"Okay," he said, pulling to him a notepad with a list of names and ID numbers. I glanced at the first and looked back at the screen. With a painful slowness, he furrowed his brow and started to type them in. Tap. Pause. Tap, tap.

"Oh, just give me that," I said, pulling the keyboard close. Keys chattering happily, I typed in the first, then grabbed the mouse and clicked the All button, making the only limit to the retrieval being those entries made in the last twelve months.

A query came on the screen, and I hesitated. "Which printer?" I asked.

Glenn said nothing, and I turned to see him leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed before him. "I bet you take the remote away from your boyfriend, too," he said, pulling the keyboard back in front of him and reclaiming the mouse.

"Well it's my TV," I said hotly, then added, "Sorry." Actually, it was Ivy's. Mine was lost in the big salt dip. Which was just as well since it would have looked like a toy next to Ivy's.

Glenn made a small noise at the back of his throat. He slowly typed the next name in, checking it against the list before moving to the next. I impatiently waited. My eyes went to the crumpled bag on the file cabinet. An inane desire to take the rat out filled me. This must be why he had said we'd be here for hours. It'd be faster to cut the letters out and paste them in a note.

"That's not the same printer," I said, seeing he had switched them.

"I didn't know you wanted to look at everything," he said, his voice preoccupied as he picked letters off the keyboard. "I'm sending the rest to the basement's printer." Slowly he typed in the last string of numbers and hit Enter. "I don't want to hear about tying this floor's printer up," he added.

I fought to hide a smirk. Didn't want to hear about it? How much could there be?

Glenn stood, and I stared up at him. "I'll get them. Stay put till I get back."

I nodded as he left. Swiveling my chair from side to side, I waited, listening to the background chatter coming in. A smile eased over me. I hadn't realized how much I missed the camaraderie of my fellow I.S. runners. I knew if I went out of Glenn's office, the conversations would stop and the looks would go cold, but if I stayed here and listened, I could pretend someone might stop by to say hi, or ask my opinion on a tough case, or tell me a dirty joke to see me laugh.

Sighing, I rose to take Glenn's rat out of the bag. I set the ugly, beady-eyed thing on the cabinet where it could watch him. A scuffing at the door pulled me around. "Oh. Hi," I said, seeing that it wasn't Glenn.

"Ma'am." The heavy FIB officer eyed first my leather pants, then my visitor's badge. I shifted so he could see better. The badge, not my pants.

"I'm Rachel," I said. "I'm helping Detective Glenn. He's getting some printouts."

"Rachel Morgan?" he said. "I thought you were an old hag."

My mouth opened in anger, then shut in understanding. The last time he saw me, I probably did look like an old hag. "That was a disguise," I said as I crumpled the bag and threw it away. "This is the real me."

He ran his eyes over my outfit again. "Okay." He turned to leave, and I breathed easier.

He was gone when Glenn strode in, a decidedly preoccupied air about him. There was a nice-size packet of paper in his grip, and I thought the FIB's information gathering must be on par with the I.S. after all. He stood for a moment in the center of his office, then pushed the papers on his long table against the wall to one end. "Here's the first one," he said, dropping the reports on the cleared spot. "I'll be right back with the ones from the basement."

I froze in my reach for them. The first one? I had thought that was all of them. I took a breath to ask him, but he was gone. The thickness of the report was impressive. I wheeled my chair to the table and positioned it sideways so I wouldn't have my back to the door. Sitting, I crossed my legs and pulled the wad of pages into my lap.

I recognized the front picture of the first victim because the I.S. had released it to the papers. She had been a nice-looking older woman with a motherly smile. By the makeup and jewelry, it looked like they lifted her photo from a professional picture, like those poses you get for anniversaries and such. She had been three months from retiring from a security firm that designed magic-resistant safes. Died from "complications from rape." This was all old news. I shuffled to the coroner's report, my gaze dropping to the picture.

My gut clenched, and I flipped the report closed. Suddenly cold, I stared out of Glenn's door to the open offices. A phone rang, and someone picked it up. I took another breath, and held it. I forced myself to breathe, holding it again so I wouldn't hyperventilate.

I suppose, in a loose fashion, it could be considered rape. The woman's insides had been pulled out from between her legs and were dangling to her knees. I wondered how long she had stayed alive through the ordeal, then wished I hadn't. Stomach turning, I vowed to not look at any more pictures.

Fingers shaking, I tried to concentrate on the report. The FIB had been surprisingly through, leaving me with only one question. Stretching, I snagged the cordless phone from the desk. My jaw hurt from having clenched it too long as I dialed the number listed for next of kin.

An older man answered. "No," I assured him when he tried to hang up on me. "I'm not a dating service. Vampiric Charms is an independent runner firm. I'm currently working with the FIB to identify the person who attacked your wife."

The picture of her lying twisted and broken on the gurney flashed before me. I shoved it down to where it would probably stay until I tried to sleep. I hoped he hadn't seen the picture. I prayed he hadn't found her body.

"I apologize for calling, Mr. Graylin," I said in my best professional voice. "I have only one question. Did your wife happen to talk to a Mr. Trent Kalamack anytime before her death?"

"The councilman?" he said, his voice thick with astonishment. "Is he a suspect?"

"Perish the thought," I lied. "I'm following up one of the faint leads that we have concerning a stalker working his way up to him."

"Oh." There was a moment of silence, then, "Yes. As a matter of fact, we did."

The zing of adrenaline pulled me upright.

"We met him at a play this spring," the man was saying. "I remember because it was the Pirates of Penzance, and I thought the lead pirate looked like Mr. Kalamack. We had dinner afterwards at Carew Tower and laughed about it. He's not in any danger, is he?"

"No," I said, my heart pounding. "I'd ask you to keep our line of investigation quiet until we've proven it false. I'm very sorry about your wife, Mr. Graylin. She was a lovely woman."

"Thank you. I miss her." He hung up the phone in the uncomfortable silence.

I set the phone down, waiting three heartbeats before whispering an exuberant, "Yes!" Spinning my swivel chair around, I found Glenn standing in the doorway.

"What are you doing?" he asked, dropping another stack of papers before me.

I grinned, continuing to shift back and forth in my chair. "Nothing."

He went to his desk and punched a button on the phone's cradle, frowning as the last number called appeared on the tiny screen. "I never said you could call these people." His face went angry and his posture became stiff. "That man is trying to put this behind him. He doesn't need you dredging it up for him again."

"I only asked one question." Legs crossed, I swiveled, smiling.

Glenn glanced behind him into the open offices. "You are a guest here," he said roughly. "If you can't play by my rules—" He stopped. "Why are you still smiling?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Graylin had dinner with Trent a month before she was attacked."