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How the hell did he approach his victims so quietly that they had no time to scream or fight back? How did he vanish afterward without a single witness? And why was he showing up at her crime scene? To gloat or to screw with her head?

Calderon should have been rattled. Instead, he navigated the cars and people with ease, not a care in the world.

Skye pulled out two cars behind him, her gray Tacoma blending into the flow of Pacific Northwest commute traffic. Her pulse hammered in her throat. He’s been stalking you, the thought whispered in her head. He knew where she lived. He knew what she drove. He knew the trails where she ran. He’d proven that when he’d discarded Banner’s body off the path she regularly used, like a cat dropping a dead mouse at his owner’s feet.

He turned south on Commercial and into the lot for an upscale grocery store on the edge of the South Salem hills. Skye coasted past and parallel parked on a side street with a partial view of the store entrance. She waited, jaw tight, fingers drumming the wheel. What was she doing here? She didn’t want to be fired.

Yet she couldn’t seem to help herself. Only by watching him would she figure out how to stop him.

Fifteen minutes later he emerged carrying two canvas bags, a burst of bloodred roses spilling from the top of one. He loaded them into the back of his Land Rover, slammed the back shut, then paused.

Slowly, deliberately, he turned his head and looked straight at her.

Their eyes locked across forty yards of parking lot.

Time itself seemed to freeze, the world fading around her, as if they were the only people here. The rain had finally stopped, but the roll of thunder in the distance told Skye it would soon return. She held her breath.

He didn’t look surprised. He looked pleased. The corner of his mouth curled into a slow, intimate smile that was anything but friendly.

Yes, I’m guilty. Yes, I know you know I’m guilty. And damn, I’m having so much fun.

A violent shudder rolled through Skye’s body. Her right hand twitched toward the door handle before she caught herself. The urge to storm across the asphalt and throw him against his own car was so strong, she could feel his body against her palms, the reverberation as she slammed him again and again into the unyielding metal frame. Instead, she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles bleached white and the leather creaked.

You’re off the case. Next time it’s suspension. And if you touch him, termination.

She couldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching her unravel. Her face froze, giving him no sign of her long-simmering anger.

Calderon held her gaze another moment, then gave her a small, mocking nod before sliding behind the wheel. The Rover’s taillights flared.

Skye sat there breathing through her mouth, trying to slow her heart. She already knew where he was going.

Five minutes later she started the engine and drove to the exclusive Fairmount neighborhood, winding through streets lined with hundred-year-old trees and million-dollar homes. She rolled past Natalie Brown’s charming English Tudor at a crawl. White brick with dark-red accents, peaked roof, perfectly manicured rose beds, neatly trimmed for the imminent winter.

Calderon’s Land Rover sat in the driveway.

Skye’s stomach twisted. She was powerless. He had gotten her yanked from the investigation, and now he was inside that house with his alibi while she sat out here like a useless spectator. Was Natalie safe from him because she didn’t fit the type of woman he raped? Or was she in greater danger because she was so close to him, she might glimpse the monster behind the pretty face?

VI.

Trent ran upstairs in Natalie’s house and looked out the front window, not turning on lights, not disturbing the blinds lest he draw the attention of the cop.

He watched, waited, until Detective Truman drove slowly by the house.

He had expected better of her. She didn’t even hide the fact that she’d followed him from the parking garage. The surprise on her face when he stared at her across the grocery store lot had given him an exciting bolt of electricity through his body.

Almost as good as the jolt he felt when he homed in on his target. Almost as good as when he first pinned down his prey.

Truman drove by again, going in the other direction. Trent waited a few minutes; she didn’t return. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and that’s when he realized he had a raging hard-on.

He pulled out his phone, saw the text from Natalie.

Leaving the hospital. Home in ten! I can’t wait to see you.

He put a heart emoji on her message and ran back downstairs to quickly start dinner.

Natalie Brown was the perfect girlfriend. Rich. Pretty. Intelligent, but certainly not street smart in any sense of the word. He was exactly who she wanted him to be: attentive, respectful, career oriented. It had taken her months before she agreed to sleep with him; she was boring and ordinary in bed, but that didn’t bother him. All he had to do was close his eyes and remember the last woman he’d taken, and he could not only ride her to orgasm but ensure that he had one as well.

It was getting more difficult, however. Which is why he went after the park ranger in her stiff, cop-like uniform. He hadn’t realized it until that moment, but it was the picture of authority that had excited him, drawn him in. The need to take that authority down a notch, show her that she was as weak as all the others.