He hadn’t realized there would be so much blood.
But she’d surprised him in what he’d thought would be a safe place, what with the curfew and all. As close as he dared get to the feds’ makeshift command center.
So he could touch the telepath’s mind.
Play with it a bit.
He didn’t need touch or even line of sight, but he did need to be close enough. He wasn’t sure exactly what his limits were, since this wonderful ability was fairly new to him, but he had sensed her when he’d reached the alley, so that had been close enough.
Until Annie Duncan picked the alley as a shortcut.
He couldn’t believe she’d done that. Couldn’t believe she hadn’t even worn her gun.
Stupid bitch deserved to die.
But he hadn’t liked killing her. Too messy. And not part of his plan.
He stood in the shower for a long, long time as soon as he got home, soaping his body again and again, using the hottest water he could stand. It hurt some of the scars still not completely healed, but he didn’t mind pain. If he’d minded pain, he’d probably be dead or addicted to painkillers by now.
He was neither.
The pain had only made him stronger.
And given him The Gift.
A Gift he intended to use to its fullest. After all, why else had he been singled out?
That was one of the things he’d wanted to discover in touching the mind of the telepath: how she had received her gift. But that information, that memory, had been buried deep, and he hadn’t been able to find the event that must have changed her life.
Not yet, at least.
He’d have to try again.
But he’d have to be even more careful now. Even more cautious in what he did, how he moved. Cops went insane when one of their own was murdered, he knew that. They’d be out in force every night, and they wouldn’t hesitate to start shooting if a shadow moved the wrong fucking way.
The darkness that had been his friend could become his enemy, if he wasn’t careful.
But he wasn’t done yet. He still needed to figure the telepath out. And that other one, the odd one who had somehow reached into Annie Duncan’s dead mind and found too many details of her death.
That was . . . strange. Unnerving. That was a kind of Mind Trick he didn’t understand. And didn’t like.
There should be rules, after all. Even about Mind Tricks.
Especially about Mind Tricks.
He soaped up his body one last time, finally sure he had rid himself of the stink of blood and death.
There were plans to be made.
And he was running out of time.
—
“WOW,” ROBBIE SAID. “I gather she was right.”
“Was she ever. I was majoring in law enforcement, so remaining silent about something like that really went against the grain. I asked her if I could stop it, alert the police, do something, but she said some things had to happen just the way they happened. This was one of them. Nothing I could do to change the outcome.”
Robbie and Dante exchanged glances.
“What?” Sarah asked. “Don’t believe me?”
“Oh, we believe you,” Robbie said immediately. “It was the other thing you said your grandmother said. That some things have to happen just the way they happen. It’s sort of the mantra of the Special Crimes Unit.”
“You mean you deal with that kind of shit all the time?”
“Yeah. Not fun.”
“Frustrating, I call it. And not a little bit scary when it comes to killers. One of the girls on my campus who was killed about two months later was a friend. She was his third victim, first college student. I never knew she was dating him, so I never got the chance to warn her. And I would have, no matter what Gran said. But . . . The police got close once or twice, but it was still almost two years before they caught that bastard.”
“Please tell me he was convicted,” Robbie begged.
“Of ten counts of first-degree aggravated murder and aggravated assault. They couldn’t prove he killed the first two victims, but the police were sure, and I think they convinced the families at least enough to give them some peace. In any case, he was arrested, charged, and with his guilt being a foregone conclusion, everybody agreed to a plea deal that locks him up forever and a day.”
“Not long enough to bring any of his victims back, but better than a death penalty.”
“I agree,” Sarah said. “Even if the system was working smoothly, which it most definitely is not, with the death penalty you get months, even years, of appeals, and after all that a few brief minutes of a needle or a gas chamber or the chair or whatever—and it’s done.” She paused, adding, “I always thought killers should be locked away in tiny cells with nothing to do but think about their crimes until they die.”
“I agree,” Robbie said.
“I’m not arguing,” Dante said, but absently, his attention back on his computer.
Robbie looked at him with a frown. “You sound preoccupied. What are you doing?”
“Reviewing the security videos from the courtyard where Luna Lang vanished—and the ones inside the Tyler house. Tyler really did get a top-notch security system: great outside cameras, and inside cameras covering all the common spaces and every single bedroom doorway—but the inside cameras are programmed to be on only from eleven P.M. to six in the morning, unless someone changes the programming. Outside, twenty-four-seven. And the outside cameras cover all the windows as well as the doors. Outside lighting is excellent, and on a timer from dusk to dawn.”
“That’s certainly extensive,” Robbie said. “If not a little paranoid. But given what happened . . . Did the FBI lab do a good job of enhancing the videos?”
“Tyler’s system is digital, so much clearer than your usual security cameras to begin with. The ones in the apartment complex courtyard were your garden-variety middle-grade cameras, slightly out of focus and grainy. The lab improved them considerably.”
He still sounded preoccupied. Robbie looked at Sarah, then said to him, “Dante? What is it?”
“Mmmm.”
“Dante, use your words.”
He looked at her rather blankly for a moment, then said, “You know the woo-woo stuff with car doors being open but photographed as closed, and footprints being visible but photographed as not being there at all?”
Robbie groaned. “Don’t tell me we have more useless information from those recordings.”
“No,” Dante said. “Not useless. I think. But I’m damned if I can figure out what I’m looking at.”
Robbie and Sarah immediately left their files and came to peer over his shoulders at the computer screen. He was using a split screen, and rewound both videos so he could start them at the right point. Then he started the tape on the left side of his screen, at normal speed.
They saw Luna Lang, the young, attractive wife and mother, dressed casually in jeans with her hair tied by a ribbon at the nape of her neck. She was walking briskly along the courtyard walkway to go to her neighbor’s condo. Everything about her looked utterly and completely normal.
Then normal stopped.
She stopped. Very abruptly. There was no sign of anyone else. No movement. And for several moments, she just stood there, her back to the camera. Then she turned and suddenly looked directly up at the camera. Her face was expressionless.
Like the face of a doll.
“Anybody else just feel a chill?” Sarah murmured.
“Oh, yeah,” Robbie responded, her gaze fixed on the screen.
Luna Lang moved quickly toward the camera, a visual that was disconcerting in and of itself. It was well above her head, and it was also obvious that she stood on something, though what was difficult to tell. But as they watched, she slowly changed the angle of the camera. Still wearing absolutely no expression, eyes blank.
She apparently got down from whatever she’d been standing on, disappearing from that camera’s range for a few seconds. But then she reappeared on a second camera, which showed her holding a lightweight metallic outdoor chair.
Seconds later, she was adjusting that camera as well, moving it slightly, slowly. There was a quick glimpse of her as she got down and moved the chair.