"Do you connect with the victim very often?"

"Not if I can help it. As dark as the mind of a killer is, the mind of his victim is… almost worse. The terror and despair, the agony…" Cassie shook her head again slowly. "It pulls me in. They pull me in. They're so desperate, so frantic to find a way out."

He stopped himself from reaching out to her, bad as he wanted to. "I'm sorry."

She shivered visibly, and finally looked at him, saw him. But when her gaze touched him, it was cool rather than warm, and such a faint sensation, it was almost ghostly.

"I can't do it anymore." Her voice was low, hurried. "I know it's the right thing to do, I know the sight gives me a responsibility, and I've always tried… but I can't do it anymore. I thought I could. I thought there had been enough time… enough peace. I thought I was strong enough. But I'm not. I can't go through it again."

"Cassie – "

"I can't. I can't help you. I can't help myself."

"You came to me," he reminded her quietly.

"I know that. I wanted to help. But I can't. I'm sorry."

"What you saw today. Were you looking? Were you trying to tap into him – or her?"

"No."

"Then what choice do you have?"

"I can leave."

"You left L.A. What good did it do? Cassie, there are monsters everywhere."

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the chair.

Ben watched her for several moments, unsettled by his intense desire to touch her, hold her. He had never been attracted to emotionally fragile women, to the opposite, if anything. If he admitted the truth, any woman who was not wholly focused on her own life and career and disinterested in anything more than a casual affair had very quickly found him to be elusive and emotionally remote. As Jill could testify.

So protective impulses and urges to comfort were alien to his nature when it came to women. He preferred to spend the night in a woman's bed so that he could leave long before dawn with a minimum of fuss, and that alone said a great deal about his avoidance of involvement on any level except the physical.

Needy women were definitely not his style. Not that Cassie clung in any way or, indeed, had even reached out to him. On the contrary, she was completely self-contained, and everything about her from the avoidance of touch and even eye contact to her body language said she was literally untouchable.

He thought she needed to be held worse than anyone he'd ever known. But he didn't touch her. Because she would not have welcomed the touch, and because he shied away from offering it.

Finally, her voice drained, Cassie said, "A few years ago, a cop friend of mine gave me a quotation from Nietzsche. He told me to put it where I could see it every day, to never forget. 'Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.' " She lifted her head and looked at him with exhausted eyes. "I don't know how many more times I can do it and survive, Ben. Every time I've looked into that abyss, a piece of me stayed there."

"You could never become a monster."

"I could lose myself in one. What would be the difference?"

He leaned toward her, elbows on his knees, getting closer without actually touching her. "Cassie, you're the only one who can decide if the risks are worth taking. The risk of this madman finding out who you are before we find him. The risk of getting too deep in his head. The risk of losing something of yourself in the blackness of his soul. Only you can really know what it might cost you. And only you can decide if the price is too high."

She gazed at him almost curiously. "You pointed out one of the risks yourself. That no matter how careful I am, how skilled, the killer is more than likely to find out who I am in this small town of yours. Even so, you believe I should try to help you catch him."

Ben was silent for a moment, then said, "If you're leaving Ryan's Bluff, the discussion is over. I understand self-preservation; anyone would. I'll respect that decision, Cassie. But if you're staying here, then you have to help us catch him. Because as long as you're here, you're a potential threat to him. You can see inside his head. Sooner or later he'll find out you can do that. And he'll come after you."

"So I've convinced you, huh? That psychic ability is real?"

"Let's just say… I'm convinced you're real. I don't pretend to understand it, but I do believe you possess an extraordinary skill. And right now I need that skill to help me catch a monster. Before he kills anybody else in my town."

Cassie sighed. "All right." More than anything else, she sounded defeated. "What do you want me to do?"

Ben hesitated, almost wishing he had not been so persuasive. "After a lot of arguing, I finally got Matt to agree that you should go to the crime scene, see if you pick up anything." He paused, then added roughly, "But right now I think you should sleep about twelve hours. Tomorrow is soon enough."

A little laugh escaped Cassie. "Very nice of you to be concerned, but not very practical or wise. I'd say there's no time to waste. For him to kill again so soon is a very bad sign of worse things to come."

"Be that as it may, you're exhausted. If you push yourself too hard – "

"You don't have to worry. I won't collapse on you. I'm stronger than you think." She got to her feet.

Ben rose as well. "Cassie, a few more hours won't make any difference. She lived alone, and Matt has a couple of his officers standing guard, so the scene won't be disturbed. And it's not going to be a pleasant thing to see, whether you pick up anything or not. You should rest, recover some of your strength first. I'll take you there tomorrow – " He broke off when she lifted a hand to brush back her hair and he saw the bandage. "What the hell happened?"

She looked at her hand as if it belonged to a stranger, and answered absently, "I broke a glass."

"Have you seen a doctor?"

"It wasn't a deep cut." She was obviously puzzled as her gaze returned to his face. "Her house. That's where you found her?"

"Yes. In the kitchen. Isn't that what you saw?"

Tension gathering in her voice, Cassie said, "The kitchen. No, that isn't right."

"He definitely killed her there, Cassie. There was blood everywhere, and the M.E. says that's where she died."

Cassie closed her eyes for a brief moment, then opened them and looked at him almost beseechingly. "Who died, Ben? Who was she?"

"Why – Ivy Jameson. Isn't that who – " Ben watched her sit down abruptly as though the strength had left her legs. He drew a deep breath. "You mean there's someone else?"

"Yes. There's someone else."

Ben called Matt from the Jeep once they were on their way to town, and the sheriff got there before them. He came out onto the sidewalk so quickly that Ben had barely gotten his door open. It was dark by then, but the streetlights made the sidewalk nearly as bright as day.

"Don't go in there," Matt said.

He hadn't really doubted Cassie this time, but Ben nonetheless felt a shock, and with it pangs of pain and regret. "Is she,.?"

Matt nodded. "The doc will have to tell us when, but I'm guessing she was killed while we were at Ivy's place. I'm sorry, Ben."

Ben gazed blindly toward the open front door of Jill Kirkwood's store for a moment. "I should have told her to be careful."

"It wouldn't have mattered, you know that. I warned her when she came to tell me about somebody following Becky. And I'm sure she thought she was being careful. But even if the town had been under curfew, she wouldn't have hesitated to come into her store on a peaceful Sunday afternoon to catch up on paperwork."

"I have to see her."

The sheriff caught his arm. "No. There's no reason for you to go in there, Ben. My team will be here any minute, and this time they're damned well going to get a completely undisturbed crime scene." He paused, then added steadily, "You don't need to see her. You don't want to see her."