He began to lift the cover when a voice called from behind her, "Agent Dance?"

She glanced back to see another officer in uniform walking up to her. He was holding something in his hand.

"Yes?"

"Do you know a Jonathan Boling?"

"Jon? Yes." She was staring at a business card in his hand. And recalled that somebody had taken the victim's wallet to verify ID.

A horrifying thought: Was the victim Jon?

Her mind did one of its leaps-A to B to X. Had the professor learned something from Travis's computer or in his search for victims and, with Dance away, decided to investigate by himself?

Please, no!

She glanced briefly at O'Neil, horror in her eyes, and lunged for the body.

"Hey!" the CS tech shouted. "You'll contaminate the scene!"

She ignored him and flung back the tarp.

And gasped.

With mixed relief and horror, she stared down.

It wasn't Boling.

The lean bearded man in slacks and a white shirt had been repeatedly stabbed. One glazed eye was half open. A cross was carved into his forehead. Rose petals, red ones, were scattered over his body.

"But where did that come from?" she asked the other deputy, nodding at Boling's business card, her voice shaking.

"I was trying to tell you-he's at the road block, over there. Just drove up. He wants to see you. It's urgent."

"I'll talk to him in a minute." Dance inhaled deeply, shaken.

Another deputy came up with the dead man's wallet in a plastic bag. "Got the ID. His name's Mark Watson. He's a retired engineer. Went out to the store a few hours ago. Never got home."

"Who is he?" O'Neil asked. "Why was he picked?"

Dance dug into her jacket pocket and retrieved the list of everyone mentioned in the blog who might be a potential target.

"He posted in the blog-a reply to the 'Power to the People' thread. About the nuclear plant. It doesn't agree or disagree with Chilton about the location of the plant. It's neutral."

"So anybody connected to the blog at all could be at risk now."

"I'd think so."

O'Neil looked her over. He touched her arm. "You okay?"

"Just…kind of a scare."

She found herself thumbing Jon Boling's card. She told O'Neil she was going to see what he wanted and began down the path, her heart only now returning to a normal beat from the fright.

At the roadside she found the professor standing beside his car, the door open. She frowned. In the passenger seat was a teenager with spiky hair. He was wearing an Aerosmith T-shirt under a dark brown jacket.

Boling waved to her. She was struck by the look of urgency on his face, unusual for him.

And by the intensity of the relief she felt that he was all right.

Which gave way to curiosity when she saw what was stuck in the waistband of his slacks; she couldn't tell for certain but it seemed to be the hilt of a large knife.

Dance, Boling and the teenager were in her office at the CBI. Jason Kepler was a seventeen-year-old student in Carmel South High, and he, not Travis, was Stryker.

Travis had created the avatar years ago, but he'd sold it online to Jason, along with "like, a shitload of Reputation, Life Points and Resources."

Whatever those were.

Dance recalled that Boling had told her that players could sell their avatars and other accoutrements of the game.

The professor explained about his finding a reference in Travis's data to the Lighthouse Arcade's hours of operation.

Dance was grateful for the man's brilliant detective work. (Though she was absolutely going to dress him down later for not calling 911 immediately upon learning that the boy was at the arcade and for going after him alone.) On her desk behind them, in an evidence envelope, was the kitchen knife that Jason had used to threaten Boling. It was a deadly weapon and he was technically guilty of assault and battery. Still, since Boling hadn't actually been injured and the boy had voluntarily handed over the blade to the professor, she was probably going to be satisfied with giving the kid a stern warning.

Boling now explained what had happened: he himself had been the victim of a sting, orchestrated by the young teen who sat before them now. "Tell her what you told me."

"What it is, I was worried about Travis," Jason told them wide-eyed. "You don't know what it's like seeing somebody who's in your family getting attacked like he was, in the blog."

"Your family?"

"Yeah. In the game, in DQ, we're brothers. I mean, we've never met or anything, but I know him real good."

"Never met?"

"Well, sure, but not in the real world, only in Aetheria. I wanted to help him. But I had to find him first. I tried calling and IM'ing and I couldn't get through. All I could think of was hanging out at the arcade. Maybe I could talk him into turning himself in."

"With a knife?" Dance asked.

His shoulders lifted, then sagged. "I figured it couldn't hurt."

The boy was skinny and unhealthily pale. Here it was summer vacation and, ironically, he probably got outside now far less often than in the fall and winter, when he'd have to go to school.

Boling took over the narrative. "Jason was in the Lighthouse Arcade when I got there. The manager was a friend of his and when I asked about Stryker he pretended to go check out something but instead he told Jason about me."

"Hey, I'm sorry, man. I wasn't going to stab you or anything. I just wanted to find out who you were and if you had any idea where Travis was. I didn't know you were with this Bureau of Investigation thing."

Boling gave a sheepish smile at the impersonation-of-an-officer part. He added that he knew she'd want to talk to Jason but he thought it best to take him directly to her, rather than wait for the city police to show up.

"We just jumped in the car and called TJ. He told us where you were."

It was a good decision, and only marginally illegal.

Dance now said, "Jason, we don't want Travis to get hurt either. And we don't want him to hurt anybody else. What can you tell us about where he might go?"

"He could be anywhere. He's really smart, you know. He knows how to live outside in the woods. He's an expert." The boy noted their confusion and said, "See, DQ's a game, but it's also real. I mean, you're in the Southern Mountains, it gets like fifty below zero, and you have to learn how to stay warm and if you don't you'll freeze to death. And you have to get food and water and everything. You learn what plants're safe and what animals you can eat. And how to cook and store food. I mean, they have real recipes. You have to cook them right in the game or they don't work." He laughed. "There've been newbies who've tried to play and they're like, 'All we want to do is fight trolls and demons,' and they end up starving to death because they couldn't take care of themselves."

"You play with other people, don't you? Could any of them know where Travis might be?"

"Like, I asked everybody in the family and nobody knows where he is."

"How many are in your family?"

"About twelve of us. But him and me are the only ones in California."

Dance was fascinated. "And you all live together? In Aetheria?"

"Yeah. I know them better than I know my real brothers." He gave a grim laugh. "And in Aetheria, they don't beat me up and steal money from me."

Dance was curious. "You have parents?"

"In the real world?" He shrugged, a gesture Dance interpreted as meaning "Sort of."

She said, "No, in the game."

"Some families do. We don't." He gave a wistful look. "We're happier that way."

She was smiling. "You know, you and I've met, Jason."

The boy looked down. "Yeah, I know. Mr. Boling told me. I kinda killed you. Sorry. I thought you were just some newb who was dissing us because of Trav. I mean our family-well, our whole guild order-has been totally dissed because of him and all the posts on that blog. It's happening a lot. A raiding party from the north traveled all the way from Crystal Island to wipe us out. We made this allegiance and stopped them. But Morina was killed. She was our sister. She's come back but she lost all her Resources."