Kay Hooper - Blood Dreams

If anything, Jordan looked sicker. "The families are bound to ask why. What do I say to them?"

Marc didn't hesitate. "That we need all the information we can get to find missing persons, and prints are more valuable than photos in some cases." This time he did hesitate, before adding steadily, "Tell the teams to find something with DNA. Hairbrush, razor, toothbrush, whatever might give us what we need. And tell them to be subtle about it."

"So we don't tell the families about… this?"

"Not until we know something for sure. Until then, I want this kept as quiet as possible, Jordan, understand? Anybody talks to the media is going to be looking for a new job tomorrow, and it won't be with a reference."

"I understand, Marc, and so will the rest here. But you know as well as I do that we won't keep it quiet for long."

"As long as we can." His cell phone rang, and he answered it before the second ring. "Yeah?"

"Marc, it's Dani. I know you're busy, but-"

"You know where I am? What I'm looking at?" Marc realized that his voice was too harsh, but there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it.

The silence on the other end of the line was brief, and then she said quietly, "I know. There are some people you need to meet. Here, at Paris 's house. Can you come?"

"I'm on my way," Marc said.

HE HAD TO CUT HER image from another photograph because the first one got all crumpled, but that was okay.

He always made copies.

With some of his tension eased, the jagged edge of his need blunted, he was able to carefully remove all the uninteresting bits from the picture, leaving only her.

He set her aside and reached for the next picture, this time cutting her out from the background of a gas station where she'd been standing by her car, pumping gas.

The next was of her walking a dog in the park. He debated but in the end cut the dog out as well.

Huh. He hadn't really thought about dogs, but-

His mind shied, and he frowned to himself. No, not dogs. Not animals.

She didn't even like animals. Could never bear to have them in the yard, much less in the house. Dirty things.

"Dirty, dirty things!"

"No. Not dogs. Not animals. They don't matter."

He cut the dog from the shot and dropped it in his trash can.

Just her, then.

Just her.

He worked steadily through the stack of photos until he'd done them all, cutting her meticulously from each shot and tossing the remainder of each photo into the trash.

When he was done, he gently gathered up the pictures of her and carried them into the next room.

The room was large, and the thick concrete walls made it both chilly and something of an echo chamber. He enjoyed both attributes, though his recent work had diminished the echo effect at least a bit.

There was a bright spotlight beaming down onto a stainless-steel table in the center of the room, but he ignored that for the moment. Instead, he went to one of the walls, where a long strip of halogen track lighting on one of the beams above provided smaller spotlights, which were carefully aimed and focused on the precise geometric arrangement of squares of corkboard that lined the entire long wall from concrete floor to open-beamed ceiling.

Everything lined up perfectly.

He had used a laser level. Nifty thing, very helpful.

Each square of corkboard was two feet by two feet, and each was framed by a thick line of black paint that served to separate it from the adjoining squares. Three of the squares were nearly filled with cutouts of women, each individual woman getting her own square, and no two of the squares side by side or even near each other.

"We live alone," he murmured. "We die alone."

He stood back for a moment, then chose a square near the center of the room, again making sure it was isolated from the others. He pulled a wheeled stainless-steel work cart nearer the square, placed his pictures carefully on the shiny surface, and opened a waiting plastic box holding white pushpins.

It took him at least fifteen minutes to place the pictures carefully, to pin them onto the corkboard. He left space, of course, for other pictures. There would be others.

These pictures came first. The hunting.

And then her.

And then pictures of her metamorphosis would join the others on her board. Until at last it was complete. Until she was complete.

He turned finally from his display wall and went to the center of the room, and to the table.

She was secure, of course. He was always careful about that. And the drugs had done their work; she was only now coming out of it, eyes fluttering, trying to focus.

He waited until they did, until she saw him. Watched those eyes widen and grow terrified.

He smiled down at her.

"Hello, sweetheart. We're going to have so much fun."

EVEN WITH DAYLIGHT Savings Time still in effect, the sun was going down and the air had grown decidedly chillier by the time Marc pulled his unmarked cruiser into the driveway of Paris Kincaid's rehabbed farmhouse on the edge of town. He assumed Paris 's BMW was in the garage, since he didn't see it and since she was known to be finicky about leaving it out in the weather.

Dani's Jeep was in the drive ahead of Marc's cruiser. And parked beside it was an innocuous black SUV.

Innocuous, my ass. Why not just use plates that say FED ? Standard Georgia license plates or not, Marc knew a federal vehicle when he was staring at one.

And because he didn't really want to think about why federal agents would be here now, on this particular day unsummoned and, please God, unneeded, he chose to focus instead on the irritatingly neon choice of vehicle.

Even with all the SUVs on the road, there was just something about this one that screamed out what it was. Way too obvious for his taste. Marc never wore a uniform, did not carry his weapon openly if he could avoid it, and had made certain his "unmarked" cruiser looked more like a businessman's nice car than one belonging to a law-enforcement official.

He didn't like to be all that visible while he kept an eye on his town; his might be a political position in some minds, but not in his, and he probably knew more about what went on in Venture than any sheriff before him could have claimed.

Not that it was always a pleasure to be so well informed.

Like now. Knowing that at least one citizen of Venture had died horribly and they had so far found only pieces of her made his stomach churn in a way his chief deputy would have recognized. The difference was that Jordan could get physically sick and pretty much rid himself of the poisons-and sleep like a baby tonight.

Marc would be having nightmares for weeks.

Assuming he could even sleep.

Dani met him on the front porch, her face pale and drawn, the earlier worry now even more obvious. "I'm sorry," she said immediately. "When we talked before, in town, I didn't know."

"You knew something." It wasn't-quite-an accusation.

"Something. But not that. What I knew-what I know or think I know-hasn't happened yet."

Marc considered that briefly, then shrugged it off to be dealt with later. Right now he had to be concerned with what had happened, not what might. "When you called a few minutes ago, you knew."

"Because somebody told me. Come in, Marc. There are people here you need to meet."

Feds. But why come like this? Why so … unofficially? He didn't budge. "So you said. What people?"

Dani didn't seem surprised or put out by his stubbornness, and answered readily. "John Garrett, for one. You've probably heard of him."

"I've heard he's a very wealthy man and a very powerful one. I don't know what the hell he'd be doing in Venture."