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had dried up most of the lake. There was no sign that the killer had taken O’Donnell to one of those cabins. And the case files had yielded no other leads that could have helped them find her in time.
    Logan looked past O’Donnell’s pictures to the pictures of Amanda. The first one was her college graduation photo from before the attack. Logan didn’t think she looked all that different now. She was still beautiful, even with her scar. She had the same mass of thick, cinnamon colored hair and deep blue eyes that tilted up at the corners.
    The main difference between the woman in that photo and the woman he’d met this morning was her smile, or lack of one. He hated that a stranger had taken away the joy and hope that had filled her college picture.
    The second photo was from the crime scene at Black Lake. Amanda was balled up inside a hollowed out oak tree where the police had found her after she’d escaped and hid from Dana’s killer. It wasn’t the first time Logan had seen that photo. But now that he’d met Amanda, seeing her skin so deathly pale and smeared with blood was far more disturbing. When an agent handed him a sheet of paper, Logan was grateful for the excuse to look away from that haunting picture.
    “Special Agent Nelson is passing out the profile he put together on the killer,” Pierce said. “We’ll update it with information from the O’Donnell and Branson/Stockton cases, but we believe it’s still a viable profile.”
    When everyone had a copy, he stepped to the white board. “We’ll review the profile in a few minutes. First, look at the pictures of the women he killed, or left for dead.”
    “What do you mean, left for dead ?” Riley asked from his seat on Logan’s left.
    Pierce drew red circles around the faces of Dana, Amanda, and another woman.
    “The killer’s pattern is to stab and strangle his victims, except for these three cases. He stabbed these women, but he didn’t kill them. He left them to bleed to death. We don’t think he cared if they lived or died. He plays a twisted game of chance with each victim, deciding whether to finish them off based on the outcome of that game.”
    He glanced at Logan and nodded, as if to reassure him that he’d withhold the information about the thorns. That was something Logan had insisted on when he’d called the bureau. Having information to hold back was vital for culling out false confessions, or for proving they had the real killer in custody.
    Continuing, Pierce said, “It’s not the killing that excites him as much as the fear he elicits from his victims.”
    Encouraged by the possibility of another witness who might be more willing to be interviewed than Amanda was, Logan indicated the picture of the third woman circled in red. “Did she survive?”
    “Only long enough to answer a couple of questions. She’d lost too much blood.” He pointed at Dana’s and Amanda’s pictures. “Since these two are his first known victims, their case is crucial to our investigation. A serial killer’s first murder is often the one where mistakes are made, before he hones his craft and learns from those mistakes. That’s why we’ll focus heavily on both the Branson/Stockton case and the O’Donnell case. Solving the first may very well solve the last.”
    “Since Stockton survived, do we have a sketch of the killer?”
    Pierce glanced toward the detective at the far end of the table who’d posed the question. “The woman who told us about the game said her attacker wore a hood.” He looked at Logan. “I haven’t seen the Stockton interview notes yet, but I’m under the impression the witness couldn’t identify her attacker, that he wore a hood when he was with her too?”
    “That’s right.” Logan glanced around the table. “She could only describe him as a white male with brown eyes. She judged him to be about six feet tall, around one-hundred-eighty pounds.”
    “Hell, I guess I did it,” Riley joked. “You just