same model that Sherman Tull was driving when he disappeared.” They stared at each other, disbelief warring with excitement. “Son of a bitch,” Nate said again, his tone slightly awed. He slipped an arm around her waist for a hard hug. “We’ve been wondering what the offender did with the victims’ cars. Could he really be that ballsy?”
The warmth his touch elicited sent an answering shower of sparks through her veins. It suited Risa to blame that on the excitement generated by a possible break in the case. “Does the partial plate match Tull’s vehicle?”
Nate strode quickly back to the table, where he’d left the bulging case file he’d brought downstairs with him. It took several minutes for him to look for the necessary information. She remained where she was. It seemed safer that way.
Finally he looked up, his excitement visibly dimmed. “No. But if we go back to my office, I can access the database to determine who the vehicle belongs to.”
She extracted the tape and helped him pile it along with the others into the large cardboard box he’d carried them in. Then they headed back to Nate’s office. The initial adrenaline from the discovery had subsided, leaving Risa with an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. She needed sleep. And more than that, she needed distance. Spending long hours penned up with Nate McGuire was playing havoc with her normal good sense.
And good sense dictated never, ever getting personally involved while on a case.
While he accessed the information, she sat down, uncertain how much longer she could remain upright.
Finally Nate looked up from the computer screen, his expression pensive. “The state of Pennsylvania issued fifty-seven plates beginning with those three digits to owners of 2007 or 2008 Ford Five Hundreds. Half of them list Philadelphia or the immediate surrounding area as their address.”
There was more. Something in his voice alerted her. “And?”
“There was a local report of stolen plates with the same three digits made just last week. The owner is seventy-two and rarely uses her vehicle. Keeps it in the parking garage for the apartment complex she lives in. She hasn’t driven the car in over a month.”
They looked at each other in mutual understanding. “Which would have given the UNSUB ample opportunity to switch the stolen plates to Sherman Tull’s vehicle.”
The fire was licking up a stone wall, engulfing the figure chained to it. The body gilded by the flames was almost silent as it writhed in inhuman agony, only muffled sounds that had to be screams escaping it. The watcher stood over the scene, elevated as if levitating, cavorting nude in a joyous dance as the figure burned.
The watcher bent and spun, releasing something into the air. Once and then again. Each article spun in a speeding arc to land in opposite directions in the tall weeds. Then the watcher resumed his dance, celebrating the death that was taking place below. A picture of triumph and sheer madness.
The moan that wakened her didn’t belong to the victim. It was her own.
Risa sat up, sweating and shaking, her heart racing in her chest like a runner’s after a record-setting sprint. It took long moments to regulate her breathing. To focus on the simple act of hauling oxygen in and out of deprived lungs.
It took far longer to calm her pulse.
She rubbed the perspiration from her face with a hand that that trembled as if with palsy. And made herself, through sheer force of will, consider the details revealed by the newest vision.
There was no rhyme or reason in the way the dreams played out. In one she might be a spectator, in yet another it would be as if she were in the victim’s place suffering their pain.
It was those dreams that took the worst toll on her.
After all of them, she was left to decipher what they meant. How the events unfolded. When they might have happened. Who was involved.
It was the “who” that made it especially difficult to return her breathing to normal.
Because the man engulfed in flames was Detective Mark Randolph.
Sneaky little needles of doubt pierced her then, detracting from her conclusions. The dreams were rarely specific. Her interpretation of them could be erroneous. That had been all too evident in Minneapolis.
Drawing her knees up, she enfolded them with her arms, rocked a little. She’d been to all three scenes. This one was different, she was certain of it. Outside, but not the park where Christiansen had been found. Not the woods that had