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Break-in at the Daniel home. Nothing appears missing, except for a fresh quart of milk that the intruder emptied and left on the kitchen table. Mrs. Daniel thinks he also helped himself to cookies from her jar. (She showed me the crumbs around the jar.)

Mr. Daniel thinks it’s “punk-ass teenagers” doing it as a dare. Likelihood of that being true is very high.

I did a walkaround regardless. No broken latches or locks, and the Daniels say they leave their door unlocked more often than not, so the intruder must’ve just walked in.

The intruder sat in the sleeping family’s home as the first brush of dawn kissed the sky outside, calmly drinking a cup of coffee he’d made using their fancy coffeemaker. They’d start waking in the next fifteen minutes. First mom and dad, then the adorable two point five kids.

He’d looked in on the point five. Cute kid.

A few months old it looked like, but he was no good at judging the age of babies, so who knew?

But it had been awake and kicking its legs in the crib when he’d glanced into the nursery.

He’d have had to make a run for it if the kid had started bawling—he didn’t hurt babies; he wasn’t a psychopath.

But the baby had just gurgled baby nonsense at him.

Adorable.

Smiling back at the little chubster, he’d started up the mobile of sea creatures above the kid’s bed, after making sure the sound was off. The baby had grinned and stared up with big blue eyes.

The intruder had padded away from the nursery and down the stairs as quietly as he’d gone up. He was hungry, but there was no time to make a good breakfast. The coffee, however, was excellent—rich but not bitter.

It calmed his racing mind, allowed him to think.

He’d been running on too little sleep of late, burning the candle at both ends, as that old-bat neighbor of his liked to say; she was always watching, that one.

Tiny pinprick eyes in that wrinkled-up prune face.

She was lucky he’d shaken off the urge to strangle her and just taken to drugging her nightly milk toddy while she was upstairs changing into her nightgown.

No point drawing attention to himself by having a murdered neighbor. Old bat would drop dead soon enough anyway. But he was making mistakes in other ways. If he hadn’t been, then Eleri Dias wouldn’t be at the inn, wouldn’t be poking around town. Even these break-ins on home soil were careless.

He’d started them in an effort to stave off the whispers in his head.

After all, he was no ordinary serial killer driven by impulse. He had a plan , had a timeline. Yes, he hadn’t expected the J who was his playmate in this game to track down his home ground so quickly, but she was here now.

No point avoiding it.

Better if he used it, ramped up the game.

The whispers were eager now, his entire body humming.

He tapped a gloved finger against the bone china of his coffee cup.

She’d spent a bit of time with Adam Garrett. The falcon leader had visited her at the inn. Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed, but he wasn’t most people. He’d made it a point to notice.

Hmm…

Finishing up his coffee, he went to the sink and thoroughly washed the cup. As he did so, he considered the twenty-year-old girl in the bed upstairs. College student home for a short vacation. Petite frame. Irritating voice. Smart. He could make it to her room as soundlessly as he had the nursery.

But then he’d have to rush, waste the opportunity.

“Another time,” he promised the whispers and put his clean but wet coffee cup on the kitchen table.

There, all done. He was a conscientious guest.

He closed the back door silently behind him.

Wouldn’t want to scare his unknowing hosts.