“Excuse me, sir?” The receptionist knocked on a partially closed door. “Special Agent Lambert is here.”

Alec entered, realizing Blackstone’s entire team was present, which explained the empty offices he’d passed. Judging by the frowns on their faces, the meeting was an intense one.

Lucky for them, he’d provided a distraction. Which wasn’t so lucky for him. Because as soon as the receptionist nodded and bowed out, every voice silenced, every head turned, and the six people sitting around the table focused their attention solely on Alec.

He maintained his stiff, aloof stance, offering a brief nod to one agent he recognized from the publicity on last summer’s Reaper case. Then he focused on the team leader, who was rounding the table, his hand extended. “Glad to see you, Lambert. Your timing is appropriate, given the topic of this morning’s briefing,” the man said, his voice smooth and solid.

That smoothness had impressed Alec during his interview. Blackstone seemed very calm, even tempered, and eminently professional.

Alec shook the extended hand. “This morning’s briefing?”

“We’ll get to that. First, introductions.”

Gesturing toward the conference table, which dominated the small room, he pointed to each team member, introducing them in rapid succession. Alec put the names together with the faces as Blackstone ran down their backgrounds.

“Dean Taggert,” Blackstone said, gesturing toward the agent Alec had recognized as the one who’d helped bring down the Reaper. He remembered the man’s history-a hard-nosed former street cop, he’d recently been in ViCAP working the most violent of crimes. Had a temper. Tough and intuitive.

“Brandon Cole.”

A punked-out blond who would never have gotten away with the hairstyle in any other bureau office. Young and good-looking, he should have been wearing a neon sign over his head proclaiming, I’M A REBEL WITH A BRAIN AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT. Alec wasn’t surprised to hear he’d been a hacker as a teenager, which probably hadn’t been more than a half dozen years ago.

“Lily Fletcher.”

A pale-haired, fair-skinned programmer who’d been lured over from cyber crimes. He’d heard of her, too. Something about a tragedy in her family, though he couldn’t remember the details. She was probably in her late twenties, and appeared quiet, serene. He’d lay money she didn’t have field experience, but the intensity in her eyes said she was devoted.

“Kyle Mulrooney.”

A stout, middle-aged bureau man all the way. From the side-parted, slicked-down hair to the loose-fitting suit and the too-narrow tie, this guy had probably been on the job for a few decades. He was old-school and probably as tough as a week-old steak.

“Jackie Stokes.”

Also from cyber crimes. The attractive African-American looked tougher, more street-smart than the blonde. Probably in her early forties, maybe ten years his senior, she’d been with the bureau for fifteen years. She’d also been one of the first people Blackstone had brought in. The man apparently wanted agents who were experienced but open to new things.

Like him.

He would bet Jackie Stokes hadn’t landed on the team because it was Blackstone or the unemployment line, however.

“Please take a seat, Alec. We were just getting started.” Blackstone returned to his position at the head of the table and tapped on the keys of a laptop. Behind him, on a portable screen, two yearbook-type pictures appeared.

“Those are the boys?” Lily Fletcher asked, shaking her head slightly, her mouth pulled down at the corners. The blonde wore her emotions on her face. Not a good trait to have when working violent crimes.

“Yes,” Blackstone replied.

Like everyone else, Alec stared at the bright, smiling faces of the all-American teenagers enlarged on the screen before him. Their ordinary appearances gave not the slightest indication of whether they were victims or suspects. Knowing from experience they could be either, Alec waited for a hint.

“Poor kids,” Fletcher murmured.

Victims. Though of what, he did not yet know.

Blackstone swiveled in his chair to stare up at the screen with the rest of them. “Jason Todd, age seventeen. Ryan Smith, sixteen, both from Wilmington, Delaware.”

The picture changed, a collage of images appearing. Mostly joint photos of the two boys, side by side, mugging for the camera. In a few, the bigger boy, blond-haired Jason Todd, had his skinny friend in a mock choke hold and was noogeying him on the head.

Alec began analyzing the details, seeing a picture of the boys’ relationship. Jason was undoubtedly the ring-leader, Ryan the follower. Did the loyal friend follow his buddy into danger this time?

“High school juniors, good students, lacrosse players, best friends from childhood.” Blackstone ticked off the details in that smooth, calm manner, betraying no emotion. “They disappeared nine days ago.”

Knowing better than to ask Blackstone to back the meeting up and go over familiar ground just for him, since he’d always been annoyed by latecomers himself, Alec figured he’d do what he always did and leap into the action. It was time to dive into the deep end rather than safely tread water on the sidelines.

He’d been treading on the sidelines for months, trying to recapture his health, his job, his life, maybe even his sanity. Play it safe, go slowly, be careful-they were words of advice he’d heard from everyone, including his doctor, his bureau-ordered therapist, and his friends. But he’d realized something: The longer he played it safe, the lower his self-confidence went. For someone used to accomplishing anything he set out to do, self-doubt was simply unacceptable. Period.

Clearing his throat, he asked the obvious. “Kidnapping?”

It was a reasonable assumption. The FBI would have been brought in by the locals. Blackstone’s team could have been made a part of the investigation because the ransom demand had come in electronically. Of course, Blackstone’s involvement probably meant the boys were already dead. Damn shame.

Blackstone shook his head. Then he tapped his keyboard again, not elaborating. The man apparently thought Alec knew enough to keep up. Meaning the team hadn’t heard much more than the basics-like that the two kids pictured on the screen were dead.

The next set of images confirmed it.

“Jesus,” Taggert muttered.

Everyone at the table stared, taking in the awful visual.

The two boys had been turned into a single crystallized statue. Their bodies were upright, back-to-back, one sitting, tied or taped to a chair, the other on his knees. They appeared to be naked, their skin a uniform bluish white from their foreheads to their feet. Judging by the grainy outdoor backdrop-a slushy shoreline dotted with spiky trees and dead brush-the victims had been pulled out of a lake. A pretty fucking cold one.

And judging by the openmouthed expressions of horror frozen on their faces, they’d been thrown into it alive.

Blackstone confirmed as much, his tone matter-of-fact. “I don’t have copies of the reports yet, but the coroner says drowning is the cause of death.”

Exposure had obviously come in a close second. Alec honestly couldn’t decide which was worse.

“A farmer spotted the submerged car in a pond on his property two days ago, during a warm spell that melted off some of the ice. The bodies were pulled up yesterday.”

“Were they held elsewhere, then brought to the lake to be killed?” asked Stokes. The frown on her brow and the tightness of her lips indicated she wasn’t quite as dispassionate about what they were seeing as her boss.

“Judging by the evidence gathered so far, we believe the boys were killed the night they disappeared. We know they were lured to this particular spot. I think it’s safe to assume they were not brought here by someone else but arrived of their own volition.”