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  Roarke’s eyes went immediately to the case board behind them, a seven-foot long white board on a standing metal frame taped with clusters of photos, documents, Post-its — everything they knew about Cara Lindstrom. The police sketch that was their only image of her looked down on him: blond and fine-featured, eyes concealed behind big dark sunglasses.

  He forced his gaze away and looked around at his waiting team. “So where are we?”

  He saw a flicker of anger on Epps’ face, and Roarke knew why. He’d been uncharacteristically late, which for him meant he stepped into the briefing at their meeting time of nine on the dot, to avoid being cornered by Epps. It was the same reason he’d taken a different flight back from L.A. Roarke didn’t want to talk to Epps alone, and Epps knowing that made him even more determined to talk to Roarke, and they had been doing this dance for days.

  It would come to a head any moment, now, Roarke knew. But he was not about to talk about that night, two weeks ago, the night he had helped Cara Lindstrom kill ten people. Ten men, to be specific, meth dealers and human traffickers. Ten who needed killing, absolutely no doubt. But even there, that phrase: “Men who needed killing.” In the last month since Roarke had been hunting Cara Lindstrom, thoughts like that were coming into his head with alarming frequency.

  He didn’t need Epps grilling him about it when he had no idea what it meant, himself.

  But for the moment, Epps simply began his report. “All our paperwork on the cement plant bust is in to the L.A. Bureau. They’re continuing the investigation into the trafficking stemming from the plant. At the cement plant, seven arrested, ten dead. At the storage facility, thirteen arrested, four dead.”

  Busts that never would have happened if Cara had not led them out to the desert.

  “And victims released?” Roarke asked.

  Epps’ eyes flicked to meet his briefly. “Nineteen at the cement plant, twenty-five last night.”

  The numbers vibrated in the air between them. Forty-four women and children, victims of sex trafficking.

  Roarke avoided Epps’ eyes. “So we can put our focus on Lindstrom, now. The question is, where is she?”

  Ryan Jones was the first to speak. “I wasn’t there, but from what you’ve laid out, she could be dead, right? A woman shot by the kind of military grade weapon we’re talking about?”

  Agent Singh leaned forward with the grace of a dancer, an earthy and enigmatic presence. She spoke in a musical Anglo-Indian accent. “The L.A. Division has been searching the desert outlying the plant. There have been bodies recovered in the gravel pits on the grounds, in the outlying alluvial area. None of them were Lindstrom’s.”

  Roarke had also checked all nearby hospitals, asking about women admitted with gunshot wounds that night. There had been none.

  “She’s not dead,” Epps said flatly.

  Roarke looked at him.

  “You don’t think she is,” Epps said.

  In fact, Roarke didn’t. The only thing he had to go on was an insane belief that he would simply know in his blood if she had died.

  “I have no clue,” he said without inflection. “But our job is to find her, if she’s out there alive.”

  Only now did he let himself step to the case board. It was divided into three. First, the past. It started on the left hand side of the board with black-and-white photos of unspeakable carnage, the massacre of four members of an All-American, upper-middle class family, stabbed to death in their desert home by a faceless killer the media had christened the Reaper. The slaughter was the third in a series of similar family slayings that took place over a year’s time exactly twenty-five years ago. It was the criminal case that had inspired Roarke’s early obsession with law enforcement: a serial killer who had never been caught, who had disappeared into the realms of legend after the third family had been slaughtered. The Reaper’s killing spree had left only one surviving victim: five-year old Cara Lindstrom.

  That angelic, blond-haired child came out of that bloody night with her throat slashed and her world view shattered into pieces that had reassembled themselves into a woman unlike Roarke had ever encountered before, and had resulted in the carnage depicted in crime scene photos on the right-hand side of the board. A trail of five known male victims killed in three states in a two-year period, and ending with the mass slaughter of the traffickers at the concrete plant two weeks ago. Photos of the victims were pinned to a map of the Western United States: California, Oregon, Utah.

  The middle of the board was blank. After a teenage history of foster homes, group homes and juvenile prison, Cara Lindstrom had disappeared off the map at the age of twenty-one. She’d been invisible for eight years. The team had not found any hint of her location, her name, or any activities whatsoever until the day Roarke had seen her on the sidewalk behind Agent Greer just before his bloody demise. What Cara had done to Greer besides speak to him, naming his crime, was still unclear. What was clear was that Greer had turned, as undercovers sometimes do. He had been using the trafficked women he was sworn to protect, sexually abusing them rather than helping them to safety. Roarke had no idea how Cara could have known this about Greer, and he doubted they would ever be able to prove that murder, if murder was even what anyone could call it. That was the problem with Cara Lindstrom. She was forcing Roarke to come up with new definitions for everything he’d ever believed in.

  But call it murder or call it — whatever —he had seen Cara kill eight men in one night and he had very little doubt that in the weeks to come they would find many, many more bodies to fill up that space in the middle of the board between Cara’s childhood and the bloodshed of two weeks ago.

  Singh was speaking and Roarke turned back into the room to listen. “She is on the Wanted list. Bulletins are out to the agencies throughout the states, as well as in Nevada, Oregon, and Utah. We’ve gotten the usual assortment of useless tips and a few confessions. Not one has checked out so far. The San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s department is putting together a package to take to the District Attorney, to see if there is enough there to charge her.”

  “If we can find her and deliver her,” Epps muttered.

  It was almost always preferable to have local police bring a case rather than federal prosecutors, not just faster: the sentences in non-federal courts were often more harsh. But in this case it was more complicated, being that the trucker whose throat Cara had slashed had a record of sexual assault, and had come after her in the women’s bathroom.

  Singh glanced at Roarke as if she’d heard his thought. “And it will be a difficult case to make, obviously. Any defense attorney will be able to introduce a strong motive of self-defense.”

  “We’ve got her for kidnapping,” Jones said.

  “Also not an easy case to make, under the circumstances.” Singh replied. “My understanding is that Sebastian will never press charges. He and his son are more likely to appear for the defense.”

  Mark Sebastian was a newly divorced father who along with his five-year old son had befriended Cara while they were on vacation in Pismo Beach; she had used the pair of them as both hideout and camouflage after Roarke had picked up her trail. Cara had ended up killing the drug dealer boyfriend of Sebastian’s ex-wife. The dealer had been selling pictures of Jason to a pedophile ring. Another murder on her scorecard; another death not many people would ever lose sleep over.

  Epps was speaking and Roarke forced himself back into the present to listen.

  “We need to get her, and let the prosecutors worry about how to charge her,” Epps said tightly.

  Singh glanced at him without comment and then continued. “One more thing. So far our bulletins are confined to law enforcement agencies. Obviously, we could begin a more public appeal—”

  “No,” Roarke said, before she could finish the sentence.

  His team looked at him.

  “We don’t want the media anywhere near this. A female serial killer?”

  He didn’t have to explain it. Female serial killers w
ere exceedingly rare. There was even an argument to be made that no such thing existed that fit the textbook definition of sexual homicide, murder specifically for sexual gratification. Cara Lindstrom was a killer, the most unusual one Roarke had ever encountered. She hunted and killed brutally and specifically. But psychologically she was more of a vigilante, her victims hand-picked for their crimes against women and especially children: child molesters, sex traffickers, and in one case, a homegrown terrorist who had been plotting to bomb a Portland street fair.

  He spoke into the silence. “We let word leak out about what she’s doing, we won’t be able to take a step without cameras down our throats. It’s too volatile, and a logistical nightmare. I say we do this quickly and quietly, and hope to God the press doesn’t get wind of it.”

  He could see Epps struggling with himself, but finally he nodded reluctantly. “Agreed.”

  Roarke breathed an inner sigh of relief, then took control. “So. Her last known whereabouts are the cement plant. We know that she steals cars for transportation. She has a master key for Hondas at the very least.” He turned to Singh.

  “I have been monitoring reported car thefts in Southern California,” she said in her musical lilt. “There were none that checked out in the Blythe area on the night she disappeared.”

  Roarke nodded. “The most likely scenario is that she took off in a car or a truck she stole from the plant site. Given how she was wounded, I can’t see her getting out of there any other way.” Privately he’d wondered if she might even have taken one of the criminal ring hostage, forced him to drive her out, and disposed of him on the way. He could see it happening in a heartbeat.

  Epps chimed in. “None of the arrestees are admitting to a vehicle being stolen that night, but why would they? They’re not cooperating on anything else, and it was probably stolen to begin with.” He glanced to Roarke. “She’s probably already ditched that vehicle, though.”

  Roarke looked toward Singh. “Keep on the stolen cars reports. It paid off for us before. As to where she would go from there… Singh, I’d like your take.”

  Singh looked grave. “I believe that Cara has several practically perfect IDs. She’s demonstrated that she knows how to set them up. Unfortunately the name she gave the Sebastians was not attached to any existing identity papers or financial accounts; it appears to have been a name she invented on the spot. This woman knows how not to be found. And she has been hiding not for mischief, but for survival. If she is alive, she may well have gone somewhere that she has set up as a safe haven long ago, quite possibly years.”

  “And we know she’s got plenty of money to get lost with,” Jones added. Cara had come into over a million dollars of insurance money from the deaths of her family. The money, plus substantial interest, was hers the day she turned twenty-one, and she promptly disappeared from all public and financial records.

  Epps’ face was stony. “I say Mexico. No one’s keeping track of anything down there. Anyone can set up a new life. That night at the cement plant we were two hours from Mexicali, tops. Why wouldn’t she just cross the border?”

  Roarke glanced toward the police sketch of Cara mounted on the corkboard: the delicate features behind sunglasses, the light and luxuriant hair. He willed himself to look away. “A blonde — that blonde — in Mexico? Trying to stay hidden?” He shook his head. “She knows the U.S. The Western U.S. That’s her comfort zone. She’s not going to be down there dodging federales and narcos.”

  “Why not? That seems right up her alley,” Epps said tensely. “Take a bunch of the fuckers out. If she’s after bad guys—” He stopped, remembering himself. “If she thinks she’s after bad guys,” he qualified, too late, “that would be a good place to start.”

  “No doubt,” Roarke said. “But I don’t see it.”

  Epps stared at him hard, and Roarke knew that he was revealing himself. “You don’t see it,” his man said softly. “So what do you see?”

  Roarke locked his eyes for a beat. “If it were me? I’d go east.” He did not know if he meant it at all. “Get out of her known hunting grounds.”

  “She doesn’t know what we think her hunting grounds are,” Epps pointed out. But Roarke suspected she did. In the little contact he’d had with her, she seemed to read him well enough to figure some things out.

  “I only said it’s what I would do. If I knew what she would do, I’d say that.” Roarke was aware his voice was far too taut for the circumstances.

  “We’ve got less than two weeks to another full moon,” Epps said, glancing at the board, at the moon chart where Cara’s killings were chronicled. Most had taken place on nights when the moon was full. It was a not-uncommon characteristic of serial killers; the Reaper, the killer of Cara’s family, had also killed during full moons.

  “I’m not so sure we have as much to worry about now,” Roarke said aloud. From almost the beginning of Roarke’s hunt for Cara Lindstrom, he had been consulting with his old mentor Chuck Snyder, a legendary profiler from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, and they had discussed this point in depth. “Snyder was very clear that the violent decompensation Cara was experiencing last month was triggered by the twenty-five year anniversary of her family’s deaths.” Anniversaries of traumatic events were known triggers for unstable and violent people. “After the bloodshed of that night, he thinks it’s unlikely she would be feeling the same kind of compulsion to kill again so soon.”

  “Got it out of her system?” Jones suggested.

  Roarke paused, and qualified, “For now.” Most serial killers had a rhythm of killing that included a long build-up of fantasizing about a kill before the actual kill, and then a “cooling-off” period after the frenzy of the kill. Not that Cara, or any woman, could easily or even usefully be compared to male patterns of sexual homicide. The motive for women to kill was completely different, and there was simply not enough data available to develop a useful profile.

  “But we don’t know,” Epps said.

  “No. We don’t know.”

  Singh spoke up, with that serene calm that always made Roarke’s blood pressure lower a few notches just listening to her, no matter how gruesome the subject matter. “I am monitoring VICAP for all killings of adult men by slashed or slit throat. I also have a nationwide bulletin out asking for reports of such crimes from local law enforcement.”

  “But there have been no more incidences in the country in the last two weeks?” Roarke asked, feeling himself tensing as he waited for the response.

  “Nothing in which the perpetrator was not immediately arrested.” Singh answered. She reached for a stack of files, the gold armbands she always wore glinting on her wrists. “I am watching for all new cases. I also have a list from VICAP of all killings of adult men by slashed or slit throat from 2001 on. All states. And a nationwide bulletin out asking for reports from local law enforcement, previous cases that may not have made it into the VICAP database.”

  “How many cases on that list?”

  “Just under two thousand.” The temperature of the room dropped.

  Singh acknowledged the reaction with a nod as she brushed her thick fall of dark hair back from her shoulders. “Most will be eliminated. I will start with the western states and work my way through it.”

  “See you next century,” Jones muttered.

  “You can start by working with just the kills that correspond to the full moons,” Roarke said.

  “Yes, the moon is the first sign,” Singh agreed. “And I will ask local officers I speak with about the turtleneck or high collar.” Cara wore high collars to conceal the old scar on her neck. “I am also narrowing the field by victim profile, looking only at sex offenders or men who have had sex offenses alleged against them.”

  “We don’t know that’s the only killing she’s done,” Epps said, with a dangerous edge.

  “No, that’s right, there was also the mad bomber planning on killing hundreds of people on a single day,” Roarke said, and as he stared across the ro
om at Epps, tension crackled between the two men.

  “It is a tendency,” Singh said calmly, and Roarke had the sensation she’d just stepped in between him and Epps, as distinctly as if she’d done it physically. “Using a victim profile merely narrows the field for my initial search.”

  Roarke was on his feet, walking the room. He never could stay in a chair for long. He focused on the board, that empty middle section.

  “So Singh will be looking to fill in anything she can find on these years.”

  And then he looked at the middle chart, the teen years, the bleak list of Cara’s residences: the foster homes, the group homes, the juvenile prison in Southern California. At the top was the photo he’d found of her in one of those case files, a slim blond waif of thirteen with enormous and watching eyes, too intense to be called beautiful, too mesmerizing to look away from.

  “There,” Roarke said, and put his hand on the list pinned to the board below the photo. “These are the people who knew her. The only places she ever stayed long enough for anyone to know her were the places she was confined. These are real people from those years who had prolonged interaction with her. During that time she may have dropped clues to what she did after she disappeared. Places she talked about, people she knew whom she may have sought out.”

  It was a slim thread, but it was something.

  There was another thread he didn’t mention: the real possibility that her first kill had been when she was only fourteen years old, the year she was released from nearly three years in juvenile detention. A former counselor at the group home where she’d been arrested for assault had been found with his throat cut. Roarke had not put that fact into the case file. He hadn’t let himself consider why.

  “It’s someplace to start,” he continued aloud. “Interview the family members—” he stepped to the board and read names: “Patrick and Erin McNally, the cousins she lived with briefly after the deaths of her family. They would have been too young to remember her at the time of the massacre, but possibly she visited her aunt over the years. Families talk, especially about black sheep. And there’s the aunt’s second husband, Trent, the one who left the family after five-year old Cara came to live with them.”