"How are you?" asked Nick, who had brought another bouquet and a get-well card. The entire homicide unit had signed it, as well as the forensics unit.

"How do you feel when they scratch your whole abdomen out." Maggie pulled the pillow behind her close and sat up a little straight. They had pushed Maggie out of the OR two hours ago. The scraping was done. And the redhead prayed for Elizabeth that the detective would bring her the dead embryo. No matter what Elizabeth had to do to get it, whether it meant risking her reputation. She wanted to bury the baby. Didn't want it to burn with any surgical waste, like food gone bad thrown into a campfire while camping. And Elizabeth should put the baby on ice sooner rather than later and keep it safe. Otherwise, there would be two bodies.

"Maggie --"

"What about the murderer?" she interrupted Nick. "Anything new?"

"We're all on the lookout. We'll brief you when we know more."

Knowing more. She felt like there was something she knew. But it was buried in some back part of her brain. Through the shock. The unconsciousness. And then the twilight anesthesia. Everything that was, she was aware of only through a sticky fog.

The door opened. A nurse came in and brought dinner.

Nick frowned a little. "Do I get something, too?"

"You can get a coffee outside." The nurse smiled.

"It's feeble, though."

"We don't want heart attack patients, after all. And we don't want patients still here wandering around at midnight because they can't sleep, either."

"Sleep is overrated anyway," Nick replied, standing up. "If it's okay, I'll keep you company at dinner. I'll get me a cup of coffee. And then I've got to get going."

"Gladly!" Maggie surveyed the food relatively less enthusiastically. She was always barbarically hungry after surgery. At least, what with the previous surgeries of her life - a tonsillectomy and an appendectomy. And today, too.

"Oh, Dr. Ross," the nurse said. "We have your things here. Do you need anything?"

"What all do you have?" It occurred to Maggie, too: she must have had her things with her.

The nurse shrugged. "Wallet, smartphone, and a key, I think --"

A key ... Slowly, the crusting in Maggie's brain caused by shock and anesthesia broke down like an icebreaker was driving through it. "A key?"

"Wait, I'll give you the plastic bag." She placed the bag of Maggie's belongings on the fold-out table in front of her.

"The key!" the redhead exclaimed.

"Yeah." The nurse shrugged. "Your front door key?"

"No, that's the ... the --" She had forgotten. But now it was back. With the force of a hammer blow, the memory was there! The man! He had kicked her in the stomach. Had killed her baby, her little innocent baby. He had dropped something. She had grabbed it. Maybe that was why he had kicked her?

The key had fallen out of his pocket when he had pulled out the coin roll. The coin roll he had used as brass knuckles.

And Maggie had clutched it with the last of her strength. Shit, the man had said, kicking her, and had run away when he'd heard the police sirens. And Maggie had lain on the wet sidewalk clutching what the man had lost. The key. The key that was now in front of her. A front door key, it looked like. "The key! The key!" she cried, and her voice suddenly rolled over.

Nick came into the room with a steaming mug of coffee. "Key?" he asked, confused. "The door was open."

Maggie looked at him with wide eyes. "This key right here. The son of a bitch lost it! The murderer! This is the killer's key!"

"You mean this key belongs to the killer?" Nick looked at the key and forgot to drink from his coffee with excitement.

"It's the only lead we have, Nick." She looked at the key like an artifact from a legend. "There's something here. Pretty chipped."

"Let's see North E --" He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "Could match a warehouse in North End."

"Something to do with the killer." She bit her lower lip.

"But we have to --" Maggie began.

"We have to check where this key fits."

At that moment, Maggie realized they both had the same thought. "Then we need to multiply the key ...?"

"At least a hundred times?" added Nick with furrowed brows. "And send out a squad of a hundred with it. And fast."

"Will you do that?"

Nick picked up the key. "Sure. You can't do it yourself. I'll leave you the coffee." He threw his coat over his arm.

"If you find anything, will you let me know immediately?" Maggie was about to get up and dress.

Nick looked at her admonishingly. "You should get better first." He smiled weakly and winked. "I'll get back to you."

Maggie sat back in bed and looked at the steaming coffee mug, feeling completely useless. After all, she had the key. And now, they would check out an area with hundreds of warehouses. With hundreds of keys. And hundreds of officers. What would Jane say to that? But there was no other way. It was insane. But it was the only solution.

Only the insane succeed, Elizabeth had once said to her. And only those who follow determine what madness is.

xxx

The call reached Elizabeth at her home. It was 7 a.m. the next day.

"I thought you'd like to know," Nick said flatly. "We have the warehouse in North End."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, we'll go right in. With the RRT."

With the RRT.

Elizabeth knew the commanding officers of the RRT. Marc and Philip.

She got up from the couch where she'd been sitting and brooding all night, grabbed her keys, and marched toward the front door. "I'm on my way. Text me the address."

"Roger that," Nick said, ending the call.

xxx

Something wasn't right. He knew that.

His next victim was waiting for him in there. She could wait a while longer.

He saw the people at the abandoned warehouse. He didn't know why, but he knew they were looking for him. Knew they had the key he'd left with that redheaded bitch.

He could sneak inside quickly. Kill his victim.

Just as quickly as he had been in the hospital. Had followed that pathologist, he'd kicked unconscious. And who was pregnant. He had heard something. He and his aides he had sent to the hospital. He hadn't been able to get close enough to the redhead. But he knew, now, who she was. And who else had visited her.

Knew, too, that the redheaded pathologist was married to a woman.

He knew all that. But he didn't know how many of the cops were on their way, whether they might be right outside his kingdom.

Eventually, those black vans would come.

The black-clad cops. With ballistic helmets. And rifles.

SWAT.

These fellows were not to be trifled with.

He had to stay calm. Focus. Even if it would have made him so horny to slaughter his next victim. But that would have to wait. Apart from that, millions of potential victims matched his prey pattern.

Just now, he had been excited just when he had been about to torture and kill his victim. To film everything. And to earn money with it.

But now he was calm again. Completely calm.

The resting pulse went from 60 to 80.

At 115, fine motor skills deteriorated.

145 was the optimal combat readiness.

From then on, gross motor skills also deteriorated.

From 175, loss of depth perception and night vision.

And then it became serious. Irrational behavior, flight, attack, but mostly freezing, pleading, begging. And sometimes uncontrolled wetting and defecation.

He had had that with his victims, too. And it was always an extraordinary mess. The only thing that helped was a lot of ... cat litter.

Pulse 175, he thought. His pulse was always low.

Except when he was aroused.

Except when a gaping wound looked like a vagina.

He had to go. And he had to go now. Otherwise, he was in safekeeping for the rest of his life.

They would find his realm. One of his empires.

But not him.

Because they didn't know who he was.

And his victim?

For his victim, it was a happy day today.

She wouldn't die, that bitch.

But then again, it was her birthday.

He shoved his in-ears in. Walked through the door toward the back stairs. Enjoyed the song that sounded like it was about him.

So a doctor said

Would be best for me

Give me colored pills

and neurosurgery

Now, across the hall.

Then, into the other corridor.

And out.

Far away from the warehouse

Hit him with a hatchet

And ran from my cell

Need no special cure

Trying to keep my well

They can look for me, he thought. But they won't find me

For I am not there.

I am only a shadow.

Tonight, he knew, the shadows were alive.

xxx

"What are you doing here," Jane growled as she watched her older daughter duck under the police tape and march toward the detective while giving Nick a dark look.

"I've said from the beginning that this is my case. I'm on it here. That's for sure."

Jane looked at her with her eyebrows drawn together. "Shouldn't you rather be at the hospital with your wife?"

"I'm about the last person Maggie would want around right now."

"I hardly think so."

Elizabeth took a deep breath and gritted her teeth. "She pretty much made me understand that without saying it out loud."

"Maybe, but still, she's your responsibility," Jane countered, hoping Elizabeth would cave and return to her car and join Maggie at the hospital, offering the redhead assistance in a very dark hour.

Elizabeth gritted her teeth again. "This is all my responsibility." She shrugged. "My whole adult life ... Is my fault." She looked at the warehouse. "So this is where it is?"

Jane nodded slowly. They both looked at the building. Crumbling plaster, graffiti, and bruised doors and window frames. This is where you would expect to find bums and junkies.

The three black vans stopped at the sidewalk.

The rear doors opened. And the RRT teams spread out on the street. Behind them two ambulances, in case a victim or more victims were alive after all.

"Do you know where?" asked one of the two incident commanders. It was Marc, as Elizabeth could tell by the look in his eyes. The RRT teams wore balaclavas under their helmets to avoid detection. As a special police task force, no one in the regular police force knew their real names. Each member of the Boston RRT team had a three-digit number. And even in court, where it was illegal to disguise oneself, members of RRT units were addressed only by those numbers. The danger was too great that some drug lord or boss of a Mafia family would seek revenge on the families of RRTs for an operation.

She took another look. Yes, it was Marc. Together with him, she had already busted serial killers like the Werewolf, Nameless One, and Legion.

"Basement."

More black-clad elite cops peeled out of the squad car. Wearing their thirty-three-pound bulletproof vests with stab protection, balaclava, ballistic helmet, and respirator. The radio was strapped to their chests, a multi-purpose knife next to it. And weapons.

Elizabeth joined Jane in looking at the screen in one of the vans transmitting videos from the bodycams. The RRTs rushed into the building. Garbage bags and newspapers lay around, and anarchy signs and life wisdom were spray-painted on the chalky walls. Life sucks if your girlfriend doesn't, it said. Then, the writing was already gone, and the officers took the stairs up. One black jumper boot at a time. Up to where either horror awaited them or a perfectly normal, abandoned warehouse. Because they were wrong. Because it wasn't North End in Boston at all. Because it was ...

"We'll take this door," Marc said through the radio. The bodycam showed an entrance on each side of the second floor. The first entrance didn't have a door, but you could look through the opening directly into the wide-open space, or it was always there. Plastic bags were there, some tubs and a wheelbarrow. This place was obviously under renovation or new construction, without a door.

The other door was closed like a mouth that releases its secrets only when it is forcibly opened. And perhaps it was pretty clever of the killer that there was a construction site next door, drowning out any noise from his domain.

"We're going in, okay?"

"Yes," Jane said curtly. "Access!"

Elizabeth saw on the screen the battering ram that threw the door out of the lock. She heard the bang to the van she was sitting in.

Then there was silence.

Ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

Elizabeth looked at her mother.

"What's going on?" the chief asked with a deep frown. "Expecting report. Hit?"

"Fuck, yeah," Marc said. "That's a hit."