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was missing something, that there was a different interpretation.

There wasn’t.

No matter how you sliced it, I was being threatened. Someone had it out for me.

I think I need that other beer.

Chapter 25

NED SINCLAIR SAT behind the wheel of his stolen Chevy Malibu, watching from across the street as John O’Hara returned home.

He watched O’Hara get the mail. He watched him go inside.

Soon the sun would go down, and under the cover of darkness Ned would do what he’d come to do. What he was dying to do.

Outside the open windows of the Malibu he could hear the sound of a sprinkler head on a nearby lawn as it sprayed its water in a slow but steady circle.

Click, click, click, click…

It was the same sound, over and over and over. Relentless. Monotonous.

Music to his ears. As beautiful as a Brahms concerto.

Ned’s memories of being a mathematics professor at UCLA had waned to the point of being only quick, distant flashes now. What little he saw, though, was almost always the same. Equations. Equations everywhere. Those beautiful patterns of numbers filling up every inch of a blackboard, one line after another.

And always he’d be pacing before them—stalking them, really—with chalk in hand. He’d solve one equation and move on to the next, and the next, and the next.

Each one a victim of his genius.

A few minutes after nine, with no more daylight left in the sky, Ned stepped out of the car. Gently closing the door behind him, he glanced left and right to make sure he was alone, not being observed. The sidewalks were clear, there were no oncoming cars. A few porch lights glowed in the distance, but nothing more. Ned was all but invisible.

As though he wasn’t even there.

Slowly, he walked across O’Hara’s front lawn to the side of the house, where there was a small grass pathway between a wooden fence and some hydrangea plants.

He peeked in a bay window along the way, looking for anyone else who might be home, but he was pretty sure O’Hara was alone.

Ned had been parked in front of the house all day. He saw no one else coming or going, which was exactly what he wanted.

Everything was falling into place beautifully. Perfectly. Just as he’d imagined it all those days and nights at the hospital.

Approaching the backyard, Ned began to hear the faint sound of music. He recognized the song immediately. How could he not? His father used to listen to Sinatra all the time.

“The Best Is Yet to Come”? “Strangers in the Night”?

Ned smiled. No.

The song was “Call Me Irresponsible.”

Peeking around the back, Ned got a pleasant surprise. He wouldn’t have to bother getting into the house. O’Hara was sitting outside on his patio. He was drinking a beer.

Ned walked a few steps toward him, emerging from the darkness into the hazy glow of a nearby floodlight.

“Are you John O’Hara?” he asked.

He knew he was, but he wanted to make doubly sure. It was just like an equation. Always check your work. Then check it again. There can be no mistakes here.

O’Hara, startled, sat up quickly in his chair. He cupped a hand over his eyes for a better look at his uninvited guest. Ned Sinclair stared into those eyes.

“Yeah,” O’Hara said. “Who wants to know?”

Ned pulled a gun from inside his Windbreaker, the polished metal of the grip feeling like a big and wonderful piece of chalk in his hand.

“I’m Ned,” he said, taking aim at O’Hara’s head. “And you’re dead.”

Then he pulled the trigger and killed John O’Hara.

Book Two

What’s in a Name?

Chapter 26

THE WORDS PLAYED over and over in the head of a special agent named Sarah Brubaker. “There’s one more out there, and you’ll never find her,” the sick bastard had said. “That poor, poor little girl, she won’t last much longer. She’ll be dead and gone like all the others. She’s probably dead already.”

Agent Brubaker reached up beneath her sweat-soaked blouse. She sliced the straps of her bra with the blade of a Swiss army knife. Unhooking the front clasp, she then pulled the bra out from the bottom of her blouse. She stuffed it in her slacks along with the knife.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Doug Trout, chief of the Tallahassee police department.

“Please get me two rubber bands,” Sarah said, ignoring his question, not to mention his quick peek at the way her blouse hugged the shape of her breasts.

Yep. She knew exactly what she was doing.

Trout disappeared into a supply room a