“You couldn't have prevented this from happening,” he said. “But you may be able to help her now.”
“In what way? By relieving my every conversation with her? Trying to pick out clues to a crime she couldn't have known would be committed against her? That's how I spent my afternoon. I would rather have spent the day poking myself in the eye with a needle.”
“You didn't get anything off the tapes.”
“Anxiety and depression, culminating with a row with Rob Marshall that could have me reading want ads soon.”
“You're pushing your luck there, Kate.”
“I know, but I can't seem to help it. He knows just how to punch my buttons. What do you have for me to do? Could I stretch it into a new career?”
“It's your old career. I brought you copies of the victimologies. I keep having the feeling that I'm looking right at the key we need and not seeing it. I need fresh eyes.”
“You have all of CASKU and Behavioral Sciences at your disposal. Why me?”
“Because you need to,” he said simply. “I know you, Kate. You need to do something, and you're as qualified as anyone in the Bureau. I've forwarded everything to Quantico, but you're right here, and I trust you. Will you take a look?”
“All right,” she answered, for exactly the reason he'd said: because she needed to. She'd lost Angie. She'd lost Melanie Hessler. If there was something she could do to try to balance that out, she would.
“Let me put some clothes on.” She pulled the chenille throw around her as she sat up.
Quinn scowled. “I knew there'd be a downside.”
Kate gave him a wry smile, then went to her desk, where the light was blinking on the answering machine. She was a vision in the amber glow of the desk lamp, her hair flame red, the curve of her back a sculptor's dream. It made him ache just to look at her. How incredibly lucky he was to get a second chance.
A petulant voice whined from the machine, “Kate, it's David Willis. I
Kate hit the button to forward to the next message. “If they were all like him, I'd get a job at Wal- Mart.”
The next message was from the leader of a businesswoman's group, asking her to speak at a meeting.
Then next a long silence.
Kate met Quinn's sober stare with one of her own. “I had a couple of those last night. I thought they might be Angie. I wanted to believe it might be.”
Or it might be whoever had Angie, Quinn thought. Smokey Joe. “We need to put a trap on your phone, Kate. If he's got Angie, he's got your number.”
He could see that hadn't occurred to her. He saw the flash of surprise followed by annoyance with herself for having missed it. But of course Kate wouldn't think of herself as a possible victim. She was strong, in control, in charge. But not invulnerable.
Quinn got up from the couch and went to her, still naked, and put his arms around her.
“God, what a nightmare,” she whispered. “Do you think she could still be alive?”
“She could be,” he said, because he knew Kate needed to hear it. But he also knew that she was as aware of the odds and the horrible possibilities as he was. She knew as well as he did Angie DiMarco might still be alive, and that they might have been kinder hoping she was not.
The words cut at him. The music clawed at his senses. He played the tape anyway. Letting it hurt, needing to feel.
Peter sat in his office, the only light coming in through the window, just enough to turn black to charcoal, gray to ash. The anxiety, the guilt, the longing, the pain, the need, the emotions he could seldom grasp and never express, were trapped inside him, the pressure building until he thought his body would simply explode and there would be nothing left of him except fragments of tissue and hair stuck to the walls and the ceiling and the glass of the photographs of him with the people he had deemed important in his life in the last decade.
He wondered if any part of him would touch the pictures of Jillie crowded down into one small corner of the display. Out of the way, not calling any attention. Subtle shame—of her, of his failure, his mistakes.
Dark pieces of a disturbing picture he didn't want anyone to see.
The surge of shame and rage was like acid in his veins.
The sound of the phone was like a razor slicing along his nerves. He grabbed the receiver with a trembling hand.
“Hello?”
“Da-ddy, Da-ddy, Da-ddy,” the voice sang like a siren. “Come see me. Come give me what I want. You know what I want. I want it now.”
He swallowed hard at the bile in his throat. “If I do, will you leave me alone?”
“Daddy, don't you love me?”
“Please,” he whispered. “I'll give you what you want.”
“Then you won't want me anymore. You won't like what I have in store. But you'll come anyway. You'll come for me. Say you'll come.”
“Yes,” he breathed.
He was crying as he hung up, tears scalding his eyelids, burning his cheeks, blurring his vision. He opened the
