trek back there. Maybe both of them.”
“I know I’ve been there at least once,” Stella said. “I rarely forget anything, especially somewhere I’ve bouldered.”
“It’s possible you weren’t bouldering,” Sam pointed out. “If there are two of them, they might be trad climbing. Or sports climbing. Look at the shadows. They’re carrying rope.”
Stella didn’t like climbing with rope. That was a well-known fact among her friends. She could do it, but she didn’t like it. She preferred to solve the problems bouldering presented. She was a solitary climber. The risks were her own. “This particular place is very remote, Sam. If someone is working it, my guess is it’s someone’s long-term project. He’s been working on it for weeks, maybe longer, but that’s just a guess.”
She pressed her hand to her forehead. “This is so frustrating.”
Sam caught her wrist and pulled her hand down, keeping possession of it. “You’re driving yourself crazy, Stella. You have to let this go for a little while. You’ve done everything you can do for now. Tomorrow night, you’ll get a bigger glimpse of the rock and that will hopefully jog your memory. If not, then when we show all these drawings to the others, one of them will recognize the place. Always, on the fifth night, you get a much clearer vision.”
“He’s been killing the very next day. He doesn’t wait one or two nights like the other killers. He’s too eager.”
Sam’s thumb slid up and down over the back of her hand in a little caress as he pressed her palm over his heart. “The moment we know the location, we can drive out there. What’s more natural than you practicing rope climbing? Especially where we know no one else is around? The killer is interrupted and we find out who he is.”
Something in his voice made her heart stutter and then accelerate. There was no real inflection. His tone was soft, gentle even, so Sam. She turned her head, her eyes meeting his.
“Sam.”
“What is it, sweetheart?”
He brought her hand to his mouth and scraped his teeth over the pads of her fingers, igniting a million fiery nerve endings, nearly distracting her. She took a deep breath.
“Once we know who he is, we have to talk to Griffen.”
His gaze didn’t shift from hers. He looked at her steadily, his teeth biting down. Her stomach turned over and her sex clenched.
“What exactly are we going to say to Griffen, Stella? What proof do we have? There’s no way to convict him.”
“Sam, you can’t go after him.”
He didn’t say anything, he just looked at her.
She shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t.”
“Sweetheart, what other choice is there? We can’t let him keep killing people. Once we know who he is, anyone he kills after that is on us. The cops can’t arrest him without proof. You know that. They need enough for a conviction. They don’t have anything on him and they aren’t going to get it. He’s too intelligent. They would have to wait for him to kill. Then he’d have to make mistakes during his kills.”
“You can’t.”
“It’s what I do.”
“Not anymore. You aren’t in that life. You came here to find a different life and you’ve found it, Sam. It would be different if it was self-defense, but it isn’t. And don’t you dare set yourself up so he comes after you. I mean it.”
“He can’t live, Stella.” Same steady tone. Gentle. Patient. He didn’t look away from her, not even for a moment.
She framed his face with her hands. “Honey, you have to listen to me. We can’t be judge, jury and executioner. We don’t have that kind of authority.”
“I do.”
“Not anymore.”
“I have it. I’ve chosen not to use it. We can’t let him continue.”
“What then? You go to jail?”
“Please, Stella. I can arrange an ‘accident’ just as well as this guy.”
“I’m not sacrificing you for him or for anyone else. We have to think of another way,” Stella insisted, and leaned into him to brush kisses over his mouth to prevent him from arguing with her.
She had no idea what it would do to him to have to kill a friend. He’d gotten out of that business. Maybe he was slower than he had been. He might hesitate. Even if he did kill the serial killer and the body disappeared, or his death was deemed an accident, what would that do to Sam? He had finally come to terms with his past. He didn’t need to start all over again. And