3

Arriving in Hope Valley was like entering a 1950s TV show. Dean had heard of places like this; he just didn’t know they still existed. He’d been raised on the mean streets of Baltimore and now lived in D.C. He had never experienced towns with ice-cream parlors, free on-street parking, and community centers complete with signs for dances and bake sales.

The main streets through downtown were lined with green trees that overhung the neatly swept sidewalks. Rather than antique shops and galleries designed to lure tourists on day-in-the-country outings, this place had normal businesses serving the people who lived here. A small grocery store was tucked between a bank and a pharmacy. A diner offered blue-plate lunch specials. Outside a barbershop stood an antique spinning pole that actually worked.

There was no major shopping center in sight. Since leaving Front Royal, they’d passed only one weary, dilapidated strip mall with a Family Dollar as its anchor. Hope Valley truly appeared to be a self-contained little town that wasn’t merely an extension of some larger city’s urban sprawl.

“Serial killer in a small town, much?” he muttered, talking more to himself than to Wyatt, who was driving the sedan.

Dean had thought Wyatt would send him out with Mulrooney, but their team leader had insisted on driving out here to Nowhere, Virginia, with Dean this afternoon. As if he suspected, as did everyone else, that this case could be the key to bringing down the Reaper, whose crimes were the stuff nightmares and slasher movies were made of.

“So you still believe the unsub’s actually from this area?” Wyatt asked.

“Don’t you?”

The man pulled into a parking place in front of a small, single-story building marked SHERIFF’S OFFICE. “If our theories are correct, that Lisa Zimmerman was his first victim, and that her killing might have been personal, then yes, I think it’s likely.”

“The details fit. The physical description, identifying marks. We know the timing of her disappearance works, since Fletcher was able to determine within days when the murder occurred, given the lack of buds on the tree the vic was tied to.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Wyatt’s mouth. They’d all been impressed by that one. Lily might be a quiet office type without much field experience, but she had a brain like a steel trap. Because even though Lisa Zimmerman had disappeared in early March, a month before the “freebie” video had gone up, that hadn’t meant she’d died right away. But the bare, sullen trees hinted she’d met the cold, steely blade very close to that time.

“And,” Dean concluded, “the missing persons photo looks just like the woman on the tape.” To the untrained eye, it seemed irrefutable that Lisa Zimmerman had been their unidentified victim. Now they just had to get confirmation from someone who knew her.

Dean stared out the window, wondering how the locals would react. The idea that the Reaper lived here in their small-town heaven would probably send most of them running for their basements.

But it fit. If Lisa had, indeed, been the unsub’s first victim, it made complete sense that her killer was from here. And Dean wanted him. Badly.

The murder had been hard to watch, but it hadn’t gone on as long as the others. The young woman had been tied to a tree, naked, with her arms extended above her. While the killer had been free with his blade, Brandon had estimated that she’d died within twenty minutes of the first cut.

It had been brutal. But not quite as bad as some of the other victims, whose torture had lasted for hours. As Cole had said: There were different degrees of awful.

“You said you had the feeling the sheriff personally knew the missing woman?”

“Yeah.” Dean again looked around the town, all twelve inches of it. “I think so.”

Sheriff Rhodes, whose young, strong-yet-feminine voice had surprised him for a moment on the phone yesterday, hadn’t given him any details about her relationship with Lisa Zimmerman, but he’d lay odds she’d had one.

“Good thing we had Brandon capture some still frames,” Wyatt said. “I’d hate for anyone who knew Miss Zimmerman to have to actually watch that entire video.”

“It’s hard enough to see it happen to a stranger.”

“Fortunate that we didn’t have to get family members to ID any of the others. Or to make the pictures public in order to identify the victims,” Wyatt replied.

“No kidding. Tipping off those Satan’s Playground bastards would have been suicide for the entire case. The unsub would have taken a deep dive straight into cyber hell and might never be found again.”

They hadn’t needed personal identifications to determine who seven of the eight victims had been. There had been autopsy reports and police investigations to go on. Brandon had found the first; then they’d put names to six more. They had scoured reports and databases, matching unsolved murders to the videos. And in every other case, except the woman in the free preview, the victims’ bodies had already been found and ID’d.

“Let’s hope this sheriff is as cooperative as the other agencies have been,” he said. Each murder had been stymieing the local police, so, for a change, none of them had minded the FBI’s intrusion. The cases were growing cold, some stretching back more than a year. Plus, they were unlike anything the small-town authorities had ever seen.

If anybody had ever connected the killings, the FBI would likely have gotten involved long before now. But nobody had. The Reaper’s gimmick, auctioning off “means” but not victim, had helped him escape detection. There had been no common signature for anybody to stumble over. No similarity in the crimes, except that they were all unusually brutal. Or even in the victims, aside from the fact that they were all female and Caucasian. They ranged in age from seventeen to forty. Two were married, with kids, and three were young college students. A few had been sexually violated though not raped. Bodies had been dumped in wooded areas, a landfill, one in the bathroom of a rest stop. The crimes had been spread across four states, the only string tying them all together being a cyber one.

Chilling to think the cases might never have been connected at all had Brandon Cole not stumbled into Satan’s Playground.

“So, if the sheriff identifies Lisa Zimmerman as the Reaper’s first victim…?”

Wyatt cut the engine, and heat invaded the interior of the sedan so fast it might have been piped in. “Then you’ll be sticking around Hope Valley for a while.”

Exiting the car, Dean waited for a rusty Ford to wind its way down Main Street; then he crossed, Wyatt behind him. He entered the sheriff’s office, no being buzzed in, no metal detector, and glanced around. A trio of folding metal chairs stood in the empty waiting area.

“Notice something strange?” Wyatt asked, sounding bemused.

Dean nodded. Not only was there no security; there was nobody, period. The lobby was silent as a church during confession. And the glassed-in receptionist’s cubicle stood empty, the rolling chair pushed far away from the desk and turned, as if its occupant had hopped from it midslide.

“Afternoon siesta?” he mumbled.

As he began to wonder if they were going to have to go on a sheriff hunt, Dean suddenly heard raised voices coming from somewhere down a hallway marked, PRIVATE.

“God damn it, Stacey, if you can’t use your job, give it to someone who will!”

He and Wyatt exchanged a quick look. Both went on alert, as anyone would when it sounded as though a fellow law enforcement officer was being threatened.

“When did it become my job to get you out of your own messes? It’s not my responsibility to keep you from getting fired,” a woman snapped back, crisp and in control. Her voice sounded calm, betraying none of the throbbing anger of the male one that had preceded it. “You don’t want to lose your job? Then convince your boss you didn’t have anything to do with the cash shortage. Kiss his ass, whatever you have to do.”

Listening, Dean realized he knew the voice of the woman. That confidence had impressed him yesterday on the phone, especially since the strong, authoritative tone did not entirely disguise a slightly husky, sexy quality. Sheriff Rhodes, he had already decided, was one cool customer. Which was probably a good thing, if this morning’s argument was anything to go by. She apparently faced some crazy demands in her job.

“You can go talk to him; Dad would have. Threaten him, tell him you’ll start enforcing the no-parking zone behind the dealership. Damn it, you’re my sister; isn’t that supposed to be good for something?”

Ahh. He got the picture. This wasn’t some random townie making demands. It was a loudmouthed brother trying to browbeat his sister. He waited, wondering how she’d handle it, knowing he would already have thrown that sorry-ass sibling out.

“Get out of my office.” Good.

“I’ve been patient, Tim. We all have. But everybody’s getting a little tired of your bullshit. All you’ve been doing is getting drunk and getting into trouble with Randy like you’re still a couple of teenagers. It’s time to grow up.” Her temper was building; he could hear the sharpness of it, strung tight like a wire. If he knew what was good for him, the brother really ought to get out while he still could. He sensed the sheriff would be a formidable opponent.

“Go home, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and try to make this right.”

The brother said something else, in a voice too low to hear, but the sheriff’s response was fully audible. With words as sharp and hard as chips of ice, she again ordered her brother out, adding, “Or else you’ll find out what a bitch I can be.”

Ouch. If Dean ever called his own sister such a name, she’d bash him in the head.

The sharp slam of an inside door was followed by two sets of footsteps. The first was the hurried click of shoes belonging to the missing receptionist, who raced into her oversize fish-bowl cubicle. She threw herself into her chair, as if to avoid being spotted by the man who’d been arguing with her boss. Dean had a sudden visual of the big-haired woman with her ear pressed to the keyhole. Not that it would need to be-that argument could have been heard on the street.

The next footsteps, heavier and hard, belonged to a lean guy, probably in his mid-thirties, around Dean’s age, wearing ragged jeans and a T-shirt. His deep scowl was matched by angry red scars that ran from his neck all the way up his cheek and into his hairline.

“The fuck you lookin’ at?” he snarled as he strode past Dean and Wyatt. He shoved the handle and pushed the door open, stalking outside without another word.

The whole scene had taken less than a minute, but it left an aura of unease in the office. Wyatt straightened his tie, shifted his jacket, and finally cleared his throat.

“Oh, my, I didn’t see you standing there,” the receptionist said. She must have thought Mr. Friendly’s parting remark had been addressed to her. “I’ll go get the sheriff.”

Another female voice intruded. “No need.”

Even before she introduced herself, Dean knew they were being greeted by Sheriff Rhodes. He’d been curious about her since they’d spoken yesterday afternoon, wondering how she would hold up if the team’s speculations were correct and a serial killer was living in her jurisdiction. Hearing her fight with her brother, he suspected the woman could seriously hold her own.

Seeing her confirmed it.

“Thanks for meeting with us. I’m Supervisory Special Agent Wyatt Blackstone,” Wyatt said as he showed the woman his badge. “This is Special Agent Dean Taggert.”

While she checked out their IDs, Dean made a quick visual assessment of the sheriff.

Probably in her early thirties, Stacey Rhodes didn’t come across as too young for her job. In fact, she wore her uniform as if she’d been born in it. She was tall, close to his six feet, with shoulders squared and posture military-straight. Her chin was up, her green eyes assessing, though not cold. Her reddish blond hair was pulled back too tightly to determine its length, but the style emphasized the determined jut of her jaw and the sculpted lines of her face. She exuded competence.

Thank God. Before he’d picked up the phone to call here yesterday, he’d envisioned a turf battle with a blustering, small-minded, small-town bureaucrat who’d like the spotlight of an FBI investigation, but not the down-in-the-dirt work of one. Since Lisa Zimmerman was still officially a missing person, they could have encountered trouble. But he already suspected they wouldn’t. Nothing about Sheriff Rhodes indicated that she was someone who’d get belligerent or territorial at the expense of a murder investigation.

“Special Agent Taggert.”The woman extended her hand after she’d shaken Wyatt’s. “We spoke yesterday?”

“Yes, we did.” Clasping her hand in his for a brief shake, Dean noted the strength, expected, but also the softness of her skin. That was definitely unexpected.

As was his sudden reaction to it, which came completely out of nowhere.

Because while he’d been visually running down her qualifications for the job, he had obviously mentally processed something else-that she was very attractive. The brush of his hand against hers brought that realization home with a sharp jolt deep in his gut.

Her fitted uniform appeared as uncomfortable for this weather as Dean’s suit, but she wore it well. Incredibly well. Damn, no wonder the woman carried herself with such professional dignity. Her attitude was sure to provide at least a momentary distraction from the tall, lithe body, with the full hips and slim waist emphasized by the khaki pants. Not to mention the prominent curves beneath her long-sleeved, button-up shirt.

He wasn’t distracted anymore, though.

Suddenly feeling the heat of the day even more than he had outside, Dean forced himself to ignore the soft, feminine form trying to hide beneath the stiff, starched clothes. He put his focus back where it belonged: strictly above her shoulders.

That didn’t help much. Because despite the lack of a smile, her mouth was just a little too wide, her lips a little too lush for someone oozing such authority.

So this is what instant attraction feels like.

He hadn’t experienced it before, this sudden, heated awareness that made him incapable of putting two thoughts together. And frankly, he didn’t like it. Distractions caused problems and mistakes.

Neither of which he could afford right now. Not when he was so busy trying to keep all the balls of his life up in the air. A new job on a probationary team, a new apartment courtesy of a lopsided divorce agreement… a new man being called Dad by his own son. Hell, he had so much on his plate he might as well call his life a Denny’s breakfast special.

He nodded coolly and kept his expression impassive when the sheriff invited them to her office. And he kept his eyes glued to the back of her head rather than even considering watching the sway of her hips and the curve of her ass as she led them there.

“Please have a seat,” Sheriff Rhodes said, gesturing toward two empty chairs opposite her desk. The office was neat, and despite the age of the furnishings, it was equipped with new-looking computer equipment. Not nearly up to CAT standards, but better than he’d have expected, given the fact that the sheriff’s department was housed in a building smaller than an average fast-food joint. “Would you like some coffee? Or something cold to drink?”

“No, thank you,” Wyatt said, as Dean shook his head in refusal.

“Okay.” The sheriff crossed her arms and eyed them both.

For a second, he wondered if she would comment on the fight they’d heard-she had to have known they were there. But she didn’t, choosing to ignore it. “Tell me what you know about Lisa Zimmerman.” Her full mouth tightened. “Special Agent Taggert was a bit cryp tic on the phone yesterday.”

Not used to being thwarted, this one. The instant realization, the way her personality was revealing itself in her every gesture and word, almost made him smile. But Dean squelched the reaction. “Sorry. I didn’t want to tell you what we think happened to Lisa without giving you a chance to look at some photographs. We don’t know the identity of the woman in the pictures, or when or where they were taken. So it’s best for you to just look at them cold.”

“Ever heard of e-mail attachments?”

“These need to be seen in person,” he explained, taking no offense. He’d have been annoyed at the stalling, too. “Preferably by someone who has met Lisa.”

She stiffened, preparing herself. “I’ve known her since she was a kid.”

Damn. Good news for them, but it would make it harder for her if she’d known the victim for so long.

Reaching into his briefcase, Dean drew out a few stills Brandon had isolated from the digital recording. The images weren’t the best, taken at night with an average-quality video camera. But that night had been a clear one, and the killer had been using some type of artificial lighting. He’d also zoomed in on his victim’s face, nice and tight, as well as pulling back to present the whole scene.

The killer had wasted no effort in making his show more enjoyable for his audience. And he’d turned his camera away from absolutely nothing.

Starting with the ones from the earliest part of the torture session, Dean spread three photos on the desk, turning them to face the sheriff. The victim’s eyes were closed in the first, her head slumped, her chin touching her chest. She’d been unconscious for the first few minutes of the film. Judging by the trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth, she’d been made that way by one or more sharp blows to the face and head.

The next shot was more disturbing. The victim’s eyes were open, confusion and pain warring with terror in her expression. Seeing what she’d been seeing-the hooded figure, the moonlight glittering on the knife-anyone would have been the same.

Anyone.

He positioned the third picture, hoping this would be the last he’d have to show the woman sitting so stiffly, her posture revealing nothing, though every ounce of color had fallen from her cheeks. This was a full-length shot, showing the naked victim, conscious and aware, her face bleeding but her body still unblemished by the blade that was about to be visited upon her with such excruciating ferocity.

Watching the sheriff’s reaction, he knew when her eyelids fluttered down and she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth that they’d identified their victim. The sheen of moisture in her eyes when she reopened them confirmed it, but also made him feel like crap for having to put her through this.

Bad enough for anyone in law enforcement looking at the final, agonizing moments of a stranger. But to see someone she’d known since childhood? Hell. “Sheriff Rhodes?” he asked, his tone gentle. “Can you identify the woman in the photographs?”

She swallowed visibly, then nodded once. “It’s Lisa Zimmerman.”

“You’re sure?”

“Even if I didn’t recognize her face immediately, I’d know her by that bumblebee tattoo on her shoulder. She was a finalist in a statewide spelling bee in elementary school. She had that put on a couple of years ago, I guess to remind herself that she’d once accomplished something.” She pushed the pictures away, the tips of her nails touching the very edges, as if she couldn’t bear any more contact with them. “So she’s dead?”

“We haven’t found her body,” Wyatt explained. The man sounded coolly professional, as always, but also quietly subdued in respect for the sheriff’s obvious dismay. “But yes, there seems to be no doubt the woman in these pictures is dead.”

Silence descended in the office for a long moment, broken only by the hiss of the air-conditioning unit in the window. The stream of cold air ruffled some papers on the sheriff’s desk, and lifted a finger-size strawberry blond curl that had escaped the bun at her nape. The skin it rested against looked slick, damp with the kind of sweat that could never be chased away on a day this hot.

That soft, fragile strand of hair was the only part of her that moved during the full minute it took her to process the situation. The rest of her remained frozen in place, unmoving, unblinking, almost not even breathing.

She was the picture of a professional-dealing with an awful crime that touched her personally. Yet already detaching herself from it in order to do her job.

He’d have expected nothing less. Dean watched closely, wondering why he understood her so well after such a brief acquaintance. But he didn’t have to wonder for long before the truth washed over him with sudden clarity.

She was like him. Stacey Rhodes compartmentalized her reactions. She put the tough ones aside to be dealt with later, at a more expedient time, in a more appropriate place. He could almost see the way her brain churned behind those green eyes, putting up walls and barriers to separate facts from emotion.

With Dean, it was usually his anger that he thrust away, shoving it aside to focus on getting the job done. When the release came, it was often quick and ruthless, exploding out of him blow by blow against a punching bag at the gym or with a brutal workout that left him free of any feeling at all.

With Sheriff Rhodes, it was her sadness she was tucking away out of sight, boxing up, hammering it closed with tenpenny nails. She would eventually release it in the privacy of her home, with a few tears, perhaps. At least he hoped so, because, God, holding on to that kind of grief for too long could crush a person.

He knew that from experience. They had different emotions. Different reactions. But the same basic method of dealing with them.

Finally, she cleared her throat and her chin went up. That curl remained beside her soft neck, but every other inch of her was sharp. “I assume there are more pictures?”

Dean’s hands closed tightly around the folder containing the additional shots of Lisa Zimmerman’s final moments. He kept it in his lap, not willing to show her the rest. He didn’t know if her mind had enough safe rooms to deal with them all.

“Yes, there are,” Wyatt said.

“They don’t look like typical photographs.” She tented her hands on the top of her desk and matter-of-factly surmised, “Screen shots?”

Dean nodded. “Yes.”

“So there’s a video.”

A frisson of concern rising up his spine, Dean felt his fingers tighten on the folder, and this nod was slower in coming. “A digital video file. It came to our attention recently, though it was originally uploaded to the Internet in April of last year, a month after Lisa disappeared.”

She blanched at the uploaded to the Internet part. “I need to see it.”

He had no idea what Wyatt was going to say when he opened his mouth, and he didn’t care. Dean immediately answered, “Out of the question.”

“I have to see it, especially if you want my help.”

“Of course we want your help,” Wyatt murmured,

“and of course you can see it. If you’re really sure you want to.”

“No, I don’t want to,” she admitted. She swallowed, her slender throat working with the effort, as if she’d scooped a handful of sand into her mouth. “I need to.”

Dean continued to shake his head. “No.”

She leaned over her desk, tension and heat rolling off her in waves, as if the mental barriers holding back her fury and anguish over Lisa’s murder would burst if she were pushed too hard. “What’s the matter? Afraid a small-town sheriff, a female one, can’t handle it? You should know I-”

He interrupted her, putting one hand up, palm out. “That’s not it. To be frank, Sheriff Rhodes, that video is something nobody who actually knew Lisa Zimmerman should ever see if they can help it.”

They stared at each other for a moment, and he saw the indignation leave her. He understood the reaction. She probably dealt with sexism on a daily basis. It was unfortunately commonplace in law enforcement.

She remained silent, mollified. The tense hands unclenched and she sat back in her chair. She nodded slowly, conceding the point, acknowledging her rush to judgment.

Calm and levelheaded, reasonable and intelligent. And incredibly sexy. God, where had this woman been all his life?

Forcing that insane thought away, he muttered,“We’ve got more screen shots, if you need more verification.”

“Agent Taggert, please listen.”

Her serious tone told him she wasn’t just playing I-can-keep-up-with-the-boys-in-the-schoolyard, as if he’d ever for a moment thought she would. She offered him a small, rueful smile. Her expression held warmth for the first time since she’d greeted him in the lobby. Knowing how those tightly sealed boxes of emotion had to be screaming for release behind those green eyes, he could only do as she asked.

“I appreciate your concern, and believe me, if it weren’t important, I wouldn’t press the issue. I can think of a thousand things I’d rather do than sit through what I suspect is probably going to be the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Giving up had never been one of Dean’s strong suits, so he couldn’t help saying, “No probably about it. It’ll be worse than your darkest nightmare. This unsub-unknown subject-is among the sickest, most perverse killers I’ve ever seen. Why put yourself through this? Are you having second thoughts that it’s her?”

“It’s her.”

“Then why?” She sure wasn’t the type to get off on voy euristic violence. If he was wrong about that, then he’d learned nothing in his twelve years in law enforcement.

Her answer took Dean completely by surprise. He’d been prepared for protestations that she had to be sure, for the family’s sake. That it was her job. What he didn’t expect was the answer he got.

“I have to watch the film, Agent Taggert, because I think I might be able to tell you where Lisa Zimmerman died.”

Stacey could probably have told the FBI agents sitting in her office where she thought Lisa had been killed without watching that horrific home movie of the slaughter. Considering she was now leaning over the bathroom sink, having puked her guts out one minute after the clip had ended, she almost wished she had.

Almost.

Her only solace was that there had been no audio accompaniment. If she’d had to hear Lisa’s anguished screams, she doubted she’d ever get their echoes out of her ears.

But she’d needed to see it. Having a hunch based on the shimmer of something in the background of one of the original three pictures wasn’t enough. Not for a case like this. Not when Stacey was going to have to go tell Winnie Freed her daughter was dead.

Another parent mourning another child. It was too much. She’d come here, back to Hope Valley, specifically because she never wanted to see such anguish again. Never wanted to witness the pain she’d seen in her last days as a state cop, when parent after parent had cried their grief for the children they’d sent off to school and never seen again.

God, how could they possibly bear it? How would Winnie bear it?

“Sheriff?” Someone knocked on the closed bathroom door. Fortunately, it wasn’t one of the two agents. The voice was female.

“I’m okay, Connie.” She wet a paper towel, holding it to her forehead and her cheeks, trying desperately to get her heart to stop racing and her stomach to stop heaving.

Finally, either because she’d gotten herself under control or because there was nothing left inside her to spew out in protest of what had been done to Lisa, Stacey rinsed her mouth out and left the bathroom. Reentering her office, she found the two men sitting where she’d left them.

The agents looked up at her return, but didn’t rise to their feet in some antiquated show of courtesy. “I apologize for the interruption, gentlemen,” she murmured, returning to her seat.

“We quite understand,” the supervisory special agent, Blackstone, said. “It’s not something any normal person would ever want to see.”

He was stiff, dispassionate, his black suit starched and crisp despite the heat and humidity. Probably in his early forties, the man was almost too elegant to be in law enforcement. She suspected he kept a wall of formality and coolness around himself at all times. Even the way he sat, one leg crossed over the other, hands folded in his lap, displayed an almost visible disdain for any macho law enforcement posturing. Yet he was so intense and focused, she dared anyone to think the pose was at all feminine.

“Are you all right?” a gruff voice asked. That was the other one-Special Agent Dean Taggert. And he was not stiff, dispassionate, and aloof. Definitely not cold, either. Not one tiny bit.

“I’m fine.”

From the moment they’d shaken hands in the vestibule, Stacey had been unable to help noticing the coiled strength of the man. While Blackstone was all calm, controlled professionalism, Taggert appeared tense and hard, wary and maybe even belligerent. Blackstone’s grip had been cool and smooth, Taggert’s powerful and rough. The older agent never looked around, appearing completely at ease and comfortable with his surroundings. The younger one never stopped checking things out, eyeing entrances and egresses, always on alert, edgy and ready for action. With his thick dark hair, flashing eyes so deep brown they were almost black, and strong-boned face, he looked almost too streetwise to be in the eminently professional FBI.

The senior agent emanated authority. The junior one, pure physical excitement.

“Here,” Taggert muttered, tossing a pack of mint-flavored gum toward her.

Stacey caught it in midair.

“Believe it or not, it helps get the taste of imaginary blood out of your mouth.”

Perfect description. Watching Lisa’s final moments, she’d felt as if she were swallowing the horror whole. “Thanks.”

She took a piece, hoping her stomach could handle the simple act of chewing, then pushed the pack across the desk toward its owner, watching him pocket it.

“Want some water or something, too?” he asked, displaying concern that completely surprised her.

“No, really, I’m okay.”

Though as polite as his colleague, Special Agent Taggert’s gravelly voice, tight tone, the tension in his body, and the fire in his eyes told her the man wasn’t used to playing nice, to asking courteously and talking quietly.

Right now, he watched her with an assessing stare. But there was also a hint of warm compassion. Understanding. It was as unexpected as it was genuine, just like the offer of the gum. Stacey found herself staring back at him for a brief moment, their eyes locking as they took silent measure of each other.

“Did you find what you were looking for in the footage?” Blackstone asked, sounding courteous, yet not quite so… What was that tone in his colleague’s voice? Protectiveness, maybe. Yes, when she thought about it, the near-stranger had seemed almost protective of her. Such a novel thing. Nobody had tried to protect her in years. She did a damn fine job of it herself, and part of her should have been offended.

She wasn’t. She’d evaluate why later, when she didn’t have to look across her desk at those deep brown eyes.

“Sheriff?” Blackstone prodded.

Determined to get past the awkward moment of her sickness, she nodded and reached for her notepad. She’d jotted down specific moments of interest in the film. “You said this video was made public last April? About a month after she disappeared?”

The senior agent nodded. “But we believe it had been made sometime prior to that, given the wintry appearance of the background location.”

She thought about the scene, the stark, skeletal bareness of the trees. Then she recalled the early spring they’d enjoyed last year; her pollen allergies had been in high gear by the first week of April. The timing definitely fit. “I noticed that, too.”

Blackstone folded his hands in his lap, saying nothing.

“She left Dick’s Tavern, a hangout two miles outside of town, a little before two a.m. That night was the last full moon of the cycle. I remember because we’d had a really bad week, calls out to Dick’s every night. Around here the general consensus is that the crazies come out during the full moon, and they all end up at Dick’s. Most folks think Lisa ran off with one of them.”

“Maybe she did,” Taggert muttered.

“Maybe. But if so, she didn’t get far. Because she died within hours.”

Both FBI agents watched her closely. Neither appeared surprised. Just interested.

“There’s one moment when she’s looking directly up, when the camera panned up, too,” she explained, suddenly feeling weary. “Maybe the bastard wanted to see if there really was a God up there listening to her prayers. It’s only a split second, but I’m nearly certain the moon was full.”

“Yes, we saw that,” Blackstone admitted. “We sent the tape for evaluation beyond what our office could handle, and I imagine they’ll verify it. But the fact that you caught something that appeared so briefly says a lot about your powers of observation.”

Under other circumstances, she might feel pleased by the compliment. Now, though, her mind still awash with the visions of Lisa’s final moments, there was no room for anything positive.

“To recap…” She ticked off the obvious points on her fingers. “We know she was last seen at close to two a.m. on the final night of the full moon in March. We know she was killed under a full moon. We know there were no buds on the trees, while if it had happened at the next full moon, there would have been. And we know the video went public in April.” It was simple deduction, really. “She had to have been killed the night she disappeared. It had to have happened somewhere close to here, since there would have been only a few hours between when she left the tavern and dawn, and there was no sign of morning on that video. With the time it took to grab her, get her somewhere entirely secluded, and do what he did, there wouldn’t have been time to drive too far out of the area.”

Agent Taggert leaned forward in his chair. “You said you might know where she died, meaning you saw something else.”

“Yes, I did.”

They waited.

“During the segments when your suspect zoomed out and panned the clearing, you can see a glint of silver through the branches of some of the trees, to Lisa’s left. I first spotted it in the third picture you showed me. You can see it better in the video.”

Taggert opened the folder, glanced at it, then offered it to his colleague.

“Brandon Cole, our IT specialist who’s been working on this, spotted the same glimmer,” said Blackstone. “But he couldn’t isolate it enough to identify it. It was too far away and too small. It could be a flash from the spotlights, a smudge on the cheap camera lens. Maybe even a reflection from one of the blades the perpetrator used.” He put the picture down. “It’s not a headlight or something, if that’s what you’re thinking. We considered that, but the height and dimensions don’t work. We’re hoping the final analysis of the footage will give us more to go on.”

She wasn’t thinking vehicle. And the other explanations could be correct. But the first impression Stacey had had when she’d spotted it hadn’t been of any of those things; it had been of wire. Very thin, very sharp wire, looping on itself.

Intuition. But she trusted her own intuition. She always had.

“I think it might be razor wire. If you use Lisa’s position to gauge it, the image is about level with the tops of her hands.”

She stood, demonstrating, raising her arms above her head, thrusting away the thought of Lisa being tied in this position. Actually, she needed to thrust away the thought of the Lisa she’d known, period, if she was going to be of any help in this investigation. She needed to think of her as only another victim. Nothing else.

“I’m five-ten. Li-The victim was a good six inches shorter. The level of her hands would be right about the same height as the wire running across the top of a steel fence.”

Blackstone immediately reopened the folder, and the two agents looked down to test her theory against the eight-by-tens. Stacey lowered her hands, tucked her shirt, which had slid up over her middle, back into her khakis, and returned to her seat. Why the hell she’d had to play Miss Show-and-Tell, she had no idea. Far from being eminently professional, she’d probably looked like some amateur detective solving bloodless murders on an old, pre-CSI TV show.

“Damn, I think she’s right,” Taggert said. He looked up, caught her eye, and immediately leaped to the next conclusion. “Not many places need that kind of security. You know of a fence like this in the area?”

Still not quite believing that Lisa could have been killed at a place she drove by practically every day, Stacey nodded. “I do. One of the locals, Warren Lee, has a farm outside of town. He’s a bit of a character.”

Taggert stiffened. “Violent?”

She considered it. “Possibly. He’s a survivalist type; I suspect he’s armed to the teeth out there.” Realizing why he’d asked, she almost immediately ruled out the agent’s unspoken supposition. She knew Warren well enough to fear that when he snapped he’d go out guns blazing. He didn’t have the patience, the calmness she’d seen in the video.

“I don’t believe that was him on the tape, but it could have happened near his place. He has a huge spread. It’s fenced in, with razor wire across the top.”

Agent Taggert immediately swung to face his boss. “Can we get a warrant?”

Blackstone shook his head. “We’ve got nothing to justify one.”

Stacey cleared her throat. “I didn’t mean I thought the crime occurred on Warren ’s property. The way he guards his place, the only way it could have is if he did it, and I tell you, everything I know about the man says he didn’t. I think it’s more likely this happened on the other side of his fence. In which case, you can easily look around.”

They both waited in tangible expectation.

“Most of Warren ’s land skirts along part of the Shenandoah National Park.”

A quick grin appeared on Taggert’s face, as if he’d heard his first good news in days. “Federal property.”

“Exactly,” she replied, thinking for a fleeting moment how much younger the man looked when he smiled. “No warrant required.”