New York to Dallas

could only share his brilliance, as he sees it, with the women he intended to kill anyway. Now he’s found release and enjoyment in bragging. He contacted me to shake me up, to make sure we’re still connected, but also to share. His control isn’t what it was, and that’s an advantage for us. It also makes him more unpredictable.”
    Steadier, she thought. She was steady enough. “If you could send Mira all the updates, this ’link transmission. Ask her to review and reprofile. Then we can talk it through, pass it to the locals and feds.”
    “All right. Don’t watch it again.”
    “You know I have to.”
    “Then give it some time. You said he contacted you, with that, to shake you, to brag. Consider he may have also sent it to switch your focus, to have you spend time studying that brutality rather than pursuing other leads.”
    “You’re probably right. I’m going to finish my review, run some fresh probabilities. It’s unlikely anything on that preview will help us nail down his current location. But he confirmed for me he has one, with a guest room.”
    She nodded, slowly now. “He’s slipping, and I won’t.”
    She dug back in, reviewing notes, making new ones, checking maps. She ran a probability and got a high enough result to allow her to eliminate the Highland Park area. She adjusted the property list she and Roarke had compiled, then began the laborious task of checking with soundproofing companies.
    “I’ll help you with that,” Roarke told her when he saw what she was doing. “But the deal is you take a break. It’s nearly one, and you’ve been up since dawn without anything to eat.”
    “I’m not getting anywhere. All of the locations on my list had soundproofing during the build. Most of yours, the same, or during a remodel. These sorts of buildings, people expect soundproofing, so he wouldn’t have to hire it out.”
    “Then we’ll move on to security and electronics. After we eat.”
    “Yeah. I’ll get it. I need to let this sit and simmer some. If I missed something, if there’s a key, I’m not finding it.”
    “What are we having?”
    “I don’t know.” She checked the AutoChef’s menu without much interest. “They got nachos.” She perked up a bit. “Nachos are supposed to be good here, right? And this tortilla soup. Not bad.”
    “I’m in,” Roarke said, thinking that with a messy plate of nachos and the soup she’d have to sit to eat.
    She ordered it up, got drinks out of the office friggie. And wandered around her board again.
    “The beginning, the beginning again.” She sat, scooped up a loaded nacho. “He’s settled in New York. Excellent hunting ground. He’s got money stashed all over the place—good, solid money—but he’s settled in his working-class building. We haven’t found a second location in New York, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have one. Higher end again. He gets caught, gets caged. But he finds people in the system to exploit. That didn’t start with Stibble and the guard. People running errands, giving him unrecorded access to coms. That takes money. You’ve got to keep the errand boys happy. So if he owned the second location, wouldn’t he sell it? Invest the money?”
    “Possibly.”
    “Because if he had another, and I think he did, why didn’t he go there, too? Why just where I took him down? He could’ve used that instead of a hotel. If someone else is living there, he just does what he did to Schuster and Kopeski. More fun anyway. But if he sold it, it doesn’t mean anything. Reaching,” she said, pushing her hair back.
    “Maybe, maybe not. Keep going.”
    “I’m not sure where I’m going, but okay. He killed the New York partner before I took him down. Our best anal is he kills his partner before he switches locations. But there wasn’t any sign he planned to leave that apartment or New York. He had his collection there.”
    “He was bored with that partner.”
    “Yeah, or she got on his nerves or screwed up. But say he was bored with her, wouldn’t he have another on the string? A replacement, at least potentials?”
    “I’d say yes. Yes,” he repeated, pleased they both seemed to be thinking more clearly. “And wouldn’t he want or need another place—one where he didn’t have to worry about the partner dropping by, or the potential becoming too curious about that locked room. A place where he could entertain her, begin to train her, develop the bond.”
    “A place more suited to his