New York to Dallas

think it was one of my men,” Ricchio told her. “Nothing he did, or we did. Someone recognized him, a college student. My detective had spoken to his class recently, spent some time answering the boy’s questions after. The kid came out of the building, spotted him. He got rid of him, but did a run on him anyway. He works at a gourmet market a few blocks away—just outside our perimeter.”
    “Talk about luck.”
    “He’s down there now, speaking to the boy. It’s possible McQueen was in there, the boy said something about the police.”
    “Jesus.”
    “No one could’ve predicted or foreseen—”
    “No, no one could. It just swung McQueen’s way, and that’s all.” But she stiffened when Nikos strode up to her. “If you’re going to crawl up my ass on this, just save it.”
    “Not this time. It was running like clockwork. But I want to know why you didn’t deny it when he made contact. Why you confirmed.”
    “Because he knew, so I chose to grind him up a little. He’s off center. Doctor Mira calls it devolving. Swiping at him should help that along.”
    “Doctor Mira also said he’s likely to become more violent and less controlled.”
    “That’s right. Freeze the accounts, now’s the time.”
    “Done,” Nikos told her. “Five minutes ago.”
    “Good. He’s got no place to go, no way to get there, unless or until he steals a car. And he knows he can’t ride around in a stolen vehicle for long. We need roadblocks, we need to cover all public and private transpo. He doesn’t have any cash except what he’s got on him. He only has the ID he has on him. He uses credit, we nail him, and he knows it.”
    She turned around, gestured. “Look at this place. He took a lot of time and care putting all this together, and from prison. Now he can’t use it. When he goes to access more funds, he’s frozen out.”
    “He’s going to try to get out of Dallas.”
    “Maybe, but we don’t have to make it easy for him.”
    She crossed over to the locked door, glanced at Roarke. When he disengaged the locks, she stepped in.
    He’d covered the walls with pictures of his victims. All the girls, all the eyes.
    “These are case-file shots,” she stated. “It mattered enough for him to get them. He wanted me in here, locked in with them.”
    She studied the shackles, remembered how they weighed on her wrists and ankles in her dream.
    Then she turned away, walked out. “Let’s see what else he left behind.”
    The high life, she thought as they turned the apartment inside out. Sheets of Irish linen, towels of Turkish cotton. French champagne, Russian caviar.
    Tranqs and paralytics and syringes all meticulously organized in an embossed case.
    “Fresh flowers in every room,” she said to Mira. “And enough food for months. A lot of it fresh, too. So it would spoil.”
    “He needed to acquire—collect again—and purchase and have. And he’s likely having trouble deciding what it is he wants.”
    “So he buys too much. Too many flowers, too much food, too many clothes. He knew how to live light once—well, but light. I bet we find his prints everywhere, overlapping each other. He’d want to touch everything, over and over. He’d stand out on the terrace, feel like the king of the world. Then he’d come in here, lock up like a fortress. Where’s he going now?”
    “London was in the plans,” Roarke told her. “We’re getting through some of his blocks, and found where he’s started researching accommodations and real estate in London.”
    “He can’t get there now.”
    “He knows New York.”
    Eve nodded at Mira. “And expects I’ll go back there. He’ll need to ride the grift for a while, pump up his funds. He’ll need to hunt, and that’s soon. But he’s got nowhere to take her, keep her. A motel maybe, something he can pay cash for. He’d have to keep her under. No soundproofing this time. But he’ll need that release.”
    She paced. “Or break into a home, a private residence. Take what he needs, regroup.”
    “He’s angry. He’ll be rash,” Mira warned her. “And violent.”
    “The media should be useful. Blanket it with his face, his name, feed the media some of the data on the manhunt. If he catches it, he’ll get more pissed, more shaken. He’s alone now, and has to go back to living on his wits. It’s been a long time.”
    She had a pair of uniforms take Mira back to the hotel, watched EDD carry out the electronics.
    “They could use you on that,” Eve