“Ah, Doc, come on. I was just—”

A knock on the door caused Garland to break off in mid-sentence. Charlie glanced around in surprise. Such an interruption had never happened before; the session ended when she opened the door to let Johnson in, as Johnson and everyone else who had any reason to be interested knew. But Johnson’s face was framed in the window even as he knocked again, more urgently. Raising her eyebrows at him, Charlie stepped away from the table to open the door.

“Yes?”

“Hey, Johnson, you really miss me so much you just couldn’t wait for Doc here to finish up?” Garland drawled before Johnson could reply. Tall, burly, and bald-headed, the forty-something guard cast Garland a look of loathing before focusing on Charlie.

“Sorry, Dr. Stone, but there’s two feds here to see you. Warden just took ’em into your office. He told me to tell you you should join ’em and it’s urgent.”

“Feds?” Charlie asked with a frown even as Johnson stepped inside the room. The heavy door closed and locked automatically behind him as she turned back to the table to gather up her belongings. Maybe someone from the Justice Department checking up on her? Although it had never happened before, given the state of the federal budget it was always possible. At the thought that her grant might be at risk, she felt a quiver of alarm.

“Uh-oh, you been a bad girl, Doc?”

It was all Charlie could do not to shoot Garland a withering glance, but she caught herself in the nick of time and managed to ignore him. Johnson, however, showed no such restraint.

“Shut up, you,” he snapped at Garland, who replied with a one-fingered salute, which made Johnson’s face redden.

“What kind of ‘feds’?” Charlie asked, as much to create a distraction as because she thought Johnson might actually know.

“They’re from the FBI,” Johnson clarified, surprising her. That nullified her alarm about the grant—the FBI had nothing to do with that—but Charlie’s surprise ratcheted up a level.

“If you want, I can wait here till you’re done and we can go on,” Garland said, smirking at her across the table. “I got to tell you, I’m really starting to feel them inkblots. No tellin’ what you might get outta me if we keep at it. Probably some real kinky stuff.”

At that Charlie’s eyes collided with his, but she managed to refrain from replying. Maintaining the doctor/subject relationship was vital to her research, and it required that she keep control of the interview—and interviewee—at all times. Not always an easy task, considering that her size—five foot six, one hundred eighteen pounds, taut and fit but lacking any intimidation factor, even to a man far less imposing than Garland—and gender put her at a physical disadvantage, at least in the eyes of her subjects, whom she was pretty sure saw her as potential prey to their predator. To maintain control, what she mainly fell back on were classic conditioning techniques such as reward/punishment. Garland, she knew, considered their interviews to be prime entertainment. Ergo, cutting them short was punishment.

“You can take Mr. Garland back to his cell,” Charlie told Johnson. Her choice not to reply to Garland directly was deliberate: more punishment. Garland’s eyes narrowed, his face tightened, and for an instant Charlie thought she caught a glimpse of the monster concealed beneath the good looks. A shiver of disquiet slid along her nerve endings. Once again her pulse quickened, although she made sure her reaction didn’t show. This guy feeds off fear, she reminded herself. She felt the barely contained violence in him instinctively, all the way through to the marrow of her bones. Caged and chained, he posed no threat, but if he should ever get loose—well, he was the kind of guy she wouldn’t want to find herself alone with in a dark alley.

He’ll never get out of prison alive.

Surprisingly, the thought didn’t make her feel any happier. With her notebooks and the inkblots now nestled in the crook of her arm, Charlie turned her back on Garland in a gesture calculated to demonstrate her lack of fear of him, and headed for the door.

“Bye, now, Doc,” Garland called after her.

His tone was pure insolence. Brows snapping together, Charlie opened the door and walked on through it as if she hadn’t heard.

“You better shut your damn—” Johnson growled at Garland. The solid click of the door closing behind Charlie cut off the rest of Johnson’s words. With a little frisson of relief she put Garland out of her mind.

Despite the fitful glow of the overhead fluorescents, the windowless hallway was as gloomy as a tunnel. The faint smell of mildew from the air-conditioning mixed unpleasantly with the odors of ammonia and sweat, and the usual prison sounds—the metallic clang of doors sliding open and shut, angry male voices calling out, shuffling footsteps—formed a constant, nerve-fraying backdrop. At the end of the corridor, the heavy mesh airlock-type double doors that kept this administrative area separate from the cell blocks were manned by a pair of guards. Her office was just a few steps away. Its door, which she always kept closed, was ajar. About twice the size of the interview room she had just left, her office was still just big enough for an L-shaped metal desk that held her laptop as well as various other tools of her trade, plus a tall black filing cabinet and two molded plastic chairs for visitors. The wall behind the desk was enlivened by a photograph of the sun rising over the Blue Ridge Mountains. In one corner stood an easel-style chalkboard with the names and MO’s of the murderers she was studying scrawled on it. Two men in dark suits stood with Warden Bill Pugh in front of her desk. One was studying her diplomas, which were mounted on the wall to the right of the door. The other was talking to the warden.

“Dr. Stone,” Pugh greeted her. Although she knew he wasn’t happy about her presence in his prison—she guessed it was because she was just one more set of eyes to observe practices that would have had the country up in arms if they’d been carried out, say, on animals in a dog pound—he was, as always, polite. Charlie nodded in reply. In his fifties, average height, paunchy and balding, Pugh had a beaky nose and a small mouth. His eyes, which were the approximate color of his rumpled gray suit, were cold and watchful behind rimless spectacles. “You have visitors. They’re from the FBI.”

“Gentlemen.” Charlie looked from one newcomer to the other in turn.

“Special Agent Tony Bartoli.” The man studying her diplomas had turned as she entered. Now he smiled and held out his hand to her. He was tall, maybe six-one, lean, not quite as hunky as Garland but certainly handsome enough to make her take notice. On the plus side, he was probably not a serial killer, so maybe her life was looking up. Mid-to-late thirties, with well-groomed black hair, brown eyes, and a healthy tan, which she registered because such a thing was a rarity around the prison. He wore a red power tie with his white shirt. His grip was strong and warm as they shook hands.

“Special Agent Buzz Crane.” The other agent shook hands in turn. This guy, who looked a little younger, was about five-ten and slightly built, with a thin, sharp-featured face set off by a pair of black-framed glasses. His hair was a Brillo Pad of short brown curls. Behind the glasses, his eyes were the same bright blue as his tie. Together, the agents made the classic hottie/geek combination with which every female who’d ever spent a couple of hours in a bar or nightclub checking out the wares was familiar. Even as she released Crane’s hand she saw, from the corner of her eye, Garland shuffling past her office, his gait made awkward by the chain linking his ankles. Several inches shorter, a whole lot pudgier, and grim-faced, Johnson gripped Garland’s arm just above the elbow as he escorted him back to his cell. The clanking of Garland’s shackles caused the agents to glance toward the hall. With his wrists secured to the chain around his waist, Garland nevertheless managed to wave his fingers jauntily at them while his eyes sought and found Charlie.