Samantha sank down on the edge of the bed and murmured, "Shit."

The anchorwoman, with only the faintest note of disbelief in her voice, said, "Kidnapping, murder, and mysticism in Golden; we'll look forward to further reports, Tom."

Lucas used the remote to turn off the TV and then dropped it onto the bed. He walked over to the window and pulled the curtains slightly to one side, gazing out.

Samantha knew a delaying tactic when she saw one, and wondered if he was actually too angry to speak. Part of her wanted to say something that might defuse the situation, but she knew she couldn't do that. Not now.

Deliberately offhand, she said, "I just can't get the hang of talking to reporters, can I?"

"Is that all you have to say?" His voice was very quiet.

She wanted to tell him the truth, that she had gambled her little press conference would only make the local papers and that it had been designed as much to anger him as anything else, another of her tactics intended to push through his walls.

But she was just too tired to get into all that, so she merely said, "Well… I can say I didn't expect a TV reporter to quote me on the eleven o'clock news, naive as that sounds. There wasn't a TV camera there, so… I can even say I made a mistake talking to the press at all. But what difference would any of it make, Luke? I became part of the story, and they were not going to let me pass unnoticed."

"Just like before." His words dropped into the quiet room like icicles.

"So it's my fault, what happened before? It's my fault that a reporter lied and claimed I knew who had abducted that child, that I'd seen it in a vision, and the kidnapper panicked and killed her?"

"I never said that."

"You never had to. Oh, you blamed yourself for not finding her quickly enough, but we both know if I hadn't been involved, that reporter would never have made his claim, would never even have speculated there was anything paranormal in the investigation. And maybe, just maybe, that little girl would have lived long enough for you to find her alive."

Samantha had known that in pushing and prodding Luke she was likely to open her old wounds as well as his, but she hadn't expected the strength of the pain.

Lucas turned but remained at the window. His face was hard, expressionless. "It wasn't your fault," he said.

"Once more with feeling."

"What do you want from me, Sam? I never believed it was your fault. What I did believe, what I came to understand, was that Bishop was right about the issue of credibility. Because any unscrupulous reporter would find it a lot easier and a lot safer to fabricate something as coming from the mouth of a carnival mystic than from a federal agent."

"I won't apologize for who and what I am."

"Have I asked you to?"

"Sometimes it feels that way."

He shook his head. "Even though you haven't told me everything, I know enough to understand that you didn't have many choices fifteen years ago. Life in a carnival over life on the streets? No question you made the better choice."

Samantha waited for a moment, then said, "You aren't going to ask, are you?"

"Ask what?"

"Ask what happened to leave me, at the age of fifteen, with just those two choices." She kept her voice steady.

He hesitated visibly, then shook his head once. "This isn't the time to get into-"

"Like I said, we're running out of time. I honestly don't expect much more, not for us. You aren't in my future, remember? And if all we have is now, then I'd just as soon get all the skeletons out of their closets where we can both see them. Just in case we ever do meet again. Or just in case we never meet again."

"Sam, you don't have to do this."

"You don't want me to do this," she said, knowing only as she spoke that it was the literal truth. "Because it'll make it harder for you to walk away if I do."

He frowned slightly but didn't protest that statement.

She turned a bit on the bed in order to face him more fully and clasped her cold hands together in her lap. "Have a seat. This may take awhile."

Lucas came away from the window and did sit down on the other side of the bed, but said, "It's late. You're tired, I'm tired, and we have another long day tomorrow. We have a killer to hunt down, Sam."

"I know. Remember what I said that first day? You can't beat him without me."

"Because you can piss me off?" he asked.

She drew a breath, too tense to be able to see any humor now. "Because I make you listen to things you don't want to hear. You refuse to let yourself feel pain or fear until you have absolutely no other choice. So I'm not giving you a choice."

"Sam-"

Ignoring the beginning of protest, she said steadily, "I was six when I became psychic. It happened the first time he threw me against a wall."

Jaylene watched the same news report and grimaced as she turned off the TV in her room. She wasn't surprised when her cell phone rang a summons just minutes later.

She checked the caller I.D., then answered with, "You saw the news report, huh?"

"Yes," Bishop said.

"Uh-huh. And just how long have you been close by?"

"Long enough."

Jaylene sighed. "I had a hunch there was more going on than you were willing to say. I mean, I know you sometimes send in a watchdog or two without alerting the primary agents, even someone working undercover, but you don't often turn up personally when another team member is leading an investigation."

"This killer has more than a dozen notches on his belt, Jay, and he's shown no signs of even slowing down. Or of conveniently wanting to be caught. He has to be stopped, and here."

"No argument. But why the cloak and dagger? Why not just tell us you're involved?"

"Because the killer's focus is on Luke-and I'm too recognizable to the media."

Jaylene knew that the latter, at least, was quite true; he had a memorable face and presence, did Bishop, and it was only very rarely possible for him to work undercover.

"You think if you showed up publicly, the killer would shift his focus?"

"No. I think he'd leave Golden and try to take his game elsewhere. He knows about us, Jay. About the SCU. And if any other team members showed up publicly, he'd very likely come to the conclusion that we had a decided edge in his game. A psychic edge."

Thoughtful, Jaylene said, "And yet he lured Sam here. Think he doesn't believe she's genuine?"

"My guess is exactly that. Her involvement in the investigation three years ago was more or less a public fiasco, at least from the media's reporting of it; anyone reading those reports would probably decide she was a phony."

"So he wanted her here as a… distraction… for Luke?"

"Why not? Even if that angle didn 't work, chances were good the media would grab on to Samantha as a good story and at the very least add to the tension. Among the investigators and the townspeople."

"Making it even harder for Luke to concentrate." Jaylene frowned. "Yeah, but if this guy really is matching wits with Luke, why work so hard to turn the game to his own advantage? I mean, why not a level playing field?"

Bishop said, "A nicely sane, competitive mind would want that, yes. But a sociopath? He just wants to win, and never mind fair play. He wants to prove, in his own mind, that he's better than Luke. Smarter, stronger. Manipulating people and events is just another way he's doing that."

"So we were being naive in even trying to figure out his rules."

"I'd call it an exercise in futility."

"Guess you're right. Sam said something about broken minds not working the way we'd expect them to."

"She's right about that. The only thing we can know for sure," Bishop said, "is that he has a personal grudge against Luke."

"I assume you're checking on that?"

"We've already gone back through his cases in the last five years, and nothing looks promising in the way of a lead. Harder to find out about his cases before he joined up, but we're working on that." Bishop paused, then added, "I don't know if Luke could remember anything helpful, but it wouldn't hurt to steer him in that direction."