But Megan reminded her that she couldn’t do that. As much as she hated him, she couldn’t kill.

He wants to fuck you. He wants to pretend he’s one of those insect monsters and fuck you till you bleed. You have to- Be quiet! I’m doing the best I can.

Closer. The steps got closer. The sound coming from around the corner. She didn’t have time to get into the main corridor-he was too close.

She stepped into a little nook. Trapped.

He moved closer, paused. Maybe hearing her.

Maybe smelling her. He’d stopped whispering her name. Which scared her more because he knew he was close to his prey and didn’t want to be heard. He was sneaking rip on her. He was playing the invisible monster; she’d seen that story in one of the comic books. Some creature you couldn’t see snuck into girls’ locker rooms and raped stragglers after gym class. The comic had been limp, as if Peter’d read that one a thousand times.

He moved forward another few cautious steps.

Her hand started to shake.

Should she jump out into the corridor and just run like hell?

But he couldn’t be more than ten feet away And he’d looked so big in the photographs! He could lunge like a snake and grab her by the throat in two steps.

Suddenly a flash of pain went through her hand-from one of the blisters-and she dropped the knife. Gasped involuntarily.

Megan froze, watching the knife tumble to the floor. It can’t break! No…

Just before the icy glass hit the floor she shoved her foot under it, waiting for the pain as the tip of the blade sliced into the top of her foot.

Thunk. The knife hit her right foot flat and rolled, unbroken, to the floor.

Thank you, thank you…

She bent down and picked it up.

Another two footsteps, closer, closer.

No choice. She had to run. He was only three or four feet away.

Megan took a deep breath, another. Jump out, slash with the knife and run like hell toward the trap.

Now!

She leapt out, turned to the right.

Froze. Gasping. Her ears had played tricks on her. No one was there. Then she looked down. The rat-a large one, big as a cat-standing on his haunches, sniffing the air, blinked at her, cowering. Then indignantly it turned away as if angry at being startled.

Megan sagged against the wall, tears welling as the fear dissipated.

But she didn’t have much time for recovery.

At the far end of the dim corridor a shadow materialized into the loping form of Peter Matthews, hunched over and moving slowly. He didn’t see her and disappeared from view.

Megan paused for only a few seconds before she started after him.

The Shenandoahs and Blue Ridge keep the air in northwest Virginia clean as glass in the spring, and when the sun sets, it’s a fierce disk, bright as an orange spotlight. Newscasters report on “sun delays” from the glare at various places on the highway.

This radiant light, behind Tate, lit every detail in the trees and buildings and oncoming cars as he sped down I-66 at eighty miles an hour.

He skidded north on the parkway, then east on Route 50, pulled into the county police station house and climbed out of the car. He practically ran into Dimitri Konstantinatis as he too happened to arrive, carrying two large Kentucky Fried Chicken bags.

“Oh-oh,” the detective muttered.

“What oh-oh?”

“That look on your face.”

“I don’t have a look,” Tate protested.

“You had it comin’ into my office when you were prosecutor and you needed that little bit of extra evidence-which’d mean I’d lose a weekend. And you’ve got it now. That oh-oh.”

They walked inside the building and into Konnie’s small office.

“You didn’t call me back,” Tate said.

“Did so. Ten minutes ago. You musta left. What’s that?”

Tate set the letter Megan had written him and the knucklebone he’d found in his house that morning, both in Baggies, on the cop’s desk.

“Prints,” Tate said.

“A prince among men-yes, I am. So, what’s going on?”

“I want you to run the letter through Identification. Something’s up. Bett’s acting funny”

“You complained about that when you were married,” Konnie pointed out. “ Crystals, mumbo jumbo, long distance calls to people’d been dead a hundred years.”

“That was cute funny This’s weird funny. Witnesses’ve been disappearing and not calling back and it’s just too much of a coincidence. And I think I know who’s behind it.”

He also told Konnie about his run-in with Jack Sharpe.

“Ooo, that was bright, Counselor, and you were packing your gun to boot?”

Tate shrugged. “Was your idea for me to get one.”

“But it wasn’t my idea to threaten an upstanding member of the Prince William mafia with it. Grant me that at least.”

“I’ve been on his bad side since I routed his lawyers at the injunction hearing last week.”

“What’s wrong with a nice theme park ‘round here, Tate? You’d rather have what we got now in Manassas? A track fulla big wheels slugging it out in a mud pit. I’d vote for Disneyland, with them fun rides and cotton candy and knock-the-clown-in-the-water shit.”

“I’m just telling you that Jack Sharpe would love for me to be out of commission come that argument at the Supreme Court in Richmond next week. And I think he’s had somebody in a van following me. Sorry, no tag, no model.”

Konnie nodded slowly. Then added, “But he’s got boys he’d hire for that. And they could hire other boys. No way could you trace it back to him. And you think anybody’d snitch on Jack Sharpe?”

“I’m not a prosecutor anymore, Konnie. I don’t want to make a case. I want to find Megan. Period. End of story.”

“And kneecap the prick who did it.”

Tate pushed the bags containing the letter and the bone toward Konnie again. “Please.”

Another mournful glance at his cooling dinner. “Be right back.”

“Wait.” Tate handed him another Baggie. “Exemplars of Megan’s prints on the keys and mine on that glass. And remember you handled the note too.”

Konnie nodded. “The prosecutor in you ain’t dead, I see.” Carrying the bags, he walked down the hail toward the forensic lab. He returned a moment later.

“Won’t be long. I was looking forward to supper.”

Tate ignored the red-and-white KEG bag and continued. “Now, there was a gray Mercedes following her. Can you check that out?”

“Check what out?”

“Registered owners of gray Mercedeses.”

“I was asking before: year, model, tag?”

“Still none.”

Konnie laughed. He typed heavily on his computer keyboard. “This’ll be worth it just to see your expression.”

As he waited for the results Konnie peeked into the tallest Kentucky Fried bag, kneaded his ample stomach absently. “You know what the worst is? The worst is when the mashed potatoes get cold. You can eat the chicken when it’s cold because everybody does that. On a picnic, say. Same with the beans. But when mashed potatoes get cold you have to throw them out. Which is bad enough but then you think about them all night-how good they would’ve been. That’s what I mean by the worst.”

The screen fluttered. Konnie leaned forward.

“Here’s what we got. I did Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, Prince William and Loudoun. Mercedes, all types, all years, gray.”

Tate leaned forward and read: Your request has resulted in 2,603 responses.

“Two thousand,” Tate muttered. “Man.”

in

"Two thousand six hundred.”

Tate knew from his prosecuting days that too much evidence was as useless as too little.

“If you’re Just not buying the runaway stuff”-Konnie sighed- “were gonna have to do more thinking. All right, you think Sharpe’s a possibility and I don’t think he’s above snatching a girl. But there anybody else? Think hard now, Tate. Anybody hassling her?”

“Recently?”