Deathscape by Dana Marton Page A

required cold ruthlessness. She didn’t fit a killer profile, he thought for the dozenth time. But would she allow herself to be dominated by one? After all, she let her father call the shots regarding her daughter.
    Could she be manipulated or forced into some sort of twisted relationship with Blackwell? Did Blackwell need an audience? Mementoes of his crimes? Was he using her for that?
    But none of her paintings, other than the one of Jack, were of Blackwell’s known victims. A lot of those crimes had been solved, and he couldn’t find cracks, no matter how hard he’d looked, in the convictions.
    Nothing made sense.
    Frankly, her tale of dark visions came closest to an explanation, the only possibility he refused to consider.
    He thought about the absurdity of her claims all the way back to Broslin, with two batches of grossly misshapen cookies on the passenger seat.
    He wanted to give the cabin in the woods another look.
    He found nobody there this time, so he picked the lock, eased inside, inch by careful inch, ducking low and watching for a trap.
    He looked through the arsenal, opened the boxes—ammunition and water bottles, no instruments of torture, no Taser, no human remains. He could see nothing he could tie to Blackwell, dammit.
    * * *
    Ashley looked at the small chunk of cheese and wilted celery in her nearly empty refrigerator. She was going to have to brave the grocery store tonight. She needed bread and milk, cold cuts, some microwave dinners for herself when Maddie wasn’t here, and the makings for a healthy, homemade meal for her daughter tomorrow.
    Her father and Maddie were coming, finally. Which meant she couldn’t put off the shopping trip any longer. As much as she dreaded the store, the thrill of seeing her daughter again gave her strength to do it. Their way-too-brief visits were the only thing that kept her going.
    She closed the fridge door, then tidied up the old-fashioned tile countertop a little. Not that her small kitchen was messy. She’d already mopped the ancient glazed-brick floor. Once she filled the fridge and her plain oak cabinets, she’d be ready for visitors.
    She’d go shopping after midnight; by then the store was usually deserted. She wasn’t looking forward to sleep anyway. The night before, she’d dreamt of Detective Sullivan, had awoken with a start, then dreamed of him again. And again, variations of the same dream over and over. Always the dream started with him coming for her. Sometimes he took her to jail. Sometimes he made love to her.
    She really was going crazy now, she thought as her phone rang. Her father.
    “ I just heard about the incident on your property. Good God, Ashley, why didn’t you tell me?”
    Her jaw clenched; a headache blinked awake in the back of her head and quickly intensified. “It was no big deal.”
    “ A Detective Sullivan came to see me about a serial killer.”
    “ They don’t know that for sure. And the…victim is fine. It’s over.”
    “ I don’t know if I feel comfortable bringing Maddie out there.”
    Her throat tightened. “But I didn’t see her last weekend either.”
    “ You shouldn’t be out there alone.”
    Her head pounded too hard suddenly to point out that Broslin rarely had any violent crime, while there were half a dozen murders on the average day in Philadelphia where her father lived.
    Nausea rolled in her stomach. Her palms began to sweat, and with a shock, she realized what it meant. She knew what was coming.
    So damned unfair.
    She squeezed her eyes shut. She shouldn’t have another stupid vision. She’d saved a man’s life. Shouldn’t that have bought her some sort of salvation?
    She fought back her rising desperation and focused on keeping her voice steady. “The police and the FBI were here for days on end. They checked every ditch and bush.” She stared out the living room window into the moonlit night but barely saw the road or the fields on the other side. “Everything is perfectly