"Yeah, the universe doesn't like us to get too complacent."

Samantha sighed. "It was like walking a high wire sometimes, especially in those early years. The only talent I had was… telling fortunes. Sometimes I'd try to change what I saw, and sometimes I felt almost paralyzed, unable to act at all."

"You were very young," Lucas said.

"Like I said, I wasn't young even when I was." She shook her head, adding more briskly, "I headed south, knowing that the weather would be milder if I had to sleep outside. And I usually did. Told fortunes on street corners for a few bucks. Got busted a couple of times. And finally hooked up with Leo and the Carnival After Dark."

"How long were you on the streets?"

"Six, seven months. Long enough to know I wouldn't be able to have any kind of a life that way. As you said, the carnival was a much better option." She looked at him steadily. "And if you're wondering, I don't want your pity. Lots of people have sad stories; at least mine had a relatively happy outcome."

"Sam-"

"I just wanted to remind you that you aren't the only one who knows something about pain and fear. You aren't, Luke. It was a long, long time before I could sleep through the night. A long time before I stopped expecting him to suddenly show up in my life and hurt me again. And a long time before I learned to trust anyone."

"You trusted me," he said.

"I still do." Without waiting for a response, she got up from the bed and began turning the covers back. "The shower's yours. I'm going to bed. Can't seem to get warm."

Lucas wanted to say something, but he didn't know what. He didn't know how to bridge the distance between them, far too aware that he was responsible for it. He knew what Sam wanted from him, or at least he thought he did-her needling had made that plain.

She wanted him to tell her about Bryan.

But that was a wound that was still raw and untouchable, and Lucas shied away even from thinking about it.

Instead, he gathered what he needed from the bag he had brought from his own motel room and headed for the shower, hoping the hot water would help him to think.

He had no doubt that without her needling and pushing, he would not have found Wyatt in time. She had found a way- however painful-to force him to reach beyond his walls, to lash out in anger, and in so doing to open himself to the fear and pain he'd been designed by nature to intercept.

It disturbed Lucas deeply that his own anger seemed a better key to unlocking his abilities than anything else he had discovered in years of concentrated effort. He had to believe, just from what he knew of psychics and psychic ability, that his was not supposed to work that way.

He should have been able to consciously, calmly, tap his abilities, focus them-and to do so long before he was so drained and exhausted the effort very nearly incapacitated him.

He knew that.

He had known that for a long time.

He even knew why he had been unable to do so, though it was not something he allowed himself to consider very often.

As badly as he wanted to find the victims of the crimes he investigated, as badly as he wanted to find those who were lost and in pain and terror, there was a part of him that dreaded and even feared what it cost him.

He felt what they felt.

And their terror, their doomed agony, pulled him into a hell of torment that was a memory he couldn't bear.

The bedroom was very quiet and semidark when Lucas came out of the bathroom. He checked the door again, just to be sure, then slid his weapon under the pillow beside Samantha's and got in that side of the bed. The lamp on his side was on low, and he left it that way.

He lay beside her for a long time, staring at the ceiling. Then he felt her shiver and, without hesitating, turned toward her and pulled her into his arms.

"Still cold," she murmured, unresisting.

He pulled her a bit closer, frowning, because her skin wasn't cold, it was just this side of feverish. And he had the sudden, unsettling realization that the cold place Samantha tapped into to use her abilities, the place a brutal animal had awakened with violence, was as hauntingly dark and tormenting as anything he had ever experienced.

And, for her, inescapable.

Wednesday, October 3

Caitlin Graham honestly didn't know why she was still involved in the investigation of kidnappings and murders. Why she wanted to be here, and why they allowed it. She thought of herself as the only civilian in the bunch, despite Samantha's lack of law-enforcement credentials; the other woman clearly understood the procedures involved, as well as possessing an obvious investigative knack.

"The only thing we have that even remotely resembles a lead," she was saying now, "are those ATV tracks the CSU found up at the mine this morning."

Looking over a printout he'd just received, Lucas said, "Preliminary report is that the vehicle is likely to be a Hummer, just like we've been driving up there."

Wyatt grunted. "We have four in the motor pool. Other than those of us who have to patrol in the mountains around here, they aren't all that common-though more so than they used to be."

"Impressive TV ads," Caitlin said. "And they're on some high-profile TV shows. So now they're sexy."

The sheriff agreed with a rueful nod.

"Still out of reach of most car owners, though," Lucas noted. "And still pretty rare. I'm getting a list covering owners in every state in which there's been a kidnapping, including this one."

"And then?" Wyatt inquired.

"Hoping a name will jump out at one of us," Lucas replied with a sigh.

"Would he be driving with an out-of-state tag?" Jaylene wondered aloud. "Wouldn't it make him look even more conspicuous?"

"At this time of year?" Wyatt shook his head. "Place is full of tourists, especially in October. They come to hike, look at the leaves, camp. Even with all the publicity lately-or maybe because of it-the numbers I'm seeing are up over last year."

"Lost in a crowd of strangers," Samantha murmured.

"My bet," Lucas said, "is that he only drives the Hummer when he has to. When he's moving around here in town, he'll have something a lot more ordinary and inconspicuous."

"Bound to," Wyatt agreed.

"Look," Jaylene said, "he can't be staying at any of the motels in town, right?"

"Unlikely," Lucas said. "He's a loner; he won't be around other people any more than he has to."

"Okay. And so far, he's been leaving his victims in remote areas, mostly up in the mountains. But he knows we've been searching those places, at least the ones on our list of possibles, which is probably why he hid Wyatt away in a mine that wasn't on any of our maps and that no one remembered."

"Big assumption," Wyatt said. "The mine must have been on his list, otherwise he wouldn't have had time to get his guillotine up there."

She nodded, a bit impatiently. "Yeah, but that's not what I'm thinking. He has to be staying somewhere during all this. We've had rangers and cops checking campers and hikers since we got here, obviously with no luck, but he has to know what we're doing."

"He's watching," Samantha said.

Jaylene nodded again. "He's watching. So he won't put himself in a position to be noticed or questioned. And he won't be too far away, not any more often than he has to be. Which means he can't be sitting in a cozy tent off the marked campsites and trails way up in the mountains. He has to be close. Most of the time, he has to be close."

"Pretending to be a member of the media?" Caitlin guessed. "Lost in that crowd of faces?"

Lucas considered, then shook his head. "He's too focused on his game to be able to act a part, and he'd know that. But I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't tried to talk to a journalist at least once in order to get information. Probably after those periods when he'd been occupied by a kidnapping."