Fury bubbled, but she kept her cool. “Use your imagination. It’s what you’re good at.”

“I’ll pick God and angels. So, when that man strangled you, did it hurt?”

It had. It still did, in her worst nightmares. Worse, it shamed her. No more.

Slowly she stood, damned if she’d be victimized again. “Yes, it hurt very much. I have a scar from where he wound twine around my throat. Would you like to see it?” She unfastened the leather choker she always wore, leaned forward, chin high. “Would you like to touch it? So that you can more accurately describe it to your readers?”

His eyes flashed. “You can’t bluff. I get what I want, or I will print your personal story. Tell me about these three murdered women and your privacy will remain intact.”

She smiled at him, a full smile that accentuated the dead side of her face. It looked creepy, she knew. Phantom of the Opera creepy. She’d perfected her half smile so she wouldn’t see the disgust she saw on Kurt Buckland’s face at this moment.

“You’ve already breached my privacy,” she said loudly. “Everyone in this room is googling me. They’ll be too polite to come and ask about it to my face. But they’ll talk among themselves. Bad move, raising your voice like that. You just lost your leverage.”

“The rest of my readers won’t be so polite,” he snapped. “They’ll point and stare.”

Eve laced her fingers loosely even though her insides were so taut she thought she’d break in two. “If you want a story, talk to Webster. You won’t get shit from me.”

He drew himself up tall and put his smile back on. “I’ll make sure you get a copy of tomorrow’s paper. For your scrapbook. You can paste a clipping next to this one.”

He tossed a photocopy of a murky newspaper photo to her desk and her taut insides shattered. That’s me. The day she’d been released from the hospital, almost six years ago. The face was horrifically scarred, the eyes wide and terrified. Eve felt the pain, all over again. But she’d made it through then. She was stronger now.

“One last chance,” he said quietly. “Nobody else has to see that.”

Eve made herself touch it. Keeping her hands steady, she brushed past Buckland, walked straight to the bulletin board and pinned the picture in the middle with a tack. Then she turned, her half smile in place. “I’m not afraid of you. Leave. Now.”

One of the other students rose from his cubicle. Jose was built like a brick, and now he put one of his beefy hands on Eve’s shoulder. “The lady said leave.”

“And stay away from my apartment,” Eve added, “or I’ll get a restraining order.”

Buckland glared. “I haven’t been near your damn apartment.”

“Save it for the judge. Stay. Away. From me.” With a final glower, Buckland walked away and Eve let out a breath. “Thanks, Jose. I owe you one.”

He took the horrible picture down. “You want me to shred this?”

Eve took it from his hands. “No. I think I’ll keep it.”

He took the choker from her stiff fingers and fastened it around her neck. Eve turned to thank him but something in his eyes gave her pause. “You already knew, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “I was doing research last year for Abnormal.”

The class she was taking now. “The mind of serial killers,” she murmured.

“I found articles on Rob Winters.” She winced and he grimaced. “I’m sorry, Eve.”

“It’s okay. Really.” She made herself smile. “It’s not like we can go around calling him ‘He who should not be named.’ That’s kind of long.”

His lips twitched. “I think that’s copyrighted, anyway.” He sobered, kindly. “None of us knew what to say, so we decided not to say anything. It’s your business. Your life.”

“Which I think I just took a little more back of this morning.” And it made her proud.

Her elation was short-lived. Donner’s assistant was watching her with ill-disguised curiosity from behind his round spectacles. She’d waited all morning for Jeremy Lyons to take his break so she could download the study files from his PC. She didn’t want access traced to her own laptop and she wouldn’t dig Ethan in any deeper than he was.

But Jeremy had stubbornly stayed and soon Donner would return from the class he was teaching. After Buckland, Eve wasn’t sure she had the energy left to stand up to Donner, too. Donner would demand to know what she’d done, why she’d told the police about Martha when he’d all but commanded her to forget Martha’s name.

Besides, Donner had access to the list. As did Jeremy. They could be involved. She’d thought it a hundred times since talking with Noah that morning, but it was no easier to believe. Donner was an academic, Lyons an annoying weasel. Neither of them looked like killers.

But then, neither had Rob Winters when she’d first met him. “Jose, can you divert Jeremy? I need to get out of here and I don’t want to deal with him.”

Jose’s eyes narrowed. “I hate that little troll. Just leave him to me.”

Jose blocked Jeremy’s view and Eve sailed by without detection, but once outside the building, the bubble of accomplishment popped. I don’t have my car. And then Jeremy was running out of the psych building, followed by Jose. Instinctively, Eve ducked around the corner, into the alley between their building and the next. From here she could listen and see without being seen.

“Where is she? Dammit,” Jeremy said angrily.

“She’s gone home,” Jose said. “Let her be.”

Jeremy looked afraid, and the hairs on Eve’s neck lifted. “I’m so dead,” he muttered.

It could have been simply an overused phrase, but Eve was taking no chances. Sticking to the alleys, behind and between the buildings, she began to run, her cell phone in her hand.

Chapter Ten

Tuesday, February 23, 8:45 a.m.

So this is all being done within a game?” Carleton asked incredulously. “This is… amazing. And certainly changes the nature of my profile.”

“How so?” Noah asked.

“There’s a level of intelligence, of order that I’ve never seen before. You say he’s able to go in and change these game characters-”

“Avatars,” Jack inserted.

“Avatars,” Carleton repeated. “He’s got technical skills or he’s able to learn them quickly. And then there’s the cruelty. I have to tell you, I haven’t been able to get that victim from yesterday out of my mind. That he went to the danger and effort of locating a highly venomous snake, immobilized her… I don’t even want to imagine what that poor woman went through. I have patients with snake phobias and they are very real.”

Micki glanced at Jack, looking chastised. “We’re still trying to find out where he got the snake. But why only the snake with Christy? Why change his MO now?”

“And how will he change it the next time?” Jack asked grimly.

“I don’t want a next time,” Abbott said. “Micki, anything else from the scene?”

“Yeah.” Again the cautious look at Jack. “The snake had just ingested a mouse.”

Jack grimaced. “Oh God.”

“It hadn’t digested it yet. It must have swallowed it right before the killer blew its head off. We found a puncture in the mouse. It had been dosed with ketamine as well.”

“Why?” Jack mouthed the word.

Remembering the snake bite on Christy’s foot, Noah knew why. It made him ill.

“The mouse would have remained alive, warm-blooded,” Noah said. “Attractive to the snake. The mouse just wouldn’t have been able to run away.”

“The mouse was bait,” Carleton said, his voice thin and horrified. “Dear God.”

Abbott cleared his throat. “Keep the mouse out of the paper.”

Jack pulled his palms down his face. “I don’t want to think about that. Give me a few minutes to pull up the all-night waffle houses in the area and we can roll.”

“Christy Lewis’s last meal was waffles,” Noah explained. “We figure she ate it in the middle of the night, so we’re off to check the twenty-four-hour waffle houses and diners.”