The room chuckled.

Bridget did not seem impressed. “I meant did it help you hone onto the next victim’s sex or type?”

“No,” Kent said, “But based on their over correction to a Latino male, I think they are going to swing back to a woman, but this time middle-aged and red-headed.”

“How did you come to the conclusion?”

Kent shrugged. “A hunch.”

“We can’t warn the entire city’s red headed population based on your hunch,” Ruben piped up, his tone bitter to Nicole’s ears. For her partner’s sake she hoped that the mics didn’t pick that up.

“No, but we can take much more seriously any reports of any red head going missing or complaining of being followed than we would have last night.”

How Kent always managed to do that. Pivot around any criticism and look all the better for it.

Ruben backed down, finally as Kent brought the briefing to a close.

“We’ll be adding more as we dig into Tanya’s family history. For now be ready for Buzz Kill to strike soon. Perhaps even tonight. Pay particular attention to any peeping tom reports or stalking complaints. We’ve got to get ahead of this killer.”

The room agreed in unison and then began breaking up. The mayor, a portly older gentleman, along with the Police Chief, another good ole boy, came forward. The mayor shook Kent’s hand rather enthusiastically.

“Fantastic work,” he gushed. “Simply fantastic. To have a break in the case this early.”

“It’s just a break though,” Kent stated. “Catching Buzz Kill is going to take way more than that.”

“Funny you didn’t mention that during the briefing,” Ruben huffed.

The Police Chief glared at Nicole’s partner. “You’ve filed all the paperwork for the gangland killings?”

“We just need Nicole’s statement to the shooting team.”

Thanks for throwing me under the bus, Ruben, Nicole thought, but didn’t let that enter into her tone. “Which I was going to give right after the briefing,” she said with a smile. The Chief smiled back. He’d always liked her for some reason.

* * *

Kent watched as Nicole expertly navigated the political waters that churned in the aftermath of the conference. She was so good at the nicey-nice stuff. Kent on the other hand was doing his best to melt away into the crowd that was bleeding from the room.

That is how he backed into Glick. The Captain was never a big fan of the politics game of the department.

“Captain.”

“Quite the show you put on there,” Glick stated. “But don’t you always?”

“I figured the television crew that you sic’d on me, needed a nice sound bite. Should make for a good promo.”

Glick tilted his head. “You never fail to surprise, Harbinger. I expected to find you at the foot of my bed last night, throwing a hissy fit.”

“What can I say?” Kent said. “I’ve grown so much under your leadership.”

“And there it is,” Glick said. “Nice to know you’re still in there.”

“I do need a favor though, think of it as payback for the camera crew.”

Glick frowned. Kent could only imagine what the captain was thinking. Luckily for Glick, Kent’s favor was case related.

“I need both an undercover and uniformed officers in every biker bar tonight.”

“Why?” Glick said, his eyes narrowing to a slit. “Another hunch?”

“You could call it that,” Kent replied. “But we are coming up on Lucky 37s deadline. Plus have them look for non-traditional biker types.”

“Because?” Glick asked.

The old man was a lot sharper than he appeared.

Kent shrugged, trying to get from under the conversation. He did not want to have to tell the captain about missing Lucky 37 last night. “Let’s just say I have a feeling that meeting me may have caused Lucky to evolve.”

“Great job,” Glick said, his tone slathered with sarcasm.

“But you’ll put the men into the bars?” Kent confirmed.

Glick tossed a glance over his shoulder. “With the cameras rolling 24/7? How could I not?”

Okay, so maybe Bridget and her crew were going to be good for something.

* * *

Joshua stood there. Still in shock. He’d thought he’d seen the best days of his life already. Come on, catching Kent and Nicole in the parking lot that night? That shot right up into his Top 5. Then helping catch Wallflower with his pollen analysis. Again, Top 5 with a bullet.

But this? To have Harbinger openly credit him with helping to break the Buzz Kill case? That was just crazy good. Like he was going to have to steal the tape from the camera crews kind of good. And to think that vote of confidence from Kent might end up on television.

He was going to have to expand his top 5, it was getting a bit crowded in there.

“So, you’re the Joshua that Special Agent Harbinger was talking about?” a tall blonde, Bridget Fairweather, the host of Infinite Justice, asked him.

Holy crap. She was one of his heroes.

Joshua cleared his throat trying to get his “Unsolved Mysteries” voice down pat. “Why yes, Bridget, I am.”

Wow, did he just say that?

“You are also the morgue attendant who was arrested for stealing two uteri a few years back, aren’t you?”

Oh, Bridget loved to spring those “gotcha” questions. He should know he’d seen every episode of the show.

“Yes, I am,” Joshua answered proudly. He had nothing to hide. “I also helped break open that case. I led the team to the killer’s lair.”

“You did?” Bridget asked. “I didn’t see that in any of the papers.”

Joshua smiled. “You can’t trust everything you read, or see on television,” Joshua said, poking Bridget in the ribs. Well, actually she was too tall for that, so he ended poking his elbow into her hip. Oops. “Can you, Bridget?”

“You were also instrumental in tracking down Wallflower, weren’t you?” Bridget asked, tipping the microphone toward him.

“Yes, I realized the pollen samples that Dr. Rodden examined were quite different than he reported.”

“So it is safe to say that you are an integral part of Harbinger’s team.”

“Oh, I am more than that,” Joshua said. “I’m more like his partner.”

“Really?” Bridget said, her eyebrows going up. “I thought Detective Usher was his partner? There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around this matter.”

“Perhaps I mis-spoke,” Joshua said, backpedaling. “Nicole is Kent’s partner, partner. I’m more like his muse, ya, muse.”

“His muse?”

“Yah,” Joshua said finding his footing again. “I can’t tell you how many times Kent calls me in the middle of the night to go over the case. He’s got his own special ring tone, “Shine Bright Like Diamonds.”

He noticed the surprised and horrified look on Bridget’s face.

“TMI?” Joshua asked.

* * *

Ruben watched as Joshua flailed around. He really had gone off the rails with the whole “muse” thing. Although Ruben feared he hadn’t looked much better today.

Normally he was calm, cool and collected. He seldom spoke out of turn. He actually prided himself on that. The fact that he weighed his words before speaking them. But all of that went out of the window when he was around Kent.

He couldn’t help but poke the bear. It was crazy and even a little sad, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was like he had Kent-specific Tourette’s. There was something about this self-fashioned Rasputin that just got under Ruben’s skin.

It didn’t help that Harbinger had the Mayor and the Police Chief eating out of his palm. Ruben was the one that had a future with the department, yet the only thing the Chief knew about Ruben was who signed the bulk of the crime reports.

Not solving them of course, that would be Kent’s department.

Ruben had also noticed the little tête-à-tête that Kent had with the Captain. Apparently Kent had asked a favor and Glick had agreed. Crap, Ruben couldn’t even get a new stapler out of the captain, let alone an actual favor.

“Ruben?” a voice called behind him.

He turned to find Paggie coming up. “Honey, what are you doing here?”

“I was checking the meters on Robertson and decided to swing by and see if you heard anything else about that poor woman I found.”

With everything happening, Ruben hadn’t even called the morgue yet. He wasn’t about to admit that to his fiancée though. “Sorry, honey, no. They’re backed up at the morgue.”

“No, we aren’t,” Joshua said from Ruben’s left.

Ruben could feel his cheeks burning as he was caught in a lie. “Sorry, that’s what patrol told me.”

Joshua shook his head. “Those guys. Always laying the blame at the morgue. Dr. McGregor showed up on time and dug right in, so to speak. He was even early. And in such a good mood. I think he might have gotten some last night. Not confirmed of course, but just my observation.”

Ah, there was Joshua’s TMI again.

Paggie wrapped her arms around Ruben’s waist and laid her head on his side. Normally Ruben would have felt horribly uncomfortable with such a blatant show of PDA, but somehow Paggie made it feel so natural.

“Did you find anything on that poor prostitute that was found in the Chaser Alley?”

Joshua nodded like he was a bobblehead. “Sure enough. Overdose. And by overdose, I mean, overdose. The purity of the stuff she shot up was like Hong Kong grade. Uncut. Crazy, pure.”

“Do we know where she got it?” Ruben asked, draping his arm over Paggie’s shoulder.

“Nah,” Joshua said. “We haven’t seen anything that pure in a while. I’m guessing by her multiple needle tracts that she must have gotten this stuff as a present and thought she was just going to party hard. Instead of, you know, frothing at the mouth then dying.”

“Joshua,” Ruben reprimanded the morgue attendant.

“Oh, sorry,” Joshua said as he bounced on his tip toes. “Doc ruled it an accidental overdose. I sent the paperwork in earlier today so the case shouldn’t end up on your or any other detective’s desk.”

“Thank you,” Ruben said. He’d kind of meant it as a dismissal, but Joshua didn’t catch the clue.

“Did you guys see that briefing?” Joshua asked, pointing at the murder board. “It was like epic.”

“Yes, yes it was,” Ruben answered glancing over to Nicole and Kent conspiring in the corner. He remembered a time when he and Nicole would be the two plotting out their next move. Although he didn’t think they ever quite rose to the level of conspiring. And Nicole never quite leaned into him like she was Kent. It wasn’t affectionate cuddling that Paggie was doing.

There was something so very public about their relationship that still seemed to hold its fair share of secrets. Like they knew something the rest of them didn’t. Or could ever comprehend.

“Don’t forget to ask them,” Paggie said, patting his belly. How long had he been staring at the couple? “Meters are rolling over on Birch, so I’ve got to get going.”

Ruben gave her one last hug, “I will. Promise.”

Paggie got up on her tip toes and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Okay, so here’s to not finding any more bodies today. For both of us.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Ruben said.

“Hey, I do need some job security,” Joshua piped up.

Ruben looked to the murder board. “I seriously doubt if you have any worries there.”

* * *

Kent wanted out. He was none too thrilled with hanging around the police station. He far preferred working out in the field. And especially with Bridget sniffing around, interviewing anyone who was stupid enough to still be in the bullpen. It was only a matter of time before she made her way around to Kent and Nicole.

And he was not about to live through that experience again.

“Let’s head out,” Kent suggested.

“But I’ve still got the shooting team interview.”

“Too bad for you,” Kent said. “I’m out.”

Nicole didn’t even fuss. She knew there was no way in hell he was going to hang out here for another hour waiting for her. It wasn’t a question of how much he loved her, but of how much he loathed the station.

She entwined her fingers in his. Giving them a squeeze. “I’ll call you after I’m done.”

“Deal.”

CHAPTER 6

Nicole tried to keep from rolling her eyes at the interview panel. These shooting team interviews were tedious at best. And knowing that Kent was out hunting Buzz Kill and Lucky 37? That thought made the interview nearly unbearable.

“I’m sorry,” Nicole said, interrupting one of the droning voices, “But what exactly did you expect me to do in the face of nearly a dozen gang bangers, shooting at Harbinger?”

She shied away from using the profiler’s first name. Everyone in the room knew that they were engaged, but she didn’t need to rub it in their face.

“You mean while he was using one of them as a human shield?” the chubby man on the left asked.

Nicole didn’t back down. “You mean, the one that had nearly broken the profiler’s hyoid bone while choking him out? That fine, upstanding citizen?”

The chubby man who spoke, leaned back, his face turning bright red.

Perhaps she should have had her union rep here. The gangland incident clearly was a good shoot scenario. Why were they pressing so hard? Was this a vendetta against Kent? Or her?

The door opened and Glick stuck his head. “Just checking in.”

“I’m thinking we’re done here,” Nicole said rising. Perhaps on her own they might have argued with her concluding the interview, but with her Captain standing at the door, urging her out? The panel didn’t make a peep.

“Great,” Glick said. “We’ll have your verdict in twenty four hours?”

There was a slight fluttering around the table. No one wanted to admit to an exact timetable. Which again was weird. Usually the shooting team decided within hours if a shooting was legitimate. Why were they dragging their feet?

Glick ignored the lack of response. “I’ll be hearing from you tomorrow then.”

Nicole grinned as she stepped out into the hallway and Glick shut the door behind her.

“Thanks, Captain.”

Glick waved off her gratitude. “That was getting a little long in the tooth by any standards.”

“Has Kent checked in?”

Her Captain raised an eyebrow. “When does Harbinger ever check in?”

Good point.

Arriving at her desk, she instinctively unlocked her drawer and fished around for her gun. Of course it wasn’t there. She was still under review.

Feeling a bit naked without it, Nicole turned to the door. “I’ll call once I find him.”

“Try not to shoot up a warehouse, okay?” Glick asked.

She was going to remind him she didn’t have her gun, but then of course he knew about the piece at her ankle.

“I’ll try,” Nicole said.

“All I can ask,” Glick responded.

* * *

Kent stood over Jimmi and Joshua. They were both getting their geek on, which wasn’t helping at the moment.

He’d said they had broken the case wide open, now they actually had to break it wide open. And he couldn’t do it by himself, as much as he wished he could.

Unfortunately they needed to data mine. Turn this poor Tanya woman’s life upside down. Explore every nook and cranny to find the connection between her and the killer.

It was through her, the archetype that they would have the best chance at finding Buzz Kill.

“Sorry, dude,” Joshua said, “But this chick is possibly the most boring person in the world. No family. No husband. No kids. Boring clerical job. Her most evolved relationship seems to be with the DSW customer service staff.”

“So she was a shoe-aholic?”

“No,” Joshua said, shaking his head, making his pointy spiked hair, shake. “That would be way too exciting. She returned as many as she bought, hence her interaction with the website’s customer service staff.”

Kent was getting sick of all the excuses. This woman must have had a direct connection to Buzz Kill. She died of cancer though, so she didn’t seem to be the first victim, but the trigger that got Buzz Kill rolling.

“No will? Or life insurance claims?” Kent prompted.

It was Jimmi’s turn to shake his head. But with this shaved scalp there was no hair to shake. “Nope. With no clear heirs, her estate has been put into probate.”

“Estate?” Kent asked. “What estate?”

“She’s got a modest house, a compact car and some small bank accounts and IRAs.”

“No one had claimed them?”

“Nah, that’s why it’s probate. More than likely unless someone comes forward, it will all go to the state.”

Kent leaned back. That was a lonely life. Fighting cancer and not even having someone to leave your estate to? She knew she was dying. From the medical records she had been fighting the pancreas cancer for over a year. Why hadn’t she left a will? Even just to leave everything to charity? Or did she just love her state that much that she wanted everything she had worked for to go to the government?

No one loved their state that much.

Something was amiss.

“You said she had a house?” Kent asked.

“Yeah, it’s about twenty minutes from here.”

“And it was never searched or processed?”

Jimmi shook his head again. “There was no reason to. There wasn’t even an autopsy. She was under a doctor’s care, as a matter of fact when she died she was in a chemotherapy infusion unit when she passed. It was considered a natural death from the get go.

Of course it was. It was always 20/20 hindsight. No one could suspect this quiet woman’s death to trigger a rash of chainsaw murders.

“I’m heading over to her house,” Kent said.

Both Jimmi and Joshua seemed pretty stoked by that idea. He was probably bugging them more than he was encouraging them at this point.

“Call me if you get anything?”

“You know it!” Joshua nearly shouted. His unbridled enthusiasm nearly infectious. Nearly.

Kent left the CSU office and headed to the parking lot. There was Nicole’s Mustang. She didn’t need it today, did she?

He got in and fired up the engine. It nearly purred. Nicole kept the classic muscle car in fighting shape. Pulling out into traffic, Kent watched the city flow by. Buzz Kill was probably hunting. Lucky 37 was probably still sleeping off the night before’s bender. He wouldn’t be up until later, probably hunting once the sun went down.

Kent had to shed that idea. There were probably 2-3 other serial killers they hadn’t even identified yet hunting the city as well. Urban predators. Kent could only put one foot in front of the other.

This was the slow, boring part of the job. Actually going out and finding clues. This was more in Ruben’s wheelhouse, but without an accurate victim profile, Kent couldn’t stalk Buzz Kill and he’d have to wait until tonight to go after Lucky 37.

The drive across town wasn’t too bad. He wasn’t all that fond of driving, but he certainly couldn’t wait for Nicole. Plus he was getting tired of trying to field questions that he didn’t have the answers to.

Kent pulled up in front of Tanya’s house. It was as unassuming as the woman had been. It looked like it had been built in the fifties. All boxy and small. The power lines ran above ground, coming from a pole at the street. A low chain link fence surrounded the small front yard.

The lawn was short and burnt.

The scene was more than a little depressing. In a probate without a will like this, the house might sit in limbo for over a year. Then the state would try to sell it, but it might be another year before it actually got a new owner. Until then it would be a blight on the block.

Kent opened the gate which squeaked its complaint. He followed the concrete path to the porch. A rather small porch. Again fifties proportions. The door was a tacky hollow one. There wasn’t a doorbell. Which he didn’t need anyway.

He pulled out his lock pick kit from his jacket pocket. The door opened within seconds.

Who needed keys?

* * *

Ruben sat in front of the shooting committee. He didn’t have much to report. He’d pretty much showed up after all the action. It was unusual for him to be called in under these circumstances.

The panel was calling in everyone who had even stepped onto the crime scene. Something odd was going on. Ruben was sensitive to the political mechanisms of the department.

There was a witch-hunt going on. But who was their designated target?

“Do you think that Detective Usher’s relationship with Harbinger affected how she responded to the situation?”

Ah, that’s where they were going. Nicole had the hexen brand on her forehead. Ruben noticed that they weren’t going after Kent. Since he wasn’t with the department or even the FBI anymore, he was rogue in the worst sense of the word.

The profiler was nearly untouchable. So they went after the next best thing. His fiancée. How many times had he warned her that Kent was going to end her career and now it looked like they were only a few steps away from that happening?

This shooting panel could sink her. They could throw her to the dogs. Open her up to personal, civil suits against her. Forget her career. She could lose her house, her pension.

“Nicole would have reacted the same if I had been in the warehouse,” Ruben stated.

“But then again, you were her lover as well,” The guy with the slicked back hair and expensive suit said.

Ruben did not rise to the bait. He had nothing to hide. And neither did Nicole.

“You’re from the mayor’s office?” Ruben asked.

The man didn’t seem quite so cocky any more. Like a snake who had been noticed under a rock. “Yes. It is completely legitimate for a civilian to sit on this panel.”

Funny thing about people, they told you exactly who they were right away. Anyone who used the word legitimate to explain their presence was anything but legitimate.

“Yes, but normally it’s a neighborhood outreach representative.” Ruben looked around the room. “As a matter of fact, for such a racially charged incident as this I find a disturbing lack of Latinos on the panel.”

The men sitting behind the desk squirmed a little. Ruben also noted not a single female sat on the panel. Interesting.

“I believe this shooting panel, by mandate of the state must have at least one victim’s rights representative present.”

He knew that Kent disdained Ruben’s nearly encyclopedic bureaucratic knowledge, but sometimes it came in handy. Sometimes. Like now.

Ruben cocked his head to the side. “I would be very interested to know who authorized this political figure to fill in for a victim’s rep.”

More squirming. At least they were off the subject of his and Nicole’s romantic past.

“This panel is supposed to be apolitical,” Ruben explained. “I’m sure the Latino representatives would like to know why the mayor has more say here than their community?

The head of the panel. A retired police chief cleared his throat. “This is a closed inquiry.”

Ruben smiled. Again, regulations were his friend. “That is true but the make-up of the committee is not. I would be breaking no laws by discussing the members of the panel to say, MALI,”

Oh, that made them squirm. No one, but no one wanted the Mexican American Leadership Institute involved. Hell, Ruben was Latino and didn’t want them sniffing around the station.

The mention of them got the desired effect though.

“No, no,” the head of the panel murmured.

“Then I can assume this panel has finished its inquiry? That Nicole will be cleared?”

No one seemed happy around the table. There were a bunch of frowns and tight-lipped pouting. Served them right. And now the mayor had tipped his hand. He had been all BFF with Kent early, but clearly the man had a grudge against him.

No great surprise of course. Nearly everyone up and down the food chain had a grudge against Kent.

It made Ruben feel less guilty about his own.

Ruben pushed off the table and rose. “That will be all then.”

He didn’t wait for a response, Ruben simply headed for the door. Not unsurprisingly no one stopped him.

Outside the meeting room, the bullpen was its noisy, barely contained chaos. Especially when they were on a high profile serial killer case. He headed to Glick’s office which was open. The Captain liked to keep an eye on things.

“Any news?” Ruben asked.

“Nope. She must not have found him yet.”

Ruben looked to his watch. It was afternoon. His stomach rumbled a little. He’d skipped lunch to attend that sham of a shooting panel. They didn’t have long until tonight’s Lucky 37’s stake out.

“Unless you’ve got something else for me to do, I’m going to break for lunch.”

“More wedding stuff?” Glick asked.

Ruben tried not to bring his private life into the office, but Glick had been a damned good detective in his day. “Yeah. Who knew you had to coordinate the color of the mesh that wrapped those stupid wedding almonds with the napkins? Which needed to match the ribbons and the secondary flowers in the bride’s bouquet?”

“I’m assuming, Paggie?” Glick suggested.

Ruben sighed. He did want to make his bride happy, but even he had his limits. “We’re trying to set up a catering tasting.”

“At least your belly will be full,” Glick said. “If they have any tiger shrimp, bring me some back.”

“Will do,” Ruben said, slapping the door jam.

After all the drama around here, it might be nice to get out and about.

He’d just have to trust that Kent wasn’t getting Nicole in trouble.

* * *

There was something thrilling about breaking the law. For a good cause of course, Kent thought as he walked around Tanya’s house. It was about as bland as he imagined. A microfiber couch. The kind where you could spill spaghetti sauce on it and you’d be able to wipe it clean in a jiffy. It was the modern equivalent of those old plastic covers that housewives made their families endure.

There were only a few splashes of color. A bright orange Georgia O’Keefe poster. A red rooster over the stove. Otherwise the place was nearly institutionally dull.

On a small desk set off from the kitchen, in what should have been a breakfast nook, was a desk with a laptop.

Finally. Something that might actually help the investigation.

“What are you doing?” A young voice called from behind Kent. He swung around, wishing for once he had a weapon on him. He eyed the knife block until he realized that the intruder was just a young, rather scrawny teenager.

“I’m with the police department,” Kent stated.

The boy’s eyes narrowed, clearly more suspicious now than he was before. “Don’t you need a warrant or something to bust in here?”

Kent lifted an eyebrow. “Might I ask you the same question? At the least I’m on official business and you are?”

Realizing his mistake, the teen took a step back. “I’m a friend of Tanya’s.”

“A live-in friend? Aren’t you a bit young for that?”

“No,” the teen said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t like that. She took me in, gave me a place to stay.”

“Out of the goodness of her heart?” Kent questioned.

“Yes, if you must know. Tanya was the nicest person I’d ever met.”

The boy sounded sincere. Teens weren’t great liars. They just didn’t have the focus for it. Kent nodded to the kitchen table. “Then why don’t we sit down and you tell me about it? How about your name?”

The teen hovered at the other side of the table. “Nathan.”

“And how did you meet Tanya?”

Nathan shrugged. “At her weekly book club meeting.”

“She had a book club?”

The teen stared at Kent like he was possibly the stupidest person in the world. “You really don’t know a thing about her, do you?”

“Apparently not,” Kent admitted, “But you met at a bookstore?”

“Well, not exactly in the bookstore, more out back in the alley.”

“Where you were…?” Kent asked.

“What do you think?” Nathan shot back. “Selling drugs and…”

“Turning tricks?” Kent filled in the blanks. In Britain the teen would be called a rent boy.

Nathan nodded, apparently too ashamed to say the words himself. “At first she just brought me books and magazines. Which to be honest were more important than food or drugs.”

“But then?” Kent prompted.

“She asked if I wanted to live with her,” Nathan explained. “It was a little weird, ya know?”

Kent could get a sense of it. “Because she didn’t want anything from you?”

“Yah, she just wanted to make sure I was safe. So even though it was weird, I came here. It turned out good though. I was able to keep up the house when she was sick and help her when she was weak.”

“It sounds like you two really helped each other out,” Kent said, waving to the chair. “Sit.”

“Not until you tell me why you’re really here.”

Fair enough. “I’m investigating Tanya’s life and death. It may be connected to a serial killer.”

The teen snapped his finger several times, pointing at Kent the kid reminded him a lot of Joshua, only the teen’s behavior was age appropriate.

“I told them!” the boy announce. “I told them it wasn’t natural causes!”

“Whoa,” Kent said. The kid was way ahead of him. “What do you mean not natural causes? Tanya had stage five pancreatic cancer.”

“Yah, but it was the treatable kind. She was doing great. Then boom, she went down.”

“At the infusion center?” Kent said trying to catch up. This must be how Nicole felt all the time. Not a very pleasant sensation.

“Yeah. She was doing fine then she started complaining about the solution stinging. The nurses kept saying it was phlebitis, but Tanya had ten rounds of chemo and had her catheter replaced several times, she knew what phlebitis felt like and she said it was different. Not a burning, but a sharp sting.” Kent nodded for the youth to continue. “Then she started frothing and seizing and died in my arms.”

“There are a lot of reasons for someone on chemo to die. Embolisms, Rapid Tumor death toxicity, preexisting heart conditions.”

The teen shook his head violently. “No, I‘ve seen plenty of people die. Junkies on the street. Then the people that died at the infusion center. I know the difference. This looked more like an overdose death.”

“But no one believed you?”

Nathan snorted. “Yah, some fancy cancer doctor is really going to believe an ex-junkie like me. They kicked me out before I could even talk to the police.”

Sounded like an infusion center who didn’t want any controversy. And who usually listened to street kids? Not a whole lot of people. Kent was just a little proud, prouder than he was of his profiling work, that he was one of them.

“I’m listening now, tell me everything,” Kent urged.

The kid did. He walked through the timeline precisely, giving Kent a rich detail of what happened that day. It was clear that this kid had turned those events over and over again in his head. There was a clarity that most witnesses didn’t have.

“You realize to prove your concerns, we’re going to have to exhume Tanya’s body?”

The boy looked concerned for a moment, then nodded. “It’s worth it. I’m sure she’d understand.”

“Okay,” Kent said opening his phone.

A voice came over the line. “Captain, what do I owe the pleasure?”

“It’s Kent,” he informed Joshua.

If anything the morgue attendant got even more excited. “Yes, sir. I’m at your disposal.

Kent certainly hoped so. “Look, I need the body of the woman you guys discovered.”

“We’re going to need the signature of the nearest blood relative.”

“That’s just it,” Kent explained. “She doesn’t have any.”

“Well, then the order will need McGregor’s signature.”

“Ah, and that’s the other rub. Could you ask him for me?” Kent queried. McGregor and he didn’t exactly have the friendliest relationship.

“Dude, come on. Don’t make me the messenger,” Joshua whined. “Besides he’s going to want something in exchange.”

“Tell him I can get Cuban cigars. Real ones. Dipped in cognac.”

“All right. Give me a second,” Joshua said then Kent heard the click of the hold button followed by an instrumental Barry Manilow song. Coppa something. Kent checked his contact list. On another case, he’d met a cigar steward well versed in acquiring illegal cigars.

The phone line clicked back over. “He says only if they are Havana with the seal intact.”

“You tell McGregor we’ve got a deal. And once you get the body, please pay special attention to the last catheter site. I have a witness that swears there was something else in that chemo cocktail.

“You got it. I’ll ring you once we’ve got the body.”

The line went dead. Kent put the Captain’s phone back in his pocket.

“Do you really think they’ll find anything this long out?” Nathan asked.

“If anyone can, it’s my team,” Kent stated.

Nathan grabbed a picture of Tanya from the desk. “I want to do right by her.”

“You are,” Kent said.

Out of everything he’d learned this afternoon, the one thing that came through crystal clear was how much this adopted mother and son loved one another. “I can’t believe she didn’t leave a will or something for you.”

Nathan shuffled a napkin in front of him. “She did, but I can’t find it. I think it may be in her safety deposit box. She never expected to die suddenly. She kept telling me when the doctors told her it was time she’d show me everything. She thought it would be jinxing her recovery if we talked about end of life stuff.”

“She had a safety deposit box?” Kent asked.

Before Nathan could answer, the screen door opened and Nicole walked into the house. “Why am I not surprised?”

Kent shrugged.

“You said you’d meet me back at the station,” Nicole frowned.

“But this is so much more interesting,” Kent informed her. “This is Tanya’s unofficially adopted son, Nathan.”

Nicole recovered quickly and shook Nathan’s hand. “Very nice to meet you.”

“He thinks that Tanya was murdered at the chemotherapy infusion center,” Kent explained. “And he was just telling me about a secret safety deposit box. Nathan, do you know where the key is?”

“Sure, I’ll go get it.” Nathan said pushing back out of his chair and rushing off like only a child could do.

Nicole frowned as the child left. “What are you doing? The kid is living here illegally and has got to be under aged. We’ve got to contact social services.”

“Or,” Kent suggested. “We figure it out without them.”

“Kent, you can’t just keep picking up strays like this.”

He rose and put his arms around Nicole’s waist. “Why not? You did with me.”

Before she could answer, Kent kissed her, deeply. Nicole responded at first, then pulled back. Maybe his mojo was wearing off.

“Really? What’s your end game here?” she asked. “What’s your ideal resolution?

“I’m just trying to fulfill Tanya’s last wish. Are you really going to complain?”

Nicole sighed, pushing back from him as Nathan ran back into the room.

“Here ya go,” Nathan said, handing the key over to Kent.

Nicole rolled her eyes. “I suppose that you need me to get you a warrant to get into the box?”

Ah, that was his girl. He’d take her frustrated frowns, sighs and eye rolls as long as she helped him out in the end.

Off of his nod, Nicole sighed one last time. “All right, then we should head over to the bank then.”

“Aught, aught,” Kent said, wagging his finger at her. “You have another engagement, don’t you?”

Nicole cocked her head, clearly trying to think of where she was supposed to be.

“Remember? The stake out tonight?” Kent reminded her.

“That doesn’t start until eight. It is barely three o’clock now.”

Kent breathed in savoring the next few moments. “But you have to get ready.

Nicole’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’ve to get you looking like Lucky 37’s ideal woman. You need make-up, a dye job and a few tactically placed temporary tattoos.

“No,” Nicole said crossing her arms over her chest.

“Nic, Lucky saw you that night and again last night. There’s no way you can go in looking like this. And even if he hadn’t seen you, you aren’t his type at all. We’ve got to transform you into a skanky strung out biker chick.”

“Well, thank you at the least for thinking I needed a complete make-over,” Nicole stated.

“Run along now, I hired everyone and they should be at the house at any minute.”

Nicole frowned. She did that a lot around him. But that was the trade off right?

“You’ll call me if anything significant turns up?” Nicole asked.

“Of course,” Kent reassured her even though they both knew if something really significant turned up, he’d probably be too distracted to call her. But no point in bringing that up now.

“Fine,” Nicole said as she put her hand out. “But I get the car.”

“How are we going to get to the bank then?” Kent asked trying to look as innocent as he could while still holding onto the car keys.

“Ugh, fine. I’ll call a patrol car,” Nicole said heading to the door. “This had better be worth it.”

Once she was gone, Nathan turned to Kent. “You guys been married long?” the teen asked.

“No, we’re just engaged, not yet married.”

“Really?” Nathan said. “You could have fooled me.”

CHAPTER 7

Nicole got out of the patrol car.

“Thanks,” she said as she closed the door. She really hated hitching rides, especially since she had a completely kick ass Mustang herself. Maybe she should buy Kent a car despite his objections.

What would it matter? He’d just “borrow” her keys and leave her driving some stupid Nissan or Toyota. Now the only way she could drive a Mustang all the time would be to buy another just like hers and she just didn’t have the extra hundred grand to restore another Mustang to its original condition.

Especially not with the wedding coming up. At some point. They didn’t have a date yet, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t money to be spent.

She walked up to her door and found it ajar. Nicole smoothly pulled her weapon, nudging open the door with her foot.

“Hello?” she called out softly.

“In here!” a cheerful voice called from the kitchen.

Nicole crossed the house quickly, her gun still out but pointed down, her finger off the trigger.

Her kitchen was no longer her kitchen though. The table and counters were covered in makeup brushes and rouge. There was another cart stacked with tin foil squares and a container filled with some paste that reeked like bleach. Better than a dead pig she supposed.

“No,” Nicole said. The perky blond with the happy voice stepped behind Nicole, blocking her from leaving.

“He said, you’d put up a fuss,” the hairdresser said. Nicole only guessed that she was a hairdresser. The teased, mile high big hair kind of gave it away. “Now have a seat and let us do our work.”

“You aren’t making me a blonde,” Nicole said as she reluctantly sat down on a kitchen chair.

“Dirty blonde, yes,” the hairdresser said. “With nice long roots.”

Ugh, could this get any worse?

“He wanted such prominent roots that I made him sign a waiver you all weren’t going to sue me after,” the hairdresser said, chuckling to herself. Nicole feared the woman’s prominent breasts might burst out at any moment.

A smaller and less buxom blonde walked in from the porch, she had even more make-up bags.

“Really, I don’t need all that,” Nicole pleaded.

The make-up artist tilted her head. “Oh honey, yes, you do.”

Sighing, Nicole leaned back in the chair and awaited her doom. If she called Kent he would just insist so there was no point in calling him.

Besides, she did want to catch Lucky 37 and if that meant she had to turn into a bleach blonde skank, so be it.

* * *

Kent waited in a rather comfortable chair next to Nathan as the bank manager went to the fax to get the search warrant. Nicole had been a good girl and gotten it for them even though he’d taken the Mustang.

“Sorry for the delay,” the manager said as he walked back in with his cheap suit and flamboyant tie. “I’m so sorry to hear Miss Wyant passed on. We had no idea. I will need to see a copy of the death certificate.”

Kent looked to Nathan. He hadn’t thought about that. He might need to get Jimmi to do some of his magic.

But Nathan pulled out his beat up wallet and pulled out a delicately folded piece of paper. “Here, but I get it back, right?”

The manager gave a sympathetic smile. “Yes, I just need to get a copy of this.”

Kent looked to Nathan. He was trying to be brave but the corner of his lip, quivering gave him away. While this trip might be helping him out long term, clearly in the moment it was ripping open a scab.

The manager was quick about it and came back almost immediately. Kent felt that his presence and that of the search warrant had lit a fire under the man. He doubted if Nathan came in by himself he would be getting such service.

“This way,” The manager said, motioning through the glass door to the deposit box area.

Kent followed along with Nathan as they went through two locked doors until they were finally at the vault itself. The manager opened the door but did not enter.

“You have the key?” he asked Nathan. The teen pulled out the key from his pocket.

They entered together and used the two key system to open the box. The manager backed away. “Let me give you two your privacy.”

The manager left, partially closing the door behind them.

“All right, let’s see what’s in there.”

Nathan pulled out the long drawer and placed it on the table. He opened the metal lid.

There were several papers on top. Kent opened the first one. It was Tanya’s will and testament. He scanned it quickly. No surprises here.

“She left everything to you.”

“What does that mean?” Nathan asked.

“It means we’ll get you a lawyer to handle it, but you should be able to stay in the house.”

“But I’m a minor, aren’t they going to force me into a foster home.”

Kent patted Nathan on the back. “Normally, yes, but with my lawyer, not so much. He’ll get someone to act as an estate manager to deal with the money until you are of age and someone else to be your legal guardian.”

“I don’t know anyone though, who would do that for me?”

“Oh please,” Kent said, ruffling Nathan’s hair. “I’ve got enough kids under my protection they might as well call me Mother Goose.”

“Thanks,” Nathan said, although not all that enthusiastically.

Kent understood the reason why though. Nathan had probably been promised a lot of things by a lot of people. All of which had let him down until Tanya and now Kent. As a matter of fact, he had a nice trans girl that Nathan might want to meet. She could teach him the ropes on how to move on with your life.

“What’s that?” Nathan asked.

There was a card envelope with Nathan’s name on it.

“Looks like Tanya wrote you.”

Kent handed Nathan the card. He hesitated to accept it. “You don’t have to read it now,” Kent explained.

“No,” Nathan said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this. I want to read it. You go through the other stuff, please.”

Kent watched as Nathan opened the envelope. A beautiful flowery card emerged. Nathan opened it, and began to read it. Tears burst to his eyes as he swayed unsteadily. Kent helped him to sit down on the thinly carpeted floor. There Nathan bawled and bawled.

This was not the time to press the kid on what the note contained. Besides, Kent seriously doubted if anything probative was in a Thomas Kinkade notecard.

Instead, Kent went back to the deposit box.

There he found a life insurance policy, also with Nathan as the beneficiary. Looks like Kent was also going to have to find the teen a certified financial planner. That policy was going to make an excellent college fund. There were a few other legal papers. The deed to the house. The pink slip to the car. The usual stuff you’d find in a safety deposit box.

Once he had rummaged through all of the papers, he found a false bottom to the box.

Interesting.

What was Tanya hiding?

Kent wiggled the metal and it popped out. Inside lay a very long strand of pearls with a “B” dangling from the apex. Kent was no jewelry expert but this necklace was not just expensive, but priceless. A work of art really.

“What’s that?” Nathan asked.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Kent stated. “You don’t recognize it?”

Nathan shook his head. “No. I’ve never seen it before.”

Odd. Or at least one more odd thing about the case. Out of all the things he expected to find in Tanya’s security deposit box, a seemingly rare, antique necklace was not one of them.

Ah, just one of the perks of his job. Never a dull moment. Okay, there were lots of dull moments, not just today.

Kent looked down at his watch. “We’ll get you some dinner then I’ve got to head out.”

“But I can stay at home tonight?” Nathan asked.

“Yes,” Kent answered. “I’ll call the lawyer on our way over to your house. I can put it on speaker if you’d like to join in the conversation.”

“Yes, I’d like that very much,” Nathan said with a vigorous nod.

Kent was glad he could fulfill his promise. In his line of work that was sometimes sketchy.

Just ask Nicole. Speaking of Nicole he could hardly wait to see her anti-makeover.

* * *

Nicole could barely breath her new jeans were so tight. And low. Seriously you should not need a Brazilian wax just to wear a pair of pants. She also teetered on five inch stilettos. Because nothing went better with stone washed denim than stripper shoes. She was used to wearing heels, but come on.

And the top, if you could call it that. There wasn’t even enough fabric to cover her bra, but Nicole guessed that was the point. Her pink bra straps completely showed and even the lace of the cup stuck out from under the black, skin-tight top.

Normally Nicole wouldn’t be caught dead outside looking like this. She hadn’t even looked in the mirror at home for fear that she would burst out into tears, ruining the elaborate make-up.

So in she walked to the bar, not knowing exactly what she looked like. She hefted open the heavy bar door. The place smelled of buffalo wings and smoke. Even though the city banned indoor smoking, even in bars, that didn’t stop these bikers.

Maybe she’d turn them into the health department once she was done with the stake out.

Making sure she didn’t trip on the door jam, Nicole stepped into the bar. All heads turned in her direction. The woman mostly sneered, the men mostly leered.

Nicole responded to none of them.

Instead she headed straight for a stool at the middle of the bar. She perched there, waving down the bartender.

“Well, hello there,” he said, leaning in, not even hiding the fact that he was staring straight at her cleavage which Nicole had to admit was on ample display.

“Scotch. Neat,” Nicole replied, giving the bartender no room to think she was interested in him. It was bad enough she was going to have to flirt with a bunch of yokels tonight. The bartender was not one. He had already been cleared. He was not Buzz Kill.

Taking her drink, Nicole took a sip. The alcohol burned a path down her gullet. Who drank this stuff for pleasure, let alone knocked back a whole glass like the flabby guy at the end of the bar?

She was going to nurse this drink for the rest of the night. She had to be alert, at her best if Buzz Kill did indeed decide to take the bait tonight.

Her phone buzzed in her chest pocket, because Lord knew she couldn’t fit it in the back pocket that was practically glued to her ass. And apparently biker chicks didn’t carry purses, so her chest pocket it was.

She took out her phone and looked at the caller ID. Her captain. Answering it, full well knowing it wasn’t Glick, “Yes?”

“Enjoying yourself yet?” Kent asked.

“Ya, just a ball,” Nicole answered.

“You look hot though,” Kent said. “I think we may have a new role playing scenario.”

“Keep dreaming. I’m going to be a dark-rotted bleach blonde for about seventy two hours,” Nicole said into her small Bluetooth earpiece.

“Three days, there is a lot that we could accomplish in three days.”

“I thought we were trying to catch Buzz Kill.”

“Oh, we are,” Kent responded. “You’ve got one coming in from nine o’clock.”

Nicole turned her head to find the chubby guy from the end of the bar walking toward her. He definitely wasn’t Buzz Kill.

Before he could even sit down, Nicole said. “Never going to happen.”

The man frowned, as if it took him a few seconds to process what she said, then without a word turned around and walked back to his stool and ordered another drink.

* * *

Kent watched as the poor man that Nicole had unceremoniously rejected tilted his glass back and drank the whole thing in one gulp. He felt slightly sorry for the guy, but come on. What was he thinking? Nicole, even roughed up the way she was, was way out of his league.

Sure she had a blonde that only came out of a bottle with roots over an inch long and make up that added a decade to her smooth features. So that was what she was going to look like in her forties. Not bad. Kent had gotten lucky. Nicole was going to be a looker into old age. Even the temporary wire tattoos on her arms and tramp stamp on her lower back that peeked out each time she leaned forward, separating her leather vest and super low riding pants, did nothing to distract from her beauty.

He’d meant it. This was a good look on her. And the rest of the bar seemed to think so. All of the single guys were checking her out and quite a few guys who’d come in with someone else were looking to upgrade.

They all were taking a minute though after watching her toss aside the chubby guy. Normally on a stake out like this you wanted the bait to be inviting, but in this instance, Lucky 37 wasn’t at all intimidated by a strong woman. If anything he was attracted to them. Nicole so fit the bill.

Kent breathed in through his nose, forcing himself to calm down, but each time he thought about taking down Lucky 37 tonight, his heart rate went up. He wanted this guy, for so many reasons.

Not the least of which was to ask Lucky, why help me? Kent always preached how serial killers were so much more complicated than people gave them credit for, and Lucky 37 was the perfect example. Something about their near meeting had sparked something in the man. Kent wanted to know exactly what it was.

Plus if Lucky 37 had picked up two separate serial killers in the space of a few weeks, how many other active serial killers had the man identified in the dozens of towns he had stalked?

Lucky 37 could be a treasure trove of information if they could capture him alive.

But once again, Kent was getting ahead of himself. First they had to lure him.

And that was Nicole’s job. She took another sip of her drink, spinning a little in her chair, bouncing her toe to the Lynyrd Skynyrd song blasting from the jukebox.

She was playing her part perfectly.

But would Buzz Kill bite?

* * *

Nicole could feel her eyes glaze over as her latest suitor waxed poetic about his Harley. You could only hear so much about chrome foot plates before you just wanted to scream.

“Not him,” Kent said in her ear.

“Ya, sorry, but not feeling it,” she told her would-be suitor and turned away to finalize the conversation.

She had a small camera in her American flag pin on her lapel. Jimmi was on the other side, doing facial recognition and background checks on anyone who came up to her. They had the sketches from Kent and Nicole’s first brush with Buzz Kill to compare to.

So far three strike outs. This was going to be a long night.

And what if the note on the bill last night didn’t mean that Buzz Kill was on the prowl tonight?

The only way they were going to know was to play out the night. It was getting late though. Pretty much all the rest of the patrons of the bar were falling down drunk or leaving.

The bar closed in ninety minutes. Not much time to hope Lucky 37 would show up.

Another man approached. It really was hard to tell the difference. They all had greying, scraggly hair, pulled back into a ponytail tied off by a leather band. They all had on denim shirts, covered by a leather vest and then way too tight leather pants. The only difference was how far over their bellies hung.

This one was pretty fit though and had added black leather fringe to his vest. A little bit of a showman. She didn’t turn away when he sat down.

He certainly had swagger. He didn’t seem to be intimidated at all by her or her off-handed rejection of nearly half a dozen other guys.

This was the best fit to Lucky 37’s profile so far.

She sat up a bit straighter.

“Don’t look too interested,” Kent said in her ear. “Draw him out.”

Nicole slouched back down a bit, using a straw to swirl her Scotch. She tapped it a few times on the side of the glass, then brought it to her lips and sucked on it.

That got the new guy to lean in. “I’m Damien. You must be new to town.”

Nicole shrugged, signaling to the bartender to refill her glass.

“Let me get that for you, darlin’” the man said, beer on his breath. He threw a ten on the bar. Big spender. “Keep the change,” he told the bartender.

Nicole let him think he’d impressed her. Because you know a four-dollar tip really turned her crank. Not.

“I’m Nicole, and you’re from around here?”

“Born and raised,” the man said. “If you want I can show you the sights.”

However with that lecherous grin, the only sights Nicole was certain this guy wanted her to see were the inside of his bedroom and his pants.

“I’ve got a Harley out there with two helmets.”

“Oh, not so easily, my man,” Kent said in her ear.

No kidding.

“A little fast for me,” Nicole said. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“What do you want to know?” the man asked, leaning over, practically drooling on her vest. His hand reached out and laid on her leg.

Nicole guessed since she didn’t reject him out of hand he felt like he would eventually make the score. Which meant in the past he had.

Did this really work on other women? Did they have such low self-esteem that they went with any guy that showed them the least bit of attention?

Guys would screw anything. Seriously. Anything. She saw some of the women that had walked out of here with guys on their arm. Not attractive was the nicest adjective she could come up with. Downright hideous was more the reality. Come on, if you get your front teeth knocked out in a bar fight, get a bridge, girlfriend.

Nicole wasn’t being arrogant in the least to know that she was the best thing in this bar. And this guy thought she’d just walk out with him after a lame invitation like that?

“Sorry, we can’t seem to find this guy,” Jimmi said in her ear.

Kent must have been monitoring the same channel. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s not in any database. No state driver’s license picture. Nothing in the military banks. Nothing. He’s a ghost.”

Nicole tried not to let any emotion cross her face. That sounded like the description of Lucky 37.

“Try every state,” Kent said.

“But he said he was from here,” Jimmi retorted.

“The guy is trying to get laid, he’ll say anything. Check across the fifty states plus Puerto Rico and Guam.”

“On it,” Jimmi said.

“Nic, play it forward, but I think Lucky 37 would have a slightly more sophisticated approach.”

Was he just saying that to calm her down or did the profiler really believe that?

Either way, she needed to play along.

Nicole wasn’t great at small talk under the best of circumstances and this? This bar, meat market small talk, she was horrible at.

“Ask him how big it is,” Kent suggested in her ear.

She was so used to this out-of-body instructions, she simply repeated the words. It wasn’t until the man’s eyes dilated and his cheeks flushed that she understood the double meaning.

“Your engine, how big?” Kent asked in her ear.

Damn, why was Kent a better flirt than she was?

She purred the question.

“Pretty damn big,” the man responded.

“Your Harley engine,” Kent and then Nicole clarified.

“Oh, that,” the man said sounding just a little disappointed. “Over 100 cubic inches. The largest allowed by law.”

Of course it was. Compensating much?

“What kind of rides do you like to go on?” Kent asked in her ear.

The profiler was brilliant with double entendres. Why couldn’t she think up stuff like this? She was a heterosexual chick after all. Nicole passed on the words though since they were way better than anything she was coming up with.

“Oh, I like a lot of different rides, but my favorite is a Hog rally.”

“Not a wing ding?” Kent asked in her ear.

When Nicole repeated it, the man spit on the floor. “Hell, no. I ain’t no Goldwing rider. Fucking pussies.”

The man pushed away from her, taking his hand off her thigh. She was losing him. Nicole didn’t even wait for Kent’s instructions.

“Sorry, just needed to be sure I was talking to a guy who could fulfill all his promises.”

That got him back into the seat. Although he didn’t put his hand back on her thigh. At least not yet.

“So tell me about your bike,” Nicole suggested knowing that these guys couldn’t resist.

But the guy didn’t. Instead he put his hand back on her leg. “How about I show you? Actions speak louder than words, right, Nicole?”

“Go with him,” Kent said in her ear. “I’ll be a few steps behind you.”

Nicole squeezed Damien’s hand. “Let’s go see that big engine of yours.”

“Okay,” Kent said. “You might want to leave the ad libbing to the experts.”

Darn and she’d thought that was a good one too.

She allowed Damien to lead her out the back exit of the bar.

“I think you’re going to like us,” the man stated as he swung open the large metal door.

“Us?” Nicole asked not sure if she’d heard him correctly.

“Ya, me and my buddies.”

Crap, this wasn’t Lucky 37. It was just some date rape perv. Another figure emerged from the shadows as Nicole’s vision blurred. She wasn’t drunk. She’d barely had a glass and a half. No, she’d been dosed with something?

GHB? Did it matter? She needed to get out of the situation before she lost any more of her faculties.

Before she could get ganged up on two to one, she threw an elbow up into her “date’s” solar plexus then planted a stiletto heel into his foot. He groaned, falling back and away from her.

She was off her game, so the second guy was able to land a backhanded blow to her face. Blood gushed from her nose. She didn’t have time to check as the second man charged her.

Nicole flattened her palm and hit the guy’s chin, snapping his head back. She followed with a kick to the groin. The guy crumpled to the ground.

Unfortunately her head was spinning as well and she was having a hard time staying upright. Her “date” had recovered and grabbed her from behind. Nicole didn’t even bother to struggle. The fact that many wanted to ignore was that men were in fact, stronger than women. Pound for pound men had more muscle fibers than women.

Kent had taught her that. And don’t try to compete with them in a power struggle. It would be futile and waste her energy, which she had very little of at the moment.

Women however had other weapons. Like stiletto heels and nearly inch long acrylic nails. Nicole reached behind her, found the guy’s face then dug her nails in, ripping down his cheek.

Hot blood flooded under her nails as the guy screamed, releasing her. Nicole stumbled forward, barely able to keep her feet when the third member of this little party showed up.

The chubby guy from the end of the bar. Guess if he couldn’t get her on his own he’d enlisted his Hog friends. He put his head down, charging toward her.

In her current condition, there was no way she could avoid his assault. Nicole braced for the worst but it never came.

Instead, Kent dove from the side, tackling the chubby man, knocking him to the ground. Kent then scrambled up, kicking the guy in the gut, over and over again. Kent didn’t care how “fair” it seemed. His philosophy was to get his man down, then keep him there, no matter how you did it.

Once the chubby guy stopped crying, Kent rushed to her side.

“Are you okay?”

Nicole struggled to talk, “Sort of,”

Kent’s hand coursed over her. “Did they have a knife or gun? Did you hit your head?”

Nicole shook her head, sending her world spinning. She licked her lips. “I’ve been drugged.”

“Drugged?” Kent said cradling her for a second, then he kissed her on the head and rose. “Then the bartender was in on it.”

Before he could do anything else, Kent was punched in the jaw. Only it wasn’t one of the rapists. It was Ruben.

* * *

Kent’s head snapped to the side. Ruben had been a collegiate boxer after all. He had one hell of a right hook.

“What the hell?”

“You prick,” Ruben hissed. “You freaking prick.”

“What?” Kent yelled back, his fists up in case Ruben decided to take another swing.

“Look at her!” Ruben shouted. “You never give a crap how much danger you put her in.”

“She’s got a bloody nose,” Kent protested. Ruben was always prone to overreaction, especially when it came to Nicole.

“Then why is she down?” Ruben protested, glancing over his shoulder at Nicole.

“She’d just been drugged,” Kent explained.

“Just?” Ruben hissed, his fist raised again.

“Hey, shouldn’t we be calling a bus instead of duking it out?” Kent suggested. He was no match for Ruben in a fair fight. Luckily he never fought fair but then there would be that whole uproar if he knocked Ruben out with that length of tail pipe at their feet.

“I already called one, you ass,” Ruben snarled.

“Stop it,” Nicole whispered barely loud enough for them to hear. Kent took the opportunity to grab that chrome tail pipe.

Ruben looked to Kent then to Nicole. It was one thing to rush a guy in a moment of rage, but to continue into what was now shaping up to be a nasty fight? Especially with sirens on the horizon and Jimmi and the rest of the tech crew flooding into the alleyway?

Ruben lowered his fists but Kent kept the tail pipe, just in case. You never knew with these Dudley Do-rights.

CHAPTER 8

Ruben knelt beside Nicole, still shaking with rage. Kent’s indifference to Nicole’s safety had finally hit a blowing point. Like a volcano, all that rage had come out and into his fists.

He wasn’t proud of it, but the feeling of his fist connecting with Kent’s jaw did give him some level of fulfillment. For one moment in time, Kent wasn’t in control of Ruben’s life.

To see Kent’s head whip around and him stumble backward was perhaps Ruben’s most satisfying moment in his career. He didn’t care how lame that sounded.

His knuckles hurt of course, but he wasn’t about to let that show.

“Nicole,” Ruben whispered, gathering her up in his arms. “Nicole.”

Her head lolled to the side. A bit of drool at the corner of her lips.

“I’m okay,” Nicole croaked, then proceeded to cough and sputter.

She was a long way from okay.

“The ambulance is almost here,” Ruben murmured. The sirens sounded closer.

“Just get me to the hospital and have them flush this crap out of my veins.”

“I will, I promise,” Ruben said, meaning every word of it.

“Listen,” Kent said. Cocking his head. “Jesus, is that a chainsaw?”

At first the idea seemed incredulous, but then as Ruben listened, blocking out the sirens, the noise sounded more and more like a freaking chainsaw.

The rest of the techies started nodding their head.

Kent broke through the circle of CSIs, running.

Damn it.

“Nicole, I’ve got to go,” Ruben said, indicating for Jimmi to come hold her up so she didn’t drown on her own saliva.

“Go,” she moaned. “Go.”

After the transfer, Ruben ran after Kent who was shockingly fast. For a guy that had never seen the inside of a gym, the guy was a powerful sprinter. Maybe what he always said was true.

Kent swore that he got his work out on the job.

Ruben tried to narrow the gap as the sound of the chainsaw was suddenly accompanied by screams. Kent somehow kicked it into another gear, pulling ahead. The profiler turned a corner, disappearing behind a wall. The chainsaw sound cut off abruptly, however the screams did not.

Could they really have interrupted Buzz Kill? Was the serial killer really this close?

He took the corner at full speed, but then stumbled. Kent jumped over the severely injured woman, chasing a figure deeper in the shadows.

“Take care of her!” Kent yelled, not even looking back.

Of course Kent would chase Buzz Kill while leaving Ruben to attend to the injured. Pretty par for the course. Ruben could also expect to write up all the paperwork.

All of those thoughts faded though as he approached the woman. Arterial blood sprayed from…well, everywhere. Ruben ripped his jacket off and laid it over her and just put pressure down anywhere he could. He’d hit a wound, no doubt.

The woman’s cheek was ripped. He could see her bloody teeth. There was another long cut down her side, nearly amputating her left arm. Another wound ran across her belly, flailing open the muscles.

There was no way his jacket was going to save the woman who alternated between screaming and moaning.

Sirens rang out. Ruben had to make a decision. Rather than sit here as she died, Ruben rose and ran out to the road, flagging down the ambulance. It was meant for Nicole, but he thought that his partner would forgive him.

“Hurry!” Ruben shouted at the EMTs, guiding them down the alley.

“Oh my god,” one of them exclaimed, stumbling to a stop. Yep, the scene even freaked out the EMTs.

“She’d lost a lot of blood.”

“No, crap,” the other EMT hissed, but got down to work.

Ruben paced behind them. He of course wanted the woman to live, but even more so wanted the witness to live. To have an eye witness account of what had happened? It could be invaluable to catching Buzz Kill.

That was if Kent didn’t catch him tonight.

* * *

Kent was puffing pretty badly. He was really a sprinter, not a marathoner. That was Nicole. If only she weren’t drugged and nursing a concussion, she would really come in handy here.

The figure was stretching out his lead. The guy was fast. Damn.

And after running through a maze of alleys and yards, Kent had to admit that he had lost him. No dogs barked, giving him any indication of which way the murderer had gone.

He stopped, trying to slow his breathing, trying to hear over his own bounding heartbeat. Mind over matter, damn it. There were three ways Buzz Kill could have gone. Kent leaned over, trying to look down each one, trying to figure out which way the guy had gone.

There was no way he was going to give up. He trusted that Ruben had called in the cavalry. There would be cops swarming the area in a matter of moments. If Kent could just keep Buzz Kill within his sights that long, they could nab him.

Out of the shadows a chainsaw came down, not buzzing, but the base of it hit Kent’s temple. The world tilted then listed, then turned upside down completely. Kent felt his chin hit the pavement. It was not the most pleasant sensation in the world.

Then the chainsaw’s starter line was ripped open, revving up the chainsaw. Kent feared he was about to see the inside of his spleen. But as the blade arced downward, a shot rang out.

“Police!” Ruben shouted. “Drop it!”

But Buzz Kill didn’t. Instead he turned off the saw and ran for it. Ruben fired, but couldn’t hit the fleeing suspect who was covered in blood and was wearing a pair of Adidas. It was the only thing that Kent could clearly make out from this prone position on the pavement.

Then Buzz Kill did the weirdest thing Kent had ever seen. He jumped onto a green Vespa and streaked away. A serial killer with a scooter as a getaway vehicle?

“Kent,” Ruben said skidding to a stop, dropping to his knees. “You okay?”

The world finally stopped spinning, just wobbling a bit on its axis. Kent rose up on his elbows. “Yah, I think so. Just a mild concussion.”

All the compassion bled out of Ruben. “Serves you right,” the detective said, rising up. “I’ve got to put out an APB for that scooter.”

“You do that,” Kent said, having to get to his feet on his own. He had to grab a hold of a chain link fence to accomplish the task. A little Maltese ran out of the house, yapping incessantly.

“Where were you a minute ago?” Kent asked the fluffy white canine. Probably hiding in the house until the real danger was over.

Sirens blared as the ambulance took off. Kent used the sound to find his way back to the alley since Ruben had split. Did the ambulance take Nicole too?

He stumbled into the street glad it was late without a lot of traffic. As he was passing the Mustang he realized there was a white piece of paper under the windshield. Crap. If he’d gotten a ticket, Nicole would kick his ass. Get her drugged and banged up and she was fine. Get a ticket on her precious Mustang? That would get him booted out of bed for weeks.

He staggered over to the car. Maybe he could get Paggie to fix the ticket. He’d owe Ruben a favor of course, but it would be worth it compared the tongue lashing he’d get from Nicole. He’d rather take a chainsaw to the temple any day.

But the nearer he got, the more he realized that it wasn’t a ticket on the car. Instead of being relieved, Kent could feel his muscles tensing.

It was a plain piece of paper folded in half.

Tentatively, Kent reach out and pulled the paper out and opened it. There were only a few words scrawled in black ink.

“It was never about me.”

Every ache and pain vanished. It was like icy, mountain stream water coursed through his veins. You might as well hook Kent up to a car battery and zap him, that’s the jolt that passed through his body as he read the note.

This complicated things immensely but also simplified them. The multiple layers to the note smacked Kent upside the head, harder than the chainsaw had.

Lucky 37 knew who Buzz Kill was. Not just knew who Buzz Kill was but lured Kent and Nicole to this bar with his previous note.

This bar was the highest probability for Lucky 37. It had the oldest female population and was the one where most of the lone wolf riders hung out. Lucky had forced them to do the stake out here, knowing that Buzz Kill would strike nearby.

Damn, Lucky 37 was good. Like Kent good. Bastard.

Lucky could of course be a little less obtuse, but what would the fun in that be? Clearly this new game with Kent was more engaging than killing his surrogate women. Would Lucky even kill two more women before the week’s end?

Kent stared at the paper. He could take it as a mocking. As a challenge. As if Lucky was taunting him, but he didn’t. If anything this gave Kent hope like he didn’t have before. If Lucky could find Buzz Kill, so could he.

Then he’d find Lucky and see how cocky the serial killer was then.

“Kent!” a voice called out. It sounded like Jimmi.

Tucking the piece of paper into his pocket, Kent made his way to the alley behind the bar. Nicole was surrounded by EMTs as they got her up onto a gurney.

“No, I’m good,” she said as she tried to push an EMT away, but missing by three feet.

“She’s really putting up a fuss,” Jimmi said.

“Nic, honey,” Kent said. “Come on, let them do their jobs.”

Nicole stopped fighting for moment, “Kent?”

Clearly she was more messed up than she wanted to admit if she couldn’t tell it was him. He pushed his way through the EMTs.

“Yah, besides we need to get that crap pumped out of your system.”

“Are you coming with me?” Nicole asked.

“Sorry, he’s got to follow behind,” an EMT replied.

Kent pointed to the bleeding wound on the side of his temple. “Oh, I get to go in the ambulance.

“What happened?” Nicole asked, squinting, trying to inspect the wound.

“Oh, you know, I got hit by a chainsaw,” Kent explained. When Nicole inhaled sharply he added. “The butt end. No need to panic.”

Settled down, Nicole allowed the EMTs to roll her into the ambulance. Kent sat down on the jump seat as the EMTs shut the doors. Soon they were on their way.

“Any news on the latest victim?” Kent asked.

The EMT shook his head. “Just that she’s still alive.”

Well, that was something.

* * *

Nicole watched as the nurses and doctors worked on the Buzz Kill’s latest victim in the next bed. They didn’t even know her name yet, just that she was precariously close to dying. The ER staff was so busy trying to save the woman that they hadn’t even had time to pull the curtain around her.

All Nicole could see was blood and a near forest of IV stands, each with their own bag attached. They were running blood into the woman like crack into an addict. There were other bags, all brightly identified by their fluorescent orange stickers.

The monitors hooked up to the woman were fluttering erratically. There wasn’t a moment when one alarm or another was going off. Doctors were shouting orders and nurses were running around trying to fulfill them all.

From what Nicole could overhear, the surgery rooms were all taken since there had been an accident on the freeway. The doctors were trying to clamp off the major bleeders right here in the ER.

Kent sat at the end of Nicole’s bed watching the medical drama unfold. They sat silently as the fluids next to Nicole ran into her veins. They felt cool and Nicole could swear that she tasted something a little salty.

The profiler covered her with another blanket. GHB in high doses lowered your body temperature and hers was down to ninety six. The fluids though should flush the GHB out of her system. Even though GHB’s effects only last four to six hours, the longer the chemical was in her body, the more memory she could lose.

And she wanted to testify at those bastard’s trials.

“Where is she?” a woman screamed as she burst into the ER. “Where is my daughter?”

The hysterical woman was dressed in what looked to be an old fashioned housecoat with worn leopard print flip flop slippers.

“Where?” she screamed again.

And orderly caught her as she tried to approach the victim’s bed. “You can’t be here.”

“Oh my god, oh my god,” the woman sobbed as she realized the blood covered girl was her own. Kent went over and relieved the orderly of the hysterical mother. “No, no, no, no, this can’t be happening, it can’t be,” she sobbed in Kent’s arms as the profiler awkwardly held her. Kent didn’t exactly have the best bedside manner.

He guided her over to a chair near Nicole. The orderly pulled the curtain so they could no longer see the resuscitation next door. The only way Nicole knew the girl was still alive was by the erratic beeping of the monitors.

“I’m an FBI profiler and this is Detective Usher. We’ve got a few questions to ask you about your daughter.”

“No, no, no, no” the woman wailed. “No!”

“Okay, let’s get that breathing under control,” Kent said, bending the woman over. “You’re going to faint if you don’t start breathing normally.”

Tears streaming down her face, causing a puddle at her feet, the woman gulped air like a flounder flapping around a boat deck.

“Slow and steady,” Kent insisted, rubbing the poor woman’s back. “Come on, you can do it.”

“My daughter,” the woman blurted, trying to sit back up again.

“They are doing everything they can,” Kent insisted. “The best way for you to help your daughter is to talk to me so we can catch who did this.”

The woman seemed to gain a modicum of control. She breathed more steadily and the waterworks had stopped.

“I’m better,” she said sitting up. “But I don’t know what I can tell you.”

“You’d be surprised,” Kent said, sitting in the chair next to the woman.

“First off, what’s your name?”

The woman sniffled. “Adelene Placket.”

“Great, Adelene,” Kent answered back. “And your daughter’s name?”

That made her tear up again and Adelene just shook her head back and forth so quickly that Nicole feared she’d give herself whiplash.

“Okay, okay,” Kent said. “Does your daughter have any allergies to medication?”

Again, the woman just kept shaking her head. Nicole wasn’t sure if that was an answer to Kent’s question or just a reflexive dismissal of everything that was happening.

“Okay, Adelene, I need you to focus,” Kent said. “This is really, really important.”

The woman’s eyes seemed to clear and her compulsive head shaking stopped.

* * *

Kent looked deeply into the woman’s eyes. They were bloodshot and puffy. She wasn’t wearing any makeup but Kent guessed that she usually did since her eye brows were plucked to within an inch of their life.

“Adelene,” Kent urged. “Stay with me.”

The woman nodded, hiccupping several times before settling back down. “Yes?”

“What was your daughter doing in an Alley off of Freeland Street?”

“I don’t know,” the woman sobbed. “I don’t know.”

“Think,” Kent said, squeezing the woman’s upper arms. Which weren’t nearly as flabby as he would suspect of someone wearing an old, ratty housecoat.

“Lacey normally takes the bus straight home,” the woman wailed, clutching her arms around her knees. He guessed that was better than the hysterical gulping of air.

He shook her a bit to get her to refocus on him. “When was the last time you spoke with your daughter?”

The woman took a few mouth breaths then spoke. “Lacey, texted me before dinner asking what we were having. I told her stuffed green peppers with cucumber salad.”

Adelene began sobbing the word “no,” over and over again. He couldn’t lose her now.

“Adelene, what happened then?”

“She’d really wanted pot roast so she said she’d just eat on campus but she’d be home by eleven.”

Kent ran the information through his head. Campus. Bus route. Passed by alley. “That would be the 58 line, wouldn’t it?”

The woman nodded her head before launching into another sobbing fit. “If I’d just made pot roast, she would have come straight home. If only I’d made pot roast.”

Kent knew that each person grieved in their own way and processed trauma in their own unique process, but sometimes it just came out plain weird.

“So why would she have stopped off by the Freeland alley?” Kent asked.

“There’s a small bodega at the corner. We usually buy our meat there,” Adelene stated before the histrionics started again. “Oh god, oh god, she probably went to buy roast. This is all my fault. All of it.”

It always surprised him how quickly people jumped right from denial into the guilt level of grief. It seemed easier to take responsibility for a horrible tragedy than it was to have it be cruelly random.

“Did you or your daughter feel like you were being watched or followed in the last few weeks?”

The woman clutched her purse to her chest. “No, no, or I never would have let Lacey out of the house.”

Sobbing again, Kent backed away from the woman. Maybe it was time to let her cry it out. He spotted Jimmi standing off to the corner, apparently trying not to get any blood on himself.

“Anything on the surveillance cameras?”

Since they knew they were stalking Lucky 37, they had proactively reached out to all the ATM’s and store security cameras. They had hoped to catch Lucky 37 either coming into the bar or leaving it. Even finding out his license plate would have been helpful, but now they needed it for an even more urgent reason.

To catch the killer that had done all of that to the girl in the next bed. The thought that he too could have been in that condition passed through his mind. He let it exit as quickly as it had entered. He couldn’t linger on his mortality. Ruben had been there. He hadn’t been hacked up. End of story.

Just like racecar drivers and shark divers, Kent couldn’t linger on the idea of his near miss with death. Not if he wanted to go after not one but two serial killers.

“Sorry, no,” Jimmi said. “I mean we’ve got the girl getting off the bus, going into the bodega, coming out with a package and heading into the alley, but there’s no coverage inside of there.”

Kent watched the image stream by. The girl was only in the alley for a few moments before Kent, then Ruben came into view of the camera. The detective really should work on his cardio.

Then Ruben reemerged from the alley, covered in blood, flagging down the ambulance.

“Nothing of the neighborhood where I chased the perp?”

Jimmi again, shook his head. “That’s a residential grid. No cameras in the interior for the neighborhood.”

“Great, thanks. You’ve been so helpful,” Kent commented.

“Wait a minute, maybe you aren’t asking me the right questions,” Jimmi said. “How about the Vespa?”

Oh yah, the scooter. “And?”

Jimmi switched feeds and brought up the Vespa speeding down the street. “I picked it up a few blocks away, heading north.”

“Do we see where he stopped?”

“Sorry, man, I didn’t say that I was a miracle worker,” Jimmi unnecessarily explained. “He turned down a country road and we lost him.”

Of course they did. This was Buzz Kill.

Kent was going to ask about the parking lot footage from the bar to see if they captured Lucky 37 when all of the beeping stopped from the next bed and the sound became one continuous drone.

Lacey had flat-lined.

Kent caught her mother as she wailed incoherently, throwing herself toward the curtain.

There he stood, holding her as they heard the shout “Clear” then the loud clunk of the defibrillator.

Then the sound of the flat line again.

CHAPTER 9

Nicole’s hand flew to her mouth as the sound of the flat line filled the room. The only other sound that could be heard above it was Lacey’s mother’s wailing. The two seemed to form a harmony together describing infinite anguish.

Then the clunks. Finally they seemed to have jump started Lacey’s heart and it beat in erratic fits, but at least it was beating again. The curtain burst open as the girl’s gurney was pushed through along with a bank of monitors and more IV stands than you could count.

A nurse was on top of the gurney giving Lacey CPR as they raced to the OR. Lacey’s head was turned to the side. Her eyes wide open, yet not seeing. Her teeth showing through her chewed up cheek. The facial tissue looked like hamburger.

One doctor was still on the phone, “Well, then I suggest you get that appendectomy out of there because they are on their way!”

Adeline sank to the floor, sobbing, “I did this. I did it. I should have made the pot roast.”

Then the woman became completely incoherent, only sobbing and making loud moaning sounds. Kent was clearly uncomfortable and Nicole was pretty much getting there too. Bare, naked, raw grief felt like it hurt her too.

Luckily a nurse came over and helped Adeline up. “I’ll get the doctor to give her something.”

Nicole nodded. That level of grief needed to be medicated.

Jimmi was off in a corner, rocking from foot to foot. He clearly liked his laboratory better than out here in the field where things got real. Too real.

“I think…” Jimmi said. “I think I’ll head back.”

“You do that,” Kent stated.

Even though Nicole was pretty sure Kent was implying that Jimmi was being a wimp, the tech nearly ran out the sliding ER doors.

With the critical emergency racing to the surgery suite, the ER descended into an unsettled quiet. The nurses began cleaning up the god awful bloody mess as an orderly started getting patients from the waiting room into beds now that there were some doctors available.

“Let’s get you back into bed,” Kent said urging her back.

Nicole didn’t fight it. Even though the GHB was being pushed from her system, she still had a raging headache. Like she’d drank a bottle of whiskey instead of a glass.

Kent tucked her sheets in. “There ya go.”

“You aren’t leaving are you?”

The profiler shook his head. “And leave you with these quacks? Never.”

Nicole smiled back at Kent even as she surveyed his temple. The wound was turning a nasty bruise and still oozing blood. Guess it got missed in all the calamity.

“You should have the doctor take a look at that.”

“And have them tell me what? Yikes, that looks like it hurts?”

Nicole shook her head. Typical Kent.

“No, it might need stitches,” she tried to insist.

“What? To add to my lifelong suture count? No thank you. Now scoot over.”

Nicole did as instructed as Kent lay down next to her and draped her blanket over him.

“How about a power nap?”

* * *

Ruben sat at the nurses’ station filling out his paperwork. He’d gotten here after all the drama. He could only see the aftermath of it. It was shocking the girl had survived such a brutal attack.

You could see the effect on the floor of the ER. They were still trying to collect all of the bloody gauze squares and they were stacking emptied blood bags. There looked like there were quite a few. The stack was getting pretty tall.

Next to the scene of all that horror was Nicole’s bed. Kent, of course, was curled up next to her. Which kind of epitomized their relationship. Even in the hospital, he was able to sneak his way in between the sheets with her.

Worse, Nicole rested her head against his chest, idly toying with a button on Kent’s shirt. In the three years they had been together, never had she done that to him. Theirs was more of a partnership rather than a relationship.

Somehow Kent could balance the two with her.

Just one more talent that Kent had that Ruben did not. Like out of all the city, he somehow had them staking out a bar not two blocks from Buzz Kill’s next victim. Maybe the profiler was as psychic as he was made out to be.

Or maybe he was hiding something, which given it was Kent made a whole lot more sense.

Ruben turned back to his paperwork. Glick was going to need it in the morning to tackle the press conference set for nine am. Somehow the captain was going to have to explain how they let Buzz Kill slip through their fingers. If the girl survived it might lessen the sting of losing Buzz Kill.

Then there was Lucky 37. The guy was sure keeping his head down. Was he afraid of Kent or playing a new game?

Joshua with quite a jaunty bounce in his step as he walked up to Ruben. He had a huge clear plastic bag filled with bloody clothes. “Guess it’s kind of nice I didn’t have a body to pick up.”

“At least not yet,” Ruben said with a frown. He’d just gotten a text from a nurse friend to let him know the girl had arrested again in surgery, but they got her back, barely.

“Ya,” Joshua said. “This bag is really, really heavy.”

No wonder, there was probably two pints of blood in there. Ruben had been at the crime scene. It looked like someone had broken into a blood bank and smashed it to bits.

Joshua looked over to Nicole’s bed. “Nicole’s going to be okay?”

“That’s what the doctors say.” Physical wellness and emotional wellness were two very different things.

“They really are a power couple, aren’t they?” Joshua said, waxing poetic as he always did with Nicole and Kent.

“Sure,” Ruben replied.

“Oh sorry,” Joshua said. “I forgot that you two used to be together.”

As apparently Nicole had. “No worries.”

The ambulance bay doors opened as bright lights flashed in Ruben’s eyes. Bridget and her crew rushed into the emergency room like a tornado. Nurses jumped from their seats, hurrying to intercept the interlopers. Bridget held out a piece of paper as if it were a holy shield.

“Why wasn’t I informed?” Bridget demanded, her cheeks ever redder than her usual crimson rouge.

“Of?” Ruben asked coolly.

“Another Buzz Kill victim found alive?” Bridget sputtered. “I should have been your first call.”

Ruben shrugged, not carrying how it looked on TV. “Sorry, not how it works.”

Bridget tsked her tongue then spun her thin stiletto, waving her arm at the still messy ER. “Get this. All of this.”

The camera man turned his lens away from Ruben and started slinking about the place, honing in on any blood he could find. After the day Ruben had, he was happy to be out of the camera’s eye.

“Okay,” Joshua said, turning for the door. “Looks like this is my cue to adios.”

Bridget however cut the short man off. “What do you have there?”

Joshua looked down at the bags he was carrying. “Stuff, you know, stuff.”

The host snapped her fingers, calling her cameraman over. “Can we have a looksee?”

Joshua looked to Ruben who slowly nodded. There was no real sense in fighting Bridget over it. She was going to get the footage that she wanted sooner or later.

“Oh my god,” the dark-haired producer exclaimed as she put her hands over her mouth and looked away.

Inside the black evidence bags were dozens, perhaps hundreds of blood soaked gauze squares.

“And what are you going to do with all of this?” Bridget asked.

“Well, I have to go through each one and make sure it is only the victim’s DNA, that somehow inside of all of this there isn’t a shred of the killer’s DNA.”

“All of that?” Bridget said, her expertly plucked eyebrow shot up, at just the right angle for the camera.

“Well, since we don’t have a body to process, unless we get lucky enough the victim dies --”

“Lucky enough?” Bridget retorted. “You would consider it lucky if the victim dies?’

“Well…” Joshua was scrambling. It was never good when Joshua scrambled, however Ruben was going to let him get himself out of this one. “No, no, of course not from a moral standpoint, but from a forensic standpoint, her being alive does make it more difficult to collect evidence.”

“So survivors are quite the problem for you then?” Bridget pressed.

“No, yes, I mean, I’ve got to get back to the morgue and start processing.”

Before Bridget could intercept him, Joshua sprang into action, hustling past the film crew and out the ambulance doors before anyone could even react.

Bridget swung her microphone around to Ruben, bearing down on him. “Do you have anything to add?”

“Nope,” Ruben said. He was so not in the mood for this. He felt a little sorry for Paggie who was not going to get to see her man at his best on TV.

“Nothing? Who is the victim? How was she injured? How was she rescued?”

Ruben just shook his head. Bridget inclined her head to Kent and Nicole resting.

“Or was it the partners, who aren’t partners over there?”

“Like I said, no comment.”

Bridget got tired of toying with such a boring subject and turned to the nursing station. “Where was the victim taken?”

“OR 6, but you can’t go in there.”

Bridget, with her tiny army of two following behind her, headed for the elevator. “Oh you just watch me.”

Then with the whoosh of the elevator doors opening and closing, her conquering force was gone.

Once again the ER was still. Just the sharp bite of antiseptic in his nose and the whirr of the air conditioner. Ruben hunkered back down.

This paperwork wasn’t going to finish itself.

* * *

Nicole woke with a start. Someone was flashing a pen light in her eyes. Great way to wake up.

“I’m fine,” Nicole said, waving away the white coated intern.

No wonder people got worse in hospitals. You were awakened every ten minutes to check your “vitals.” Which of course spiked your vitals, so much for a baseline.

Kent was already up, putting on his coat. “They are discharging you now, but we’ve got to head over to the barn. Glick wants to talk to us before the press conference this morning.”

Nicole’s eyes, still sore from the stupid penlight slid over to the clock. It was eight o’seven. Plenty of time to get across town to the station.

A nurse yanked out the catheter in her hand.

“Ouch!” Nicole exclaimed. “You could have warned me.”

The purple scrubbed nurse, who looked a little like Barney’s illegitimate child, shrugged. “Works better if you aren’t anticipating it.”

With the throbbing under the little bandage, Nicole kind of doubted that. She found that she could get out of bed with ease. The effects of GHB nearly gone. She nearly felt herself.

The nurse brought a wheelchair.

“I’m fine,” Nicole said.

“Oh stop it,” Kent said waving her into the chair. “You’ve been in the hospital enough to know it is policy.”

Ya, she’d been in the hospital enough, usually because of following Kent down the rabbit hole, like last night.

After Nicole signed about a hundred papers, all of which protected the hospital from her suing them for an early release, Kent rolled her out the ER doors. The Mustang sat in the ambulance bay, purring in idle.

He tipped the wheelchair forward, thrusting her to her feet.

“Hey,” Nicole said.

“What?” Kent said with that mischievous grin. “You said you didn’t want to ride.”

He was right. “True, but I’ve got to use the restroom.”

“Again? Jesus, you kept me up half the night.”

“Hey, you have four liters of fluids pumped into you overnight and see how long you can go.”

Kent waved her off like that was TMI so Nicole, who had just been rolled out the door was able to walk back in the door on her own two feet. Bureaucracy.

A nurse came up to her. Nicole was afraid she was going to get into trouble, but the Barney offspring nurse smiled. “She made it. She’s out of surgery and in ICU.”

“When can we talk to her?” Nicole asked.

“Oh, not for a while and then only once the doctors agree, you’re going to have to get through her mom. She doesn’t want her daughter disturbed.”

Nicole could imagine.

But she had Kent on her side. If anyone could talk his way into that room, it was him.

But for now they had the captain’s briefing to get to. Oh ya, and a bladder to empty.

* * *

Kent yawned. Sleeping in your fiancée’s hospital bed was not nearly as comfortable or romantic as one would think. He had a kink in his back that he just couldn’t get out.

Nicole looked refreshed. She was still bleach blond with smeared makeup but considering how rough she looked in that alley, she was a freaking beauty queen. Someone, re Ruben, had brought her a change of clothes to the hospital so she didn’t have to walk into Glick’s office in full biker gear.

They reached Glick’s door which was already open for them. Kent stood to the side, allowing Nicole to enter first. Mainly to see Glick’s response.

While Nicole had been turning heads all the way through the bullpen, the Captain’s response was priceless. His jaw dropped as he sputtered. Ah, it was moments like this when everything was worth it.

“Nicole, I mean detective Usher, I mean…” Glick tried to find his footing. “Interesting look.”

Nicole’s hand went to her hair, which right about now must have felt coarser than most straw. “Trust me, its temporary.”

“Ah, are you sure?” Kent fake pleaded.

“Yes,” Nicole snapped then turned to Glick who had managed to close his mouth. “You wanted to see us, Captain?”

Glick nodded as he sat down. “But I just want the highlights,” he said tapping a huge pile of reports. “Not this tower of non-information.”

“Sure,” Kent said. “We were staking out a biker bar, trolling for Lucky 37.”

The captain interrupted him. “And why that bar?”

Kent cocked his head. “I thought you wanted the highlights?”

These middle management types always wanted what they just said they didn’t. Normally Kent wouldn’t even bother to show up at a meeting like this, however it involved both Lucky 37 and Buzz Kill. Any meeting involving those two had his attention.

“Sorry,” Glick said, waving Nicole on.

“A stake out that resulted in flushing a gang rape foursome,” Nicole continued.

“Foursome?” Glick asked.

Nicole jumped in. “The three attackers and the bartender who slipped me the GHB. It turns out if the women are still pliable enough when he got off shift, he got a shot at them too.”

“Quite magnanimous of them,” Glick replied.

* * *

“Ya, they were quite the saints,” Nicole said as she gently probed the tissue around her nose. It was still tender. No great surprise there.

“And while you were arresting these rapist, you heard the sound of a chainsaw?” Glick asked, turning his attention to Kent.

Kent nodded. “Then Ruben and I went off in pursuit. I was able to catch a glimpse of the perp, but he was in black shoes, baggy sweat pant and hoodie.”

“And nothing on the hundreds of hours of footage we subpoenaed around that area in prep for Lucky 37’s arrival?”

“No, sir,” Nicole stated.

Glick glanced to Kent then focused on Nicole. “So I’m supposed to sell how this was all a happy coincidence? We are running a sting on a bar and just so happened to be down the street from Buzz Kill?”

Nicole shuffled in her seat, her eyes seeking Kent’s. He refused to meet her gaze though. Under her captain’s scrutiny, she couldn’t hold their secret in any longer. She hated lying to her captain, even if it was by omission.

“Lucky 37 left a note the night before,” Nicole admitted. “‘Tomorrow Night.’”

Glick leaned back in his chair. “There it is. I knew there was something going on. We just never get that lucky.”

Kent snorted. “Luck has nothing to do with it. Ever.”

Her captain frowned which he tended to do when Kent was around. “And this was the only communication between Lucky 37 and you?” Glick asked.

When Kent didn’t answer, Nicole squirmed even more despite trying to stay still. Why couldn’t her fiancé just come clean? Why did he always put her in this position?

“He also left a note last night on the Mustang,” Nicole felt compelled to admit. “‘It was never about me.’”

Glick leaned further back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. “Am I catching this right? Lucky 37 knew that Buzz Kill was striking in that alley and led you to him?”

“Pretty good for an impending AARP member,” Kent replied taking a dig at Glick’s age.

The captain let the slight go. “Does Lucky 37’s involvement help us or hurt us?”

Kent shrugged. “He helped us with those idiotic teenagers.”

“But I thought you said that was because he had a teenage daughter,” Glick asked.

Nicole had the same question. It was good to know she wasn’t stupid. Even her captain seemed confused.

“I still do,” Kent explained. “But I think he got a taste of hunting other serial killers. He’s gone a little Dexter on us.”

“So he’s going to help us catch Buzz Kill?” Glick asked.

Kent turned his head away, looking through the window to the bullpen. That was the profiler. He only tuned in when he wanted to.

“I don’t think he’s going to make it easy,” Nicole said filling in the awkward silence. “It’s still a sick game.”

Glick breathed out heavily, shifting forward in his chair again. “So we might have to solve this the old fashioned way?” Off Nicole’s nod he asked. “And the girl, Lacey, has she been able to give us anything?” Nicole shook her head. “When will she be able to?”

“Probably not until this afternoon at the earliest,” Nicole stated then her phone vibrated on her hip. It was a text from Ruben. Lacey had been rushed back into emergency surgery. It looked like a part of her bowel got nicked and they missed it in the first eight hour surgery. So now the girl didn’t just get ripped up, suffer catastrophic blood loss, but also had full blown peritonitis.

Not good. “Sorry, it looks like if she survives another surgery it won’t be until late night or even tomorrow morning.”

“And we have other leads you are following?” Glick asked.

When Kent didn’t acknowledge the captain’s question, Nicole stepped in, although she had to give Glick credit that he had learned not to take Kent’s behavior personal. The profiler was an ass to everyone.

“Yes, there was the necklace that Kent found in Tanya’s safety deposit box.”

“And this had to do with murdering people with a chainsaw how?” Glick asked not unreasonably.

Kent finally found his voice. “Not sure. I think he may have killed for the necklace and then figured out how much he liked killing and his signature evolved from there. He may have killed more people, we don’t know. If it weren’t for Nathan, we wouldn’t have known that Tanya was murdered.”

“And we’ve confirmed that?”

Since Kent was mute again, Nicole stated, “Yes, the biopsies of the tissue around the catheter site show high levels of heroin.”

Glick squinted his eyes, glancing back and forth between Kent and Nicole. “Isn’t this unusual? A stealth killer turning into a chainsaw murderer seeking recognition?”

“What can I say?” Kent said. “Serial killers are weird.”

“And clearly, unpredictable,” Nicole added.

Kent slapped his hands down on the chair. “Okay, I think we’re caught up here. Places to go. People to see and all that.”

“And the necklace?” Glick asked.

“That and other things,” Kent said about as cryptically as Lucky 37 would have.

Glick looked like he might challenge Kent, but then the captain took a deep sigh first, holding out his hand. “Fine, but I need my phone back.”

Kent looked offended, which usually guaranteed he was guilty of lifting something. Nicole watched as Kent and Glick had a little standoff. If Kent thought she was going to jump in and run interference for him on this, he was sadly mistaken.

“Come on,” the captain said. “I knew it was you once my phone company contacted me questioning why I was calling North Korea.”

“Fine,” Kent said, pulling the phone from his pocket and handing it over to the Captain.

Nicole was glad to see Kent was actually cooperating. That happened ever so infrequently.

“Am I now on some FBI and Homeland watch lists?”

Kent shrugged. “Why do you think I used your phone?”

What on God’s earth was Kent doing calling North Korea? Even to her Kent had a secret life. Sometimes he would get calls in the middle of the night and just be gone for days at a time. Just last year he’d gone and come back with a scar on his neck. He’d nearly been decapitated yet Nicole knew no more about that incident than she did the calls to North Korea.

Supposedly Kent was part of a think tank. A think tank that he had been recruited out of to come back to field work, but Nicole found it odd that a member of a think tank could get nearly decapitated. There were times when she suspected he worked for the CIA as well, but wouldn’t he just use a CIA line to call North Korea?

Was Kent sneaking around the spy agency as well? Was there a handler at Langley that was as frustrated with Kent as her captain was?

The profiler turned to leave but Glick tsked. “And my pen.”

Kent pulled out the writing instrument and gave it over. Nicole just shook her head. What else was there to do?

“And my sand rake?”

The captain, in an effort to avoid his fourth heart attack had taken to sand design to relieve his stress. Glick had gotten quite good at it. He had a very active Pinterest page. Kent hadn’t really taken his tiny rake had he?

What in the hell would he use it for? But that really wasn’t the point of Kent’s sticky fingers. It was his dominance over his victim. Taking something precious then using it. The only person he didn’t do that to was Nicole.

Well, except for the bra and panties that time, but the profiler insisted that he had borrowed these for research. And strangely, she believed him.

Kent looking only mildly chagrined handed over the rake. So he had it. How could she not know he was carrying around a tiny sand rake in his pocket? They had just slept together, scrunched in a hospital bed all night. You’d think she would have noticed that.

“Anything else?” Glick asked.

“Like I’d tell you,” Kent said then headed out.

Glick looked to Nicole. “You’ve got a live one there.”

Didn’t Nicole know it?

CHAPTER 10

Kent paced behind Jimmi and Joshua as they studied their latest clue. They were oohing and ahhing over the necklace he’d found at Tanya’s safety deposit box.

“Yes, yes, it is beautiful,” Kent admitted. “But what does it mean to the case?”

“Well, it’s obvious isn’t it?” Joshua said as Jimmi nodded his head in agreement. You seriously couldn’t put two geeks in a room together before they fused into the same person. As much as these two competed against one another, they were like Siamese twins

“How about you explain it to us, non-Big Bang groupies?” Kent asked. This time it was Nicole who nodded her head, but then frowned. She must still have a killer headache from the ruffie last night.

“This necklace,” Joshua said in reverent tones, “Once belonged to Anne Boleyn, King Henry the 8th’s wife. That’s what the “B” stands for. Boleyn.”

“Okay, so it is rare and therefore expensive I take it?” Kent suggested.

“Expensive?” Jimmi spat as Joshua chuckled. “You mean priceless. I can’t even begin to imagine how many millions this would go for at auction.”

“Just last year a Henry ring went for two hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds.”

Kent frowned what was a glorified secretary doing with this infamous and super expensive antique?

“No idea how it relates to the case,” Joshua said as if he could read Kent’s mind.

“He’s getting good,” Nicole said, leaning against the counter. She kept insisting that she was fine, however her pale color and lack of balance said something else entirely. Kent would have loved to have help support her, but each time he moved over to her, she gave him that “I said I was fine” glare. She had way too much pride to admit the attack last night had taken it out of her.

“So no idea, whatsoever why Tanya would have the necklace?” Kent asked.

“Well, I didn’t say that,” Joshua said. “I just don’t know how it factors into Buzz Kill.”

“So you know why Tanya had the necklace?” Nicole asked sounding far more irritated than she usually did with these two. She normally seemed to enjoy Mr. Toad’s Wild techno jargon ride.

Both men nodded but neither said anything.

“And you are going to share this?” Kent suggested trying to keep his temper in check, after all Nicole had a raging headache.

“Oh, sorry,” Jimmi said. “We thought it was obvious.”

“Well, it isn’t,” Kent stated keeping his fists clenched to keep him from grabbing the nearest techie’s throat. Normally Nicole would be laying a hand on his arm, begging for some form of restraint, but right now, she looked like she wanted to join him in the throttling.

Joshua’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he brought up a painting of the Queen wearing the necklace. “Okay, so we all know what happened to her, the whole head detached from body thing, but what has been a scholarly mystery for centuries is where did all of her jewelry go?”

Jimmi, appearing to not want to be overshadowed, jumped in. “Some suggested that Henry gave the jewels to his new wife.”

“Yet, not a single mention or painting of the new queen with Anne’s jewelry showed up,” Joshua stated.

“Others suggested that Henry melted all the jewelry down,” Jimmi countered. “And made new jewelry for his blushing new bride.”

“But that doesn’t hold up since several other pieces of Anne’s have shown up to auction over the centuries,” Joshua explained.

“And there is a theory about who took the jewels?” Nicole asked, obviously trying to prod this explanation along.

Jimmi nodded. “There was a rumor that just before her unceremonious beheading, Anne entrusted her jewelry to her maid, Paisly Jasper who then passed them down to her descendants.”

“Of which Tanya was one?” Kent asked trying to wrap this logic thread up.

Both men nodded. “The last direct one as a matter of fact,” Joshua added.

“And you got all of this from the necklace?” Nicole asked, squinting at the harsh fluorescent lighting.

“No,” Joshua answered. “But I did go pretty deep back into her family tree when Kent told me to track down her closest relative. I noticed the Jasper connection and thought it was interesting, then wham, the necklace sealed the deal.”

“So Tanya was in possession of a priceless heirloom that she could have sold at any time --”

“Well, there’s the rub,” Jimmi said. “Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?” Nicole asked, pushing off the counter, coming over and sitting down in one of the chairs. Kent watched as his fiancée slowly rubbed her temples as Joshua answered.

“Back then women couldn’t own any property so in theory that jewelry was King Henry’s. His descendants have gone after previous auctions, suing them for selling stolen goods. Tanya might have been worried what would happen if she tried to sell the necklace.”

Jimmi jumped back in. “She might have even contacted auction houses and been refused.”

He brought up a list of her calls. “Once she became ill, she contacted several of the large auction houses.” Jimmi held up his hand. “I’ve already got calls into them to see what their discussions were about.”

Kent looked at the screen. For a serial case, the monitor was filled with such an odd assortment. Anne Boleyn, auction houses and necklace. This was more the stuff of Agatha Christie. He expected Miss Marple to walk in at any moment.

“But this doesn’t indicate who would have wanted her dead,” Nicole said.

“And there are no other heirs?” Kent asked.

“No direct heirs,” Joshua corrected. “There are like a gazillion cousins and relatives via marriages.”

“Then we need to track them down,” Kent instructed. “We need to figure out who wanted that necklace.”

Joshua sighed but nodded. “I figured. It’s like over a thousand people, but I’ll try to see if there is anyone who pops.”

Kent was about to wrap up the little pow wow when Bridget and her crew burst into the room.

* * *

Nicole shielded her eyes from the glare. Seriously why was everyone being so bright and loud today? She was never drinking again. Anything. Not even water, unless she poured it herself. That was final. She was never going through this again. Ever.

Kent, Ruben, the Captain and her doctor had all encouraged her to take the day off and go home to sleep it off, which right about now that option was looking pretty attractive. Why hadn’t she taken their advice? Oh ya, two serial killers were on the loose.

“Our agreement states you are to call me if there are any advances in the case,” Bridget said with a flaming red pout.

“Your agreement with the department, not our agreement,” Kent clarified for everyone in the room. “Our agreement only covers who pays for your funeral…which is you. Not me.”

Bridget’s frown deepened. “You would think you would want us here. Documenting for the world how a first class profiler works.”

“Yes, funny, I don’t,” Kent said with a tilt of his head. He could be such an ass sometimes. In this case though, it was completely justified.

“And now are you going to try and stop us from filming this latest development?”

“Oh heavens no,” Kent said, waving toward the two men and the monitors. “As a matter of fact I am going to have them go through the entire process, step by step with you.”

Bridget grinned as if she had just won that exchange. Clearly she had not spent a lot of time with Jimmi or Joshua when they let their geek flag fly.

“You aren’t going to be here?” the producer asked, clearly suspicious.

“Got to run the little lady home, doctor’s orders,” Kent said. “These guys can fill you in on that too.”

As they walked past the crew to the door, Nicole whispered, “Really?”

“God, no,” Kent said, pushing the door opened. “But what a nice escape. They are going to be tied up for hours while we go have some lunch.”

Nicole smiled. Food did sound good. They couldn’t stalk Lucky until after dark and they were going to have to wait for Joshua to produce any name to investigate.

Hand-in-hand they walked out of the morgue.

Even though the sun was too bright, this was turning out to be a pretty good day.

* * *

“No, no, no,” Kent said, digging in his heels. “I said lunch, just you and me, not brunch with Paggie and Ruben.”

“Too bad,” Nicole said, seeming to be more herself. “We’ve been promising them a double date for weeks and voilà, today our schedules finally aligned.”

“But we’ve got two serial killers on the loose.”

“Which you know as well as I do that we can’t do anything about until later. Just look at this as being able to check off something from your list.”

Kent frowned. “But really the Chez Snotty Café?”

“Chez Soufflé Café, and yes.”

Really? He’d have to sit through Ruben and Paggie and eat small servings of crappy food. It really didn’t get much worse than this.

Kent walked in as the waiter shook his head. “The gentlemen must wear a tie.”

“I’m sure Ruben has an extra,” Nicole said, waving to the couple seated at a table near the kitchen.

“And the lady must be in a dress,” the snooty maître d’ said, pointing to a sign that outlined a very long list of dress codes.

“Excuse me?” Nicole said. Oh, it was okay for her to get all pissy, but he had to suck it up? That seemed decidedly unfair and maybe a little sexist.

Ruben and Paggie rose, joining them at the maître d’ station. “Is there a problem?” Ruben asked as he approached.

“Yes, your guests do not meet our dress code. The gentleman has no tie. The ‘lady’ no dress.”

“I thought I texted you the dress code?” Paggie asked. “I specifically texted you the dress code.”

Ruben put his arm around Paggie’s shoulders. “It’s okay, honey, we can just go somewhere else. It isn’t the food, right. It’s the company?”

Paggie didn’t look so sure to Kent.

“But we were thinking of having this restaurant cater the wedding.”

Dear god, as if Kent didn’t already need to find an excuse to not attend their wedding, this was the nail in the coffin. He was not going to sit through some sappy nuptial only to endure a fois gras disaster.

“Paco’s Chicken and Pancakes is right down the street,” Kent suggested. Paggie turned her nose up, literally, at the suggestion.

“Chicken and Pancakes?” she sneered.

“They’ve got breakfast all day with the best Eggs Benedict you’ve ever tasted,” Kent tried to reassure her, why he wasn’t sure, but he just wanted the maître de’s beady stare off of him. “And of course if you are in the mood, fried chicken and waffles.”

“Yes, I am sure they will allow you in that establishment as you are currently dressed,” the maître d’ sneered.

“Really, Paggie” Nicole chimed it. “I know it sounds weird, but really, it’s good food, especially for brunch.”

The other couple looked askance, but Nicole didn’t seem to be in any mood to argue and headed straight for the Mustang. Kent wasn’t about to let her leave alone. He trotted to catch up.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” Nicole said. “They have the best chicken fried steak in town and I so need to eat my whole way out of this hang over.”

Kent smiled. That was his girl.

* * *

Ruben could feel Paggie tense beside him as her eyes surveyed the rather tacky diner. Everything was plastic. The booths. The silverware. The table clothes. He could feel her start to itch. Paggie was all about class and Paco’s Chicken and Pancakes was the antithesis of class.

The maître de from the café would have probably just swooned rather than enter the establishment and Ruben wouldn’t have blamed him.

Especially since a bright red lettered sign read, “No shirt? No shoes? No problem.”

Kent and Nicole were already seated at a back booth, perusing the large, tri-fold menu which had pictures. Yes, because chicken and pancakes were so difficult to imagine.

“We don’t have to stay,” Ruben suggested as much for him as for Paggie. His acid reflux was acting up just looking at the greasy spoon food passing by on a waitress’s platter. Apparently no one here had heard of the ill effects of trans fatty acids.

“And do what? We’ve lost our reservations at the cafe,” Paggie sighed. “And I’m starved. They’ve got to have some kind of fruit platter, don’t you think?”

Ruben seriously doubted it, but his stomach was rumbling and he knew how much Paggie had been looking forward to picking Nicole’s brain again, and Ruben also felt it wasn’t above rubbing the approaching wedding into his ex-lover and her arrogant profiler.

They made their way past a table of screaming toddlers and a Goth couple that apparently thought making out in public was cool.

With his hand on Paggie’s back, Ruben guided them to their table.

Kent laid his two foot high menu on the table. “I really can’t decide between the ham and cheese waffles and the chicken scone. Decisions. Decisions.”

Ruben really hoped that Kent was making that up, but as he picked up his menu, he realized those were a few of the more normal selections. Jalapeno and cream cheese blintzes actually looked interesting though.

Paggie didn’t seem to be having as good a time as she turned the menu back and over again. “Really? No yogurt? Cottage cheese? Peaches?”

Kent waved off her concerns, “Go to the farmer’s market for that. Get your belly fully of hot goodness here.”

Paggie scrunched up her nose, looking at the menu again. “I guess the strawberry crepes might not be too bad.”

“They aren’t,” Nicole jumped in. “They are like eating delicious, delicious air.”

Ruben leaned back. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be too bad after all. The children had gotten their hot chocolates, piled high with whipped cream and for the moment were quieted.

“So you haven’t settled on a caterer yet?” Nicole asked. “The wedding is what two, three months away?”

“Thirteen and a half weeks,” Paggie announced proudly. “We’ve narrowed it down to three companies, but are having a tough time deciding between them. Each has its own advantages.”

“Like snails?” Kent asked.

There were times Ruben wanted to punch the profiler. This was one of those times.

“Yes, actually. We want our guests to feel special,” Paggie answered smoothly. Always the negotiator. She seldom let Kent rattle her.

“I’m not quite sure if we are using that term in the same way,” Kent stated smiling as the waitress set down an old fashioned stainless steel shake cup. “Double malt?”

“You know it,” the waitress said, giving a wink. “Everyone ready to order?”

In rapid fire, they all placed their orders and the waitress was off again.

“So have you two settled on a date yet?” Paggie asked.

Ruben stiffened. This had been a touchy subject whenever he brought it up with Nicole which he felt meant that maybe things weren’t quite as glorious in paradise as Kent made them out to be.

Nicole looked to Kent and got no response so answered, “Apparently not.”

“We’ll know when it’s right,” Kent grunted. “Not a moment before.”

“You do know that Martha Stewart says that it isn’t really an engagement until the date is set.”

“Bully for her,” Kent answered then locked eyes with Paggie. “How can you plan something so intimate? The binding of two souls shouldn’t be scheduled down to the minute. You should eat what is on hand and be with the people who matter most.”

Ruben knew that went against every fiber of Paggie’s being. Her work and her life went by the clock. It was one of the things that Ruben loved about her. He knew what came next. There were no weird variables. She was reliable and consistent. After the roller coaster with Nicole? Slow and steady was really, really attractive.

Almost too quickly to be believed the waitress came back and slid his plate down. His Eggs Benedict sloshed half way across the plate, nearly spilling over to the side when at the last moment they slid back.

“Don’t worry, doll, never spilled a drop yet,” the waitress said with a wink. She was like the Kent of the food service industry.

Paggie lifted her strawberry crepe with the end of her knife, apparently checking to make sure no bacon had snuck its way under there. Finally she took her fork and cut off a tiny corner of the buttery yellow crepe.

Time for him to take the plunge as well. He used the edge of his fork to cut off a piece and popped it in his mouth. Oh my.

The sauce was like cream personified and the eggs? Cooked to perfection with the ham adding just the right amount of salt to the mix to make his taste buds sing.

He looked up to find Kent staring at him with a Cheshire grin. Damn him. Kent took another huge bite of his breakfast, moaning the whole time. Nicole just rolled her eyes and ate her chicken-fried steak.

Ruben glanced over to Paggie to find even her smiling as she cut off a larger slice of crepe. Okay, he would never admit out loud, especially in front of Paggie, but this diner was much more his style. Anyone who could cook Eggs Benedict this well could probably cook anything well.

“Don’t even think about it,” Paggie whispered giving his knee a shove with her knee. “We are not catering from here.”

Darn. A brunch catered wedding, wouldn’t that be unique. But off of Paggie’s glare, Ruben didn’t even bother to bring it up.

Paggie turned her focus to Kent. “To be truly memorable a wedding must be planned out thoughtfully, otherwise it will just be all ad hoc.”

Kent wasn’t deterred though as he plowed into his second piece of Benedict. “Can you really say that in 13 weeks you will still want to get married?”

Ruben grabbed Paggie’s hand. “Yes, absolutely.”

His fiancée smiled up at him. “Of course.”

“Good for you,” Kent said, although Ruben seriously doubted if he meant it. “Nicole and I are waiting for the perfect moment when electricity strikes and we can no longer stand not being married.”

Ruben studied Nicole’s face very carefully. He knew her. That smile wasn’t real. She didn’t necessarily agree with Kent, but would never contradict him in public. He knew that despite her tomboy ways, Nicole had dreamed of a winter wedding, late in the evening with candlelight to guide her down the aisle.

It saddened him to think of all that she had given up to be with Kent. Too much. To hide in his shadow like this? When she should be basking in her own glory. It all became too much and he nearly choked on his food.

“Whoa there, big guy,” Kent stated. “There’s plenty to go around.”

Ruben took a sip of water as things seemed to be settled. Then Paggie had to go probing again. What had gotten into her?

“So, Nicole, do you agree with Kent?” Paggie asked, taking another bite. “You are cool with no flowers, no band, and no food?”

Nicole demurred, stirring her country gravy into the mashed potatoes. “I agree that I don’t want to spend months and months going from one caterer to another. I agree that I don’t want a taffeta designer gown.”

“But you don’t agree on not having a wedding date?” Paggie probed.

Ruben’s partner shrugged. “I don’t agree nor disagree. We’re bound together whether we have a date or not.”

Spoken like a woman who couldn’t get a wedding date out of her fiancée. What else could Nicole say?

“Maybe our wedding will inspire you,” Paggie said.

* * *

Orange juice nearly shot out of Kent’s nose as he tried to suppress laughter. Although he shouldn’t have worried. His beautiful fiancée’s elbow in his side took care of that.

Sputtering, he made his apologies. He was spared any more awkward looks as Nicole’s phone went off.

“It’s the hospital,” she reported.

Well, this morning was looking up as Nicole answered her phone “Detective Usher.” His fiancée then listened carefully then reiterated, “Our victim’s surgery was much simpler than they had thought. She’s in recovery and we might be able to talk to her within the hour.”

Kent was out of his seat like a mongoose after a cobra.

Nicole sprung up as well, seeming equally eager to ditch this lovely brunch.

“Just tell Emma to put the bill on my tab,” Kent said as he headed to the exit. He waved to their waitress. “The usual tip.”

Emma did a little curtsy as he passed by. Yah, he was a good tipper. It kept the extra Hollandaise sauce coming on his eggs.

Nicole hustled to catch up. “Okay, I agree. No more double dates.”

“Finally,” Kent sighed. The first one had been one too many.

As they climbed into her Mustang Kent asked, “So how do you really feel about setting a wedding date?”

Nicole revved the engine as her features turned contemplative. “I’m not sure really. On one hand it does feel odd not having a firm date. On the other, whenever I think about having a date that means I actually have to start doing stuff. All the stuff Paggie is doing and I’d rather eat brunch at the café with a fork through my eye.”

“Couldn’t agree more. So we’ll just roll with it?” Kent confirmed.

“For now, yah.”

With Nicole driving, they got to the hospital in minutes. Being a detective she could park right next to the ER doors. They hopped out of the car and headed straight to the nurse’s station.

CHAPTER 11

Nicole hurried into the hospital with a bit of trepidation. Well, more trepidation than usual. She hated hospitals, but who didn’t? Did any in the history of mankind say “Wahoo I’m back in the hospital?”

No, Nicole didn’t think so. Unfortunately her hatred went deeper. First was her recent humiliation. How had she allowed herself, even with full police protection to get slipped a Mickey and then gang attacked?

No one had chided her. Not Glick, not Ruben, not even Kent for her oversight. They all gave her a pass. Well, Nicole wasn’t about to give herself one. She had been kicking herself all night over it. She probably had more bruises from her self-flagellation than she had gotten during the blitz attack. If Kent hadn’t been there…

She shuddered to think. Sure, Ruben had punched Kent, but it had been Kent that had gotten to her first. However, as a professional, she shouldn’t have needed protection from such a group of low lives like that. The paperwork in explaining an “officer down” call was going to take hours.

The second reason went much deeper than just her ego. It had been those last few months with her mother, in and out of the hospital like a revolving door. Riding the high of hope when her mother got to go home, then crashing back down when her white cell count would bottom out.

In the end, her mother had decided that it was best just to stay hospitalized until the end to spare her family the trauma. Nicole had sworn she’d never step into a hospital again. Of course that was back when she was a teen and thought she was invincible. How little she knew.

The third reason she hated this trip in particular was that she was reluctant to interview Buzz Kill’s latest victim. She could only imagine how traumatized the girl must be and she knew how Kent could get. Nicole was betting that they were going to get kicked out of the hospital at the least and possibly banned. Better to go in with low expectations.

Kent however seemed oblivious as they walked through the ER to the elevators. However he only looked oblivious. If she asked, Nicole knew that Kent could probably tell her the name of every nurse they passed and not only the number of patients but their condition as well. That was the miracle of Kent. Seeing without seeming to see. It truly was his gift. It made people underestimate him which was usually a fatal blow.

It would be interesting to see if the profiler could get any useful information out of this post-surgical patient. If they were going to get anything, it needed to be soon. Leads went cold after forty-eight hours and the girl had been in surgery ten of those hours.

“We are here to see Lacey Placket,” Nicole said, showing the nurse her gold badge.

“Sure, you can join the other cop on the fifth floor in the surgery recovery waiting area one. But get ready to wait. Like I told him, it could be a while.”

“What other cop?” Nicole asked. She looked to Kent who seemed to be wondering the same thing. The only other detective that would have been assigned to the case was busy finishing up his Eggs Benedict with Paggie.

“Not sure,” the nurse said. “Tall, handsome. A few tats so I assumed he might be from vice or gangs.”

* * *

Breath caught in Kent’s throat. Only one man fit that description.

“Lucky 37,” Nicole whispered what Kent was thinking.

Then they both sprang into action, running for the stairs. They didn’t have time to wait for the elevator. It was a race to the fifth floor. Nicole’s heels clanged on the metal stairs, but damn she could fly in those things.

Kent grabbed hold of the railing and hauled himself up the last few steps to beat her to the landing. Smiling, he yanked open the door and they rushed onto the surgery floor.

To the right was the recovery waiting area. Of course no one was there except Adelene, Lacey’s mother. Nicole yanked open the glass door anyway.

“Are you okay?” Nicole said with a puff. Last night had really taken it out of her. Usually she could run five miles without breaking a sweat.

The woman, still looking haggard and unkempt seemed shocked at Nicole’s entrance. “Besides praying for my daughter to pull through, yes, I’m okay.”

Although she didn’t seem okay. Her daughter was out of surgery and in recovery so why did she seem even paler than she had the night before? Something happened.

“Was there a man here?” Nicole asked.

Kent already knew the answer to that. He could smell Brut all over the room.

Adelene pulled her sweater tighter around her shoulders. “Yes, he said that Lacey was a very lucky girl.”

Kent swung around “Where did he go?”

The woman frowned. “I’m not sure. I think maybe the stairs.”

“How long ago?” Nicole asked.

“I don’t know, a few minutes ago,” Adelene responded. “What’s going on?”

What was going on? Oh, just the fact that they had missed Lucky 37 by a hundred plus seconds or so. Nothing really. Kent hit his fist into the doorjamb, damaging his knuckles much more than the metal.

He could try to give chase, but what use would it be? Lucky 37 had the jump on them and Kent knew that the sophisticated killer would never enter the hospital without an impeccable exit strategy.

Instead he turned to Adelene. “What exactly did he say?”

* * *

Nicole stepped between Adelene and Kent.

She tried to keep her tone soothing and low. “We just really wanted to talk with the man.”

Before Adelene could press further, a nurse walked into the waiting area. “She is waking up,” the nurse said to Lacey’s mother then turned to Nicole. “The doctor okayed you going in there, but doesn’t want her agitated.”

“I understand,” Nicole reassured the nurse but then the nurse looked to Kent.

“Is that clear?” the nurse asked the profiler.

“You know it.”

Okay, that did not seem to reassure the nurse at all, or Nicole for that matter.

“May I have a few moments alone with my daughter first?” Adelene asked.

“Of course,” the nurse said, glaring at Kent to contradict her.

However Kent just went over and sat on one of the chairs. What? Nicole had never seen him obey an order in their entire time together. And now he sits and stays? What had gotten into him?

Adelene left the waiting area and Nicole sat down next to Kent. Was it her imagination or did the waiting room really smell like Brut?

Why had the serial killer showed up here? They knew that Lucky wasn’t Buzz Kill. He was too busy raping and murdering another woman on the far side of town during Buzz Kill’s second murder.

Were they totally wrong about his motives and Lucky 37 was actually in league with Buzz? Kent refused to believe it, however Nicole wasn’t so sure. Otherwise his visit here made absolutely no sense.

Kent slapped the arms of his chairs with his palms. “I think a few minutes have passed.”

Nicole wasn’t so sure about that, but followed him out of the waiting area and down the hall. She was as eager now to interview Lacey as Kent was. Lucky’s visit had just upped the stakes considerably.

They turned the corner and found room 535. The door was ajar and Nicole peeked into the dimly lit room. Lacey’s mother was sitting at her daughter’s bedside, holding Lacey’s hand.

Nicole was transported back to that unpleasant time when it was she holding her mother’s hand those long, dark nights. She could empathize with Adelene. It truly was nearly as hard on the family as it was on the patient.

“Mrs. Placket,” Kent said, bowing his head in a most unusually respectful manner.

“If she gets the least bit upset, you’ve got to stop,” Adelene stated seeming more put together than she had been just a few minutes before.

“Of course,” Kent said with nearly a purr in his voice.

What had gotten into him? Normally Nicole had to practically hit him over the head during interviews to get him to stop. He must have an angle, Nicole just hadn’t found it yet.

* * *

God how Kent hated being nice. It physically hurt him. He could feel a muscle just under his ribcage tighten as he smiled sympathetically to the mother of the victim.

Contrary to popular belief, Kent did realize the victim had been traumatized and that the mother’s natural instinct was to protect her progeny, however, come on, didn’t anyone want to catch the bastard who did this? And especially in this case. The mother had a run in with another serial killer just a little while ago and who knew? Would Buzz Kill try to finish what he started?

But invariably the family would put up as many blockades as possible to keep him from interviewing the victims, and they hadn’t even met him yet. They objected to questioning in principal.

Then if the police didn’t make progress on the case it was all “the police don’t care. They aren’t working hard enough.”

Ugh.

He could tell by the set to Nicole’s jaw that she was worried about how he was going to conduct this interview. He wished that she didn’t have to be, but he couldn’t give any guarantees. Kent was trying out to see if honey really did attract more bees.

He personally was a vinegar man, but, hey, even he could learn new tricks. Especially if it kept him out of Glick’s office for their “sensitivity talks.”

“How is she?” Nicole asked, probably genuinely. She actually cared.

The mother wiped tear stains off her cheek, blotting them with a tissue. “They think she is remarkably lucky, considering,” Adelene stated. “They are worried about her arm though. They were able to completely reattach it, but whether her lower arm will have nerve damage they aren’t sure.”

“What does Lacey do?” Nicole asked, again, because she probably really cared.

“Software designer so her fingers are kind of important,” Adelene explained.

Kent used Nicole distracting the mother to come close by the victim’s side. “Lacey,” he said, making sure to butter up his tone. “Hon, are you awake enough to talk?”

The victim’s long lashed eyes fluttered then opened wide. “Mom?”

“Right here, honey,” Adeline said, putting her daughter’s hand up to her chest. “Right here.”

“What happened?”

Kent’s heart sank. It wasn’t uncommon for victims to completely block the events of the trauma. The lapse could last minutes to years.

“You don’t remember anything?” he asked as sweetly as he could. Seriously bees should be flocking to him right about now. Or bears, ya bears. They liked honey right? And he was as sugary as they could come.

The girl’s eyes focused as her nose scrunched. “I was… I was walking home from the bodega with the pot roast and then someone…” Tears welled in her eyes. “Mom, am I going to be okay?”

“Yes, honey, of course of course, the doctors are very optimistic.”

The young woman nodded, turning back to Kent. “A man came from behind me and put a cloth over my mouth.”

“Are you sure it was a man?” Nicole asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” Lacey said, “but whoever it was they were taller than me and lifted me off the ground while they were pressing the cloth to my nose. They were hella strong.”

Lacey’s voice shook with just the right amount of emotion. She seemed to be telling the truth.

Nicole nodded. “Anything else to indicate it was a man? Aftershave? Hair? Voice?”

Lacey shook her head, “The only thing I know for sure is that when I clawed at his arm…” she looked down at her fingernails which were clean. A concerned look crossed over her face.

“The crime lab scraped under your nails,” Nicole stated. “You didn’t imagine it, you clawed at a leather jacket.”

“Yes, it was so weird, instead of my life flashing before my eyes, all I could think was ‘that’s a nice jacket, I bet its Italian leather.’”

“Don’t worry, that’s very common,” Kent explained again, trying to stay on the helpful side. “Your brain tries to focus on what makes sense rather than the unbelievable events happening around it.”

“That must be it,” Lacey said. “Then I hit the pavement and heard a motor? An engine, then…”

For the first time she looked around her at all the machines and tubes attached to her. “What happened?”

The mother glared at Kent, apparently pre-warning him off as she spoke. “The doctors say not to rush anything, honey. Just take it slow. Truthfully if you never remember it, I’ll be happy.”

Yes, retrograde amnesia might be the best thing for the victim but the worst thing for the case. Still, Kent didn’t press the issue. Honestly the information before attack was much more important than the actual hacking.

* * *

Nicole couldn’t believe it when Kent didn’t jump all over that “I can’t remember” claim. Usually he had people, uninjured people, crying by now. He was usually all about the rapid fire questions, probing their statement forcing them to repeat it over and over again to check for inconsistencies.

Instead he stepped away from Lacey’s bed, appearing to give up.

Um, not so fast.

Nicole came forward. It was weird to step into the bad cop role with Kent around. He was the natural at it.

“Lacey, can you think of anyone in the last few weeks who has been watching you? Stalking you?”

At first the girl shook her head, then she frowned. “Well, not really, but maybe...”

“Anything, Lacey,” Kent added.

Nicole took Lacey’s hand as her features scrunched up. “Even just the hairs at the back of your neck going up as you walked by someone, anything you remember could be helpful.”

“Well, remember, mom I mentioned that cable truck down the road?” Lacey asked, turning her attention to her mother.

“Yes, yes,” Adelene stated. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t take you more seriously.”

“It’s okay, no one could have known.” She gave a warm smile to her mother. These two had a close bond. Too close? Was there some enmeshment going on? It was always so hard to tell with mother and daughters. It was one of the few non-sexual relationships which rivaled romantic love or so the profiler said.

Nicole could remember a time, before her mother got sick when she felt that way. They completed each other’s sentences. They liked the same TV shows, the same food, the same clothes. Nicole remembered what it felt like to lose her best friend since birth.

* * *

“The truck?” Nicole prompted just before Kent was going to. Well, well, the grasshopper had beat the sensei to the punch.

“Oh yah,” Lacey said, seeming to have spaced off for a second, but then her eyes focused. “It looked completely legit but every time I went out for my walk, the guy was always eating his lunch in the back of his truck.”

“What did you mean, completely legit?” Nicole asked. Kent felt pride well up. His fiancée was using the clarify and confirm technique. The technique he had taught her but that she hadn’t yet embraced. That is until today. Maybe he might take the backseat a little more often.

“He had on a uniform,” Lacey explained. “Name tag and I could see into the back of the truck and there were bunch of wires and stuff, you know all the stuff a cable guy would have.”

If that indeed had been Buzz Kill, that was a pretty well thought out cover. Kent didn’t even have to tell Nicole what to do next. She snapped that phone right off her belt and dialed Jimmi to start pulling traffic cam footage from around Lacey’s house. His fiancée truly was a gifted investigator.

This was why you always interviewed surviving victims as soon as you could. The cable guy was the kind of information that you could only get from a surviving victim.

“Mom, why can’t I move my arm?”

Adelene patted her daughter’s hand. “Don’t worry. They have it immobilized after surgery.”

Lacey seemed to calm down again even though Kent was pretty sure her mother had just told her daughter a lie. Far be it for him to step into the middle of that family quagmire. Soon enough, Lacey would find out her arm had nearly been cut from her body and pretty much only through the grace of God was it sewn back on.

Ya, Kent would definitely let Adelene handle that one.

“Anything else, Lacey?” Nicole asked once she was off the phone.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, no. It’s all such blur.”

* * *

Nicole knew how the young woman felt even though Nicole’s trauma was a one hundredth of Lacey’s. Even so, she was starting to have a hard time remembering the exact sequence of events at the bar and into the alley. Who threw the first punch? When did she go down? She didn’t want to be confused up on the stand. She did not want those scum bags to walk because the GHB fuzzed her memory.

“All right then,” Kent said walking out from the other side of the bed, angling for the door. “If you remember anything else, please let us know…And Adelene that goes for you too.”

Both mother and daughter nodded as they left.

“What is up with you?” Nicole asked, trotting to catch up with the profiler.

“What?” Kent countered. “I can’t be nice just to be nice?”

“Um, no,” Nicole responded.

Kent sighed. “Fine, you’re going to find out anyway… There is a bet going on back at the barn that I couldn’t make it through that interview without getting kicked out of the hospital.”

Nicole wasn’t surprised. She would have taken that bet in a heartbeat.

“It was fifteen to one when we left,” Kent explained “I put five Jacksons down.”

Nicole shook her head. If it took a bet to keep Kent civil, she was going to take it.

“A little unfair, though, don’t you think since the bet was about your behavior?”

Kent shrugged. “They didn’t think I could stay civil, period, even with five hundred bucks on the line.”

Nicole chucked. Yah, that was true. Not even she would have guessed he could keep it under control, even for that much money.

“What were the odds?” she asked.

“Fifty to one.”

Nicole whistled that was a chunk of change. “Hope you are planning to take me out to eat.”

“Sure.”

Nicole’s eyes narrowed. “No drive through.”

“Not even Big T’s BBQ?”

Nicole shook her head. “It has to, at the least, have linen napkins.”

Kent rolled his eyes, but took her hand as they walked. “We’ll see.”

That was about the best she could expect out of Kent.

* * *

Ruben walked into the tech room. Joshua and Jimmi seemed all excited until they realized it was only him. Then both of their faces fell and they turned back to their keyboards.

So sorry, I’m not the stark raving mad lunatic you both worship.

He’d gotten Nicole’s text. Despite the fact that Lacey couldn’t remember the attack in detail, they might have gotten a solid lead out of her with this suspicious cable guy.

“Want to give me a preview of what’s going on?” Ruben asked.

“Nah,” Jimmi said.

“Don’t want to have to go over it again when Kent gets here,” Joshua elaborated.

Ruben wanted to say, “Let’s be clear, if Kent were here and I wasn’t, you’d move ahead?” But he didn’t. What would be the point? The answer would be a unanimous yes.

Luckily the doors opened and Kent whisked Nicole in. She looked much better than she had earlier this morning. He still thought that Glick should have sent her home, but he’d been overridden by everyone.

Kent looked around the room. “No Wanna be Amazon Queen Investigator?”

“Nah,” Jimmi stated. “She bailed forty-five minutes into the presentation.”

“Imagine that,” Kent stated. The men laughed although Ruben was pretty sure that was a dig at them, not Bridget. Ruben had sat through plenty of briefings by the two “J’s.” They were usually laden with multi-media touches, which only made them run longer. Numerous times Ruben had wished he could have bailed, but as the detective he really couldn’t.

“Well?” Kent asked the guys.

Instead of the shoulder shrug and nearly teenage level of apathy they had given Ruben, Jimmi and Joshua started their dog and pony show.

“First off, Lacey was right,” Jimmi said scrolling through footage. “This guy was parked there for five straight days, yet didn’t go into a single house or do a single days’ work.”

“Did the cable company report any vans missing?”

“No, that’s the weird part,” Joshua said. “They swear every truck is accounted for. I even made the supervisor go out and do a visual inspection of all the rigs.”

“Maybe he stole it from another district?”

Jimmi shook his head. “We checked across the tristate area. None missing. None.”

“Maybe we should go nationwide.” Ruben suggested.

“Do you have any idea how long that would take?” Jimmi asked.

“I agree,” Kent stated. “This guy is pretty damned sophisticated. Work outward, going state by state until you have them all.”

Jimmi frowned, but Ruben noticed that the tech didn’t argue with their resident Svengali.

“Anything on the necklace?” Nicole asked.

“I’m working my way up Tanya’s family tree,” Joshua answered, “But so far no one who pops out as wanting to kill her for it.”

“So you called me in, with nothing to show me?” Kent asked with a disapproving frown. Ruben could feel the shift in the room, both Jimmi and Joshua sat up straighter.

“Of course not,” Jimmi said, however he didn’t exactly rush into what he did have.

“Never,” Joshua reassured them all without changing the monitor.

“We got Lucky 37’s license plate number from the hospital footage!” Jimmi said excitedly and brought it up on the screen.

Nicole tilted her head. “Are you saying that it is unlike the rest? It wasn’t stolen?”

Joshua seemed deflated. “No. It was stolen and he’s probably already changed them.”

“So nothing, then,” Kent said. “It’s getting time for me to head out to stalk both Lucky 37 and Buzz Kill and this is all we have to go on? An antique necklace and we don’t even have the cable guy’s face?”

Neither Jimmi nor Joshua would look at Kent. Ruben could feel their disappointment. Hell, his other three cases had been bumped back for Buzz Kill. Everyone’s focus was on the chainsaw wielding murderer.

“You can’t track Lucky by his motorcycle like you did last night?” Nicole asked.

Jimmi shook his head again. “That was late at night with his bike the only one on the road. During the day, there is way too much other noise to be able to pick him out of traffic.”

“Lucky 37 is going to kill again in the next three nights and more than likely Buzz Kill will be on a tear again, literally, and this is all you have?”

“No,” Jimmi said, “But this lead is really, really early.”

“Too early,” Joshua jumped in.

“Show me,” Kent said taking a step forward. His tone did not brook argument.

Ruben watched as Jimmi spun a dial and a new piece of footage was on the main monitor. This was of a hospital hallway. It looked like somewhere down in the basement.

They watched a man that Ruben had to assume was the serial killer they had been hunting for weeks. It looked like the sketches of Lucky 37, only cleaned up. In khakis even.

Ruben glanced at Kent. He was watching the footage, engrossed as if he could learn something important just by Lucky’s gait. Then the serial killer stopped, faced the camera and said something. It was difficult to make out since the image was so blurry.

“Can’t you clean that up?” Kent demanded.

“Like we said, way too early,” Jimmi said. “Down there they still have old VHS cameras. That footage isn’t even digital.”

“It’s going to take us a few hours, “Joshua insisted. “And even then we are going to have to use experimental software to fill the gaps, pixel by pixel.”

“Your violin needs tuning,” Kent shot back. “I want that footage.”

“Rewind it,” Rube instructed. His cousin was deaf and he’d learned a bit of lip reading. He was surprised that Kent wasn’t all over that. Was there truly a skill that Ruben possessed that the vaulted profiler did not?

Jimmi did as instructed. “I’m telling you the resolution is too low for any of the programs to pick up --”

“I think… I think Lucky 37 just said…” Ruben hesitated, “Rewind it again,” Ruben ordered wanting to make sure it is what Lucky said and not what Ruben wanted him to say. “I think Lucky just said, ‘Sucker.’”

* * *

Nicole’s eyes flashed to Kent. He did not like being dissed by anyone let along a serial killer he couldn’t catch.

“Sucker?” Kent repeated. “I don’t get it.”

That was a rarity. Usually after an unusual turn in a case like this, his face would cloud over and would rush out of the room with everyone chasing after him, physically and intellectually.

“Seriously,” Kent said. “Does anyone have any idea why Lucky would call me sucker?” The profiler turned to Ruben, “Come on, you’ve got to have an opinion on this.”

Ruben’s face scrunched up as if he was trying to decide if Kent was setting him up. Not that Nicole could blame her partner. Kent was known for his baiting as much as his profiling.

“I mean it,” Kent said. “I can’t for the life of me understand why he’d call me that.”

Ruben hesitated again, glancing around the room. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me,” Kent replied.

“Doesn’t it mean…” Ruben paused again. “That you are a sucker for believing that Lucky 37 is helping you?”

Oh, no her partner didn’t, Nicole thought.

Nicole got ready to intervene. To physically step between the two of them, but Kent, shocking the entire room just sighed.

“No, it’s not that,” Kent said sounding sadder than she’d heard him in a long while. “I almost wish it were that. That would make sense.” Kent pointed to the video screen. “This… this doesn’t make any sense.”

Nicole was slightly emboldened by Ruben’s brash statement. “Kent, we know that you feel convinced that Lucky is helping you, but don’t we have to, just for a second, especially in the face of this tape, have to consider that Lucky isn’t?”

She expected a lot of things from Kent, but sitting down and stealing a sip of Jimmi’s Mr. Pibb was not one of them.

The profiler’s tone was surprisingly even and calm. No recrimination or defensiveness. Just totally level. “So let me get your theory straight. You are suggesting that Lucky is playing the long con. Tricking me into believing he is helping me by actually helping me catch serial killers, but instead is ultimately going to turn on me and all he has to say is ‘Sucker’? And if your theory were true, why would he tip his hand like that? Your theory makes no sense.” Kent said with a shake of his head. “No, we’re missing something. Something huge.”

Nicole’s eyes flickered over to Ruben. “Yes, that he is conning you.”

Kent rose, looking like his usual arrogant self. “Okay, let’s say you are all right. That Lucky accidentally helped me solve two other serial killer cases. And now he is what? Teaming up with Buzz Kill?”

“It wouldn’t be unprecedented,” Ruben countered, only riling Kent up more. The profiler was back on a roll. Nicole was glad to see it. Calm, cautious Kent seldom got the job done. Jerk, arrogant, rude Kent usually did.

“So suddenly after decades of killing unchecked, Buzz Kill wants to hitch his wagon to a killer that doesn’t rape or strangle? In this theory of yours what’s the up side for Lucky?”

“To mess with you?” Nicole offered.

* * *

It was like a blind man trying to describe to a deaf man the colors of a painting. Kent tried to reign in his impatience. It wasn’t their fault. Not even Ruben’s. They just didn’t get it. They just didn’t have a gut like Kent’s.

After tracking down hundreds of serial killers, Kent got a feel for each. He could predict their movements. He could leap ahead of the killers and catch them in the act.

Lucky 37 in many ways bucked the trend. His behavior had deviated significantly since Kent had spotted him in that biker bar. But even that deviation had a logical progression to it. Double crossing Kent just didn’t fit into Lucky’s moral code.

That was the part that the others didn’t seem to understand. How a serial killer could be a vicious rapist/murderer yet still have a very rigid moral standard. Lucky and Kent had formed an unspoken pact. Lucky didn’t like other people killing in his territory and was helping Kent catch them. And Kent caught them. Pact sealed.

Unless something else had shifted significantly, Lucky would abide by that pact. And he certainly wouldn’t call Kent a sucker for trusting his intel. That would reflect nearly as badly on Lucky as it did on Kent.

“Can you just trust me?” Kent asked his fiancée.

Her lips pursed as if she were going to speak, then she lowered her head. “You’ve earned that much I suppose.”

“Thank you,” Kent breathed out. “Lucky was referring to something else, which I believe is the key to the case.”

“But what?”

Kent shrugged. “While Lucky isn’t conning me, it’s still a game to him. He isn’t just going to tell me. This is the fun to him. Giving me just enough information to frustrate me.”

A loud ding sounded and everyone swung around to the screen.

“Holy mother of…” Jimmi said as he typed rapidly bringing up a map of Great Lakes in the process. “Kent you were right to expand the search, a cable truck was stolen a month ago.”

“And looky at this,” Joshua said as he brought up a rival screen, clearly trying to keep up with Jimmi. “There is a Marion Roslow, cable company employee who disappeared the same time as the truck.”

Joshua answered in a sing-song voice, “Oh after he was brought in for questioning then released for a double homicide, which get this, was done by a machete.”

“Machete?” Kent said as he sat back down. Now that was interesting. He glanced over the crime scene photos. They were pretty gory that Jimmi brought up. Lots of blood. And the perp didn’t just cut his victims, he sliced and diced them.

“Is it that far a step up from machete to chainsaw?” Nicole asked.

“It would be a consistent evolution,” Kent said as he chewed on this new information. Marion, Marion, Marion. What had you gotten yourself into?

“You said arrested, but not convicted?” Kent asked for clarification.

Joshua shook his perfectly coiffed head. “They had to cut him loose, not enough evidence to take to trial and they didn’t want to invoke double jeopardy.”

Kent could imagine. If you ran the risk of a trial and lost, that was it. Two macheted girls would never get justice. Kent’s eyes scanned the screen, taking in all the information. And there was a lot. The victims were Marion’s girlfriend and her best friend. Witnesses stated that Marion and his girlfriend were fighting and that she wanted to break things off, but Marion didn’t want to. Pretty classic crime of passion. ‘If I can’t have you then no one can.’ However the machete made for a rather gruesome outcome.

The file stated that Marion had no alibi per se. He said he was at a movie and had the ticket stub, but come on, who couldn’t slip out of theater, then slip back in at the end? That was about as soft of an alibi as they came.

The detective’s in Chicago’s big problem was that the murder weapon was never recovered and just because Marion’s DNA was all over the crime scene could be explained by Marion nearly cohabitating with the victim. He could only imagine the detective’s frustration at having to cut Marion loose.

Just another murderer to walk away. Or perhaps run away to their fair city. Big mistake on Marion’s part.

* * *

Since Kent wasn’t talking much, Nicole stepped in to fill in the breach. “Alright, let’s get a warrant for Marion’s phone records, bank statements, anything about him really.”

“Plus, let’s see if he hasn’t inserted himself someway into the case,” Kent added.

Nicole turned to her fiancée. “Because of the showy dump scenes?”

Kent nodded. She should have thought of that. “Now that we have a face, let’s do some facial recognition on all the crime scenes, see if he showed up to any or all of them to check on his handy work.”

“Absolutely,” Jimmi said, “But I can tell you he was already there.”

Nicole frowned. “Don’t tell me you hacked into his phone without a warrant. I want any charges we throw on him to stick.”

Jimmi shook his head. “No way. I’ve learned my lesson, thank you very much.”

“Then what is it?” Ruben asked, moving from the back of the room to join the group. She’d nearly forgotten he was there. Which was kind of a good thing. It meant he wasn’t busy goading Kent.

“I just scanned Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for his avatar, MRDeath, and found a bunch of pictures of the Buzz Kill crime scenes posted along with some really inappropriate comments.”

Nicole scanned the screen that Jimmi brought up. The tech was right. Marion was a piece of work. Commenting on the butchering techniques and glorifying the violence.

“Would he be stupid enough to post this if he were the killer?” Ruben asked.

Kent frowned. “I don’t know if stupid is the right word. Perhaps compulsed.”

Nicole took a step back from the screens. It was a little too easy to get tunnel vision when you were so immersed in a case. When in a bubble like this, it was easy to get too comfortable with the theory and not poke holes in it. And it felt like this one needed some holes poked, ASAP.

“Let’s back this up,” Nicole suggested. It was a little heady to go from absolutely no suspects to a prime suspect dumped in their lap.

“Yes, let’s,” Kent concurred, pushing back in his chair.

Nicole felt on the spot. Everyone staring at her, like she held the answers. Well, didn’t she? Or at least as few as any of them.

“Okay, so let’s walk this theory through…” Nicole said then sputtered out.

Ruben nodded for her to continue. He looked just a little glad it wasn’t him in the hot seat right now.

She took a deep breath. Kent was always saying that while she stepped up to the plate, she seldom took a swing, let alone a big one. Well, here went nothing.

“We are theorizing that Marion killed his girlfriend and best friend with a machete…” Nicole looked to Jimmi. “Is there evidence of any other violent crimes? Anything to lead up to the machete incident?”

Jimmi’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “A few bar fights, but nothing major.”

Nicole turned to Kent. “So on the basis of that, do you think Marion could have jumped right into murder by machete?”

Surprisingly Kent took a few moments to think before answering. He seldom pondered. They really must be in trouble if Kent was pondering. What seemed straight forward, Marion starting with a machete, stealing a cable van, moving to their city and starting to murder with a chainsaw became less and less of a sure thing as silence hung in the air. Kent was uncomfortable with the new information which made Nicole uncomfortable over all. She really wanted to have a prime suspect.

Kent went to open his mouth, at that exact moment, the door swung open and Bridget and her film crew blew in.

“There you are!” Bridget exclaimed, turning around to face the camera as she walked backward into the room. “And here we are at the heart of the investigation. The team assembled to review the evidence before hitting the streets again in search of perhaps the most vicious serial killer in the United States.”

Wow, Bridget really could pour it on thick if she wanted to. Nicole noticed that Ruben straightened in his seat while Kent leaned even further back in his chair, then swung his feet onto a desk. Nicole wanted to reach out and swipe those feet off the desk, but that probably wouldn’t look any better on camera.

“And what are we doing now?” Bridget asked.

“Solving crimes without you,” Kent answered.

Bridget’s heavily eye lined lids narrowed. You could tell that she equally hated Kent and needed the profiler. Kind of like the rest of the world.

“Want to catch us up?” Bridget asked Kent who promptly ignored her.

“Nicole, why don’t you go on?” Ruben suggested.

“I’d just asked Kent whether or not, without any kind of ramp up Marion could go from bar fights to murder by machete.”

“Murder by machete?” Bridget exclaimed. “When did this happen?”

Ruben was the one to answer. “About two months ago in Chicago.” Being the dutiful detective he brought Bridget up to speed. He truly was the opposite of Kent in every way. Ruben finished up, “Then the prime suspect left the jurisdiction along with a cable van. A cable van that now appears to have been used to surveil Lacey before the attack.”

“Gotcha,” Bridget said, nodding vigorously. “So we’re looking at Marion as our prime suspect?”

Nicole shook her head. “No, we’re going over the theory of the crime, trying to even see if this set of circumstances warrants our attention.”

Bridget swung around, aiming the mic at Kent. “Well, does it?”

Kent shrugged as he was apt to do in these situations. “Normally I would say that with the level of overkill in the machete murders, that no, bar fights and a few petty drug charges would not prepare Marion for that kind of violent escalation.”

“But?” Bridget asked, leaning in making her long legs appear even longer on camera. Nicole was going to have to remember that trick.

“But it was a crime of passion,” Kent explained. “My guess is the girlfriend tried to break up with him, he got pissed, the friend tried to intervene and voilà, the machete murders.”

“So he is your prime suspect,” Bridget insisted, her piercing blue eyes flashing in the bright camera lights.

“No,” Kent said. “He is a person of interest who we are going to pull in for questioning.”

Bridget turned back to the camera, flashing that TV presenter smile. “There you have it. A crime on the verge of being solved.”

How Nicole wished that were really true.

* * *

This crime was on the verge of nothing, Ruben thought but didn’t mention to Bridget. He’d had enough bad moments on film, he didn’t wish to add another.

The room broke up with Kent and Nicole heading out the door and the techs turning back to their work. He noticed that Bridget was hot on the profiler’s tail, leaving Ruben to sit there with the techs once again.

Ruben took it that it would be up to him to track down Marion and haul him in. Seldom did Kent do any kind of actual police work.

“Do you have an address for him?” Ruben asked.

“Oh, you’re still here,” Jimmi stated.

“Yes,” Ruben answered not even bothering to be put out by his near invisibility. There was a crime to solve. “And the answer to my question?”

“Texted to you already,” Joshua answered.

Ruben looked to his phone. Sure enough an address on the east side popped up. “You’ll let me know once those warrants come through and you get his records.”

“Sure,” Jimmi said without turning around.

Ruben was certain that the tech meant “sure, I’ll let Kent know right away.”

There was no point in lingering here so Ruben headed out to his car.

It was quite a ways from the tech basement lair to the parking lot. Guess he wasn’t going to have to jump on the treadmill tonight. His steps echoed off the cement floor as he made his way across the complex in the underground tunnels. Just one more reason he hated coming down here.

The garage was dank and depressing. He feared it mirrored his own mood. Normally he would have liked Marion for the murders, but with Kent being on the fence he began to question his own judgment. And he hated it when he couldn’t trust his decade’s honed instincts.

Soon though he was out and into the fresh air. The day was already getting warm. He loosened his tie just a little as he got into his car. Nicole should, of course, be with him, but when was the last time that happened? Oh, just before Kent caught, re killed, the Plain Jane serial killer.

Like two years ago now. How much things had changed in that time. Now Nicole was engaged to Kent and Ruben was promised to Paggie.

His life was good so why did he still look at that empty seat with rancor?

The trip across town wasn’t bad. He’d gotten onto the freeway just after morning rush hour and before the afternoon crush. He pulled up to Marion’s apartment building wondering if this was truly the abode of a vicious serial killer. It looked like an average apartment complex. Boring even. There were probably a thousand like it in the city.

There was no security at the front door. No buzzer. No door man. Just a glass door that said Welcome to the Shady Brook apartment complex. Ruben noted that there was no shade, nor any brook.

He made his way up the stairs to the second floor to apartment 214. He looked to the number. It didn’t seem to have any meaning to it. He had perhaps expected 666?

Ruben knocked and an immediate “Be right there,” came from the other side of the door. Is that how serial killers answered their door? The sound of running steps came from the other side.

“Who is it?” a voice asked with the rattle of the chain.

“Police,” Ruben clarified, putting his badge up to the peephole.

“Police?” Marion’s squeaky voice answered from inside.

“Yes, please open up, we need to speak.”

The sound of the deadbolt clicked and the door opened as far as the chain would allow it. “You need to speak to me?”

Ruben held his annoyance. This was the part he was supposed to be good at. Massaging a suspect. Getting him ready for the interrogation. Unlike Kent who usually just started pelting the perp with accusation and odd questions about his childhood.

“Yes, can I come in please?” Ruben didn’t have a warrant. Not yet at least.

“Why?”

Marion had been questioned, a lot back in Chicago. He was naturally wary of a policeman showing up at his door. Ruben forced himself to exhale through his nose, calming himself. This was going to be a long day. Without a warrant he was going to have to talk his way in. Which was why he hadn’t simply sent a patrol unit out to make the scoop. “We have some questions about your blog.”

“My blog?” Marion asked but this time with a bit of intrigue.

“Yes,” Ruben answered yet again. “We think you may have seen something that maybe you didn’t even know when you are at the crime scenes.”

That got the door to close and the chain to come off. Long before Kent ever arrived on the scene, Ruben had learned to play to ego. No one wanted to answer questions about their life. But their passion? Oh, they were all over that. And it was clear that Marion’s blog was his passion.

“Come in, come in,” Marion stated, waving Ruben through the door.

The guy looked like what a serial killer should. Brow and lip piercings. A snake tat coursing up his neck. His apartment reflected his angst rock look.

Posters of Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and several bands that Ruben had never heard of such as 10 Dead before Noon and Just Before the Funeral lined Marion’s walls.

Ruben scanned the room for any chainsaws or machetes. None were obvious. But would Buzz Kill really be that careless?

“We would like you to come down and answer a few questions to see if perhaps you noticed something that we didn’t.”

Marion smiled, tilting his lip bar upright. “I’ve been covering crime for nearly a year, surprised it took you this long to notice me.”

Another tried and true tactic. Make the suspect feel superior to you.

“Let me grab my car keys,” Marion stated as he started fishing around the ceramic ashtray.

“No need,” Ruben said. “I will give you a lift to the station and we’ll drive you back.”

“Okay…” Marion said, sounding concerned again.

Ruben forced a smile on his lips. “Don’t want you to waste your gas on our behalf.”

“Ya, sure,” Marion replied a little more relaxed, but not nearly as relaxed as he was a moment ago.

“So, how many hits have you had this month?” Ruben asked as they walked out the door trying to calm Marion’s nerves.

“Over twenty thousand. Man, those pics are really pulling in the readers.”

Ruben allowed the suspect to ramble on about his blog. It felt like being trapped with the two J’s again. Only they actually talked about things that might matter unlike Marion who was busy explaining how he was driving traffic to his blog through Pinterest.

The things he did for his job…

CHAPTER 12

“You coming?” Glick asked Kent as he lounged in Nicole’s chair in the detective bullpen. Kent didn’t have his own desk. Why, when he had Nicole’s?

“In a minute,” Kent said. He hated standing there outside the interrogation room as they went through the formalities. Informing the suspect they weren’t under arrest, however if they wanted an attorney present they could blah, blah, blah.

Plus it was kind of fun to piss off Bridget. Who looked ready to pee her pants in excitement to film a live interrogation.

“You can go ahead,” Kent offered but he already knew Bridget’s decision. She was not about to let Kent out of her sight, which was probably a good choice, because the first chance he had to ditch the woman, he would take it, even if it meant missing out on an interrogation.

“We can wait,” Bridget said as predicted.

Kent let the seconds tick off in his head. He knew that Nicole would be getting nervous, wondering where he was. Good. She did better when her adrenaline was coursing through her veins.

Glick tapped his foot a few times, then turned and headed to the interrogation room. The captain simply didn’t have the patience for serial killer profiling.

Kent allowed several more minutes to pass before he rose and followed Glick.

“Get rolling,” Bridget snapped at her cameraman. The bright lights shone again, filling the narrow hallway between the interrogation rooms.

“Is that him? Buzz Kill?” Bridget asked in a rush.

Kent glanced through the one-way glass. “No.”

“No?” Bridget asked. “They haven’t even asked him any questions yet.”

“Look at his body language. His arms are crossed over his abdomen, a protective position. His pupils are dilated in fear. Buzz Kill would be confident. This would be part of the game. He wants to interact with the police. He would see this as a challenge, not a dangerous situation.” Kent took in a breath. “Serial killers are if anything supremely overconfident.”

Bridget squinted looking through the glass, giving her cameraman directions. “Make sure to get close ups of his arms and eyes to cut to during Harbinger’s explanation.”

Kent put in the ear bud that Glick offered him, tapping it to turn it on. “Babe, sorry, not our guy.”

Nicole turned in her chair, giving him a world-class glare. She was going to make a great mother. That glare was going to be able to stop a teenager from going out and smoking a few joints.

On him however, not all that effective. She hated it when he made an early decision like this, but hey, he could only call it how he saw it. And he saw a guilty man, just not of his victims.

“Even if we suppose you are correct,” Glick stated. “Don’t we want to know if he killed his girlfriend back in Chicago?”

“Oh, he did it,” Kent said. “Otherwise why would he be so nervous?”

“Funny, Harbinger,” Glick replied with no humor in his voice. “But our DA likes things like proof or a confession.”

Kent sighed. Why did the entire criminal justice system rest on his shoulders?

“Fine,” he sighed. “But let’s make this quick. We’ve got two serial killers to catch.”

On the other side of the glass, Nicole nodded, turning her attention back to Marion.

* * *

Kent had just dodged a bullet from Nicole. Had he bailed on her with a perp in the chair, the profiler would have been sleeping alone for a few weeks.

Ruben stirred next to her.

Nicole waited a few breaths, expecting Kent to supply her with the questions, but he didn’t. Typical Kent. Leave her hanging.

Oh well, this was her job after all. She had been interviewing perps long before Kent crashed into her life. And he’d already given her plenty of information. They shouldn’t concentrate on the Buzz Kill murders, but instead focus on Chicago.

Nicole spread out photos the J’s had pulled from Marion’s blog. “You certainly seem to like blood.”

Marion shrugged. “It sells the blog.”

She nodded, seeming sympathetic to him. “You didn’t always like this much blood, did you?”

The perp’s eyes darted back and forth from Nicole to Ruben. “I guess…”

Ruben smiled. “Why detective Usher, I believe that Marion already knows what you are angling at.”

“Detective Torres, I believe he does.”

“I…I…” Marion stuttered. “I thought we were talking about the Buzz Kill murders and my blog?”

“Oh how cute,” Ruben taunted. “He bought it.”

By now the perp was off balance. She and Ruben had always made a great team. At the least in the interrogation room. In bed, not so much.

Marion squirmed in his chair. “I don’t understand.”

Perhaps the suspect was a little too off balance. In another few seconds he might ask for a lawyer and they really didn’t want that to happen.

So Nicole backed off a bit. “Okay, Marion why did you leave Chicago and the cable company?”

The suspect brightened a little. “I got a better job offer.”

Ruben shuffled some papers. “I don’t see that you transferred to another cable company.”

“No way. That was just my day job until I could get my blog up and running.”

Ruben’s eyebrow went up. “You mean you are making your living off your blog?”

Nicole was equally surprised. She’d seen his blog. It was nothing to write home about. “Tell us, how did you manage that? My brother has been trying to do the same thing and can’t get any traction.”

That could also be due to the fact he was trying to blog about ground soil contamination. A noble cause, but not one that got you a blog sponsorship.

“What can I say? I’m just that good. I think the difference is that I really get in there to get the really graphic photos. I’m telling you a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Ruben still didn’t seem convinced. “And who exactly is paying you?”

“Don’t know,” Marion said. “I got an offer via email and get paid through PayPal. They only stipulated that I needed to cover all violent crime in depth when they hired me. I even got moving expenses.”

Nicole looked to Ruben who got his phone out and started texting. She figured it was to Jimmi to start a trace on that money. Had someone lured him here to begin his killing? Was there a puppet master behind it all? Was that why Marion wasn’t vibing on Kent’s radar.

“If we are through with amateur journalism hour,” Kent said in her ear. “The guy isn’t winning any Pulitzer any time soon, can we get back to the whole confession thing?”

Nicole nodded slightly, enough so Kent could see her, but not enough to attract Marion’s attention. He seemed more relaxed though. His hands were folded on the table in front of him.

“There was so much blood, wasn’t there?” Kent asked in Nicole’s ear. It seemed that he wanted to jump back into the deep end. She repeated the question.

Marion’s eyes darted so quickly it looked like he was watching a tennis game on crack.

“Blood? Where? When?”

“Oh, Marion, you know the answer to all those questions,” Nicole purred not needing Kent to guide her any further. “Don’t you?”

“No,” Marion snapped back much like a child who you caught with his fingers in the cookie jar.

“You didn’t expect so much blood, did you, Marion?” Nicole pressed. “People don’t realize how acrid blood smells if there is enough of it. The iron taste on your tongue. The warm sticky sensation on your hands. It envelopes you. Surrounds you. Consumes you.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Marion said, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair, back away from her and her accusations.

“Be careful,” Kent warned in her ear. “You can’t alienate him too much.”

Nicole felt like responding, tell me something I don’t already know, but she couldn’t break the rhythm of the interrogation.

“It overwhelmed you, didn’t it?” Nicole prodded. “It happens all the time. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

That got Marion to lean forward again. See? She didn’t always need Kent, however even she had to admit she was emboldened by Kent’s presence behind the one-way glass. She trusted him to reel her back in if she went too far, which made her all the more brazen and better for it.

“The vomit. It is actually quite common for a first time killer to throw up right after the kill.”

Ruben nodded. “Shockingly common.”

“I… What? I didn’t…” Marion couldn’t even finish his sentence.

“When the Chicago police questioned you about it you said that you had vomited the week before after getting food poisoning at a seafood restaurant.”

Marion’s arms were back to being crossed again. His face a mask of defiance.

“Ah, but you see, we are a bit more dogged,” Nicole explained. “We tested the vomit for any form of food poisoning and guess what?”

Marion’s face blanched and his arms fell away from his chest. “What?”

“We didn’t find any. Not a one. That food was perfectly fine and not even fish.”

The perp’s eyes darted again as his cheeks flushed. Nicole was bluffing of course. She wasn’t even sure if there was a test like that and lord knew even if there was, there hadn’t been time to run it, but Kent was a big fan of lying, surprise, surprise, so she went for it.

“I think you need to get back on Yelp and give an apology to Mr. Yang’s Sushi and Roll.”

“I…I… it had been over a week, I couldn’t remember…”

Nicole let him stammer on, digging himself deeper and deeper into his obvious lie. Eventually Marion gave up. His head hung so low that his chin hit his chest.

Kent’s voice was seductive in her ear. “That wasn’t how it was supposed to go, was it?”

* * *

Ruben hated it when Kent forced Nicole to go all submissive and seductive. Her voice was silk. It caressed his ear. He wanted to lean into. Believe it was meant for him, but it wasn’t. It was to lure Marion and not for sex, but for a confession.

“You loved her. You went over there to make things right,” Nicole cajoled.

“It was just a misunderstanding,” Marion answered. Damn it, but that tone worked every time. “She thought I’d posted a birthday greeting for an ex-girlfriend on Facebook, but it had been an automated post that I forgot to delete.”

Could a double murder really have all started from a Facebook posting? People were getting weirder and weirder by the day. In Ruben’s mind, social media wasn’t bringing people closer together, it was driving them stark raving mad.

“You just went over there to explain,” Nicole encouraged, clearly trying to get the perp to open up.

Marion nodded.

“But she wasn’t hearing it, was she?” Nicole asked. “And her friend was riding you. Not letting you get a word in edgewise.”

“The bitch was telling her how the post was proof I was cheating on her. That doesn’t even make sense. Wouldn’t I hide it better?” Marion asked.

“So instead of an apology it turned into an argument.”

“An argument that traveled into the garage,” Ruben added.

Marion didn’t verbally respond but his shoulders slumped and his face drained of color again.

“What did she say?” Nicole pressed. “What made you reach your hand out for the machete?”

The perp was silent, but his eyes flickered back and forth under closed lids. He was reliving the murders again.

“You didn’t mean to. You hadn’t come over to hurt her,” Nicole stated. Ruben knew that she had to remain as sympathetic to Marion as possible. Still it cut across the grain to do so. The perp had killed two young women because his ego had been bruised. Ruben wanted to jump over the table and throttle the guy, not coddle him, but they needed a confession. They had absolutely no evidence to convict him of the murders back in Chicago.

“Trust me,” Ruben said. “I know how it feels. For you to be so much more into your girl than she is into you. It hurts. And when she says it to your face? She made the first cut, man.”

His eyes glanced over to Nicole. They had danced a similar dance a few years ago. This was all getting a little too personal for Ruben, but he knew he had to go there. The more of your real life you could put into your interrogation, the better. The more genuine points of connection, the more likely the perp was to open up. He knew Kent was chuckling behind the glass, but that couldn’t matter to Ruben. Not now. Not when they were so close.

Marion nodded vigorously. “She shouldn’t have said she was glad to be rid of me. No more holding my hand during sex.”

Yep. There is was. The inciting incident. The statement that broke poor Marion’s fragile ego. A statement like that would cut any man to the bone, however it didn’t mean he had to kill.

Then the sobbing started and the “I’m so sorrys” began.

Ruben only hoped the mics picked up all the “I didn’t mean to do its.” and “She made me do its.”

Nicole rose. Ruben’s signal he could leave as well. Now it was for the lawyers to decide what to do with Marion.

* * *

Nicole stepped out into the hallway to find Bridget ready with her rather aggressive microphone.

“So Detective Usher, how did it feel to break that suspect?”

“As it always does, both gratifying and sad.”

Bridget cocked her rather dangerously hair-sprayed head. She really shouldn’t be standing that close to the hot lights. Nicole feared the TV host was going to go up in flames at any moment. “Sad?”

“Yes, because I’m only in there because someone’s daughter or son was killed. There is no glory in this. Just resolution.”

Nicole looked around Bridget finding her crew and Glick. “Where’s Kent?”

Bridget swung around apparently shocked that the profiler had gotten away from her… again.

“Where… How did he get away?” Bridget asked the captain who shrugged.

“I swear that man’s got a white stallion waiting at all times.”

No, not a stallion, but a Mustang. Nicole was sure that Kent had slipped out and taken her car off to who knew where.

“So what is the plan now?” Glick asked. “If we believe Kent, Marion isn’t Buzz Kill.”

It wasn’t just Kent. Nicole didn’t believe the man capable of pre-meditated murder either. She glanced over her shoulder as the man sobbed hysterically. A hardened criminal he was not.

“Not sure, but I think I need to go back to the techs. See who else could have been at the cable van.”

“You do that,” Glick said, nodding to Marion. “Ruben, looks like we’ve got some paperwork to fill out. I’m sure Illinois is going to want their murderer back.”

With a groan, Nicole’s partner moved off. Nicole had hoped perhaps Bridget would follow Ruben, however clearly she did not care about the paperwork portion of the job.

“Well” Bridget pressed. “Are we leaving or what?”

Nicole didn’t want to admit that she didn’t have a car.

“Why don’t we ride over together?” Nicole suggested.

Bridget nearly peed her pants. To have a detective all to herself in the news van? It seemed like a wet dream to the TV host.

“And we can conduct a one-on-one interview about what it’s like to work with such a savant,” Bridget announced excitedly.

For joy.

* * *

Kent sat down in the comfy chair in the lab as the techs got their presentation ready. This was going to be a long one.

“Alright, now that we know Marion isn’t our guy,” Jimmi stated, “I assume you want to look back over the cable truck video?”

That might seem like the logical course of action, but Kent seldom followed conventional wisdom. Marion had been a pawn. He had been led by the nose to the city so that Buzz Kill could set him up for the murders. He was simply a patsy. On the surface he looked like a great suspect. Once you scratched the surface at all, his guilt looked as hollow as a donut.

Buzz Kill wanted him to focus on the cable van, so guess what? It was the last thing he was interested in right now.

“No,” Kent stated. “Time for Joshua to pull his weight.”

The young morgue attendant sat up straighter, his fingers hovering over his keyboard.

“That necklace was the cause of the first murder,” Kent explained. “The chain-sawing just evolved from that.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Joshua said, nodding vigorously. “I have been climbing the genealogy tree, but I can’t find anyone so far that would have had claim to the necklace who also might kill for it. So far a bunch of Judo moms and one cross-dresser, but that’s it. No one more sinister than that.”

“Keep pushing,” Kent said.

“No worries. I’ve got an algorithm scanning all birth and death records now. I should have a full twenty branch tree, within the hour.”

Kent nodded. Joshua better or he was going to lose his Kent cell phone privileges and Joshua liked nothing better than to call Kent at all hours of the night.

“Jimmi back to you, but not the cable van footage. We need to go further back than that. I want to know every single person who was at each crime scene.”

“Well, besides police,” Jimmi started to say, but Kent interrupted him.

“No. Including police,” Kent clarified. He needed to look at Buzz Kill with all new eyes. Framing someone as well as Buzz Kill had framed Marion took some pretty exceptional skill and patience. Something a person in the law enforcement industry might have. It wouldn’t be the first time a cop had gone over to the dark side.

Jimmi frowned but complied. He brought up a split screen. Each individual frame had the crime scene log for each murder. Jimmi had highlighted the signatures with a hue of the color spectrum. Kent’s was in dark blue. His signature highlighted across the different crime scenes. The boys really liked their multimedia presentations.

“The police that were consistent are you, Usher, Torres, Glick and Tandy.”

“Tandy?” Kent questioned.

“Yeah, the crime scene officer,” Jimmi replied.

“Can you calculate the odds of Tandy being the officer on all murders just by coincidence?”

Jimmi didn’t type anything. “The guy is as stand up as you could get. Tandy is not our guy.”

“Yet strangely I asked for a statistic, not your opinion.”

“Ya,” Joshua emphasized. Kent gave a single look and Joshua went back to his work on the genealogy tree.

Jimmi spun around in his chair as his fingers flew over the keys. “This isn’t New York. We have a fairly light, skeleton crew on the late shift which Tandy works so the odds are… Seventy nine point eight six percent he would pull all of these crime scenes.”

Damn it. Another suspect ruled out. They had gotten good at that. Ruling suspects out, not so much about finding them. Kent leaned back in his chair. “We had to be sure.”

Kent squinted at Jimmi’s elaborate crime scene chart extravaganza. “Pull up all non-cops who attended the crime scene. After we clear one, drop it from the roster.”

Jimmi complied. Now that all the cops were off, there were only a few names that cut across the entire spectrum of crime scenes. The usual suspects like Joshua the morgue attendant. A few CSIs. A crime reporter.

Then a name jumped off the list as the others were cleared

Bridget.

What the hell was she doing there?

“She was at all the crime scenes?” Kent asked for clarification.

“Yeppers. I mean, she is reporting on the cases.”

“Yes, but why the first one?” Kent demanded. “Why was she even in town then? I thought she only officially came on board on this case after the second murder?”

Jimmi shrugged. “She said she was doing research.”

“Really? She came to our non-top 5 media markets to look for crime?”

“She said she was researching you,” Joshua said. “Waiting for your next big case.”

Kent leaned forward in his chair, making the old shocks creak. “Doesn’t that sound a little convenient? A carefully crafted excuse?”

Jimmi looked to Joshua then back to Kent. “Not really.”

A theory was beginning to form. Bridget wouldn’t be the first newscaster to create a little news of her own. But was she capable of it?

“I need everything you have on Bridget brought up.”

“Um, that’s like a lot,” Jimmi said. The tech was right. Pages and pages of search results came up.

“Focus on her childhood then,” Kent suggested.

Jimmi typed a few commands in and the number of articles reduced dramatically. Kent scanned the headlines. It was all confirmed what he already suspected about Bridget.

“Send the top five to my phone.”

“Your phone or Glick’s?”

Kent just gave Jimmi that look. Glick’s of course. The stolen phone dinged with the information.

Kent scanned it quickly. It held all the info he needed.

Just then the door burst open and Bridget, along with her crew and Nicole walked in.

“Just the person I wanted to see,” Kent stated.

CHAPTER 13

Nicole stopped in her tracks. Something was wrong. Really wrong. When Kent invited a newscaster into the room, it spelled disaster.

Jimmi and Joshua had that look on their face like right before Kent did something crazy. It was an odd mix of horror and admiration. And there was that glint in Kent’s eye.

This wasn’t going to be pretty. She had no idea what was going to be ugly, but it was something and it was soon.

Nicole couldn’t allow a media nightmare to unfold. Glick would kill her.

“So what’s going on?” Nicole asked very pointedly to her fiancée.

The profiler had that angelic look about him. There was definitely trouble brewing.

“Nothing much,” Kent stated rolling his chair back and rising.

If something got him out of his chair Nicole was thinking it was more “much” than “nothing.”

Bridget however was not as well versed in the Kent code as Nicole and took the bait. Walking forward, pointing her microphone at the profiler.

“Please, catch us up on the latest developments,” the TV host encouraged.

Kent got that smirk. Nicole was just glad it wasn’t aimed at her.

“Well,” Kent said sounding oh so helpful. Couldn’t Bridget see Kent was up to something? The profiler was never this forthcoming. “We’ve found a new suspect. Someone who was at all the crime scenes and does not have an alibi for the murder time frame.”

“And this would be?” Bridget asked, nearly drooling over the scoop she was about to get. You could see the “screw you Katie look on her face.”

“You,” Kent said in that singsong voice he got just before he eviscerated you.

Bridget took a step back, wobbling a bit on her high heels. “Me?” she squeaked.

“Oh please, don’t look so surprised. You knew you’d make the list eventually.”

“I don’t… I…” Bridget looked to her crew. “Tell them. Tell them I was with you, working on the footage.”

Bridget’s producer shrugged. “The logs are the logs Bridget. You were gone for hours at a time ‘doing research.’”

The TV host’s cheek drew a bright red. Guess you should have treated your crew better, Nicole thought. Karma was such a bitch. Nicole was mildly surprised that Kent had accused Bridget, but she could tell there was something more. Something even deeper than accusing her of being Buzz Kill. What could be worse than accusing her of that? The profiler was angling for something. Something deep and dark and private. And knowing Kent, he wouldn’t stop until he found it.

“Do you really want to do this typical perp “I’m innocent” dance or get to the real heart of the matter?” Kent questioned.

“I am not Buzz Kill,” Bridget hissed.

“Maybe, maybe not, but you’ve got a secret,” Kent insisted.

Bridget pulled up to her full height, towering over the rest of them. “I live my life on camera.”

Which Nicole noted was not a denial per se. People were so fascinating. They told you everything if you just knew how to listen.

Kent, seemingly not intimidated in the least by the tall host, continued. “Maybe now, but in your youth? Back when you were diagnosed as a psychopath?”

Nicole watched the scene unfold very carefully. Behind Bridget her crew’s eyes opened wide and there were sharp intakes of breath. Bridget however didn’t move. She just kept breathing steadily. Her body actually relaxed as if the revelation took a burden off of her.

“You’re a smart one,” Bridget said in perfect conversational tone to Kent. “Perhaps even living up to your reputation which is surprising. Most people disappoint in person.”

Kent just smiled. He knew exactly how good he was. He went to continue but the shorter woman stepped forward.

“But, but…” her producer said. “She’s charismatic, how can she be charismatic and be a psychopath?”

Kent waved the brunette’s concerns away. “Simply because psychopaths do not have any true empathy and remorse doesn’t mean they can’t fake it. Bundy, HH Holmes, and many more were charming as could be while still having a dead heart.”

“Are you getting all of this?” Bridget asked the cameraman. He nodded up and down, making the red light on his camera blink. That was the TV host always thinking of her fans.

“But Bridget actually learned her charm didn’t you?” Kent asked. “Upon your diagnosis your parents panicked and put you into group therapy. The worst possible decision they could have made.”

Bridget only touched her knuckle to the corner of her eye, keeping her mascara from smearing.

“Why was it the worst mistake?” Nicole asked. She’d never heard that before.

Kent sat back down in his chair. “It is the perfect training ground for psychopaths to learn how to fake emotion,” he explained.

“How did you figure it out?” Bridget asked.

“Oh please, like I didn’t spot you right off at the crime scene,” Kent said with a wave of his hand.

Nicole reviewed every time she had been around Kent and Bridget. She was slowly starting to put the pieces together. “You sent Bridget into the carousel to see how she reacted?”

Kent nodded. “You were good, I have to admit, Bridget.” Kent continued. “You looked physically repulsed by the carnage and sincerely nauseated, but you held your belly too low. If you truly were sick, you would have held it up higher and to the left. You were acting out appendicitis pain.”

Bridget didn’t argue.

* * *

Joshua was trying to keep his excitement in check. To have two of his favorite people going at it was like a kid’s first trip to the circus, you know, before he realized the elephants were abused and the bearded lady was a fake.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Nicole asked Kent.

That was a completely valid question in Joshua’s mind. Kent did let a psychopath run around with them for days.

“Why would I?” Kent retorted. “One in a thousand is a psychopath. I would be blurting that out a lot if I had to report each time I spotted one.”

One in a thousand? Dang that was a lot of psychopaths.

“Just because one is a psychopath does not make one a killer,” Bridget said seeming to regroup.

Kent chuckled. Joshua liked it when Kent chuckled. It made him feel safe. If you were going to be in a room with a psychopath, you really wanted your FBI agent relaxed enough to chuckle.

“No, it doesn’t,” Kent agreed. “Only one in one hundred psychopaths are criminals and only one in ten thousand of those is a killer.”

“So that’s… one in a million is a psycho killer?” Joshua confirmed.

Kent nodded. “Now on wall street, one out of every ten executives are psychopaths. Surgeons. Let’s just say a lot of them. Military brass, again, another hot spot.” Kent rose and walked around Bridget. “Oh but, you my dear are a piece of work. You are that one in a million.”

Bridget got a smirk before she responded. “Prove it.”

“Oh, I won’t have to, you’re going to tell me all about it,” Kent insisted.

Bridget’s smirk left her face. “I am not Buzz Kill.”

Joshua’s computer chimed. He couldn’t believe the name on the screen. The results of the in-depth genealogy search had produced a singular name. Bridget Fairweather.

“How surprising,” Kent said without looking at the screen. “Bridget was related to Tanya.”

Joshua gulped. “Yes.”

“What are you talking about?” Bridget demanded.

Kent indicated to Bridget’s lapel. “That triple lion pin you wear, it’s Henry the 8th’s crest.”

“So what of it?”

“You were also heir to the Boleyn necklace.”

“What are you talking about?” the TV host asked.

It seemed that Bridget was genuinely irritated and didn’t know what Kent was talking about.

“Tell me who you have killed or you will go down as a money scheming witch who killed for money, not for the satisfaction.”

The TV host’s eyes narrowed. He loved it when Bridget did that. It was usually when she was interviewing someone who was holding back. Just like Kent she’d go for the jugular in those situations. It must have felt weird to be on the receiving end of that stick.

“What makes you so sure I’ve killed?” Bridget demanded of the profiler.

“Because you seem content. The only time psychopaths are content is when they are fulfilling their psychopathy,” Kent responded.

“I’m not going to make it that easy for you.”

Kent smiled though, leaning far back in his chair. “Yes, you are.”

Bridget shifted her weight from one foot to the other, clearly not understanding where Kent was going with this. Joshua didn’t know either, but hey, he seldom did. And who cared? The ride was just so fun.

He nudged Jimmi and nodded to the drawer. Carefully the tech pulled it open and grabbed a big bag of caramel popcorn that they had been saving for just such an occasion.

Bridget crossed her arms. “No, I’m not.”

Kent’s smile never wavered. “Bridget, you’re smart enough to follow all of this through. How is it going to play out?”

Joshua didn’t think the TV anchor realized she bit her lower lip. Apparently psychopaths could feel some anxiety. Maybe not fear, but at the least confusion and concern.

“I know you’ve killed Bridget. I’m going to find your victims,” Kent said as he stood up and dragged his finger along the desk. “You’re going to lose your job and be imprisoned. Your only concern now should be your legacy.”

Bridget frowned.

“You have built an empire,” Kent stated. “Do you want to go out with a whimper or a bang?”

Joshua could practically see the wheels turning inside of Bridget’s mind. Her image was important to her. That was clear.

“What do you suggest?” Bridget asked.

“You confess and I guarantee you a full hour interview with me on how I caught you.”

Bridget’s eyes narrowed again. “I will get to host my own episode?”

Kent shrugged. “I can’t say what your network will do, but I can promise to give you the interview. What you do with it after that is your problem.”

“I am not Buzz Kill,” she repeated.

“Then prove it,” Kent challenged.

There was a moment of silence as Bridget’s eyes scanned the room. It looked like she was trying to gauge everyone’s response. Who believed Kent and who didn’t?

She went to smooth her dress, only she didn’t smooth her dress. Instead she pulled a knife and flung it at her cameraman square in the chest, just below his camera, then grabbed her producer and sinking a blade into her back.

* * *

Everyone else gasped except Kent. Why was everyone so surprised by serial killers? They were, well, killers…

Nicole and Ruben were up, guns pointed at Bridget.

“Let her go,” Nicole demanded.

“Oh my dear, I can’t…” Bridget stated. “My knife has cut through the renal artery. If I remove the blade she will bleed out in twenty heartbeats.”

The cameraman was on the floor, yet propped himself up to film the proceedings, even though he had a knife in his chest. Bright red blood streaked down his grey T-shirt. The blade bounced with every heartbeat. He wasn’t going to make it once the knife was pulled out either.

Ruben was busy calling for back-up and ambulances. It was useless but that was Ruben for you. Bridget had gotten the drop on them. It happened. There wasn’t much else they could do. Kent didn’t have enough on her to arrest her. Until she threw that blade she was just a person of interest that they couldn’t do anything to.

“So?” Kent asked. “Ready to talk yet?”

Bridget smiled as the producer grimaced in her grip.

“Why aren’t you Buzz Kill?” Kent demanded. “Prove it to me.”

Bridget gave a sigh and set her chin on her producer’s shoulder in an almost playful manner. That was if she didn’t have a knife in the woman’s back. Now the TV host was just playing with them. “I couldn’t be Buzz Kill because at the time of the third murder I was across town killing two other people.”

Nicole kneeled down next to the cameraman, checking his vitals. “He’s lost a lot of blood.” When he didn’t respond she asked pointedly. “Kent?”

He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to fix the situation. She wanted to get both victims out of there and to take Bridget down. The only problem was Bridget undoubtedly had more knives. The woman liked her blades.

Right now all he could do was make certain that Bridget wasn’t Buzz Kill and hope that his assessment was wrong and the EMTs could in fact help the victims.

Until the EMTs arrived, he needed to keep Bridget talking.

“Tell me who,” Kent asked, ignoring the glare he got from his fiancée and her partner.

“They will be a middle-aged couple,” Bridget explained. “They were walking to a restaurant and took a wrong turn and ended up in a sketchy neighborhood. I made it look like a mugging gone wrong. I knifed them both in the abdomen and watched them bleed to death.”

Ruben’s gun shook in his hand. He seemed to be taking all of this rather personally. No shot went off though. If he shot Bridget, invariably the knife would come out, dooming the producer.

“So your alibi for not being Buzz Kill is that you were killing other people?” Jimmi asked.

Bridget shrugged. “I told you I wasn’t Buzz Kill and I didn’t know anything about that necklace. I am a predator plain and simple.”

“So how many others?” Kent asked. “The total?”

“Twenty seven,” Bridget informed them. That was a higher number than he expected. The TV host had been a busy little girl. The two murders she committed in his town hadn’t even made his radar. Bridget continued. “A total of twelve, all faux-botched muggings. All around the country.”

Kent nodded. See? The bright and the attractive usually got away with it. “All in bad neighborhoods?”

Bridget nodded. “They shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It was their fault to begin with. I just finished the statistical equation.”

“They came up to you for help?” Kent asked. The total perversion of the plan coming to light. She would act like she was being helpful. Who would suspect the TV host as being anything other than nice?

Well, except her soon to be ex-producer and cameraman.

That got Bridget to smile. “Perfect wasn’t it? Imagine their surprise when I pulled the knife. Most of them couldn’t believe it. One guy even laughed at me. Well, I was the last one to laugh.”

“Do you know who Buzz Kill is?” Kent asked.

Bridget’s face fell. “If only I did, but no. I didn’t run across anything about him.”

* * *

Nicole watched the interaction between Bridget and Kent very, very closely. As a matter of fact she was squinting so hard that it was giving her a headache.

But Kent had what he’d come for. He got Bridget to not only admit that she was a serial killer, but to do a little of it right in front of them.

Nicole had been too slow on the draw. It had all happened so quickly. One moment Bridget was in the middle of a war of words with Kent and the next she was pulling blades out of who knew where.

Kent stalked in front of the tall TV reporter who was all but holding her producer up. The woman didn’t look like she had much time left as her lipstick no longer gave her lips color any more.

“Kent…” Nicole warned.

She knew that the profiler liked to go at his own pace, but he didn’t have the luxury of that right now.

Of course her fiancé ignored him.

“Once she dies they’re just going to shoot you,” Kent explained.

Nicole cringed. Not exactly something out of the hostage negotiator book.

Bridget pulled the producer closer. “What will be will be.”

“I thought you wanted to go out with a bang?” Kent challenged. “Yes, I know when they shoot it will be bang, bang, but really? That’s how you want the story to end? Just another killer shot in a standoff. Passé, if you ask me.”

Nicole knew exactly what Kent was trying to do by appealing to Bridget’s ego, she just wasn’t sure she could have kept the pressure up under these circumstances. As it was, she wasn’t even at the center of the situation and her ears rang with her pulse. It was quick and sharp driven by the adrenaline coursing through her veins.

“Come on, Bridget,” Kent implored. “You didn’t seek me out just to be killed by someone else.”

“I didn’t plan to get killed by anyone,” Bridget stated.

Kent chuckled as only he could. “Really? You actively sought the most efficient profiler in the world and thought you were going to skim right past me?”

“Oh and I would have it if hadn’t been for --”

Kent held up his hand “It is always ‘if it hadn’t been for’ Bridget. That’s how killers get caught. You guys mess up or we get lucky.”

Bridget by now looked to be fuming, but Nicole was pretty sure that is exactly what Kent wanted.

“You wanted to face me down. Toe-to-toe. Nose-to-nose.”

Bridget frowned but didn’t argue.

“We can still do that. Exchange me for your producer. Let’s get out of here and get down to business.”

* * *

Kent watched as the internal battle played out across Bridget’s face. She liked the relative safety of hiding behind her dying producer because after all, the TV host was a coward. On the other hand, Bridget wanted to prove she wasn’t a coward. What was a serial killer going to do?

Take the bait.

“You got bored, Bridget. You know as well as I do that killing becomes as stale as a drug addiction. Each kill becomes a little less exciting. You are just chasing the high, my dear. Don’t you want to feel that invigorated again, one last time?”

Kent could tell that she did. You could see it in her eyes, yet concern lingered. Psychopaths might not know normal fear like the rest of the human species, however they did have an overdeveloped sense of self preservation.

He needed to leverage that.

“Once your producer goes limp they are going to fire. That is certain death, or you could take your chances with me.”

“How would it work?

“Both of the cops are going to put down their guns.”

“Like hell we are,” Ruben snorted.

Kent turned and glanced at Nicole. Ruben was inconsequential in this equation. Nicole was the one that would decide.

“Our only hope at saving both of them is to do as I say.”

Nicole’s eyes scanned his face. She could read him like a book. He wasn’t lying. She lowered her weapon and set it on the ground. “You better know what you are doing,” she groaned.

But she already knew that he did or she wouldn’t have lowered her weapon. Nicole then looked to Ruben. “Do it.”

The tall detective looked like he wanted to argue, but in the end just gave an odd grunt and put his gun on the floor.

“There,” Kent stated as he turned back to Bridget. “Now you are going to allow Detective Usher to come over and stabilize the knife before you and I take this outside.”

Bridget’s eyes shifted back and forth. “What is to stop her from overpowering me?”

Kent rolled his eyes. “Um, the third blade you’ve got in your belt.”

A smile lifted Bridget’s lips. “Touché.”

“And you can put it to my neck before Nicole comes over to take your producer.”

That synched the deal. He could read it in her expression before she even said.

“Deal.”

Kent obligingly walked over and offered Bridget his neck. The AI investigation into this incident would ask him how he knew Bridget wouldn’t just slice him open right then and there. His answer would be that he didn’t know. He rolled the dice.

You could see the same question play out over Nicole’s features as the TV host put the blade to his skin. Right over his near decapitation scar. Ya, that was a little tender.

He flinched and Nicole took a hurried step forward.

“Whoa,” Bridget warned, digging the metal into his skin.

“It’s okay,” Kent tried to reassure his fiancée. “Just get the producer so we can get this over with.”

Nicole did as asked, slowing her pace, coming from the other side, apparently putting a hand on the knife.

Kent couldn’t see the hand off, but he felt it. Suddenly Bridget was all about him. Now there wasn’t just a knife to his neck, but fingers gripping tightly into his arm.

The producer made a gurgling moan as Nicole tried to lower her to the floor.

“Let’s go,” Bridget said, moving them toward the door.

Ruben didn’t look all that worried though. No surprise there. Kent bet the detective wouldn’t mind at all if Bridget ended him. Then Ruben might actually have a shot at Nicole.

As they passed by the cameraman, Bridget hissed in Kent’s ear, “Grab the camera.”

Slowly, making sure that the TV host followed him down as he kneeled beside the dying man with a knife in his chest, he reached for the camera.

“Sorry,” he said as the man flinched at his touch.

“You warned us,” the cameraman whispered as he handed over the camera.

Yes, in fact, Kent had, but whoever listened to him?

At the least, the night was looking up.

CHAPTER 14

Nicole put pressure on the wound while she tried to keep the knife as stable as she could all the while watching Bridget drag her fiancé out the door with a blade to his throat.

Had she just let Kent get marched to his death?

Ruben had rushed over to the cameraman and was having equally bad luck trying to stop the bleeding. Crimson stained the otherwise grey tile floors.

“Here,” Joshua said, handing her his rumpled up jacket.

She would take it. At the least to blot up some of the blood.

Sirens wailed, yet no EMTs had arrived yet.

“Jimmi,” Ruben barked. The tech was still sitting perched on his stool. He hadn’t moved since Bridget knifed down the TV crew. “Go to the building entrance and help guide the EMTs here.”

“What?” Jimmi responded then his eyes cleared. “Ya, sure. On it.”

He hopped off his stool and ran out the back door to the room. Smart move, the tech didn’t want to cross paths with Bridget and Kent.

“Please,” the producer moaned. “Please let go.”

“I can’t,” Nicole stated. “It’ll just be a few more seconds.”

Or at least that’s what Nicole hoped.

“Tell my parents I’m sorry I didn’t tell them.”

Nicole had been to enough bedsides to know that it wasn’t uncommon to have confession time. She really didn’t want to be the bearer of this woman’s secrets. “Shhh,” she tried to encourage, but the woman wouldn’t stop.

“They don’t know I’m gay,” the woman said. “Will you….” The producer licked her lips then continued. “Will you please be the one to tell them so they don’t find out on the news?”

Nicole squeezed the woman’s hand. What else could she say? “Of course.”

“Tell them… tell them I was happy.”

Before Nicole could answer the woman gave out one last rattled breath, then fell still. Nicole tried to rouse her, with no luck. She checked the woman’s pulse. No heartbeat.

Nicole rocked back on her heels and looked to Ruben who shook his head and backed away from the cameraman.

Both dead. So far, Kent had been right on the mark.

* * *

This was a long ass hallway. And given the time of evening, most of the offices and laboratories were locked. Bridget had checked each door, jiggling it before moving on. They needed to find a place to resolve this, otherwise Kent wasn’t going to have to shave for quite some time.

Two EMTs burst into the hallway then skidded to a stop. Kent indicated down the hall. “They’re down there.”

The men seemed confused and more than a little hesitant to go past them.

“It’s fine,” Kent reassured them. What a bunch of sissies. He was the one with the knife to the throat. “Go.”

The men, with their backs to the wall, shimmied past.

“But don’t go far,” Bridget stated. “We’re going to be needing you soon.”

“We?” Kent questioned. “Don’t you mean, you?”

What was Nicole always telling him? It was probably best not to provoke the psychopath especially one with a knife to your neck. Well, he paid the price as she dug the blade a little bit deeper. Kent could feel warm blood trickle down his neck. He really didn’t want to get more stitches. He already looked a little bit like a Frankenstein home science project gone wrong.

Finally Bridget found an open door and pulled them into a small laboratory. It looked like maybe it was a DNA lab. There were a lot of boxy machines and tons of pipettes.

Once Bridget shut and locked the door behind her, she pulled the knife away and shoved Kent to the center of the room. He set the camera down, pointing toward the future battle field.

There were a number of weapons that Kent could have picked up, but he didn’t bother. The only weapon he wanted was the one in Bridget’s hand.

She arced the knife back and forth in an effort Kent guessed to impress him? Ya, not going to happen.

They began circling one another.

“The rush you’d hoped it would be?” Kent asked.

“Oh, so much more,” Bridget said, her voice cracking just a little. Kent could see the excitement in her knife hand. It was shaking. Good old adrenaline. So helpful, unless you are OD'ing on it, then not so much. “And imagine how it is going to feel when I am standing over your dead body.”

Kent didn’t bother to respond it was such a stupid statement. Bridget for all her kills was an ambush killer. Most serial killers were. Or blitz attackers. They used surprise to their advantage. Seldom were they the stand and fight kind of killers.

No, that would be too hard.

Bridget was used to taking down unsuspecting, unarmed civilians. This was really going to be a treat for her.

“Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Bridget came at him straight, her knife high above her head. Psycho-style. Ya, that might work in the shower, but not on Kent. He easily knocked her arm to the side, then came in with a nice punch to the solar plexus.

The TV host “ooffed,” doubling over, but keeping the knife.

She looked mighty pissed as she rose back up. Kent wasn’t sure if it was from the pain or the embarrassment. Well, there was plenty of both to still go around.

Bridget tried a slice from the side, about waist high, but she telegraphed the move from her shoulder so Kent was able to step aside, then send a kick to the back of her knee. The tall TV host stumbled forward.

It really was just a little bit pathetic. Like he was a cat toying with a mouse. But didn’t Bridget kind of deserve it? She more than likely just killed her entire TV crew.

Besides, Kent had to stay alive until he could find his moment to disarm her.

Bridget became more cautious. Faking first, waiting for a response from Kent that didn’t come. He wasn’t about to give her any advantage. He was not stupid enough to tip his hand by falling prey to feints.

Quickly she became frustrated with his lack of response. “Not nearly as fun as you let on to be,” she said.

Ya, sorry. I forgot I was supposed to entertain you in this little dance of death.

Kent outwardly though only shrugged. He needed her bored and impatient. He needed her to grip that knife as tightly as she could for as long as she could. Obviously she’d never been in a prolonged knife fight before. The biggest problem in a long fight was that your hand began to cramp. That was why, unless you were actively attacking someone, you loosened your grip and allowed the muscles in your palm to relax.

Bridget on the other hand was gripping that knife like her life depended on it. Only occasionally would she release just a little to relieve the cramp, then grip again. Big mistake.

Kent watched her hand out of the corner of his eye, timing the release re-grip cycle. Clearly the woman had never taken any hand to hand combat classes. Kent guessed that might have raised a few red flags if she were ever questioned about the murders. She had to look as harmless as she did to get away with it.

But now? Now she was in a completely different league.

“Oh just you wait,” Kent said just before he rushed her.

As predicted she raise her knife over her head, apparently not realizing that was the absolute weakest, most vulnerable position you could take. And exactly the right one for his plan to work.

He came up hard with his forearm, knocking into her hand just as her muscles forced her to relax her grip. The knife flew into the air. Bridget was too shocked to lunge for it, so Kent was able to grab it mid-air and using a compact, stable backhanded swing, he sliced across her neck.

Blood gushed from the two severed jugular veins. He hadn’t been able to go too deep but he didn’t need to.

Bridget gasped, grabbing her neck. Her eyes showed every ounce of shock and dismay.

“That’s how you do it, you moron.”

And for the record, Kent didn’t feel bad at all about taunting a dying serial killer.

“Seriously, you serialists, need to really practice on more difficult prey. You get weak and lazy.”

Maybe he should add that to his list. You can always catch the ugly and the stupid and now apparently the lazy asses too.

Bridget stumbled, wobbling on those high, high heels of hers. Not the most functional shoes to kill in. The TV host really should have thought this through.

One hand on her neck, she reached out with her other hand like Kent was supposed to help her or something.

Um, not.

Instead as she fell against the wall then slid down it, Kent squatted next to her. “Not so fun when you are on the receiving side of the blade, eh?”

No, it didn’t seem so. He could of course have stabbed her again, but he felt like that would have been overkill and honestly he felt like she deserved a long slow death like all of her victims had.

* * *

Once the EMT declared the producer dead at the scene, Nicole popped up, grabbed her gun and flew out the door. Ruben was hot on her heels. She trotted down the hallway, looking into each glassed in room that they passed. It wasn’t until they were nearly at the end of the hallway that she found them.

She should have guessed the scene. Filled with blood and one of them on the floor. Of course it wasn’t Kent. Ruben looked just a little disappointed. Nicole feared that her partner had maybe hoped that Bridget might be triumphant.

The door was locked so Nicole banged on the glass.

Kent was slow to rise from Bridget’s side. The woman was still alive. Nicole could tell by the weak spurting of blood from her neck, but she certainly didn’t have long.

“Guys, down here!” she called for the paramedics.

Sanguine, Kent sauntered over and unlocked the door. She didn’t even check on him, even though he had a streak of blood down his neck. He had proven over and over again that he could take care of himself.

Instead she rushed over to Bridget and put pressure across the wound even though she knew it was futile. The woman’s hands lay limp at her side. Her palms were blood stained so at some point she had tried to stop the bleeding but was now too weak.

Bridget opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“Don’t waste your energy,” Nicole urged, though she wasn’t quite sure at this point what difference it would make.

“Tell him…” the TV host couldn’t finish her sentence.

And what was it today? Why was she the official messenger of the dying? She already had to break some difficult news to the producer’s family. What was she supposed to pass along for Bridget?

“Tell him it was worth it,” Bridget sputtered then sagged into Nicole.

The EMTs burst into the room, pulling Nicole out of the way. She had no doubt who “he” was, yet Nicole didn’t say anything to Kent. Like he needed another ego boost. The profiler was looking pretty happy with himself.

“I suppose you are going to try and pass this off as self-defense?” Ruben questioned Kent.

“You guys saw,” Kent said. Nicole felt that the profiler was feigning being hurt. “She dragged me away at knife point. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Um, I don’t know. Just disarm her until we arrived. Go for a superficial wound? Hobble her? Something other than kill her.”

“I guess I couldn’t,” Kent said with a shrug. “You know how it is in the heat of battle, you simply react.”

Nicole couldn’t help but snort. Right. Kent simply reacting. The guy had a plan seven steps ahead when ordering breakfast, let alone during a knife fight. She’d seen him in action at knife fight club. There was nothing reactionary about his technique.

No, they all knew that Kent had taken the kill shot on purpose. He’d probably set Bridget up from the get go, all in anticipation of that last slice. She also knew why Kent had done it. It wasn’t some sick revenge scenario or even twisted pleasure. The profiler was of the hardened belief that serial killers couldn’t be rehabilitated. They were forever a threat. They killed in prison or they got acolytes to kill for them outside of the prison walls.

Kent believed that if you had a chance to kill a serialist, you took it. Period. End of statement.

And here they were…again.

Kent walked past her to the hallway. “What are we waiting for?” he asked. “We still have two serial killers to catch.”

* * *

Ruben wanted to punch Kent again, but he felt like socking the profiler twice in the same week might reflect poorly on his record. Instead he let the profiler and Nicole leave the room so that he didn’t have to listen to Kent’s insufferable excuses.

Noticing the camera on the table that was still rolling, Ruben went over and turned it off. Like they needed anything else on tape. Although Ruben was looking forward to reviewing the film so that he could see exactly what Kent had done. Maybe, just maybe he could catch Kent in a not exactly “self-defense” moment.

“She’s gone,” one of the EMTs announced.

No great surprise there. Kent was as efficient as any serial killer. The only reason the man still walked around free was that his favorite victims were serial killers. No one to weep for them. Or sue Kent or demand he be arrested.

Glick burst into the room, glanced around as horror filled his face. “What the hell happened here? Damn I knew he didn’t like the reporter, but did he have to kill her?”

Ruben sighed. This was going to be a long explanation. He tried to keep it as brief as possible, knowing exactly how much paperwork he was going to have to fill out for this little debacle.

“It turns out Bridget was a serial killer.”

“Buzz Kill?” Glick asked, confusion still reigning on his face.

Ruben shook his head. “No, just a random serial killer who thought she could go up against Kent.”

“Don’t they ever learn?” Glick sighed.

“And we’ve got two more bodies in the other lab,” Ruben informed his Captain.

“Her crew?” Glick asked.

“Yes.”

Glick shrugged. “Kent did warn them.”

Yes, he had.

“Thank goodness he had them sign those extra release forms,” Glick stated.

Even the Captain was intermittently impressed with the profiler. Ruben didn’t see how anyone could sign Kent’s “you are probably going to die” release form. Didn’t it just confirm how little the profiler regarded anyone else’s safety?

Or was Ruben just pissed because of his own guilt. He’d just stood there as Bridget killed two people. He kept running the scenario over and over again in his head. Beyond breaking about a dozen laws himself, he didn’t know how he could have stopped the slaughter.

Until Bridget drew those knives, they didn’t have any proof of Kent’s allegations. They didn’t have enough to arrest her. Hell, they didn’t even have enough to force her to come into the station to give a statement. Until she’d killed, she had appeared to be a law-abiding citizen. With three knives in her belt.

Ruben looked down at the body as the EMTs loaded Bridget onto the gurney. Ultimately the TV host had paid the price though, hadn’t she?

And of course, they had Kent to thank for that.

Glick patted Ruben on the back. “Guess you know what comes next.”

An avalanche of paperwork. He knew what he’d be doing for the next six hours. He might as well call Paggie and let her know.

And the night was just getting started. Who knew what other trouble Kent would get them all into?

All Ruben knew was that his hopes of ever getting the upper brass’ attention was probably never going to happen.

“This all eventually matters, right?” Ruben asked his captain.

Glick smiled. “Don’t worry, Torres, one day you will have your very own rock garden.”

Ruben wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

CHAPTER 15

Kent walked back into the two J’s lab. The bodies were gone, but the huge blood pools were not. There were already five different CSIs taking pictures and blood samples. Why Kent wasn’t really sure. This had all been pretty straight forward and oh ya, the suspect was dead, so no trial.

But when a crime happened in a crime lab, it was all hands on deck, immediately.

Joshua and Jimmi were over in the corner chatting up their compatriots.

“What are you doing?” Kent asked.

Joshua turned around, a smile spreading across his face. “Explaining your exploits.”

“Well, get back to work.”

Jimmi frowned. “But it’s a crime scene.”

“Like I care,” Kent continued. “We’ve got two serial killers to catch.”

Joshua patted Kent on the back. “Hey, man, you are already two for two tonight.”

Kent shrugged off the praise. “But the wrong damned two. Now get to work.”

Nicole walked in. “Now what?”

“We go back to square one,” Kent admitted. He hated these side adventures even if they ended in the arrest of two murderers. He only had a very short window to take advantage of this adrenaline high before he crashed back down. When you had greatly increased blood flow to your brain, you had to take advantage of it.

Jimmi and Joshua got set up at their computers.

“Square one,” Jimmi asked. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It means we throw out everything we know and start at the beginning.”

“You mean Tanya’s death?” Joshua asked.

Kent just nodded. What else did square one mean?

Nicole put a hand on his arm. He didn’t even realize that his fingers were tapping on the table. That was adrenaline for you. He needed to harness it, instead of it ruling him.

* * *

Joshua dutifully brought up the file, but really didn’t see the point. They had been through this all before…ad nauseam. But this was how Kent worked. If he ever got stuck, he would wipe the board clean and start over.

Frustrating but effective. Usually.

Could Kent’s mojo ever give out? Sure he was on a roll, but even as he said, he hadn’t caught the serial killers that he really wanted to catch. Most people would sit on their laurels, but not Kent.

That was why Joshua wasn’t ashamed to say that he worshipped the man. Why wouldn’t you?

Kent paced behind them. “Alright, let’s look at this as if someone had actually believed Nathan and we had investigated Tanya’s death from the start.”

Joshua scrolled back as Nicole stepped up.

“We would have found the necklace and known she was killed for it.”

“So,” Joshua jumped in before Jimmi could get his wily little hands on his part of the case. They might be BFFs but that didn’t mean that they weren’t competitive. “We would have looked up the genealogy way earlier and found the link to Lacey and Adelene.”

“And Bridget,” Kent added. “So we might have saved how many deaths and dismemberments?”

“Stupid doctors,” Jimmi commented. “Nicole, at the least are you going to slap them with an obstruction of justice charge?”

Joshua was glad to see that Nicole waved off his competitor. “We’ll deal with them once we have Buzz Kill in custody.”

Joshua’s eyes slid over to study Kent. He didn’t think the profiler had any intention of putting handcuffs on the serial killer, but Joshua didn’t say anything. He’d let Nicole and Kent hash that out amongst themselves.

“Alright so Buzz Kill started out killing for money,” Kent said.

“So really, we never may have gotten this case,” Joshua said.

Nicole shrugged. “Due to the value of the necklace, Kent might have been brought in to consult.”

The detective turned to her fiancée. “So would you have picked up that this was a serial killer in the making?”

“No,” Kent stated bluntly.

Okay, mark that on your calendar. Kent admitting to a mistake. This really was a banner night.

Nicole frowned. “Really? You are going to totally fess up to that?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Kent responded. “Buzz Kill wasn’t Buzz Kill yet. He wasn’t even a serial killer yet. He hadn’t formed yet, so I couldn’t detect him.”

“Isn’t poisoning a woman’s choice of weapon?” Nicole asked. “Wouldn’t we have profiled Tanya’s killer as a woman under this theoretical investigation?”

“Yes, or an omega male. Someone really, really passive.”

Nicole stared at the screen. “So what in the hell happened between Tanya and Buzz Kill’s first kill?”

“Grew his balls?” Jimmi suggested.

Kent actually chuckled at Jimmi’s comment. Joshua’s ear tips started to burn.

“Something like that,” Kent said. “It was pretty major. Glick’s right. You just don’t see stealth killers transform into attention seekers.”

“What if Tanya wasn’t Buzz Kill’s first kill though,” Nicole said as everyone turned to her. “Aren’t we treating Tanya as victim zero? What if she wasn’t?”

Kent’s pacing stopped as he turned on his heel toward Nicole.

Joshua could feel by the shift in the air, this was going to be good.

* * *

Kent grabbed Nicole by the back of the head and laid a lip lock on her. She was brilliant simply brilliant.

At first she resisted the kiss, but then melted into it. His fiancée knew with their lifestyle she better take it where she could get it.

When their lips finally parted he simply said, “Thank you.”

She smiled back, licking her lips.

Kent turned back to the two J’s. “Okay, pull up all unsolved murders for six months before Tanya. She might have been a functional kill. An aberration. Perhaps there is an evolving signature that we simply haven’t picked up yet.”

Even though this was technically Jimmi’s area, Joshua typed frantically. He knew the morgue data base like the back of his hand.

“Parameters?” Jimmi asked.

Joshua was already way ahead of that. Look at what Buzz Kill had become so you just had to ask yourself what would Buzz Kill Jr do? He liked blood, a lot. And violence. Like video game level violence.

“I’ve got one,” Joshua said as Jimmi gave him a glare. “I remembered how gory the crime scene was.”

Nicole squinted reading the report. “A car accident?”

“It was ruled a hit and run,” Joshua explained. “We proved the car was pushed off the side of the road.”

“No suspects?” Kent asked joining the group in front of the monitors.

Joshua shook his head. “This was out in the backwoods roads so no traffic cams and we got some paint transfer, however it was a common Chevy color.”

“I want every registered vehicle with that color brought up.”

“But, that’s like thousands,” Joshua complained before he thought about it.

* * *

Kent glared at Joshua. “And what about my demeanor makes you think I care?”

He had to give Joshua credit. The kid dug right in without another peep. Jimmi was usually the whiner.

“Okay, so a possible early Buzz Kill murder. What else?”

It was Jimmi’s turn apparently to try to impress. “I’ve got two unsolved about a month apart.”

“MO,” Nicole asked.

“One looked like an accidental drowning and the other was a supposed suicide until forensics ruled that the victim had been pushed off the roof.”

Kent turned to Nicole. “Well, developing any theories?”

His fiancée frowned, biting the edge of her thumb nail.

“You’re the one that started this wagon train. Where is it leading us?”

“The kills are all over the map, though,” Nicole stated.

“And that is a bad thing?” he asked. He really needed her to not only think outside the box, but live outside of it. She needed to be about three zip codes away from the box.

“He was experimenting?” Nicole said, although she didn’t exactly sound sure of herself. Still, he’d give it to her.

“Testing out his psychopathy. Seeing what fulfilled his need and what didn’t.”

“So all three of these killings were before Tanya?”

“Go back further,” Kent instructed. “We need to find victim zero.”

The two J’s worked their skinny little fingers to the bone.

“Got one. Two years ago,” Joshua said. “It was initially ruled an accidental death. A drunk fell and hit their head on a dumpster.”

“What made it ruled a homicide?” Nicole asked.

“Sub-dermal bruising on the upper arms and neck. Someone slammed her head into that dumpster.”

“And another one five years ago,” Jimmi chimed in. God, Kent loved it when the two J’s went head to head.

“Five years?” Nicole commented.

That was a long time for a serial killer to simmer then explode, but Kent had to throw out any suppositions. Buzz Kill was as unique as they came.

“MO?” Kent prompted.

“Another accident turned murder.”

“A woman?” Kent asked.

Jimmi nodded.

“Bring their pictures all up on the screen,” Kent ordered.

The women’s phenotype were all over the map. One was Hispanic. Another black. Yet another dirty blonde. This didn’t feel like the killer was trying to use forensic countermeasures.

He turned to Nicole. Time for her to put her thinking cap on.

“Ugh,” his fiancée said. “You already have a theory, don’t you?”

Kent just smiled and urged her to look at the murders with a fresh eye.

“Okay,” Nicole said, rubbing her hands together. “I’m a psychopath. I have this urge to kill, but what to do with it.”

“What type of victims do these feel like?” Kent prodded her.

* * *

“Opportunity?” Nicole suggested wishing she felt more confident.

“What changed?” Kent asked.

Nicole took in a deep breath. In some ways it encouraged her when Kent had a theory. It meant an answer was out there. However it equally frustrated her since the answer was always just out of reach of her fingertips.

“Tanya,” Joshua jumped in. “Sorry.”

“No,” Nicole stated. “I can use any help I can get.”

And Joshua was right. Tanya had been a turning point.

“Buzz Kill’s archetype,” Kent stated. “Buzz Kill found a singular point for his rage.”

“Which is why the next two victims were so bloody and brunettes?” Nicole knew that she should be stating that as fact rather than putting a question mark on the end of that sentence but she couldn’t help it. She just didn’t feel definitive about it. She felt she was more groping around in the dark.

Kent smiled though. “Yes, I feel like Tanya pissed Buzz Kill off personally. That Tanya blocked his desire for riches, but then wasn’t satisfied once she was dead since the necklace wasn’t found.”

“So he killed his archetype,” Nicole stated this time feeling more sure of herself.

“But Buzz Kill is smart,” Jimmi added. “He knew we’d eventually find Tanya so he switched up his victim profile.”

Kent nodded. “He’s come into his own now. He practiced for years until he had the courage to break out like this, truly fulfilling his potential and satiating his psychosis.”

Nicole frowned. “But how does this help us?”

“Oh, it doesn’t,” Kent said.

What the hell?

“Then why go through all of this?”

“Don’t you feel like we know Buzz Kill just a little better?”

Nicole in fact did feel like that. Before this conversation there had been a huge question mark about how a killer came out of the gate with a chainsaw. And then Tanya made it even weirder. But now, now the evolution of the killer made sense.

“No, I think the answer to the current Buzz Kill persona is within the footage of Lacey’s cable stalker.”

Great. Going over hours upon hours of footage was Nicole’s favorite.

“Hey, my guy should be coming through with some neighbors footage,” Jimmi piped up.

“When?” Kent asked.

Jimmi didn’t seem quite so chipper as his head bent. “I’m not sure. Soon though. My buddy is working on it.”

* * *

Soon might as well be never to Kent. They needed that footage yesterday.

Nicole’s phone went off on her hip. She answered the phone then frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Kent asked her. Like tonight could get any worse.

“Lacey checked herself out of the hospital,” Nicole asked.

Kent cocked his head. That was the last news he expected. Another Lucky 37 murder. Now that would have made sense or Buzz Kill on a rampage, but Lacey going home? “Why? She should have stayed for the pain meds alone.”

Nicole hooked her phone back on her hip. “Don’t know, but I better go find out.” She gave him a peck on the check. “Call if you find anything interesting.”

Kent sighed. “You just don’t want to sit and look at footage.”

Smiling, Nicole gave him another peck on the cheek. “Maybe, but you’ll be here when I get back?”

“Maybe,” Kent responded. Served her right. Plus she should know better than to try and tie him down that far in advance. His fiancée didn’t even try to fight him on it.

That was his girl.

After she left, Kent turned back to the techs. “Okay, before we doom ourselves to reviewing the footage, let’s look at the pivot point for Buzz Kill. Tanya. He knew her. They must have interacted. So let’s turn over every rock in her life.

Both Js sighed, but didn’t buck him either. They knew this was their lot in life. They might have caught two bad guys today, but Kent’s board would not be cleared until he had Buzz Kill and Lucky 37 under his belt.

Joshua brought up the murder of Tanya. The unassuming heiress to one of the most priceless pieces of jewelry in the world. She was the key. Kent could feel it.

Kent paced in front to the facts. “Bring up the phone calls.”

Jimmi dutifully scrolled the numbers past him.

“There,” Kent blurted pointing to a cluster of numbers. “What are those?”

“Given the randomness of the area codes and the time of day we chalked them up to telemarketers.”

Kent sat down. How they still needed him. “Let’s test that little theory out.”

* * *

Ruben could swear that his fingers were going to fall off. Yes, he had done that much paper work today. And now Bridget’s massacre?

Normally he might have been frustrated that there was a serial killer right under his nose, however this one, this one he was glad for. Hopefully his earlier bungling of his first cable television appearance would now be buried deep beneath Bridget’s murderous streak.

Paggie wouldn’t be able to see him on TV, but she also wouldn’t have to see him fall face down in the mud either.

Speaking of Paggie... Ruben checked his phone. No calls from his fiancée all day. That was unusual. Even if she knew he was busy, Paggie would usually call just to let him know she was thinking of him. He found it strangely reassuring. And odd that she hadn’t done so today.

Ruben pressed the speed dial and waited for her to answer. “Hey sweetie.”

“Oh Ruben, hello,” she said sounding a bit distracted.

“I was just worried. You hadn’t called.”

“So sorry, honey,” Paggie replied sounding more herself. “So much wedding stuff. And…”

“And?” Ruben asked sitting up straighter.

“And that poor girl’s mother tracked me down. Came up to my cart and asked me a bunch of questions about her daughter.”

“What do you mean?” Ruben asked, feeling ready to rush out the door if he needed to.

“Just that her daughter had been clean for a few months and her mother thought this time she really would quit.”

“That is what they all think,” Ruben stated.

Paggie sounded like she was choking up on the other end of the phone. “I just can’t help but wonder if I’d gotten there sooner. If only I had found her before… before…”

“This was no one’s fault but the addict’s,” Ruben said getting more than a little irritated with the mother. “And her mom is feeling guilty as well and trying to transfer it on to you. Don’t let her.”

“Easier said than done,” Paggie replied.

“Babe, you gotta call me when stuff like this happens,” Ruben urged.

“I called the desk sergeant and he said you were with Kent.”

“Still, you should have left me a voicemail.”

“I knew you’d hear it in my voice and I know you are working on two huge cases so I knew today was important.”

“Never more important than you,” Ruben explained.

“Oh, hon, I know that, but you do such important work. I hate bugging you with my little problems and even the wedding stuff.”

Ruben hated hearing her sound like this. He knew what it felt like to be a second class citizen to the job. He never wanted Paggie to feel like that. He wanted for her to know how important she was to him.

“You know what, hon? Go with the pink and white for the wedding colors.”

“But, you said they were too feminine, that you wanted at least one masculine color in there.”

Ruben could remember how important that had felt to him a few months ago. That he felt that he had a pretty good sense of style and he wanted that reflected in the wedding. He wanted it to be a blend of him and Paggie. Now though, it seemed silly.

“The wedding is really for the bride, Paggie. You should get what you want,” Ruben stated.

“Really? You won’t mind? You’ll still be happy?”

“As long as you are, yes,” Ruben replied.

Paggie’s voice got the old excitement back in it. “Oh my gosh, because I found some great place settings that will work perfectly for the pink and white theme.”

“Go for it,” Ruben answered, happy to hear Paggie so upbeat again.

“They are kind of pricey,” Paggie said with some hesitation in her voice.

“You only get married once,” Ruben said although he had to admit he had a slight agenda here. His only goal was to make sure they had a far more spectacular wedding than Kent. Not so much Nicole, but this whole, “we are just going to wait until the right moment thing” had to be nipped in the bud.

He felt a little sorry for his partner, but she had agreed to the odd arrangement, so he couldn’t spill too many tears over it. The only thing that anyone knew about their wedding was for everyone to have their dress attire ready and wait for the text.

Yes, wait for the text. This is the crap Kent put Nicole through.

Well, he was not going to be that kind of fiancée or husband. He was going to give Paggie a wedding to remember.

CHAPTER 16

“Nope, all of those calls were made from pre-paid cell phones,” Jimmi admitted. “We totally missed it.”

Kent liked feeling appreciated but also wondered how any crimes were solved without him. Seriously. Check the damn numbers. But it wouldn’t do any good to berate the J’s. They knew they’d messed up and would never do so again, or at least not on any of Kent’s cases.

This is why you went over everything with a fine tooth comb, to find those little nits of information you looked over.

“Okay, so look at the times,” Kent said. “They knew her work schedule calling before and after her hours.”

“And right after this one,” Joshua stated, “She called the auction house.”

“So Tanya was getting pressed to hand over or sell the necklace,” Kent surmised. It was a leap of logic, but not a very far one.

“Let’s triangulate the cell towers from the prepaid phones,” Jimmi suggested, clearly trying to make up for missing the importance of these calls. “We may not be able to know who made the calls, but at the least, we can know where.”

Kent watched as the screen dissolved into a map and little red dots started popping up. The general location of where the prepaid cell phone calls originated.

“Does that look familiar?” Joshua asked.

“That’s Lacey’s neighborhood,” Jimmi stated, overlaying Lacey’s house which was off to the south of the call area.

“So Buzz Kill was already stalking Lacey?” Joshua asked.

Or…

“Where’s that neighbor’s footage?” Kent demanded.

“We still don’t have a warrant, but –

“No buts. Get me the footage right now.” He had a theory to prove. Right this second.

Kent’s head nearly exploded, but he kept his temper in check. It wasn’t Jimmi’s fault some judge was being a douche. The judge probably hated Kent. Actually most of the judges probably had reason to.

Jimmi looked to argue, then the tech must have seen the determination in Kent’s eyes. If Kent was right, they were all going to feel the fool. He couldn’t even walk his theory forward. Not until he had more proof.

“Get that footage,” Kent pronounced each and every syllable precisely.

“I just can’t --”

“Footage, now,” Kent demanded.

Jimmi’s face blushed pink then red. “I am opening myself and the department up to not only a lawsuit, but criminal charges against me personally.”

Kent fixed Jimmi with his stare. “Once we catch Buzz Kill everything will be forgiven.”

“That’s kind of what you said about the Catholic school and they ended up trying to sue me.”

“Tried being the operative word, Jimmi. Do you trust me or not?”

Jimmi held up for about two and a half seconds then crumbled. His fingers flew across the keyboard. “It’s not going to be instantaneous though. Even if I hack into, never mind, even though I am in their databank, I still have to stream the video over.”

“Yes, yes,” Kent said. “You are a cyber-genius and whatever I ask is a Herculean task. I get it.”

Jimmi frowned but kept typing.

The phone in Kent’s pocket dinged. Probably Nicole wondering if he was still at the lab before she drove all the way back across town from Lacey’s. He almost didn’t even bother to get the phone out. It was Glick’s after all. Who else would be texting the phone? The old captain wasn’t exactly text friendly.

In the end though, Kent knew it was going to be a really late night and he wanted some super strong black coffee. Not that Starbuck’s crap, but old fashioned Joe. Nicole knew the drive-thru he liked. They didn’t ask you to order in Italian or anything stupid like that. An extra-large was simply an extra-large.

He pulled the phone from his pocket and only glanced at it, then stopped abruptly. It wasn’t from Nicole. It was from an unknown number.

The only word was “satellite.”

It could only be from one person. Lucky 37.

His eyes flickered from the text to the screen.

“God damn it,” Kent cursed, flying out of his seat. “We’ve been played all along.”

The two J’s looked back and forth to each other, clearly trying to catch up with him.

“How do we spell satellite?” Kent asked, pointing to the van. “There are two ‘Ls’ and only one ‘T.’”

“Oh yeah, right,” Joshua said. “But what does that matter?”

“I think the cable company probably knows how to spell its own industry,” Kent said. Neither seemed to realize the implications of the misspelling. “That isn’t an official van. Someone mocked it up to look like one.”

“But why?” Jimmi asked.

“To dangle Marion in front of us. I think Buzz Kill was hoping we would stay on Marion a bit longer.”

“Then… then…” Joshua stammered as the full reality of the situation hit him. “So Buzz Kill has been setting up Marion even before the first chainsaw murders?”

Kent nodded. “I think this explains the significant lag between Tanya’s murder and the chainsaw murders. Buzz Kill was waiting to find a patsy.”

“Dear god,” Jimmi whispered. “That is diabolical.”

“That is Buzz Kill,” Kent replied, his mind a whir of activity.

Why would Buzz Kill go to such lengths? But then it hit him, the necklace. That first crime had been sloppy. Okay, so he almost got away with it, but that first kill had been telling. It had been personal. Buzz Kill had known that a connection could be found and so had worked very hard to not only distance themselves but to point the finger squarely at someone else.

So the killer must be obvious. It was an obscure connection, or all of this elaborate jury-rigging wouldn’t be necessary. Someone was hiding in plain sight. He had an inkling but dare not voice it until he had more information.

“Let me see that list of heirs,” Kent stated.

Joshua brought it back up.

“None cross referenced to anyone besides Bridget on the crime scene log.”

Jimmi shook his head.

Kent scanned the list of heirs again. He was missing something. Something as obvious as the misspelled satellite on the van. Something so innocuous innocent looking, his mind had passed over it.

The list hadn’t changed though since the last time he had looked at it. There of course was Lacey and her mother.

But wait, if Buzz Kill had done the elaborate van switch, why would they want to call attention to the necklace again? Kent’s mind pinged back and forth trying desperately to assimilate all of this new knowledge and coalesce it into a sound theory.

No, it couldn’t be.

“Here we go,” Jimmi said. “I’ve got the first few frames of the security footage.”

It came as no great surprise when they finally got a glimpse of the van stalker, that it in fact was a woman. And not just any woman.

“Lacey,” Joshua exhaled. “How could it be Lacey stalking herself?”

Oh, it went much deeper than that. Lacey had to have had an accomplice. Her mother. Apparently love of chainsaws ran in the family.

He pulled out Glick’s phone to call Nicole. “I’ll get Nic on the warrants while you guys dig up…”

Kent stopped. He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Dig up?” Joshua asked.

Kent dialed quickly. “Nicole went over to Lacey’s house.”

Of course the call to his fiancée went straight to voicemail.

“Tell Ruben, tell everyone I’m on my way over there.”

He didn’t wait for either of the J’s to respond, Kent just ran.

* * *

Nicole’s head hurt and she just wanted to sleep.

Unfortunately the sound of someone trying to start a chainsaw wouldn’t let her.

Chainsaw.

Crap.

Right.

She knew enough not to move. Not to give the Placket women any hint she was conscious.

God how she hated walking into a trap. Especially when she didn’t realize she was walking into one. She’d simply gone over to see how Lacey was doing. Well, Lacey had been planning her next murder, that’s how well Lacey was doing.

Nicole cracked open an eye. The younger of the women, her arm in a sling, was having a hard time starting the chainsaw.

“I told you to clean and oil the saw each and every time we use it,” Lacey’s mother scolded.

“I think it is the fact you nearly cut off my arm that’s the problem, mother,” Lacey retorted.

Glad to hear the two murderesses didn’t always get along swimmingly well. Nicole wondered if she could use it to her advantage. Although she couldn’t see how just about now since her arms and legs were tied to a chair.

Kent would miss her at some point, right? He had to figure this out. She couldn’t be the only one stupid enough to not see this coming, right?

“Don’t worry, dear,” Adelene said. “We’ll get to you in a moment.”

Nicole could have sworn she hadn’t moved and the woman was behind her so how did she see her eyes open.

“Oh please, like I didn’t have Lacey try to fake sleep through her entire teenage years.”

Nicole tried to stay calm as Lacey braced the chainsaw between her knees and tried to pull the start the equipment. Luckily she failed again.

“Darling, let me do it,” Adelene implored.

“No,” Lacey said, turning away from her mother. “I’m injured but not a cripple. I can do this.”

The sound of the engine grinding set Nicole’s teeth on edge. She knew what came next with these two. To distract herself, she tried to piece the puzzle together.

“We really thought we’d thrown the scent off of ourselves,” Adelene said as Lacey continued to struggle with the chainsaw.

“You had,” Nicole said, no longer having to feign unconsciousness. “I was just coming over to check on Lacey.”

“Oh my,” Adelene said sounding genuinely surprised. “I guess we jumped the gun. We could have continued on, but maybe it is better this way.”

“It is,” Lacey said. “Funny how quickly killing with a chainsaw gets tiresome.”

“Oh and all the cleanup,” Adelene fretted. “Tsk. Tsk. Your hobby should never be more work than work.”

“Here, here,” Lacey said turning back to them.

Glad to know even serial killers could be lazy.

“That profiler would have been on to us anyway,” Adelene said. “Better to have one last glorious kill before we are captured.”

Well, at least Nicole death wouldn’t be in vain as Lacey finally got the chainsaw going.

CHAPTER 17

Kent hit the gas pedal, hard. He wasn’t even sure what kind of car he’d stolen, he’d just broken into and hotwired the first one he’d come to.

“She’s not at the house,” Joshua yelled in his ear.

“What do you mean?” Kent asked.

“They moved her, but I’ve got their location. You need to head west.”

Not even looking, Kent slammed on the brakes and made a hard left turn. Honking horns complained but he could care less. Buzz Kill had Nicole.

This was his fault. All his fault. And not his usual angst ridden guilt either. This time it was true. Lucky 37 had given him all the clues. He’d practically painted a sign over Lacey and Adelene’s names, pointing to them as Buzz Kill but Kent had been too self-involved. Too narrow-minded to see that a mother-daughter team, especially one that had just practically been torn limb-to-limb, could be the culprits.

“Next right,” Joshua advised in his ear.

Kent went up and over the corner pavement, cutting it so close. The car’s suspension would never be the same again, but Kent couldn’t care less.

He dug the accelerator into the floorboard. Maybe he should have paid attention to the type of car he’d stolen. This certainly wasn’t Nicole’s Mustang.

“Next left and it is the last building on your right.”

Joshua had guided him to a warehouse district. A bunch of really big buildings without a lot of people around at night to care.

The perfect kill zone.

But he couldn’t think like that. He had to assume Nicole was still alive. She had to be alive. If she died because he wasn’t quick enough…

Kent shook his head physically to get him out of that mindset. He was going to be on time.

Right?

* * *

Nicole clenched her teeth as Lacey stumbled her way over. It turned out the chainsaw, especially running was a bit much for her injured arm. But she refused her mother’s help. If Nicole’s life hadn’t been on the line, the sight would have been almost YouTube worthy.

But Lacey was determined to be the one to start on Nicole.

The chainsaw’s loud engine filled the room with threat. The whir of the blades. Nicole had seen enough of Buzz Kill’s crime scenes to know what that chainsaw would do to her.

Could do to her. If it ever got there. Lacey stumbled again, having to right herself on a metal table. Her bad arm was still in the sling and the hand was limp. It had only been sewn back on less than twenty-four hours ago.

“Oh for the love of god,” Adelene said, snatching the chainsaw away from her daughter. “You can do the carving,” she continued as she revved the engine.

Without her daughter’s restrictions, Adelene brought the chainsaw over her head and angled down at Nicole.

She squeezed her eyes shut, turning away from the blade that never came. Instead Lacey stumbled forward, nearly getting sliced in half. Adelene had to stop the attack to catch her daughter.

“Lacey, what are you doing? I said I’d do it.”

The daughter tossed her chin over her shoulder. “I was pushed.”

Framed in the low light was Kent. And he had that smirk that Nicole loved so much as long as it wasn’t pointed at her.

“How quaint,” Adelene said with profound bitterness in her tone. Nicole guessed she wasn’t all that fond of men, let alone Kent. Most female serial killers had some form of abuse from men. As a matter of fact, their first kill many times was in true self-defense, but then some switch got thrown and they started to do it for enjoyment.

But these two women? They killed men, women, they didn’t seem to care. They certainly fit no pattern that Nicole was aware of. They were just two whack jobs with a chainsaw.

“The white knight come to save his fair maiden?” Adelene jested.

Kent smiled. “Oh, I am no knight my dear, and trust me she’s no maiden.”

Nicole smiled back. That was her slightly crazy profiler fiancé. Just the man she wanted to see. Screw a white knight. She’d take an off-balanced G-man over a knight any day.

“But you came with no weapon,” Lacey sneered. “Men.”

Little did they know Kent.

“And exactly what kind of weapon should I have brought to a chainsaw fight?”

“Something more than you did,” Adelene said as she took a run at Kent who casually ducked the blade and threw a punch to the woman’s solar plexus. Adelene tripped, barely righting herself as the chainsaw clanged against the cement floor.

“Really?” Kent smirked. “I’m liking my odds right about now.”

Only Kent could stand in the middle of room, facing two serial killers, one armed with a chainsaw and look that incredibly smug.

Go, Kent.

“I suppose you want to know why?” Lacey asked, stepping forward, blocking Kent from her mother who was still recovering from the blow.

Kent shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Lacey cocked her pretty little sadistic head. “I thought you always wanted to know the why? Isn’t that the most important part?”

“Apparently you seem to think so, so shoot,” Kent said as he circled the two women. Nicole could tell that he was angling for her though. His eyes seldom left her.

“Nature or nurture,” Adelene said, finally able to stand upright. “We may never know since I gave her my genes and I raised her. I thought I had kept my desires under wraps. I thought I had been so careful.”

“You mean making all of your kills look like accidents?” Kent asked

“Oh mom,” Lacey said. “I had no idea you were killing my entire childhood.”

“Oh thank goodness,” Adelene said, patting her hand over her heart.

The two were acting like they were talking about an apple pie recipe. Kent kept telling Nicole that she didn’t really understand the true extent to which a psychopathic mind worked vs. an average one. Nicole was finally starting to get it. There was a level of detachment that was hard to grasp.

“No, mom,” Lacey said. “It was like I told you. I had those urges for a while, then some random chick cut in front of me at Starbucks. I held it together in the shop, but then followed her and well… she wasn’t going to take cuts anymore.”

Kent kept circling, obviously trying to get an advantageous angle on the situation. Nicole wished she could do something other than just sit there as the two spun their origin tale.

“I came home,” Lacey said “and was crying, tears of happiness and fear and told my Mom what I had done… and what did you say Mom?”

“Oh thank god,” Adelene said with a chuckle. “The ruse was over. Finally I could be myself, my true self around my daughter.”

How very heartwarming. Nicole was certain Lifetime channel was just itching to do a story about them. But now it was all starting to make sense. The bizarre evolution of Buzz Kill. The profile had been contaminated from the start. Not only were there two killers, but they had an inciting incident that none of them could have known.

“And that’s when you decided a chainsaw was the thing?”

“Oh no, no,” Adelene said. “That came later. First we had to take care of Tanya, that little bitch.”

“She kept denying she had the necklace that should have been ours,” Lacey spat.

“But we knew that once it was found out, we’d be suspects so if we wanted to keep killing, and we really, really, really wanted to keep killing we would have to switch it up completely.”

“And naturally you landed on a chainsaw?” Kent retorted.

Adelene smiled though. “My father was a farmer. I used to love waking up to the sound of a chainsaw.”

“And I loved the blood splatter, so we were both happy campers,” Lacey concluded.

The two were nuts. Certifiable. Kent had told her over and over again how psychopaths had no conscious. No shame. No boundaries. Nicole found that hard to believe. Even this deep into her career.

But here they stood. Two uncaring, wacked psychopaths.

Kent had not been exaggerating at all.

They were unredeemable. Kent described them like a photo’s negative. They were there, but they weren’t really there.

Nicole had enough. “Just get this over with Kent.”

CHAPTER 18

Kent was so glad to hear that. Without preamble, he charged Adelene. She wasn’t ready so her chainsaw was only half up when he hit. He used one arm to shove the chainsaw up and back. The thing was too heavy for her to hold on to with one hand so it hit the floor and skid. Kent took a split second to kick it toward Nicole.

Luckily his fiancée was on her toes, literally, sliding the chair over as the blade hit it, sawing through the wood. She was one quarter free now.

Adelene wasn’t going down without a fight though. She threw a pretty decent left hook, landing on Kent’s chin. His head snapped around. That left her right side open though and he landed a punch to her kidney. The woman doubled over so Kent kicked her in the head, throwing her backwards.

He had to give her some quarter, she used the momentum to get herself to Nicole and picked up the chainsaw again.

Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, she smiled with bloody teeth.

“You think you’re so good,” Adelene sneered. “You’re nothing.”

Kent had heard it all before. These psychopaths and their vision of themselves. Always so much smarter than they really were. Which was kind of the problem with living in your own altered reality. It distorted your perception. A perception that could prove fatal.

She ran at him again. Holding the chainsaw lowered, bracing it against her hip. Perfect.

Kent allowed her to run at him until the last second. Then he stepped aside and kicked at the back of her knee. The force of it brought her down, right on top of her own chainsaw.

That had to hurt. Apparently her screams confirmed the fact.

The wound though was fairly superficial.

It had bloodied her but not much more.

She got up, turned on him and had the true look of a psychopath in her eyes. They were devoid of fear. Devoid of any normal human emotion. Now there was only bloodlust and revenge.

Both worked in his favor.

Once you dug deep down into the reptilian brain, yes, you gained some strength because you set caution aside, but you lost upper brain functions. Like thinking things through and strategizing.

Now Adelene was just a beast. Strong but thoughtless.

She swung the chainsaw high, coming at him like an enraged bull. Guess she hadn’t seen many bullfights. The bull usually lost. Badly.

As a matter of fact, Kent wasn’t even sure why bullfighting was such a popular sport in Spain. Since the bullfighter won 99.9% of the time. Now if the bull won 50% of the time that might make for some interesting viewing.

For now though he had to contend with his own chainsaw wielding bull.

She came at him with ferocity, growling, her lips wide open but her teeth clenched.

“Behind you!” Nicole screamed.

Kent didn’t have time to turn around.

* * *

Lacey was charging Kent from the back. He was going to get caught between the two psychopaths. Nicole had to do something.

But she only had a three-legged chair and one foot loose.

She swung her free foot and knocked Lacey’s legs out from under her.

The young woman screamed as she fell on her bad arm. Boo hoo.

Nicole was now on her side as well. Not good. She pushed with her one free foot until she hit a wall. She banged and banged until she broke not just one leg, but two. Now to break the last one.

Kent had narrowly avoided the chainsaw. Only his jacket had lost one sleeve. He seemed unharmed since he was busy taunting Adelene.

“A little harder when your victim isn’t drugged, eh?”

The older woman’s face was flush and her pupils dilated so completely her eyes seemed black. As black as her soul.

Lacey rose and kicked Nicole in the stomach.

“Bitch.”

That’s right. You aren’t the only predator in this room. Nicole was able to get her feet under her and heft her way up. Of course she still had the frame of a chair on her back, but what was Kent always saying? Use your environment to your advantage?

She turned around and back pedaled until she slammed into Lacey, crushing her against the metal wall.

“I’ve got her!”

* * *

Kent had perhaps never been more proud of Nicole then in this moment. The detective was really showing her spunk. No wonder why he had proposed to her. She looked so cute with her sweat soaked hair and blotchy face, holding off an injured serial killer with a chair.

God he loved her.

Then a chainsaw came swinging his way and he had to get his head back in the game. Adelene after all was armed and he wasn’t.

That was about to change.

Any subtlety or skill had long since vanished in Adelene’s attacks. Instead it was all brute strength and a reliance on the whirring blade to get the job done.

Not so much.

Kent blocked with his elbow, knocking her arm away, then he hooked his forearm over hers and heard a very satisfying crack. He’d just dislocated her elbow.

The chainsaw clambered to the ground, skidding right over to him.

Adelene’s eyes widened as she clutched her arm to her body, backing away from him. He hoped she recognized the intelligent glint in his eye. Even with his and Nicole’s lives on the line, he refused to go Neanderthal. His mind was his greatest asset.

He made a fake run at Adelene, watching carefully as she defended herself by turning in profile and backing a step. Good to know.

He faked again, forcing her to turn toward him and to the right.

This time was no fake and he corrected at the last second to intercept her as she turned in profile again. Adelene screamed as the blade made contact with her side, cutting into her flank.

This time it was no superficial wound. Bright red blood gushed down her side. A few more seconds and it would have been a fatal wound. As of now, it just crippled her.

She now had two weak spots to protect.

Kent was going to take advantage of that.

He came at her again, this time straight on. She was surprised that he had in fact not feigned or pivoted so he caught her square in the body. Her screams echoed off the walls. He hoped she remembered all the times she had created those screams.

The blade was deep in her belly, but Kent didn’t let off until he got through to the other side.

“Mom!” Lacey screamed as the top half of Adelene fell to the floor. Shortly thereafter the lower half crumpled to the ground as well.

He turned toward Lacey.

Her face blanched. Psychopaths may not exhibit a lot of fear. But faced with imminent death, even they had a physiological response.

“You need me,” Lacey stammered.

“For what exactly?” Kent asked, holding the chainsaw off to one side as he helped Nicole out of her restraints.

“We’re the first confirmed mother daughter team. I could provide you with a wealth of knowledge,” Lacey tried to convince him.

Oh, how little she knew him. Perhaps under other circumstances he might have been intrigued by the idea, however Lacey had threatened Nicole so it was kind of game over.

His fiancée stepped out of the way. There was nothing between him and Lacey. She moved to the left, trying to get some space between her and her beloved chainsaw.

“You said you liked blood splatter,” Kent said closing the distance.

Lacey gulped. “You aren’t really going to kill an unarmed, injured woman are you?’

“Why not?” Kent asked.

“Because, because that would be murder and you’re a profiler.”

“No, I just see that whole self-defense situation a little more fluid than most. It may not be the heat of the moment, but you’re still a danger.”

As much as he would like to, he didn’t take a run at her. As much as he liked to say otherwise, he usually did kill in the heat of the moment. While he truly was in danger. But now? Lacey did look helpless. He knew better than to think she was anything but a murderer, but he was having a hard time cutting her apart.

Then suddenly Lacey launched at him. Now he had no problem. He turned the chainsaw blade on its side, hacking at her bad arm. She screamed as the limb dropped off her body.

He wasn’t done yet. Kent flipped the blade again, cutting crosswise, ripping into her neck. Lacey’s hot carotid blood sprayed his face as her head lolled to the side. She fell to the floor, dead before she hit it.

Only then did Kent realize Lacey didn’t make a run at him at all. It had been Nicole who had pushed Lacey into him.

Again, pride surged in his chest for his fiancée. She had saved them both in his moment of weakness.

* * *

Nicole leaned against the wall. The chloroform was still circulating in her system. Adrenaline had gotten her this far, but with the danger over, she was having a hard time staying upright.

Kent rushed over and scooped her up. He was wet and sticky with blood. She hugged him anyway.

“You found me,” she smiled, wiping his lips off before she kissed them.

“Only with Lucky 37’s help.”

She could understand why her fiancé frowned. That serial rapist had inserted himself into their lives. She knew that Kent was beyond frustrated he couldn’t capture the man. And then to have him help on cases. That was just salt in the wound.

But for now she didn’t care as she hugged Kent. That had been close. Too close. Never again was she going to do any nice favors for victims that was for sure. If they checked themselves out of the hospital, all the more power to them.

Kent leaned back, smoothing back her hair. “You know what?”

“What?” Nicole asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

“I think it’s time.”

“Time for?”

“Time to get married,” Kent said with a smile on his face. Not his usual, I’m about to outsmart you smiles, but a genuine smile. A happy smile.

“So we can plan a date?” Nicole queried. You never could be sure with Kent.

“No,” Kent answered. See, there it was.

“Then what?”

“I meant, now.”

“This weekend?” Nicole asked trying to figure him out.

“Now.”

“Tomorrow?” That seemed just impossible yet Kent shook his head again.

“No, now. Tonight. We shower, change clothes, get married. That kind of now.”

Nicole took a step back. He couldn’t be serious could he?

“That’s crazy.”

Kent indicated to the carnage around them. “Any crazier than this?”

No, Nicole guessed it wasn’t.

“But how?”

Kent shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’ve got everything down.”

He brought out Glick’s phone and sent a text. “There. Everyone will be at the church in two hours.”

Kent tried to tug her toward the door, but Nicole dug her heels in. “But…but… what about this?”

The profiler waved away her concern. “We just tell them after the ceremony.”

“We can’t do that,” Nicole stated.

“Why not? What does it matter? We didn’t shoot anyone. So no shooting board. And they aren’t going anywhere.”

Horror must have crossed Nicole’s face because Kent stopped. “Can’t you feel it? That feeling that we can’t be unmarried a moment longer?”

Nicole put her hand on his arm. “I’ve felt it since you proposed. I wanted to get married right then and there.”

Kent cupped her face in his hand. “Then why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because…” Nicole was having a hard time putting her feelings into words. “Because you get engaged, then set a date then get married.”

“And who said that exactly?”

Ugh. Sometimes it was rough having a man in your life that truly didn’t care what anyone thought about him. “Everyone.”

“So what is it going to be?” Kent asked. “Call in the crime or go get married? It’s up to you.”

Nicole knew what she should do. She also knew what she wanted to do. So she grabbed Kent’s hand and ran out of the building with her fiancé.

CHAPTER 19

Ruben straightened his tie. This was the most absurd thing he’d ever heard of. Kent had actually sent a text that stated, “If you want to attend our nuptials be at the Seventh Street Cathedral at nine pm.”

Seriously not even a real invitation.

“There you are,” Paggie said as she trotted up to him, her heels clicking on the sidewalk. They hadn’t even had a chance to ride to the church together. “Do you think it is really happening?”

Ruben shrugged. He’d heard on the grapevine that Nicole had been taken by Buzz Kill but apparently that was just a wild rumor because supposedly she was getting her hair and makeup done.

He guessed that Kent had decided to get married instead of take down Buzz Kill tonight.

It was all so random.

“Gosh, it looks so pretty,” Paggie said as she took Ruben’s hand. She was right. The church’s stained glass windows glowed in the dark night. It really was magical.

Then they stepped into the church to find the entire thing lit by candlelight. White flowers were everywhere, of all kinds. Daisies, lilies, roses. It was like an explosion of faith.

A white carpet ran down the center aisle.

Ushers stood at the entrance. “Party of the bride or the groom?” one asked. Ruben thought it was one of the younger patrolmen.

“Bride,” Ruben answered.

He noticed that the left side, Nicole’s side was nearly crammed full, yet the right side only had Jimmi and Joshua. Kent probably liked it that way.

There was a hush on the air as they took their seats. Glick was in the row ahead of him with a woman Ruben didn’t recognize.

Good job, Glick.

Then, when the organ should have started playing, harps instead struck up. Ruben looked up to the choir area to find it filled with five harpists. The music was the wedding march only haunting. And the most beautiful music he had ever heard. Kent entered from the side to take his place near the priest. He actually looked dapper in his formal tux.

All eyes turned to the back of the church as Nicole appeared from the hallway. There was a loud shuffled as everyone stood to get a look at her. She looked stunning. Her dress was a simple silk dress with an empire waist. She looked barefoot as her feet padded on the thick white carpet. Her makeup was simple and no elaborate up do for her. Instead Nicole’s hair hung down in long beautiful chestnut ringlets, framing her perfect face. Ruben nodded to his once possible father-in-law who looked none too happy walking his only daughter down the aisle to Kent.

Ruben had always gotten along well with Mr. Usher. He’d hoped to be a son-in-law, but that ship apparently was sailing right now.

All of that condemning Ruben had done of Kent over the wedding. He’d been certain that the profiler would let Nicole down. Either by never sealing the deal or by throwing some kind of disjointed, low budget, thrown together affair.

Instead he’d given her this. A magical, unforgettable ceremony.

Ruben glanced over to Paggie. Her Polynesian features had gone an unusual pale and she was biting her lip. Not a good sign.

He knew exactly what Paggie was thinking. How was she going to out do this?

Ruben hated to tell her, there was no way. Not when you looked into the guest’s eyes. They were all enraptured. Completely and totally.

The department would be buzzing about this for weeks.

Damn it.

* * *

Nicole had to remember to breathe. She could feel her eyes pooling with tears but she refused to let them spill over. She was not going to let her emotions ruin her perfectly applied eyeliner.

To think just a few hours ago she was still half-drugged and covered in blood and now, without ego, she knew that she looked like an angel floating down the aisle.

And there was Kent. The man that had done it all. Not just saved her from two vicious serial killers, but had planned and executed the most beautiful wedding she ever could have conceived of. No, she never could have conceived of this. It was far more than her limited imagination could have come up with.

Only Kent in his eccentric, bizarre brain could have pulled this off.

Her father took her hand off of his arm and gave it to Kent. She knew how hard that was for her dad. There was no love lost between the two men. Nicole gave her father a peck on the cheek to let him know how grateful she was then stepped up beside Kent.

She’d thought she would have felt short given she didn’t have her normal heels on, but Kent had even thought of that as Nicole realized there was a silk covered step for her. She was nearly eye level with her fiancé.

Was that tears in his eyes? Had Kent actually misted up? She had never loved him more than in that moment.

She took his arm and turned to the priest. She was surprised to find it was her childhood priest. Father Sampson. How had Kent not only tracked him down but talked him into coming out of retirement to officiate?

Nicole had to cling to Kent’s arm. Whether it was the lingering side effects of the chloroform or the overwhelming majesty of the wedding, she didn’t know.

All she knew was she had never been happier.

* * *

“I don’t,” Kent said feeling a bit light-headed. He’d gone over this night again and again in his mind. Trying to make sure everything was perfect. The flowers, the music, the vows. Crap. That wasn’t the right answer.

He had to cover. “I don’t want to live another day without her,” he said.

Nicole’s glare softened.

The priest cleared his throat. “I do need you to say it correctly though,” he whispered.

“I do,” Kent answered loudly to relieve the rest of the crowd. This was the tensest moment since the priest asked if anyone objected to the union.

Kent had given a glare of his own to Ruben. Luckily the bald detective’s butt stayed in his seat. Kent wasn’t sure if it was his glare or the fact that Paggie probably had a death grip on his hand.

“Then I declare you man and wife,” the priest said. “You may kiss the bride.”

So that was it. They were married.

Kent leaned over to Nicole, pushed back her veil, cupped the nape of her neck and brought her in for a kiss. Her lips were warm and wet and tasted vaguely of peaches.

Doves, not his doves, but actual church doves took that opportune moment to fly down from the rafters and sail above the crowd. The entire church was filled with ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’. Kent was totally going to take credit for that.

He was sorry though to have their lips part.

The smile on Nicole’s face nearly made up for it though.

“Mrs. Harbinger.”

“Mr. Usher,” Nicole countered nudging him. They still hadn’t decided on the semantics yet. Probably because they didn’t realize when they were getting married until about two hours ago.

“You can take her out now,” the priest urged.

Kent wasn’t so good at this formal stuff. Nicole tucked her arm into his and they started walking back down the aisle. Then an overwhelming sense of joy took them over and they began to run.

Some of the guests had beat them outside, throwing bird seed at them. Kent bet who ever developed this tradition was a sadist himself.

Then they were through the crowd and to Nicole’s mustang.

Before they left there was just one more thing to do.

“Glick,” Kent said, calling the captain over.

“I’m so sorry,” Nicole said before Kent could say anything else.

Glick hugged Nicole. “Why ever would you be sorry on a night like tonight?”

“Well,” Nicole said stalling. “We kind of caught Buzz Kill.”

Kent rotated his hand. “Um, caught may not be the correct word for it.”

Nicole buried an elbow into his side. “Yes, well, neutralized might be a better term for it.”

Glick’s face went from happiness to concern. “Are you telling me that before the wedding you killed Buzz Kill?”

“Yes, both of them,” Nicole finally stated truthfully. “But we didn’t want the hoopla to overshadow…well… this…”

Kent had to give the captain credit. His rage blew out within seconds. “It’s fine. Go to the reception. I’ll get Ruben and straighten this out.”

Nicole kissed Glick’s cheek several times. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

However Glick looked over Nicole’s head and mouthed, “You owe me one.”

That Kent did.

But he had captured four murderers and had a happy bride. What more could he ask for?

EPILOGUE

Lucky 37 stood in the reception line. This was a huge risk. He’d stayed at the back of the church during the wedding. He had planned to sit on Kent’s side but since there were only two other men there, he couldn’t chance it.

But now, now this was worth it.

All the other guests were so excited that they really didn’t give him much heed. Even Nicole’s father had patted him on the back.

Had his family been like this then maybe he would have turned out differently?

But it hadn’t and here he was.

He stepped forward as the reception line moved along. He’d never been to a wedding let alone a formal reception, so this was all new and exciting. Almost as exciting as the hunt. Would it be as fulfilling as the kill though? He doubted it.

Someone bumped him from behind. He thought the shorter Asian man’s name was Jimmi? A tech that worked with Kent frequently.

“Sorry, dude,” the tech stated.

“No problem,” Lucky replied. The man who was tasked with tracking him down hadn’t even given him a second glance. Would Kent be so oblivious? A part of him wanted Kent to recognize him while another part just wanted this to be his little secret.

While he waited, he allowed the aroma of the buffet line to wash over him. It was a spread he could really dig into. Who else but Kent had chicken fried steak at their reception? No poufy crab puffs or tiny sandwiches. Nope, there were biscuits and country gravy. Meatloaf sandwiches and some of the tastiest cherry pie around.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

The line moved along until finally he was next up. Lucky took a deep breath and stepped forward. Since neither the bride nor groom had a “best” anything nor even bridesmaids or groomsmen, the first person he came to was Nicole. She did truly look lovely. Ethereal in her flowing white dress and soft makeup.

“Congratulations,” he said as he shook her soft hand.

“Thank you,” she replied with a smile. Her eyes flowed over him with no sense of recognition. He gave her hand a little squeeze before he moved on to Kent.

There the profiler was in all his glory. The single most effective profiler in the history of profiling. And today’s quadruple header was only going to cement Kent’s reputation fully.

Kent reached his hand out without hesitation. Lucky took it and pumped it up and down. “Congrats, man, congrats.”

“Thank you,” Kent answered seeming a little distracted. Nicole’s leg had peeked out of a slit in her dress. So it turned out Harbinger was human after all.

“Catch you later,” Lucky said, patting Kent on the arm as he walked off.

“Absolutely,” Kent answered then didn’t give Lucky another look.

Lucky took in a few breaths as he walked off. That nearly had been as good as a kill. Fooling Harbinger like that would probably be unlike any other high he’d ever have.

Once past the line, he turned around and surveyed the scene.

Kent and Nicole looked so very happy. And for that Lucky was glad since it was probably their last night on this earth.

Pallor: the wrap-up shorty story featuring Lucky 37

CHAPTER 1

Nicole tried not to flinch as she stared down at the body that lay out before her. She was a homicide detective with years under her belt. Not like the rookie patrolman that was losing his cookies over in the bushes. The flashing red and blue lights almost made his hacking into some kind of art school project film.

“So this is the work of your local, helpful serial killer?” Nicole asked Kent who kneeled near the body.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Kent stated, a frown engraved in his features.

She really shouldn’t bust her husband’s chops. Nicole knew how torn he felt about Lucky 37. On one hand the man was a brutal serial rapist-killer that had done that to this poor woman’s face. You couldn’t even make out any real features. They were going to have to identify the woman by dental records, if there were enough teeth intact to make an ID. The victim’s bleached blond hair was nearly unrecognizable as well, the strands were so soaked in blood.

“Well, at the least,” Kent sighed as he rose, “He is keeping to his schedule despite helping us out so much.”

Lucky 37 had helped them solve two serial cases in as many weeks. This on the other hand? This was not so helpful. Lucky and Kent had formed an odd and completely dysfunctional relationship over the past few weeks. During his hunts, Lucky had come across a few pieces of work and passed the info along to Kent to help catch them.

Nicole didn’t care though. There was no amount of help Lucky could give them to wash away the sight of this poor woman’s smashed in face. Nicole watched as Kent spun his wedding ring around and around his finger. She knew how he felt. The marriage felt right. Being bound to him in a legal and moral way suited them both, however the rings? Those were annoying.

But it was ‘til death do us part. Most couples didn’t live with that vow hanging quite so closely over their heads. Any day one of them, or heck, both of them could be killed. That was just part of the job.

Ruben walked up, cringing at the sight. “Another one?”

Kent nodded. “That makes two. To keep on schedule he will need to hunt again tonight to make his third and final kill in this area before he moves on.”

“Any closer to figuring out who his next target is?” Ruben asked, already knowing the answer. The man just couldn’t stop poking the bear. It was now Ruben’s thing. Irritate Kent as much as Kent irritated Ruben.

“I’m definitely tightening the circle but will it be closed enough by tonight? Unless we break something, I doubt it.”

“So another woman dies and then Lucky moves on to another city?” Ruben asked another question he knew the answer to.

Kent didn’t even bother responding. “I want to pull the team together. Go over everything again.”

“We’ve been over it a hundred times,” Ruben complained.

“And yet we are missing something,” Kent said turning to the tall detective. “You can’t have it both ways, Ruben. Either I am a lazy, lay about, not working hard enough on the case or I’m a ball buster. Which is it?”

Ruben’s cheeks flushed an unhealthy burgundy. That vein on the side of his temple throbbed. Nicole stepped in. “You’re neither, Kent.” She nodded to Ruben. “Let’s allow the CSI and coroner to do their jobs here. We’ll follow you to the barn.”

Ruben’s frown risked becoming permanently etched into his features, but he finally turned on his heel and wordlessly returned to his car.

“So exactly how many serial killers has he caught?” Kent asked, luckily quietly enough that Ruben didn’t seem to hear.

“Kent. Stop.”

“What?” Kent asked, acting all innocent. The victim.

Which Nicole knew for a fact he was not.

* * *

Kent paced in front of the murder board. No make that the murder boards. They almost had too much information on Lucky 37. They had murders going back twenty five years. The boards were plastered with his victims. Three in each city with dozens upon dozens of cities.

Now Lucky graced their humble abode. Kent had vowed to stop Lucky, but as the hours ticked down to his departure date, even Kent became more and more disparaged that he could fulfill his promise.

“We have missed something,” Kent mumbled. He turned on the group. “You guys can’t always count on me to do the heavy-lifting. Think.”

Jimmi, Joshua, Ruben and Nicole refused to meet his eye. Only Captain Glick stood up to Kent’s glare.

“You love being the lone ranger, Harbinger,” Glick said. “Time to live up to your hype.”

Damn it, like Kent didn’t know it. The only reason anyone put up with him, even his adoring new wife, was for his expertise. His intrepid mind was the only thing keeping him out of prison or the looney bin.

He turned his supposedly withering stare to the board again. He went back to the beginning. The first set of murders. Detroit. A biker town so no great surprise there.

The three women looked about as badly beaten as the current victim. At the least Lucky was consistent.

Wait a minute.

“These are all the same MO. Exactly,” Kent stated. Everyone nodded. “Doesn’t that seem odd? His first set of murders is perfect? He had it dialed in at such a young age?”

Nicole’s brows furrowed together. “Those first sets of murders, in theory, should have been messier. More mistakes, not as fine-tuned?”

“Exactly,” Kent said as he ripped the first three victim’s photos down. “These aren’t the first victims.”

“But --” Ruben said then stopped himself. Good boy.

Kent turned to Joshua and Jimmi, his info tag team. “I want you to dig up any rape-murders that at all fit Lucky 37’s MO but before his first official kill. Focus on the victim and not the cycle or timing of the murders.”

“Do you know how many rape-murders across the country we are talking about?”

“As the leading serialist profiler, yes I do,” Kent said. “It is going to be a lot, but really drill down to the overkill. That I believe would have been his early signature. That and the biker chick fetish. That should cut the results down to a manageable number.”

Joshua’s head bobbed up and down. He was always up for anything Kent laid on him. “And me?”

“We are talking pre-DNA days. You are going to help coordinate gathering samples they took but never ran to confirm if we have any early Lucky 37 kills.”

“You got it,” Joshua said as he hopped off his stool. “And I’ll look into all of our records as well to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

“Good,” Kent said. They all needed to go back and recheck their work. They couldn’t let a single clue slip through their fingers.

A uniformed policeman ran into the room, handed Glick something then hightailed it out of there.

Glick opened the manila envelope and pulled out a picture. “It seems this was Lucky 37’s victim last night. Lisa Bounnet. Twenty seven. A frequenter of biker bars given her sheet full of drunk and disorderly arrests.

“Oh my god,” Nicole breathed out beside Kent.

* * *

Nicole took a step back from the picture. “I met her. That night I was staking out at the bar. I met her.”

It seemed impossible. How out of all the biker chicks in the world, she had met one who turned out to be a Lucky 37 victim. It was chilling to know that was how close they had come to Lucky. How close Kent had brought them to Lucky.

What if she’d gone back to that bar last night? Could she have prevented this latest tragedy?

“It wasn’t your fault, Nic,” Kent tried to reassure her, rubbing his hand up and down her arm. “This is the price we pay for getting so close.”

She breathed out through her nose, trying to maintain focus but her mind kept overlaying that bloody, broken face over the smiling Facebook picture. She should have warned her. She should have done more.

Nicole looked up into Kent’s eyes. If there was anyone in the world that understood how she felt, it was her husband.

“We’re close,” Kent said. “You’ve got to remember that. If you knew her, you almost know him.”

Nicole nodded, gulping down the saliva that had collected in her mouth. “I don’t know if it matters, but she had a really bad smoker’s rasp to her voice.”

“It might,” Kent said, squeezing her upper arm. “Anything else you noticed about her?”

“She was nice,” Nicole said. “I know Glick that you said she had a long rap sheet, but she wasn’t like a lot of the other hard core biker chicks. She seemed genuinely nice and friendly. She didn’t act like I was her competition.”

“Interesting,” Kent said. “That really could be important. I think Lucky is looking for an emotional connection, more than a physical one. Acting nice, especially to another attractive woman is a rarity in that world.”

“So what? We’re going to go up to each of them and ask them to give us a quarter?” Ruben challenged.

She could see Kent’s jaw working up and down. She was very proud of her husband. That meant he was actually holding his tongue. Another rarity.

“I think what it means is that we go back and interview all the bartenders and waitresses and find out who stands out as nice amongst their customers.” Nicole looked to Kent who nodded. “So why don’t you get started with that?”

Ruben’s cheeks billowed in and out a few times, then he nodded. “I’ll get a few Uni’s to help out.”

“Yes, why don’t you let the men with big boy pants do the thinking,” Kent commented.

Nicole spun on her heel, digging her elbow into Kent’s side. Seriously just when she had diffused things he had to go all juvenile on her.

“Ruben, please,” Nicole beseeched. “Another woman’s life is on the line. Can we forego the tit for tat? You guys can hash this out once we catch the killer.”

Luckily for all of them, Ruben was the more mature of the two and he headed out without another word. Glick shook his head at Kent before he left.

“You gotta learn to let it go, son.”

* * *

Ruben swore he could feel an aneurism coming on. His head throbbed. His pulse pounded against his temple. Paggie kept telling him it wasn’t healthy to engage with Kent like this, but there was something just so grating about the man, he felt helpless to stop.

However as his vision started to blur when he trotted down the staircase, Ruben was beginning to rethink that supposition. Paggie also kept telling him, the only reason Kent sparred with him was because the profiler considered him a threat.

Ruben seriously did not believe that. Kent led a violent, but charmed life. He got everything he wanted. Serial Killers. Nicole. Everything. That ring on his finger proved it.

Even there he had upstaged Ruben and Paggie’s wedding with his own. How were they going to top that? He wanted to give Paggie the best day of her life, but how could he do that if all of the guests were comparing it to Kent and Nicole’s?

Paggie said she didn’t care, but Ruben didn’t believe it. Didn’t every bride what to be the center of attention, if not just for that one day?

He flagged down a few Uni’s standing around the parking lot. Bad day to be kicking it.

“You two, head to the Hog Head tavern,” Ruben said. “We are looking for the friendliest, nicest of the biker chicks. Bring back a list along with addresses and phone numbers if possible.”

One of the younger officers chuckled.

Ruben gritted his teeth. He might have to put up with Kent’s attitude, but not these men’s. “We’re looking for Lucky 37’s next victim. If you don’t understand the urgency of that, I would recommend you go visit his latest victim in the morgue.”

All the smirks feel off the men’s faces.

Knowing that he had their attention, Ruben continued. “And you two hit up the Lost to the Road Bar. I want all of this done in two hours.”

The men grumbled but no one specifically complained to Ruben. “Alright then, get going.”

The men scattered, clearly trying to get away from the uptight detective as soon as they could.

Ruben had kept the largest biker bar, The Lonely Life Bar and Grill for himself. At the least he would like to contribute something to this case.

* * *

Joshua vibrated with anticipation. Lucky 37’s latest victim had just come in. He knew he should be sad, horrified or a little of both at the woman’s condition, yet he was only fascinated. It took a lot of force to break both zygomatic arches.

Lucky 37 must have been buff. Sure the women had some alcohol in their systems, but with these women’s chronic alcohol consumption, that amount would only make them a little lubed up. Not tipsy or anything.

Blitz attack. That’s what Lucky 37 employed. They had assumed that for a long time. Kent was right. This killer was as constant as the Northern Star. Never varying. Never wavering.

His pattern and kills were always the same.

Joshua looked up to the X-ray viewer, he had Lucky’s DNA profile on the viewer. His DNA was all over the woman. Semen, hair, skin. Joshua had everything. Lucky’s fingerprints, DNA, even a pretty decent composite sketch, but it hadn’t helped them a bit.

Within his chosen group, he didn’t stand out at all. And none of the bikers were going to turn in one of their own, even if he was killing their women. That was some hard core loyalty. Kind of like Joshua’s to Kent.

Ruben really should just learn to embrace the awesomeness of Kent and get over his whole grudge thing over Nicole. Heck, Joshua had.

A crush on a girl certainly wasn’t worth not swimming in Kent’s awesome-sauce. Joshua had faith in the profiler. He would catch Lucky 37, most likely tonight. Joshua could just feel it in his bones. Or was that the rain that was coming?

Either way, it was going to be an amazing night.

He stared at the DNA profile again. They had already run it through every known database. With the exception of the crimes he had committed, Lucky didn’t pop up anywhere else. No military back ground. No prior arrests. No teacher’s license. Nothing.

But wait. Hadn’t Kent suggested that originally Lucky 37 had helped them because he had a teenage daughter of his own?

Joshua ran over to his computer and started a familial search. Maybe he could find someone related to Lucky.

That would be super awesome in and of itself wouldn’t it?

* * *

“What are we doing here?” Nicole asked as they pulled into a mini golf course parking lot.

“I need to focus,” Kent said as he got out of her Mustang and headed for the entrance.

It was a busy Saturday afternoon. There were kids everywhere. Laughing, screaming, crying. How exactly was Kent going to focus?

Still he strode right up to the ticket booth and bought them one round each. Nicole guessed that she was lucky. Kent never stopped surprising her.

They picked up their clubs and balls and headed to the first hole. This one had a castle sitting over a bridge with a windmill circling, adding an additional level of difficulty, swinging over the entrance to the green.

Kent put his ball down on the fake grass and eyed the hole. He swung his club back three times but didn’t hit the ball. By now a couple with three children had come up behind them.

“Too scared to hit it?” the oldest dark haired boy scoffed.

“Johnny!” the father barked and the mother tried to pull the boy away, but the boy slipped out of the hold.

“Your parents too scared to tell you that you were adopted?” Kent shot back.

The boy’s lip trembled, then he turned and ran.

“What kind of a monster are you?” the father demanded before he ran after his distraught son.

The mother however just stood there, blinking uncontrollably.

“I’m so sorry,” Nicole said, not sure what else to say.

“How did you… How did you know?” the mother asked.

Kent shrugged in that way that he did when he was being superior. “The hair line. That kid’s got a nearly Dracula high widow’s peak. Neither you, your husband, or your other kids have it.”

“My husband was right,” the woman sneered then gathered her kids and left.

Nicole waited until they were out of earshot. “Kent, you can’t keep doing that.”

“Why not?” Kent asked, leaning over his ball again. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

“No matter. You need to show some restraint.”

Kent stood up straight. “Again, why? They were lying to that boy and he knew it. I gave him the information that he needed to move on.”

“You don’t know that,” Nicole replied. The profiler really could get annoying when he was high up on his horse.

“Did you notice that Johnny didn’t say ‘no’ or ‘what are you talking about’? He knew what I said was true. It confirmed his fears. My guess is that he’s asked before. I couldn’t have been the only one to notice the widow’s peak. Plus the hair on his arms swirled rather than ran in a straight line like the rest of the family. There are probably a hundred different such traits I didn’t even notice. But Johnny noticed and wondered.”

It really was insufferable when Kent was so right. Well, right on his observations, not necessarily on his actions. “It was still that family’s decision to make, not yours.”

“Really? Because that kid better get some treatment or he is going to have a screwed up life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The attachment disorder? Didn’t you notice how the family was used to those outbursts and how he refused his mother’s touch? My guess is he was adopted from a Russian orphanage when they thought they couldn’t have kids, then once they got Johnny home, she got pregnant right away. It happens all the time.”

Nicole knew that she was being nearly as stubborn as Ruben, but it just didn’t seem possible he could have obtained all that information in the space of a few seconds when she hadn’t noticed any of it. It was like they were living on two different planes or something.

“Russian adoption? Attachment disorder? Are you just making that up to justify your actions?”

Kent looked over his shoulder at her and shot her a glare. He was known for his many eccentric behaviors, but lying to bolster his rep was definitely not one of them.

Nicole turned to watch the family. The boy had stalked off, his arms crossed, tears streaking down his face. The mother was trying to console him, but he was having none of it. The father had gotten the course’s manager and was yelling in his face. The manager was turning deeper and deeper shades of red as the conversation continued until he finally put up a hand and started walking towards them.

“We’ve got to go,” Nicole said as the man stomped over. Unfortunately she was kind of used to this, however it usually involved Kent lifting something. She carried nearly three hundred dollars in her purse to pay for anything Kent “borrowed.”

“But I was about to make a hole in one,” Kent complained as Nicole dragged him off the course. She took his club and ball, setting them down on the table before striking for the exit. The manager was really hustling to catch up, but Nicole flashed her badge.

The large man’s determination waivered in the face of a police presence. Finally his feet stalled and she noticed his toes pointed back to the golf course. Crisis averted.

“Seriously, I can’t take you anywhere,” Nicole complained to Kent as she opened the passenger side door.

“Why can’t I drive?” Kent asked seeming oblivious to the last few minutes.

“Just get in the car,” Nicole said. Her tone must have been firm enough because Kent didn’t argue back he just got in for once.

Nicole rushed around the other side of the car and hopped in, gunning the engine.

“Why are you mad at me?” Kent asked.

“We can’t just have a normal game of put-put golf,” Nicole said with a shake of her head.

“Not fair,” Kent responded. “I was the only chance that boy had.”

Nicole rolled her eyes, running her fingers through her hair. “You do know there are other ways to go about these things rather than just blurting out hurtful information.”

“Really?” Kent asked leaning back. Nicole knew she was in trouble before he even opened his mouth. “Because I remember you ready to knock a father around for not letting his son become a daughter.”

Nicole made a right hand turn, perhaps a little too fast as the wheels squealed. “That’s different.”

“Really? Because that boy has felt odd and different and “less than” his whole life too. Just like Delia. Now at least he knows he isn’t defective, or a disappointment to his parents. He is just genetically different with a beginning in life that left him with certain challenges. Can you imagine how it’s felt to live in that postcard perfect family and have the pain that boy carries and not knowing why?”

Nicole chewed her lower lip. Why was Kent always so insufferably right? “You could have talked to the parents.”

“Yes, because that always goes so well,” Kent scoffed.

She couldn’t rebuke him. Nicole could have imagined how that conversation might have gone and in the end the parents would have probably decided against telling the boy.

This way, Kent had ripped off the bandage. It might hurt like heck, but it was out in the open. The wound could now heal.

“Could you maybe pass this stuff by me first though?” Nicole asked.

“Why?” Kent asked. “I knew you’d agree with me or I wouldn’t have done it.”

Nicole didn’t know how to respond and missed a left hand turn out of the complex. Just when she was beginning to fear that Kent was as much as a lone wolf as Lucky 37, he’d go and say something like that.

“You really thought it through that far?” Nicole asked. Most of the time Kent seemed to be going by the seat of his pants.

Kent just nodded with that smile he got when he knew he’d won her over.

Damn him.

“So where to next?” Nicole asked to try and change the subject.

“I was thinking home,” Kent responded. Nicole almost missed another left.

“Home? Lucky 37 is going to strike again tonight and you want to go home for a nap?”

“Well, I was thinking of the bed but not to sleep.”

Nicole could feel her cheeks blush even though she tried to make them stop. Ever since the wedding they had been on quite the roll. “Really in the middle of an investigation you want to go home for a quickie?”

“Sure,” Kent said. “Why not? I need to do something to take my mind off the case so that my subconscious can do its thing.”

“And I’m supposed to just go along with this?”

Kent shrugged again. “It’s either a quickie or we go to a video arcade for a few hours.”

Ugh. Nicole would rather have serial killer inspired sex, thank you very much.

CHAPTER 2

Kent unlocked the door with his wrist turned backwards. Nicole was in his other arm and let’s just say he had brought her around to the whole idea of heading home.

He fumbled a few times, but finally got the key in the lock and swung the door open. Entangled, they stumbled into the house. Nicole was heading for the couch, but for what Kent had in mind they were going to need the bed.

He scooped her up in his arms and headed up the stairs. Nicole was busy unbuttoning his shirt when they finally got to the bedroom.

Kent tossed her on the bed, leaping after her. She laughed as she rolled on top of him. So much better than the post-mini-golf-pissed-off-Nicole. Although seeing her so passionate was what gave him this idea in the first place.

She had her shirt and slacks off in a split second. His wife was straddling him in her underwear, rocking back and forth as she unbuttoned his pants.

Suddenly panic replaced passion.

“Stop,” Kent said grabbing her wrists.

“What, I thought --”

He put a finger up to his lips. Carefully she swung her leg over his, letting him up.

“Is it Yvent again?” Nicole whispered.

Kent shook his head. His protégé was still in Israel. Their visitor was much more malignant.

“Can’t you smell that?”

Nicole sniffed, curling up her nose. “What?”

“Brut aftershave.”

She inhaled again but shook her head.

“He’s been here,” Kent said.

“He?”

“He.”

Nicole’s cheeks went pale as her pupils dilated. “Lucky 37?” she said in horror.

Nothing like a serial killer in your bedroom to kill the mood.

Kent stood and walked the room very carefully. Everything seemed normal until he got to the dresser. There lay a red rose with a note underneath of it.

Nicole scrambled to get her clothes back on. “What does it say?”

“Tonight.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Kent sniffed the paper. Brut aftershave all right. He’d smelled it on all of their victims, but now it was confirmed, Lucky 37 was a Brut man. No great surprise there. “I think it means our little détente ends this evening.”

* * *

Ruben tried not to act surprised when Nicole and Kent came back into the station. From Nicole’s mussed hair and improperly buttoned shirt, he could guess what the two of them were up to.

He nodded to Nicole’s waist. She looked down and obviously realized what the problem was as she rapidly re-buttoned her shirt and tucked it in.

“An eventful lunch then?” Ruben asked. It was bad enough she had rejected him for Kent, but to flaunt it like this?

“Yah,” Kent said. “Lucky 37 left us a note in our bedroom. Tonight.”

“He was at your house?” Ruben demanded of Nicole. “We’ve got to move you to a safe house.”

“Whoa,” Nicole said. “Let’s all just take a moment before we go off the deep end.”

Ruben turned to Glick as the captain walked into the bullpen. “Glick, Lucky 37 made a direct threat against Kent and Nicole.”

“What?” Glick asked as Kent handed him the note. “Tonight?” What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly,” Kent said. “It was clearly meant for me,” he explained to the captain then turned to Ruben. “And lord knows you don’t care about my safety, but thanks for thinking of me.”

Ruben didn’t bother to retort. Kent had won this round, he just needed to let it go. Maybe Paggie was right. Ignoring Kent might be the best revenge after all.

Luckily Ruben was spared any more small talk as Jimmi burst into the room.

“Has no one gotten my texts?” the tech demanded.

Ruben snapped his phone off his belt. “No, I’ve got nothing.”

Murmurs from the others confirmed that fact that none of them had received texts.

“Oh, crap, I must have run out of minutes,” Jimmi said, “No worries, though, maybe it’s better that we do this in person.”

“What do you have?” Kent asked as Jimmi went over to Nicole’s computer.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, are you going to love this!” Jimmi announced as he brought up a report onto the big screen.

“You know how you told me to look for similar, but early, raw murders?” Jimmi asked.

“Since I told you it like an hour ago, yes,” Kent responded.

“Well, I found two rapes that match our criteria. I’ve already called evidence to get the DNA rolling, they were so long ago they didn’t have DNA available back then, but they did do some vaginal swabs.”

“Rapes?” Kent asked, “Not murders?”

Crap, Ruben hadn’t even noticed the difference in Jimmi’s statement.

“That is why you are going to love me way more than you have ever cared about Joshua,” Jimmi said. “Because yes, the first woman died, but the second survived and guess what?”

“Jesus, Jimmi, what?” Glick pressed.

“The crimes happened here, in this city.”

* * *

Kent sat down hard. This was the biggest break in the case… well it was the only big break. “Tell me she still lives in town.”

Jimmi shuffled his feet a bit. “Well, I might have over exaggerated a bit in my exuberance.”

“Jimmi…” Nicole threatened.

“She does live here, but in a managed care facility. She has been catatonic since the rape… But hey, if there is anyone who can get someone in a twenty year catatonic state to help us, it’s you, right?”

Kent loved his rep, but sometimes it got him in trouble. Like Jimmi thinking he could coax anything from a woman who had been catatonic for two decades. A coma was one thing. That was a medical condition. Someone could wake up from a coma after two decades with their memory intact, damaged or gone. Catatonia was something altogether different. It was the brain’s way of protecting itself from severe trauma. Unless someone came out of a catatonic state fairly quickly as the subconscious processed the trauma, they seldom came out.

They were permanently locked in their own mind. If the victim hadn’t come out after all this time, could he really succeed in getting any information from her?

“We have to at least try,” Nicole said, obviously trying to manage expectations.

“While we run out there,” Kent told Jimmi, “I want everything and I mean everything on this woman.”

“Marcy Becks,” Jimmi stated giving their victim a name.

“I want to know what breakfast food Marcy ate, everything.”

Jimmi nodded vigorously then ran, ran out of the bullpen. Kent kind of liked the kid.

Kent turned to Nicole. “Ready to break the case?”

She grabbed her keys from the desk. “Always.”

* * *

Nicole stood in the back of the hospital room. Marcy, two decades later was still hooked up to a dozen machines. A urine bag hung from the bedpost. She had a tube up her nose, Nicole supposed to feed her.

This was no life at all. Kent had been bugging Nicole to write a living will. Nicole had thought it morbid, but now after seeing this? She was going home tonight and printing off the forms.

“No one ever visits her?” Kent asked the nurse that had escorted them into the room.

The nurse shook her head. “No family that I know of. No one to sign an order to stop her feeding tube. She’d been here longer than I have and I started in the nineties.”

“Who pays the bills?” Kent asked looking around the room. It was a nice facility, probably running ten thousand a month.

“I think I heard there is a trust fund or something,” the nurse reported.

“So no trustee or lawyer or executor of the fund has ever been by?”

“You’d have to talk to admin for that info,” the nurse said. “I’ve got bed pans to change so just use this button to page one of us if you need anything…” the nurse looked to Marcy whose cheeks were shallow and her skin color was closer to grey than anything else. “Although I doubt anything will...”

Nicole nodded as the woman left the room. She had about the same expectations as the nurse.

Kent leaned over the patient. “Marcy, can you hear me? Do anything. Move a finger, blink, anything.”

Nothing though. Kent took Marcy’s hand. “You haven’t had anyone that cared Marcy, I get it. But I’m here now and I’m trying to take down the man who did this to you.”

Still nothing. What had either of them expected?

Nicole’s phone vibrated at her hip. “Looks like it’s Jimmi.”

“Put it on speaker,” Kent said.

Nicole complied. “What’ve you got Jimmi?”

She could hear Jimmi gulp several times before he spoke, it must be something big. “Take a look at the pic I just sent,”

Nicole switched over to her text window to find a picture of a man.

“Recognize him?” Jimmi asked.

She flashed the picture to Kent who whistled through his teeth. It was Lucky 37. Younger, less scruffy, but Lucky.

“Who is it?” Kent asked.

“Marcy’s fiancée at the time of her attack. A Gerald Gurtz.”

“Gerald Gurtz?” Kent repeated.

“I know, that so doesn’t sound like Lucky 37’s real name,” Nicole added.

“But it’s him,” Jimmi said. “I age progressed this photo and it is nearly a 100 percent perfect match to your guys’ sketch from the biker bar.”

* * *

Kent rolled the name around in his head. Gerald Gurtz. An innocuous name. Not the name of infamy you expected from a serial killer who had roamed the country killing at will. Gerald.

Lucky 37 suited him better.

Still he leaned over Marcy. “Did Gerald do this to you?”

There was no response. Her pupils were mid-range, her pulse hadn’t changed. He hadn’t taken her hand to comfort her but to check her heartbeats.

“Why wasn’t Gerald pulled in for doing this to Marcy?” Nicole asked Joshua.

Joshua’s voice sounded tinny coming over the speakers. “Because he had an airtight alibi.”

“Let me guess,” Nicole said. “His biker buddies.”

“Exactly,” Joshua responded. “And police felt very strongly that the first rape and murder and Marcy’s were connected and Gerald wasn’t at all in their sights for the first one.”

“Surrogate?” Nicole suggested.

Kent nodded. Gerald’s frustrations and fantasies had probably circled around Marcy but he didn’t have it in him to attack her, so he found someone else that reminded him of Marcy and raped and killed her, then got the confidence to go after the real object of his obsession, Marcy.

Kent leaned over the woman, “Did Gerald do this to you?”

Again, there was no response whatsoever.

He went on a hunch, figuring that sensory memory was a much more vital function, taking out the card that Lucky had left for him. Kent waved it under Marcy’s nose.

Her pupils constricted and her eyelids fluttered.

“Gotta go, Joshua,” Nicole said as she cut off the call mid-sentence and came to Kent’s side. “Was that a response?”

“Looks like it,” Kent said. “Marcy blink once for no. Two for yes. Is your name Marcy?”

There were two blinks. Bingo he had gotten in.

“Did Gerald do this to you?”

Two more blinks. Damn he was good. It was confirmed, not just suspected that Gerald Gurtz raped and attempted to murder Marcy which meant Gurtz was Lucky.

Kent was so close to Marcy he could smell the anti-lice shampoo that they used on her hair. But was there something else as well? He smelled up and down her neck and her pillow.

“What are you doing?” Nicole asked.

“Has he been here?” Kent asked.

Marcy’s eyelids fluttered frantically as a tear rolled down her cheek.

“Get the nurse!” Kent barked.

“But I don’t --”

“Nic, just get the nurse.”

* * *

Nicole didn’t understand what was going on, but she went and flagged down the nurse that had helped them from before.

“What’s wrong?” the nurse asked, slightly winded from running down the hallway.

“We need a rape kit stat,” Kent ordered.

“No,” the nurse moaned. “This couldn’t happen again.”

“Again?” Nicole asked.

The nurse nodded. “About sixteen years back, Marcy here got pregnant. There was an orderly who was accused of touching another patient so we all just assumed it was him and he was fired.”

“Was there a DNA test done? Were there any charges pressed?” Kent asked in rapid fire.

“No, the hospital didn’t want any bad press and with no family…”

Right, Nicole got it. Who cared that a catatonic patient got raped when you had a reputation to uphold.

“What happened to the baby?” Nicole asked.

The nurse shrugged. “I think it was put up for adoption.”

Kent snapped his fingers. “I told you he had a teenaged daughter.”

Nicole looked to Kent. This couldn’t really be happening could it? Had Lucky 37 been coming back to “visit” aka rape Marcy over and over again. Had he fathered a child by her? Had he been here recently?

Her mind spun with the implications. Kent, as always, seemed way ahead of her. He grabbed her phone and dialed. He didn’t even wait for Jimmi to speak.

“Get adoption papers for a child birthed by Marcy about sixteen years ago,” Kent stated.

“It could take a few days to get the court --”

“Jimmi, we both know your skills. Get me those adoption records.”

Kent then reached over and cut the line, probably to stop Jimmi from whining.

Nicole turned to the nurse. “I’m going to need all of your security footage from this hallway for the last week.”

Seemingly in shock herself, the nurse didn’t move.

“Now,” Nicole emphasized and urged the nurse to the door.

Once her squeaky shoes left the room there was a silence only broken by the whir of the machines. Tears still streaked down Marcy’s face, although she cried silently. Her slack face held no expression so the tears seemed out of place.

But Nicole knew they were exactly in the right place.

“No wonder she never came out of her catatonia,” Kent said, smoothing the woman’s hair back. He could be the most tender at the oddest moments.

“She’d been traumatized over and over again,” Nicole added. “How awful.”

Kent leaned over and whispered into Marcy’s ear. “He’s mine, now.”

The woman’s eyes fluttered. If only she knew what Kent had in mind.

Nicole’s phone rang. “Joshua?”

She didn’t wait for Kent, she just put it on speaker.

“You guys are never going to figure out what I found!”

Kent rose from Marcy’s side. “That Lucky 37 has a teenage kid.”

* * *

Joshua wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt so eviscerated. Ever so deflated. Like jumping into icy water when your testicle sucked back up into your body for protection.

“How did you know?” he blurted, not bothering to hide his pain.

“Do you have a name for her?” Kent asked, brushing past Joshua’s hurt feelings like they were a rancid stack of flattened pancakes.

“Him,” Joshua corrected. “The child is a boy.”

So there was a silver lining here. In the silence that followed, Joshua knew that Kent’s eyebrows were pulling together as he frowned. He had miscalculated one small detail.

“Boy? You are sure?” Kent asked.

“I’ve got an ‘X’ and a ‘Y’ chromosome staring right back at me.

“That can’t be,” Kent nearly whispered.

But it was. Kent wasn’t perfect, but damn he came close.

Joshua loved being at the center of the investigation like this. He knew that Jimmi had thrown down some pretty good evidence earlier. Joshua was playing catch up. But he always liked to come in as the underdog.

He was like Rudy, only with dead bodies. Yah that was it.

“Do you have a name?” Nicole asked. Apparently Kent was too blown away by his error that he couldn’t speak.

Yep, Joshua had caused Kent to be speechless. Like he said this was going to be a great night.

“Yes, it is Dell Sherrer.”

“Gotta go,” is all that Nicole said before abruptly hanging up the connection.

That was weird. Usually Kent did the hanging up.

* * *

Kent couldn’t keep the smile from his lips. He had been right. So very wrong, yet so right. The sensation filled him up from the inside. It welled like a long bottled spring, erupting in his chest, warming him throughout.

Everyone criticized him for always needing to be right, but he had to be right. To think he had messed up and thought that Lucky 37 had a daughter rather than a son, that would have been a critical error. That supposition had been the basis for everything he thought he knew about Lucky. Had he been wrong in that, he would have been wrong on everything.

And his need to be right went deeper than that. He was only as successful as he was because he trusted his instincts one hundred percent. If he started to doubt those, he would be reduced to just another profiler stumbling around, groping for answers.

But he had been right. Lucky did have a teenage daughter, she just wasn’t born that way. She’d been born a boy, adopted, then realized she was transgender and was transitioning to her female self.

“Delia is adopted?” Nicole asked, clearly trying to catch up. They had met Delia last year and had taken her under his wing, helping her emancipate from her less than supportive father.

“Apparently so, which makes Mr. Sherrer’s attitude a bit more understandable. Not right, but understandable. He didn’t sign up for a transgender adopted son.”

So many good meaning people adopted for all the wrong reasons. Clearly Mr. Sherrer had been looking for that 1950’s family. He and his boy out in the backyard throwing the pigskin around while the missus was making dinner. What he got was a bit different, wasn’t it?

“So are you thinking that Lucky found those teenage rapists because he was checking in on Delia?”

Kent nodded. Good she was pulling up alongside him.

“Do you think she knows her father is Lucky?” Nicole asked.

“I don’t even know if she knows she is adopted,” Kent remarked. “What is up with parents?”

“It’s complicated, Kent,” Nicole stated. How little she knew.

He turned to her. “Want to go visit my favorite ward?”

* * *

Nicole was driving again, but not because she had demanded it, Kent had simply gotten into the passenger’s seat. She could practically hear the gears in his mind spinning on overdrive.

They now had more information on Lucky 37 in the last few hours than they had for the last twenty years.

She was speeding over to Delia’s house. Kent had reassured her that Delia wasn’t in danger, but the girl was all alone in her studio apartment. How could Kent be sure that Lucky didn’t turn his rage on her as he had done on her mother?

The mustang’s brakes squealed as she pulled into the apartment complex. For saying Delia wasn’t in any danger, Kent sprinted to the door, then charged up the stairs to the third floor then flat out ran to Delia’s door. Nicole could barely keep up and she went to the gym regularly. Okay, maybe not regularly, but a hell of a lot more frequently than Kent.

He knocked loudly and Nicole breathed out as Delia answered the door, then launched into Kent’s hug.

“What do I owe the honor?” Delia asked, tossing back her long hair “We aren’t scheduled for lunch until next week.”

“I know, can we come in?” Kent asked.

“You pay the rent so sure,” Delia said, opening the door wider.

There were many things about Kent that surprised Nicole. Many horrified her, but others brought tears to her eyes.

For one thing, it wasn’t until after they were married and combining their finances that she realized exactly how rich Kent was. Like there were three more zeroes in his bank account than she had ever seen in any of her accounts. Not only had he come from money, which he totally didn’t act like, but he had written several books under pseudonyms and made bank. A few had even been made into movies.

Hence the hefty bank account.

But the really surprising thing had not been how he’d made his money, but how he chose to spend it. It turned out that Kent was the guardian of at least six children and the executor of another eight children’s trust funds. Some of those kids were in their twenties, he had been doing this for that long.

No wonder he’d had an emancipation lawyer on speed dial. While none of the children lived with him, he made sure they had the support and living conditions to thrive.

Nicole had sobbed when she’d read the letters the children sent him. She’d known in her mind and her heart she was right to marry him, but after that, she knew it in her soul.

Delia was only one of many. A child rescued from an abusive household, set up for success. Nicole knew that Delia had just gotten accepted to early admissions to Yale. Yale.

Kent had even found a long lost aunt and moved her to town to be near Delia. They had a tentative relationship, but it was family.

They did not have such good news today.

Kent sat down on a plush couch with a burgundy crushed velvet blanket thrown over the back. Nicole sat next to him as Delia sat across from the couple.

“I take it, you don’t want any hot chocolate,” Delia said. “Whatever it is, I’m ready.”

Nicole took Kent’s hand, hoping that the contact would urge him to be gentle. This was going to be brutal.

“You know I swore to never lie to you,” Kent started out. This was not going to be pretty.

“And you never have,” Delia said, absently braiding her hair. “Don’t start now.”

“You were adopted,” Kent said.

“I figured as much,” Delia responded calmly. “Mom tried to tell me in the end, I think, but just couldn’t and dad’s refrain, ‘you aren’t my son’ I believe was literal, not figurative.”

This kid was amazing. No wonder Kent had quickened to her.

“But you aren’t here for that. That you could have told me over the phone.”

* * *

Kent knew that Nicole was worried about how he was going to handle this. Hell, he was worried. Delia had been through so much already, he didn’t want to add to her burden, but he also couldn’t hold anything back. She deserved to know everything. He could not be the arbitrator of what truth she knew and didn’t know.

“Delia, did you ever try to track down your biological mother or father?”

The girl snorted, very unlady-like. “Are you kidding me? They didn’t want me in the first place, were they really going to want a freak like me?”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” Kent retorted. He hated it when she denigrated herself like that. She was perfect in his eyes. “Or I’ll up your therapy to twice a week.”

Delia spread her hands in defeat. “My situation is complicated at best. Bringing in two more strangers wasn’t going to help.”

Kent gulped. Yes, he gulped. He didn’t want to speak the next words.

“I take it you know who my parents are?” Delia asked.

Kent could only nod. Nicole squeezed his hand. He could do this.

“And it’s bad, isn’t it?” Delia asked. “Like a serial killer or something?”

Kent again nodded.

Delia pushed back further into her chair. “I was not the product of love was I?”

Kent shrugged. “A twisted sort I think.”

Delia frowned, making her look so sad and lost. He had only ever wanted to help anchor her. Was he unraveling all the good he had done?

“Is my mother still alive?” Delia asked.

“She is catatonic,” Kent stated.

* * *

He had been doing so well, Nicole thought, then he just blurted that out. Delia’s eyes welled with tears.

“So no second chance, eh?” the girl blotted her eyes so as not to smear her mascara.

“I don’t know. We did get through to her, a little at the least today.”

Delia cocked her head. “You didn’t find all this out just randomly. What brought you this information?”

Nicole squeezed Kent’s hand so hard that she feared she was going to break a finger, but Kent plowed on.

“Have you heard of Lucky 37?” Kent asked.

Delia inhaled sharply. “That’s my dad? Lucky 37, the serial rapist-murderer? No wonder I’m so messed up.”

“You aren’t messed up, Delia,” Kent reassured the girl. “You are perfect in your imperfections.”

Delia however didn’t seem to hear him. Tears were streaking down her cheeks. “That’s it then. I’m doomed. I can’t recover from that. I can’t ever be normal can I?”

“Normal is stupid,” Kent said. “I’m not going to say this isn’t horrendous and that you don’t have some genetics that could be problematic, but his DNA and actions don’t define you, Delia.”

“How could they not?” the girl asked, her perfectly lined lips trembled.

“I’m telling you, they don’t. I know others that have walked this path before you,” Kent explained.

“Right,” Delia snorted. “Like you’ve got a bunch of serialists’ kids on your speed dial.”

“Maybe not a bunch, but enough,” Kent said.

This was news to Nicole. What kind of life did he live before they were married?

“And they have a support group. Not as flashy as AA,” Kent reported. “But they meet on line, over the web and in person. You are going to have questions, concerns, and fears. They can help you navigate through them.”

Delia’s eyelids lifted as she stared at Kent. “You really believe I can be a good person? That I’m not broken? Damaged goods before I even left the warehouse?”

Kent rose and knelt by Delia’s chair and took her hand. “I don’t just believe it. I know it.”

“You’re sure?” Delia’s tone shook with fear yet was tinged with hope.

“More sure of anything in my life,” Kent said, giving Delia a peck on the cheek. “Everything you’ve been through, even this is only going to make you a better person, I swear.”

“And you’d never lie to me?” Delia asked.

“Never,” Kent insisted then smiled. “Now, I might steal that hand blown vase over there, but lie, never.”

Delia laughed, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “You can have it or if you want steal it later, because I know you love the rush.”

Nicole chuckled as well, this girl knew her husband all right.

Sniffling, Delia asked. “Am I in danger?”

“I don’t think so, as a matter of fact, I think Lucky has been watching over you. I’m going to post a few patrolmen in the hallway though.”

“Yah, that’s going to make me popular with the neighbors.”

“They’ll get over it,” Kent said, rising. “Call if you are at all worried.”

Delia stood as well, walking them to the door. “I will. Nicole, I didn’t have a chance to give you my congratulations. Quite the ring.”

Nicole looked down at her wedding band which was braided white gold. “Thank you, and please let me know the next time you go makeup shopping. That mascara really held up.”

Delia fluttered her eyelashes. “It’s from the drugstore, totally bizarre, right?”

Nicole smiled as she exited. However as soon as the door was shut, Kent frowned, grabbing her phone, dialing rapidly.

“Who are you calling?” Nicole asked.

“Delia’s therapist,” Kent explained. “I’m putting Delia on suicide watch.”

“Why? She seemed good.”

“That’s Delia though. Remember the last time she seemed to take bad news in stride?”

Yes, Nicole did remember. They had found her hanging from her closet. Only her vanity had saved her. They couldn’t count on that again.

“Next, I’m calling her aunt and getting her over here.”

Again, the uncaring, blissfully irresponsible Kent was being the most responsible guardian you could imagine.

Nicole kissed the back of his neck as he talked to the therapist.

She had the best husband in the world.

CHAPTER THREE

Ruben’s finger shook as he dialed the phone. He was ahead of Kent. For once. He was going to relish this moment.

“Ruben?” Nicole answered her phone.

“Yah, put Kent on,” Ruben stated. He did not want this information to go through Nicole. He wanted to hear the defeat in Kent’s voice.

“Pull it out if you need to,” Kent answered.

Ruben was already pissed and it hadn’t been two seconds. He swallowed his pride on that one and coolly answered. “I think I’ve found Lucky 37’s next victim.”

Look at that. Ruben was using Kent’s own technique to beat him.

“Lucy Harrow?”

Ruben’s jaw fell open as his stomach plunged to the floor. “Yes… yes… How did you know?”

“I’d met her on a stakeout. Now that I knew what we were looking for, she was the most viable candidate.”

“But, but, but…” Ruben stopped himself. He sounded like a wronged teenager and with all the other cops around the bullpen, Ruben did not want that to be the image he projected from his side of the conversation. “Kent, I asked you earlier and you said you didn’t have any idea who the next victim was.”

“I know, I lied,” Kent admitted sounding his usual smug self.

“Why?” Ruben asked feeling about two inches tall.

“Because, this conversation wouldn’t have nearly been as fun,” Kent stated.

Nicole must have taken the phone away from the profiler as she answered, “But Ruben, look at it this way, you did figure out the next victim without Kent’s help. That’s huge.”

He knew that Nicole was trying to salvage his ego, but it was too late for that.

Ruben heard Kent in the background, “Plus I wanted an outside, uncontaminated opinion.”

Weak praise indeed.

“How long have you known?” Ruben asked Nicole.

“Only a few minutes, but he’s known since this morning.”

Of course he had. There was absolutely no reason to cry over spilt ego.

“So what is the plan?”

“Heck if I know,” Nicole responded. “He’s just having me drive south.”

“But the bar Lucy frequents is to the east.”

“Welcome to my world,” Nicole said just before hanging up.

Ruben turned to the city map on the murder board.

What in the hell was Kent doing going south?

* * *

“Care to fill me in?” Nicole asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Think it through,” Kent responded in his usual non-helpful but instructive way.

Didn’t he realize she had been racking her brain ever since he had diverted her to the south?

God how she hated to ask. “A hint?”

“Do you really think that Lucky is going to show up at any biker bar tonight? We have his name, his face, his prints, his DNA. He may like his ritual, but he isn’t stupid.”

“But I thought you said his ritual was compulsive so doesn’t that imply he had no control over it?” Nicole asked. She tried to keep all of Kent’s rules in her head.

“Oh, he is following his compulsion, all the way back to the beginning.”

“Got it,” Nicole said as the flash of understanding nearly blinded her. “He’s going back to Marcy.”

Kent nodded.

“But I thought we put some Uni’s at the hospital?”

“Like that’s going to stop him,” Kent said. “This is his coup de grace. He assumes we are going to chase our tails and give him the opportunity to finish what he started.”

Nicole chewed her lower lip. Had she been in charge, that is exactly what she would have done. She would have followed the pattern, assuming Lucy was next up. She would have assumed that Marcy was safe with her police protection. This was Lucky 37 though. He had killed with impunity for decades. A few cops at the door wasn’t going to stop him. Kent was right.

Now that she knew where she was going, Nicole stepped on it. “Should we call in for backup?”

Kent just gave her that look. Too many cops was sometimes not a good thing. Friendly fire and all.

“Ruben,” she said to her phone and it dialed automatically. Ah, technology.

“Nicole?”

“Ruben, look, Kent thinks Lucky is going back to Marcy’s.”

“I’ll send a unit over.”

“Well, no, Kent doesn’t want a large police presence to spook him. But have them wait four blocks out, okay?”

She knew Ruben hated it when Kent pulled stuff like this. Ruben liked his backup nice and close. He used to run with the strategic teams and felt they were essential to any take down. Nicole didn’t need to mention that Kent liked to go in alone so there were no witnesses to what came next.

“Okay, but keep me in the loop.”

Nicole hit the end button. She wouldn’t give any promises she couldn’t keep.

Within minutes they skidded into the advanced care facility’s parking lot. Everything seemed nice and quiet, while a maelstrom was brewing inside.

* * *

Kent walked through the door, feeling the rush of recycled air in his face. The lights were dimmed and the only people visible were two nurses at the reception station.

“Where are the police that were stationed here?”

A nurse looked up from her chart. “One of the outer bungalows was broken into, scared an elderly woman half to death. They went to check it out.”

Kent slid his eyes over to Nicole. They both knew who created that diversion and the cops had fallen for it. He couldn’t blame them though. They just didn’t understand how street-smart Lucky 37 was.

He rushed down the hallway to Marcy’s room. Nicole pulled up alongside of him, her gun drawn and down at her side.

Kent shoved the door open, trying to make the most of their element of surprise.

He found someone there, just not the person he expected.

“Delia?”

The teenage girl was sitting next to her mother’s bed, holding her hand.

“How did you find Marcy?”

“Don’t be mad at him,” Delia said. “I tricked Joshua into telling me. And don’t be mad at my aunt, I tricked her by saying I was coming to see you.”

Of course she had. He should have expected it.

“I’m not mad, but we need to get you out of here.”

“Why? He’s already here,” Delia said, nodding to behind the curtain.

Lucky 37 stepped out. Finally the bastard was just a few feet away. Nicole’s gun was up, aiming at Lucky, but he had a knife to Marcy’s neck.

“Possibly one of the most messed up family reunions ever,” Kent commented.

“If only she hadn’t insisted in waiting until after the wedding.”

“Right,” Kent hissed. “This all would have been fine if she’d just put out. Rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power.”

Lucky 37’s lips drew up into a smile. “The only problem with that theory is in areas with high porn usage have fewer rapes. How does your big brain process that information?”

Great, now Lucky 37 was an expert in the psychology of rape. And Kent couldn’t counter his argument. There was an unpopular yet evolving theory that rape was in fact about sex in many cases and that porn and frequent masturbation decreased the rape urge. Not exactly something Congress could get behind though, was it? Increase porn! Yah, you weren’t going to find that on a bumper sticker anywhere. Beating off, beats rape. Again, not exactly campaign slogan friendly.

“And now you are here to finish the job?” Kent asked.

“I was so young, so unsure,” Lucky stated.

“Be honest, you just couldn’t bring yourself to kill her. You knew her. You just couldn’t finish the job.”

Lucky’s eyes got that far off look that one did when delving deeply into memories. His voice sounded wounded, hurt. “She begged me. Her jaw was broken but still she begged.”

The serial killer’s eyes refocused and that laser sharp intent was back. “But look at her. I should have finished this long ago.”

Delia put her hand out onto Lucky’s wrist. “Please, don’t. She’s all I have left.”

Lucky looked to his daughter. “You don’t understand.”

“Yah, I think I do,” Delia said. “But she communicated with Kent early today. Rudimentary, but that’s how they found me and you.”

Lucky’s stern visage waivered.

“And she squeezed my hand earlier. There’s hope,” Delia said. “And all I really have is hope. I know you care about me. You can’t take hope from me, not now. I’ll kill myself, I swear it.”

Kent noticed that Lucky’s hand moved a few millimeters from Marcy’s neck.

“I’m not turning myself in,” Lucky rumbled.

“And I’m not asking you to. I know what happens next, I’m just asking for you to do it outside. Spare my mother, please, please, please.”

Lucky looked up at Kent. “Deal?”

Kent pushed Nicole’s arm down. “Deal.”

Lucky burst into action, hurling himself out the window. The sound of shattered glass filled the room. Delia threw herself over her mother and Kent and Nicole rushed across the room. Nicole used her elbow to break away the last of the glass, then was out the window as well. Kent took just a moment to turn back to Delia.

“Good job, kid.”

“Go get the douche,” Delia answered back with a smile.

* * *

Nicole had lost Lucky 37. How could she be a few feet behind him, but lose him? But there was no one out here. Or at least none she could see or hear.

Kent pointed to the parking lot. “Hurry before he gets on his bike.”

Then they heard it, the roar of a Harley. Nicole ran forward, firing as Lucky 37 took off down the road. How could they have him, then lose him.

Kent grabbed her phone off her belt and dialed.

“Jimmi, work your magic. Lucky is on an un-muffled Harley heading west.”

“And exactly what magic is that?” Jimmi asked.

“Don’t, sass me,” Kent growled. “Use traffic cams, satellite, whatever you’ve got.”

“Look, this isn’t Fallujah. I don’t have satellites,” Jimmi complained. “And out in that area, there aren’t a whole lot of traffic cams.”

Nicole leaned over the phone, “What about the new shot locator the FBI just installed?

Kent’s eyebrow went up so Nicole explained. “We’ve had enough violent crimes that the Feds put in a new set of microphones which listen for gun shots so that we can get first responders to the crime faster.”

“And how is that going to help us?” Kent asked.

“Well, that un-muffled exhaust is going to create a pretty unique signature sound that the microphones can pick up and track.”

“Got him!” Jimmi cried out. “He just got onto the freeway, heading north.”

Nicole beat Kent to the car and hopped into the driver’s seat and revved her Mustang’s engine. It was going to get a work-out tonight. Laying down rubber, she exited the parking lot, heading for the onramp.

“Where now?” Kent asked

“He just got off the Majorly exit heading west again.”

“Turn here!” Kent yelled, pointing to an old country road.

“Why?” Nicole asked even as she did what Kent wanted.

“I know where he’s going,” Kent said. “Just step on it.”

* * *

“Slow down,” Kent instructed Nicole. “Turn off your lights.”

Nicole complied as they eased down the street. This was a rough neighborhood. Chronic poverty did things to people and communities. All the houses were tagged without evidence that anyone had even tried to paint over the gang signs. The type of neighborhood where gunshots went unreported and victims bled to death on the streets. Which was why the city had gotten the shot reader.

“Stop here,” Kent said.

They rolled to a halt in front of an old burnt out house. “He’s come home.”

Nicole nodded, getting out of the car.

For all their cleverness, serial killers were trapped in their past. Constantly trying to right the wrongs done to them. In the most unhealthy ways of course, but still he felt a pang of sympathy for Lucky 37. Gerald didn’t have much of a chance growing up here with a crack mother.

Gun up, Nicole carefully climbed the rickety stairs to the house. The full moon streamed light through the shattered roof. No one had the money to tear down the relic, let alone rebuild here.

The mottled light gave the blackened room a silvery glint. Lucky stepped out of a doorway. Kent urged Nicole’s arm down. He wanted to hear what Lucky had to say.

“You think you know my first victim, that Katie Terrance,” Lucky said, “But my first real victim was here. Here, where I was the victim.”

Kent could see tears well in Lucky’s eyes. “You know what the worst was? When she was clean, she was a great mom. Fun, loving. But when she was on the pipe?”

Lucky shook his head, flinging tears onto the charcoal floor.

“And when she realized she could make money off a young boy like me for her habit?”

Kent could imagine. Mothers prostituting their own children had to be the cruelest form of abuse.

“And when I refused?” Lucky continued as he pointed to a corner. “That’s where she broke my nose.” Lucky pointed toward the kitchen. “That’s where she broke my arm.”

“Then you got older and bigger?” Kent suggested.

Lucky nodded. “One day she tried to use her belt on me and I just snapped. I did to her what those men did to me, then I choked her until she couldn’t yell at me anymore. Then I lit the whole place on fire.”

The serial killer looked up at Kent. “I tried to exercise my demons, I really did.”

“I believe you,” Kent said. “You didn’t kill again for years.”

“I stayed away from people. Kept my distance, especially from women. I knew they were trouble, but Marcy was just so sweet. So nice.”

“What happened then?” Nicole asked seeming to want to know as badly as Kent did. To hear the evolution of a serial killer from the killer’s mouth was quite heady. Especially when you could smell the soot, as it etched into your pores. You could feel both his suffering and his evil at once.

“She would get me all worked up then send me home,” Lucky said. “The pressure just built and built.”

“Why didn’t you just take care of yourself?” Nicole asked.

“Ah, there again Mom wouldn’t let me. She said I needed to save it for my dates,” He snorted harshly. “Somehow getting myself off was a sin, but what she let those men do to me was her paycheck.”

“So when you met Katie in that bar?”

“She was so much like Marcy, but you could tell she wasn’t going to hold out on me,” Lucky explained. “Once we got out into the alleyway though, I honestly don’t know what happened. One minute we are having consensual sex, the next I’m standing over her bloody body.”

Kent nodded. He had heard it before. Many times the first kill wasn’t even conscious. Some impulse that had been wound and wound and wound tight inside of them was suddenly released without their knowledge. A lifetime of abuse poured out onto their poor victim.

“And Marcy?” Nicole pressed.

“I tried to break it off, I swear,” Lucky said and Kent believed him. So far Lucky hadn’t lied once.

“She came to my place to find out what was wrong. We argued and then again, I came to, on top of her…”

“So you are saying she was an accident too?” Nicole asked, not sounding convinced.

“No,” Lucky said with a sob. “I knew what would happen if I let her live so I strangled her.”

“But you couldn’t finish it, could you?” Kent asked. “You weren’t a cold blooded killer yet.”

Lucky shook his head. “I ran off. I thought it was over. Until the pressure just got too much while I was in Detroit. Too many eager targets.”

“Do you really think we’re going to be sympathetic?” Nicole demanded.

“No,” Lucky said, “But you have to tell Delia, I wasn’t a born killer. I was forged into one. She doesn’t have to worry. She is a good person. I don’t want her to worry.”

Kent had to steel himself. Lucky got to him every time. He was a vicious, heartless killer, yet underneath it all, he was still that innocent young boy before his mother pimped him out.

“I will,” Kent reassured him.

Lucky smiled, then without warning, flung a piece of pipe at Nicole, knocking her gun out of her hands. He launched at her, tackling her around the waist, slamming the back of her head against the wall.

* * *

With her vision swimming, Nicole knew she should have just shot the bastard while she had the chance. Kent many times overestimated how in control of the situation he was.

She struggled against Lucky’s grip, but damn he was strong.

He brought his lips up to her ear. “You aren’t my usual type, but I might make an exception for you. After of course I dispense of your husband.”

Yah, good luck with that, Nicole thought.

She brought a knee up into Lucky’s groin, forcing him to double over. More than enough of a window for her to slip out from his grip. Did he think she didn’t know self-defense? That he was the first serial killer who had snatched her.

Please.

With a sweeping kick, she went for his legs. Lucky had to jump out of the way, pushing him even further away from her. Then he had the pipe again.

Where in the hell was Kent? Nicole leapt out of the way. Unfortunately she landed on a weak board which gave out from under her. Awkwardly she listed to the side, trying to keep from falling through. She might have succeeded if Lucky 37 hadn’t backhanded her. She backward fell into the dank, musty basement.

* * *

Kent had kept back. Nicole could take care of herself. And now she was safe in the basement. He couldn’t have planned it better himself.

Lucky turned on Kent, his pipe high above his head.

“This is going to be fun,” Lucky said.

Kent couldn’t agree more.

People, even an experienced serial killer always felt way too overconfident when they had a weapon. They invariably let down their guard, figuring the weapon would keep them safe. It wasn’t a conscious thought, but a deep sub-conscious one. The brain could only work on so many things at once and loved to check off boxes so it could move onto something else.

Kent could tell that Lucky’s “I’ve got the advantage” box had been checked.

Time to make that work for Kent.

He fake lunged, inducing a sweeping swing from Lucky. Before he could reverse that swing, Kent threw a punch to the solar plexus. Lucky grunted but stayed upright, bringing the pipe back around. Kent ducked, letting it whistle over his head.

Another punch, this time to Lucky’s groin. A groin already hit by Nicole. That had to hurt. Lucky stumbled, then gripped his pipe even tighter and launched at Kent. He side-stepped easily allowing Lucky’s momentum to carry him past.

Kent used his elbow, right at the back of the neck. Lucky nearly splayed out, but kept his feet under him at the last moment.

“A little different from fighting weak, alcoholic women, isn’t it?” Kent prodded.

Lucky growled, actually growled, then took another swing. Not only had Kent seen it coming, but grabbed the tip of the pipe and wrenched it from Lucky’s grip.

He relished the surprised look on Lucky’s face. He brought the pipe up and slammed it into Lucky’s temple. The big man tumbled over, then got to his feet.

“I know you,” Lucky said. “This is your fix. You like to kill men like me how they killed. So what are you going to do? Rape me, then strangle me?”

Kent smiled which seemed to unsettle Lucky even more. “I’ve already mind-fucked you, I can get to the killing now.”

He went at Lucky with a fury, swinging, clanging that pipe on Lucky’s jaw, wrist, shoulder, cheekbone. Lucky wasn’t even trying to defend himself anymore, he just held his hands up over his face. Kent knew that Lucky had the body weight and muscle mass over him. He had to beat him down before he went hand to hand.

Kent had no mercy. Just as Lucky hadn’t. His blows rang off the walls until Lucky slumped over. Kent grabbed Lucky by the throat and started choking him. It was only fitting.

Lucky could have struck out. Going for Kent’s eyes or lips or neck. The serial killer had the reach, but he didn’t use it.

He just let Kent choke him until his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped against Kent. Lucky must have wanted it over as badly as Kent did.

In the end, though, Kent let go as Lucky’s pulse weakened under his grip. He didn’t finish it. Lucky didn’t deserve that kind of release.

Nicole came up from the hole in the floor and staggered over, holding her right arm close to her. “Is he dead?”

“No,” Kent replied.

* * *

“No?” Nicole said as her voice cracked. Her elbow hurt like hell. She wasn’t sure if it was broken or not. “Why the hell not? You don’t think he can be rehabilitated do you?”

Bad time for Kent to wimp out.

“No,” Kent said sounding sad. “But think of how many other serial killer’s paths he has crossed. Think of how many cases we could close. How much closure we could give to victim’s families.”

Nicole still didn’t like it. Lucky was dangerous. And just like a rabid dog, you had to put them down. Kent had taught her that. She could hear his reasoning, but it was almost as if he doth protest too much. Like he had to justify it even to himself. In the end, Kent just couldn’t bring himself to kill a man, that in some perverse way he respected.

“But hey, if you feel strongly enough,” Kent said, “Go for it.”

Could Nicole do it? She leaned over Lucky, watching his pulse pound in his neck. Could she squeeze it until his heart stopped beating? Nicole had killed before. But never this close. Never in cold blood.

She rose. She couldn’t do it. She almost wished she could, but she couldn’t.

Then Lucky was up, grabbing her by the neck, squeezing her windpipe closed.

“You will be my last,” Lucky promised as his grip tightened, closing off her air.

Then a shot went off and Lucky cried out. Then another shot and Lucky went down. Nicole stood there shaking, watching Kent lower the gun. Kent had used a gun to protect her. She probably shouldn’t feel quite so proud of that fact. Kent hated guns. He called them the weapon of the weak and uninspired. Yet he’d used one for her.

“You okay?” Kent asked as she rubbed her neck. Funny, her elbow didn’t hurt so badly any more.

She looked down at the now-dead Lucky. “Yah, I think I am.”

EPILOGUE

Kent draped his arm over Nicole’s shoulder. Her good one. Her other arm was in a sling. The elbow wasn’t broken, just badly sprained.

They were back at the convalescent hospital. Delia was taking it all in stride.

“So he’s dead, really dead,” Delia asked. “Not like Friday the 13th kind of dead, where he bursts from the closet in a few seconds and kills us all kind of dead.”

“No,” Kent said. “The kind of dead where the ME is cutting into him as we speak.”

“Good,” Delia breathed out and took her mother’s hand again. “She is really responding. It’s not just wishful thinking.”

“Well, she’s got something to live for,” Nicole said, setting her head down on Kent’s shoulder.

“We will get the top neurologist out here,” Kent promised, “And see if maybe there isn’t some pharmacological help we can give her to rise to the surface.”

“Like you said. Everything I’ve been through is going to help me reach her.”

Kent wished he was close enough to hug her. “That’s right.”

Delia smiled, kissing her mom on the cheek. “I’ve got so much to tell her.”

Kent leaned his head against Nicole’s. Today had been a good day. A serial killer dead. A mother and daughter reunited, sort of. And Ruben was back at the barn, grumbling about the paperwork. Perfect.

Nicole raised her head and brought her lips to his. “I think this is the right time.”

“For what?” Kent asked even though he had an inkling of what she was about to say.

“I’m pregnant.”

“Finally,” Kent sighed. “I’ve flipped you into every pro-conception position I could think of, wifey.”

Nicole elbowed him, with her bad arm. So she was the one to wince. She kind of deserve that though, his wife was a little fast and loose with that elbow.

As she rubbed her injured joint she smiled. “So you’re happy?”

“Happy?” Kent asked. “No, I’m not happy.” He waited until Nicole gave him a frown. Sometimes she was just so predictable. “No, I am elated. Like you are when Downton Abbey comes on.”

“Wow, that’s pretty excited then.”

“Yes, yes it is,” Kent said, kissing the top of her head and tucking her back under his arm as he watched Delia whisper into her mother’s ear.

Like he said.

Perfect.

Afterword

Thank you so much for reading the Harbinger collection. I hope it didn’t keep you up as many nights as it did me!

If you enjoyed this collection, I would ask a quick favor of you and have you go back to Amazon and leave a review. We indie authors live and die by our reviews!

I’d also like to ask that if you find any typos/errors to please contact me directly. Even though this and all of my books have been put through a gazillion rounds of edits, we are all just human. It really helps if you catch anything to email me at authormccray@aol.com

Already, I have heard the outcry that the Harbinger series is coming to a close, but do not fret! I have a new trilogy in mind starting with the Soho Slasher (see the next section on how to purchase) cross over novel where Kent goes across the pond to finally solve the Jack the Ripper mystery.

Later in the fall Kill Joy, the 1st book of the 2nd cycle of the Harbinger collection should be out.

Remember by purchasing this collection now, you are entitled to not only the complete collection but any future short stories at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE.

There is a new, easy and exciting way to update your collection automatically.

Go sign up now so that it is ready for any updates in the future and you won’t have to think about it.

It is super simple. Sign into your Amazon.com account then hit the “Your Account” button. Now hit “Manage My Kindle” (even if you don’t have a Kindle device this setting will update your preferences on any Kindle app). A new banner will appear and you need to hit the “Learn More About Auto-Updates” link. It will take you to a window where you can opt into auto-updates. If you opt in, that means that the day a collection is updated, it will automatically whispersynch to your Kindle or app. Voilà!

You can read away. Once you opt in for auto-updates you can just sit back and relax while you wait for the next book to upload. How awesome is that?

If this doesn’t work as planned and you realize I have updated the collection, yet it hasn’t whispersynced to your kindle/app, as always, just let me know and I will get you a updated file ASAP.

Do you also want to know the exact moment any book of mine goes live?

You can now subscribe to me and get an email alerting you to any my release. Just go to my author’s page (and while you are there, if you could hit the “like” button – in the upper right hand corner -that would be great? Thanks!)… Just click on the "Stay Up to Date" link

Can’t wait for fall? Want more thrills right now? Check out the next section for lot of great McCray reads!

Other Works by Carolyn McCray

Soho Slasher: Jack Is Back

A Harbinger Crossover to International Hunters, Inc.

From the #1 Mystery/Thriller Bestselling authors Carolyn McCray & Ben Hopkin comes a novel that solves one of the oldest serial killer cases in existence… Jack the Ripper!

Praise for Soho Slasher…

“Ben and Carolyn know how to take the reader right into the plot and keep you involved from page one to the last and you will be panting for the next book they write. This is not the first book that I have experienced from them and it surely will not be my last, they are permanently on my favorite authors list. Action and emotions run high in their new crossover thriller series so don't miss out.”

DD Gott

Amazon Reviewer

“...it's one twist after another as it builds to a stunning conclusion. All I could think was ... And this only the beginning! This new Harbinger crossover is Brilliant!”

Anna Salamantin

Amazon Reviewer

Praise for the Harbinger Collection...

Did you know that James Rollins recommends... The Harbinger Collection, including Plain Jane: Brunettes Beware, a #1 bestseller in both Hard-Boiled Mysteries and Police Procedurals?

Let’s see why…

“If you think you know what is going to happen, you're wrong. I have read so many suspense and crime books that guessing the end gets easier and easier. NOT this time. Be prepared to be hooked from the first page and lose some sleep because you just can't put it down”

Michelle Delgado

Amazon Reviewer

“I just finished The Harbinger Collection. It was a real page turner and if I didn't know that Carolyn McCray is the author, I would think I was reading a James Patterson novel. It definitely isn't for the squeamish! It is like a thrilling roller-coaster ride!”

Skeeter

Amazon Reviewer

Anyone who enjoys mystery/thrillers such as James Patterson, Lee Child, and Patricia Cornwell, Soho Slasher will definitely satisfy your need for suspense! Click here to purchase Soho Slasher.

* * *

The Darc Murders Mystery Collection

Praise for Darc Murder Mysteries...

“A pathological serial killer is terrorizing Seattle and the only person standing in his way is Detective Robi Darcmel. From the chilling opening scene to the last lines of the first episode, I don't remember taking a deep breath. As one observer notes in the opening scene at the slaughter house to a man clearly intrigued by the sight and smell of blood, visceral and flesh--”You are one sick puppy, dude.” Indeed...This is a fascinating if horrific read. One of the most unusual “heros” I can imagine, Detective Robi Darcmel has Asperger's Syndrome… Be prepared to be shocked, and hooked.”

Windgo

Amazon Reviewer

“In the literary tradition of serial novels, I am loving this new format for the Kindle! The characters are engaging, the plot intense, an excellent read! “

Jon M. Wilson

Amazon Reviewer

The collection includes…

Devious

the prequel short story to The Darc Murders Series

Deceived*exclusive to the collection

Another prequel short story to 9th Circle

9th Circle

the #1 Hard-Boiled full-length mystery that started it all!

7th Sin

the squirm in your seat sequel to 9th Circle

Carnal*exclusive to the collection

the bridge short story 7thSin & 5th Pentagram

5th Pentagram

the shocking full-length conclusion to the Darc Murders Collection

Sinister*exclusive to the collection

the “wrap-up” short story to finish out the Darc Murders series

More praise for the Darc Murders Collection

“I absolutely am loving this book! The way it bounces between the different characters perspectives really helps to get a 3-D picture of what’s going on. The killer is so creepy and ominous.

S. Busch

Amazon Reviewer

“Five stars for an extraordinary hero who senses his way through clues and is seemingly clueless about ordinary give-and-take relationships. a very satisfying , engrossing novel.”

Dot Day

To sample or purchase The Darc Murders Collection, simply click here.

* * *

The Nursery Rhyme Murders Collection

Praise for The Nursery Rhyme Murders Collection...

"Come for the murder, stay for the three-dimensional, realistically fractured characters! … Long plane rides and rainy Saturday afternoons were made for books like this. If you like your suspense with a side of gruesome and a dash of humor, this is it."

Brandon Stanley

Amazon Reviewer

"Humpty Dumpty is a wonderful start to what I hope will be the first in a fun and thrilling series. I found myself flipping the pages to get to the end and what an ending. The story was well written and the dialogue was sharp, witty and fast-paced. The chemistry between the main characters, Joshua, Had and Cooper was magical… Eagerly awaiting the next installment in this series.”

Romano Robusto

Amazon Reviewer

“Another good crime scene series from one of my favorites. Once again Carolyn McCray has brought together an interesting cast of characters. Each member of the team has flaws, just like real people. The concept of using nursery rhymes as a theme for murder gives the story a creepy edge. The plot twists will keep you guessing.”

J. Duarte

Amazon Reviewer

The collection includes…

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

the prequel short story to The Nursery Rhyme Murders Series

Humpty Dumpty

the greatly anticipated full-length novel

Old Woman in a Shoe*exclusive to the collection

the fascinating short story follow up to Humpty Dumpty

All Fall Down (will be added to the collection March 2014)

the rousing continuation of the Nursery Rhyme Murders Collection

Eennie Meanie Moe (will be added EXCLUSIVELY to the collection March 2014)

the bridge short story following All Fall Down

More praise for The Nursery Rhyme Murders Collection…

“I am a big fan of this author’s novels… So, I have been excited and waiting a long time for this story… I was not disappointed and continued to read every single page all the way to an ending that was unbelievable, made me feel a little sick, and left me just as speechless as Agent Sariah Cooper… I have never read an ending to a book like this ever and it’s a vision that will be with me for quite a while.”

Robin Lee

Amazon Reviewer

"For me, a book that inspires my imagination so much that I can see the movie playing along as I go is a great read – and this definitely does that. Highly, heartily recommended for fans of murder/mystery novels, fans of James Patterson, and fans of action/mystery movies.”

Knikki Jacobsmeyer

Amazon Reviewer

To sample or purchase The Nursery Rhyme Murders Collection, simply click here.

About the Author

Carolyn has had a long and extremely interesting road to become a bestseller.

When she headed to veterinary school those many years ago she had no idea decades later she would be writing controversial historical thrillers, gut wrenching mysteries and roller coaster-style action/adventure tales!

Born in San Francisco and raised in the beautiful Napa Valley, Carolyn always had an overactive imagination. As a child you could usually find her dragging the neighborhood children out to the haunted barn to make her Nancy Drew-style audio tapes. Oh and did she mention, there was an entire life-sized recreation of the nativity scene in the rafters? Yeah, that wasn’t just a little creepy.

Which of course was great practice for writing such blockbusters as Plain Jane: A Patterson-style thriller with a dash of Hannibal and 30 Pieces of Silver: An Extremely Controversial Historical Thriller.

With over 600,000 books sold, Carolyn now lives on a beautiful lake in the Pacific Northwest where the fog rolls in over the water, snuffing out all signs of life around her. Yep, she still loves the creepy!

Table of Contents

Praise Page

Main Menu

ANATOMY – The prequel short story to Plain Jane: Brunettes Beware

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

PLAIN JANE – The full length novel that started it all!

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

CHAPTER 65

CHAPTER 66

CHAPTER 67

CHAPTER 68

CHAPTER 69

CHAPTER 70

CHAPTER 71

CHAPTER 72

CHAPTER 73

CHAPTER 74

CHAPTER 75

CHAPTER 76

CHAPTER 77

CHAPTER 78

CHAPTER 79

CHAPTER 80

CHAPTER 81

CHAPTER 82

CHAPTER 83

CHAPTER 84

CHAPTER 85

CHAPTER 86

CHAPTER 87

CHAPTER 88

CHAPTER 89

CHAPTER 90

CHAPTER 91

CHAPTER 92

CHAPTER 93

CHAPTER 94

CHAPTER 95

CHAPTER 96

CHAPTER 97

CHAPTER 98

CHAPTER 99

CHAPTER 100

CHAPTER 101

CHAPTER 102

CHAPTER 103

CHAPTER 104

CHAPTER 105

CHAPTER 106

CHAPTER 107

CHAPTER 108

CHAPTER 109

CHAPTER 110

CHAPTER 111

CHAPTER 112

CHAPTER 113

CHAPTER 114

CHAPTER 115

CHAPTER 116

CHAPTER 117

DARK LULLABY – the Post-Plain Jane short story

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

MY SOUL TO KEEP – the Post-Plain Jane short story featuring Nicole

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

WALLFLOWER – The full length sequel to Plain Jane

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

EPILOGUE

SHALLOW GRAVE – the bridge short story between Wallflower and Buzz Kill

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

Epilogue

Buzz Kill- the final book in the Harbinger trilogy

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

EPILOGUE

Pallor: the wrap-up shorty story featuring Lucky 37

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER THREE

EPILOGUE

Afterword

Other Works by Carolyn McCray

Soho Slasher: Jack Is Back

Anyone who enjoys mystery/thrillers such as James Patterson, Lee Child, and Patricia Cornwell, Soho Slasher will definitely satisfy your need for suspense! Click here to purchase Soho Slasher.

* * *

The Darc Murders Mystery Collection

The Nursery Rhyme Murders Collection

About the Author

Contact Information

Copyright

Contact Information

Carolyn McCray can be found...

Twitter

Facebook

Carolyn’s Amazon Author page where you can “like” and subscribe to her!

authormccray@aol.com

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Harbinger Mystery Collection

An Off Our Meds Project/published by arrangement with the author

FIRST EDITION

Copyright 2013 by Carolyn McCray

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Any inquiries can be made to:

3524 South Star Lake Rd

Auburn, WA 98001

authormccray@aol.com