He was strong and determined. Stubborn, even. Like her.

He was good at his job, wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of doing it to the best of his abilities. Also like her.

He was smart. Intuitive. And deep down, beneath all the gruffness and the swagger, he had both a sense of humor and a genuine warmth. The latter appeared at the oddest of times, like when he’d tossed her that gum, when he’d tried to prevent her from watching the video of Lisa’s death. Even now, when he’d genuinely appreciated the comment she’d made about his son.

Oh, yes, Dean Taggert had more depth than she’d first imagined.

And aside from all that, he was incredibly masculine, incredibly tough… incredibly big. Incredibly sexy.

That last one doomed her. Because despite resenting the darkness he’d brought into her safe, secure, nice world, she couldn’t deny she wanted him. That was all, just plain wanted to go to bed with him.

It had been a long time since she’d been so aware of a man. Longer since she’d been so aware of herself as a woman. That it should happen now, in the midst of this horrific case, confused her more. Not two minutes ago, in the middle of this nightmare, she’d had one of the most intimate conversations she’d had with a man in years.

No doubt about it, working with Taggert was messing with her head, putting strange ideas in it at the strangest of times. She’d found her stare tugged back to him time and again this morning, watching the way his white dress shirt grew damp with sweat and molded itself against his thick chest and muscular arms.

Unlike his boss, Taggert looked as though he knew how to get down and dirty. Despite the clothes she’d harassed him about, he seemed more than ready for some rugged action with that powerful body and that rock-hard determination in his jaw.

Get over it already.

She had to get over it. Because she needed to work with the man. Taggert was leading this investigation, and he was desperate to solve it. He hadn’t told her the whole story, but she knew enough to know they were working against a clock here. This killer could be stalking his next victim right now. The thought that he could be someone she knew, someone she’d interacted with here in Hope Valley, made her stomach heave.

Anything she could do to help, she would. That included setting aside her response to the man and being one of seven people sifting through hundreds of acres of woods, looking for evidence that had probably been washed away months ago.

Utterly futile, perhaps. But she owed it to Winnie. And to Lisa.

By three p.m., Dean was beginning to regret not bringing the shorts he’d mentioned to Stacey. Heat radiated from each molecule of air, baking and assaulting the senses. His clothes clung to every inch of him, and his eyes had glazed over. His sunglasses didn’t help; they merely steamed up, so he’d shoved them into his pocket early this morning and hadn’t touched them since. If he had to inhale one more mouthful of hot, pine-scented air, dry and redolent with the must of decaying trees and ancient dead leaves, he was gonna gag.

The great outdoors. Give him the D.C. Metro during rush hour any day.

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Absolutely nothing.” The three teams scouring the perimeter of the fence hadn’t turned up anything other than the remnants of an old, illegal campfire and a few crushed beer cans, there for a month at most.

“We’ve still got a lot to cover,” Stacey reminded him.As if he needed reminding. With only seven of them working, this was shaping up to be a weeklong project. They’d expected to have more help with Brandon and Lily, but Wyatt had kept them in the city for today. Another auction could be taking place at any time, and the IT experts would be more valuable trying to track it than searching for the bloody needle in this forest-wide haystack.

“I know, but we’ve got to be thorough.”

He’d seriously considered doing a trade-off when they’d all broken for a quick lunch: letting Stacey partner up with one of her men, leaving him with just about anybody else. Because despite the fact that he liked working with her, those moments this morning when things had gotten a little on the personal side had been a bonehead move.

He had no time to get personal. No interest in getting personal. No room in his life for anything resembling personal.

Right?

Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll start to believe it.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to hear himself say that when his head was filled with nothing but her words: We both know there’s something here.

God, she was so direct, one more thing he really liked about her. That and the way her sarcastic sense of humor emerged every once in a while. The things he knew about the woman-the details she’d let slip-only made him want to know more. And despite the way she’d answered his question the previous night, he suspected he understood what she was doing here in small-town Hell Valley.

April 2007. Virginia Tech. Christ.

“I dunno. I somehow think I’ve seen this tree before,” she mumbled as she leaned against a staggeringly tall pine. “Or maybe it was one of his nine thousand brothers.”

He got the point.

“Can I be honest?” she asked. She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m afraid this is a waste of time. The guy’s smart. Would he really have left anything for us to find?”

“It’s possible. You’d be surprised at the mistakes criminals make.”

“But he’s got to be a genius, right?”

“Not necessarily. Brilliant monsters are a Hannibal Lecter fallacy; most organized serial killers are of just slightly above-average intelligence. Disorganized types can have low IQs, but they’re cunning. In fact, the less intelligent the perpetrator, the more persistent and brutal he can be. Like an animal going after a treat, he just doesn’t give up. Doesn’t relent. Doesn’t see anything wrong with what he’s doing.”

“Doesn’t have a conscience,” she whispered.

“Exactly. No moral compass. Combine that with a bloody streak, a hint of cleverness, determination, and a good survival instinct and you’ve got yourself a John Wayne Gacy, who was no rocket scientist, yet killed dozens before he was caught.”

“He’s savvy, though. Using the Internet the way he does…”

“Every sixth grader in America is savvy enough to utilize the Internet. You’ve got teenagers beating each other up and proudly sharing the video on YouTube. While it might be unbelievable, it’s not that difficult. Any asshole with a digital camera and a DSL connection can get his fifteen megabytes of fame.”

She fell silent. The reality of what they were facing was probably worse than what she’d been imagining. Because a brilliant criminal, while hard to catch, might trip himself up through his own arrogance and certainty of his intelligence. An average one often escaped notice, his sheer blandness allowing him to fly under the radar. For years.

“Okay. So maybe he left something.” She shook her head, eyeing the hundreds of trees in all directions. “But seventeen months?”

There, he agreed with her. It was a long shot. And they were all exhausted. They needed more men, and they needed dogs.

About to call it a day and suggest he, Stokes, and Mulrooney start on their interviews of Lisa’s family and friends, he paused when Stacey’s staticky radio came to life on her hip.

“Sheriff? You better get over here,” one of her deputies said.

Their eyes met and locked. “They found something?” he asked.

“What is it, Frank? Over.”

“Sorry ’bout that, Stacey. I forgot about the ‘over.’ Uh, over?”

Dean’s teeth clenched and his temples began to throb.

“It’s okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

“We got company. Damn it now, Warren, you put that away unless you want to get yourself shot.”

“Oh, hell.” Stacey’s slim body stiffened and she immediately began to move, her long legs pistoning as she blew past him. The radio at her mouth, she ran toward the next quadrant, where her three deputies had been working. Mulrooney and Stokes were south of them, too far to be of any use.