She met his eyes, and for that moment, she could almost believe that the scenario he had built would come true.

"Don't worry about it," Lynch said gently. "I wouldn't do anything to hurt you. It will always be your choice."

"Dammit, you're soothing me again." She jerked her gaze away as the elevator started to descend. "And you're d.a.m.n right it will be my choice. How arrogant can you get?"

He threw back his head and laughed. "You'll have to see, won't you? At the least, I promise I'll be the ultimate challenge for you." His eyes were suddenly glittering with sly mischief. "And you know you can never resist a challenge, Kendra."

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Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen in

The Naked Eye

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CHAPTER.

1.

SHE WAS FLOATING. FLOATING IN a pool of blood.

No, now it had become a river of blood.

What in the h.e.l.l...?

Of course.

This was a dream. The same horrible nightmare that had haunted her for months. Why hadn't she realized it before?

Because the terror was real, and she was always afraid the nightmare was real, too. Colby was a demon. Couldn't a demon make a nightmare come true?

She was back at the gully in Coach.e.l.la Valley, the place where she had beaten him. Yet here he was, night after night. He crouched on a rock at the gully's end, waiting for the blood river to carry her to him.

No!

Colby laughed and raised his two large knives. "Here we are. Just me and you, Kendra. The way it was meant to be."

He swung his blades at her.

Darkness. Darkness. Dark- * * *

GOT ONE FOR YOU.

Kendra Michaels jerked wide-awake at the jangle she'd programmed to signal the text messages on her phone.

d.a.m.n.

She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and studied the message header. It was from Martin Stokes, a San Diego Police Department homicide detective. He'd included an address and a few details.

She took a few minutes to steady her breathing, trying to gain control. She was still trembling from her nightmare, and her face was covered with sweat. She'd be okay in a minute. Every night the nightmare came, and every night she survived it.

Just as I survived you, Colby.

I won't let you drag me back to that time, and someday I'll fight off this d.a.m.n nightmare.

But here in her hands, a real-life nightmare beckoned. She didn't have to go, of course; a glance at the crime-scene photos and a reading of the case file would probably tell her everything she needed to know.

Probably.

Who in the h.e.l.l was she kidding? She knew she was going.

No matter how horrific the scene was, it couldn't compare with the beast still taunting her in her dreams.

A quick shower and she'd be out of here. She reached for her jeans and headed for the bathroom.

She stopped short as she glanced in the vanity mirror. She reached up and touched one of the dark circles beneath her eyes.

Those nightmares again. There was no strength in that face at this moment. She appeared delicate, breakable.

She was not breakable. She was the one who had broken Colby that night in the gully four years ago.

Colby had been her first case as an FBI consultant, and she had been so horrified at the brutality of his kills that she had become obsessed with catching him. The cat-and-mouse search had culminated with her almost dying in that gully and Colby's going to the hospital with a fractured skull. He had found that defeat intolerable. His ego couldn't bear the thought that she had triumphed and sent him to prison. She had become the focus of his hatred and obsession, and he had let her know; he had been a dark shadow behind her all those years he had spent on death row.

You're out there waiting, aren't you, Colby?

I can feel it.

So wait, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. And when you get bored, come after me.

I'm waiting for you, too.

And I'm not standing still.

She turned and jumped into the shower.

"I DIDN'T THINK YOU WERE going to show." Detective Stokes lifted the police tape for Kendra to duck under and join him in the driveway of the one-story craftsman home. Four squad cars were parked on the street, flashers pounding the house with out-of-sync strobes of red and blue light. The scene was crawling with uniformed officers, detectives, and forensics experts.

Kendra shrugged. "What else would I have to do at three-thirty in the morning?"

"I could think of lots of things. Especially since you don't have to be here."

What did he know? She felt the familiar chill. "I do have to be here."

She'd tried to suppress the shudder, but Stokes narrowed stare told her the effort was unsuccessful. "Sure, but you should be thanking Detective Kael. He's the one who beat it into my brain that I should contact you if I encountered any killings of a serial or ritualistic nature. He thinks you're the real deal."

Did that mean Stokes did not? She gazed at him appraisingly. Thirtysomething, receding brown hair, pleasant enough features. No sign of belligerence or cynicism. "Kael is a good man."

"He's a rotten softball player, but other than that..." He motioned for her to follow him up the driveway. "But I trust him most of the time. I was actually glad when I had an excuse to call you on this case." He grimaced. "I'm very curious. But you know I've heard so many incredible things about you that it's hard to separate the truth from the bulls.h.i.t."

She half smiled. "Bank on the bulls.h.i.t."

"I don't think so. Tell me, were you really blind for the first twenty years of your life?"

"Yes."

"Completely blind?"

"Yep. I'd never seen a thing in my life."

"That's amazing. Kael says you got your sight from some kind of stem-cell surgery."

She nodded. "In England. They did a lot of the early work in corneal-regeneration techniques."

"I've always heard that blind people developed their other senses to compensate. And that's how you pick up on stuff most other people don't."

She wished he'd just drop it. Patience. At least, he was pleasant enough, and she might need him to notify her again if he ran across one of the target murders. "I guess so. But I don't think my senses of hearing, smell, taste, or touch are better than anyone else's. I just had to use them to make my way in the world."

"Yeah. And afterward you used your eyes, too." He smiled. "You don't remember me, but I was at the Van Buren crime scene a few years ago. It wasn't my case, but I was curious as h.e.l.l about you. So I just stayed in the background and watched."

"Really? I hope you were entertained."

"Did I say the wrong thing? I didn't mean-I was impressed. You cracked that case by reading the lips of a suspect when he was talking on the phone to his wife. It was amazing ... and surprising. It made me want to go out and learn it myself."

"Did you do it?"

"No, it was like a lot of things in my life. It just somehow slipped away as time pa.s.sed." He paused. "But I think I should let you know, Kael isn't the only one who thinks you're the real deal. I do, too, Dr. Michaels."

He was sincere. Sincerity deserved politeness as well as patience. "Thank you. I appreciate your calling me. I hope you'll think of me again when something like this comes up."

"You can bet on it." They had reached the front door. "Let's hold up here for a second." Stokes held up his hand as he looked inside the open front door. "The photographer's doing his thing."

"Sure."

Stokes crossed his arms in front of him. "I think this is going to be one of those cases when you'll have to concentrate on being pretty sharp about things you see."

"Whatever." She was feeling the tension start. She didn't like standing out here waiting. "I never take things for granted. Things I see aren't just details to me. They're gifts. They're part of the world that was closed off to me for so long. I guess I just want to take in everything."

"I'm afraid you'll get more than you bargained for in there." He shook his head. "It's not a pretty scene."

She just wanted to get to it, dammit. Kendra glanced at the driveway next door, where another detective was talking to a distraught-looking bald man in sweatpants and a Padres T-shirt.

"That's the husband?"

"Yeah. He fell asleep watching TV upstairs in bed. A little before two, he came downstairs and found his wife's body in the kitchen. It's a mess."

"He has no clue who could have done this?"

"No. His wife was an elementary-school teacher, no enemies that he knows of."

"Maybe he has the enemies. What does he do?"

"Residential mortgage manager at a bank." Stokes glanced back inside. "All clear."

Kendra followed him through a small living room, carpeted with a thick burnt-orange rug that probably wasn't even in style when laid fifteen years before. She scanned the room. Photographs, vacation souvenirs, and two watercolor prints probably purchased from a cruise-ship auction.

Through a doorway on the far wall, she heard at least half a dozen pairs of footsteps. No, she self-corrected, more like eight.

Stokes motioned her through the doorway. Kendra walked through and nodded her greeting at the seven men and one woman working the crime scene. She recognized most of them from other recent investigations. They'd become much more at ease with her now that they knew she wasn't interested in grabbing credit from them.

That's never what this was about.

Two forensics men were crouched in front of the open refrigerator. Upon seeing Kendra, they stood and moved away to reveal what had brought them all there: Thirty-five-year-old Marissa Kohler, lying in a pool of her own blood.

Kendra had seen many murder victims over the years, many at much more gruesome scenes than this one, but it still hit her like a kick in the stomach. She hoped she'd never become too callous to not feel that horror. This woman had probably just gone through the motions on her last day on Earth, with nary an idea that it would all soon come to a horrific end.

Detach. Focus.

Time to see if he did this. The monster.

Kendra crouched next to the corpse, trying to avoid the splatter trails on the tile floor. Dressed in sleeper shorts and a long T-shirt, the victim was lying in front of the open refrigerator as if attacked while getting a midnight snack. Her hands were near her face, suggesting a defensive position even after falling. A pair of round spectacles rested on the floor about five feet away. Obviously, the victim's gla.s.ses, confirmed by the distinctive mark on her nose that matched the spectacle's arched bridge.

Stokes pointed toward the open back door, which was splintered as if kicked open with a fierce kick. "Point of entry over there. No curtains on the back windows, so the killer could have spotted her in here."