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she’s become a threat to someone. A very specific threat to a very specific someone. And I’m finding it difficult to believe that would be wholly unconnected to our investigation these last weeks.”
    “It doesn’t seem likely.”
    “No. It doesn’t.”
    “If nothing else, the shooter could have been following you two as you pursued the investigation. Under orders not to do anything until…”
    “That is the question, isn’t it? Until what? Maybe… somewhere along the way, through some action or simply by her presence, Hollis became too much of a liability to the killer. And yet she has some of the least-invasive, least-threatening abilities. She’s a medium and a self-healer, and she sees auras. Where’s the threat in any of that?”
    “Something we can’t know until we find out who—or what—she threatens.”
    Miranda drew a deep breath and then allowed it to escape, misting in front of her face. “Yeah. And in the meantime, we have these murders to investigate.”
    “That we do.”
    “While we keep Hollis safe.”
    “Might be easier just to take the shooter out.”
    “Easier, but probably not the right call. Take him out and chances are somebody else will be sent to do the job. Somebody we might not see until too late. At least this guy is an enemy we’ve spotted, one we can keep an eye on.”
    “True. So we watch him? Stick close?”
    “Like white on rice. And, Roxanne—be careful. Be very careful. You and Gabe both.”
    “Copy that. Get some rest tonight, will you? All you guys are running on fumes, and that is not a good thing.”
    “I know.”
    “You have guns. Dangerous things in sleep-deprived hands.”
    “And you’ve made your point.”
    “Good. We’ll watch tonight. Time enough tomorrow to try to figure things out.”
    “I hope you’re right,” Miranda said.
    “That you’ll figure things out?”
    “That we have time enough to do it.”
    F or a long time now, Diana hadn’t needed sedatives to sleep, but she still required time to wind down and something boring to occupy her mind while her body gradually relaxed and her nearly ever-present guard came down. The usual remedies, like a hot bath or shower and glass of warm milk, didn’t do much for her.
    For her, either a few games of solitaire—the old-fashioned way, with actual cards—or a boring documentary on TV tended to work more often than not.
    On this particular night, it was “not.” Weary though she was, nothing seemed to work.
    Her room in the B&B, one of only three doubles with two queen-sized beds, looked out onto a pretty little courtyard at the rear of the building. It was pleasant and comfortable, and since each guest room was a suite with its own tiny sitting area and generous bathroom, and there were eight of the suites, each agent had his or her own space. That was not a little thing, they had discovered, to have some room and privacy during an investigation. It provided at least the illusion of normalcy.
    Most of the time.
    And it helped. Most of the time.
    But Diana didn’t think the problem tonight was her surroundings. She’d been on edge since she and Quentin joined this investigation a couple of weeks before, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because this was the first real SCU case she’d been assigned, and she was still uncertain of her training and abilities.
    Maybe it was because her relationship with Quentin was still tentative and wary.
    Maybe it was the case itself, twisted and depressing as serial-murder investigations tended to be. With little evidence and few leads, she had the hollow feeling they were pretty much chasing their own tails, waiting for a break in the case that might never happen, while viciously murdered and tortured victims were being cast aside like garbage and contemptuously left for them to find.
    Contemptuously?
    It was an easy guess, she decided, requiring no particular skill as a profiler—which she wasn’t. But she had begun reading up on the subject, as