Author's note: This is a rather long chapter. But once it started it just kept on coming. I decided to continue it through rather than leave it on a cliffie ending. This mindset will not be coming in future chapters, though. This chapter does have a few mind-warping parts, though, so I decided to hold off on the cliffhangers.

Lisa Starling was tired. It had been a long day. But she wasn't tired enough to not be horrified at the sight in front of her.

The crime scene she had been sent to was largely a bust. They found not a hair nor a fingerprint. Nor a body, for that matter. It was a nice apartment, and Lisa thought the furniture was tasteful. There were pictures of family set up in a tasteful display on the bookcase. This was the apartment of Roland Mapp.

The only proof they had that anything was even amiss was at the computer desk. The chair was nice – sumptuous black leather, ebony wood armrests. Lisa didn't want to sit on it, though. This was because there was a large groove where someone had driven a meat cleaver into the armrest. The groove was stained with blood. The seat itself was also stained with blood – a fair amount from the likes of it.

"So someone's hand was on there?" Lisa asked, looking at the bloodstain.

Ralph Lima shook his head. "Fingers. Look at the blood trails. Four separate wounds. Four little blood trails there, see 'em? Somebody chopped off somebody's fingers."

The cleaver itself was lying on the desk next to the keyboard. It had already been bagged. A bloodstain was visible on its edge.

"OK, a test for you, Agent Starling. Is that the murder weapon?"

Lisa studied it carefully. "Might be, but I doubt it," she said carefully. "There's not a lot of blood on the blade. Not compared to what we see on the chair. Plus, Susana knows about evidence. I bet the actual murder weapon is either in the dishwasher or she took it with her."

"You think?" he challenged.

"She took the body," she pointed out.

Ralph Lima smiled and nodded. "Good," he said cryptically.

She'd spent the night in New York City. The FBI's hotel-room policy did not allow for anything resembling the sumptuous suite her cousin had enjoyed while she was in the city. Still, the room was comfortable and clean. Lisa didn't need much more than that.

That morning, Quincy had called. Based on his tone of voice, Lisa had thought Susana had struck again. And she had. Well, sort of.

"I need you and Lima to catch a flight out to Wheeling," Quincy had told her. "Tickets are already reserved for you. Get out there."

"Wheeling? Wheeling, West Virginia?"

"Yes," Quincy said. "The local boys will pick you up from there. The rest of the team will be out there shortly. Let forensics handle New York. We think Susana has left."

I said that two days ago, Lisa Starling thought, but did not say it.

"Where are we going?" Lisa asked.

"Small town. Beaumont, it's called. A few miles from Menatchie."

The bottom of Lisa' stomach tumbled out. Her fingers tightened on the phone. She scowled.

"Beaumont?" she asked.

"Yes. Beaumont. Get a move on, Starling. I'll fill you in when you get here."

The flight to Wheeling was bumpy and unpleasant. The plane was much smaller. From the size of the seats, Lisa guessed that the airline must cater to midgets. She was offered a cup of lousy coffee and a package of crackers, which she took. As the small turboprop began its descent into Wheeling's airport, Lisa glared at the landscape below her.

West Virginia, for Lisa, was a bunch of vaguely unpleasant memories and distastefulness. She had heard the jokes: West Virginia and backwardness, West Virginia and bumpkins, West Virginia and incest. Not much of it was true, but enough of it was to hurt.

Susana Alvarez Lecter's memories of her childhood involved money and two loving parents. Lisa Starling's involved a father who seemed impossible to please, a man embittered by his station in life as a feed salesman. There was never enough money. Bill collectors called constantly. Her father turned to the bottle, as many men do, and when he came home, he was often violent. He'd never actually hit Lisa, but he had not scrupled at hitting her mother. They had lived in Beaumont. Her uncle had lived there many years ago. Now he rested in the cemetery there.

As the FBI agent peered out the window, the frightened six-year-old within screamed I dowanna go back there! I dowanna! The long-buried memories of hearing her parents argue, then the sounds of smacks and screams, arose. Her father, leaning over her bed in a beery haze: Honey, Mommy 'n daddy were just having a little argument, that's all. His big hand clapping her on the back in a drunken attempt to comfort and stinging instead.

Her knuckles tightened on the scarred aluminum armrest.

"You OK?" Ralph Lima said.

"Yeah," Lisa sighed. "It's…my first time back here in years."

"Not easy to go home," Lima said.

Lisa shook her head. She had left West Virginia to attend the University of Virginia on full scholarship. She had avoided returning whenever she could, only responding to her mother's pleas when guilt absolutely forced her to.

Goddam you, Susana. Goddam you for making me come back to this Godforsaken hunk of nowhere.

The Wheeling airport was more modern than she would have thought, thanks to some federal help. At the gate, they saw two local officers waiting there. The local boys seemed to recognize them right off the bat. It was like dogs, or something, Lisa thought. Cops could recognize other cops even in plainclothes. It was as if they could smell the scent of cordite and badges.

One of the officers ambled up to them slowly.

"Are yew-all the FBI agents?" he asked.

"Yes, we are," Lisa said in as crisp and Northeastern an accent as she could manage. She flashed her ID. "I'm Special Agent Starling, this is Agent Lima."

The cop tipped his head. "Good morning to you, Agent Starling. Say, are you Lisa Starling?"

Crap.

She read his nameplate. T. Anderson. "Yes, I am," she said, lapsing into her old accent in defeat. "You're Teddy Anderson, aincha? Mark Anderson's boy?"

"Yes, I am," he acknowledged. He had been two years ahead of her in school. At one time, she'd had a schoolgirl crush on him. Now she was the FBI agent and he was the local-yokel cop.

Politely, he carried her bag at the baggage claim, even though it contained very little. At the door was parked a gleaming white police cruiser. It was surprisingly new-looking. Along the side was emblazoned the words TOWN OF BEAUMONT POLICE DEPARTMENT. Probably brought their best cruiser to show off for the FBI, Lisa thought.

"PO-leece," Lisa said under her breath.

"Excuse me, Miss Starling?" Officer Anderson asked.

"Nothing," she brushed it off. "Long flight. Jet lag." She hadn't taken a jet into Wheeling, just a dinky little turboprop, but Officer Ted Anderson of the Town of Beaumont PO-leece Department did not need to know that.

In the car, Lisa accepted a place in the back for her partner's sake. The metal barrier pressed into her knees, but it wasn't too bad. It was dented where a prior passenger had given it an angry kick.

"It's a long drive back to Beaumont," Officer Anderson said from behind the wheel. "Y'all like country music?" He gestured to the radio.

Lisa hated country music. If it came down to spending the next two hours listening to men in cowboy hats wail about how they had lost their women and their trucks and presenting herself to her cousin and inviting her to remove whatever organ she might want without anesthesia, Lisa would have had to sit down and think about it.

"Sure, why not," she said, not wanting to hurt the feelings of the local boys. They actually seemed to look up to the FBI. The first jangling chords of guitar and banjo came over the radio. Lisa sighed and accepted her fate.

"It's a strange crime scene," Officer Anderson said. "We don't get a lot of this in Beaumont."

Lisa's head snapped up. "What is it?"

He turned down the radio to speak more. Had there not been a metal grille separating them, Lisa would have kissed him for that.

"Well, it's a black fella, strung up in the graveyard. Real horrible to look at. Some people." He shook his head.

"Is it a hate crime, you think?" Ralph Lima asked from the front seat.

"Naw. Beaumont's mostly white and Menatchie's mostly black, but there ain't too much hate crime around here. Hasn't been for years. Most people get along fine, white or black. Plus, we've seen some Klan type crimes, and it ain't Klan." He turned and looked at Agent Lima as if to suggest that he wasn't stupid.

"It looks kinda like whoever did it was trying to make it look like a hate crime, but it don't match up exactly. Klan and all them white-pride boys wouldn't hang him up in a white graveyard. Woulda been somewhere more public. Plus, they chopped off his fingers. If it was Klan, they mighta cut somethin' off, but it wouldn't be fingers."

"Good thinking," Lisa Starling said. She tilted her head as she listened, unconsciously mimicking her cousin. She would want to see the crime scene herself, though. "Have you ID'ed the body?"

"Not officially. The police chief over in Menatchie…," Officer Anderson sighed. "The police chief over in Menatchie heard the squawk on the radio. We don't hide much from each other, you know. She got out there and said it was her nephew. Asked us to call the FBI and not to touch nothing. She's pretty broken up, you know. It was our scene cause it's our jurisdiction, but we decided to do what she asked."

On the highway, Officer Anderson stepped on the gas and got the cruiser going. He waved at a few state police boys on the way. A few of them radioed him to ask if he was being pursued by bats or something.

After a long, interminable drive on the highway and then the endless two-lane roads Lisa remembered from her childhood, the area turned less rural. A sign up ahead beckoned them, stating WELCOME TO BEAUMONT. A NICE PLACE TO LIVE.

A nice place to leave, Lisa Starling thought. After all, she had done just that.

The graveyard was not far away. Nothing was far away in this little town. There were plenty of cruisers parked around the graveyard, their lights going. The other two Beaumont cars, and one Menatchie prowl car parked companionably by them. There were also several unmarked cars with Washington plates. Lisa did not need an engraved invitation to tell her these were FBI.

Officer Anderson scurried out of the car to open her door. This was more necessary than courtesy, as the back doors of police cruisers do not have interior door handles. Lisa's legs screamed as she stretched from the long ride. Then she walked up into the cemetery, looking for the crowd.

She found it. Uniformed cops and FBI agents in plainclothes milled around a particular area. As Lisa moved closer, they let her past. She heard them muttering.

Goddam worst crime ever out here—

Hope they catch the sick fuck—

Get him down from there, let's get fingerprints—

When she made it to the inner edge of the crowd and had a good look, she gasped in horror.

This part of the cemetery sported a large white statue of Jesus. Jesus held out his arms as if to bless anyone in the cemetery who passed by. Under him, the beaten body of Roland Mapp also held out his arms. He was tied to the statue with thick ropes carefully tied to the concrete arms and body of the statue. His head slumped forward. His face had been carefully removed to expose the skull. One eye stared at nothing. The other was missing, carefully scraped from its socket. A long slash in his throat was shockingly pink against his dark skin. Dried blood crusted at its edges.

Lisa took a deep breath. She hoped for his sake that the mutilations had been done postmortem. The FBI agent part of her was already tracking that. There wasn't much blood, so it probably was.

In Roland Mapp's left hand – the only hand that still possessed fingers – was a signpost. The sign atop it read Welcome to Menatchie – where life is worth living. On his chest was a piece of paper. It was held there by a long, thin filet knife carefully driven into his chest. Lisa ignored her nausea and leaned in close to look at it.

It was a newspaper article from the Beaumont-Menatchie Post, dated from two years ago. Menatchie gets new police chief, it read. Under it was a blurry picture which had not survived the photocopying process well. It showed a black woman with her hand raised in the air, taking the oath of office. The article stated that Ardelia Mapp, former head of Behavioral Science at the FBI, had taken the post as Menatchie's police chief.

Lisa turned away and saw a black woman in a different uniform than the other uniforms looking at the corpse with teary eyes. Her nameplate read A. MAPP. She walked over to the woman and introduced herself.

"Hi," she said softly. "I'm Special Agent Starling."

The black woman's eyes focused on her and a fresh wave of grief washed over her face.

"Yes, we spoke on the phone," Ardelia Mapp said tonelessly.

"I'm sorry to meet you under these circumstances," Lisa said.

"Thank you." After a few minutes, Ardelia spoke again.

"She did this, you know."

"Susana Alvarez?"

"Yes," Ardelia said. "Find her, Starling. Find her and give her to me. I'll do what is necessary."

"We'll find her," Lisa said. "I promise. We'll bring her to justice."

"Justice." Ardelia snorted bitterly. "Bring her to me, Starling. That little bitch will not take anything more from me."

"I can't promise that," Lisa said softly. "You know that. We have a duty."

Ardelia's eyes turned cold and hard. "Then you're no damn use to me, Agent Starling." She turned away.

Lisa sat there for a moment, not sure what to do. Different people dealt with grief differently. She could not hold Ardelia's behavior against her, not after the atrocity she had just witnessed.

Chief Quincy walked over to her and took her arm. Ardelia met her successor's eyes with a look that bespoke no friendliness or courtesy, simply noting his presence. He guided Lisa to a spot several feet away.

"You think this is Lecter?"

"Probably," Lisa said. "It's supposed to look like a hate crime. But there's nothing racial to it. Susana Alvarez hasn't ever showed any racist tendencies. This was a hate crime against Mapp, not blacks."

"Good," he said calmly. God, how could he seem so nonchalant with the horror of Roland Mapp not ten feet away? "The profilers agree with you. It's her, all right. Mapp said she did it on videoconference with her there."

"Excuse me," Lisa said. "I need to check something."

She walked over a few rows of graves, until she found what she was looking for. A large gray stone that Ardelia Mapp had bought and paid for. JOHN STARLING, KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY. She stared at her uncle's grave for several moments. Tomorrow would be the anniversary of his death.

Planted neatly on it was a fresh, new bouquet of flowers.

Damn you, Susana. I was right.

…

Susana Alvarez was in tears.

Her wrists were bound behind her back and she was blindfolded. Her unseen captor was busy banging around doing something else. She was sitting on the floor, jammed into the corner. She could hear another girl next to her crying herself.

Susana did not try to speak. Her captor had warned her not to. She heard the clatter of metal, then the squeak of a pulley. Footsteps came towards her slowly. She cringed.

The blindfold came off roughly and Susana saw her captor for the first time since she had been captured outside the Ballston Common Mall.

Her captor was a young woman like herself. She was very pretty, but there was a cruel look on her face. Her eyes drew Susana's attention like a snake's draw a mouse. Red eyes, with no mercy in them at all. Her face was the face of a devil – a diabla, as Susana's grandmother might have put it.

"Well, hello there," la diabla said. "Don't scream, or I'll have to hurt you."

"P-please…doan hurt me," Susana whimpered. Her Mexican accent was obvious.

La diabla tilted her head and stared at Susana. "Hablas español?" Her accent sounded Argentinian.

"Sí," Susana whimpered. "Por favor, no me mata, no me mata."

"I'm not going to kill you," la diabla said. "Tell me, though. Your name is Susana Alvarez?"

Susana nodded.

"Well, what do you know," la diabla mused. "That's my name, too. Now look, I'll tell you what. We don't want to confuse Lisa here, so we'll just call you Susie." She indicated the blond girl similarly bound on the floor next to Susie. She flipped off the girl's blindfold.

"Hi, Lisa," Susana Alvarez Lecter said sarcastically. "This is Susie, next to you. I'm Susana. We've got the same name, so Susie gets the diminutive." She nodded at the weeping blonde.

"Now," Susana continued. "Make very very sure you get it straight. I absolutely despise being called Susie. I didn't even let my mother call me Susie when I was a kid. So: she's Susie, and I'm Susana. Got it?"

The blonde nodded through her tears.

"Now make extra sure you get it straight, Lisa," Susana said calmly. She reached behind her and pulled her Harpy off the waistband of her expensive slacks. It snapped out. Both bound girls screamed in unison and cringed.

"I'm not gonna hurt you, either of you. But if you call me Susie, Lisa…and that goes for you too, Susie, then I'll be upset with you. And when I'm upset with you, I only tend to feel better about you once I've cut something off you. Got it?"

Both girls gave her big horse nods that indicated sheer terror more than understanding.

"Great. I have a little performance piece here that you're going to help me with."

Susana Alvarez Lecter was pleased with herself. The abandoned building just outside Baltimore was just what she wanted. She had figured it wouldn't be terribly hard to find a girl with her name and had been correct. Then it had simply been a matter of finding the girl and getting her. With the aid of a 500,000 volt stun gun, it was as easy as carting Roland Mapp's corpse down from New York City had been. She had told passersby that her sister was epileptic and she was getting her her medication. Amazing, what some people would believe.

Finding a stand-in for her cousin had been harder. Susana had been forced to settle for a blonde sixteen-year-old named Lisa Starklock. The name discrepancy displeased her, but after all, it wasn't like there were too many Starlings around. Still, it would get the point across, and in a most artful way. Plus, Lisa sported the mile-thick West Virginia accent Susana liked to torment her cousin with. The kid had been baby-sitting when Susana knocked on her door and pretended to be a census taker. She hadn't even needed the stun gun. The sight of the knife had been enough. Susana had bound her, blindfolded her, and frogmarched her out to the Suburban, a vehicle excellent for transporting bound prisoners.

She hoped her cousin would not be so easy. Otherwise, this would be terribly boring.

Susana had set up a mildly complicated system of two counterweights attached to a long rope which ran through a pulley. The pulley was attached to the doorknob. She opened the door experimentally and watched the two counterweights bob up and down. She frowned thoughtfully. It ought to be enough weight, the blows should be heavy enough.

She grabbed up the weeping blonde girl and walked her over to one of the counterweights. The girl simply looked at her with big tearful blue eyes and said nothing. Susana made her lie down on the wooden pallet she had dragged in from the loading bay and glanced over at her second prisoner.

"Don't get any ideas, now, Susie," she chuckled. "I'll get upset with you if you do."

"No," Susie whimpered from her corner. "No, please, señora, I'm being good."

"Buena, chica."

Susana took a coil of rope and carefully bound Lisa Starklock face up on the pallet. Wrists, ankles, waist, knees, above and below her breasts. Lisa Starklock was not going anywhere soon. Satisfied, she walked back for Susie and marched her over to the pallet.

Both girls were terrorized and easy to control. She forced her namesake to straddle Lisa and bound her ankles to the pallet. She tied a rope around Susie's neck and pulled it back, forcing her to arch her back. All the while, Susie's arms lay limply on either side of Lisa's head.

Next, Susana took a contraption she had made herself from a hardware store. It consisted of two three-foot-long pipes mounted into a connector that held them at a ninety-degree angle. She held this against Susie's arms and used duct tape to bind her arms to the pipes. She was liberal with the duct tape. Her father had told her about it once. It made a most effective restraint, as the late Paul Krendler could have attested.

She attached the connector of the pipes to the rope and stood back to view her work. Susie loomed over Lisa on the pallet, her arms up in the air as if to deliver the killing blow. Susana nodded, pleased with herself. This would be a hell of an effect. Too bad she wouldn't be able to see it.

She unwrapped a second Harpy she had bought at a knife shop in Baltimore. Both girls began to scream.

"Cállense," Susana ordered.

Susie quieted. Lisa did not. Susana squatted and grabbed the girl's cheek, twisting it painfully.

"Be quiet, I said. You really ought to learn another language, Lisa. Don't be such a peasant."

"I'm sorry," the hysterical girl wept. "Please, I just, I don't want to die, please don't kill me, I'm only sixteen."

"I'm not going to kill you," Susana said dispassionately. "And when I was your age I almost got my face cut off by a hairy psycho janitor. Don't be such a baby."

She seized Susie's right hand and put the Harpy in it, point down. Susie did not want to hold it at first, but did so when she saw her captor grow displeased. Susana carefully mummified her captive's hand in duct tape. First the right one, so that Susie could not discard the knife. Then she added the left hand for more stability.

She was pleased with the result. Whoever opened the door would trigger off a rather unpleasant stabbing scene.

"Don't wiggle too much, either of you," she warned. "If that rope slips…," she trailed off. They all knew what would happen.

"One more thing," she ordered and walked back to the table. When she returned, she had a small plastic case in one hand and a cardboard box in the other. She reached for Susie's eye and held it open with her thumb and forefinger. Susie whimpered and turned her face away.

"Open them or lose them," Susana said peremptorily.

Her face drawing down into a mask of misery, Susie opened.

Susana carefully slipped the contact lenses in. She was mildly miffed that red contact lenses were only available in costume shops. However, it had the desired effect. Susie now stared up at her with eyes as maroon as her own. The shade wasn't exactly right, but it was close.

Last touch. Susana opened the box and removed the head inside. Both girls screamed shrilly. Annoyed, Susana slapped Susie's face.

"It's just a Styrofoam head, you morons," she said disapprovingly. She took the brown wig and carefully arranged it on Susie's head, covering her own black hair. She showed them the white Styrofoam head on which the wig had rested.

Both girls, convinced they would die, looked up at her fearfully. Susana clapped her hands like a scoutmaster.

"Okey dokey," she said breezily. "Now, if you're very good girls, you might live through this. If you're bad girls, well, then, all bets are off."

"I'm going to leave the room now, but I will be in the area. Now, I'm sure your mothers taught you that ladies don't scream and ladies don't yell. So you make sure to act ladylike, now." She waggled a perfectly manicured nail at her captives.

"Now I'm sure you noticed that dear little Susie has the same name as me. We certainly don't want little Lisa to feel left out, so there will be an awfully nice lady from the FBI coming along with the same name as Lisa. Well, close enough, anyway. Now when the nice lady comes in, your job is to convince her not to shoot. Susie, I expect to hear you saying 'Pleese doan shoot me, señora Aif Bee Hai Agente, and Lisa, you make sure to say 'She ain't no bad'un, so you put that gun down raht now.'" Both accents were reproduced perfectly.

"You understand?"

Horse nods.

"You sure?"

"Yes," wept Susie.

"Now, Susie," Susana continued, "I want you to tell me your email address and password. You've got AOL Earthlink, right?"

"Yes," Susie whimpered.

"Good girl. The way America keeps in touch, don't you know. Now: your username and password, please."

Through her tears, Susie managed, "It's Salavarez216@aolearthlink.com…and the password is Alberto." She sniffled. "That's our dog's name. Please, don't hurt me."

"Good," Susana said, and walked to a nearby window. She opened it and slipped out easily. In the Suburban, she connected her laptop to her cell phone and dialed a number.

…

Lisa Starling was reviewing the lab reports from Susana's latest atrocity. Her cubicle was quiet. Was Ardelia Mapp Susana's next target? It was hard to say: this go-round, Susana seemed to be killing whoever she wanted.

The familiar double tone of her computer informed her she had new email. Lisa waved her mouse to turn off the screen saver and maximized her Outlook 2025. What she saw made her gasp.

From: Susana Alvarez (Salvarez216@aolearthlink.com)

To: Lisa Starling (lstarling@fbi.gov)

Subject: Hello, Cousin Lisa!

Howdy, Cousin Lisa!

I declare, this modern technology is just great. Keep in touch wherever you go. My father never got into email – he liked the old ways, real paper letters and such.

Tell me, if you will. Look inside yourself. Not the FBI, yourself. Starling.

What do you see, when you look attt yourself? Do you ever think about what would happen if you were out of the FBI? If you lost 'the G', as Barney would refer to you? Think about it, k?

In the city my father practiced in, there are two hostages. Figure out where they are, and you may yet save their lives. Knock, knock, Lisa. We're waiting for you.

Ta ta,

S.A.L.

Lisa stood up, blinking at her flat-screen monitor. For a moment she could do nothing. Two hostages? What the hell?

Then she knew what to do. She clicked 'print' to print out a copy of the message. Then she ran for Chief Quincy's office. He looked up at her, annoyed. He was on the phone.

"What do you want?" he asked.

Lisa waved the paper. "We need to get everyone together. Susana sent me an email."

He took it and scanned it. Then he handed it back to her. "Get with Lima," he ordered.

"Sir, I think--," Lisa started.

"I said get with him, not give it to him. You'll work with him."

Two hours later, after much research, everyone was gathered in the meeting room. Lisa was grimly pleased. She had engaged in a rough brainstorming session with Ralph Lima. Although they had both screamed at each other at times, she believed they had the answer. The email Susana had sent was projected on the whiteboard.

"I told you this was a bad idea," DeGraff said. "Today she's emailing Starling. Tomorrow, she'll be gunning for her."

Lisa scowled. "I can handle myself. Let's look at the message."

"Maybe it's just nonsense," he said.

"I doubt it. Look." Lisa rose and walked over to the whiteboard.

"The email address does check back to a Susana Alvarez, but not our Susana Alvarez. The account has been around for years. According to AOL Earthlink's records, it was dialed in from a satellite phone. So she's portable. The number checks out to a company that rents sat phones to travelers. Rented a week ago, one month rental."

"The reference to the city her father practiced in is easy. Susana thinks we're all as dumb as a box of frogs, so she's going to give us that one." Next to the letter, she printed the word BALTIMORE.

"The reference to me is too hokey for Susana. She's referring to the Buffalo Bill case in which her parents met."

Chief Quincy, who had been with the FBI then, asked, "Yourself Storage?"

Lisa shook her head. "No, it's a pun on my name. Agent Lima and I went over it." Under BALTIMORE, she printed STARLING.

"She's messing with your head," DeGraff said.

"No, she isn't, sir. Look." She pointed to the email's text.

"The at has three t's instead of one. That's not an error. Susana knows how to spell. It could be just a sticky key on her keyboard, but nowhere else in the message is the 'T' repeated. It's part of it." She printed ATTT. Next to it, she wrote ADD T.

"Add a T," she said unnecessarily.

"The reference to 'lose the G' has nothing to do with Barney. She's just trying to camouflage it and remind us what she did before. Likewise, the 'k' is not OK like it usually would be. Susana would never use that kind of slang, her father taught her better. She's telling us what letter goes in place of the G."

Lisa erased the letter G from her name and replaced it with a letter K. In between the R and L of her name, she managed to sneak in an extra T.

STARTLINK.

She turned back to face the men at the table and beamed with accomplishment.

"I checked, and there's an old DSL company in Baltimore that went bankrupt years ago. StartLink DSL, it was called. Their building is still abandoned. The Knock, knock reference probably means that whatever she wants us to find is in their NOC – their Network Operations Center."

"What does the 'We're waiting for you' mean?" Chief Quincy asked. He seemed interested.

"I don't know, sir," she admitted.

"This is a load of crap," DeGraff said. "You have no idea if this is right or not--,"

Chief Quincy rubbed his chin thoughfully.

"Peter, be quiet," he said. "I think she's got it. Brilliant work, Starling."

"I believe so, sir," she said, and in that moment she would have killed for him. "Agent Lima was part of it too. I couldn't have done it without him."

"Everyone get their weapons," Quincy ordered. "We're going to check out StartLink DSL."

…

The FBI agents piled out of the van, their weapons at the ready. They surrounded the old building that had once housed StartLink DSL. Lisa Starling raised her Glock and waited for the battering-ram team to get the door open. She noticed that the electrical power to the building had been restored. Light came from the inside of the building.

With a bang and a roar, the door fell open. They piled through the doors and quickly covered all positions. There was no place Susana could be that did not have the muzzle of a weapon pointed in that direction.

Carefully, slowly, the team made its way through the dead building. The ghosts of long-departed desks and chairs made themselves known by the marks they had left in the carpet. In the back of the building was a large gray door.

On the door was emblazoned the cryptic letters NOC. This was the network operations center. Tucked above the doorknob was a piece of paper. Emblazoned on it was the following message:

Susana Alvarez is indeed behind this door.

But I wouldn't open it if I were you.

The door-banger team swiftly arranged their battering ram. Lisa took up a position behind them, the muzzle of her Glock pointed beyond the door. Her pulse beat in her ears. But something wasn't right. This was way too easy.

The agent with the ram raised it to break down the door. Lisa tensed. All of a sudden, her cousin spoke up in her mind.

Why, Cousin Lisa, however did you think I got the other Susana Alvarez's email address?

The agent struck the door with the heavy metal ram. Behind them, Lisa's jaw dropped. A look of fear and surprise came over her face. She meant to scream for them to stop, and had they waited another five seconds she would have.

But they didn't, and she didn't. The door burst open. The rope tied to the knob slipped off. And the Rube Goldberg contraption Susana had devised began its work.

It was simple in execution, really. The two counterweights bobbed up and down, each forcing the other up and down. Eventually, it would stop of its own accord as the weights achieved balance.

Except Susana Alvarez's arms were tied to one of the counterweights. And as it plummeted, it forced her arms down and forced the Harpy into Lisa Starklock's soft, tender stomach. An unwilling cog in her namesake's evil device, she stabbed Lisa Starklock over and over like a homicidal clockwork monkey.

The team ran in. They heard Lisa Starklock's screams and brought their weapons to bear on Susana Alvarez. They saw her crouched over the other girl, stabbing her over and over. Lisa Starling ran in behind them.

"Susana, stop! Drop the knife or we'll shoot!" cried an agent.

"No! Wait! I can't!" the terrified girl cried.

Lisa saw one of the other agents bringing his pistol up. She looked, saw the rope running across the ceiling, and the heavy weights. Her cousin's plan spelled itself out in her mind.

"No!" she yelled.

"Please don't shoot me!" Susana Alvarez begged.

A spurt of flame burst from the agent's pistol. Susana Alvarez screamed. The bullet struck her in the shoulder. The agent had aimed for her head and barely missed. Her arms still worked mechanically, driving the knife into her victim again and again.

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" Lisa Starling screamed. That didn't work. She unwittingly imitated her first cousin's predilection for profanity in stressful situations. "HOLD YOUR GODDAM FIRE, DAMMIT TO HELL!"

"Put her down," she heard someone else say. "I don't know what's got into Starling, but….,"

Lisa Starling had to act. There was no time. And she would not let the FBI become Susana's unwitting goons.

She sprinted forward, into the fire zone, where the weapons of her allies would go to bear on her.

"STARLING, GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE NOW!" she heard behind her. She ignored it. DeGraff's voice floated back bitterly: "Look. Starling's gone fucking crazy. I told you women didn't belong in the FBI. What does she think this is? A Tupperware party?" Write me up, asshole. I cordially await any Board of Inquiry you care to call. You can explain how you were about to kill the girl Susana Alvarez left for us to find.

Lisa jumped into the air and grabbed the counterweight. She braced her feet on it and held onto the rope. With the weight of her body, the counterweight was much heavier than its mate. It went down and stayed down.

Susana Alvarez's arms went up and stayed up. The bloody Harpy stuck from between the blob of her duct-taped hands. She sobbed with relief. So did both Lisas.

"FBI," Lisa said. "You're safe." Then she looked at them both, saw the blood, and trembled.

"Are you all right? Are you alive?"

"Yes," Susana Alvarez whimpered, although she was swiftly turning pale and going into shock.

Under her, Lisa Starklock licked dry lips and husked, "Yes, ma'am."

Both girls were wounded and would need medical attention, probably surgery. But they were alive. She'd beaten her cousin this time. She'd won. She glanced over at the wondering eyes of the fire squad. They put aside their weapons, as shamefaced as young boys who have been yelled at by their mothers.

One of the agents said wonderingly, "That was the goddamest thing I've seen in twenty years. You got balls, Starling."

Lisa Starling placed her forehead against the rope of the counterweight and felt tears of relief spring to her eyes.