Surprise on her face, she turned around to where an older man stood, looking determined. She frowned at him. "Yes, I will, Lucas."

The man named Lucas shook his head stubbornly. "You heard what the doctor said. We can't see her till she's stable. You might as well get some rest so you'll be strong tomorrow."

"He makes sense, Jenna," Steven said quietly.

Jenna sighed. "His logic is solid, this once. I'll wait for you here, Steven."

She's as beautiful up close as she was through binoculars, Neil thought. As beautiful as she'd been in his dreams. And now, having seen her up close, having heard the smoothness of her voice, he knew he'd never get Jenna Marshall out of his mind.

"So who is she?" Neil demanded without preamble as he and Thatcher pulled out of the parking garage ten minutes later. Thatcher had been wearing a self-satisfied smile since Jenna had promised to wait for him and Neil wanted to wipe it from Thatcher's face with a ferocity that shocked him.

Thatcher glanced over at him, his smile becoming a hard frown. "She's my son's teacher." Thatcher was no idiot, Neil mused. He knew another man on the hunt.

"Just your son's teacher?"

Thatcher clenched his teeth. "And my…"

If Thatcher didn't know, Neil figured Jenna Marshall was not his woman after all. "Friend, girlfriend, lover, betrothed?" he asked sardonically.

A muscle twitched in Thatcher's jaw. "Yes to one and two, not yet to three and four."

"I see."

"Make sure you do," Steven said with false mildness. It must be the way Southern men posture, Neil thought and was not impressed.

They were quiet for several miles until Thatcher said harshly, "That accident was no accident."

Neil turned in his seat, giving Thatcher his full attention. "What do you mean?"

"Jenna flunked one of the football players last week, suspending him from the team. The ballplayer and his friends have been making her life a living hell for the last week, slashing her tires, vandalizing her classroom. That call earlier was from the Raleigh PD. Her brakes were cut."

A new fury burned inside him. "Then Jenna was the target and her friend was just in the wrong place, wrong time."

"Yeah." Thatcher's voice shook when he said the word. "I'll tell her when I pick her up later. Oh, and three guesses as to who the football player is."

Neil shot upright in the seat. "No fucking way."

"Yes fucking way. Our own Rudy Lutz."

His heart began to race. Close. They were close. "Can you prove he's done the vandalism?"

"None of it so far," Thatcher said tightly. "We could bring him in for questioning, but we don't have enough to hold him. Certainly not enough to arrest him at this point. His father's fancy lawyers would have anything we gathered tossed out of court."

"But if we could arrest him-"

"We could get our own DNA sample to compare to the hair we found at the clearing." Thatcher nodded. "Yeah, I thought of that already."

"So what next?" Neil asked, practically vibrating, charged up and ready to pounce.

"See if we can't more closely link Rudy to the trouble at the school or Jenna's car tonight. Stay back for now, Davies. Let's let the locals do their job and see where we come out."

Neil bit his cheek. "I'll stay back for now." From Parker, he thought, but not from Jenna.

Thursday, October 6, 11:30 P.M.

"What do you know that you're not telling me?" Jenna asked when they'd stopped in front of her apartment. "You're too quiet. Too something. I don't know. Tell me what you know."

Steven braced himself. "Your brakes were cut, Jenna. Casey's accident was no accident."

Her face drained of all color leaving her white and trembling. "No," she whispered. "They wouldn't." He said nothing, but took her hand and let her squeeze the life out of his. She leaned back, her eyes shut, her lips a strange fluorescent purple in the glare of the parking lot lights. "I thought it, in the waiting room, but didn't want to believe it was true," she said, her voice harsh. "But it is." She clenched her teeth. "Steven, I need to run an errand. Will you drive me?"

"Where?" Steven asked warily.

"Just drive, please. I'll tell you where."

Thursday, October 6, 11:50 P.M.

After twenty minutes Steven stopped, looking up at their destination in a combination of disbelief and a strange feeling of karma. "This isn't a good idea, Jenna."

Her lips were set in mutinous determination. "You don't have to go in. I, however, do."

He guessed she did. He watched for a moment as she got out of the Volvo and marched up to the front door of the house, the whiteness of her karate gi making her look like she glowed in the dark. He caught up with her as she rang the doorbell.

Nobody answered. The house was dark.

"I think they're all asleep," he said mildly.

"Then let them wake up" she gritted and leaned into the doorbell, creating one continuous chime they could hear through the expensive stained-glass door.

Finally a light came on. The door opened revealing a tired-looking woman in a flannel nightgown. A god-awful ugly flannel nightgown. "What is this about?" she asked imperiously.

Jenna pushed the door open and stalked in, leaving the woman agape. "Mrs. Lutz, I'm Dr. Marshall and I want to talk to you and your husband. You might as well cooperate, unless you want to call the police. Then we'll have a nice conversation about what a saintly son you have."

Mrs. Lutz paled. "Get out."

Jenna stood her ground, nose to nose with Mrs. Lutz. "I will not. I will talk to you and your husband. Now."

"Nora, what's going on?"

Steven looked up to see Mr. Lutz coming down the stairs, tucking his shirt into his slacks. Jenna waited until he got to the base of the stairs before speaking.

"I have had enough of your terror tactics," she said coldly and Lutz had the nerve to look bored. Big mistake, Steven thought.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Miss Marshall."

Jenna advanced until she was toe to toe with the hulking man and Steven poised himself to drag her away before it became physically confrontational. "It's Dr. Marshall, you sniveling little man," she said and Steven bit back a grin.

"Nora, call the police," Lutz said calmly.

"Go ahead, call the police," Jenna returned, now as calm as Lutz. On the surface only, Steven knew. "Call Al Pullman of the Investigative Division. I'm sure he'd like to talk with you."

Lutz scowled. "Get out. Miss Marshall."

"I will," she said evenly, "but not until I've said what I came to say. You think you're clever. You think I'll give your son a grade he did not earn. But you're wrong. Not only will I ensure your son never graduates from my school, I will not rest until he's behind bars for what he's done."

Steven watched Lutz but didn't see a single flicker of fear. Either Davies was wrong and Rudy was not the infamous William Parker or Lutz was good. Steven preferred to believe the sonofabitch was good. Really good. But ultimately not good enough.

Lutz said nothing and Jenna shook her head in disbelief. "A few spray-painted epithets I can take. Slashed tires and water in my gas tank I can take. I can even take the dead possum your son hung in my classroom yesterday morning."

Steven straightened. He hadn't heard about that. Animal mutilation was inextricably linked to serial killers. Almost all of them had killed animals at one time or another.

"But," Jenna was continuing, "attempted murder I cannot take. Neither will the police."

Lutz raised a brow. "You're delusional."

Jenna's jaw went rigid. "No, I'm not delusional. I'm alive. But I may not have been and now my best friend's lying in ICU because she drove my car this afternoon. My brakes were cut today, Mr. Lutz. That is not adolescent vandalism. That is no longer a misdemeanor. That is a felony."