He popped the hood, climbed out of the car, and walked around to the front. He raised the hood and used his phone display to illuminate the engine compartment.

Who was he kidding? Maybe he could unscrew the carburetor lid and move the b.u.t.terfly doohickey back and forth, but after that, he would have reached the absolute limit of his automotive expertise.

There would be nothing to do but sit in the car and wait for the d.a.m.ned- A pair of headlights appeared. They had come from over the hill behind his car, a quarter of a mile away. At first the vehicle appeared to be racing toward him, but it soon slowed to a crawl.

Paul raised his hand to block the headlights' glare, trying to glimpse the car behind it. It was much too soon to be the tow truck, and the rounded headlights didn't seem to belong to a squad car. He soon saw that the vehicle was an SUV. It pulled alongside him and the pa.s.senger-side window lowered.

"Need help?" The driver was in shadows, but he sounded like an older man.

"Nah, I called the auto club. Thanks, though."

The man pointed to the open hood. "What's the problem?"

"No idea. It just broke down on me."

The man shifted his SUV into PARK but left the engine running. He climbed out. "Let me take a look."

"I appreciate the help, but like I said, a tow truck will be here any-"

"No problem at all. Got a flashlight?"

Paul held up his phone's illuminated screen and angled it toward the man. He had gray hair, tanned skin, and deep smile lines. It was almost as if Mr. Rogers had stopped to lend a hand. All that was missing was the cardigan.

The older man laughed at the phone. "That'll have to do. You'd do better to hold it over the engine and let me take a look."

Paul held the phone high over the engine compartment. "I can't see anything wrong, but that doesn't mean-"

Pain.

An icy shiver ran through his torso. He turned. The old man was holding a long, wet blade.

Wet with his blood, Paul realized.

The man was still smiling. "Relax, son."

Paul couldn't breathe. But he could move. In one quick motion, he reached up, gripped the edge of the open hood, and brought it down hard on the man's head.

"Aughh!" The man screamed, and blood spurted from his hairline. He stumbled. "You little p.r.i.c.k!"

Paul wanted to tackle the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but his legs wouldn't cooperate. He staggered forward and fell to the ground. The asphalt felt warm against his cheek. Getting harder to keep his eyes open ...

"Be still," the man said. "It'll be over soon."

Paul's eyes fluttered. Please, no. Don't let this be it ...

"That's good, Paul. Rest easy."

Paul. The son of a b.i.t.c.h knew his name. His eyes flicked wide open.

"It's better this way," the older man said. "Believe me, I'm doing you a favor."

He tasted blood in his mouth.

He closed his eyes for the last time.

Bayfront Walk

San Diego

6:45 A.M.

Kendra plugged the earphones into her phone and scrolled through her audio library until she found the folder with Jeff's recordings. He customarily recorded them in his car after each interview or meeting, but he also spoke into his portable recorder whenever something occurred to him at any hour of the day or night.

That d.a.m.ned little recorder. Even now, she could remember how annoyed she'd been at how often he would cut short their most intimate conversations to start talking into the thing. Jeff would laugh his a.s.s off if he knew she was now poring over dozens of hours of those recordings.

Lord, she hoped that would come to pa.s.s.

If he was lucky, maybe they would soon laugh together.

She glanced around the Bayfront walking path that bordered the convention center and offered a view of the two large cargo ships and the Coronado Bridge. She had gone there to do her usual run as she listened to Jeff, but she had just changed her mind. She needed to focus and absorb every nuance of what was being said, something that would be impossible if she were breathlessly pounding the pavement.

She sat on a bench and scrolled to the last date. Two entries: a four-minute recording at 6:07 A.M., another at 2:20 P.M. She pressed the first one and listened.

"Somemore thoughts on my interview with Shawna Davis, fiancee of Steve Conroy, AKA victim number three ... She gave me the names of two friends that we didn't have. She didn't seem to have a lot of affection for these people but didn't dislike them, either. It didn't sound as if she and Conroy socialized together with the friends..."

Kendra had braced herself for the experience of once again hearing Jeff's voice in her ears, but she was caught off guard by the tension and edginess of his tone. This wasn't his normal professional voice; she had heard him keep his cool in some of the most stressful situations imaginable, yet here, in this fairly innocuous interview recap, his inflections were clipped, and his breathing was shallow.

He continued in the same troubling manner, even as his observations bordered on the mundane. She took interest, however, as he finished: "... the victim's fiancee said she didn't know a lot about his earlier life. She answered a good many of my questions with 'it didn't come up' or 'he never talked about that stuff.'" It was a little unusual for a fiancee to know so little, but not unheard of. But it did make me think of the husband of victim number one, Tricia Garza, who also seemed to know very little of his wife's life before him. It may be nothing, but with so few commonalities between our victims, it's something to keep in mind."

Kendra looked up at the bay as the audio file ended. Vintage Jeff. Working his case twenty-four/seven, chewing over every interview and each sc.r.a.p of evidence when his coworkers were still trying to decide what to eat with their breakfast cereal.

But there was something here that troubled him more than usual. Could anyone else hear it? Probably not. She felt justified for wanting more than the transcript, but even she had never suspected that his tone would be so telling.

What in the h.e.l.l was going on, Jeff?

KENDRA SPENT NINETY MINUTES listening to more recordings, but Jeff's remarks were nowhere near as revealing as the stress in his voice.

She thoughtfully put away her phone and walked home through the Gaslamp Quarter, where the restaurant workers were starting to arrive with their seafood and fresh vegetables from the wholesale markets. There was much more to hear, but she was surprised by how much the process drained her emotionally. Memories had ambushed her at every turn and it was becoming difficult to overcome them and a.n.a.lyze the tapes with her usual coolness. There was too much history there. Although the FBI work eventually drove her to split with Jeff, in the beginning, it gave her a tremendous charge to see him in his element, doing what he clearly did best. It was a side she hadn't seen before; tough, capable, and s.e.xy as h.e.l.l. He had told her that he got a similar charge from watching her on that first case, helping bring down a sports-team owner involved in murder and an international money-laundering operation. She had actually enjoyed showing off for Jeff, and he had made her believe she had a gift that should be cherished.

A gift, she thought bitterly. A "gift" that four cases later was only good enough to put her first on the scene to find two dead children who had been buried alive.

The nightmare memories were suddenly bombarding, ambushing her. Distance yourself, she told herself. It's over. She would continue listening to Jeff's recording later in the afternoon. Surely, there was no great hurry.

Bulls.h.i.t. The tension in Jeff's voice had given her a sense of nagging urgency that wouldn't leave her.

As she rounded the corner onto E Street, she caught sight of Adam Lynch's Ferrari. A moment after that, she saw the man himself, leaning against the wrought-iron fence that bordered her building. He held a manila envelope.

She felt her muscles tighten with that familiar tension that seemed to be her constant response to Lynch.

He inclined his head. "Good morning."

"You could have called me, you know."

"It's early. That would have been ... rude."

She pulled out her keys and opened the building's main door. "But showing up completely unannounced ... I suppose that's okay?"

"There was another murder last night."

She turned toward him. "Where?"

"About forty-five minutes outside of town, on State Route 16. This one was on the side of a road."

"Same pattern as the others?"

He nodded. "It was a stabbing. Same-size blade, same toxic substance in the victim's system. This one was a Caucasian male, age thirty-three."

Kendra felt a jolt of shock. Dammit. As much as she tried to tell herself that this case was different, it was still a race. The longer it took her to reach the finish line, the more people were going to die. That realization had once almost driven her insane in other cases. "You got a toxicology report that quickly?"

"Sienna Deever has developed a blood test that gives her almost immediate results. Every time there has been a fatal stabbing in the last couple of weeks, she's gone out to the location with her kit. She knew we had another match even before she left the crime scene at four thirty this morning."

Kendra had already been impressed by Sienna during their brief meeting the day before, but she was now even more so. "Time of death?"

"Around midnight."

She pointed to the envelope in his hand. "And are those the crime-scene photos?"

He nodded. "You can look at them on the way to Route 16."

She had seen it coming, but she was still annoyed at his presumptiveness. She stepped into her building and held the door open for Lynch. "I was waiting for that shoe to drop."

"We don't have much time. The body has been removed, but the Highway Patrol is detouring traffic around the crime scene. They've promised to hold it down for us until ten thirty."

She checked her watch-9:20. "So you're telling me we have to leave right now. That I can't shower or change? You want me to go to a murder scene in stretchy workout clothes."

He smiled. "It could work to our advantage. Very few women could pull off a formfitting outfit the way you do. I'm sure the cops down there will be extremely accommodating."

Her face flushed, and in the next instant, she was furious at herself for the reaction. The Puppetmaster was still at work, prodding, probing, a.s.sessing. Trying to see what b.u.t.tons to push with her.

Give him nothing.

She turned and motioned back toward the front door. "We're wasting time. Let's go."

KENDRA AND LYNCH ARRIVED at the scene less than an hour later, after being waved through a roadblock by a young uniformed officer who was far more interested in Lynch's Ferrari than with his official ID. They parked and walked toward the Volvo S60 on the side of the road, which was surrounded by an a.s.sortment of police and FBI forensics investigators. Agents Michael Griffin and Bill Santini stood on the sidelines and turned as they approached.

Griffin tapped his watch. "Just in time to watch us tow it away. Thanks anyway."

Kendra nodded. "I don't need much time. I'm sure you've already found what there is to be seen here."

"Really? I know you don't believe that," Santini said.

Kendra pointed to the ground around the car. "Any footprints?"

"Looks like the killer swept them clean with the side of his shoe. We might be able to get a shoe size, but that's it," Griffin said. "Have you seen the crime-scene photos?"

Kendra nodded. "One puncture wound, and the victim was facedown in front of his car. And his car hood was up when he was found?"

"Yes, and his headlights were still on," Santini said. "A pa.s.serby found him and phoned it in at about 2 A.M."

Kendra stepped closer to the car. "At first glance, it would appear to be random ... As if he broke down and had the bad luck to be on the same road with a pa.s.sing psycho."

"That's what we all thought," Griffin said. "Until Sienna ran her test. She's still with the body at the medical examiner's office."

"Then it appears that the breakdown was no accident. It's likely that the victim's car had been tampered with earlier."

"Want to take a look at the engine?" Lynch said.

"It would mean nothing to me," Kendra said. "I can identify almost every sound an engine can make, but I've never taken the time to match those sounds with what the actual components look like."

"I'm surprised," Lynch said. "You seem to have found the time to become an expert at practically everything else in the world."

"Are you being sarcastic?"

"Perish the thought."

"I will." She shrugged. "I am curious about the connection, but there just aren't enough hours in the day. I'll get around to it sometime."

"I have no doubt."

They walked toward the car and slowly circled it. Kendra stopped and crouched when she reached the front pa.s.senger's side. She turned and looked at the field behind her.

"What is it?" Lynch asked.