Author's Note: I love your reviews, guys. Thanks so much for being so encouraging. As a reward... (:

Happy reading!

P.S. This chapter actually gave me goosebumps. It's a little disturbing writing in the mind of the killer...because it comes all from my own head.

Ew. Not that I actually want to kill anybody. That is just gross - and totally inhumane. But I hope you get what I mean.

Nick's foot remained pressed firmly on the accelerator throughout the entire ride. Thankfully he had Officer Jamison behind him in an LVPD patrol car, or he would most certainly have been pulled over for reckless driving. Somehow he was being fueled by an overwhelming feeling of urgency that he couldn't suppress or pin down. Borrowing a few pages from Warrick's book, he swerved and swiveled with a finesse that the lean black CSI would have envied.

It was roughly four in the afternoon when he squealed to a halt right in front of the path that led into National Mead. Without even waiting for Officer Jamison, he pushed the door of his Tahoe open and then started into the woods.

"Stokes!" the young cop called.

Nick reluctantly turned and looked across at the kid. Officer Jamison had thick straw-colored hair arranged neatly atop his head, and big baby blues. He had to be in his mid-twenties, with a baby face and youngish features. Nick nearly squinted at the younger man's cheeks – were those honest-to-goodness freckles? Where was this guy from, Kansas? Then he laughed to himself. He was from the Lone Star State, after all – it wasn't all that farfetched.

"Yeah, Jamison?"

The cop pointed sheepishly to the right. "Isn't the crime scene back that way, CSI Stokes?"

Nick smiled wryly. Yeah, this guy was fresh out of the academy, no doubt, to be using formal titles in the LVPD. "Call me Nick, Jamison. You got a first name I can use?"

"Sure. It's Larry."

Nick refocused on the woods beyond him. "Well, Larry, the path leading into National Mead and towards the lake starts from here, at the parking lot. The crime scene was all the way over at the gazebo, where our Jane Doe was found. We've already searched the parking lot for any traces of a car or transportation where Jane Doe could have taken a cab or something and died here. Right?"

"Uh huh." The young cop looked a little nervous.

"Well, we didn't check the footpaths. What if she went down this way with her killer?"

The younger man shrugged. "Then we check it out."

Nick grinned. For a newbie, the kid was eager. "We check it out."

Without preamble, he picked up his silver field kit case and adjusted the brim of his cap. Nodding once to Larry, he silently urged the cop to follow him before he ducked a tree branch and started walking through the undergrowth, his eyes glued to the ground in front of him and to his left and right for any clue he could find.

"Stok–Nick?" Larry blurted suddenly, and Nick nearly jumped.

Nick almost felt the kid's breath on his neck. "Yeah, Larry?"

"What exactly are we looking for?"

Okay, Stokes. Stop getting ahead of yourself here.

"Sorry, Larry. My bad. We're looking for signs of a recent human presence. Check for trampled and trodden leaves and other vegetation, like broken branches and bent stems and stuff. Are you from the country, or are you a city boy?"

"Kansas City. But my grandparents live way out in the boonies, and we always go and visit them there. I like the open spaces and the fresh air." Larry's cheeks flushed, and Nick smirked to himself at his spot-on guess.

"Don't we all. So, I wager you do a little tracking?" he ventured.

"My granddad taught me all he knew."

Excellent.

"Good. Then you know what I'm talking about, right?"

"Sure." The kid cocked his head and met Nick's brown eyes curiously. Finally he stated, as if answering a question of his own, "Texas?"

"The very same. Let's get to work, laddie."

Both young men got down to work. It wasn't long before Nick realized he was following a trail of shoeprints across the path – high-heeled shoes, he figured, with sharp stiletto points that had punctured the underlying vegetation, and flat triangular tips that had flattened and smoothed out the grass underfoot. Here were other shoeprints – big, practical boots that were ideal for hiking and trekking. Both prints were side by side. Then they suddenly veered off the path and towards the direction where the gazebo was located.

"Back to the crime scene," Larry commented unnecessarily.

Nick sighed in reply. "I was hoping for something else. We can run the shoe sizes, I guess – it's better than nothing, which is all we have right now."

Snapping the pictures took less than half a minute, after which Nick unloaded the memory card images from the camera and fed them into his phone. He was glad, at least, that his Motorola software was compatible with the memory card software of his camera. Thank goodness for technology. It only took a minute to send the images to Catherine for uploading into the databases. Larry waited patiently as Nick finished the upload – and then his phone shrilled for his attention.

"Hello? Cath?"

"Nicky. We've hit gold."

Catherine gripped the phone as she tried to hold on to her excitement.

"Really?" Nick burst out. She could tell the news had the same poignant effect on him. "What is it?"

"The broadcasts paid off. A couple, Peter Kopellan and Heidi Black, were making out at National Mead several miles away from the gazebo. They didn't hear or see much, but in between kisses and sweet nothings they remember a man and a woman entering the park. The woman was a blonde about five feet six or seven, and she had a small rectangular-shaped bag with her – probably a purse or bag of sorts. She was wearing high heeled sandals – thanks for the photos, I'll upload them – and her companion was likely six feet two or three, if Mr. Kopellan remembers correctly. I quote Ms. Black: 'He was, like, kind of big? WWE big.' Also, our happy couple recalls that he kept bending his head and face towards the woman, so they couldn't see his features. They do remember that he had hair the color of wet sand, according to Mr. Kopellan."

Nick sounded as if he was trying to squelch his excitement and anticipation. "Are they reliable witnesses, Cath?"

Catherine angled a blue eye towards the couple seated in the lobby of the station, assessing the witnesses once more in her head and with her good judgment. Finally she gave Nick her assent. "Ms. Black seems a little flighty, but I'd vouch for Mr. Kopellan. He works under a headhunter and according to his boss, he has a good eye for people."

She could tell that Nick was grinning. "I could kiss you, Catherine. Help me check out those shoe prints and the shoe types, would you?"

"Wait! Nick!" Catherine hung onto the phone until she knew she had snagged his attention yet again. "Detective Cavaliere's free. He's waiting for you to radio him on your location. Are you with Officer Jamison yet?"

Nick's gusty sigh was like the sound of dead leaves blown by the wind. After a long while, he finally admitted, his voice a trifle strained, "I'll radio him."

"Good boy. I'll see you soon, Nicky."

Nick pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at Larry as he hung up the call from Catherine. He supposed that she was right – inter-departmental peace was a must, especially when detectives and CSIs had to work together. Hopefully Cavaliere had mellowed over the week since the last case where they'd worked together.

He looked back over the shoeprints again. Another set of the bootprints led back to the parking lot, as if the man – their killer, if the witnesses were to be believed – had gone back to the car for some supplies. Or perhaps, Nick thought darkly, he'd returned to the car for his knife and the wire to kill his female companion. He and Larry combed the entire gazebo to find out if there were any other shoeprints leading anywhere else.

"Nick?" Larry's voice rang out hollowly.

"Hmmm?"

"There's a set of high heel prints and boot prints leading towards the lake. Do you want me to follow it?"

Nick's expert eye spotted something that he hadn't expected. The hairs stood at attention on his neck and arms, and he held onto that thought for dear life before turning his gaze over to the young cop and nodding. "Sure, Larry, if that's okay. Thanks. I'm going to follow up over on these high heel prints here. Meet you back at the gazebo?"

Larry was already bounding off. Smiling slightly once more at the kid's vibrance, Nick was about to follow up on his lead when Catherine's admonishing statement floated across his mind like a bad memory. He let out his breath in a loud raspberry.

Last thing I want to do is to have a moral debate over the phone.

Reluctantly Nick dialed Cavaliere's cell and waited, his heartbeat matching the steady ring, ring, ring of the cell phone. It took only a few seconds before Cavaliere's gruff voice answered.

"Cavaliere."

"Hey, Cavaliere, it's Nick Stokes." Nick didn't give the man a chance to butt in. "I heard that you're free to come watch my back for this case? I'm at National Mead with Officer Larry Jamison, at the gazebo crime scene. We're scouting out the lake and the surrounding area on a lead."

"Sure thing, Stokes," the detective replied. His tone was baldly controlled, almost tentative, as if he was treading on unsteady ground.

Nick felt the coiling tension rising in him like a tidal wave. Before his traitorous mouth could obey the stern commands from his brain to stop and think, the words popped right out. "Just straighten me out on something, Cavaliere. Are you going to watch my back or burn it?"

The dead silence over the phone as both police detective and CSI tried to reconcile those words with their feelings, was utterly deafening. Nick mentally slapped himself for pushing with his Texan bluntness. What was the point of bringing those feelings out in the open? Now the issue was there to deal with, whether they liked it or not. When was he going to learn to let sleeping dogs lie?

"Listen, Nick," the detective finally spoke up in a voice that sounded nearly as weary as Nick himself felt. "I know that we haven't exactly been on great terms since that case…"

Try the term, 'at each other's throats'. That would probably be an apt description.

"…but I've thought about that day when we closed the case. I guess…you were right. I was being an ass, and there wasn't really a need for me to get nasty."

"You owe me an apology," Cavaliere gritted, as both men stood in the hallway outside the interrogation room.

Nick faced him and kept his eyes on him for a few minutes before flicking them away. "I'm sorry…that you feel that way, Detective."

Nick pinched the bridge of his nose again. The migraine in his temples let up for a moment. Cavaliere was a proud man, and Nick knew that the apology had to have galled the detective a great deal. Most men probably wouldn't even stoop to attempting at amends.

Cavaliere fell silent, likely waiting for a reaction from Nick. Nick was aware that the man was cringing, probably expecting Nick to cut him off at the knees. The Texan wasn't that cruel.

"Well, maybe not a complete ass," he allowed.

When the detective next spoke, he sounded as if he were smiling. "I'll see you at the scene, Nick. Don't get into any trouble."

Nick didn't even realize he had been holding his breath until he noticed that his chest was protesting for air. As he clicked off the call, he felt as if part of the weight on his shoulders had just dissipated. That, however, was immediately replaced by the thought of following his hunch before it grew too dark to see things in the proper perspective.

The oily feeling of uneasiness that suddenly settled over him prompted him to quicken his footsteps as he followed the shoeprints of the woman long dead into the woods.

What wouldn't he give for a real break just about now.

The Devil stood over the body, his knife still dripping rubies.

That had been so easy. The kid of a cop hadn't even known that he'd been there. All he had to do was remain still and quiet as a mouse, grab onto a handful of blond hair and jerk back the boy's head before he'd slit the kid's throat like he was butchering a hog. Nick Stokes had been on the phone, and being the considerate man he was, the Devil hadn't wanted to interrupt the conversation. After he dispatched the child cop, he would have plenty of time to go after the CSI.

Now he turned the knife over, admiring the way the dark red blood slithered over the gleaming steel of the knife, and the way the light glinted off the shining blade.

He loved the way blood flowed and moved. He loved the valuable little fact that blood was what made up life – that the precious biological elixir flowed through the veins and arteries of human beings, providing the oxygen and food and water and other elements required by the body to function. Once that elixir was gone, however, the human body was a deadened cocoon, lifeless and still. All it required was the steady draining of blood from capillaries and other vessels.

That reminded him of the way some spiders killed their victims – they bit the hapless fly or bug and sucked out the life-preserving blood and body fluids like a teenager draining a bottle of Snapple.

What a thought. What irony.

It was the same death that he had had in mind for Nicholas Parker Stokes.