“Both.” She met his intent gaze as steadily as she could. “Tara Jameson could already be dead, but even if she isn’t, she’s suffering right now.”

“That isn’t your fault, Maggie.”

She didn’t try to argue with him. “If I don’t do everything within my power to try to find her, to stop him, I’ll blame myself for the rest of my life. Do you understand that?”

He hesitated, then with an oddly tentative movement as if he couldn’t really help himself, he reached up and brushed back a strand of her hair that had blown across her cheek, his fingers lingering only a moment against her skin. “If I don’t understand anything else, I do understand that,” he said. “But there’s something you have to understand, Maggie. I lost my sister to this bastard. Andy and his detectives have lived with the investigation for months. Quentin and Kendra put their lives on the line every day trying to put monsters of every kind in cages where they belong. Maybe we don’t feel the pain of the victims as intensely as you do-but we feel it.”

Maggie drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just not used to…”

“Being a team player?”

“Don’t tell me you’re used to it.”

He smiled. “Usually a team leader. So this isn’t so easy for me either. But as long as I can feel I’m contributing, I can handle not being the one in charge.”

Dryly, Maggie said, “I have a feeling you’ve been in charge since you got here. One way or another.”

“Don’t tell Andy that. Or Quentin, for that matter.”

“If you think they don’t know, you’re wrong.”

Realizing he was still holding her arm, John forced himself to let go of her. “Then they’ve been very gracious about it. So-we’re going in there, huh?”

“I don’t know if it’ll help. Maybe he spent as little time here as he did all the other places he left his victims. Maybe I won’t find anything new. But I have to try.”

“Okay. Hang on a minute-it’s so overcast out here, we’re bound to need flashlights inside.”

Maggie waited while he returned to his car for a couple of flashlights, and then they entered the building.

The flashlights helped them see a place very like the one where Hollis Templeton had been left-a dirty, ramshackle building that had long ago been stripped to its bare bones. The floor creaked underfoot, and they could both hear the whispering scurry of rats.

“Yuck,” Maggie said. “I hate rats.”

“I’m not crazy about them either. And there’s no blood trail to follow this time; according to the report, she was found down that hallway, a room at the rear, on the left side of the building.” John kept his voice matter-of-fact.

Maggie stood there for a moment, collecting herself, slowly opening the door to those inner senses. Almost immediately she could smell the blood, and it was no easier to bear than before, thick and cloying in her nostrils. But this time, she forced herself to push past that, to let her senses probe beyond the sickly sweet odor.

“Maggie?”

“I’m okay. It… feels different somehow.”

“In what way?”

“I’m not sure.” She began moving slowly down the long hallway toward the back of the building, where there were half a dozen rooms, their doors long gone and broken casings leaning drunkenly like a child’s drawing of doorways.

“Creepy place, even with only five senses,” John muttered.

Maggie wanted to tell him it was infinitely creepier with extra senses, but her attention was tunneling, fixing on the particular slanted doorway to the left that was drawing her toward it. The blood smell was growing stronger, and with it came flashes of darkness, much as she had sensed where Hollis had been left. Flashes of darkness, and pain, and terror, and-Why was it getting harder to breathe? Why did she feel an odd sensation, as if some great weight or… presence… hung over her, bent toward her-She didn’t even hear John’s cell phone begin to ring.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Scott joined Quentin in the conference room, tired and dusty but triumphant, to add to the bulletin board two more photos of victims killed in 1934. “Dug these out of a file box over at the North station,” he reported. “Victims number three and seven in that year.”

Quentin stopped frowning over files on the conference table long enough to study the photos. “Resembling Samantha Mitchell and Tara Jameson, respectively.”

“Yeah. That’s six victims so far, and they match up with our six. Call me crazy, but I’d say that was fairly conclusive evidence that our guy is a copycat.”

Andy, who had come in virtually on Scott’s heels, nodded. “I’d say so.”

Quentin said, “We’re reasonably certain there were eight victims that year, right?”

Scott nodded. “According to that book Jenn found, yeah. But so far there’s no sign of the police files for the remaining two victims. I’ve got two more possibles to check, including a hell of a big box of old miscellaneous files that somehow ended up at City Hall.”

“Our tax dollars at work,” Andy muttered. “Well, we don’t know that finding photos of the last two victims will help us-but we don’t know that it won’t, either. Keep at it, Scott.”

“You bet.” Energy renewed by success, Scott hurried back out of the conference room.

Andy sat down at the table and rubbed his face with both hands. “I’m barely ten years older than he is, and it feels more like twenty. Jeez-what happens to stamina after thirty-five?”

“It’s still there,” Quentin told him. “It just has to be tended a bit more carefully. I like catnaps, myself.”

Andy eyed him. “How many of those have you had today?”

“I’ll get one later.” Quentin frowned at the cluttered table. “I’m still in search of whatever it is that’s bugging me.”

“Still no idea what it is?”

“Not yet. But I know it’s here somewhere.” He reached for another file. “Something a friend or family member of a victim said in an interview? Something in an autopsy report or crime-scene photo? I just don’t know.”

Before Andy could respond, Quentin’s cell phone rang, and as the agent answered, Andy could hear the excited, booming voice distinctly even across the table. It sounded like a big bear in a very small cave.

“Quentin? Hey, Quentin]”

“I hear you, Joey.” Wincing, Quentin put a prudent few inches between the phone and his ear. “What’s up?”

“Listen, Quentin, I got to thinking maybe I could help you find that rapist you cops are after, so I been asking around, and I think maybe I got a lead.”

“Joey-”

“Guy I know swears he seen an old black Caddie like my dad used to drive parked weeks ago near where they found one of the ladies after he got done with her, and he thinks he seen it more than once since then. In the neighborhood, you know, around, ‘specially at night.”

Quentin untangled that as best he could. “All right, Joey, but, listen, don’t-”

“The guy I know, he thinks he seen the car again just the other night, you know, where that poor Mitchell lady was found? So maybe it’s the bastard you’re looking for. I’m gonna check it out, Quentin, see if maybe I can find that Caddie for you.”

“Joey, we can-”

“I’ll let you know soon’s I find something, Quentin-and I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Joey? Joey?” Slowly, Quentin turned the phone off. “Shit,” he muttered.

Andy said, “I gather that was the source who gave us Samantha Mitchell’s fake kidnapper?”

“Yeah.”

“You think he might be on to something?”

Quentin rose and went to a large city map on one wall, where several small red flags marked the locations where victims had been found. “Weeks ago, he said. Probably around the time Hollis Templeton was found. And if the car was seen again the other night near where Samantha Mitchell was found…” He indicated the two flags closest together. “Not more than three miles apart. Definitely what Joey would consider in the neighborhood. Yeah, he might be on to something.”