Chapter 18

I don't see the big deal with catching a killer. The 60 Minutes people talk about these guys like they're demented geniuses; I guess maybe the human ones are. But, from the time we got into position, it only took twenty minutes to know we were in the right place. A half an hour after that, we had the guy dead to rights.

Maybe I'm being unfair to the detectives and agents that dedicate their lives to finding these creeps. I mean, they have a lot of stuff going for them, but we still have a few advantages over them. Two pairs of raptor eyes – Marco and Cassie – saw absolutely everything going on within a mile or more of Rachel. They were the best surveillance gear a killer-catcher could ask for – mobile, hi-definition cameras that knew what they were looking for.

Not to mention, we had bait - a ready-made prototype fitting the serial killer's preference to the letter. I guess cops can't ask a normal teenage girl to risk her life to draw the guy out. Once the idea had been voiced, Rachel wouldn't be kept out of it. I guess I knew that from the start.

Maybe half a mile from the beach, very near to the sites of the first several murders, there was a walking track/nature trail. Really, it was just a scruffy, sorry path that looped through the woods for a couple of miles and ended up back where it started. Rachel was just kind of pacing between the place where the trail meets the road and the place where the path forks, starting the loop. The whole point was her to be visible to the maximum amount of people; not that there were many hikers wanting to use this particular trail, probably because it was in the known stalking grounds of a serial killer.

Still, there were people around. And, like I said, after about twenty minutes, we were sure about our location. Marco called it in.

(There's a guy following her,) he said in broad-band thought-speech, addressing all of us Animorphs at the same time. (He's definitely watching her, too.)

(What does he look like?) I asked, a little fascinated, despite myself. What would a serial killer look like?

(Like a dork,) Marco replied instantly. (Actually, Tobias, if you poke your head up in about thirty seconds, you'll probably be able to see him. Do it slowly and quietly – he's focused on Rachel, but that doesn't mean he won't notice a demon-goblin-jack-in-the-box-from-hell.)

I laughed. I was hunkered down behind a fallen, rotting redwood in Hork-bajir morph. I was well-hidden from the path; Hork-bajir lived in the trees on their own world, and their trees weren't so different from ours, I guess. The mottled, muddy, gray-green color of the Hork-bajir's skin seemed to blend into the bracken of our forest perfectly. Cassie had confirmed it, saying that even with raptor eyes, looking at me behind the tree was like looking at some sort of weird growth on the tree itself. Tree cancer, I think snipers call it when a camouflaged body looks like a part of a tree.

I counted to thirty and slowly peeked over the trunk. Sure enough, there was a guy in a tucked-in button-down shirt following Rachel from a distance. He was talking urgently on his cell, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. Suddenly, he flipped his phone closed and turned on his heel, heading back to the main road and leaving Rachel behind. (Ah, it was a false alarm,) I said. (He's leaving.)

(Maybe so, but I think that might have been the opening line to the play,) Marco said. (I thought we might see something like this first.)

(Like what?) Jake asked. He was in wolf morph, somewhere behind me. He'd wanted to go tiger, but in the end, Marco had convinced him that was a bad idea. If he was spotted, somehow, a wolf would be suspiciously out of place, but not impossibly out of place. We were already taking a risk with me in an alien morph – we didn't need to add an escapee from the zoo to it. Ax was with him, also in wolf morph.

(Spotters. If we're assuming that this is the work of one guy – or one Yeerk – I thought he might have other controllers working with him. Picking out good victims and calling in their locations, you know? It's got to be pretty hard to find a young blond girl by herself around town right about now – that's part of the reason I'm pretty sure this is going to work.) Marco sounded cocky, like everything was going according to plan, but I knew him well enough to detect the note of uncertainty in his voice. It was understandable – if you can deal with a serial killer, alien or otherwise, without getting creeped out…well, then you're tougher than we are. Tougher than me. The whole thing was one big outdoor haunted house, as far as the creep-factor went.

(Keep going, Rachel, you're doing great,) Cassie encouraged as Rachel once again turned around to make another lap. If I'd been human, I would have smiled grimly. Cassie had been totally opposed to the idea, but once she and I were outvoted, she'd accepted it with good grace. Cassie is awesome in all sorts of ways – putting aside her discomfort during a mission she never wanted in order to help us get the job done is just one of the amazing things she can do. (We think you've been spotted already. Don't worry, girl, we've got you covered like hot sauce on a burrito.)

All of us, except for Ax, laughed pretty hard at that. It was nervous laughter, though – dealing with murdering, body-stealing aliens was becoming old hat for us. This was something new and unsettling in a different way.

After waiting around for a little while longer, Cassie suddenly broke us out of the monotony. (Look alive, guys. The bad guy is here to play.)

(Yep,) Marco quickly confirmed. (I've got him, too. Tobias, get ready. Rachel, slow down just a little – that way, he'll catch up to you right about the time you pass by Tobias again.)

Two grey timberwolves slunk up next to me. I almost jumped, they approached so quietly…like gray dog-ghosts or something, they were. Jake called back the very question that was on my mind. (How do you know it's the right guy? We can't pop out on the wrong person.)

(Duh,) Marco predictably said. (Well, I'm assuming it's him. A normal hiker might have a knife like our friend down there – it's a big blade, in his back right pocket,) he added almost conversationally, letting us know where this guy would try to go when we hit him. (I'm guessing normal hikers don't think to bring a big ol' roll of duct tape and a pre-rolled gag, though.)

I could hear him coming, now. His footsteps were easy to pick out; heavy, eager crunches through the carpet of fallen leaves. (Hang in there, Rachel. He won't lay a finger on you – we've got him.)

She couldn't reply, of course, because she wasn't in morph. My mind did it for her, though, said to me what she would have said. 'Whatever. Just let this creep try to grab me. Let him try.' I smiled a scary, Hork-bajir smile even as I tensed my wiry muscles, ready to spring up and forward as soon as either Cassie or Marco said the word.

As the footsteps got closer, I started a mental countdown of the distance. 'Fifty feet. Forty. Twenty.' When I thought he was about twenty feet away, I really tensed my muscles, especially the big ones in my upper legs. 'Ten feet. Five. Four…'

Marco's "voice" was impossibly loud amid my tension. (He's reaching for her! Now! Now, Tobias!)