“Yes, there’s a park not too far from the elementary school. I picked up one of those real estate booklets when I was out. There’s a furnished house near the park that we might rent for a while.” Until I find Bailey, she added silently.

Meredith nodded. “Got it. Oh, and you know what? When we go to the park we can play Simon Says.” Her auburn brows lifted meaningfully. “I found instructions online. You’ll find them fascinating. I left the page open on my laptop. It’s in the bedroom.”

Alex stood up, her heart tripping. “I’ll go check.” She’d called Meredith right back after Captain-Reverend Beardsley had driven away, and relayed the conversation, especially the line, “I’ll see you in hell, Simon.” Apparently Meredith had done some searching while Alex had bought out the toy section of the local Wal-Mart so that Meredith could do play therapy with Hope.

Alex clicked the page Meredith had been reading and sucked in a startled breath as her memories began to fall into place. Simon Vartanian.

Vartanian. Daniel’s name had been naggingly familiar, but she’d been too worried about Bailey to dwell on it at the time. Then, waiting to view that woman’s body… he’d held her hand and she’d felt an awareness that had heated her from the inside out. But there had been more. A closeness, a kinship, a… comfort, as if she’d known him before. Maybe she had.

Vartanian. She remembered the family now, vaguely. They’d been rich. The dad was important. He’d been a judge. She remembered Simon, also vaguely. He’d been a big, hulking, frightening boy. Simon had been in Wade’s class at school.

She sat down to read the article, immediately engrossed in a story so evil… Simon Vartanian had died just one week ago after murdering his parents and a lot of other people. Simon had been killed in Philadelphia by a detective named Vito Ciccotelli.

Simon was survived by his sister Susannah Vartanian. I remember her. She’d been a cultured girl in expensive clothes. Susannah had been her age, but had gone to the expensive private school. She was now an ADA in New York.

Alex released the breath she held in a slow hiss. Simon was also survived by his brother, Daniel Vartanian, a special agent with the GBI. Alex replayed in her mind the moment they’d met, the utter shock on Daniel’s face. He’d known about Alicia and Alex had attributed his shock to that only. But now… I’ll see you in hell, Simon.

She pressed her knuckles into her lips, staring at the picture of Simon Vartanian on Meredith’s screen. There was some small resemblance between the brothers. Both had the same body type, tall and broad, and they shared the same piercing look around the eyes. But Simon had a harsh look to him while Daniel had looked… sad. Weary and very sad. His parents had been murdered, so that explained the sadness, but what explained his shock at seeing her face? What did Daniel Vartanian know?

I’ll see you in hell. What had Simon done? Alex could read what he’d done recently-and it had been inhuman. But what did he do back then?

And what had Wade done? I know what he did to me… but what did he do with Simon? What was Wade’s connection to Simon Vartanian? And what did it have to do with Bailey? And Alicia? And what about the poor woman they’d found in the ditch yesterday evening, killed just like Alicia? Could Wade have…?

Alex’s pulse began to pound in her ears and it was suddenly as if all the air were sucked from the room. Calm. Focus on the quiet. Slowly she began to breathe again, to think rationally again. Alicia’s murderer was rotting in jail, where he belonged. And Wade… no. Not murder. No. Whatever it was, she knew it wasn’t that.

What she did know was that she was meeting Special Agent Daniel Vartanian tonight and he would tell her what he knew. Until then, she had things to do.

Atlanta , Monday, January 29, 2:15 p.m.

Daniel looked up from his computer when Ed Randall came into his office looking generally disgusted. “Hey, Ed, what do you know?”

“That this guy was careful. We haven’t found so much as a hair so far. We took mud from around the entrance to the storm sewer and we’re checking it in the lab now. If he came down from the road by the storm sewer, maybe he dropped something.”

“What about the brown blanket?” Daniel asked.

“The labels have both been cut away,” Ed said. “We’re trying to match the fabric to manufacturers. We might get lucky and trace it to a point of purchase. Are we any closer to an ID on the victim?”

“Yeah, actually. Felicity also found a stamp on the victim’s hand from Fun-N-Sun.”

“So you get a trip to the amusement park and I get to play in the mud. No fair.”

Daniel smiled. “I don’t think I need to go down to the park. I spent most of the afternoon on the phone with their security. They were able to patch me into their network so that I could view their security tapes from my desk.”

Ed looked impressed. “Ain’t technology grand. And?”

“And we found a woman standing in line at the Italian food kiosk. The victim had eaten pasta as her last meal. She was wearing a sweatshirt saying Cellists Do It With Strings Attached-the victim has calluses on her fingertips. The park is going through their receipts to see if she paid for her lunch with a credit card. I’m waiting for them to call back. Cross your fingers.”

“I will. We did find one thing of interest.” Ed put a small jar on Daniel’s desk. “We found hair and skin in the bark of one of the trees about fifty feet back from the ditch.”

Daniel looked at the headline Corchran had faxed that morning. “The reporter?”

“That’s what we’re thinking. If you find this Jim Woolf person, we can put him at the scene before we got there.”

“How did he get away without being seen?”

“My team was there till after eleven last night and back again this morning. Between eleven and six we had a unit patrolling. We found shoeprints along the road about a quarter mile from here. I think the reporter waited until we were all gone, climbed down and stayed low until he got a quarter mile away, then caught a ride.”

“There’s no cover along the road. He must have slithered on his belly to get away.”

Ed’s jaw tightened. “Slithered is about right. Guy’s a snake. He gave away everything we’ve got in that article. I heard you went to school with him.”

Ed sounded slightly accusatory, as if Daniel were to blame for Jim Woolf’s behavior. “I was a V and he was a W, so he always sat in back of me. He seemed nice enough then. But as Chase so astutely observed, he appears to have changed. I guess I’m about to go see how much.” He pointed to his computer screen. “I was just checking him out. He was an accountant until his dad died a year ago and left him the Review. Jim’s pretty new at this reporter stuff. Maybe he can be persuaded to talk.”

“You got a flute?” Ed asked sourly.

“Why?”

“Isn’t that what those snake charmers use?”

Daniel grimaced at the image. “I hate snakes almost as much as reporters.”

Ed broke into a good-natured grin. “Then you’re going to have a fun afternoon.”

Dutton, Monday, January 29, 2:15 p.m.

“It’s a thousand a month,” the realtor said, a gleam in her eye as if she sensed a done deal. In her mid-fifties, Delia Anderson had a bouffant-do that dynamite couldn’t budge. “First and last month’s rent payable on signing.”

Alex looked around at the bungalow. It was homey, had two bedrooms and a real kitchen-and was less than a block from a really nice park where Hope could play. If they were ever able to get her to drop the crayons. “Furnishings all stay?”

Delia nodded. “Including the organ.” It was one of the older models that synthesized every instrument in the orchestra. “You can move in tomorrow.”

“Tonight.” Alex met the woman’s eagle eyes. “I need to move in tonight.”