"This guy has absolutely no ID on him. No receipts, no ATM statements, nothing. What can you tell me about him?"

Kendra still did not turn. "Besides the fact that he's now missing half his skull?"

"Yeah, besides that."

You don't have to look back at that monstrosity that had once been a man. Use your memory. Close your eyes. Focus.

"Kendra?"

"He's a smoker. Cigarettes."

Lynch looked at the dead man's hands. "Nicotine stains."

"It's actually from the tar. You can also see it in the corners of his mouth. And he's probably been taking tetracycline or minocycline recently. Check with dermatologists in the area. He might be a patient."

Lynch looked down at the man's pockmarked face. "It's obvious he needed it, but how do you know?"

"His teeth. They have a slight grayish blue tint. That's a giveaway, and it probably tilts the scales in favor of minocycline."

"I'll check it out."

"We didn't hear him say much, but I can tell he's probably lived on the West Coast for most of his life. Possibly some time in the Northwest, but I can't be sure of that. He's also had whiskey today, but there's no telling where he drank it."

Okay, she was better now. She had control. She turned and slowly walked back toward the corpse and knelt beside it. Now that she was in the zone, she was no longer bothered by the horrible sight in front of her. It was just a collection of stimuli to be cataloged and a.n.a.lyzed. She lifted the lapel of the dead man's leather jacket and placed her nose next to it.

Lynch knelt beside her. "What are you doing?"

She leaned back. "Smelling that white stuff on his jacket."

"We have forensic tests for that."

"McDonald's vanilla shake."

Lynch smiled. "Not Burger King?"

"No. Not Burger King, not Wendy's. It was McDonald's. It's still very sweet-smelling, so I'm betting he had it today. There was a McDonald's about twenty-five miles back on Highway 78. It might be a good place to start. If he was with his partner, there might be a security camera feed with both of their faces."

He nodded. "Anything else?"

"Let's look at his bike."

They stood and walked over toward the still-rumbling motorcycle. Lynch cut the ignition and lifted it upright. "A BMW GS. Good piece of machinery."

Kendra stepped around it. "The owner brought this here from somewhere else. It hasn't been ridden much in this country yet."

"It has a California plate."

"But there's much more wear on the front tire's right side. In the U.S. and other countries where we drive on the right side of the road, there's always more wear on the front tire's left side."

Lynch thought about it for a moment. "That makes sense. Wider turn radius, more of a lean angle..."

"... and faster speed. You leave more rubber on the pavement with a wide turn. This motorcycle has been mostly ridden someplace where they drive on the left side of the road." Kendra looked at it a moment longer, then shook her head. "It's not telling me anything else."

Lynch hit the kickstand and left the bike upright. "Okay. Good. Anything else you want to see? Last chance..."

"No, I've seen enough."

Too much. Death. Betrayal. Murder.

All of the horrors that she had wanted to leave behind when she had told Jeff that she was through with working with him. Now that this problem had been faced, addressed, and identified, she was once more enveloped in the sheer terrible reality of it.

Stop shaking.

Don't break down.

"I'd better call and get the police and the Bureau out here. You were very helpful. I think that we-" Lynch broke off, his gaze on her expression. "Are you okay? You look a little pale."

"Wonderful. Just wonderful."

"The h.e.l.l you are." He took a step closer and reached out to touch her. "I didn't think that you'd react-"

She jerked back away from him. "But you didn't stop to ask how I felt about it before you got what you wanted, did you? You just used me. Well, I gave you what you needed, and now you have time to be the good guy. It's all very familiar." Too familiar. All the bitterness and sickness she had felt when she'd broken with Jeff was flooding back to her. She turned her back to him. "I don't need your sympathy, Lynch. I'm fine." As she walked away from him, she added, "So go to h.e.l.l."

THE FIRST POLICE OFFICERS arrived in thirty-five minutes, and Griffin, Santini, and Deever arrived with an army of FBI agents an hour after that. After Kendra and Lynch had told their story and conveyed Kendra's observations no less than four times, Griffin finally pulled them both aside.

"What in the h.e.l.l is going on here?"

"You don't really want to hear it again, do you?" Lynch asked.

"I thought you were working with us, Lynch."

"You don't find our information useful?"

"I find her information useful. It's your bulls.h.i.t I don't appreciate."

"Basic investigative work, that's all. We're trying to find your missing agent."

"Why didn't you tell us you were coming out here?"

"I don't see the need to keep you apprised of my every move. You have access to Stedler's computer and search history. Didn't you already think to come out here?"

He was silent a moment. "It was on the list. We didn't deem it relevant."

"And it may not be. I don't know who these guys are. Anything on his license plate yet?"

"It's registered to a motorcycle in Mission Valley."

"This motorcycle?" Kendra asked.

"Nope. It's registered to a Kawasaki. The plate's probably stolen, and the owner just hasn't reported it yet. The cops are checking it out now." Griffin gestured to the other mine-shaft openings dotting the mountainside. "We're checking out each of those. For all we know, they were running a meth lab out of one."

"Miserably hot place to try and run a lab," Lynch said. "It's about 110 here today."

"I've seen crazier things." Griffin turned back toward them. "So tell me, why in the h.e.l.l would Stedler have been interested in this place?"

"Question of the day," Lynch said. "As you say, this doesn't seem relevant to anything else he was working on."

"It's time, Lynch," Griffin said harshly.

"Time for what?"

"It's time for you to be straight with me. I need to know why the Justice Department sent you here."

"I was hired." Lynch spoke as if reading from a well-worn script. "Any questions or concerns can be directed to U.S. a.s.sociate Attorney General Frederick Jamerson. He or a member of his staff would be happy to-"

Griffin cut him off. "You know I've already spoken with Jamerson. We're as concerned about Agent Stedler's well-being as he is, but we're still at a loss as to why he sent you. If we're being kept in the dark about something, I need to know what it is."

"I don't have time to nurse bruised egos."

"This isn't about ego!" Griffin's face flushed red. "We need to know what we're dealing with here. The safety of my people depends on it. Can't you get that into your head? Jeff Stedler is the best agent I have. If something happened to him, it can happen to any one of those men and women out there."

Lynch shook his head. "I don't know any more than you do, Griffin. Sorry."

Griffin cursed and walked away.

Kendra stared at Lynch for a long moment. "If you really came without knowing why you're here, then I misjudged you."

"How so?"

"You didn't strike me as someone who would allow himself to be used like that." Her lips curled bitterly. "No, you'd be the one who'd be on the offensive. You wouldn't be sent out here by some bureaucrat without really knowing why. I don't think you're a chump, Lynch."

"If that's what I was, I'd still be working for Griffin."

"Then I guess that just makes you a liar."

Lynch laughed and stepped away, putting some distance between him and the police officers working the scene. "You're forgetting another possibility."

"Enlighten me."

"Maybe I want to know what's going on here. Maybe I want to know why one of the three highest-ranking officials in the U.S. Department of Justice has taken such a personal interest in this case. I can understand why it's driving Griffin crazy because it's making me a bit crazy. Especially if I'm somehow being used as a p.a.w.n-or a chump, as you might say-in this game. I will find out what's going on here, but I'll do it on my own terms. That's why I came to you."

She studied him. It was the only thing he could have said that would inspire any kind of approval from her. He, of course, knew that; manipulation was his stock-in-trade. But there was something in his manner, a steely determination tinged with frustration that made her believe him.

"I need your help," he said quietly. "You may feel you've already gotten more than you bargained for, and you most definitely have. But I want to work with someone outside the Bureau on this. And not with just anyone. I want it to be you."

She shook her head. "Haven't you been listening? This isn't what I do. I've helped out on a few cases, but I'm not an investigator."

"You're better at it than almost anyone I know." He paused. "And you want to do this. You have a motivation. I'll try not to pry any more into your private affairs; but, in spite of what you went through this afternoon, you thought finding Stedler was worthwhile, or you wouldn't have done it."

He's right, d.a.m.n him.

Kendra turned and stared at the ma.s.s of law-enforcement personnel swarming over the mountainside. And Olivia had also been right. There was no way Kendra couldn't help, not as long as Jeff might still be out there. He had been her friend, her lover. She might want to put a period to their relationship, but she would hate herself if she didn't at least try to help find him.

"I'll do what I can," she said slowly.

"You're in?"

"Yes, as long as I think it's worthwhile working with you. But I want to keep following Jeff's trail. If I get the sense that you and your a.s.sociate Attorney General have other priorities, I'm done. Do you understand?"

He nodded. "Of course."

"For a master manipulator, you didn't handle Griffin well just now. Please do your best not to p.i.s.s off Griffin and the other FBI agents."

His brows rose in surprise. "Says the pot to the kettle."

"I don't have to be polite to them. If I stopped being rude, they'd get suspicious. But we might need them, and you might as well be the one to bite the bullet. This case could turn on the toxicology angle, and we're going to need their expertise and resources."

"I can be a team player. But I doubt if you can."

Kendra doubted it, too. She had always been a loner, and sometimes her tongue was too quick. "Then you'd better work twice as hard to make up for my lack of cooperation. It will be a challenge for you."

CHAPTER.

5.

DAMMIT, IT'S HAPPENING to me again.

Kendra stepped off the elevator and moved toward her condo. She was tired, but she felt a tingle of pure energy jolting through her. Her mind was racing as she jumped from possibility to possibility. She knew those familiar signs. They were always the first ones that appeared as she was drawn into the vortex.

She was already consumed by the d.a.m.n case. In less than twenty-four hours, it had elbowed everything else from her mind, and the puzzles and problems of Jimmy and her other music-therapy clients seemed like a dim memory.

She mustn't let it take over. Not this time.

She pulled out her key and moved to insert it into her door. She stopped short.