He sighed. “Does that help you, to open a window?”
“Yeah, usually. I don’t like doing it with lots of people around, so I tend to wait for quieter moments. If I don’t open a window now and then, my shields tend to slip too, and usually when I’m least prepared for that to happen.”
“Like when you’re asleep.”
“When I’m asleep. Or when something unexpected happens.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look at us now. We’re doing ordinary things we tend to do on cases, the usually boring gathering of information and getting it organized so it becomes useful to us. You’ve combed through various files to assemble information, developing a timeline; I’ve set up this laptop to receive more info from Quantico—which is actually scheduled to come through in the next hour, according to a brief e-mail from Bishop.”
After a moment’s thought, Dante said, “The security footage?”
“Hopefully examined and enhanced by the techs at Quantico so it’s useful to us, yeah. And Bishop said he was sending along some aerial views of Serenity as well.”
“He did? Why?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Bishop never does anything without a reason,” Dante said slowly.
“That’s what everybody says.”
“So . . . what? He retasked a satellite to get aerial images of this town?”
“Well, I doubt he went online and used one of those find-your-house-on-a-map sites.”
“Robbie, retasking a satellite is a big deal. As in a national-security-sense big deal. Those birds tend to be busy doing things like watching enemies or potential enemies, tracking storms, facilitating communications, and God knows what else.”
With a shrug, she said, “I guess he believes it’ll help us, or that we really need it for some reason he suspects or knows and just hasn’t had the chance to tell us yet. I mean, he has to justify doing something like that, right? To the Director, at least?”
“I would think so. But I don’t actually know. Remind me to ask Luke about it. He was part of the earliest group of psychics Bishop found and recruited, so I assume he’d know.”
Robbie tapped neat pink fingernails on the table beside the laptop. “You know, when I first joined the unit, one of the other agents warned me that I would always be able to trust what Bishop tells me—but that he almost always leaves stuff out. Sometimes fairly important stuff.”
“I was told the same thing,” Dante admitted.
“So . . . what do you think he left out about this case?”
Dante hesitated, then said, “From all I’ve heard, we probably won’t know whatever it is. Until we fall over it.”
“Or into it,” Robbie said.
“Yeah,” Dante agreed somewhat hollowly. “Or into it.”
—
HE NEVER MOVED until it got dark. Never came out.
The darkness was what fueled him, fed him. What gave him his power. The darkness allowed him to work.
He was aware of the hunters, those who belonged here and those who had come to join the hunt. They didn’t disturb him.
He had the darkness.
The weapons they wielded were puny by comparison.
They just didn’t know that. Not yet.
He passed by his Collection on the way out, all of them still and silent behind the bars.
In the darkness.
His Collection that was not . . . quite . . . complete. He needed to hunt again. Tonight, in the dark, he needed to hunt. To choose his prey.
And then decide when and how to take her.
—
SAMANTHA CLOSED THE take-out box that had held a rather good dinner and pushed it away, saying absently, “That Diner guy is a really good cook.”
Jonah, sitting on the other side of the round table from Sam, had closed his own box some time before and was staring at the evidence board with the timeline. In an equally absent tone, he said, “Yeah, he really is. Listen, does anybody else think there’s something weird about having a timeline when something at most of the abduction sites messes with time?”
“We don’t know that’s what’s happening,” Robbie objected, still working on her supper. “It’s what seems to be happening.” She waved her fork for emphasis.
The chief turned his gaze to her. “Do you have another explanation?”
“I don’t have an explanation at all. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She looked at Lucas. “You’ve been at this the longest, right? Can you explain it?”
“No, lost time is a new one on me, except for time lost during a blackout. None of us have blacked out, so that explanation won’t fly. But most of us in the SCU have dealt with things we couldn’t explain—at the time. If you can’t explain a thing, leave it and look at the case another way. Very often, the pieces don’t seem to fit together until you have them all. Then they fit. Then the puzzle makes sense.”
“Victimology?” Sam suggested. She had been talked out of touching any items belonging to the victims for the time being, as requested by her husband, who wanted to “use our brains before the extra senses.”
He hadn’t fooled anyone, including his wife. He’d wanted to give her more time to recover from the strange collapse earlier in the day, to get some food into her system. And to give them all time to become more familiar with the facts—such as they were—of the disappearances.
Luke nodded an agreement with her suggestion. “We have an energy signature we can’t explain, but not at all the abduction sites. We have missing people, but we don’t know if they’re still alive, or dead. We don’t have a suspect or a motive. The victims are the only thing we have to profile. We have to look for something they all have in common.”
Recalling the FBI courses he’d attended, Jonah said, “Isn’t most profiling done on the basis of crime sites?”
“No, it’s a pretty individual thing. You work with what you’ve got. In most cases, the crime scene is apt to provide a lot of information. Other times, especially if you don’t have a crime scene but a dump site, or someone just missing, then you have to concentrate on victims.”
Samantha said, “To study a hunter, you study his prey.”
Luke nodded again. “At first glance, the only things connecting these victims is that they were all white, and they all lived in Serenity.” He frowned suddenly. “Two of them were leaving Serenity.”
Jonah wanted to correct the past tense usage but couldn’t bring himself to interrupt.
Dante asked, “Think that could have been his trigger? Two teenagers leaving town?”
“It’s worth considering. If he has abandonment issues, and especially if he was close to either of those teens, their leaving could have been the stressor. Something had to set him off. You don’t just wake up one day and decide to start disappearing people, leaving no clues behind. This is something you work up to.”
Dante said, “Think he’s had practice runs? If not here, then somewhere else?”
“Maybe.”
“Not here,” Jonah protested. “I would have known.”
Robbie said, “I imagine you would have. And assuming he lives here, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to take anyone local until he was sure he could do it. So we should check missing persons for—what?—couple hundred miles all around?”
Sam was making notes on a legal pad. “At least.”
Jonah frowned, but before he could speak, Luke was continuing. “He’s moved awfully fast, taking six people in less than a month. Not much of a cooling-off period. Except . . . He took Luna Lang just three days after he took the judge. The other abductions were more widely spaced. He also took her earlier than the others, before midnight.”
“Not sure about the judge,” Jonah pointed out. “He walked to his fishing spot just before dark, and he was there long enough to catch a few. We don’t know for sure that he wasn’t taken before midnight, since he wasn’t missed until morning.”