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Travis unloaded the carryon bag from the trunk. He opened his briefcase and removed a thick sheaf of papers in a manila envelope.
    “Your copy of the case file.”
    “Bedtime reading,” Abby said. She stuffed it into her suitcase.
    “Thanks for the ride, Paul. And—thanks for giving me another chance.”
    “I’ve never blamed you, Abby. Never.”
    “And if TPS goes under, will you still feel that way?”
    “It’s not going under. Things will turn around soon.”
    “Sure. I know.”
    She started to turn away, and then he took her by the shoulders and kissed her—a strong, heady kiss but too brief. When he pulled away, he was frowning.
    “You know, I may have given you the wrong impression.”
    She was momentarily confused. Then she realized he was talking about the case, not their relationship.
    “How so?”
    “I’ve stressed the most ominous aspects of Hickle’s behavior, but there’s another side to it. He’s a reliable employee with no police record, no history of mental illness, no known violent tendencies. He’s never issued a clear threat against Kris. I know none of these things are predictive, but when you put them all together, he starts to look less like a crazed killer and more like a harmless eccentric.”
    “Maybe that’s all he is.”
    “I just don’t want you going into this with your mind made up.”
    “I won’t. I have to get to know him. He’ll tell me who he really is and what his intentions are. Risk assessment, that’s my game. Gather the data, and analyze.”
    “You make it sound almost prosaic.”
    She smiled, but it was a sad smile, burdened with wisdom.
    “It is—when nothing goes wrong.”
    At 3:15 Hickle parked on a side street near the entrance to the Channel Eight studios. From this vantage point he had a clear view of the security gate.
    In the backseat of his car lay his duffel bag. He hauled the bag into the front compartment, then unzipped it and removed a twelve-gauge shotgun, fully loaded.
    He rested the gun in his lap. The long steel barrel was cool to the touch. He liked running his fingers over it, feeling its smoothness.
    Sometimes he fantasized about sliding the barrel into Kris Barwood’s mouth, feeding her the tube of the gun, watching her eyes above the gleam of metal. Then one pull of the trigger, and no more eyes, no more mouth, no more Kris.
    Blammo.
    He felt a stir of arousal in his groin. The feeling was nothing new to him. He had been passionate about Kris Barwood since the day he first saw her. Since then, she had been with him constantly, at least in his thoughts. At bedtime he would conjure her in his arms, and the smell of her hair and skin would lull him to sleep. Throughout the day, while at work or doing chores, he would invent conversations with her, magical dialogues in which he was always witty and buoyant, and she sparkled with laughter at his jokes. For many months he had been married to her. She waited for him in his apartment. She shared dinner with him.
    She looked deep into his eyes.
    But in the past few weeks his fantasy had died, exposed as the delusion it had always been. He had maintained the dream as long as he could, until at last reality had broken it into pieces.
    She did not love him.
    She didn’t want to talk to him or read his letters or accept his gifts.
    He had sent her jewelry with the polite request that she wear it on the air. She never had. He had called her countless times, and on the rare occasions when he’d gotten through, she had been hostile and uncommunicative.
    It was so unfair. He deserved her love. No one could have done more for her than he had. Hadn’t he dedicated his life to her? Hadn’t he built a shrine for her in his heart? He had spent countless hours hunting down the smallest fragments of information in magazine profiles and newspaper clippings, learning her biography, memorizing every detail of her life.
    He knew that her parents had sent her to swim camp at age nine after installing a pool