Fear the Dark by Kay Hooper Page B

stuff.”
    â€œI was told the same thing,” Dante admitted.
    â€œSo . . . what do you think he left out about this case?”
    Dante hesitated, then said, “From all I’ve heard, we probably won’t know whatever it is. Until we fall over it.”
    â€œOr into it,” Robbie said.
    â€œYeah,” Dante agreed somewhat hollowly. “Or into it.”
    â€”
    HE NEVER MOVED until it got dark. Never came out.
    The darkness was what fueled him, fed him. What gave him his power. The darkness allowed him to work.
    He was aware of the hunters, those who belonged here and those who had come to join the hunt. They didn’t disturb him.
    He had the darkness.
    The weapons they wielded were puny by comparison.
    They just didn’t know that. Not yet.
    He passed by his Collection on the way out, all of them still and silent behind the bars.
    In the darkness.
    His Collection that was not . . . quite . . . complete. He needed to hunt again. Tonight, in the dark, he needed to hunt. To choose his prey.
    And then decide when and how to take her.
    â€”
    SAMANTHA CLOSED THE take-out box that had held a rather good dinner and pushed it away, saying absently, “That Diner guy is a really good cook.”
    Jonah, sitting on the other side of the round table from Sam, had closed his own box some time before and was staring at the evidence board with the timeline. In an equally absent tone, he said, “Yeah, he really is. Listen, does anybody else think there’s something weird about having a timeline when something at most of the abduction sites messes with time?”
    â€œWe don’t know that’s what’s happening,” Robbie objected, still working on her supper. “It’s what
seems
to be happening.” She waved her fork for emphasis.
    The chief turned his gaze to her. “Do you have another explanation?”
    â€œI don’t have an explanation at all. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She looked at Lucas. “You’ve been at this the longest, right? Can you explain it?”
    â€œNo, lost time is a new one on me, except for time lost during a blackout. None of us have blacked out, so that explanation won’t fly. But most of us in the SCU have dealt with things we couldn’t explain—at the time. If you can’t explain a thing, leave it and look at the case another way. Very often, the pieces don’t seem to fit together until you have them all. Then they fit. Then the puzzle makes sense.”
    â€œVictimology?” Sam suggested. She had been talked out of touching any items belonging to the victims for the time being, as requested by her husband, who wanted to “use our brains before the extra senses.”
    He hadn’t fooled anyone, including his wife. He’d wanted to give her more time to recover from the strange collapse earlier in the day, to get some food into her system. And to give them all time to become more familiar with the facts—such as they were—of the disappearances.
    Luke nodded an agreement with her suggestion. “We have an energy signature we can’t explain, but not at all the abduction sites. We have missing people, but we don’t know if they’re still alive, or dead. We don’t have a suspect or a motive. The victims are the only thing we have to profile. We have to look for something they all have in common.”
    Recalling the FBI courses he’d attended, Jonah said, “Isn’t most profiling done on the basis of crime sites?”
    â€œNo, it’s a pretty individual thing. You work with what you’ve got. In most cases, the crime scene is apt to provide a lot of information. Other times, especially if you don’t have a crime scene but a dump site, or someone just missing, then you have to concentrate on victims.”
    Samantha said, “To study a hunter, you study his prey.”
    Luke nodded again. “At