MAGGIE got up before dawn. She left Nick a scrawled note, apologizing and giving him instructions for setting the alarm. He had said he needed to get back to Boston to prepare for a trial, but she knew he was trying to figure a way out of it. She told him she didn’t want him to jeopardize his new job. What she left out was that she didn’t want him close by for Albert Stucky to hurt.

She called Tully from the road, but when he answered his door he didn’t look as if he expected her. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt and was barefoot. He hadn’t shaved yet, and his short hair stuck up. He let her in without much of a greeting.

“I’m brewing coffee. Would you like a cup?”

“No, thanks.” Why did he not feel the same urgency she was feeling?

He disappeared into what she thought must be the kitchen. Instead of following, she sat down on a stiff sofa that looked and smelled brand-new.

A girl wandered into the room rubbing her eyes and not bothering to acknowledge Maggie. She wore only a short nightshirt and her steps were those of a sleepwalker. The girl plopped into an oversize chair, found a remote between the cushions and turned the TV on, flipping through the channels but not paying much attention. Maggie hated feeling that she had gotten the entire household out of bed.

“Emma, shut the TV off, please,” Tully instructed after only a glance at the screen. “This is Special Agent Maggie O’Dell. Agent O’Dell, this is my ill-mannered daughter, Emma.”

“Hi, Emma.”

The girl looked up and manufactured a smile that looked neither genuine nor comfortable.

“Emma, if you’re up for the morning, please put on some regular clothes.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” She pulled herself out of the chair and wandered out.

“Sorry about that,” he said while he skidded the chair Emma had vacated around to face Maggie rather than the TV. “Sometimes I feel like aliens abducted my real daughter and transplanted this impostor.”

He sipped his coffee, wrapping both hands around the mug and taking his time. Then, as though he remembered why they were here in his living room on a Sunday morning, he stood up abruptly, set down the mug down and started digging through the piles on the coffee table. Maggie couldn’t help wondering if there was any part of Agent Tully’s life that he kept organized.

He pulled out a map and started spreading it out.

“From what you told me, I’m figuring this is the area we’re talking about.”

She took a close look at the spot highlighted in fluorescent yellow.

He continued, “If Rosen was lost, it’s hard telling exactly where he was, but if you cross the Potomac using this toll bridge, there is this piece of land about five miles wide and fifteen miles long that hangs out into the river. The bridge passes over the top half. The map shows no roads, not even unpaved ones down in the peninsula part. It looks like it’s all woods, rocks, probably ravines. In other words, a great place to hide.”

“And a difficult place to escape from.” Maggie sat forward, hardly able to contain her excitement. “So when do we leave?”

“Hold on.” Tully sat down. “We’re doing this by the book, O’Dell.”

“Stucky strikes hard and fast and then disappears. He’s already killed three women and possibly kidnapped two others. And those are just the ones we know about.”

“I know,” he said much too calmly.

“He could pick up and leave any day, any minute. We can’t wait for court orders and county police cooperation or whatever the hell you think we need to wait for.”

He sipped his coffee. “Are you finished?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and sat back. She should never have called Tully. She knew she could talk Rosen into assembling a search team, though the area was across the river, which meant not only a different jurisdiction but also a different state.

“First of all, Assistant Director Cunningham is getting in touch with the Maryland officials.”

“You called Cunningham? Oh, wonderful.”

“I’ve been trying to find out who owns the property. It used to be the government, which may account for that weird chemical concoction in the dirt. Probably something they were testing. It was purchased by a private corporation about four years ago, something called WH Enterprises. I can’t find out anything about it, no managing CEO, no trustees, nothing.”

“Since when does the FBI need permission to hunt down a serial killer?”

“We can’t send in a SWAT team when we don’t know what’s there. Even the mud simply means that Stucky may have been in this area. Doesn’t prove he’s still there.”

“Goddamn it, Tully! This is the only lead we have, and you need to analyze it to death!”

“Don’t you want to know what you might be walking into this time, Agent O’Dell?” She knew he was referring to last August when she went running off to find Stucky in an abandoned Miami warehouse. She hadn’t told anyone else. She had been following up on a hunch then, too. Only Stucky had been waiting for her with a trap. Was it possible he’d be expecting her again?

“So what do you suggest?”

“We wait,” Tully said as though waiting was no big deal. “We find out what’s there. The Maryland authorities can fill us in. We find out who owns the property. Who knows? We certainly don’t want to go onto private property if there’s some white supremacist group holed up with an arsenal that could blow us off the planet.”

“How long are we talking?”

“A day. Two at the most.”

“By now you should know what Stucky can do in a day or two.” She calmly walked to the door and left, allowing the slamming door to enunciate what she thought about waiting.

Tully listened to O’Dell slam her car door and then gun the engine, squealing the tires—taking out her anger on his driveway. He could understand her frustration. He wanted Stucky caught just as badly as O’Dell. But he knew this was personal. Three women brutally murdered simply because they had met Maggie O’Dell.

He got up and wandered over to the coffee table. He found the file folder and flipped it open: a police report, a copy from a DNA lab, a plastic bag with a pinch of metallic-flecked dirt stapled to an evidence document, a medical release form from Riley’s Veterinary Clinic.

Last night Manx had given him the file marked Rachel Endicott. Now, from the looks of the evidence and a recent DNA lab report, even Manx had been able to figure out that Endicott might have indeed been kidnapped. After seeing how close to the edge O’Dell was this morning, Tully wondered whether or not he should show her the file. Because according to the DNA test, Albert Stucky had not only been in Rachel Endicott’s house, but he’d helped himself to a sandwich and several candy bars. And now there was no doubt in Tully’s mind that Stucky had also helped himself to Endicott.