Hollis felt a chill crawl up her spine. "Do you-do you mean the man who attacked me?"

Yes. We have to try to save her, Hollis. I can't reach her. But you can. You have to warn her.

Hollis sat there for a moment longer, her fingers gripping the arms of her chair tightly. But then she swallowed and said, "I'm a blind woman, Annie. What can I do?"

Will you help me?

"Just… tell me what you want me to do."

It took hardly more than fifteen minutes to drive to Maggie's small house in a quiet suburb of the city. Since it was dark by the time they arrived, John didn't bother trying to form an impression of the house, just followed her inside.

Almost as soon as they crossed the threshold, he saw her shoulders shift slightly, as though throwing off a burden, and he thought, Quentin was right again. This place is her sanctuary.

The living room they stepped into was very much Maggie, he thought. Nothing fancy but obviously good quality, the furniture was comfortable and casual, and the slight clutter of books and magazines combined with the riotous growth of numerous green plants gave the room a cozy, lived-in feeling. There were several framed paintings on the walls and one impressionist-style work propped on the fireplace mantel that struck a vague cord of familiarity in him.

"Nice place," he commented.

"Thanks." Maggie shrugged out of her flannel shirt and tossed it over a chair, and the close-fitting black sweater she wore underneath was a startling reminder to him of just how slender she was.

All that hair and the layers of clothing she invariably wore were both deceptive, he decided. And he had a shrewd hunch she used the camouflage quite deliberately.

"I could use some coffee," she said, pushing her hair back away from her face with both hands in an absent gesture. She was still too pale and obviously tired.

"You? I'd offer something stronger, but since I don't drink I usually don't have anything on hand."

"Coffee's fine." John knew he should leave her alone to rest, but he was reluctant to leave her at all.

"Coming up. Make yourself at home." She headed off toward the kitchen.

John followed, saying, "Mind if I keep you company?"

"No, not at all." She gestured toward the three comfortably wide and strong-looking stools on one side of the big center work island and moved toward the sink on the other side. "Have a seat. When I moved in here, I remodeled and commandeered what used to be the dining room for part of my studio. A studio I needed; a dining room was wasted space."

"Your guests probably end up in here anyway," he said, shrugging out of his leather jacket and hanging it over the back of one of the stools as he looked around at the bright, spacious French Country kitchen.

"Usually," she agreed.

He sat down. "I'm not surprised. This is a wonderful room.

She eyed him while measuring what looked like freshly ground coffee into an honest-to-God percolator. "I would have figured you for a different style. More classical, maybe."

He was only a little surprised; she was an artist, after all, and undoubtedly given to summing up personal style fairly quickly. "Generally speaking, that is more my style. But I like a lot of what's popular now. Like this room-French Country, but more French than Country."

Maggie smiled. "I'm not overly fond of roosters or sunflowers, to say nothing of chintz. This works for me."

John watched her more intently than he realized, wanting to take advantage of this time to gain a better understanding of Maggie. It was becoming more important to him, and he didn't bother to ask himself why.

With the coffee started, she got milk from the refrigerator and put it on the work island, then went to get two cups from the cabinet, saying abruptly, "Back at the station, when you were singing the praises of Quentin and Kendra, I notice you didn't mention their psychic abilities."

"No, I didn't."

"Still an unbeliever?" she asked, half mocking and half not.

"I don't even think that was it. Maybe I just wanted to keep everything… grounded."

"Grounded in reality?"

"No. Just grounded in the ordinary. The expected. Andy is pretty open-minded, didn't even blink when he found out about you, but I wasn't sure about Scott and Jennifer."

Maggie did understand. Despite his desire to keep "things" grounded, what she sensed in him was doubt and uncertainty… and the dawning, reluctant seeds of belief. She had caught a bit of that earlier, which was why she'd decided to talk to him, at least about some of it. Maybe show him the painting…

Slowly, she said, "But that's the point, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You say you want this investigation to be… grounded. Grounded in the ordinary, the expected. Only that isn't where it is. That isn't where it is at all."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Maggie-"

"Think about it. An ordinary investigation? The best lead we have to date as to how this animal is choosing his victims is found in police files nearly seventy years old. Is that the ordinary, the expected?"

"No," he admitted. "

"You yourself brought in an avowed psychic-two, actually-because you knew they could help. And even before that, you wanted my help. Not the help of a police sketch artist. The help of someone with a… knack. A paranormal knack." Again, her smile was wry. "Hell, John, you've known from the beginning there was nothing in the least ordinary or expected about any of this."

He thought about that while she stepped away to pour the coffee and had to admit, somewhat ruefully, that she was right. He himself had always had an instinctive knack for choosing the right people for the right task; it was one of the reasons he'd gone so far and achieved so much in business. Why wouldn't it apply to this situation as much as any other?

"Okay, point taken," he said as she pushed his coffee cup across the island to him.

"But are you willing to go beyond the point? To accept the extraordinary and look for the unexpected?"

"I don't know," he admitted honestly. "I'm ready to try, if that means anything."

Maggie had already made up her mind to do this, but she still had to be careful, very careful. She sipped her coffee, watching as he added milk to his, then said, "I guess it'll have to be enough, won't it?"

"I hope so."

She nodded, then drew a breath. "I have a brother. Half brother, really; we had the same mother. But he's a seer, like Quentin, and he's helped me to make sense of some things in my life. Certain… instincts. Dreams. The things I feel, and the images burned into my soul."

"What kind of images?"

She hesitated, then shook her head. "That's-I'll get to that later. Anyway, my brother and I both inherited Mother's artistic tendencies, to differing degrees. Beau got the genius; I got… just enough for what I needed to be able to do."

"Which is?"

"Draw the face of evil."

John looked at her searchingly. "Andy says you could be any kind of artist you wanted to be, that you have talent to spare. Judging from the sketch of Christina, I agree."

"I probably could have been pretty good if I'd worked at it." She shrugged, dismissing something obviously unimportant to her. "But what I needed to do required less skill than… intuition."

"You mean your empathic ability?"

"Yes."

John frowned, remembering the terror, pain, and shock he had seen her endure. "You had to suffer to draw the face of evil?"

She hesitated, then said, "I don't think I could draw it otherwise. I don't think anyone could. For some things, knowledge isn't enough. Imagination isn't enough. You have to feel to understand."

"Only evil?"

"Particularly evil."

"Then… you've drawn the face of evil?"