She slowly returned to her chair. "Okay. Tell me everything."

Wyatt began, going over every detail he could recall, from the minute he'd picked up the phone and heard Lily's voice, until this very morning. Brandon added bits here and there, reiterating, as often as he could, that they hadn't involved anyone else on the team strictly for the agents' own good, because the others all had more to lose.

Lily spoke only once, to set the record straight. "I asked them not to tell a single soul, Jackie. I wasn't…" She swallowed hard, twisting her hands in her lap. "I wasn't well for a time. Physically or emotionally. Please, don't blame Wyatt and Brandon-they were only doing what I asked them to."

Jackie dropped an arm over Lily's slim shoulders and tugged her to sit even closer. "Honey, with what you went through, I'm still shocked, and very grateful, that you had the ability to call Wyatt."

"Me, too," said Wyatt.

"Don't you ever apologize, to me or to anyone else, for doing what you had to in order to stay alive and get well. Just in case you're worried about it, everybody else on the team is going to feel exactly the same way." Jackie hugged Lily again, as if she wanted to keep her close. "I'm so glad you're alive."

After that, Lily remained silent, as if it was better to just hear her story succinctly told by someone else than to have to repeat all the ugly details herself. Wyatt tried to gloss over some of them, like the extent of her injuries, and some of the more brutal methods her kidnapper had used, but Jackie's glassy eyes said she wasn't fooled.

Finally, when he was through, Jackie blinked those tears away and thought for a long, silent moment. Then, instead of getting sentimental or dwelling on her disappointment that they hadn't called her, that sharp mind went right where he most needed it to go. "How much have you got on this Lovesprettyboys? Where does the investigation stand now and what are we going to do?"

Relieved, and glad Brandon had talked him into bringing Jackie into this, he answered, "I thought we had a good shot at finding him." He waved toward the laptop, where the audio file from the convention workshop still droned on at a low volume, completely forgotten in the reunion. Explaining what they'd been doing, he added, "It's still possible he was there, and that she'll hear him. We'll get back to that shortly."

She frowned. "Meantime, while she's listening to tapes from a bunch of plastic surgeons, recorded two years ago, this psychopath is out there setting her up to take the fall for another murder?"

"Hey, it'd almost be better if he was. Now that she's with us, at least she's got an alibi," Brandon said. As soon as the words left his mouth, he winced, realizing how they'd sounded. "Not that I, uh, wish anyone murdered. Especially not as viciously as this guy's killing them. The sick bastards deserve to be locked up, not chopped up."

"As always, Brandon, your eloquence astounds," Wyatt murmured.

Lily's lips quirked and she glanced at him sideways, through half-lowered lashes. Their eyes locked and they shared a brief moment of amusement that was completely out of place, but still felt right. Like everything about them felt right lately. Everything except the very idea that someone out there wanted to hurt her. Again.

He tore his gaze away, needing to keep his focus, not get distracted by thoughts of what was happening between them. Lily was in danger, with enemies closing in on all sides. The last thing she needed was him losing his impartiality, letting his personal feelings make him careless.

"I have another idea," Jackie said. "Let's say this scumbag really is a doctor, and he was at that convention. We know the unsub stayed at the shack, hiding out for the first couple of days, until he knew they weren't on to his real identity, right, Lily?"

"Time seemed a little fuzzy to me," Lily admitted, "but I'm pretty sure he did, yes. He was muttering, over and over, about how he couldn't go home, he could never go home, that they'd be looking for him. Then one day, he disappeared. He came back in a good mood, telling me he'd gotten away with it completely." Her voice shook as she added, "And that meant he had lots of time to pay me back for inconveniencing him."

"Sick motherfucker," Jackie muttered. But she quickly returned to her point. "Okay, back to this convention. How about if we get a list of the male attendees? We exclude everyone whose alibi is unshakable-anyone on surveillance video during the time of the attack, or checking out of the hotel Sunday morning."

"We've already done that," Wyatt said. "And done background investigations on the rest."

"Okay, good. From the rest, we narrow down the ones who are local, say within a hundred miles of Richmond. There can't be that many, maybe a few dozen? We call their offices, say we're calling from an insurance company, doing an audit or something. Ask whether the doctor treated patients on the Monday after the convention."

"If he did, then it's a pretty good bet he's not our guy," Brandon said, sounding impressed with the idea. "So we look a little closer at any of them who weren't in that day."

The idea certainly wasn't perfect, and had a number of holes, like the fact that Lily's memory could be faulty. But it was something, another angle, at least. At this point, Wyatt was willing to try anything. "Brandon, do you have that list with you?"

"Nope, but I can get into it remotely," he said, turning in his chair to swivel his laptop around. "As long as numb-nuts hasn't changed my passwords or anything to get even with me for not bowing down after his summons."

"Anspaugh. Man, oh man, he's gonna run this all the way into the end zone to try to get his career back on track." Jackie sounded completely disgusted.

"He really hates me."

"Yes and no. I think part of the problem is he felt anything but hatred for you once. Now his feelings are all screwed up." She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I swear, watching him search through your stuff yesterday, I wasn't sure whether he was gonna smash your old coffee mug, or put his mouth on it, just so his lips could touch something yours had."

"Excuse me while I vomit," Brandon mumbled, though he remained focused on the laptop screen.

On the laptop, the audio file continued to play, the volume turned down, mere background noise. Wyatt was about to tell the younger man to turn it off when Jackie announced, "I think it's pretty obvious that Lily needs to just hide out here, lay low, not let anybody know she's alive yet."

"That's impossible," Lily said, shaking her head.

"Why? It's gone on this long. What's another week or two, so we can find the real killer and keep you from getting hauled in for questioning? Or worse?"

"You know why." Lily wrapped her arms around herself, looking at all three of them, as if wondering how they could have forgotten what had brought her out of hiding in the first place.

Wyatt hadn't forgotten. Of course he hadn't.

"Jesse Boyd is out there walking the streets. The DA is not going to refile that case and have him rearrested unless he knows he has a shot at winning. And because of whatever happened with the other evidence, I am the only shot he has left."

Her testimony was the only shot because the other physical evidence had been tossed out. The DNA, the fibers on her nephew's clothes that had come from the rug in Boyd's van, the boy's hair found on one of Boyd's shirts, a spot of his blood on Boyd's shoe. All excluded. All because of him.

He abruptly rose, not even able to look at her any longer. He'd have to tell her someday. When the time was right, he would admit it was his fault and apologize from the very depths of his heart. Right now, though, he just couldn't stand to do it. Seeing that look of devastation, of betrayal, on Lily's face was something he simply couldn't bear right now.