"It's the only way."
"Maybe if you told Bishop—"
"No. Not this time."
"It wasn't your fault. It wasn't even his fault. How many times have you told me that some things have to happen just the way they happen?"
"Some things. Not everything."
Bonnie came around and sat on the couch. "Even so, how can you be sure he'd react the same way this time?"
Miranda kept her head leaning against the back of her chair, her eyes closed, and her voice was matter-of-fact. "Because he's a coldhearted bastard with only one moral certainty — that the end justifies the means."
"Is he? Is that the man he is today, Randy, or only the man he used to be?"
"Bonnie—"
"What happened changed you. How can you be so sure it didn't change him too?"
"Men don't change. Get that out of your head right now."
"I know they don't just because someone — some woman — wants them to," Bonnie agreed, thinking of Steve Penman and poor Amy, "but life can alter them just like it can us. Experience can change them, especially something so awful."
Miranda was silent.
"All I'm saying is that as long as you're closed up, you can't be sure of anything where Bishop is concerned. You don't know his mind, Randy. Not anymore. And it isn't like you to — to judge without a fair hearing."
Miranda lifted her head, opened her eyes, and frowned at her sister.
Bonnie went on quickly. "You said you hadn't even used the access he gave you to find out about Lewis Harrison." Her voice quivered very slightly on the name.
"There's no need. He wouldn't have given it to me if he hadn't been telling the truth." Miranda shrugged.
"So we know that threat is gone. What else is there to find out?"
"I don't know. And neither do you." Bonnie rose. "I think I'll turn in. Do you mind if Amy spends the day here tomorrow? With no news on Steve, she's pretty much pacing the floor and driving her parents crazy. At least here with me she has somebody to talk to, and maybe I can get her busy, keep her mind off things."
"It's fine with me. But don't go anywhere unless Seth or Mrs. Task is with you, okay?"
"Sure. Good night, Randy."
"Night, sweetie."
Alone in the silence of the living room, Miranda tried to relax but found it impossible. The dull pounding in her head wasn't exactly restful, and she couldn't seem to let go of the conversation with her sister.
Bonnie was softhearted, of course. Way too sensitive for her own good, Miranda often thought. She fed stray cats and dogs, cried when even the villain died in the movies, and invariably felt sorry for anyone she felt wasn't being treated fairly.
Even, apparently, Bishop.
"What else is there to find out?"
"I don't know. And neither do you."
Miranda realized she was on her feet only when the sudden movement caused a surge of nausea. She gritted her teeth and waited it out, then went into the little side room off the downstairs hallway she had set up as a home office. The desktop computer was actually a couple years newer than those at the Sheriff's Department, and the modem was top of the line.
She swore, then turned on the machine. While it was booting up, she went to get the paper Bishop had given her from the pocket of her jacket.
He had provided all the information necessary for her to access the file on Lewis Harrison, A.K.A. the Rosemont Butcher, but that didn't mean the process was either quick or easy; the Federal Bureau of Investigation clearly disliked opening any of its files to outsiders, however well authorized, and made her work for the information.
But Miranda's experience with bureaucratic red tape since taking on the job of sheriff stood her in good stead, and she patiently wended her way through the security maze that led her, finally, to the files.
Six and a half years ago, Bishop had been a junior agent, so the bulk of the reports Miranda read had been written by two senior agents and their supervisor in the L.A. field office, as well as by several of the L.A. cops involved. Miranda doubted Bishop had even seen them.
The only report actually written by Bishop was his account of the final confrontation with Lewis Harrison that had resulted in the death of the Rosemont Butcher. One cop and another agent had witnessed what happened, and both agreed without apparent reservation that it had been a justifiable shooting, that Bishop had acted in self-defense and had no other alternative available to him, a judgment the FBI's own review board had concurred with.
But long before Miranda read about that, she had absorbed account after account of one man's relentless, obsessive hunt for a killer. Both the senior agents and their supervisor were generous in their praise of Bishop, and all three, Miranda noted wryly, used very careful phrasing to note his "hunches" and his "instincts" in tracking down Harrison.
It really did look more like magic.
For nearly eighteen months Bishop had so completely crawled inside Harrison's head that the killer had found himself unable to continue with the meticulously planned murders he had prided himself on. Again and again, no sooner did he choose his victim than Bishop would be there somehow, waiting, protecting the victim even as he set trap after trap, his patience endless.
And Bishop had not moved in secret or even quietly, but boldly and openly, making himself a target Harrison could hardly help but see, a shadow always at his heels, a brilliant mind always second-guessing him, even outthinking him. Until finally the killer had been unable to do anything except turn like a cornered animal and make one desperate, vicious attempt to get the man on his trail.
He had failed.
Miranda slowly closed the file and turned off her computer, then just sat there staring at the monitor's dark screen. She thought about those eighteen months, that dogged pursuit, and wondered what kind of life Bishop could have had then. Not much of one.
For a man of "normal" senses and imagination to so thoroughly immerse himself in the mind of a brutal killer for that length of time would have been traumatic; for a psychic gifted or cursed with a far deeper and more intimate understanding, it must have been devastating.
And to willingly subject himself to that argued a degree of determination and commitment that was incredible.
"He had his own ax to grind," Miranda murmured into the silent room. "His own score to settle. That's why he did it. That's why."
But for the first time, she wondered.
Liz had told herself she wasn't going to push. She'd told herself repeatedly while she was getting supper ready and waiting for Alex. She would be casual and friendly, and that was all. Offer him good food and good company, and hope . . . And hope.
"I am so pathetic," she told her Ragdoll cat Tetley, who was crouched companionably at the end of the breakfast bar watching her move about the kitchen.
"He still loves Janet. And who can blame him? She was a wonderful woman, wasn't she?"
Tetley blinked agreeably at her.
Liz sighed. She finished her cup of tea, then sat beside her cat at the bar and studied the leaves. Within seconds, she got a flashing image of a scene she had seen once before plainly and a second time more ambiguously. A dark man with a mark on his face — Bishop — throwing himself in front of someone Liz couldn't see clearly. The bullet hit him squarely in the center of his chest. Scarlet bloomed across his white shirt as he fell heavily to the ground and lay still. Liz knew without any doubt at all that he was dead.
The cup clattered to the bar and Liz pushed it away from her, shaken. "That's three times. But I shouldn't keep seeing that," she told her cat. "It's my cup of tea, not his, why am I seeing his fate?"
But was it Bishop's fate? Or did Liz keep seeing it because she was somehow involved, somehow in a position to change what she saw?
Was she the one he would give his life to save?