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been cheating. Although she had been dating someone else, which Dugan could have perceived as cheating.
    No. This kill was personal, meant to get revenge against him.
    Blackpaw’s theory nagged at him. He wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t at least consider the possibility that the man she’d been dating, Paul Belsa, could have killed her for some reason and made it look like Dugan.
    Belsa could have somehow gained access to the police files or read the trial transcripts and learned the details.
    Acting on instinct, he looked him up on Google. He clicked the link to the first website and information about Belsa’s business filled the screen, a list of international commercial real estate deals that were impressive.
    That must have been how Marie met him, through the real estate office where she used to work.
    His pulse drumming, Miles punched Belsa’s name into the police database and ran a check on him, but nothing showed. Not even a parking ticket.
    That seemed odd, but not odd enough to paint him as a murder suspect. Besides, what motive would he have for killing Marie?
    Wiping sweat from his brow, he closed her file, then focused on Dugan. The profiler insisted that understanding Dugan’s past would help them understand his motives and catch him. So far, it hadn’t worked. And he didn’t want to understand why the man would butcher women.
    But if he had to get inside his head to catch him, he’d damn well do it.
    Next he skimmed the interviews with Dugan. Dugan had been smooth, slick, confident, almost in-their-faces with the fact that he was smarter than the law. He also hadn’t indicated any animosity toward women, which Miles had expected to come through. No strict religious upbringing, which sometimes was the case with offenders of this type.
    In fact, according to Dugan, he’d had the perfect family. A stay-at-home mother, devoted father, and he was a single child who they’d doted on. His mother had died of cancer ten years before and his father had been killed in a car accident. Neither event appeared to have triggered Dugan’s killing spree.
    So what had set the man off?
    A scraping sound jarred him from his thoughts, and Miles went to the window and looked outside. No cars, no animals in the yard...no one that he could see. But still, he felt as though someone was out there.
    The scraping sound echoed again, and he frowned, then realized it was just a tree branch blown against the glass. Suddenly, another sound broke the quiet.
    Thrashing. Something hit the floor. A cry.
    Timmy.
    His heart jumped to his throat, and he raced into his son’s room. The night-light he’d installed glowed softly, allowing him just enough light to see that there wasn’t an intruder.
    But Timmy was thrashing in the bed, whimpering and crying, fending off the monsters in his sleep.
    Miles swallowed back the pain the sight stirred, then lowered himself on the bed beside his son and shook him gently. Timmy jerked awake, his eyes full of terror.
    “It’s all right, sport, I’m here.”
    Timmy whimpered again, a raw sound that tore at Miles, and Miles stretched out beside him and pulled him against his chest. “I won’t let anything else hurt you, Timmy. Not ever again.”
    His son’s tears dampened his shirt. Or maybe it was his own.
    Miles didn’t know and he didn’t care.
    He’d do anything to take away Timmy’s nightmares. Only he didn’t know if he could.
    And that scared him more than anything.
    * * *
    J ORDAN KEPT AN EYE OUT for anyone suspicious as she and Timmy entered the barn to saddle horses for their evening ride. All week she’d been on edge.
    The night she’d awakened to the opened window still haunted her.
    Who had been inside her cabin? The man who’d killed Timmy’s mother? Was he here on the BBL?
    Or what if it was one of the B-2-8s?
    Surely they hadn’t found her here. Besides, she and Brody had both checked the boys’ records for affiliations to the gang and found nothing.
    Timmy