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nuisance of caring for a baby daughter, had asked his sister to move into the household. Vella agreed, taking Raine into her heart immediately.
    Childcare issues resolved, Judson immediately disappeared back into his lab.
    The day of his funeral had been a turning point in Raine’s young life. The small, sad ceremony was conducted in a gray, northwest mist. It was followed by what she had come to think of as the Night of Fire and Tears. She did not recall everything about that fateful evening but a series of frightening and disturbing snapshots had been forever etched in her mind.
    A few months after the terrible night, Vella had sunk into the first of what would prove to be a number of long and extended depressive episodes. Aware that she could no longer care for a little girl on her own and terrified that the state would take Raine away and put her into the foster system, she turned to her best friend from childhood, Andrew Kitredge, and his partner, Gordon.
    Andrew and Gordon never hesitated. They took Raine and Vella into their lives, assuming responsibility for Raine whenever Vella spiraled downward into one of her episodes. Somehow the four of them had formed a family, shielding Raine from the long arm of the state.
    “You don’t have to make it sound like I do it deliberately,” she said to Andrew, trying to lighten the mood.
    “I know you don’t,” Andrew said. “But you have to admit that your little eccentricities have a tendency to rattle nerves.”
    “Okay, I’ll grant you that much.”
    She had been rattling Andrew’s and Gordon’s nerves ever since the summer of her nineteenth year, when she stumbled onto her first crime scene: that of a woman who had been murdered by her stalker-husband.
    She settled deeper into the chair, propped her stocking-clad feet on a hassock and studied the view out the window. It wasn’t quite six o’clock but night came early in the Cascades, especially at this time of year.
    “Thank God that girl was still alive,” Andrew said. “I can’t even imagine what her family must have gone through after she disappeared.”
    “She told Langdon that she doesn’t have any family, at least not one she wants to acknowledge. Evidently she’s been living on the streets for the past couple of years. The chief says that fits the profile of the Bonfire Killer’s victims. They’ve found three bodies so far, all young women with backgrounds like Anderson’s. One was from Portland. The others were from Seattle.”
    “Classic serial killer victims,” Andrew mused. “The kind of people no one misses when they disappear. I wonder why Stacy Anderson was still alive when you found her.”
    “She said the freak told her that she needed to be punished first by being locked up in the basement. She thinks he intended to finish the job tonight. It was just pure luck that I happened to go through the house today with the real estate agent.”
    “Do they think any of the previous victims were stashed in Vella’s basement, too?”
    “I don’t know what the cops will conclude,” Raine said, “but I didn’t pick up traces of any other victims. I’m almost positive that Stacy Anderson was the first one the freak stashed in Aunt Vella’s house.”
    “I don’t suppose the local cops paid any attention to what you told them.”
    “No. I think I made Chief Langdon nervous.”
    Andrew’s chuckle was dry. “You do have that effect on cops.”
    “What can I say? It’s a gift.”
    “When are you coming home?”
    Raine crossed one ankle over the other on the hassock. “I’ll stay overnight, as planned, because Langdon said the detectives from Portland and Seattle might want to talk to me. But I can’t do anything about putting the house on the market until the police take down the crime-scene tape so I’ll be home tomorrow.”
    “I stopped by your condo this afternoon and fed Batman and Robin. Played with them for a while. They’re doing fine.”
    “Thanks.”
    The cats tended