He curled his fingers around hers. “It’s not your fault that Sadie died. You couldn’t have saved her. Or the girls that monster murdered. None of their deaths are your fault.”

“You don’t understand, Joe.” She shook her head. “You don’t see.”

“You’ve got to let it go.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “The girls need me.”

“What if I needed you, Kitt? What would you do?”

“This isn’t about you, Joe, it’s about Tami. Her safety.”

He tightened his fingers. “I’d hoped…I’d thought maybe, just maybe, you’d pulled it together. I see now that you haven’t.”

Everyone in her life was telling her the same thing-that she had lost perspective, had become obsessed.

She hadn’t. Why couldn’t they see it? This was real.

She told him so. Begged him to call Valerie.

He said he would, though she didn’t believe him. Maybe it was the pity she saw in his eyes. Or the way he had snapped the door shut behind her. With a kind of finality.

Her car sat in the driveway, just beyond a streetlight. She started around to the driver’s side, then stopped as marks on the passenger-side panel caught her eyes.

Someone had keyed her.

No, she realized. Not just keyed her. They had left her a message. He had left her a message. Scratched into the paint, across the car’s door and front panel.

Don’t blink.

40

Friday, March 17, 2006

1:45 a.m.

M.C. called herself fourteen kinds of fool. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. and here she was, at Lance’s door. She had been unable to sleep. Unable to quiet her mind. Her conflict with Kitt, Brian’s sleazy come-on, the investigation, life in general.

The only thoughts that brought her pleasure were ones of Lance. Is this how an addiction started? she wondered. This thought-stealing need to experience pleasure again? To acquire the potion that would calm the nerves, bring sleep, peace or whatever the psyche-or soul-needed?

She knew he was home. She had seen his car parked on the street out front. If she knocked, two things could happen. He could invite her in. Or rebuff her.

The way her day was going, she should walk away now.

She tapped on the door instead. The first time tentatively. Then more forcefully.

He opened it. From inside came strains of classical music. Something soothing.

He frowned. “M.C.? What are you-”

“Doing here? Your guess is as good as mine.”

He didn’t move to open the door more and it suddenly occurred to her that he might have a guest. He looked as if he had been in bed-hair mussed, shirt open, trousers half buckled. The thought made her feel ill.

“I should have called.” She took a step back. “So sorry. I don’t know what I was-”

“Silly.” He caught her hands and drew her inside, against his chest. He buried his face in her hair. “You smell so good.”

He didn’t have someone there. She brought her arms around him. He felt too thin, his skin cool. As she held him, he warmed.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“I am now.”

She smiled. “Me, too.”

He locked the door and led her into his small living room. Pin neat with homey touches that surprised her. Most bachelors’ places were anything but “homey.”

“Bad day?” she asked.

“Bad night.”

“They didn’t laugh?”

He looked as if she had slapped him. She brought a hand to his cheek. “What?”

“No. No laughing tonight.”

“I’m sorry. I-”

He brought a hand to her mouth.

Wordlessly, he led her to his bedroom. There, they made love.

But this time, without laughter.

Without any sound at all.

He muffled them, with his mouth, hands. Drinking them in, absorbing them. She allowed him to lead, her pleasure feeding on the silence. The need to cry out grew inside her, strangely erotic. Like a separate, building orgasm, straining for release.

And when the release came, it reverberated inside her with the power of a nuclear explosion.

It was the most incredibly erotic experience she’d ever had.

He broke the silence first. “Wow.”

She smiled and rubbed her face against his damp shoulder. “My sentiments exactly.”

“Hungry?”

She shook her head slightly. “Sleepy. Happy.”

“You weren’t earlier. Earlier, you were Grumpy. Next thing I know, you’ll be Sneezy or Doc.”

She smiled at his reference to the dwarfs in Snow White. “Are you suggesting I have a multiple-personality disorder?”

“Don’t all women?”

She pinched him, and he yelped. “I’m also a cop and carry a gun. I’d remember that, if I were you.”

He mock shuddered. She yawned and nestled closer to his side. “I had a particularly trying day and night.”

“Want to talk about it?”

She thought a moment, then shook her head again. “Absolutely not.”

“So, what do you want to do?”

She tipped her face up to his. “I’m open to ideas.”

Turned out he had plenty of them. Ones that proved both innovative and exhilarating.

M.C. came instantly awake. She knew immediately what had awakened her.

Lance had left the bed.

She lay stone still, listening. He hadn’t gone to the bathroom. Nor to the kitchen for a snack. Though this wasn’t her home, she knew this to be true by the sound of his footfalls, their number.

It was a cop thing. A heightened awareness of surroundings brought on by a job that demanded it to stay alive.

M.C. couldn’t locate him. She may have slept with him-twice now-but she didn’t know him well enough to be comfortable with that. She slid quietly out of bed, bringing her Glock-which she had tucked just under the mattress near her head-with her. She snatched her shirt and panties from the floor and slipped them on.

M.C. made her way silently from the bedroom to the hall. She found Lance standing at the front window, naked, gazing out at the street. When he turned to look at her, his expression was heartbreakingly sad.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I couldn’t sleep.” He looked pointedly at the gun, the ghost of a smile touching his mouth. “That seems a bit reactionary.”

“Just being cautious.” She laid it on the back of the couch. “You want to talk about why you couldn’t sleep?”

“The truth?”

“Truth’s always best.”

He took a quick breath and she prepared herself for the worst. Was he wondering what he had gotten himself into? Did he want out?

It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had a guy tell her their relationship had been a mistake. A big one.

“I think I like you too much.”

She couldn’t have predicted that one in a million years. She stared at him, nonplussed. “Give me a break, funny man.”

“I’m not joking. For once.”

She crossed to him, tipped her face up to meet his. She studied his expression, searched his gaze. He wasn’t joking, she realized.

Which in a strange way, was more frightening than if he had been giving her the brush-off. Where did they go from here? Where did she want them to go? Did she want to open herself up to the possibility of a relationship?

Yes, she supposed she did.

She smiled at him. “I think I like you too much, too.”

“Really?” He searched her gaze, as if for proof that she wasn’t joking. Convinced, he smiled. “This not-sleeping thing works for me.”

She laughed and rested her head against his shoulder. “Me, too.”

From the bedroom, she heard the shrill scream of her cell phone. A call this time of night only meant one thing-somebody was dead.

Because she was being called, she feared the worst. The Copycat had struck again.

She prayed she was wrong.

Lance tightened his arms. “Ignore it?”

“I can’t.” She stepped out of his arms. The phone screamed again.

She hurried to the other room, grabbing her gun on the way. When she snatched up the phone, she saw from the display that it was, indeed, headquarters.