"I need to touch it," Samantha said.
"No." Lucas's voice was flat.
They happened to be alone together in the conference room, at least for the moment, but Samantha kept her own voice low and steady. "So far, I haven't touched any of his murder machines. But he built them, Luke. With his own hands and all the hate inside him."
"Which is why you aren't going to touch either the tank or the guillotine," he said.
"They're all we've got. And just because science couldn't find any evidence on them cjloesn't mean I can't."
"Jaylene tried. Nothing."
"I'm stronger than she is, you know that. And I've already touched this maniac's inind, with the pendant. I can connect with him by touching his machines. I have to try to do that."
"No."
"We have no leads worth pursuing. We're questioning journalists and waiting for a list of Hummer owners on the East Coast you know as well as I do will be hundreds of names long. We're waiting, Luke. Waiting for him to make his next move. We're playing his game, just like he wants. And we can't afford that luxury anymore. You know that."
He was silent.
"One of us has to connect with him." She allowed that statement to hang in the air between them, never taking her eyes off his face.
Lucas almost flinched, but his gaze remained steady. "Then I will."
"Your ability doesn't work the same way. Touching doesn't help you connect. So how're you going to connect, Luke? How are you going to open yourself up enough to feel your way into this monster's mind?"
"I don't know, dammit."
Caitlin came into the room just then, holding the cup of coffee she had gone to get and saying, "One of the journalists is saying he remembers somebody asking a lot of questions. Luke, Wyatt thinks you should hear what he has to say." She stopped suddenly, looking from one to the other of them, and added uncertainly, "Should I leave?"
"No," Lucas said. Then, to Samantha, he repeated flatly, "No." He left the room.
"A man of few words," Caitlin noted, still uncertain.
"And all of them autocratic."
"You don't really mean that. Do you?"
Samantha got to her feet. "Let's just say that this is one time I can't let Luke tell me what to do for my own good."
"Have you ever?" Caitlin set her cup on the table and followed Samantha from the room. "Hey, don't get mad at me. I just-"
"I'm not mad. At least, not at you. Or at Luke, really. He can't help being the way he is; if he could, there wouldn't be a problem."
Caitlin wasn't sure where Samantha was going, or why she was following her, but didn't allow either question to stop her. "I gather this has something to do with you making him so angry yesterday so he was able to find Wyatt?"
"Something," Samantha agreed, turning into a stairwell that took them down to the garage basement of the building. "I don't seem to have the energy to do that again today. So I'm going to try something different."
"Like what?" Caitlin followed her across the currently deserted garage to a room off to one side. When she saw what it contained, she felt a chill. "Sam-"
Samantha looked at her with a small smile, then moved to stand between the glass tank and the guillotine that were placed about four feet apart. "I'm sorry, Caitlin. I shouldn't have let you come down here."
"That tank. Is that where-"
"It's how he killed Lindsay, yes. I'm sorry."
Caitlin looked at it for a moment, thinking only that it seemed so unthreatening, just sitting there on the concrete floor, empty of water and life. And death. Or at least, so it seemed to her. She looked at Samantha. "What're you going to do?"
"I have to touch both of these machines. He built them. I have to try to connect with him."
Remembering the pendant and Samantha's frightening vision-induced pallor and nosebleed, Caitlin said, "Nobody has to tell me this isn't a good idea, Sam."
"I have to try. I have to help them find him, if I can."
"But-"
"I'm running out of time. I have to try." She reached out with both hands, her right one touching the steel blade resting in its stained groove and her left one touching the glass of the tank.
Caitlin knew instantly that whatever well of emotion or experience Samantha had been psychically dragged into was very deep and very dangerous. She actually jerked, a faint sound coming from behind the lips pressed so tightly together, and what little color she could claim drained from her face.
"Oh, shit," Caitlin muttered.
As Lucas listened to the journalist-a newspaper reporter from Golden-talk about the "really nosy guy" who had twice approached him with curious questions during the past week, something began to nag at him.
"He didn't have much of an accent," Jeff Burgess said thoughtfully. "Not from these parts, that's for sure."
"Can you describe him?"
"Well… not a young man, but not quite middle-aged. Maybe forty or so. Tall. One of those barrel chests you see on some men, the bull-strong ones. Otherwise very average. Brown hair worn short. Grayish eyes. One thing-he tilted his head just a bit to one side after he asked a question. Funny sort of studied mannerism, I thought. And irritating. Somebody should have told him to quit it years ago."
"What else?"
"Well, would you believe it, he called me 'sport.' I mean, how long since you've heard anybody use that? 'Don't mean to bother you, sport, but I was just wondering'… whatever. Probably why I remember him so well. Had a funny sort of smile too, like a guy who knew he should be smiling but didn't really want to, you know?"
"Yes," Lucas said. "I know. Mr. Burgess, I'm going to ask you to repeat this to a deputy, if you don't mind, so we'll have a written account."
"Nah, I don't mind." Burgess's eyes were sharp. "So he wasn't just a nosy tourist, huh?"
"When I find out," Lucas returned pleasantly, "I'll let you know."
Burgess snorted but didn't protest as Lucas waved a deputy over to take the statement.
Retreating to the conference room, Lucas was barely aware that both Wyatt and Jaylene were following him, and he was honestly startled when his partner spoke to him.
"Something rang a bell?"
Lucas looked at her, his mind working quickly. "Maybe. The description… mannerisms… and I imagine he could certainly hold a grudge against me, though he never showed it then."
"Luke, who is it?"
As if he hadn't heard her, he murmured, "I just don't understand how he could be doing this. Not killing, and not this way. He was a victim. He suffered, I know he did. He lost-He lost. I lost. Maybe that's the crux of the whole thing. I lost her, wasn't able to find her in time, and he blames me. I should have found her, it was my job. It was what I did. But I failed, and he suffered for it. So now it's my turn to fail. My turn to suffer."
Jaylene sent Wyatt a somewhat helpless look, then said to her partner, "Luke, who are you talking about?"
His eyes cleared suddenly and he looked at her, saw her. "When Bishop recruited me five years ago, I was working on a missing-persons case out in L.A. A girl, eight years old, never came home from school one day. Meredith Gilbert."
"Did you find her?" Jaylene asked.
"Weeks later, and far too late for her." He shook his head. "Her family went through hell, and very publicly, since her father was a real estate baron out there. Her mother never got over it and killed herself about six months later. Her father…"
"What about him?" Wyatt asked intently.
"He'd started out in construction, I'm pretty sure, so he knew how to build. Big man. Tall, barrel-chested. Amazingly powerful physically. And he had a habit of addressing another man as 'sport'"
"Bingo," Jaylene said. "If he blamed you for not finding his daughter and, by extension, for the suicide of his wife, then he could have been carrying around a hell of a grudge, Luke. Five years to plan, plenty of money to do what he needed to do. Background in construction. Even a solid knowledge of real estate could have helped him plan and set things up here in the East. It even explains his bribe to Leo Tedesco; a man like that would think of buying what he needed or wanted."