Kathleen Creighton - Danger Signals

None of which he made any attempt to keep Tierney from reading, along with the fact that he considered her to be stubborn, intractable, foolhardy and…some things he couldn't even think of words for.

Tierney bore all this without flinching. She ached with his suffering, understood it even though she believed strongly that he was wrong.

She'd tried her best to reassure him.

"I'll be perfectly safe, Wade. Remember, this isn't a killer who strikes from a distance, or from cover. He needs to be up close and personal with his victim."

"What," he'd answered back, "you're telling me my job, again? I know what he does when he gets up close and personal with his victims, remember? I've seen them-all of them. You've only seen one-in person. But hey-I've got pictures. Maybe you need to take a good, close look."

She replied gently, knowing the cruelty was only a measure of his deep concern for her. "The point is, there should be plenty of time for police to close in before he has a chance to hurt me."

"Should. That's the word. No guarantees."

"Also, don't forget I'll be able to 'feel' him if he even gets close. I'll be wired, Wade. I'll be able to warn you when he's nearby."

"Yeah?" His eyes had bored into hers, red-rimmed, brilliant as diamonds. "What if he blocks you? This guy knows what you can do. He believes in what you can do so much, he wants to kill you to protect himself."

"He may try to block his emotions, but I don't think he'll be able to, not completely. The emotions driving this man are simply too powerful. He can't control them. If he could, he probably wouldn't be doing these terrible things."

Wade shifted suddenly, jerking himself upright in the driver's seat.

"I can't believe you're going to do this." He smacked the steering wheel with his fist. "Damn it, Tee-you've been inside this guy's head."

Her thoughts had been wandering wistfully back over their more tender moments, and she had to clear her throat before she could reply. "Soul, not head."

"Even worse. You know how sick he is."

She shook her head, sadness making that her only possible response for a moment. Then she said softly. "Not sick-damaged. Beyond repair, probably, but I don't think he was born that way. This was done to him."

"I can't believe it," Wade said to the windshield, lips stretched in a travesty of a smile. "Now she's actually feeling sympathy for the guy."

And again, knowing where it came from, she forgave the dig with a small shrug and a wry smile. "I can't help it, you know. It's the price you pay for having empathy."

He didn't reply, and the car once again filled with silence.

Empathy. Wade was beginning to hate that word. Curse the day he'd first heard it. What did it mean, anyhow? It seemed to mean, to him anyway, that having it would make it damn near impossible to know for sure how to feel about anything.

He considered himself a pretty fair-minded, liberal-thinking kind of guy-for a cop-but how in the hell was he supposed to do his job if the perp's point of view kept getting in the way? He wasn't supposed to understand the dirtbag's motivation, just catch the sonofabitch and put him away.

Beside him, Tierney stirred restlessly, and because he was already on edge, fully aware he'd been broadcasting and itching for a fight, he barked at her. "What?"

She turned her head toward him and gave him a long look. He didn't have to see her expression for it to make him feel uncomfortable.

He wondered, after what he'd said to her about relationships being about sharing, being open with each other, whether she'd answer him now at all. Or. if she did. with her favorite evasion. Nothing.

Thinking about that made him feel bleaker…sadder. More lonely than he'd ever been before.

And then she said softly. "Did you ever think…if only a few things had gone differently for James Jeffrey Larson-or for you-that it could be you out there, the hunted…and he with the badge, the hunter?"

He exhaled in an explosion of shock. "My God. Is that what you think? That I could-"

"He was abandoned…abused. Terribly. So were you."

"What? I never was. What gave you-"

"Wade, I was with you-remember? There, in your nightmare. I know how terrified you were. How traumatized. If you hadn't had someone-"

"Someone? Who? I can't remember anyone being there. It was a dream, for God's sake. Hell, the guy-angel, whatever-probably wasn't even real. A figment of my imagination."

"If he was," Tierney said in her quiet, unarguable way, "you invented him because you needed to. Proof enough right there that your situation must have been intolerable. We all have ways of coping, Wade. Some people's personalities fracture into separate pieces, some develop into monsters themselves. Some simply choose to forget."

Cory's plane touched down in Portland in clear weather, hazy sunshine and 81 degrees Fahrenheit, at shortly after one in the afternoon, local time. By the time he'd rented a car and checked into his hotel near the airport it was almost two-thirty.

Which made it nearly dinner time on the east coast- and the middle of the night in the Middle East, which was probably closer to the time his body clock was on. He was definitely getting hungry. The first thing he did when he got to his room, however, was dump his suitcase on the extra bed and take out his cell phone. The number for Portland police headquarters was already stored in the phone's memory. He keyed it in, pressed the call button and, when the polite voice answered, asked to speak to Detective Callahan in homicide.

"Yes, sir…is this an emergency?"

"No. It's, uh, personal."

"I'm sorry, sir. Detective Callahan is in the field. Would you like his voice mail?"

"Sure." Cory said.

He waited for the connection, then left the message. "Uh…yes. Detective Callahan, this is Cory Pearson, the journalist you, uh… we met last week at the Rose Garden? I wonder if you'd give me a call, please?"

He left his cell-phone number and. after a pause, added, "It's important."

He disconnected, then sat for a few minutes on the edge of the bed. nerves twitching with unexpended adrenaline. He was familiar enough with police departments to know what "in the field" meant, and he figured his chances of Detective Callahan calling him back any time soon were pretty slim.

A growl of protest from his midsection reminded him he should probably go get himself something to eat before he did anything else. After that…

Well, he still had the man's address. Maybe he wouldn't wait for that phone call. Maybe he'd just drive on up to Wade's place like he'd done once before and wait for him there.

"Well, so much for that." Wade said grimly as the car sped away from the anthill of activity centered around the staged crime scene. '"The line's in the water, now let's see if this creep bites."

After much discussion, it had been decided to place the crime scene in a remote but easily accessible industrial park on the outskirts of the city, several miles upriver on the Willamette. This, it was thought, would provide enough cover for the suspected killer to observe the scene without being scared off, as well as plenty of drive time back to the city to allow him to pick up his quarry's trail, without making it seem too easy for him-too much like a setup.

The crime scene itself, with a young female patrol officer playing the part of the victim, had been gruesomely and graphically real, but it hadn't bothered Tierney as much as she'd expected. Due to the absence of emotions, of course, both residual and present. The CSIs and detectives on the scene were pretty good actors, but their gut feelings had known the difference.

Naturally, Wade hadn't been happy about any of it. All through the planning and execution stages, his anger had been like the constant shriek of electronic feedback inside