LITMIR.BIZ

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      She was forty-five minutes behind schedule.

      Another person would have foregone the four-mile jog that began each morning. But Charley was all about dedication and routine. Come six o’clock, she was out there, pounding along the thin ribbon of asphalt that threaded its way from one end of the greenbelt to the other. Rain or shine. Only the call of duty arriving in the middle of the night interfered with her schedule.

      Charley shampooed her long blond hair while humming the chorus from the Rodgers and Hammer-stein song, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” There was no man to wash out, not from her hair or her life, but she liked the song. She’d always taken comfort in the familiar.

      Not like her twin sister. Cristine had always been the risk-taker, the one who was willing to rush off into the unknown. The one who hadn’t needed the familiar or the comforting. Charley had been the one who took things slow and easy.

      And she’d been the one who’d survived.

      Not now.

      Charley shook thoughts of her sister away. Had to be the dank weather penetrating her soul. She liked the sunshine better.

      She’d just started to work the lather out of her hair when the phone rang. The chimes identified it to be her cell, not the landline. The sound worked its way through the running water, through her humming.

      Never a dull moment.

      With a sigh, Charley wiped her eyes with her fingertips, shut the water and brought the cell phone down to her ear.

      “Dow.”

      “There’s been another one.”

      Charley froze. All the warmth within the stall seemed to instantly evaporate. She didn’t have to ask another one what, she knew.

      And it sent a chill through her heart.

      The voice on the other end of the receiver belonged to Assistant Director George Kelly’s secretary, Alice Sullivan. The woman was calling on his behalf to inform the special agents assigned to the serial-killer task force that another victim had been claimed by the monster who was laying siege to the Southland.

      Charley pushed back her wet hair from her forehead. Damn it, anyway. “When?”

      “A.D. Kelly said they found the body this morning. He believes she was killed sometime yesterday. He wants to hold a meeting as soon as possible.”

      Yesterday. Sunday. The same day her sister had been killed. The same day all the victims had been killed. She was beginning to hate Sundays.

      But maybe this time there’d be something they could work with, something that would help them finally catch this bastard.

      “Tell him I’m on my way.” Charley looked at her free hand. There were traces of foam on it. “Just got to get the soap out of my hair.”

      “You’re in the shower?”

      Charley could hear the apology hovering in Alice’s throat, ready to leap out. She’d never met anyone so ready to apologize for absolutely everything. Given half a chance, Alice would have apologized that February only had twenty-eight days instead of thirty.

      She cut the other woman off quickly. “We’ve all got to be somewhere, Alice. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

      Traffic allowing, Charley added silently as she pressed the off button.

      With the speed of someone accustomed to living her life on the run, Charley rinsed the stiffening shampoo from her hair and toweled herself dry, all within two minutes of ending her conversation with Alice.

      Wrapped in the damp towel, she opened the bathroom door and promptly tripped over Dakota, who had stretched herself before the threshold like a living, furry obstacle course. Charley braced herself against the doorjamb at the last moment.

      “Dog, this is not the morning to test me. We’ll play when I get home, okay?”

      As if giving her tentative approval to the bargain, Dakota trotted after Charley as she dashed into her small, untidy bedroom. Her next mission was to find something suitable to wear that wasn’t badly in need of a visit to the laundry room. Not the easiest of missions.

      Charley settled on a dark blue skirt and light blue pullover, both of which she yanked over her body. She grabbed her gray jacket, slipped on a pair of high heels, then went for the hardware.

      First, the weapon she wore tucked into the back of her waistband, then the small one that this morning was strapped to her thigh rather than her ankle. No matter how much of a hurry Charley was in, this part of her ritual was precise, methodical. Slow. The fate of Dakota’s next meal depended on it. If she was careless, if she hurried, there might be no one to give the dog her evening meal. And Dakota had been through enough in her lifetime. She had been Cris’s dog first and the transition, after her sister’s murder, had been a difficult one for both her and the animal.

      Dakota followed her to the door, emitting a mournful noise that sounded very much like a whistling wind.

      “Don’t start,” Charley warned.

      She glanced toward the dog’s water and food bowls. Both were full. The teenager she paid to walk Dakota in the afternoon would be by at two o’clock. The dog was taken care of.

      Time was short. Charley knew she should already be in her car. Still, she paused for half a second to squat down beside the German shepherd and give the animal a hug. She loved the contrary beast. They had something in common. They both missed Cris.

      “I’ll be back,” she promised. “And then we’ll laugh, we’ll cry, and one of us will get a big treat.”

      Squaring her shoulders, Charley rose. It was time to leave the shelter of her small apartment and take down the bad guys.

      The realization that they might very well be waiting to take her down never escaped her.

      TRAFFIC WAS UNUSUALLY sluggish this morning, doubling the fifteen-minute trip from her apartment to the Federal Building where the Bureau field office was housed. The annoying deejays on the radio did nothing to lessen the tension that rode along with her in her four-year-old Honda. She kept switching back and forth between three stations with no luck. None played a song she liked.

      Would they catch him this time?

      Would the bastard who had cut short the lives of eleven unsuspecting women finally trip up and leave a clue behind so that they could put him out of everyone else’s misery?

      She wished she could believe that he would, but her customary optimism was in short supply this morning. Maybe it was the rain that was responsible for her less-than-cheery outlook. It had been raining the night she had come back from the part-time job she’d taken only to find her sister dead in the off-campus apartment they shared. Cris, it turned out later, had been the Sunday Killer’s first victim.

      Or, at least, his first known victim, she amended. Who knew if there had been others? Just like who knew why it had been Cris and not she who had been the victim.

      Maybe the killer had made a mistake. Maybe Cris was supposed to live and she was the one who was supposed to have died.

      Don’t go there, Charley. It’s not going to help.

      She could feel her nerves jangling, beginning to fray. If she let them unravel, she wouldn’t be of use to anyone, not her sister, not to the latest victim. Not even to herself. Unraveling was selfish and indulgent, and she didn’t have time for that. Solving this case was all that mattered. She owed it to Cris.

      Charley’s hands tightened on the wheel.

      THE ROAD OPENED UP just as she took a turn for the cluster of modern buildings that made up the Civic Center in the heart of Santa Ana. In the middle, standing slightly taller than the rest, was the Federal Building.

      Turning on her blinker, she merged to the right.

      A

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