"I knew you had at least one more motive for trying this," Dani said.

"Bishop's suggestion. But he's right; we might be able to find the connection, assuming one exists."

Dani shrugged, aware that, as was often the case in her dreams, she was calm, that initial uneasiness fading. She chose the corridor she had been facing. "This way, then. Not that I have any idea what we're looking for. I doubt it'll be him."

"Some representation of him, maybe." Hollis tested the first door on the left. "Locked. Damn."

"This one too," Paris reported from the right side.

Dani hesitated but then kept walking. "Maybe they're all locked. Maybe my subconscious doesn't have a clue."

"Dani, maybe we should stop and think about this." Paris reached out to touch her sister's arm, and they both jumped.

"Ow! Paris -"

"What just happened?" Hollis wanted to know.

"Sorry I forgot," Paris said to her sister, then looked at Hollis. "Secondary ability. I channel energy. When I'm awake, it's barely enough to cause static on radios if I hold one in both hands, but when I'm asleep it's a little stronger."

"And when she's asleep and with me," Dani said, "it's a lot stronger. We have no idea why."

Hollis looked interested, but before she could say whatever was on her mind, they were all startled by a scream.

A woman's scream of agony, breaking off with chilling suddenness.

It echoed up and down the corridors, bouncing off the hard surfaces until it seemed there were dozens of screams, hundreds of them, endless screams pounding against them.

"Where-?"

"I can't tell-"

Dani…

"Dani, your nose-"

Dani woke this time curled up on her side, her head throbbing in a way it never had before. She tried to push herself up on one elbow, vaguely surprised at how stiff and sore she felt.

Then she felt something else and reached up to find a thick wetness around her nose and mouth.

Her hand came away red with blood. She reached to the nightstand for a tissue and held it to her nose, then looked toward the doorway of the bedroom just as Paris reached it.

Paris didn't look so hot; though there was no nosebleed, she was pale and her eyes had a curiously bruised look to them.

"Marc just called," she said. "We have another missing woman."

Friday, October 10

"It isn't Marie Goode?" Dani asked as soon as Marc came into the conference room.

"No, she's present and accounted for. Still under guard, and considering a trip to Florida to visit her folks, but fine."

"Who's the missing woman?" Hollis asked.

"Her name," Marc said, "is Shirley Arledge. Twenty-four, five-two, a hundred and ten pounds, delicate build. Another blue-eyed blonde. Her husband just got back from a business trip into Atlanta and found her gone. No note, no missing luggage or clothes, her car's still in the driveway, and-most important according to him-her cat's in the house, and she'd never leave without him."

"Do we know how long she's been missing?" Hollis asked. Like Paris, she, too, was visibly tired and had seemed just a bit withdrawn since arriving a few minutes before.

Dani felt guilty as hell.

"Hard to say. Husband left Tuesday, and he said they hadn't scheduled any check-in calls for such a brief trip, that her plans for the week had been working in her garden, getting it ready for winter. She was nesting, he said. They'd been trying to get pregnant."

"Christ," Hollis muttered. She studied the photo of Shirley Arledge and unconsciously shook her head. This was not the woman she had seen at the crime-scene pool.

Marc added, " Jordan just called in and said they've found a basket with some garden tools on a brick pathway behind the house. Evidence she'd been working out there, but nothing to indicate a struggle or any kind of violence. Teresa's on her way out there, but I'm betting we won't have any forensics to speak of."

"How was the cat?" Dani asked. "Hungry or not?"

"Not, but it doesn't tell us much; they have one of those dry-food dispensers that hold enough kibble for at least a week, as a convenience, and her habit was to fill it up every Monday."

Dani started to speak, then thought better of it.

"What?" Marc asked, apparently picking up on undercurrents.

Or simply reading her expression, the probability of which Dani found more than a little unsettling.

"I'm not a cop," she said.

"So? Dani, you're here for what you bring to the table, and that includes any relevant dreams, thoughts, speculation, or hunches and intuition. Let's hear it."

"Okay. I hope to God I'm wrong, but let's assume that Shirley Arledge is or will be the third victim of the serial killer here in Venture."

"Possibly the fourth," Hollis said, and explained what she had seen at the crime scene the previous day.

"You're sure this isn't the woman you saw?" Marc asked, indicating the photograph.

Hollis shook her head and went to pin the photo on the bulletin board beside those of Becky Huntley and Karen Norvell. "I'm positive. I don't know who she is or why nobody's reported her missing-yet-but it's a safe bet she's a victim of our killer."

"Shorty's at the crime scene with the pool-maintenance people," Marc said. " Jordan rousted everybody first thing this morning; whatever you saw must have spooked him."

"Or I did," she said ruefully. "I'm told it's a bit unnerving to watch a medium trying to communicate with a spirit."

"Well, we'll know in the next few hours if there's any real evidence in that pool." Marc looked at Dani. "You: were saying, if Shirley is a victim…?"

"Then maybe we know now what the killer's been doing all these weeks. Maybe he came straight here, to Venture, already had or found his safe place, and got it ready. And then started selecting his victims."

"Hunting," Paris said. "But not one at a time, more like a… group of potential targets. He had a pretty good I.D. on all of them before he moved on the first one."

"It makes sense," Dani said. "Just like in Boston, these women were grabbed as they went about their lives, and in each case the timing was perfect; they were outside, unprotected, with no witnesses. He never had to break down a door or even shatter a window to get at them."

Hollis said, "No way to chalk that up to chance. Not the three times here, and sure as hell not the dozen times in Boston."

"But in Boston he didn't have the time between victims to do much hunting, and there sure as hell hasn't been much more here," Marc objected-but then nodded. "Of course. The X factor: Is he or isn't he psychic. That's what tipped off Bishop, wasn't it? The hunter was moving too fast to spend much time searching for his prey between attacks, yet there each victim was. Perfect time, perfect place, perfect opportunity. Exactly when and where he wanted them, when and where he expected them to be. Almost like magic."

"Or like he knew," Dani said.

Hollis was nodding. "The more-traditional profilers insisted that the killer had likely selected most if not all of his targets early on, that he knew their habits and routines long before he got his hands on them. And that makes sense, up to a point, but it conveniently ignores the several instances where the victim was alone and vulnerable-and in a situation not a normal part of her routine-when she was taken. Once, maybe, the killer got lucky. Not more than once."

Paris closed a folder and pushed it away from her with a slight grimace, which Dani knew the others would probably read as distaste rather than what it was: the response to a pounding headache. "And then there's Annie LeMott," she said. "If I'm reading the files right, even the traditional profilers agreed that the killer wasn't interested in the limelight and would not have grabbed Annie if he had known who she was."