He? Who is he?

That question had barely surfaced in her mind when she became dimly aware of Something Else that was with her.

In her.

Inside her head.

She had a fleeting impression of puzzlement, of dawning uneasiness—and then she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing.

Breathing slow and steady, like those around her. Thinking of nothing. Not allowing herself to be scared even though the darkness was heavy and pressing against her and Something Else was like a darker snake in the darkness, slithering around, all around, as it searched for whatever had alerted it.

Nessa breathed evenly and kept her mind still and blank. Because if the snake found her awake and aware, if he found her like that, she’d never escape. Never.

The dark, dark snake was slithering closer and closer to her, to her mind, and all Nessa could do was hide her terror and hope it—he—passed her by.

THIRTEEN

The owner of the Diner, Clyde Barrow, came himself just before eight A.M. to take breakfast orders from Sarah and the feds. He had already sent them coffee twice during the wee hours of the night, sending it by way of a couple of the cops still roaming—or patrolling—downtown. Clyde refused to be paid, the cops reported; he just wanted to do what he could to help.

The cops themselves, after what had apparently been some talking-to by Jonah, were not just polite to the feds; they were pleasant and even friendly.

Clyde was the same, though he hadn’t needed a talking-to from Jonah to be that way.

“Breakfast would be great, Clyde, thanks,” Sarah said. “We’re probably here a few more hours before we’re relieved by the others.”

“Want your usual, Sarah?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“What about you two agents? Whatever you want, I can cook.”

Robbie eyed him, this being the first time she’d actually met him. “Clyde Barrow? Any relation?”

He grinned at her. “Only cops ever ask that.”

“Well, we sort of specialize in crime. And study the history of it.”

“Yeah, I bet you would.” There was only the faintest emphasis on the you.

“So?”

“Well, family lore says yes, but I’ve never done the genealogy thing. And he didn’t have any kids, so no way I’m a direct descendant.”

“If you really want to know, there’s a technical analyst at Quantico that can get you your entire family tree in record time.”

Mildly, Dante said, “I doubt the Director would approve.”

“Maybe not, but we both know Bishop wouldn’t mind.” She returned her gaze to Clyde. “Our unit chief.”

“Ah. Well, I might take you up on that, Agent. Later. For now, what would you like for breakfast?”

Sarah, who had gone back to studying a file, said absently, “He makes great pancakes. And I don’t know what he does to eggs, but they’re to die for, no matter how you want them fixed.”

“I sing to my hens,” Clyde said without a blink.

Robbie believed him. “Someday I’d like to be there for that,” she told him. “I think I’ll try the pancakes. Butter, maple syrup, bacon crisp on the side.”

“Got it. And you, Agent?”

“Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast. And some kind of fruit if you have it. Just whatever you’ve got. Thanks, Mr. Barrow.”

“I’m just Clyde, son. Be back with breakfast in a bit.”

Dante stared after him. “I don’t think he’s enough older than me to call me son,” he said thoughtfully.

“He’s older than he looks,” Sarah said, still absently. “He’s also the mayor.”

Dante blinked. “Well, that was unexpected.”

Sarah glanced up with a smile. “In a small town like this, the mayor would have to have another job, or be retired with one paying a good pension, since the pay sucks. Clyde’s on his third term.”

“I feel like we’re on ours,” Dante said, surveying the stacks of file folders lined up down the center of the conference table. “I mean, it looks like we’ve been working, and it sure as hell feels like it. But do we have anything to show for it?”

He had joined the other two at the conference table to read through files, saying his eyes were crossing from staring at security video over and over again, especially since he’d found absolutely nothing they didn’t already know.

“Well,” Robbie said, “we’ve pretty much eliminated all the relatives and close friends of all the missing people; the only connections they have to each other, if connections exist, are reasonable and not suspicious. So there’s that.

“We’ll probably have a new batch of files to look over when the first shift gets through their canvass of the outlying areas. Most everything else we have here has been gone through by Sarah and at least one of us, which I think covers just about all the men in the age range we’re looking at who live inside the city limits.”

Tentative as he usually was when using his learning-stage profiling skills, Dante said, “He abducted six people. We’ve all been operating under the assumption that those people are still alive, right?”

“Right,” Sarah said, looking up from a legal pad of notes she’d been studying.

“Okay. Well, Luke and Sam are the experienced profilers, but if we keep assuming these people are alive, then he has to be holding them somewhere. And it isn’t in an apartment or condo here in the downtown area. Or a house. Somebody would have seen or heard something, surely, between his coming and going—and adding to his quota.”

“There have been cases of captives held in nice little neighborhoods for years with the neighbors none the wiser,” Robbie reminded him.

“Yeah, but most of those cases involved kids or young women being held captive as sex slaves.” He shook his head, adding a muttered, “Sick bastards.”

“We don’t know that isn’t happening here,” Robbie pointed out.

Sarah made a sort of choked sound. “Even the judge? Look, if it’s all the same to you, I’m clinging to the notions that they’re still alive, and that he didn’t take them for any sexual reason.”

“Well,” Robbie said, “no evidence to the contrary. So I say your notions make as much sense as anything else. The thing is, the aerial and infrared satellite shots Bishop sent didn’t show anything unusual. No heat signatures showing a group in an odd place. We were able to identify virtually every structure, and all have been searched and cleared. So where is he keeping them?”

Sarah chewed on her bottom lip. “Six people held captive, some of them for weeks. We don’t know why, but we do know this unsub has planned his abductions skillfully, and covered his tracks in different ways, from tinkering with memories to altering security footage. He would have planned just as carefully where and how he keeps his captives.”

“If they’re alive,” Robbie felt duty bound to remind her.

“Yeah. But given that, Dante is right. The satellite shots didn’t show any unusual groupings, our searches haven’t turned up anything, and I can’t think of a place downtown where six people could be held prisoner. Especially if their captor couldn’t be standing guard all the time. And he hasn’t been. Unless he has a partner, his captives have been left unguarded multiple times.”

“Luke seemed pretty certain when he checked in last night from the hotel,” Dante noted. “One unsub.”

“So nobody to guard them when he’s gone,” Sarah said. “Whatever safeguards he has in place, locks, soundproofing, anything else you can think of, the one thing he definitely needs to hold captives with the best chance of no one finding him out has to be isolation. And any isolated building is going to be in the outlying areas.”

“Where there’s been nothing but a cursory search,” Robbie noted. “Because all the missings disappeared in or near the downtown area. Shit. We may not be even an inch closer to identifying this unsub. And that means we’re no closer to finding the missing people than we were when we got here.”