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wasn’t going to hold that against him. His daughter had been abducted. No one ever gets over that. Never. “We’re still on top of the case.”
    “Like hell you are. You don’t know who took her now any more than you did the day she went missing. You don’t know a thing.”
    “We’re on it,” he said.
    “The girl up in Tacoma looks just like my Kelsey. The same hair. Same features. A beautiful girl. Maybe the guy who took her is the same one who took my little girl. Will you promise to check it out?”
    Jonathan Stevens never failed to check out any lead, no matter how tangential.
    “You hang in there, Dennis,” he said.
    “You catch who abducted her.”
    After the call, Jonathan did a quick computer check and found information about Lisa Lancaster’s disappearance. Lisa did look a lot like Kelsey, that was true. But she was much older. Kelsey Caldwell was seventeen and had been abducted after drama practice—she had been cast as Fiona in Brigadoon . Lisa Lancaster was twenty-four, a college student. He did have to hand it to Dennis Caldwell, drunk or not. He was right. The two girls looked like sisters.
    Jonathan Stevens made a call up to Tacoma. It was more due diligence than anything. The chances of the two cases being connected in any way were slim to none. He just didn’t want to be the cop who didn’t act on a desperate father’s request for justice. He couldn’t live with that at all.

C HAPTER 5
    L ike the others before him, and undoubtedly the many more to follow, he was watching the TV news with a keen interest. His kind liked to be informed. They needed to get the update, the 411. Men like him always needed to know what their work had wrought. It was a thrill to see how someone reacted when his or her little girl was snatched. Most cried. Some like Lisa’s mother, Catherine Lancaster, let tears fall slowly, as they fought for control in front of the camera. Those boohoo-ers , as he called them, were interesting, though kind of predictable.
    Of course you are miserable, you idiot. You should have taught your daughter to be careful. Ever heard of stranger danger? Cry me a goddamn river, you idiot mother!
    He sucked in everything Lisa Lancaster’s mother had been saying, like he would suck the marrow from Lisa’s bones. Hard. Quick. She was a classic boohoo-er. And a bit of a bore if you asked him. Which no one ever would, because no one would ever know it was he who’d taken her.
    The ones who got his adrenaline pumping were those who showed more anger than fear. They were the ones who jabbed at the camera and threatened to come right out of the TV to throttle the perpetrator.
    “Bring her back or I’ll make you so damn sorry!”
    He smiled. They seemed so angry, so determined. It was almost a joke to him. They’d be the first ones to run from him if they knew he was nearby. All talk. All bravado. He imagined going to a candlelight vigil or a missing persons office to rub shoulders next to the finger-jabber. He’d lean over and whisper.
    “She begged for her life, you know.”
    And when the person spun around, he’d pretend he’d said something else.
    “She’s a survivor, you know.”
    The only thing better than the finger-jab threat of some pissed-off dad was the truly inconsolable mother. The ones who could hardly get a word out of their trembling lips.
    He liked those kinds of mothers. Their words and palpable fear were like a drug. They sparked. They sent a charge of adrenaline, spasms of excitement, through his body. It was as if their pain, their deepest hurt, brought him the greatest joy that he could imagine. Better than sex.
    Almost.
    Sometimes he was so drawn to the mother’s pain that he’d drive by their house. It was a risk, a big one. Risks, however, were part of the game. The one he admired over all the other men who were just like him, had taken more risks than anyone. He’d escaped jail twice. He’d killed more girls than any other—though others were pretenders