"I asked Xander to pick up pizza. He's on his way."

"Oh." Already in the fridge, she paused, glanced back. "That's fine, if you're in a pizza mood, and saves me the trouble."

Closing the fridge, she switched modes, decided they could eat on the deck. "Where's the dog?"

"He wanted out. Everyone's gone for the day."

"So I see-or rather hear. I worked later than I'd planned. You have to see my studio space." The thrill of it bubbled through her. "It's finished, and it's awesome. I'm going ahead with that darkroom space-in the basement. I don't do film that often, and Kevin said the plumbing would be easy down there. So it would be really quiet, out of the way, and make use of some of that space."

She turned, found him watching her quietly. "And I'm babbling while you're working. Why don't I take this outside, let you finish up in peace?"

"Why don't you sit down? I need to talk to you about something."

"Sure. Is everything all right? Of course everything's not all right," she said, shut her eyes for a minute. "I've been so caught up in my own space, my own work, I forgot about Donna and Marla. Forgot about your work."

She sat at the counter with him. "It didn't seem real for a little while. Donna's funeral's the day after tomorrow, and Xander . . . It's the second funeral since I've been here, the second terrible funeral."

"I know. Naomi-"

He broke off as the dog raced in from the front, danced in place, raced back again.

"That would be Xander and pizza," Naomi said, started to rise.

"Just sit."

"You found something." She put a hand on his arm, squeezed. "Something about the murders."

She swiveled in the stool when Xander came in, tossed the pizza box on the counter by the cooktop.

"What do you know?"

"Let me start with this. Naomi, this is the picture you took in the forest just west of here. This nurse log."

She frowned at the image he brought up on his computer. "That's right. Why did you download it?"

"Because this is one I took yesterday, when Donna's body was discovered." Carefully cropped, he thought, as he toggled to it. "It's the same log."

"All right, yes."

"Donna's body was dumped just off the track, beside this log. It's an eight-minute trek into the woods-and that's without carrying a hundred and fifty pounds. It bothered me right off. Why take her in that far? You want her to be found, why take her so far in-put in that time, that effort? Why that spot?"

"I don't know, Mason. Wanting a little more time before she was found?"

"No point to it. But this place, right here." He tapped the screen. "It has a point. You've had that photo on your site a couple of weeks."

The chill skipped along her skin. "If you've got some wild idea he . . . this photo inspired him or factored into where he left her, it doesn't make sense. For one thing, I've got a dozen photos up I took in that area."

"He had to pick one." Face grim, Xander studied the images.

"It's just a weird coincidence," Naomi insisted. "Disturbing, but a coincidence. I barely knew either of the victims. I've only been in this area since March."

Saying nothing, Mason brought up another photo-one she'd taken of the bluff-then brought up another side by side. "Yours, and the crime scene shot. Up on your site, Naomi, for a couple months."

And that chill seeped in, dug into her bones.

"Why would anyone use my photos to choose where they left a body? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't."

"Stop it." Clamping a hand on her shoulder, Xander spoke sharply. "Stop it and breathe."

Annoyance at the tone shoved the weight off her chest. "It doesn't make any goddamn sense."

"And doing what he did to Marla and Donna does?"

"No, no, but that's-that's a pathology, right?" She appealed to Mason. "I know enough about what you do to understand that. But I don't understand how you could take these pictures and begin to think this killer is, what, a fan of my work?"

"It's more."

Xander had both hands on her shoulders now, and though they kneaded at the tensed muscles, she understood that another purpose was to keep her in place.

"What's more?"

Mason took her hand a moment, squeezed it, then brought up another image. "You took this shot in Death Valley in February. I had the locals send me the shots from the body dump."

He brought it up, heard her breath shudder out. "The victim was midtwenties, white, blonde, lived and worked in Vegas. High-risk vic-stripper, junkie, hooker. It didn't pop on Winston's like-crimes search because the locals charged her pimp-who'd been known to tune up his girls-with the crime.

"In January, you took this in Kansas-Melvern Lake. The body of a sixty-eight-year-old female was left here." Again, he brought up the matching shot. "She lived alone, and as her house had been broken into, things taken, they put it down to robbery gone south."

"But it was the same," Naomi said quietly. "What was done to her, the same."

"There's a pattern. You flew home for Christmas."

"Yes. I left my car at the airport. I didn't want to drive that far for the week I'd be home."

"A shot you took in Battery Park, and the corresponding crime scene photo. Another high-risk vic. Working girl, junkie, early midtwenties. Blonde."

"Donna wasn't blonde. And the older woman-"

"Donna wasn't his first choice. Neither was the older woman. It's a pattern, Naomi."

The cold, a jagged ball of ice, settled in her belly. "He's using my work."

"There are more."

"How many more?"

"Four more I can connect through the photos. Then there are the missings, missing from areas I've been able to track you to through the photos. I need the dates-the dates and locations for the last two years. You keep track."

"Yes. I don't blog about a place until I've left it-I'm careful. But I keep a log of where I was, what date I took what shots. On my computer."

"I need you to send them to me. If you've kept a log further back, I want that, too."

She focused on Xander's hands, hands warm and firm on her shoulders. "I have a log from when I left New York, from when I left six years ago. I have everything."

"I want everything. I'm sorry, Naomi."

"He didn't just stumble onto my site and decide to use my photos. He's following me, either literally or through my blog, or my photos. How far back have you gone?"

"Those two years so far."

"And you think it's longer."

"I'm going to find out."

"He's not following, he's stalking." When her shoulders only went stiffer under his hands, Xander turned her around on the stool. "You'll handle it because you have to. She'll handle it," he said to Mason without taking his eyes off Naomi. "He's been stalking you for at least two years. His preferred victim is blonde because you are. And they're all you. That's what your brother's not saying."

"It's a theory, and I need more information."

Xander flicked a glance at Mason, barely a heartbeat. "You're trying to ease her into it because you're worried she'll break. But that's not the way for you, is it, Naomi?" His gaze met hers, held her. "You're not going to break."

"I'm not going to break." But a part of her was trying desperately to shore up the cracks. "He . . . He takes them, and he keeps them at least for a couple of days so he can rape them, torture them, gratify himself. After he's beaten them and raped them, kept them in the dark, cut them, choked them, kept them bound and gagged, he strangles them."

She drew a shaky breath, then another, steadier before she turned to Mason. "Like our father. Too much like our father now, too much like it to say there are other cruel, sick men who do this. He's killing like Thomas Bowes, and following me, the way I followed our father that night."

"I believe he's studied Thomas Bowes-he may have written to him, visited him, and I'm pulling that line. I believe he's studied you. He's here, and for the first time that I can verify, he's killed twice in the same place."

"Because I'm in the same place."

"Yes. From what I'm putting together, he's evolved. His method, while not exactly the same as Bowes's, has mimicked it."

No coincidence, no excuses, she ordered herself. The facts stood clear and straight. She had to face them.

"Why hasn't he come after me? The others are what you call surrogates; why hasn't he come after me? There have to have been countless opportunities."

"Because then it's over," Xander said, shrugged. "Sorry," he said to Mason. "It's what makes sense."

"And I agree. I still have more to do, more to analyze, but I can tell you I've got enough to have convinced Chief Winston and the coordinator of the BAU to send a team here. This unsub is smart, organized, mission-oriented, and tenacious. But he's also arrogant-and that arrogance, using those particular sites for his dump spots, is going to break this open. We're going to stop him, Naomi. I need the data from you. It's key."

"I'll go up, email you the files." She slid off the stool, went up the back steps without another word.

"She's telling herself she can't have this." Mason lifted his hands to encompass the house, the life. "Not now. What Bowes is, what she tried to leave behind, came here with her."

"Yeah, she's telling herself that. She's wrong."

With a nod, Mason started to get up, sat back again. "You go. The torch passed while I wasn't around. And we both came from him. She needs somebody who doesn't carry that."

"I'll take care of it."

- She sat at her desk, her beautifully restored desk in her beautifully designed studio. A space that, less than an hour before, had made her so happy, so hopeful.

Had she really told herself, really believed, the past was done? Never done, she thought now. Never over. The ghosts never exorcised.

And once again a killer's life twined and twisted with hers.

When she heard footsteps, she opened her computer, began to bring up the files.

"It's going to take me a few minutes," she said, very, very calmly when Xander came in.

"I got that." He wandered, measuring the space, the look and feel of it. "Swank, but not fancy. That's a hard note to hit."

"You should go down. You and Mason should get to that pizza before it gets any colder."

"Nothing wrong with cold pizza."

"There's nothing for you to do here, Xander."

"That's where you're wrong. You need another chair in here. How else is somebody going to hang out and bug you when you're working? Why don't you spit out what's circling around in your gut. I can figure some of it anyway."

"You want me to spit it out? Start with if I hadn't gotten it into my head I could stay here, live here, Donna would still be alive."

"So, straight to the cliche?" He shook his head. "I thought you'd do better. That's not even a challenge. If you'd moved on, how many others before somebody like your brother finally clued in on the pattern? And what are the chances anybody but him would've seen the connection with your photos?"

"I don't know the chances. But obviously the chances of me being connected to a serial killer for the second time are really good."

"Sucks for you."

Shock snagged her breath. "Sucks for me?"

"Yeah, it does. It sucks for you that some lunatic's out there obsessed with you and emulating your fuck of a father. But you're not the reason, you're the excuse. The reason's inside this sick bastard's mind, just like your father's reasons were in his."

"It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter: excuse, reason. It doesn't matter what's in their minds, what drives them to kill. It matters that for the first twelve years of my life I grew up in a house with a monster, and I loved him. It matters that where I spent those years is now best known as Thomas David Bowes's killing field. It matters that what I grew up with followed us to New York until my mother killed herself rather than live with it. It matters that it's followed me, leaving death behind, ever since."

She wouldn't weep. Tears were useless. But fury, full-blown fury, felt righteous. "It matters that I tried to convince myself I could have what the majority of the human race has. A home, friends, people I care about. A damn idiot dog. All of it."

"You have that, all of it."

"It was-is-a fantasy. I got caught up in it, let myself believe it was real, but-"

"So what, you'll pack up, take off, sell this place, dump the dog?"

The fact stood clear, she thought again. "Sometimes people have roots so corrupted, they shouldn't try to plant them."

"That's bullshit, and it's weak. If you want to feel sorry for yourself, I'll give you a pass, but that's weak. You've got better than that, baby."

"You don't know what I've got, baby."

"Hell I don't, and because I do, I know you're not going to let some son of a bitch send you running."

He put the palms of his hands on her desk and leaned toward her. "I know what I've got, and I'm damned if I'll let you run. You've got what you need right here, and you're going to stick."