“That might be a good idea. These are dangerous times.”

“The times are always dangerous. People never change.” Beau glanced back over his shoulder at the visitor. “Is that why you’re here?”

“Don’t you know?”

Beau returned his attention to the painting and very carefully shadowed a character line in the lovely face. “No. I didn’t see you. I probably should have, I guess. You’re usually around when bad things start happening.”

“Bad things have been happening here for quite a while.”

“Yes. So what brings you now? Maggie?”

“Would that surprise you?”

“No, not really. You were back east when it started, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“They never put it together when it started.” Beau shook his head. “Not so surprising, I suppose. He’s always more lucky than he is careful. And he’s very careful.”

“He doesn’t want them to see him.”

Beau turned at last from the painting, frowning as he began to clean his brushes. “But Maggie will see him. Sooner or later. She’s determined to. The only question is, will she see him before he sees her.”

“I know.”

“I want to help her.”

“I know you do. But you can’t.”

“I could at least tell her what to watch out for. Who to trust.”

“No. You can’t do that, and you know it. Free will. You’ve already told her too much.”

Beau put his brushes away and studied his visitor wryly. “I haven’t told her about you.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Do you? I wonder.” Beau shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t think I want to know after all. Is there a particular reason you came to see me today?”

“Yes. I wanted to talk to you about Christina Walsh. And why she died.”

CHAPTER SIX

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5

Gazing around the large, spacious room, Quentin said, “There are hotel rooms and then there are hotel rooms.”

Without looking up from her laptop, Kendra said, “That’s the third time you’ve said something like that. Keep it up, and John will think the FBI makes its agents stay in backstreet dives crawling with roaches and rats.”

“I never said it was that bad.” Quentin went into the kitchenette to pour himself a fresh cup of coffee, then came back into the parlor. “But you must admit-this is much, much better than our usual digs.”

Kendra did look up then, rather absently glancing around the spacious, airy parlor of their two-bedroom suite. It was a room geared to business functions, with half the space taken up by a generous desk containing every modern technological amenity-including a multiline phone, a fax machine, and a computer supplied by the hotel-and a conference table that seated eight. On the other side of the room, a sitting area grouped around a large television promised relaxation, conversation, or entertainment.

It was a luxurious space in the sense of true luxury, nothing ornate or gilded, but beautiful, well-made, and comfortable furnishings and fixtures, and muted but tasteful decorating. Not exactly surprising for the best hotel in the city.

She smiled slightly as she watched Quentin contemplate with satisfaction the oil painting hanging over the desk, but said mildly, “With your taste for luxury, I don’t know why on earth you ever joined the Bureau.”

“I don’t have a taste for luxury, I just enjoy being in a room that isn’t a carbon copy of every other room in the place.”

Pretending as always that she hadn’t noticed him neatly evade the implied question about his past, Kendra said, “Well, while you’re enjoying that, could you please hand me the forensics file? Once I get the last of that fed into our personal-investigation database here, we’ll have everything the police say they have.”

“You’re as paranoid as John is,” he told her, taking a file from the stack on the desk and handing it across the conference table to her.

“I resent that,” John said, coming out of Quentin’s bedroom, closing up his cell phone. His leather jacket was hanging over a chair in the sitting room, and he slid the phone into a pocket before joining them at the conference table.

“You should never resent the truth,” Quentin said. “Did you get hold of Maggie?”

“I got her voicemail. Asked her to drop by here in the next couple of hours if possible or to meet me at the station at four.” John gave Quentin a wry look. “I was very polite and low-key. No pressure, no demands, just a pleasant request.”

Seriously, Quentin said, “There will come a time for demands, John, believe me.”

“What do you mean?”

It was Kendra who answered, her gaze remaining on the files whose information she was feeding into the laptop’s database; her fingers flew even as she spoke. “In this sort of investigation, the emotions of everyone involved tend to grow more powerful and erratic as time goes on. Naturally. Not just for the victims, but for the investigators as well. It’ll be hard on all of us, but particularly on an empath. At some point, Maggie’s natural instincts for self-preservation will demand that she distance herself from all the pain around her.”

“And that’s when we make demands?” John asked, watching Kendra in unconscious fascination. It was his first encounter with Quentin’s usual partner, and so far he wasn’t having much luck in figuring her out. A quiet, contained woman with rich brown hair and soft brown eyes, she was pretty without being in any way extraordinary-except that she obviously was.

“That’s when we’ll have to. Always assuming she’s a help in the investigation and not a drawback.”

“Why would she be a drawback?”

“Powerful emotions tend to cloud the mind and affect judgment, among other things. Worse for an em-path, naturally. Maybe she’s learned to handle that, or maybe not. If not, feeling her own and everyone else’s pain could drive her to do things she wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

“For instance?”

“She could get careless with her actions or incautious in sharing information. Get obsessed with a particular line of investigation to the exclusion of all else or, conversely, have increasing difficulty in even remembering things from one day to the next. She could strike out at those around her.”

Quentin murmured, “That would be us.”

Kendra nodded, but added, “She could also feel driven to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, whatever the cost to herself.”

“You said her instincts for self-preservation would protect her,” John objected.

“Eventually, yes. But from all we’ve been able to find out, Maggie’s been doing this for some years, which means she has to be strongly motivated to see it through. But this is quite probably the worst investigation she’s been involved in, given the depth and scale of the sheer human suffering. Rape is bad enough for any woman to just have to imagine; feeling that physical and emotional trauma even at second hand has got to be sheer hell. When you hurt badly enough, you’ll do almost anything to stop the pain as quickly as possible.”

“She could do that by walking away.”

“Could she?” Kendra glanced up, her fingers pausing only an instant, then continued with her work and continued speaking calmly. “Whether or not you believe she’s an empath, John, you can’t deny that for anyone to deliberately expose themselves on a regular basis to the worst pain and trauma experienced by other people argues an incredible amount of resolution and dedication. She’s driven to do this out of some deeply felt motivation, and whatever it is, it won’t allow her to just walk away.”

“So she’ll stick it out as long as she can bear it,” Quentin said. “Deliberately opening herself up to pain and emotions none of us would choose to feel-if we had a choice. Fighting herself and her own instincts harder than she’ll ever have to fight anyone or anything else.”

“In other words, she’s a loaded gun,” John said.

“More like nitroglycerin in a paper cup.”