Hunting Fear

CHAPTER 9

When Lucas reported the conversation with Wyatt and the sheriff's suspicions of Samantha and the carnival, Jaylene thoughtfully asked, "Think he might be right?"

"No. I don't believe there's any conspiracy here, not to commit the crimes and not to hide them. One man. One kidnapper. And he's a loner. An observer. He'd never be a part of any average group, let alone a carnival."

"So you and Bishop still agree on the profile."

"The basics, yeah. That our kidnapper is an older man, thirty-five to forty-five, and probably lacks a criminal record. He's careful, compulsive, highly organized, and goal-oriented. Likely to be single, though he may be divorced or widowed. He could be gainfully employed but is just as likely to be independently wealthy through some inheritance-even before the ransoms he's been paid so far."

"You didn't agree with the boss even in the beginning, though, about the reason why this guy kills his victims. Bishop was by the book: the psychological probability is that a kidnapper kills his victim to avoid identification."

Lucas frowned and, almost as an aside, said, "Odd, that. He so seldom goes by the book in profiling."

"Well, it looks like you were right to suspect another motive. The kidnapper still may be killing them to avoid identification, but it looks a bit less likely now. And Sam was right about broken minds not really working the way we expect them to."

"Yeah." But Lucas was still frowning.

"You're worried about her."

He shrugged that off, not entirely convincingly. "Sam can take care of herself."

"Doesn't stop you worrying."

"I'm just thinking we might have missed something very important."

"What?"

"As unlikely as his theory is, Wyatt may be right about one thing. The kidnapper may well be connected to the carnival or the route they took."

Jaylene waited, brows raised.

"It's just a feeling I got while he was talking, laying out this carnival conspiracy he can't get out of his head."

"It's not going to be pleasant," she murmured.

Lucas nodded with a grimace. "If we can't find a more legitimate target for him to focus on, he's going to waste time and energy, and shine a very unwelcome and hostile spotlight on the carnival."

"And on Sam."

"Yeah. No telling whether the town will remain simply curious or become unfriendly once they see where their sheriff's suspicions lie. Especially now that a cop has died, and a female cop at that."

"You could see it in the faces of all her fellow cops at Lindsay's funeral. They're taking it hard. And they want someone to blame just like Wyatt does."

"I know." Lucas shook his head. "Still, when it comes to that sort of thing, as long as it stops short of violence, Leo can take care of the carnival and, like I said, Sam can take care of herself. That's not what worries me."

"Then what? If the kidnapper isn't involved with the carnival, how could he be connected with it?"

"Ever since Sam dropped her bombshell about this guy playing his little game with me, we've considered the possibility if not probability that the kidnapper could have been observing us while we followed along behind him these last months."

"Makes sense, if Sam is right and he sees this as some twisted competition with you. The note we found in that old barn certainly seems to point in that direction. That was a very personal taunt, directed at you by name."

"Yeah. But what if he hasn't just been watching me, you, the investigation? Sam thinks he's a natural profiler, that he's done his research on me and on the SCU. If that's true-"

"If that's true," Jaylene finished, "then he might know about your past relationship with Sam."

"It was in the newspapers, some of it," Lucas said. "The case, the carnival. Sam. Just the local papers, but still. Everything's available now, stored digitally or on the Internet, ready for anybody to look it up. Somebody who knows how could find those stories easily, read between the lines and learn… quite a bit."

"Then we have to assume he knows all about Sam."

Slowly, Lucas said, "And about the carnival. About their seasonal route, just as Wyatt suggested. Jaylene… I think we'd better compare that route to the series of kidnappings ourselves. We can find any correlation faster than Wyatt and his people will be able to; we have more background info on all the other kidnappings."

"Okay, but… are you thinking the kidnapper made Sam part of his game? Somehow controlled her appearance here, her involvement? How? How could he have done that?"

"It's not impossible, if you look at it from another angle. He could have done what Wyatt's doing now. Researched the carnival's route, maybe even followed them from town to town last season or even earlier. You said yourself, we don't know he hasn't been planning all this for much longer than the eighteen months he's been active. He could have begun setting all this up-setting us up-two or more years ago."

"You really believe that's possible?"

Lucas said, "It hit me while Wyatt was talking. I know every member of the carnival, and none of them is the person we're after. I'm positive of that. But if the kidnappings do coincide with the nearby presence of the carnival for eighteen months, all across the East and Southeast, that can't be a coincidence. What isn't coincidence is planned."

"By the kidnapper."

"Part of the game somehow. Or the setup for the game. Getting all his chess pieces on the board. Arranging everything to his liking. Playing God. We have no way of knowing how many god-iamned sets of puppet strings he's pulled."

"That would be… diabolical, Luke. To involve the carnival, •Sam, to pull you in. To spend all that time planning and kidnap-jing and killing all those other victims, all of it designed to get you lere, now, under these circumstances. It's elaborate as hell. Complicated doesn't begin to describe it." She paused and stared at him. "Something like this doesn't just happen, we both know that. There's always a catalyst. A trigger. If he went to all this trouble, then something set him off."

"Yes."

"Something personal. He's out to prove to you that he's better. Smarter, stronger, faster-whatever. Just like Sam said. But not because of any media attention focused on you. Not because he just happened to notice how good you were and decided to test your abilities. He's doing this because, somewhere in your past, in his past, you stepped on his toes."

Lucas nodded. "If we're right about all this, I know him. So part of the game will be figuring out how I know him. And what, if anything, I did to him to put him on this path."

"Sam was right about something else, you know. No matter what, you didn't create this monster."

"Maybe not, but I seem to have created the game, however inadvertently. Inspired it, at least. And so far, more than a dozen people have died."

Jaylene knew better than to offer either logic or platitudes, so she merely said, "Sam said she was certain you couldn't win the game without her."

"Yeah."

"And if this guy has been investigating you, tracking you, and does know about you and Sam, then you're probably right about there being nothing coincidental in her presence here. However he did it, he must have deliberately included her in the game, somehow maneuvered her here. And while your psychic abilities haven't been publicized since you joined the unit, hers are posted outside the carnival on a marquee every night."

Lucas nodded slowly. "The thought had occurred."

"Do you think that's what Sam's been hiding from us? The fact that she knows the kidnapper is fully aware of who and what she is?"

"Another thing I think we'd better find out. Because in the wrong hands, Sam could be an unbeatable advantage."

"And in the right hands?"

"An unbeatable advantage."

Getting to her feet as he got to his, Jaylene said, "Am I wrong, or isn't the queen the most powerful piece on the board in chess?"

"You're not wrong."

"Um. Have you told Bishop yet? About Samantha being here? Being involved?"

"He knew, more or less. The news reports."

"Did he say anything about this chess game?"

"Yeah," Lucas replied rather grimly. "He told me not to lose."

As soon as Samantha picked up the small silver medallion, it started.

The black curtain swept over her, the blackness thick as tar, the silence absolute. For an instant, she felt she was being physically carried somewhere, all in a rush; she even briefly felt the sensation of wind, of pressure, against her body.

Then stillness and the chilling awareness of a nothingness so vast it was almost beyond comprehension. Limbo. She was suspended, weightless and even formless, in a void somewhere beyond this world and before the next.

As always, all she could do was wait for the glimpse into whatever she was meant to see. Wait while her brain tuned in the right frequency and the sounds and images began playing before her mind's eye like some strange movie.

Flickering images at first. Passing so fast they were a blur.

Echoing sounds and voices. Everything distorted until, finally, it snapped into place.

It wasn't at all what she had expected.

She found herself looking down on a scene that seemed ordinary enough. A little family. Father, mother, two small children, a boy and girl. They were gathered around the dinner table, apparently for their evening meal.

Samantha tried to concentrate on what they were talking about, but there was a kind of pressure in her ears, as though she were going up in an express elevator or a plane, and all she could hear now was a distant, muffled roaring. She tried to shift position so she could see their faces, but no matter how hard she concentrated she couldn't seem to stop hovering above them.

The scene dimmed before she could begin trying to memorize details, and she found herself once again in the dark, dark emptiness.

It was getting colder.

And it seemed an eternity before another scene brightened and steadied before her. This time, only the little girl was there, or a little girl, maybe a different one, huddled in a corner of some unidentifiable room, cradling one of her arms with the other in a protective posture that struck Samantha as jarringly familiar.

It's broken. Her arm. Why doesn't she tell someone? Why is she afraid?

In a blink there was another scene, a woman sitting on a bed in a neat bedroom, her hands folded in her lap, feet together on the floor, the posture oddly stiff. And across from her was-

Cold. Dead. Cold. Dead.

That's what she's thinking. Feeling.

Waves of the woman's fear pushed Samantha away, carried her swiftly to the next scene. A little boy in his bed, visibly shaking, his eyes huge with terror as he stared at the window. And outside, lightning, the rolling boom of thunder, rain pounding.

It'll get me. Get me… get me…

Another scene, and this time Samantha didn't see another person, just spiders, hundreds of them scurrying toward her across a wood floor, and she tried to back away, looking down, seeing her feet, except they weren't her feet at all-

And then she was in a dark, stinking forest, nearly smothered by the stench of the damp rot all around her, trying to get away from all the snakes that were slithering toward her, grabbing for a limb to try to beat them back, surprised to see a man's hand instead of her own-

Once again, before she could note further details, that scene was gone, this time replaced by a dizzying stream of them, like a slide show revved up to high speed. She thought she was in some of the images, strangers in others, but all of them were filled with terror.

She couldn't take in one image before the next one flashed by. And the confusion of dozens of conversations all going at once nearly deafened her.

Fear pushed at her, washed over her, waves and waves of it battering her, cold and wet and black. She could feel pressure building up, outside and inside, steadily increasing until it was painful, until she knew it was dangerous, until she was almost numbed by the force of it.

And then, abruptly, she was back in the absolute silence, the cold, dark emptiness so lonely that-

What are you afraid of, Samantha?

She opened her eyes with a start and a gasp, her ears dimly registering the thud of the pendant falling onto the table. Her open hand was burning, and she stared at it, at the white imprint of a spider and its ghostly web overlaying the much fainter line and:ircle that already marked her palm.

"Sam… Sam, you're bleeding."

She looked across the table at Caitlin's white, shocked face and felt a tickling beneath her nose. Reaching up with her left hand, she felt wetness, and when she held the hand out saw that it was smeared with scarlet.

Samantha stared at both her hands, one marked with icy fire and the other with her own blood.

"Sam?"

"What are you afraid of," she whispered to herself.

"Me? Heights. But it isn't really a phobia." Caitlin grabbed a handful of paper napkins from the dispenser on the table and handed them across the table. "Sam, the blood-"

Absently accepting the offering and holding the slightly rough paper to her nose, Samantha murmured, "Thank you."

"What the hell did you see?"

"How long was I out?"

"About twenty minutes. I was getting worried. In case you don't know, it's very spooky watching you do that. You go as still as a statue and as pale as one made of marble. Except this time you started shivering toward the end. What did you see?"

Slowly, Samantha said, "Maybe what he wanted me to."

"Who? The kidnapper? But you said he probably left the pendant for Sheriff Metcalf to find."

"I did say that, didn't I?" Samantha looked at the other woman. "Know anything about chess?"

"Not much, no. How about you?"

"I know pawns are sacrificed. And I know that a very good chess player is able to think several moves ahead of his opponent."

Baffled, Caitlin said, "So?"

"So I think this guy might just be several moves ahead. Ahead of the cops. Ahead of Luke. Ahead of me. And no matter which way you look at it, that's not good."

It was later that afternoon when Lucas stood in a storage room of the sheriff's department garage, studying the large glass-and-steel tank where Lindsay Graham had died.

The old mine was so inaccessible, it had beeu^ impractical to transport CSI officers up and down the mountain the numerous times that would have been necessary for a thorough investigation of the tank. Though trucking it down the mountain had required an entire day and half the department working on the transport. There had literally been no better way, since the heavy forest made any kind of airlift impossible.

Not that having the tank had helped them, as far as Lucas could tell. No useful forensic evidence to speak of had been recovered. Only Lindsay's prints had been found inside the tank, and none whatsoever had been found on the outside.

A few hairs had been found in the tank, at least two of them black, so not Lindsay's. Lucas had sent the lot to Quantico for analysis, along with a request to Bishop to do what he could to hurry things up.

The kidnapper had apparently left the area before the afternoon rains that had washed away any track. Either that, Lucas thought savagely, or he had sprouted wings and flown his ass out of there, leaving no trace behind.

Dramatic, but hardly likely.

Lucas circled the tank slowly, studying it, trying to get a feel for the man who had built it.

They'd had no luck in finding where the glass and steel had been purchased or when, but it was clear the painstaking work had taken time and concentration. There was no way this had been constructed after Lindsay was taken. In fact, experts consulted offered their opinion that the tank could have required a week or more to build, depending on the skill of the builder.

And then there was the careful piping that had connected this tank to the old mine's water supply, an old reservoir replenished by rainwater in the years since the mine had closed. The simple but lethally efficient clock timer that had opened the valve to flood the tank at the appointed time.

Lucas had never seen anything like it. Never even heard of anything like it.

"Almost like those campy old superhero TV shows, isn't it?"

He turned quickly, disturbed that she had managed to approach without his knowledge.

Stepping into the room, Samantha said, "Glen Champion let me in, and Jaylene told me you were down here. The rest of them studiously avoided me."

"You know cops," he said.

"Yeah. They can't logically blame me-not yet anyway-but they don't like me."

"What do you mean, not yet?"

"Come on, Luke. I don't have to be told that Metcalf is moving heaven and earth to try to find some connection between these kidnappings and the carnival."

"Will he find one?"

Instead of answering that, Samantha turned her gaze to the tank and moved closer. "Weird, isn't it? And a lot like those old TV shows. Remember? The colorful villain would capture our heroes and tie them to some absurd Rube Goldberg contraption designed to kill them-but not until next week's episode. I always wondered why, once he got his hands on them, he didn't just shoot them."

She looked at Lucas steadily. "Why didn't he just shoot them?"

He glanced at the tank briefly. "There was a timer. If we had gotten there soon enough…"

Again, Samantha asked, "Why didn't he just shoot them?"

"Because it's part of the goddamned game. If I'm fast enough, nobody dies. Is that what you want to hear?"

Samantha didn 't back down in the face of his ferocity. She didn 't even flinch. In the same level, calm voice, she said, "But why is it part of the game? Don't you see? He's deflecting the responsibility, Luke. Certainly with this, with Lindsay. Maybe with all of them, it's not his fault because he didn't kill them, not really, not with his own hands. It's the fault of the police, the investigators, because if they'd done their jobs, no one would have died."

"You're making a giant assumption just because we found one:imer."

"That's not why I'm making it. It's what I heard him begin to tell Lindsay. That he doesn't kill. He never kills, not with his own lands, not directly. Partly to deflect responsibility. But for another reason too. Kill somebody quickly and all you have is a dead body. There's little suspense, little chance for fear to build until it becomes terror. But show somebody how you mean to kill them a few minutes or a few hours from that moment, and then walk away…"

Lucas was silent, frowning.

"The other victim from Golden, Mitchell Callahan. He was decapitated, wasn't he? I heard there was something strange about hat, something the ME was surprised by."

Slowly, Lucas said, "He appeared to have been killed by a very sharp blade, in a single stroke. Maybe by a machete or sword."

"Or maybe," Samantha offered, "by a guillotine?"

Lucas's first reaction was disbelief, followed immediately by anger that he hadn't seen it before now. "A guillotine."

"It's obvious the kidnapper knows how to build. Easy enough to build a guillotine. Set on a timer, the way this… machine was. With the victim-with Callahan probably fastened in, looking up. Seeing the blade hanging over him. Knowing it would drop. Maybe he could even hear the timer ticking away the minutes he had left."

"Fear," Lucas said. "Bait for me."

"Maybe. Maybe he's creating the fear to lure you. And maybe… to punish you."

Lucas wasn't very surprised, but said, "So you've reached that conclusion too, huh? That I know this bastard, crossed paths with him somewhere?"

"It makes sense. To go to all this trouble, build this sort of… of murder machine isn't something a man would do just to win a game. Even a crazy man. Unless the game was personal. It has to be personal, and that makes it more likely than ever that he's done his homework on you. He must know how you're able to find abduction victims, that you feel what they feel. Right up until the moment of death, you suffer along with them."

After a moment, Lucas shook his head. "In the last year and a half, we've arrived on the scene early enough for me to feel anything at all in less than half the cases. If he wants me to suffer-"

"He's doing a damned good job. You might not feel the fear and pain of the victim when you get there too late, but in that case you probably suffer even more. And anyone who's ever worked with you or watched you work knows it."

Lucas fought a sudden impulse to reach out to her, saying only, "Suffer is a relative term."

"Not with you it isn't." Her smile was small and fleeting.

"Why did you come here today, Sam?" he asked, changing the subject. Or not.

"I left something with Jay," she replied readily. "A pendant Caitlin Graham found on Lindsay's nightstand. We both believe it was put there the day she was taken."

"Why do you believe that?"

Samantha pulled her right hand from the pocket of her jacket ind held it toward him, palm out. "I'm on a roll."

The room where he worked was small and, he liked to think, cozy. The place was remote enough that nobody bothered him, and since no neighbors were close by, his comings and goings were pretty much his own business.

Which is how he liked it.

He bent forward over the table, moving carefully. He wore gloves as he cut words and letters from the Golden local newspaper, from the inside pages no human hand would have touched. A fresh sheet of white paper lay nearby, and glue.

He had to chuckle. It was hokey, of course, as well as completely unnecessary to use newsprint. But the effect, he knew, vould be much greater than an ordinary computer-generated, ink-jet-printed note could command.

Besides, it was amusing. To think of their reaction. To picture Luke's face.

Time to up the ante.

He wondered if the agent had caught up yet. Maybe. Maybe he'd figured out at least part of it. Maybe he was beginning to understand the game.

In any case, the clock was moving faster now. There was no onger time for the leisurely trip up and down the East and Southeast, no longer time to allow a lull between the moves of the game.

It was a risk he had taken, confining the end of the game to one place, a small town. There were drawbacks. But advantages as well, and he felt those outweighed the drawbacks.

It was almost over now.

Almost.

Just a few more moves.

He wondered, vaguely, what he'd do when this was over. But it was a fleeting question quickly pushed aside, and he bent once more over his work.

Just a few more moves…

"None of that makes any sense," Lucas said finally.

"You're the profiler," Samantha responded.

"Do you expect me to profile a vision?"

"Why not? If a forensic psychologist can develop a psychological autopsy on a dead person, then why can't you deconstruct a vision?"

Jaylene, sitting at one end of the conference table and eyeing them as they sat across from each other, intervened to say mildly, "Off the top of my head, sounds like the vision was about fear."

"Felt like it was too," Samantha said. She sipped her tea and grimaced, murmuring, "I'm going to be up all night."

"Are you reading tonight?" Lucas asked.

"The carnival is open, I'm reading."

"You're tired. Go to bed early, get some sleep."

"I'm fine." She looked at her marked palm, where the imprint of the spider pendant remained, adding, "Dented a bit more, but fine."

"It's dangerous, Sam. You're a target."

"Not until Wednesday or Thursday."

Scowling, he said, "You're the one who warned me not to assume with this bastard. We can't assume he'll play by his own rules, remember? There's nothing to say he won't take someone today or tomorrow."

"Doesn't matter." She looked at him steadily. "All I can do is read. Play what's in front of me. If I'm one of his pawns, then sooner or later he'll show up to make his move."

Jaylene said, "What if you're his queen?"

For the first time, Samantha looked slightly disconcerted. "Chess isn't my game. I don't know enough about it to-"

Lucas said, "The most powerful piece on the board. The queen is the most powerful piece on the board."

She lifted her brows. "I doubt I'm that."

"He went to a lot of trouble to get you here," Lucas told her. "There's something Jay found out a bit earlier about that circus that got into the next town on your schedule ahead of you. Seems the owner was paid-what he thought was an incentive from someone in the town-to cancel their scheduled two weeks off and go to work instead. It was an offer he couldn't refuse." Lucas paused. "The first maneuver to alter the schedule of the Carnival After Dark. Now you explain how Golden was chosen as an alternate town."

"I told you. I had a dream."

"A vision. What was it, Sam?"

She shook her head slowly, silent.

"We need to know, dammit."

"All you need to know is that the dream brought us here. I suggested to Leo that Golden would be the perfect alternative. He igreed. We came here."

Jaylene frowned and said to Lucas, "So that wasn't something le controlled."

His gaze still locked with Samantha's, Lucas shook his head. 'Nothing was left to chance. Nothing. Sam and the carnival are lere because he wanted them to be. Aren't you, Sam?"

From the doorway, triumphantly, Wyatt Metcalf announced, He got paid. Leo Tedesco was paid ten thousand dollars to bring lis carnival to Golden."

Samantha glanced at the sheriff without changing expression, then returned her gaze to Lucas. "Sorry, I thought I mentioned that," she said calmly. "We're also here because Leo was paid what was termed a cash advance to set up in Golden. Bundle of cash and a registered letter, posted from here in town. Supposedly from an anonymous donor who wanted the carnival here for his kids. I'm sure the sheriff has a copy of the letter, or will soon."

Grim, Lucas said, "And none of that alerted you that something shady might be going on?"

"Matter of fact, it did. But, hey, ten grand. I play what's in front of me, remember?" She looked at the sheriff again, this time steadily. "It's not the first time something similar has happened, though the amount was… unusual. And before you start trying to figure out how to arrest Leo for the money, bear in mind that he'd already reported it in last quarter's income records as a cash advance. To the IRS. And sent a copy of the letter to document it. If he'd wanted to hide it, your people never would have found a trace of the money."

The dawning realization on Wyatt's face showed that he hadn't considered that, and his frustration was so obvious that Samantha actually felt a twinge of sympathy.

"Sorry," she said to him. "But as I keep trying to tell you, Leo and the carnival have nothing to do with this kidnapper and his schemes."

"I notice you didn't include yourself in that," Wyatt snapped.

"I seem to be in a different position. For whatever reason, the kidnapper appears to want me here."

Lucas said, "You could have made a different choice. Leo could have pocketed the money or reported it, and the carnival could have chosen another town."

"Yeah, well. There was that dream."

"Why the hell didn't you mention the money before now?"

"She wouldn't have mentioned it now if my people hadn't found it," Wyatt reminded him.

Staring at Samantha, Lucas said, "Well?"

With a shrug, she said coolly, "I had to give the sheriff something suspicious to find, didn't I?"

"Bullshit," Wyatt muttered.

"It kept you occupied and out of my hair, for a few hours at least," she informed him politely.

Lucas had a hunch it was more the former than the latter but didn't question her.

Wyatt sat down at the opposite end of the table from Jaylene, still scowling. To Lucas, he said, "We're two-thirds of the way through your list of kidnappings for the last eighteen months."

"And?" Lucas knew the answer already, but asked anyway.

"And… in about half the cases, the Carnival After Dark was sited within fifty miles of the kidnapping."

"Half."

"Yeah."

"What about the other half?"

"They were farther away, obviously." Wyatt met those steady blue eyes and grimaced. "A lot farther, in some cases. Nearly two hundred miles away, on average."

Samantha asked, "So will you please leave Leo and the rest alone now?"

"Including yourself this time?"

"No. As I believe I've told you before, I never expect impossible things."

"Smartest thing I've ever heard you say."

Lucas sighed. "Enough. Wyatt, stop wasting time on the carnival. And, Sam, if you don't tell me about that dream-"

But she was shaking her head. "Sorry. I saw a Welcome to Golden sign and knew I was supposed to be here. That's all you get, Luke. That's all that matters."

"Maybe," Jaylene said, "that's all we need." She was watching Lucas steadily. "For now."

He shook his head, but said, "That pendant. Wyatt, you don't recall seeing it when you checked out Lindsay's apartment after she was taken?"

"It wasn't there."

"Maybe you missed it."

Wyatt shook his head. "I didn't miss it. It wasn't there, trust me on that. I knew Lindsay was terrified of spiders, so I damned well would have noticed that thing on her nightstand."

To Samantha, Lucas said, "Is Caitlin back at the motel?"

"Yeah. We both thought it would be wise for her to wait for your okay before she started going through Lindsay's apartment. Because if he was there…"

"He might have left some evidence. If we're lucky. Wyatt, we'll need to canvass the building as well as search the apartment. You were there early afternoon on Thursday and didn't see the pendant; Caitlin found it on Sunday morning. Maybe somebody in the building noticed a stranger during that time."

"If we're lucky?" Wyatt shook his head. "Worth a shot, I guess."

Samantha looked at the clock on the wall and rose. "In the meantime, I have to go get ready to open my booth." She started around the table toward the door.

Before Lucas could protest, Wyatt said, "Conning people as usual, huh, Zarina?"

On any other day, at any other time, Samantha probably would have let the jibe pass without protest. But she was tired, her hand hurt, there was a lingering, unpleasant feeling that her head was stuffed with cotton, and she had just about reached the end of her patience with Wyatt Metcalf.

"What the hell is your problem?" she demanded, rounding on him. But before anyone could speak, she added, "On second thought, why don't I find out for myself?"

That was all the warning she gave before reaching out and grasping his shoulder. Hard.