found herself holding her breath. Expected the phone to ring and ring endlessly. Or go straight to voice mail.
It did neither. After several rings, a groggy and very pissedoff voice answered. “Who the hell is this?”
Walter Eggers wasn’t dead. Not even close.
Risa clicked off the phone without saying a word. Checked the time. Two thirty A.M. If the Cop Killer were coming for Eggers, it wouldn’t be tonight. It would be dawn in a few hours.
But he was coming. And this time, Risa was going to stop him.
Shutting off the computer, she set it aside. Went to the kitchen and feverishly rifled through drawers. Found what she was looking for when her search elicited a yellow legal pad and pencil in the desk. Flipping the light on, she carried the pad to the kitchen table, sat down, and began to sketch. Slowly at first. Then with growing desperation. Page after page. Images from the dream, in sequence, as much as she could recall.
She didn’t know how long she sat there. Long enough to have her fingers grow cramped and sore. But she didn’t stop, didn’t look up until a small noise startled her. Her gaze flew upward. Found Nate with a shoulder propped against the side of the refrigerator. Watching her with enigmatic eyes.
Everything inside her froze. Deliberately, she set the pencil down. Turned the pad over. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Awhile.”
Which told her absolutely nothing. She slanted a look at the clock. Was shocked that nearly an hour and a half had passed. “I . . . woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Decided to work until I was tired again.”
“Is that what you were doing?”
Her heart started hammering a frantic beat. “I’m a good artist. I try to capture my dreams sometimes. They’re usually about the case I’m involved in.”
“I hear you. It’s hard to turn off our minds, even when we sleep.”
His easy acceptance of her explanation calmed her pulse a bit. Driven to move, she pushed back the chair. Rose. “Which cupboard do you keep your water glasses in?”
In answer, he moved past her to a cupboard next to the sink. Went to the ice water spigot on the fridge and filled the glass. Handed it to her. She took it gratefully, leaning against the counter facing him as she drank.
He had a pair of loose-fitting athletic shorts on. Noticing what he was wearing, and what he wasn’t had her pulse doing a quick stutter. His chest was bare and impressively solid. His arms roped with muscle. The shorts covered him decently, just as the loose fitting T-shirt she’d bought to sleep in covered her. There was no reason to feel like the scene was imbued with a sense of intimacy. It was the hour that lent that feeling. She’d apologize for waking him. They’d return to their rooms. And tomorrow making breakfast would seem routine enough that the memory of this moment would be dispelled.
And then he spoke. “Was it this case you were dreaming about? Or your last one?”
Her heart took one desperate leap and then slowed. Unnaturally so. Her lungs stopped drawing air. The blood halted in her veins. And her voice, when she managed to form words, sounded cracked and harsh. “Been doing a little research, McGuire?”
There was a hint of guilty flush over his cheekbones. But his dark gaze never strayed from hers. “You said it ended badly. The articles I found didn’t give much detail. Enough to figure that the operation to rescue those boys went awry.”
Awry. An anguished laugh almost escaped her. What an innocuous word for the indescribable horror that had been that night. “Yes.” The word was rasped out. “It went awry.”
“And you blame yourself.” The softness of his voice offered understanding where none could be had. None was deserved.
“Because it was my fault.” She set the glass on the counter without drinking from it. She was afraid it would slip from her nerveless fingers. “I led them there. I told them where they could find Tyler Temple. We already had our sights on Martin Volk, the pedophile who’d kidnapped him. The team had his house surrounded. Big piece of property. Shanties and decrepit structures all over it, surrounded by a twelve-foot wooden fence. I suspected Tyler would be in one of those structures.”
But she’d been wrong about that, too. It wouldn’t be the first mistake she’d make that night.
“There was a two-pronged assault. The tactical unit planned to breach the house. I