"Katelynn," Ross said softly.

The captain swore. "I think I need to get ready for some a.s.s-kicking."

Dane shook his head. "It will be my pleasure, Captain." If anyone got to toss that guy out, it would be Dane. But first he asked, "If his theory is s.h.i.t, then why is he back on the case?" Why the h.e.l.l had the FBI bra.s.s sent the guy down to New Orleans?

"Because the guy has connections in the FBI, strings that he no doubt pulled to get down here," Ross answered. "And he's the only profiler who has spent three straight years poring over Valentine's life."

Dane's brows climbed. "Even when he wasn't officially on the case?"

"The guy's like a bulldog. He doesn't give up, and yeah, you need to take that as a warning."

He would. Dane turned away from Ross and hurried into the interrogation room.

The woman didn't even know she was in danger. She walked out of her apartment. Took the elevator down to the parking garage. And never even glanced up from her phone.

Too busy texting.

Too busy to be afraid.

Her mistake.

Most of her neighbors had already cleared out for the day. Too bad for Amy Evans-she was running late.

She thought she was alone.

Her keys slipped from her fingers. Hit the cement floor of the parking garage. She swore and finally stopped texting. She bent down and swiped up her keys.

She was making this too easy. Five steps, just five, and Amy was close enough to touch.

One, two, three, four...

Amy never even had the chance to scream. Her body slumped forward on the ground. Her head slammed into the cement.

Amy's dark hair had fallen over her face. Such lovely, thick hair.

Hair just like Katherine's.

No, she hadn't been given the chance to scream. Not then. But there would be plenty of time for screams later.

When Katherine saw Marcus Wayne enter the interrogation room, she felt her heart stop.

His eyes were the same small, beady brown that she remembered. Judging eyes. Suspicious eyes.

Plenty of others had been suspicious of her before, especially once they learned who she was, but Marcus had been the only one to ever just flat-out say, I think you're a killer, and, sooner or later, I'll prove it.

He didn't buy that she hadn't known the truth about Valentine. He said she fit the profile too well.

She knew just what the guy could do with his profiles. She might not have any fancy degrees, but she'd spent the last three years doing her own research.

You're wrong. I'm not a killer. And I'll prove it.

"h.e.l.lo, Kat," Marcus said as he came into the room and pulled out the chair across from her. "You're looking well."

Kat. She knew he'd used the name deliberately. With him, everything was deliberate. "And you're looking the same, Marcus." Same stuffed shirt. Same narrow view that only he was right.

He cleared his throat. "I'm going to be working with your detectives on this case. I thought we could all begin by going over Valentine's profile."

Was she supposed to believe that she was one of the team?

Katherine glanced up as Dane came into the room, but she couldn't read anything past the veil of his eyes. His partner was still in the room, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed. She had no clue what Mac was thinking. Mac. He'd told her to call him that when he'd entered the interrogation room. He'd seemed friendly.

Now Marcus was trying the friendly routine with her, too.

The atmosphere just made her more tense.

Then Marcus began to talk.

"Michael O'Rourke is highly intelligent, charming, and without any sense of remorse or compa.s.sion," he said flatly. "He's a chameleon. He can blend, mixing perfectly in nearly any situation-and has. He graduated at the top of his college cla.s.s. Did a stint in the military-picked up demolitions training with his unit-and even received a Purple Heart when he was injured while saving two men on his team in Afghanistan."

A hero. A killer.

"He saved men?" Mac asked, his brows wrinkling. "Why the h.e.l.l would he do that if the guy just gets off on killing?"

"Because those men didn't fit his victim type," Marcus answered. "They weren't the ones he was going after." A pause. "But being around that level of violence, I believe, encouraged the darker instincts within Michael."

He came toward me, flashing a wide smile. "Hi, I'm Michael. Michael O'Rourke." His eyes were so green. "And I think I'm in love."

"To truly understand him, we have to look at Michael's origins."

Katherine fought to keep her breathing slow and steady.

"Michael O'Rourke grew up in a single-parent home. His mother was a drug addict who sold her body whenever she needed some cash. She generally forgot about her son, and when she did remember him, she spent her time slapping him around."

That didn't match up with the story Michael had originally told her...

My mother? She died when I was just six. Such a beautiful lady, inside and out. She had the biggest smile...but one night, a man came for her. He attacked her in an alley. She was just going to get groceries for us. He was high on drugs. He killed her quickly, so she didn't suffer-or at least that's what the cops told me.

"When he was twelve, Michael's mother overdosed. He was the one who found her body."

Her funeral was beautiful. So many flowers. Roses were her favorites, too. She loved them just like you do. I like to think she was smiling down from heaven when she saw those roses.

"No father was ever in the picture," Marcus continued. His nasal tone was like nails on a chalkboard. "I doubt his mother even knew his name."

My father took care of me until I was nineteen. Then he pa.s.sed away. A heart attack. But if you ask me, I think his heart stopped the day my mother died. He loved her so much...as much as I love you, Kat.

Her palms flattened on the smooth surface of the table. She'd believed everything Michael had said about his life. Why doubt him? Falling for him had been so easy.

Because he'd been perfect.

"Michael O'Rourke probably began torturing and killing animals when he was a small child."

She remembered how Michael had seen a man kicking a dog one day and rushed over. Stopped the man. Demanded, "How would you like to be kicked?"

He'd never liked to see animals hurt. Her eyes narrowed as she stared down at her hands and saw her memories.

"He is a sociopath. Not able to form any sort of lasting relationship with anyone or anything. He suffered so much abuse as a child that he now believes the only way humans actually express emotion is through abuse. So when he attacks his victims, he's both showing his control, his complete dominance over them, and he's also showing...well, the only emotion that he can."

Her back teeth ground together.

I love you, Kat. I didn't think it would be possible to care about someone the way I do for you. But you're different. You make me want to be better. To be someone else. His warm green eyes had stared into her own. Marry me. Let's start over, together.

"I suspect he originally approached Kat here..."

She flinched at the name. "Don't call me that."

"Is that because Michael did?" Marcus asked.

"You know he did."

"Just as I know he approached you because you fit his victim profile. You were the perfect victim for him. Right hair, right eyes, right age." He paused. "Right past."

Her gaze snapped to his. Don't talk about that. Don't go there. She would share what she knew about Valentine, but her own wounds-the wounds that had come long before she ever met Valentine-those weren't open for the world to poke and prod for their pleasure.

"The women he targeted were all damaged." Marcus's eyes weren't looking away from her. They were trying to look into her. "You could have been his perfect prey, but he didn't kill you. He didn't put you on his table. Didn't slice into your arms twenty-one times and then drive a knife into your chest-"

"That's f.u.c.king enough." Dane had dropped his neutral expression. His gaze was blazing as he jerked Marcus's chair back. Marcus stumbled, nearly falling to the floor.

Katherine realized her chest was heaving. So much for her slow breathing technique. Her heart was pounding too fast.

"To understand Valentine, you have to know why he picked Katherine," Marcus insisted, tilting his head to study her. He was sweating. She could see the gleam of moisture on his temple. "I know why he picked you. You were his mirror. His perfect, broken mirror."

Dane grabbed the guy by the shirt. "The FBI actually sent you? Or did you just bribe someone up there?" He dragged the man toward the door. "Time to kick your a.s.s back to D.C. You don't come into my precinct and start talking to her like that-"

"Because she makes you feel protective?" Marcus jerked free of his grasp. "She made Valentine feel that way too. He should have seen her as prey, but for some reason Kat's good at-"

"How many d.a.m.n times does she have to tell you?" Dane snarled as he opened the door and shoved Marcus outside. "Her name is Katherine. Learn it, a.s.shole." Then he slammed the door in the agent's face.

Katherine exhaled slowly. "Thank you."

Dane turned to face her. Mac hadn't moved. Maybe the guy was too shocked to move.

"I'm not real interested in what Agent Wayne has to say about Valentine," Dane said. "I want to know what you think. You're the one who knows him best."

If only. "I'm the one who never really knew him at all." Her nails-she always kept them short and unpainted-tapped on the tabletop. "But I'll tell you as much as I can." And, maybe this time, things would be different. Maybe Dane or Mac would pick up on some detail that she and the other cops had overlooked.

Maybe this time they would actually catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Marcus Wayne entered the small observation room. The police captain turned toward him, a glower on his face. "Smooth, Agent, real freaking smooth." The captain's jaw locked. "I want your a.s.s out of my precinct."

"The purpose of my going in there wasn't to break Katherine Cole." I know you hate being called Kat. His gaze darted to the two-way mirror looking into the interrogation room. Sorry about that, Katherine.

"Then what was your purpose? To p.i.s.s off Ms. Cole?"

"No, it was to bring out more of the detective's protective instincts." And those instincts had sure come out. "If Katherine is going to be of any help to us on this case, then she will have to trust Detective Black. Katherine isn't a woman who trusts easily." He was rather surprised that she could trust at all, given what had happened to her.

"Always playing your little mind games." The mutter came from behind him. The marshal. Marcus knew the guy was far from being a fan.

Marcus glanced over at him. "She'll talk more freely now. She'll tell Dane as much as possible because she sees me as the bad guy and him as her white knight." He didn't mind playing the bad cop. With his slight build and fresh face, it wasn't a role he got to play often. Pity.

"Maybe she'll just talk," Ross said, voice snapping, "because she wants to catch Valentine. She wants him off the streets just as badly as we do."

Marcus locked his jaw but didn't respond. Ross didn't get it. Katherine Cole was the safest woman in the world. Valentine could have sliced her and killed her a thousand times over. He hadn't.

She was special to the killer.

The trick-the real trick-was finding out why she was special. If she'd just trust the detective enough to let down her guard, then Marcus might finally be able to get inside Katherine's head and figure out how she'd managed to reach the heart of a sociopathic killer. A man who, for all psychological intents, should have no heart at all.

6 .

"I learned a lot about Valentine. After he vanished. I started putting all the puzzle pieces together so I could see the real man he was."

Dane sat across from Katherine. She was pale and perfect, seemingly an ice princess, but he knew the ice was just on the surface. And the ice was cracking.

He could also see the pain in her eyes. Hear it in her voice. The jerk from the bureau had pushed her too much. Stirred memories that had ripped into her.

I should have ripped into him.

When women were hurt in any way, his protective instincts became difficult to control.

"I've studied serial killers." Katherine's confession was hushed.

Dane glanced at Mac and saw that his partner had lifted his brows.

"When you realize you've been sleeping with one, you'll do anything to make sure you never get fooled again."

He had to unclench his fingers from the edge of the table. Sleeping with one. A surge of jealousy caught him by surprise.

"In some ways, I think he was like Bundy," she said. "So charming on the surface. So smooth. He always seemed to know just what to say or do in order to put people at ease."

That must have been how he'd lured in his prey. Back in Boston, he'd killed four women in all. Four women they knew about. Three before he met Katelynn Crenshaw, one after.

Her breath whispered out. "He told me once that I was his chance to be better." She looked down at her hands. "Valentine was a gifted artist. He could paint anything, sculpt anything. He could create so much beauty with his hands, but he seemed to be drawn to death." Her gaze rose once more. "That's why the marks with his knife were so precise. Not because he was a surgeon, which is what the cops in Boston first thought when they discovered the bodies, but because he was an artist."