"Yeah, I know. Been there. Most of the guys I've met couldn't get past the fact that I was an identical twin; having dreams that literally came true hasn't exactly been seen as a fun bonus."

"Especially when you dreamed about them?"

"Well, anybody who gets close takes that risk. And since I never dream about sunshine and puppies, most of the guys in my life haven't stuck around long enough to hear about their own personal-doom scenario."

"There was one who never ran."

Dani frowned. "Yeah, well. He would have. Sooner or later."

"Do you know that, or are you only guessing?"

"Can we get back to the dream, please?"

Since a solemn pact made in girlhood, each of them had been scrupulous about staying out of the other's love life. And because her own very rocky marriage had recently left her hypersensitive to that, Paris could hardly push. "Okay. Getting back to your dream-are you saying it has something to do with that serial killer?"

"I think so."

"Why?"

"A feeling."

Paris watched her steadily. "What else?"

Dani didn't want to answer but finally did. "Whatever was down in that basement was-is-evil. A kind of evil I've never felt before. A kind that scares the hell out of me. And one thing that has been the same in every single version of my dream is the fact that it has Miranda."

"She's a hostage?"

"She's bait."

"She was my only child."

"Yes. I know."

Senator Abe LeMott looked up from the framed photograph he had been studying and directed his attention across the desk to a face that had become, these last months, almost as familiar to him as the one that had belonged to his daughter, Annie.

Special Agent Noah Bishop, Chief of the FBI's Special Crimes Unit, possessed an unforgettable face anyway LeMott thought. Because it was an unusually handsome face but, even more, because the pale silver-gray eyes missed nothing, and because the faint but wicked scar twisting down his left cheek was mute evidence of a violent past. Add to that a streak of pure white hair at his left temple, shocking against the jet-black all around it, and you had a man who was not likely to be overlooked, much less easily forgotten.

"You and your wife don't have children." LeMott set the photograph aside carefully, in its accustomed place to the right of the blotter.

"No."

The senator summoned a smile. "And yet you do. Brothers and sisters, at least. Family. Your unit. Your team."

Bishop nodded.

"Have you ever lost one of them?"

"No. A few close calls, but no."

Not yet.

The unspoken hung in the air between them, and LeMott nodded somberly. "Bound to happen. The work you people do, the evil you face. Sooner or later, there'll be a… an unbearable price demanded. There always is."

Choosing not to respond to that, Bishop said instead, "As I told you, we lost what faint trail we had near Atlanta. Whether he's in the city or somewhere nearby, that's the area. But until he makes a move…"

"Until he kills again, you mean."

"He's gone to ground, and he isn't likely to surface again until he feels less threatened. Less hunted. Or until his needs drive him to act despite that."

"It's gotten personal, hasn't it? Between you and him. The hunter and the hunted."

"I'm a cop. It's my job to hunt scum like him."

LeMott shook his head. "No, it was always more than that for you. I could see it. Hell, anybody could see it. I'm betting he knew it, knew you were hunting him and knew you'd crawled inside his head."

"Not far enough inside his head," Bishop said, a tinge of bitterness creeping into his voice. "He was still able to get Annie, he was still able to get at least eleven other young women, and all I know for certain is that he isn't finished yet."

"It's been months. Is it likely that's why he's been waiting, for the heat to die down? Is that why he left Boston?"

"I believe that's at least part of it. It wasn't the spotlight he was after, the attention. He never wanted to engage the police, to test his skills and will against ours. That's not the kind of killer he is, not what it's about for him."

"What is it about for him?"

"I wish I could answer that with any kind of certainty, but you know I can't. That's the hell of hunting serials: the facts come only after we've caught him. Until then, we have only speculation and guesswork. So all I know is bits and pieces, and precious few of those. Despite all the bodies, he hasn't left us much to work with."

"But you know Annie was a mistake, wasn't she?"

Bishop hesitated, then nodded. "I think she was. He hunts a type, a physical look, and Annie fit like all the others fit. If he needed to go deeper than looks, needed to know anything else about his targets because knowing more than the surface was important to him, he would have known who she was, known the extreme risks in targeting her. The way she was living, quietly, like any other young woman in Boston, the ordinary surface appearance of her life, didn't warn him that the response to her disappearance would be so immediate and so intense."

"That's why he stopped, after her?"

Bishop was only too aware that the grieving father he was talking to had spent years as a prosecutor in a major city and so knew the horrors men could do, perhaps as well as Bishop himself, hut it was still difficult to forget the father and think only of the fellow professional, to discuss this calmly without emotion.

This killer isn't the only man I've been profiling, Senator. I've been studying you as well. And I'm very much afraid that you'll take a hand in this investigation yourself before too much longer.

A deadly hand.

"Bishop? That is why he stopped?"

"I think it was part of the reason, yes. Too many cops, too much media, too much attention. It interfered with his plans, with his ability to hunt. Put his intended prey too much on guard, made them too wary. And it became a distraction for him, one he couldn't afford, especially not at that stage. He needed to be able to concentrate on what he was doing, because he was practicing, for want of a better word. Exploring and perfecting his ritual. That's why-"

When the other man broke off, LeMott finished the observation stoically. "That's why each murder was different, the weapons, the degree of brutality. He was experimenting. Trying to figure out what gave him the most… satisfaction."

You have to hear this over and over again, don't you? Like picking at a scab, keeping the pain alive because it's all you've got left.

"Yes."

"Has he figured it out yet?"

"You know I can't answer that. Too little to work with."

"I'll settle for an educated guess. From you."

Because you know it's much more than an educated guess. And I know now I made a mistake in telling you what's really special about the SCU.

Bishop also knew too well how utterly useless regrets like that one tended to be. The mistake had been made. Now he had to deal with the fallout.

He drew a breath and let it out slowly. "My guess, my belief, is that the response to Annie's abduction and murder threw him off balance. Badly. Until then, he had been almost blindly intent on satisfying the urges driving him. To kill a dozen victims in less than a month means something triggered his rampage, something very traumatic, and whatever it was, the trigger event either destroyed the person he had been until then, or else it freed something long dormant inside him."

"Something evil."

"About that, I have no doubts."

LeMott was frowning. "But even evil has a sense of self-preservation. The brightness of the unexpected spotlight following Annie's murder woke up that part of him. Or, at least, put it in control."