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an ax hitting wood, or…a pickax slamming into hard ground.
    He hurried to the nearest door and threw it open, once again, strange and deadly visions coming to his mind despite his perpetual search for rationality.
    She found the ghost of the ultimate evil in man. MaddenC. Newton. And the ghost had taken form and shape, and was hacking up the elusive Miss Hawkins…
    Whack, whack, whack.
    â€œMiss Hawkins!”
    Wooden stairs led down to a shallow basement. Someone indeed had a pickax, and looked as crazy as all hell.
    Angela Hawkins was attacking the floor with a pickax and a vengeance. The dry dirt floor just beneath the staircase.

CHAPTER THREE
    â€œWhat the hell are you doing?” He might have been a fool to race down the stairs to accost her—she knew how to hold an ax. The basement held an incongruous sight. Angela was about five foot eight and slender, though shapely. Despite her height, she was almost fragile in appearance. She paused for a moment, staring at him with enormous, bright blue eyes that belonged on an anime character.
    Ah, great! He was being given the nut-job assignment. He should have said no. He should have just resigned, and headed off to work the casinos.
    Angela remained frozen for a second longer, obviously a bit disconcerted by being discovered at her task.
    â€œUm—hi! I’m Angela Hawkins. You must be Jackson Crow.” Maintaining a grip on the pickax with her left hand, she offered her right in a strong handshake.
    â€œYes, hi, nice to meet you.” The words seemed a bit ridiculous. At least she wasn’t swinging the ax at him.
    He hoped he betrayed nothing in his expression. Did she know about him? That he had taken down the Pick-Man?
    Was this a test?
    He tried not to sound as hard and angry as he felt when he spoke.
    â€œI’m Jackson Crow. And—sorry, excuse me, but what are you doing?”
    She shrugged ruefully. Her soft-knit, cap-sleeved dress completed the perfect picture of sensuous femininity, which seemed so opposed to the strength of her handshake—and her prowess with a pickax. But then, she’d recently gone through the rigors of a Virginia police academy, so she must be in excellent physical shape. She’d been through a lot, the death of her parents, and the death of her fiancé. Maybe she had been through too much.
    There didn’t seem to be a crazed light in her eyes. Which was a positive sign.
    â€œI’m looking for a body,” she said.
    â€œDead—I’m assuming.”
    She nodded. “Yes, or bones, I guess. I’m not sure what would happen to a body buried down here for over a hundred years.”
    â€œAnd there’s a reason you think you’re going to find a body buried down here? The house has gone through a great deal of construction over the years. The bodies buried here were discovered over a hundred years ago,” he told her.
    â€œAh, some, but not all,” she said. “I’m looking for the body of a man named Nathaniel Petti.”
    â€œPetti—the fellow Newton bought the house from?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNo one knows what really happened to him,” Jackson reminded her.
    â€œYes, that’s why I’m looking for him,” she said. With a mighty swing, she hit the ground again.
    Whack!
    â€œWe’re not here to tear the place down,” he said. “What makes you think that he’s under the ground there?”
    She hesitated. Just a split second. “Well, I’ve been reading, of course.”
    Whack.
    â€œYou’ve been reading, and that led you to a space beneath the stairs?” Jackson asked, trying to remain courteous while he cursed Adam Harrison.
    They’d sent him a maniac.
    â€œPlease, I’m honestly not sure how to explain this, but I’m almost positive that I’m doing the right thing,” she told him.
    She was destroying the floor of the basement.
    â€œYou do know that we’re