She jerked and moaned out a sob.

“Hi Jodi,” he whispered. “Do you recognize me?”

She shook her head back and forth on the bed. Anger followed the stab of pain in his heart. She didn’t know him. She’d seen him at least once a week for months, had said hello to him, had smiled every time she saw him. But she didn’t really see him. She looked past him, through him, around him, never at him. The phony smile, the phony hello. She didn’t care about him, she never really talked to him. She didn’t know him and didn’t know his name.

Phony bitch. At least Angie had known who he was. She knew who killed her.

He stared into Jodi’s eyes, willed her to remember him. He saw a spark, something…she did know him. Now she was trying to remember where. Where had she seen him…he could practically see her pathetic phony slut mind working, working on the puzzle.

He slid off her body and retrieved the glue from the locked drawer in his desk. He took off the lid. The smell reminded him of last time, and his penis twitched.

He walked over to her, took the large brush from the can. With one hand he removed the gag. She screamed and he slapped her. He painted glue on her mouth. She sputtered, gagged, tried and failed to scream as the glue clogged her throat. He tied the black bandanna tight around her mouth and held it there. It hardened with the glue. Her nostrils flared as she tried to draw a breath.

“Calm down. If you fight it you’ll choke to death. And that wouldn’t be any fun. Just calm down.” He talked to her soothingly for several minutes, until he felt her pulse rate drop a bit, until her breathing became easier.

“My mother warned me about girls like you,” he said after several minutes. “You tease men, lure them into your bed, fuck them, and then turn them in for rape. It happened to my father, you know. A woman, just like you, gave herself to him. He had sex with her and then she went to the police. Can you believe that? Lying bitch.”

His dad had been in prison for four years and three months. And during that time his mother had brought other men into her bed. She was a liar as much as the woman who talked against his dad. Spreading her legs for men all the while telling him that sex was dirty and he’d get diseases and his dick would fall off.

He turned away from Jodi. He missed his dad. He’d only been out of prison for a few months before he disappeared. Late one night he’d walked out the door and never came back.

Mother chased him away. Daddy got mad at the way she treated him. Maybe he found out about all those men she let touch her. Why didn’t you take me, Daddy? I wanted to go. I hated her, I wanted to be with you.

Then the police came a couple days later asking about his father. Where he was, when they’d last seen him. And that’s when everything became clear.

Another woman had lied about Daddy and made him go away. He’d come back when it was safe.

A sound startled him and he looked around his room. He almost didn’t remember bringing Jodi home, but there she was. Everything came back. He glanced at the clock. He’d been sitting there over an hour.

He thought he’d have been excited to have Jodi with him, but right now he was sad. Thinking about his dad. Where was the thrill?

He knew how to bring it back. “Watch this, Jodi.” He put a tape in the VCR and turned the television so Jodi could better see it.

It was his favorite tape, the one where the guy strangled the woman with his bare hands.

By the time it was over, the sadness was gone and he was ready. He turned to Jodi, not seeing the tears, her body shaking, not hearing the sobs deep in her chest.

He shoved a beer bottle up her cunt and watched as she tried to scream.

TWENTY

HE WORE NOTHING but his hat.

She wore nothing at all.

“Come here, Carina,” Nick said in that slow, easy drawl that she now equated with rugged Montana.

She walked to him. His blue eyes darkened, and he focused on her with such intensity that every muscle melted in her body. She reached for his face, pulled him down to her, touched her lips to his. His hard, lean body hovered over her, teasing, tempting, and she arched to meet him. Suddenly they were one, moving together, his hands on her breasts, her waist, wrapping her with flexing muscles, getting closer, but not close enough.

“More,” she whispered in his ear.

The phone jolted her from her erotic dream and Carina moaned.

“I hate my job,” she muttered as she reached for the receiver next to her bed. “Kincaid.”

As she listened to dispatch she sat up, now fully alert. “ La Jolla Main Library? I can get there in forty minutes.”

Carina flipped the switch on her coffeepot, took a two-minute icy shower, and with two travel mugs of hot coffee drove the two short blocks to her parents’ house and knocked on Nick’s door. It was four in the morning. He opened it almost immediately, wearing boxers and nothing else.

Wow! Nick in person was even better than her interrupted dream. In an instant she took in his broad chest, flat stomach, narrow hips…and scars on both knees.

No time for questions about old injuries, no time to enjoy his near-nakedness. “We have another one.”

“Who?”

Carina handed him one of the travel mugs of black coffee. “We don’t have a positive ID. A body, female, approximately eighteen years of age, was found in the middle of the parking lot of La Jolla Public Library. A patrol found her, thought it was either a drunk or hit and run. Until he approached.”

“Same MO?” Nick zipped up his jeans and pulled a black T-shirt over his head. Threaded his holster through his belt, secured his gun.

“Her head was covered by a garbage bag.”

“Her head? Where’s the rest of her body?”

She blinked, at first not understanding what he meant, then realizing he thought just her head was found. “It’s all there, but her body was wrapped in plastic wrap.”

“Mouth?”

“Don’t know. The responding officer didn’t remove the bag from her head. He checked her pulse and she was dead. He secured the scene, called it in. The crime techs are meeting us there.”

Nick slid his feet into boots and picked up the coffee Carina had brought, took a sip. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“I don’t know about you,” she said as she headed down the stairs to her car, “but three hours of sleep doesn’t cut it for me anymore.”

Since it was the middle of the night with no traffic, it took less than twenty minutes to reach the library. The crime scene van was already there, but they were still unpacking their equipment. Carina introduced Nick to Jim Gage and his assistant, Blair Duncan, who was fresh out of college. Jim pulled the case when he heard it might be related to the Vance homicide; Blair pulled the case because she had the misfortune of being the lowest man-or woman-on the totem pole and drew the graveyard shift.

Another car drove up and Jim said, “Did you know Dillon was coming?”

Carina glanced behind her. Dillon got out of his Lexus and walked over. “Yeah. He’s been consulting informally, though now…” she didn’t need to finish. Chief Causey had put together a small task force for Angie’s funeral; Carina would demand that they expand it after this. Two girls brutally murdered in less than a week. Carina was certain she’d win the argument this time.

“I called Missing Persons on my way in,” Dillon said. “A seventeen-year-old intern has been missing since Wednesday evening. She left the library at eight but never arrived home. Her car was found here, in this lot, the next morning.”

“Do you have a name?” Carina asked.

“Becca Harrison.”

Gage approached the victim first while his assistant photographed the scene. When she was done visually cataloging the body and immediate surroundings, she walked in a circle outward while Gage inspected the body.