Ever since he’d spoken with Sam Dalton on the phone yesterday morning, Alec had struggled to keep the woman off his mind. Not too hard during the day, when the investigation had been first and foremost.

Nighttime was a different story.

Sleep had proved difficult, and he’d found himself replaying their conversation, wishing he’d been less belligerent. It bothered him that she’d formed an opinion of him as some kind of overbearing he-man because he’d instinctively rebelled against the idea of her being ogled by a sleaze like Flynt. Bothered him so much he barely slept, shutting his eyes only at around four a.m., which caused him to oversleep Thursday.

Fortunately, he lived in a condo in northern Virginia and had commuted down to Quantico when he was with the BAU, so he had been well positioned for the transfer into the city. The drive was shorter in mileage now. Still, the traffic lengthened it to twice what it should be, and there was no way he was going to be on time.

It was a typical morning, roads choked with cars whose bumpers all but kissed. The bridges groaned under the weight of stopped vehicles. Idle drivers familiar with the city’s history had uncomfortable flashbacks of the Air Florida plane hitting the one at Fourteenth Street on a cold day like this. Thick clouds of steam rose from the grates above the Metro, and every few minutes a stream of humanity emerged from the top of the stairs at each station, surging out into the workday. Quite a change from the warm, Southern city where he’d grown up and had been expected to stay.

Frankly, even with the scars from the bullets, he wouldn’t change a thing. The idea of showing up every morning for the past ten years at the firm his grandfather had started and his father now ran made him queasy. Handling divorces for socialites who lunched with his mother wasn’t his idea of a good job. Another reason to be grateful to Wyatt Blackstone.

Arriving at the Black CATs’ suite, he entered his own dingy office and flipped on the light. It flickered overhead, providing just enough weak illumination to showcase the cracks in the floor, the flecks of mildew on the walls, and the water stain on the ceiling.

And yet Alec found himself smiling. It wasn’t the slick, glossy office he’d had at the BAU. But it also came without the formality, weight, and competitiveness of that division. He’d been with Blackstone’s CAT for only a few days, yet he’d already noted the intense loyalty of the people who worked for the man and the cohesive-ness of the unit.

As soon as he set his leather briefcase on the battered desk he’d been assigned, his new partner entered the office. “You’re late. I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back.”

“Was there any doubt?”

“There was some question about whether you’d show up at all on Tuesday, after you got a taste of what you were in for on your first day. It’s lightened up every day since.” She glanced at the clock. “But when we hit eight ten without seeing your pretty face, I had to wonder.”

Jackie’s curiosity had been restrained for most of the week. Obviously her restraint had run out. “Why wouldn’t I come back?”

“Kind of slumming, aren’t you? I mean, you being a BAU hotshot and all.”

“If you know anything about me, you know I wore out my welcome with the BAU.”

“Yeah, got your ass shot last summer, right when we needed your help nailing that psycho Reaper.”

Alec frowned, not liking the reminder. Not merely about the shooting-hell, the scars and occasional twinge of pain wouldn’t let him forget it. But he didn’t like to think he might have been in any way responsible for delaying the capture of the murderer, Seth Covey, who’d killed several innocent victims for the viewing pleasure of a bunch of sickos on an Internet site called Satan’s Playground.

As if seeing the self-recrimination he couldn’t hide, Jackie grudgingly admitted, “Worked out okay, though. Taggert and the local sheriff were able to save the last victim; no others were killed between when you got shot and Covey offed himself.”

Funny, being consoled by the hard-ass FBI agent, who wore her attitude on her face. Then again, she’d mentioned having a couple of kids. Apparently that maternal instinct extended to her colleagues. If it existed. Which, considering his own mother, who put the frigid in the term ice queen, he couldn’t confirm or deny.

“I was poking around online as soon as I got in, checking into some stuff. I found something you ought to see.”

“Oh?”

Jackie handed him a sheet of paper, a screen shot from an Internet page. Glancing at it, he recognized the name of the site immediately. He flinched, wondering if she somehow knew he’d spent the past two nights thinking about Samantha Dalton.

“I wanted to go back and read the post she mentioned to us the other day, about responding to online classified listings. But this new one popped up right away. It’s her latest piece, went live last night. I think we touched a nerve with our online vigilante.”

Alec scanned the headline and the opening of what looked like a blog post. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me she didn’t reveal anything important.”

“Nothing about the case, or us going to see her. It’s a generic rant expounding on the physical dangers of using the Internet, that you risk not only your identity but actually your life. A plea to people to wise up and see the craziness of interacting with someone they met online.”

He nodded, glad he hadn’t misread Mrs. Dalton completely. She hadn’t looked like the type who would go back on her word, but she’d flat out stated she was a journalist at heart.

“Go ahead and read it for yourself,” Jackie said.

Leaning on the edge of his desk, he did. As his new partner claimed, it was pretty general. But there was an unmistakable undertone, a righteous anger underscoring her words. Maybe because he’d read her book, and had met her, he was able to filter what she said through an internal voice that sounded a lot like Sam Dalton’s.

And what he heard told a story.

He’d known she was wounded by the news of Ryan Smith’s death. This, however, went deeper. She was angry. Personally angry. Her emotion shone through every line, and he suddenly wondered whether there was more to that anger than her tenuous connection to a murder victim.

What had happened in her life to make her choose to do what she did? Her book had come out almost a year ago, but, according to her bio, she had been running her site for three. Without compensation, he suspected, since she described herself as a former journalist who had decided to begin her own grassroots campaign.

The journalism part he’d confirmed. Last night’s quick Google search had turned up her byline, under a hyphenated name, on some articles four or five years back. It had also turned up in a few society articles, but he hadn’t read them. That felt too personal for professional research.

But no Internet search was going to tell him why she’d quit her job. Why she’d started writing a free blog when she could never have anticipated it going viral and landing her a book deal and a spot on the best-seller list.

So what had set her off? Call it curiosity, or the profiler’s need to understand what made people tick, but he found himself wanting to know why she stayed in her tiny apartment living on Diet Coke and candy bars. Why she hid behind that Mrs. when she’d later mentioned having an ex. Why she worked in her pajamas, refused to answer her door, and interacted with the living mainly via cyber communication. Why she’d made it her mission to save people from their own mistakes.

“Now,” Jackie said, seeing he had finished reading, “take a look at this.”

He hadn’t even realized she’d been holding another sheet of paper.

“These are comments posted last night after her blog went up.”