The reformed bad kid tutoring the lost girl. There was something inherently sweet in that. If she’d known about it, she probably would have encouraged them both, even while urging Mitch not to get his hopes up too high.

She hadn’t known, however. Mitch had kept his secrets well. “You fell for her?”

He nodded, defiant. “She wasn’t what everyone thought she was. She was pretty and funny and smart.”

“And an addict,” Stacey said, not unkindly. “I suspect you were in over your head.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, but held on to his control. “One day she said she wanted to stop seeing me. She’d hooked up with some ex-con, started using heavily again. I couldn’t get her to quit.” He frowned. “I thought for a long time she’d skipped town with him, until you mentioned that he was in jail down in Georgia at the time.”

“Let’s talk about the night she disappeared.”

“I went out to Dick’s to pick up my brother.” He cast a quick, nervous glance between Stacey and Dean. “He’s not really a bad kid.”

“Yeah, he is,” Stacey snapped. Seeing the sadness in Mitch’s expression, she grudgingly added, “But maybe there’s a chance for him.”

“You gotta understand. I was the buffer when he was little.”

A physical buffer. He’d been the wall between their father’s fists and his younger brother.

Maybe that was what had drawn Mitch to Lisa. Had he felt some deep, intrinsic need to protect her from her own abusive situation, when he’d once been too young to protect himself and felt guilt over abandoning Mike?

“Once I left, I swore I’d never set foot in that house again.” His face reddening, he muttered, “Our mom’s not interested in anything that doesn’t come out of a bottle. Mike has nobody.”

Having nobody to stand up for him hadn’t kept Mitch from breaking free. But she didn’t point it out. The guy knew it already; he just didn’t want to give up on his troubled sibling.

She got that. Wow, did she ever get that.

“I’m trying to reach out to him,” he admitted. “Trying to get him to come stay with me once in a while. The old man’s going to a NASCAR race later this week. I had been planning on picking Mike up, bringing him to the station. Letting him spend some time with some of the decent people around here…” Mitch’s voice trailed off. “I guess that’s not a good idea now, though.”

With an active murder investigation? Definitely not.

“Let’s get back to that night, Mitch.”

“When I showed up at the bar that night, Mike was about to get his butt kicked. He doesn’t like being laughed at. Mike was trying to pick a fight with a bunch of hard-drinking bikers who got a kick out of a kid thinking he could intrude on their turf.”

The teen was lucky he hadn’t gotten pulverized.

“I was hauling him out when I saw Lisa.” He swallowed visibly and leaned back against his own car, as if his legs had weakened. “She was dancing on top of the pool table. Moving like… like she was, you know, wanting to have sex with any guy there. I asked her to leave and she just laughed at me. So I pulled her down.”

“Bet that didn’t make her happy.”

“No. She scratched me, kicked me. Told me to mind my own business.” His voice lowered, thickened. “Told me she was sick of being around somebody who didn’t know how to have any fun and to leave her the hell alone.” Closing his eyes, almost whispering now, he added, “It wasn’t until after I left that I realized she was crying when she said it.”

“But you did leave.”

He nodded miserably. “Yeah. I took Mike home, then drove around for a while to try to get my thoughts together.”

“By yourself?”

Another nod. Stacey hid a frown, wishing Mitch had gone somewhere with lots of witnesses who could give him an alibi.

Did she think he was the Reaper? No way. But she was standing beside an FBI agent who had to be building a case against the guy in his head with every word that came out of Mitch’s mouth.

“I didn’t want to give up on her, though, especially once I remembered those tears on her face. So I went back.”

Oh, hell. “Back to Dick’s? What time?”

“I dunno, around closing.” He hunched forward, as if physically ill. “The place was crazy and packed. One of the waitresses said Lisa had just left, though she didn’t see who she was with. I probably didn’t miss her by more than minutes.”

More information nobody at Dick’s had bothered to volunteer. So much for doing one’s civic duty. She could only again surmise that Mitch’s position as her chief deputy had kept people’s lips glued shut.

“If I’d been there earlier, maybe she wouldn’t have left with him.” He sounded on the verge of tears. “Maybe I could have stopped her from going with someone bad who wanted to hurt her.”

“Going with him?” Dean asked, his tone sharp. “How do you know she voluntarily left with someone?”

Mitch slowly straightened. “Well, I just figured it. That was the last time anybody saw her, and Freed’s car was there. She had to have left with someone. Obviously the wrong someone.”

He didn’t speculate that she’d been taken. Then again, Mitch didn’t know anything about the Reaper, or the fact that he forcibly kidnapped his victims.

For all his intelligence and his background, he was still, at heart, a pretty innocent guy. She hoped, for his sake, that he never learned the true details of Lisa’s murder. Because, having seen his eyes and heard his voice, she didn’t doubt one thing.

He had loved her.

The Reaper had had direct, personalized requests before. He’d been offered bribes, had been accosted right in the middle of his playtime, had fielded personal e-mails filled with promises and pleas.

He’d never accepted.

The thrill of what he did was in the control it gave him. Other than someone else deciding how he would do what he did, the rest was in his hands. And the how was incidental. Only the doing mattered. Only the blood. The anguish. The terror. The pain.

All that was in his control. As was the identity of his prey.

So when others had reached out, offering to pay him to kill a man, or a brunette, or a specific person someone wanted out of the way, he had always refused. He wouldn’t be manipulated or controlled. He would never sacrifice the pleasure he gained from killing his favored victims to please anyone else.

At least, he thought he wouldn’t. Now he wasn’t so sure. He’d never foreseen a situation like this one, where he might actually be forced to do so.

He’d had enough of being forced. Enough of being powerless. And the rage over Warren Lee trying to make him that way again had him ready to erupt in ferocious retribution.

He was a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Ready to land right in Lee’s lap.

“Calm. Control,” he whispered, feeling his heart race and his breath grow hot.

He counted to ten, forcing the helpless anger down into his gut, where it had lived, seethed, and taken root years and years ago. He could get through this. Even if he had to, just once, go out of his way to accommodate someone else’s desires.

Possibly sick desires. One potential client, a big fan from the start, had been particularly interested in choosing a very specific type of victim. He not only wanted to name the age, sex, and physical description; he’d insisted on seeing certain acts. Followed by the brand of death he preferred.

And he’d offered an absolute fortune to see it done.

The very idea had repulsed the Reaper. He wasn’t some sicko like that guy. Talk about weird.

The offers had been easy to refuse because, before, it hadn’t mattered. The money hadn’t mattered. He had certain needs. The auctions and drive-in ticket prices allowed him to meet them. All was well.

Now, though, with Warren Lee evading him, hiding out in his fenced fortress, almost certainly armed and watching every one of his security monitors around the clock, he wasn’t going to be able to meet them much longer.