Dramatic, but hardly likely.

Lucas circled the tank slowly, studying it, trying to get a feel for the man who had built it.

They'd had no luck in finding where the glass and steel had been purchased or when, but it was clear the painstaking work had taken time and concentration. There was no way this had been constructed after Lindsay was taken. In fact, experts consulted offered their opinion that the tank could have required a week or more to build, depending on the skill of the builder.

And then there was the careful piping that had connected this tank to the old mine's water supply, an old reservoir replenished by rainwater in the years since the mine had closed. The simple but lethally efficient clock timer that had opened the valve to flood the tank at the appointed time.

Lucas had never seen anything like it. Never even heard of anything like it.

"Almost like those campy old superhero TV shows, isn't it?"

He turned quickly, disturbed that she had managed to approach without his knowledge.

Stepping into the room, Samantha said, "Glen Champion let me in, and Jaylene told me you were down here. The rest of them studiously avoided me."

"You know cops," he said.

"Yeah. They can't logically blame me-not yet anyway-but they don't like me."

"What do you mean, not yet?"

"Come on, Luke. I don't have to be told that Metcalf is moving heaven and earth to try to find some connection between these kidnappings and the carnival."

"Will he find one?"

Instead of answering that, Samantha turned her gaze to the tank and moved closer. "Weird, isn't it? And a lot like those old TV shows. Remember? The colorful villain would capture our heroes and tie them to some absurd Rube Goldberg contraption designed to kill them-but not until next week's episode. I always wondered why, once he got his hands on them, he didn't just shoot them."

She looked at Lucas steadily. "Why didn't he just shoot them?"

He glanced at the tank briefly. "There was a timer. If we had gotten there soon enough…"

Again, Samantha asked, "Why didn't he just shoot them?"

"Because it's part of the goddamned game. If I'm fast enough, nobody dies. Is that what you want to hear?"

Samantha didn 't back down in the face of his ferocity. She didn 't even flinch. In the same level, calm voice, she said, "But why is it part of the game? Don't you see? He's deflecting the responsibility, Luke. Certainly with this, with Lindsay. Maybe with all of them, it's not his fault because he didn't kill them, not really, not with his own hands. It's the fault of the police, the investigators, because if they'd done their jobs, no one would have died."

"You're making a giant assumption just because we found one:imer."

"That's not why I'm making it. It's what I heard him begin to tell Lindsay. That he doesn't kill. He never kills, not with his own lands, not directly. Partly to deflect responsibility. But for another reason too. Kill somebody quickly and all you have is a dead body. There's little suspense, little chance for fear to build until it becomes terror. But show somebody how you mean to kill them a few minutes or a few hours from that moment, and then walk away…"

Lucas was silent, frowning.

"The other victim from Golden, Mitchell Callahan. He was decapitated, wasn't he? I heard there was something strange about hat, something the ME was surprised by."

Slowly, Lucas said, "He appeared to have been killed by a very sharp blade, in a single stroke. Maybe by a machete or sword."

"Or maybe," Samantha offered, "by a guillotine?"

Lucas's first reaction was disbelief, followed immediately by anger that he hadn't seen it before now. "A guillotine."

"It's obvious the kidnapper knows how to build. Easy enough to build a guillotine. Set on a timer, the way this… machine was. With the victim-with Callahan probably fastened in, looking up. Seeing the blade hanging over him. Knowing it would drop. Maybe he could even hear the timer ticking away the minutes he had left."

"Fear," Lucas said. "Bait for me."

"Maybe. Maybe he's creating the fear to lure you. And maybe… to punish you."

Lucas wasn't very surprised, but said, "So you've reached that conclusion too, huh? That I know this bastard, crossed paths with him somewhere?"

"It makes sense. To go to all this trouble, build this sort of… of murder machine isn't something a man would do just to win a game. Even a crazy man. Unless the game was personal. It has to be personal, and that makes it more likely than ever that he's done his homework on you. He must know how you're able to find abduction victims, that you feel what they feel. Right up until the moment of death, you suffer along with them."

After a moment, Lucas shook his head. "In the last year and a half, we've arrived on the scene early enough for me to feel anything at all in less than half the cases. If he wants me to suffer-"

"He's doing a damned good job. You might not feel the fear and pain of the victim when you get there too late, but in that case you probably suffer even more. And anyone who's ever worked with you or watched you work knows it."

Lucas fought a sudden impulse to reach out to her, saying only, "Suffer is a relative term."

"Not with you it isn't." Her smile was small and fleeting.

"Why did you come here today, Sam?" he asked, changing the subject. Or not.

"I left something with Jay," she replied readily. "A pendant Caitlin Graham found on Lindsay's nightstand. We both believe it was put there the day she was taken."

"Why do you believe that?"

Samantha pulled her right hand from the pocket of her jacket ind held it toward him, palm out. "I'm on a roll."

The room where he worked was small and, he liked to think, cozy. The place was remote enough that nobody bothered him, and since no neighbors were close by, his comings and goings were pretty much his own business.

Which is how he liked it.

He bent forward over the table, moving carefully. He wore gloves as he cut words and letters from the Golden local newspaper, from the inside pages no human hand would have touched. A fresh sheet of white paper lay nearby, and glue.

He had to chuckle. It was hokey, of course, as well as completely unnecessary to use newsprint. But the effect, he knew, vould be much greater than an ordinary computer-generated, ink-jet-printed note could command.

Besides, it was amusing. To think of their reaction. To picture Luke's face.

Time to up the ante.

He wondered if the agent had caught up yet. Maybe. Maybe he'd figured out at least part of it. Maybe he was beginning to understand the game.

In any case, the clock was moving faster now. There was no onger time for the leisurely trip up and down the East and Southeast, no longer time to allow a lull between the moves of the game.

It was a risk he had taken, confining the end of the game to one place, a small town. There were drawbacks. But advantages as well, and he felt those outweighed the drawbacks.

It was almost over now.

Almost.

Just a few more moves.

He wondered, vaguely, what he'd do when this was over. But it was a fleeting question quickly pushed aside, and he bent once more over his work.

Just a few more moves…

"None of that makes any sense," Lucas said finally.

"You're the profiler," Samantha responded.

"Do you expect me to profile a vision?"

"Why not? If a forensic psychologist can develop a psychological autopsy on a dead person, then why can't you deconstruct a vision?"

Jaylene, sitting at one end of the conference table and eyeing them as they sat across from each other, intervened to say mildly, "Off the top of my head, sounds like the vision was about fear."

"Felt like it was too," Samantha said. She sipped her tea and grimaced, murmuring, "I'm going to be up all night."