“Technically speaking.”

“All right. You want psychobabble? I can play this game. I believe it was Freud who said everything we do communicates something about ourselves.”

“You know Freud?”

“Hey, don’t let the good looks fool you, honey. I have a brain in my head. So all right, according to Freud, the tie you pick, the ring you wear, the shirt you buy, all say something about you. Nothing is random, everything you do has intent. Fine, now let’s look at what this guy does. He kidnaps women traveling in pairs. Always young females leaving a bar. Now why does he do that? Seems to me that the terrorist type of killer goes after people of a certain faith-but then will equally target man, woman, or child. The moral killer goes after the abortion doctor for his occupation, not for his sex. And yet then we got our guy again. Eight victims in Georgia, ten if you think he struck here, and always a young, college-aged girl leaving a bar. Now what does that communicate about him?”

“He doesn’t like women,” Kimberly answered softly. “Particularly women who drink.”

“He hates them,” Mac said flatly. “Loose women, fast women, I don’t know how he categorizes them in his mind, but he hates women. I don’t know why. Maybe he doesn’t know why. Maybe he honestly believes this is about the environment. But if our guy was really about saving the world, then we should see some variety in his targets. We don’t. He only goes after women. Period. And in my mind, that makes him just another garden-variety very dangerous whacko.”

“You don’t believe in profiling?”

“Kimberly, we’ve had a profile for four years. Ask that poor girl in the morgue if it’s done a thing to help us yet.”

“Bitter.”

“Realistic,” he countered. “This case isn’t going to be solved in the back room by some guy in a suit. It’s going to be solved out here, roaming these mountains, sweating buckets, and dodging rattlesnakes. Because that’s what Eco-Killer wants. He hates women, but every time he sticks one in a dangerous location, he’s also targeting us. Law enforcement officers, search-and-rescue workers-we’re the ones who have to walk these hills and sweat this terrain. Don’t think he doesn’t know it.”

“Have any search-and-rescue workers been hurt?”

“Hell, yes. In the Tallulah Gorge we had several falls and broken limbs. The cotton field caused two volunteers to succumb to heatstroke. Then we had a wonderful search along the Savannah River, where one guy tangled with a gator, and two people were bitten by cottonmouth snakes.”

“Fatalities?” she asked sharply.

Mac looked back out at the vast, plunging terrain. He murmured, “Well, honey, not yet.”

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

1:44 P . M .

Temperature: 97 degrees

KATHY LEVINE WAS A PETITE, NO-NONSENSE WOMAN with short-cropped red hair and a dash of freckles across her nose. She greeted Mac and Kimberly briskly as they entered the glass-and-beam expanse of Big Meadows Lodge and beckoned them immediately toward a back office.

“Ray said you had a picture of a leaf. Not a real leaf, mind you, but a picture.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Mac dutifully provided the scanned image. Kathy plopped it down on the desk in front of her and snapped on a bright overhead light. It barely made a dent in a room already lit by an entire wall of sunshine.

“It could be a gray birch,” the botanist said at last. “It would be better if you had the real leaf.”

“Are you a dendrologist?” Kimberly asked curiously.

“No, but I know what’s in my park.” The woman snapped off the light and regarded them both frankly. “Are you two familiar with refugia?”

“Refugee what?” Mac said.

“That’s what I thought. Refugia is a term for plants that exist as glacial relics in a climate where they no longer belong. Essentially, millions of years ago, this whole area was ice. But then the ice melted and certain plants got left behind. In most cases, those plants moved high up in the mountains, seeking the cool conditions they need to survive. Balsam fir and red cedar are both examples of refugia found in this park. And so is gray birch.”

“Ray said it was only found in one area.” Mac spoke up intently.

“Yes. Right outside the door. Let me get a map.” The botanist climbed out of her chair and rifled the bookshelf along the wall. Then, she proceeded to unfold the largest map Kimberly had ever seen. It was labeled Geologic Map of Shenandoah County, and it was filled with enough streaks of bright purple, deep fuchsia, and neon orange to hurt a person’s eyes.

“This is the geologic map which includes this section of the park. We are here.” Levine plopped the massive spread of paper on the jumbled surface of the desk, and promptly tapped a lime-green spot near the bottom of the page. “Now, gray birch grows thickest in the swampy plateau across from the Big Meadows camp, but can also be found here and there in this whole one-mile area. So basically, if you’re looking for the only gray birch in Virginia, you’re standing in the middle of it.”

“Wonderful,” Mac murmured. “Now if only we were sure we were looking for gray birch. How populated is this area this time of year?”

“You mean campers? We have thirty or so people signed in at the moment. Generally it would be more, but the heat has chased a lot away. Also we get a fair number of day hikers and the like. Of course, in this weather, we’re probably getting mostly drive-throughs-people coming to the park, but never leaving the air-conditioned comfort of their cars.”

“Do guests have to sign in?”

“No.”

“Do you have park rangers or any kind of monitors working the area?”

“We have enough personnel if trouble should come up, but we don’t go looking for it, if that’s what you mean.”

“So a person could come and go, and you’d never know he’d been here?”

“I would imagine most people come and go, and we never know they were here.”

“Damn.”

“You want to tell me what this is about?” Levine nodded toward Kimberly. “I can already tell she’s armed. You might as well fill in the rest.”

Mac seemed to consider it. He looked at Kimberly, but she didn’t know what to tell him. He might be out of his jurisdiction, but at least he was still a special agent. As of six A.M. this morning she had become no one at all.

“We’re working a case,” Mac told Levine tersely. “We have reason to believe this leaf may tie into the disappearance of a local girl. Find where the leaf came from, and we’ll find her.”

“You’re saying this girl may be somewhere in my park? Lost? In this kind of heat?”

“It’s a possibility.”

Levine crossed her arms over her chest while regarding both of them intently. “You know,” she said at last, “right about now, I think I’d like to see some ID.”

Mac reached into his back pocket and pulled out his credentials. Kimberly just stood there. She had nothing to show, nothing to say. For the first time, the enormity of what she had done struck her. For all of her life, she’d wanted to be one thing. And now?

She turned away from both of them. Through the windows, the bright sunlight burned her eyes. She closed them tightly, trying to focus on the feel of heat on her face. A girl was out there. A girl needed her.

And her mother was still dead and her sister was still dead. And Mac was right after all. Nothing she did would change anything, so what was she really trying to prove? That she could self-destruct as completely as Mandy?

Or that just once, she wanted to get something right. Just once, she wanted to find the girl, save the day. Because anything had to be better than this six-year ache.

“This says Georgia Bureau of Investigation,” Levine was saying to Mac.

“Yes, ma’am.”