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something to piss you off again?” he asked.
    “No, no,” Jack said, shaking his head. “I wanted to let you know I got a report from the FBI team up in the Arctic.”
    A chill took over Danny’s body in spite of the heat in the room.
    “You know Fairbanks isn't the only part of the state under a heat wave,” his boss continued. “It's warmer than usual up there too. The snow melt is helping them with their investigation.”
    “How so?” Danny asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
    “They've turned up three more bodies. All young women. The cold and the ice left them remarkably preserved.”
    Danny nodded. “Have they ID'd them?”
    “One of them. They found your old case. Anna Alexander.”
    Danny's throat closed up. Anna was the reason he had stumbled upon Aleksei Nechayev. Her resemblance to another missing woman, Maria Treibel, had sent Danny sniffing in Aleksei's direction. He'd followed his gut instinct that the two women were connected, never imagining where that instinct would ultimately lead him.
    “I hope that will give her parents some peace,” he said, a catch in his voice.
    “Here's the crazy thing,” Jack said. “They said one of these bodies had been up there for at three or four decades. Obviously not one of Nechayev's victims. But I wonder if he was copying some other piece of shit when he started all this.”
    No, Danny thought. Whoever she was, she was one of Aleksei's victims too. But there was no way Danny could explain Aleksei's real age and decades of crime to his boss.
    “I guess we'll never know, sir,” he said.
    “Of course, they haven't found Nechayev himself. Or the dead girl from Seattle. No sign of Katie.”
    Danny tried his best not to grimace as he recalled that dead girl flashing her fangs at him while she prepared to leave Alaska with Aleksei. She was Katya now. While Katie was most definitely dead, Katya was not. She was a monster, just like her creator Aleksei.
    “I doubt we'll ever find Nechayev,” Danny said.
    “So you've said. But I think that's just the trauma talking, Fitzpatrick. There's no way in hell he could have gotten out of the Arctic alive. We'll find his body eventually.”
    Danny flashed back to the postcard he had received from the vampire a few months earlier. At that time, he and Katya had been in Aleksei's hometown of St. Petersburg in Russia. Danny had no doubt they were long gone from there by now. He wondered how many residents of St. Petersburg had fallen victim to them before they'd left.
    “Are you alright?” Jack asked.
    Danny forced a smile onto his pale face. “Fine, sir. All of this just brings back bad memories.”
    “Of course it does. But I thought you'd want to know.”
    “I do. And I appreciate the update.” Danny got up from his chair and lifted his coffee cup from the table. “Do you need me for anything else?”
    Jack shook his head. “No.”
    Danny nodded and left the room.
    Jack watched him leave and wondered, not for the first time, if he had made a mistake promoting Danny to homicide. He didn't doubt his excellent detective skills; Fitzpatrick had proven those and then some when he'd solved the Nechayev case, but Jack knew the man had been emotionally fragile even before he'd nearly been killed in Nechayev's Arctic home. By all accounts, Danny was managing well now and had even sobered up, something Jack would never have believed possible just a few months before. But he knew the stress of homicide could sometimes unhinge even the most stable detective.
    Jack had seen the shadow cross over Danny's face as soon as he had mentioned the Arctic. It was obvious the man wasn't over what had happened to him. Jack doubted he ever would be.
    ****

Chapter 7
    Jamie Dzubenko sat at his lab table and tried to focus on the slide under the microscope in front of him. In spite of the fact that he'd had three cups of coffee in the last hour, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Last night had been exhilarating beyond