“You’re told?”

“I’m new at this.”

Rafe frowned. “You weren’t born with it?”

“Not exactly.” Hollis looked at Isabel, who explained.

“Some people possess latent-inactive-paranormal abilities. For most of those people, the abilities remain unknown and unused their entire lives. They may get hunches, flashes of knowledge they can’t logically explain, but they generally ignore it or dismiss it as coincidence.”

“Until something changes,” Rafe guessed.

“Exactly. Every once in a while, something happens that causes latent psychics either consciously or subconsciously to tap into the previously dormant ability and actually begin using it.”

“What could do that?” Mallory asked warily.

“The most common, and most likely, scenario is that a latent becomes an adept-our term for a functional psychic-due to a physical, emotional, or psychological injury. A head injury is the most common, but almost any severe trauma can do it. Generally speaking, the greater the shock of the awakening, the stronger the abilities tend to be.”

“So Hollis-”

“Both of us. Both of us survived a traumatic event,” Isabel said matter-of-factly. “And became functional psychics because of it.”

9:00 AM

Officer Ginny McBrayer hung up the phone and frowned down at the message pad for a moment, debating. Then she got up and went around the corner to Travis’s desk. “Hey. Is the chief still in that meeting?”

On the phone himself, but obviously on hold judging by his propped-up feet, bored expression, and only semicontact between the receiver and his ear, Travis replied, “Yeah. Not to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency. Or ‘relevant,’ I think he said.”

“This might be.” Ginny handed over the message slip. “What do you think?”

Travis studied the slip, then searched his cluttered desk for a minute, finally producing a clipboard. “Here’s the list we already have going. Women of the right general age reported missing within a fifty-mile radius of Hastings. We’re up to ten in the last three weeks. It was twelve, but two of them came home.”

Ginny looked over the list, then picked up her message slip again and frowned. “Yeah, but the one I just got the call about is local, from that dairy farm just outside town. Her husband really sounded upset.”

“Okay, then tell the chief.” Travis shrugged. “I’m waiting for the clerk at the courthouse to get back to me about all that property Jamie Brower owned. She’s got me on hold. Remind me to tell them they need some new canned music, okay? This shit is giving me a headache.”

“I don’t want to interrupt the chief’s meeting,” Ginny said, ignoring the irrelevant information he’d offered. “What if this is nothing?”

“And what if it’s something? Go knock on the door and report the call. Better for him to be mad at an interruption than to be mad because he wasn’t told something he should have been.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ginny muttered. But she turned away from the other cop’s desk and headed for the conference room.

“Neither of you was born psychic?” Mallory said in surprise. “But-”

Isabel smiled, but said, “Understandably, neither one of us is all that eager to talk about what happened to us, so if you two don’t mind, we won’t. We’re both trained investigators, of course, and I’m a profiler. Plus we have the full backing of the SCU and the resources of Quantico. But anything Hollis and I are able to glean from our abilities or spider sense will have to be considered a bonus, not something we can count on.”

Rafe eyed her. “Spider sense?”

“It’s not as out there as it sounds.” She smiled. “Just our informal term for enhanced normal senses-the traditional five. Something Bishop discovered and has been able to teach most of us is how to concentrate and amplify our sight, hearing, and other senses. Like everything else, it varies from agent to agent in terms of strength, accuracy, and control. Even at its best it isn’t a huge edge, but it has been known to help us out from time to time.”

“I have a question,” Mallory said.

“Only one?” Rafe murmured.

“Shoot,” Isabel invited.

“Why you? I mean, why did this Bishop of yours pick you to come down here? You fit the victim profile to a T, unless there’s been a change I don’t know about.”

“It gets worse,” Rafe told his detective, his voice grim. “Isabel believes our killer has already spotted her. And added her to his list of must-kill blondes.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised.” Mallory lifted a brow at the blond agent. “So why’re you still here? Bait?”

“No,” Rafe said immediately.

Isabel said, “We have some time before it becomes an issue. This bastard gets to know his victims before he kills them, or at least has to feel that he knows them, and he doesn’t know me. In any case, the reason why I’m here is much more compelling than any risk I face as a possible target.”

“And that reason is?”

“As I told Rafe yesterday, patterns and connections are everywhere, if we only know how to look for them.” Isabel spoke slowly. “I have a connection with this killer. He killed a friend of mine ten years ago, and five years ago I was involved in the investigation in Alabama of the second series of murders.”

Mallory was frowning, intent. “Are you saying you know him? But if you know him, doesn’t that mean he knows you? Knows you the way he has to know his victims? That thing that’s rapidly becoming an issue?”

“No. I wasn’t in law enforcement when my friend was killed, I was just another shocked and grieving part of her life-and her death. And I was on the fringes of the official investigation in Alabama; by the time I was officially involved, he’d already murdered his sixth victim and moved on. So it’s at least as likely as not that he won’t even know I was involved in the previous investigations.”

“But you’re on his hit list.”

“On it, but I’m not next in line. I’m not local, so it won’t be easy for him to find information about me, especially since I don’t plan to become too chatty with anyone outside our investigation.”

“What about inside?” Mallory asked. “We’ve had at least the suspicion that the perp could be a cop. Has that been ruled out?”

“Unfortunately, no. Our feeling is that we’re not dealing with a cop, but there are some elements of the M.O. that make it at least possible.”

“For instance?” Rafe was frowning slightly. “We haven’t seen the updated profile,” he reminded her.

“I have copies here for both of you,” Isabel replied. “Not a lot has changed from the first profile as far as the description of our unknown subject is concerned. We have revised his probable age range upward a bit, given the time frame of at least ten years as an active killer. So, he’s a white male, thirty to forty-five years old, above-average intelligence. He has a steady job and possibly a family or significant other, and he copes well with day-to-day life. In other words, this is not a man who’s obviously stressed or appears in any way at odds with himself.

“Blondes are only his latest targets; in the earlier murders, he killed first redheads in Florida ten years ago, and then, five years ago, brunettes in Alabama. Which, by the way, is another reason he wouldn’t have noticed me then even if he’d seen me; he’s always very focused on his targets and potential targets, and I had the wrong hair color for him both times before.”

“What about the elements that could indicate he’s a cop?” Rafe asked.

“The central question of this investigation-and the two before this one-is how he’s been able to persuade these women to calmly and quietly accompany him to lonely spots. These are highly intelligent, very savvy women, in several cases trained in self-defense. None of them was stupid. So how did he get them to go with him?”