Would it do so if the pain were self-inflicted? He’d often wondered.

He pushed his finger against the button again. Hard, until the metal bit into his skin and left an indentation. The joint bent backward, the tip turning bright red, the knuckles ghostly white.

He could snap it. Easily.

“Not now,” he whispered. He was busy now. He could test that another time, as he’d tested the feel of fire licking the soles of his feet or blades scraping across his belly.

Now there was only this. The sounds emerging from the fully enabled speakers grew louder, filling the room, filling his ears, filling his brain.

Filling his soul.

He relaxed in his chair, one world falling away, another spreading out before him, full of unexplored places and exciting opportunities.

No hateful voices greeted him, and none followed. Just friends speaking their cyber chatter. Some people would listen and hear only gibberish. But he understood it perfectly, even without reading the flood of text messages that appeared the moment he arrived in the playground. Welcome, where have you been? Come see my latest project. Take me. Choose me. Hurt me.

We’ve missed you.

His friends were all here, waiting for him in the only world he wanted to inhabit. Here he was somebody. Here he was never called useless or ugly. Here they respected him, were in awe of him. Feared him.

Because here, everyone knew who he really was. And what he was capable of.

When? someone asked. More took up the cry. When will you show us more?

He checked the date-nearly five weeks since his last premiere. And then he considered his finances-very low. How he’d managed only one auction every couple of months at the start was beyond him.

It was time. He had things he wanted to buy, places he wanted to visit, and he didn’t have the means to do it.

Besides, his palms were beginning to itch. Right hand meant money coming in, left meant money going out, according to the old saying. But to the Reaper, both meant only one thing.

Time to kill someone.

Dean wanted to get right to work on the search for the murder site. Though they suspected it had been a long time since Lisa had died, and the odds of their finding anything were minimal, this was the first real break they’d had in the case. All the other bodies had been found in dump sites, the original location of the killings unknown.

That the lead came courtesy of the sharp eyes of a small-town sheriff with a great ass did not escape him.

“Enough of that,” he muttered, not even wanting to go there in his head when it came to Stacey Rhodes. No matter how attractive she was-physically and mentally.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he told Wyatt. “Just wishing we could get right on the search.”

But they couldn’t.They’d spent the past two hours with the sheriff, laying out a search grid and making plans to start first thing tomorrow. Not only because it was late in the day, but also because they lacked the manpower. Even with the help of the sheriff and her deputies, there weren’t enough of them to search hundreds of acres of woods.

Besides, neither he nor Wyatt knew a thing about the deputies on her staff. For all they knew, the guys who worked for her could be small-town old-timers who’d been in their jobs for decades. Given the emptiness of the sheriff’s office, and the casual, laid-back atmosphere inside, they weren’t expecting a top-notch crew.

Stacey Rhodes was top-notch enough all on her own.

“Rather a remarkable woman, Sheriff Rhodes, wouldn’t you say?” Wyatt asked as he drove them down the main street, in search of the town’s only hotel.

Dean flinched, wondering if he’d been wearing an I’m-thinking-of-a-hot-female expression. Then again, any man with an ounce of blood below the waist and a brain cell in his head would be thinking about the woman whose office they’d just left. “Oh, yeah.”

“Good of her to arrange for us to get a block of rooms on such short notice.”

The sheriff had called the owner of the inn, getting him to offer government rates on their rooms. Dean and Wyatt were alone now, but Mulrooney and Stokes would show up tonight, Fletcher and Cole in the morning. With all of them, as well as Stacey and the deputies she vouched for, they could begin the search for the scene of the crime tomorrow. Jackie Stokes was bringing all her forensics gear, and they’d have the state police on standby with a cadaver-sniffing dog, just in case they got lucky.

Dean doubted they’d get that lucky. Finding the site would be enough of a stretch. They knew the Reaper dumped his bodies far from his kill zones, so they almost certainly wouldn’t find remains. If they could find where he’d killed her, though, there might be some surviving evidence. Doubtful after more than a year’s worth of weather and animals and natural decay, but it was more than they’d had twenty-four hours ago.

“If we find the crime took place on federal land, it’ll make things easier. But even barring that, I get the feeling the sheriff will be highly cooperative,” Wyatt said.

Dean was about to respond when he saw Wyatt flip on the blinker and turn into a small, gravel parking lot. “God, I didn’t even see the place,” he said, gawking out the window at the rambling, single-story building before them.

It was an inn only by the loosest definition of the word. A long, low strip of rooms with a sagging roof and paint-stripped doors that ended an inch above the jamb, the Hope Inn was in serious need of renovation, or a few gallons of gasoline and a match. “Think this is really the only option? What about Front Royal?”

“Too far away.” Wyatt shrugged. “When in Rome…”

“But you’re not the one who’s probably going to be stuck here for days.” His boss was heading back to D.C. tomorrow, once the rest of the team was in place.

“Getting stuck here for several days would be a good thing,” Wyatt reminded him, his voice quiet, getting his point across immediately. Because having to stick around would mean there was something to stick around for. Like evidence, or definite leads.

“I know. I just wish I’d packed a few more things. A tent and a sleeping bag, for starters.” Dean had brought an overnight bag, just in case, but he wasn’t used to sleeping in anything but his skin. And he had the feeling he wasn’t going to want that skin coming into contact with anything in one of those rooms: bed, sheets, shower, nothing.

“I have some calls to make.” Wyatt parked outside the small, dingy office. “Why don’t I check us both in, take care of my calls, and you can go scout around, see if there’s anyplace decent to grab a bite for dinner.”

Sensing that Wyatt generally ate four-star, he didn’t even want to imagine the man sitting in the local diner ordering the meat loaf special. But he didn’t argue. Obviously Wyatt wanted privacy for his calls. “Not a problem.”

Knowing his boss wasn’t just calling back to the office to update the team, he took no offense. Wyatt had other fires to control. The powers that be had him on a tight leash and a choker collar. He was always second-guessed, having to explain himself the way no other supervisory special agent in his position ever had to. Superiors continually asked questions, many of them because they wanted the wrong answers. Any excuse, any chance to mess with Wyatt, who’d brought down one of their own, and they’d use it.

It had taken balls of steel for Blackstone to expose the man who’d been the deputy director’s right-hand man for the lying, crooked scumbag he really was. Especially since the lying, crooked scumbag had once been Wyatt’s mentor.

And, man, had Wyatt paid for it. Officially, they’d given him a commendation. Unofficially… a lot of people would like to give the whistle-blower his ass on a plate.

“You can take the car if you need it,” Wyatt said, “then come back for me. Though I don’t imagine driving is going to improve the selection.”