"No. He doesn't." With another faint shrug, Bishop added, "We've weathered a changing of the guard before. We will again; our success record is too good to easily dismiss, no matter what the Director may or may not think about our methods. But in the interim…"

"You have to follow orders."

"If I want the SCU to continue, yes, I do. For now. At least officially."

"And unofficially?"

Reluctant for too many reasons to list, Bishop said, "Unofficially there's Haven."

THE BOX CUTTER'S blade was new and sharp, so he used it with care as he cut around the part of the photo's image containing the girl.

She was pretty.

She was always pretty.

He enjoyed her curves. It was one reason he took such care in cutting the images out of the photographs and newspapers, because his knife could slowly-so slowly-caress the curves.

He was careful even with her face, though the curves of nose and chin and jaw barely caused a ripple inside him.

But her throat. The very slight, gentle curves of her breasts, just that faint hint of womanliness. The delicate flare of hips. Those his knife lingered on.

Sometimes he scanned the pictures into his computer and manipulated the images to suit a variety of fantasies. He could replace clothed flesh with naked, change all the different hairstyles to the short, dark, nearly boyish look she almost always wore. He could pose her any way he liked, do wild things with color and texture. He had even found autopsy photos and superimposed her head onto those bodies that were laid out, their exposed organs gleaming in the cold, clinical light.

But that sort of thing, he had discovered, gave him little satisfaction. It was too… remote.

Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was something else.

All he knew was that the computer, while useful as a research tool, had proved worse than useless in satisfying his urges.

But the photos…

He finished the last cut on this particular photo and carefully lifted her out. A candid shot, it showed her coming out of a pharmacy, juggling bags, her face preoccupied.

Though it was October, the day was warm enough that she was wearing short sleeves and a light summer skirt, with sandals.

He thought her toenails were painted. Deep red, or perhaps bright pink. He was almost sure of it, though the picture didn't confirm that pleasant suspicion.

He held the cutout in his cupped hands for a moment, just enjoying it. His thumb rubbed the glossy paper gently, tracing the flare of her skirt, the bare thighs below.

He studied every detail, memorizing.

He closed his eyes.

And in his mind he touched her.

Soft skin. Warm. Almost humming with life.

The blade cold in his other hand.

His lips parted, breath coming faster.

Soft skin. Warm. A jerk now. The hum becoming a primal sound of terror and pain that sent fire licking through his body.

Soft skin. Wet. Slick.

Red.

He smeared the red over her jerking breast. Watched it glisten in the light as she moved. Listened to the un… un… un… grunts that were primitive sounds of agony. They thrummed in his ears like wings, like a heartbeat, like his own quickening pulse.

The fire in his body burned hotter and hotter, his breath came faster, the blade in his hand penetrating in forceful thrusts, again and again and again-

He barely heard his own hoarse cry of release above the wordless, keening sounds she made dying.

Soft skin.

Wet.

Slick.

Red.

Wednesday, October 8

COMING BACK TO Venture, Georgia, a relatively small town not far outside Atlanta, was not something Dani had wanted to do, so she hadn't exactly planned for it. Her apartment was still in Atlanta, along with most of her clothes and other belongings; she had packed as if for a weeklong vacation somewhere. That had been nearly a month ago. Not that clothing was a problem, given that she was living with her twin sister. But she and Paris had both worked very hard to have separate lives as adults, and living in the same house again wasn't really helping sustain that determination.

In fact, it made it all too easy to slip back into girlhood habits and routines. Like this weekly trip to Smith's Pharmacy downtown, because it was the only place in Venture that sold honest-to-God homemade ice cream from the lunch counter, which still did brisk business, and the twins had a lifetime habit of ice cream before bed every night.

Dani had missed this in Atlanta. Not that she hadn't continued the habit; she literally couldn't sleep without at least a small bowl of ice cream at night. But she'd had to substitute brand names for the homemade stuff, and there was simply no comparison in her mind.

Jeez.

Ice cream.

Thirty-one years old, and the treat she looked forward to all day long was ice cream shared with her twin sister before bedtime.

Bedtime at eleven o'clock most nights.

"I'm pathetic," she muttered, and dropped two of the bags she was juggling while trying to dig her car keys from the bottom of her purse.

"Let me."

Dani froze, watching a pair of very male hands pick up the dropped bags. Her gaze tracked upward slowly, following as he straightened to note that he was still whipcord-lean, that his shoulders were still wide and powerful, that he was still the sort of good-looking they wrote about in romance novels.

His dark hair was just beginning to gray at the temples, and there might have been a few more laugh lines at the corners of his steady blue eyes, but he still had the face of a heartbreaker.

Marcus Purcell.

Venture was a small-enough town that she had expected to run into him sooner or later. She had hoped for later.

Much later.

"Hey, Dani. How's tricks?"

The old childhood greeting brought an unexpected lump to her throat, but she thought her voice was calm enough to hide that when she replied as she always had.

"The rabbit ran away, but I still have the top hat. How're things in your magic show?"

"Not much of an act these days, I'm afraid. The beautiful assistant got a better offer, and after that there didn't seem to be much point."

And there it was.

Trust Marc not to pussyfoot around a subject she would have avoided as long as necessary.

Avoidance was her defense mechanism, but hardly his.

"It wasn't a better offer," she heard herself say. "It was just… a change I needed. We both needed. You wanted to stay here, and I didn't."

"You never asked, Dani."

That shook her, but only for a moment. "Your roots were always here. I didn't have to ask. And you knew once Paris decided to stay here, I-"

"Wouldn't." He shrugged. "And yet here you are."

"Visiting. Because Paris needs me."

"Yeah, who's getting divorced is always a hot topic around here, so I heard. Tough on her. But she's better off without him."

"Oh? And why is that?" She was willing to talk about anything else, even her sister's painful divorce. Which told her something unsettling about her own feelings.

"Because there are just some things a man shouldn't say about his wife. Not even when he's drunk. Maybe especially not when he's drunk. And never to another man."

Dani couldn't bring herself to ask out loud but knew the question showed.

"Not much I'm willing to repeat, Dani. But he talked a lot, and probably in bars up and down the East Coast since he traveled so much. He said she was a literal ball and chain. Holding him down. Said he couldn't have anything to himself. Not his thoughts, not even his dreams. No private space she couldn't get into. He said she made his skin crawl sometimes."