"Koresh," Sawyer said grimly. "Jim Jones."

She nodded again. "Probably something you've been worried about yourself, especially in recent weeks. You pulled those bodies out of the river. I'm betting you know there have been other victims as well. Victims someone else had to pull out of the river at some point downstream. Victims who died in unnatural ways."

"Are you telling me that Samuel killed them? You know he killed them?"

"If we knew absolutely, if we could prove it, then you and I wouldn't be having this conversation. We're sure he's responsible. We just don't have courtroom proof. Yet."

"Sowhat? You're here to get that proof? By allowing them to recruit you, take you into the fold?" Before she could answer, he sat up straighter and said, "Wait a minute. If this is your job, then you aren't really Jared's widow. It's all a cover."

She cleared her throat and looked, for the first time, a bit uncomfortable. "Jared Gray is alive and well. Sailing somewhere off Bermuda, last I heard. I'm sorry, Sawyer, for the deception. That part of it, at least. He saidwell, he didn't think there'd be anybody back here to grieve for him, especially since he left right after high school. He was in Florida trying to untangle his parents' estate months after they'd died in a car crash, hadn't even started thinking about what he'd do with the part of it here in Grace."

"You asked him to play dead."

"Not me personally. But, yes, that's what he was asked to do. And he was willing to disappear for a few months. More than willing; I think he was sick of dealing with legal matters and just wanted to get away. A sailing 'accident' was easy enough to arrange."

"And a wedding before that?"

"All the paperwork to indicate there had been a wedding, yes. An actual ceremony wasn't necessary."

"Just a lot of lying."

Grave now, she said, "I hate that part of the job. And if I didn't believe I was helping, doing something positive with my abilities, I couldn't pretend to be someone else."

Sawyer drew a breath and let it out slowly, honestly not sure if he was relieved or pissed. "So what's your real name?"

"Actually, my real name is Gray. Tessa Gray. One of the hardest things about going undercover is remembering a whole new name, so we try to avoid that as much as possible, keep at least our Christian names the same. This time it just happened to work out that I was able to keep both."

"Quite a coincidence."

"My boss says there are no coincidences. Just the universe arranging things."

Hollis Templeton would have been the first to admit that inactivity drove her nuts, so she considered it a cosmic joke that fate had placed her in the small town of Grace and in the Gray family home where she was virtually a prisoner.

She couldn't even go into town.

"You broadcast," Bishop told her frankly. "Especially since you began to see auras. We can't take the chance that Samuel or his people might see or sense you. It's enough of a risk just to have you in the house with Tessa when church members visit her."

"I know, I know. I wouldn't even be here if Ellen Hodges hadn't told me I needed to be. I just wish she'd told me why I needed to be here."

"You'll find out eventually. But until you have some sense of why, you have to keep a low profile."

"I don't have to like it."

"No, I wouldn't expect you to. But sit tight for the time being."

Hiding her abilities had never been an issue until recently, and since they were still evolvingseeing auras was a very new aspectshe had spent her time learning to cope with what was rather than worry about shielding it from other psychics.

She wished now that she had taken a few lessons in developing her personal shield and had in fact been practicing using the few basic instructions Bishop and others on the team had offered. But she was a long way yet from being able to hide her abilities.

In the meantime, since doing something was better than pacing the floor in worry about whatever Tessa might be doing inside the church Compound, Hollis had abandoned the smaller kitchen space to turn the big table in the formal dining room into her command center. Her laptop was set up there, and files, notepads, and maps vied for the remainder of the polished mahogany surface.

There was a very large, very grand book-lined study on the other side of the sprawling house, but Hollis, like Tessa, was uncomfortably aware of being very much an outsider in someone else's home, and she preferred to work in the brighter and less personal dining room.

Not that there was a lot of work to do. She had gone over everything so many times that she felt like it was all branded in her mind, and staring at the bits and pieces of information was a bit like staring at blank jigsaw pieces: impossible to know how everything really fit together.

If it fit together.

Despite Bishop's certainty, Hollis was having a difficult time accepting that the Reverend Adam Deacon Samuel really had been the mastermindliterallybehind one of the most vicious, inhuman serial killers ever to rampage across American soil. It didn't seem possible, at least in a sane world, for an avowed man of God to deliberately unchain an evil, ravenous beast and set it loose to maim and kill innocents.

Even worse, to personally hunt for and virtually feed that monster its victims, one by one.

How could any man, after doing that, return to his church and preach to his congregation about God's love?

"It's a cult," she reminded herself aloud, needing more sound than that provided by the kitchen TV, on low and tuned to an MSNBC news show. "He's got himself a cult. Cults are all about power, not religion. All about control. Look at what he's doing now with the women of that church. Maybe he needs the energy, or maybe he just likes manipulating them. Controlling them. He gets the energy and the kicksand the satisfaction of knowing he's the alpha among all the men of the congregation. That he can pleasure the women in a way none of their men can. And yuck," she added involuntarily.

Hollis had only recently begun her training in criminal profiling, but what she had learned so far told her to look for patterns, for a kind of logic in a personality so far outside accepted norms that trying to find something logical seemed irrational.

Seemed.

There was always logic, if only that of a twisted mind.

A twisted and impenetrable mind, at least to Hollis. She almost wished Dani were here; as far as Hollis knew, Dani Justice was the only person living who had firsthand experience with at least some of the thoughts in this twisted monster's mind. And was, moreover, possibly the only person who had ever hurt him in a psychic sense.

And therein lay the danger.

Dani was someone else too easily recognizable to Samuel, and she, unlike Hollis, posed a very real and deadly threat to him. Hollis he wouldn't be happy about; Dani might be able to destroy him, and that was a threat that could push him over the edge.

"Call me," Dani had said to Bishop. "If it comes to that. If you need me there. Call me. In the meantime, I'll keep practicing."

"What about Marc?" Bishop had asked, referring to the man with whom she was in the process of forming a unique partnership.

"Marc understands the stakes. And he knows how I feel about finishing this, once and for all. Call me, Bishop. If you need me."

Hollis hoped they wouldn't need Dani. As remarkable as her ability was, Dani had not faced Samuel in a literal sense, had not pitted her strength against his directly. What she had done in Venture had been self-defense, not an offensive attack.

Facing him here would be something very different.