“WE DON’T know that Stucky had anything to do with this.” Tully tried to sound convincing. It was obvious he needed to be the objective one. Ever since Ms. Heston had left, Agent O’Dell seemed to be coming apart at the seams. The calm, controlled professional now paced, quick long steps, back and forth. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. Several times they slipped into her jacket, and he knew she was checking her revolver.

“I think it’s time we leave,” Tully said. The house was spotless. Though the master bedroom smelled strongly of ammonia, there was no evidence that anything suspicious had occurred in the house. Least of all, a brutal murder and a violent kidnapping.

“Tess McGowan was the real-estate agent who sold me my house,” O’Dell repeated. “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it?”

He refused to fuel O’Dell’s panic. “Right now there’s nothing substantial to prove Ms. McGowan was abducted. And there’s nothing more we can do here. We need to call it a night. Maybe we can track her down tomorrow.”

“We won’t track her down. He’s taken her.” The quiver was there though she did her best to hide it. “He’s added her to his collection. She may be dead already. Or if she’s not dead, she may be wishing she was,” she added in almost a whisper.

Tully didn’t want to think about Stucky adding to his collection. Buried on his desk he had a bulging file of missing women from across the country. Women who had disappeared in the five months since Stucky’s escape.

The volume wasn’t that unusual. It happened all the time. Some of the women left and didn’t want to be found. Others had been abused by husbands and lovers and chose to disappear. But too many were gone without any explanation, and Tully knew enough about Stucky’s games to pray that none of them in his file were in Stucky’s new collection.

“Look, there’s nothing more we can do tonight.”

“We need to do a luminol test. We can have Keith Ganza bring it and the Lumi-Light, so we can go over the master bedroom.”

“There’s nothing here. There’s absolutely no reason to believe anything happened in this house.”

“The Lumi-Light might show any latent prints. And the luminol will show any blood left in the cracks, any stains we can’t see. He obviously tried to clean things up, but you can’t clean enough to get rid of blood.” It was as if he weren’t there and she was talking to herself.

“We can’t do anything more tonight. I’m exhausted. You must be exhausted.” When she started for the stairs again, he gently grabbed her arm. “Agent O’Dell.”

She wrenched her arm away, turning on him with eyes flashing anger. Then without warning she marched to the door, snapping off lights in her path.

Tully followed her cue before she changed her mind. He ran upstairs and shut off those lights, and when he returned O’Dell was activating the security system. It wasn’t until he locked the door and walked alongside her to his car that he saw her revolver in her hand, dropped at her side but in a tight grip.

Suddenly Tully realized that the hysteria, the frustration, the anger he had witnessed was actually fear. How stupid of him not to have seen it before now. Special Agent Maggie O’Dell was scared to death, not just for Tess McGowan, but for herself, too.