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Be careful—especially now that you’re working on your own. It’s clear that your target’s been watching you even before you became aware of his crimes.

Getting out, Eleri walked to the apparently impenetrable barrier…

and saw that the road continued between the rock walls.

The shadows there dropped the temperature in a precipitous dive, a reminder that the desert wasn’t always hot, that once discarded by their murderer, the victims of the Sandman spent night after night blanketed in nothing but the cold air.

And she knew she’d ask Adam Garrett to stay her execution until after she’d finished this, brought the killer to justice.

She’d never spoken any promises aloud to the dead, but she’d made them all the same, each and every time she found one of his victims. Because it was always Eleri who found the abused and violated remains.

The Sandman made sure of that.

The space narrowed as she drove on, the desert being eaten away by stone and rock, the road progressively less well maintained, until she found herself on a gravel track that led into a much more constricted canyon than the one that housed the town of Raintree.

Despite every instinct she had telling her to turn back, she didn’t.

Those instincts couldn’t scream anymore.

Nor did her heart race or her palms become sweaty.

The involuntary reactions had stopped one by one after her fourth…

or perhaps it had been her fifth reconditioning, the wall between her and who she’d once been so opaque that Eleri could no longer see through it.

Five minutes of driving over rugged terrain brought her to a small flat area—and Adam’s dust-coated vehicle. When she exited her own, she saw that he’d walked down a cascade of jagged rock to stand next to a waterway that reflected the red and orange of the rocks all around them.

The shadows thrown by the canyon walls created an artificial twilight on this side of the waterway, while the sunlight on the other side glittered off minerals embedded in the stone.

Truths and lies.

Shadows and shine.

Eleri and Adam.

She walked down to join him.

“This is Blood Canyon,” he told her, with a nod to the water that, from this angle, rippled a dark red. “I thought it appropriate. Locals—including most of my clan—avoid it due to superstition passed on from generation to generation, so we won’t be interrupted.”

Eleri drew in a deep breath of the crisp, clear air and asked a question she hadn’t known she was going to ask until she spoke.

“What’s it like, living in so much space, no one pushing down on you from every side?

” That was what it felt like in her mind if she ever slipped in maintaining her telepathic shields, as if she was one breath away from being crushed by an avalanche of other people’s dreams and thoughts, nightmares and horrors.

His facial muscles tight, Adam set his booted feet apart as he faced her. “You don’t get to ask the questions here. Tell me why you think Raintree might be home base for a serial killer.”

Perhaps she wouldn’t have to ask him to let her finish this task after all.

While she didn’t know how changeling packs and clans functioned except on the most basic level, she did understand that the people at the very top of the hierarchy were highly protective of those who looked to them for leadership.

Of course Adam Garrett would want to excise the Sandman out of the place his clan called home.

“It’s easier if I show you.” Eleri gathered up a few nearby bits of rock and stone, put them in a pile, then cleared a section of the sandy ground.

The dust and grit clung to her gloves, tiny flecks that highlighted her inability to protect her own mind.

“This is Raintree.” She put a gray rock in the center. “This is where the body of Vivian Chang—his first confirmed victim—was discovered.” A small black stone to mark the place where Eleri had brushed sand off the body of the cellist whose hands would never again create music soaring and haunting.

“This is where the body of Kriti Kumar, his second confirmed victim, was found.” Another petite young woman with dark eyes and hair.

That was all Kriti had been to the killer.

He hadn’t known or cared that she dressed up as a fairy for her much younger siblings’ birthday parties, or that she was the bubbly, vibrant center around which her friends spun.

As he hadn’t cared about Vivian’s spoiled pet dogs who’d refused to eat for days after she vanished, their eyes trained on the door as they waited for her to return. It was Vivian’s father who’d told Eleri that, his own face hollowed out.

“Why are you handling this instead of Enforcement?” Adam asked, even as he hunkered down beside her.

“I work with them,” she said. “Specialist attached to the serial crimes unit, and presently specifically to the Sandman Task Force.”

“Full-time?” A question with an edge. “I figured you’d be needed in the court system.”

“I’m a worn-out J.” Just a simple fact. “No longer any good for the basic work of the Corps, but it turns out many of us old Js are excellent at hunting serial killers.”

When Adam tapped the side of his head, she shook her own. “No, nothing psychic. It’s due to our years of experience walking in depraved minds. We’re each profilers in specific subsets of criminals, depending on which crimes we worked on most during our tenure.”

Eleri had never compared their workloads, but one thing she knew: all senior Js had scars.

Losing her ability to react and respond, to feel , was nothing in comparison to the price demanded of the others.

Saffron eaten up by her fury until she overloaded in seizures, Yúzé so calm and precise and insane in ways that would show up on no PsyMed test, Bram with a brain that couldn’t shut down to sleep without heavy chemical inducement that left him locked in night terrors.

“There are a lot of serial killers on the loose at the current time,” she added because this was a brutal truth that should be widely disseminated, should be exposed to the light.

“The Psy Council protected a large number because the killers were useful to them in some capacity. At least half that group managed to slither away in the aftermath of the Council’s fall without anyone being the wiser of their proclivities. ”

She could feel Adam staring at the side of her face, the intensity of his attention a near-scald that should’ve made her afraid…

only she’d lost the ability to feel fear first of all, her mind burning out on the overload of it as she walked in minds so horrific that she wished she could go back in time and end their genetic lines where they began.

“This is where I discovered the body of the third victim, Sarah Wells.”

“You, personally?”

Eleri gave a curt nod. “I had a tip-off.”

···

Adam’s gut tensed as he stared at the primitive map she’d laid out in front of him. Unless she was fucking with him—and no reason for her to do that, not when she had to know that as the head of WindHaven, he’d have access to the kind of people who could verify her claims—she was right.

Raintree sat at the direct center of the body dumps, the sun with all its horrific satellites. “Chance you’ve missed abductions that don’t fit into your pattern?”

“Low.” A firm answer, no hesitation.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Rising, she said, “The answer’s in my vehicle.”

Adam followed her without a word, and because he was behind her, he caught the slight sway of her body. It was instinct to reach out—but he stopped himself with conscious force.

He couldn’t touch her.

Not her.

“Careful.”

“I’m fine.” A response that was neither defensive nor explicatory.

It just…was.

Going around to the back of her SUV while he was still scowling at her beyond-robotic affect, she opened the trunk, then lifted out the trunk liner to prop it up against the side of the car. Below, where in most vehicles would be tools for the car or an emergency battery, were three locked cases.

Including one that he knew must hold a weapon.

Eleri reached for the one next to it.

After pulling it out, she placed it atop the one that held the weapon, then unlocked it using an iris print combined with a numerical code.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting when she lifted the black metal lid, but it wasn’t a thin pile of what looked to be paper letters that had been removed from their envelopes.

Said envelopes lay neatly bound in a stack below.

Pulling out the letter at the bottom, Eleri handed it to Adam.

The handwriting was fluid and stylish, the words altogether sickening.

My dearest Eleri,

You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?

I feel like we know each other so well…though I suppose you won’t even remember our meeting.

In fairness, it wasn’t a real meeting. I wanted it to be, but they’re so strict in the places you most often go, aren’t they?

Courts, jails…and, well, where else do you go?

As far as I can figure out, you don’t have a home.

I’ve seen you though, lots of times, and I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like to have your mind inside mine.

I’m shuddering now as I imagine the pleasure of it, of having you invade me like I invade my chosen ones.

But to experience your psychic touch, I’d have to give up my freedom and I’m having so much fun out here.

Which brings me to this. I’ve decided that if I can’t get close to you any other way, then I’ll have to do something bad and clever enough that they’ll pull you out of retirement to deal with me.

Oh yes, I know you’ve retired from Justice. Saw the gloves—dead giveaway, no pun intended. Js who start wearing the gloves don’t tend to be around much longer afterward, but maybe that’ll change with this new Ruling Coalition?

I’m not taking the risk.

Consider this the first step of my courtship and our relationship.

Below the final line were what appeared to be GPS coordinates.