The blackness was back. Even worse than before. Not only could Paige not make her mind move this time, she couldn’t make her body move either.

She looked around her for a hint of color —Brett’s colors— how they’d drawn her back last time, but she couldn’t see anything.

Couldn’t feel anything but coldness.

Fear crawled all over her body and she couldn’t get rid of it. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

She struggled to concentrate. What had triggered this? Last time the darkness had been caused by seeing the drawing of her dead self. But that hadn’t been what happened this time.

She’d gotten the call from the station. Brett needed her to come down. Had arrested Boyd Anderson and needed her opinion about something. Tom had driven her. Dropped her off.

The blackness had encroached as she approached the building. She’d thought it had been because of Anderson’s presence inside. By the time she’d reached the rear door she’d been dizzy, the darkness swamping her.

By then it had been too late to make her way back to Tom. She’d just hoped someone would get her to Brett.

Then Paige remembered the voice.

Let me help you, Miss Jeffries. I’ve been waiting a long time.

She’d felt the sting in her neck, some sort of injection, before the blackness had claimed her.

The darkness wasn’t just in her mind. She’d been given some sort of tranquilizer. It reassured her for a moment until she realized there was only one reason she could think of that someone would sedate her.

Boyd Anderson had come back to finish the job.

A different sort of fear assailed her. But at least the darkness wasn’t inside her mind. She needed to wake up.

Her eyelids fluttered and she tried to move, but this time felt the restraints around her hands. She couldn’t free herself, but at least she had control of her body.

“Finally waking up, Miss Jeffries?”

Paige opened her eyes, but still couldn’t see. But knew this black. Anderson’s aura. So ugly and opaque. She’d painted it just a few days ago.

But if she didn’t look straight at him, the dark didn’t overwhelm her. She glanced down at the ground where she was lying. Rough, wooden floors. She looked to the sides and realized Anderson had brought her back to the same rundown warehouse where he’d tried to kill her before.

He dropped a piece of paper on the ground in front of her.

“What is this?”

It was the drawing of herself. She’d brought it with her to the station when Brett had called.

“It’s a drawing of me.”

He reached out and grabbed her hair by the roots, forcing her face closer to it. “It’s a drawing of you in this building wearing the same clothes you are now. And you’re dead in the picture.”

Paige winced at the pain. What was she supposed to say?

Fortunately Anderson didn’t seem to want an actual answer.

“You destroyed my pattern, you know. You ruined everything when you got away.”

Out of the corner of her eye Paige saw his booted foot reach back to kick her. She turned quickly to the side so he hit her shoulder rather than her ribs. Agony still burst through her but at least she wasn’t dealing with broken ribs.

He grabbed her hair again, yanking Paige upright. She closed her eyes rather than look at the sickly blackness that covered him. “My pattern was perfect until you. I tried to reset it, but I couldn’t. It was never the same.” He threw her back to the ground.

Paige pushed away from him, towards the stairs. Anderson just laughed, letting her crawl a few feet before grabbing her ankle and yanking her forcibly back towards him. This time when he yanked her up by the hair, it was his fist that sent her crashing back down.

The pain. Paige remembered the pain. She wouldn’t survive it again.

She wanted to believe that Brett would come for her, but knew she couldn’t. He probably didn’t even know she’d been at the station in the first place if it had been Anderson who’d called her. It might be hours before Brett realized she wasn’t at home where she was supposed to be. Even then he wouldn’t know where to look.

They were back at the place where Anderson had attacked her before. What was left of it after it had burned. It was the last place they would look.

Nobody was coming to rescue her.

And besides, Paige already knew how this ended. The picture was right there in front of her, lying on the ground. None of her other drawings had been wrong, so why should she think this one was, just because it was her?

She was going to die in this warehouse today.

* * *

Fear closed around Brett’s throat, merciless hands that choked him until he couldn’t breathe. They were waiting for the footage from the back door security camera to be sent to their email.

Anderson had Paige. He’d been one step ahead of them the whole time. He’d been watching her.

“She told me she saw the darkness here at the station when she left the other morning,” Brett said, pacing back and forth in front of his desk. “I chalked it up to stress. But if darkness is what she sees every time Anderson is near her…”

“She mentioned the same at the art show,” Tom grimaced, holding his phone away from him for a second. “She didn’t press it, of course, because she always felt embarrassed when she would get nervous.”

Tom put his cheek back to his phone, was making calls to whatever private contacts he had that might be able to help.

Brett would take whatever help he could get.

He had no idea how long Anderson had been following Paige, but had a gut wrenching suspicion it had been since the beginning.

“He never let her go,” Brett said to Alex. “It’s like Anderson’s ex-wife said about him being so obsessive compulsive. Paige was a part of his pattern and he needed to kill her to complete it.”

“Maybe. But for two years?” Alex’s shoulder raised in a half shrug. “That’s a hell of a long time to not make a move.”

Brett sat down in his office chair but then jumped right back up. He couldn’t sit now. It was all he could do to keep from hitting a wall. “She never went out unaccompanied, so he couldn’t get to her. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t watching.”

Tom leaned away from the phone again. “That’s true. She never went anywhere without part of the security detail right at her side. Rarely left the house at all to be honest. I was happy when the two of you started seeing each other. I thought it might encourage her to get out more.”

All three of the men grimaced. Evidently Anderson had just been biding his time.

“At least now we know why he killed Denise Rubio even though it wasn’t a payday.” Brett ran a hand through his hair. “He saw Paige leave here the other night so he knew she’d been working with us. Maybe he thought she could identify him.”

“He was trying to finish his strangled, stabbed, burned pattern,” Alex finished the thought for Brett.

“Paige fits his needs twofold. First he gets back the prey that got away. And if Denise Rubio was stabbed, then Paige will be…”

Burned. Brett couldn’t even bring himself to say it.

“That’s not going to happen,” Alex said softly.

Brett looked at Tom. “You know what caused her to go all comatose yesterday? She drew this.” He grabbed his phone to show Tom and Alex the picture of Paige.

Both of them muttered low, rough words.

“She drew her own death. Just like she drew all those other women dead.”

Tom, to his credit, didn’t press for details about how or why Paige had been drawing dead women. Brett couldn’t stop staring at the picture.

“Footage from the doorway just arrived via email.” Alex brought up the images on his computer. It didn’t take them long to rewind to twenty minutes ago.

“There.” Brett pointed to Paige as she came into the frame. The camera didn’t cover all the way back to the road where Tom had been stopped. Paige turned and gave a short wave to Tom.

“That’s when I left,” he muttered.

Her face was a pasty white and it was obvious she was struggling to stay on her feet.

“Anderson was nearby.” Brett leaned to observe more closely. “That’s why she’s so unsteady. All she can see is blackness around him.”

Anderson had never been inside the building. He stepped out from a darkened corner and slid an arm around Paige just as she reached the door.

“Shit. He injected her with something,” Alex said.

They watched as Paige collapsed against him. He kept her upright by draping her arm around his neck and keeping his arm brutally wrapped around her body and clamped to her upper arm. A moment later they were both out of range of the camera. No way to tell which direction Anderson had taken her once he’d gotten her to the vehicle.

Brett slammed his fist down on the desk.

“Her shirt was red,” Tom said. “It’s black in the drawing she did of herself. Not red.”

Brett felt a little bit of hope but then shook his head. “Rewind it to just before they stepped out from under the overhang.”

In front of them Anderson drugged Paige again and then stepped out into the rain. They were only in frame for a couple of seconds but in that time Paige’s shirt was already getting wet, turning the red into a much darker color.

“By the time he got her to her vehicle her shirt would be black with rain,” Brett said.

And if her drawing held true, unless Anderson was keeping her out in the open somewhere, she’d be dead before it dried.

Captain Ameling joined them, already aware of the situation. For once he wasn’t combative. “We’ve got APBs out on both of them. I’ve made sure everyone knows to get the details of Boyd Anderson’s car out to every official and unofficial contact we have. I even called Chief Pickett personally to see if he could get the governor to get us more resources, since Paige Jeffries is friends with his wife.”

That call couldn’t have been easy to make, given Ameling’s feelings about Brett and the chief. “Thank you,” Brett said.

Ameling shrugged. “You tried to tell me there was a link, but I didn’t want to believe it. It looks like this guy is a serial killer. I don’t want to lose another woman.”

“Captain, Brett, I think you need to look at this.” Alex had taken the electronic copy of the picture Paige had drawn and enlarged it on his computer screen.

“What am I looking at?” Ameling asked. “Besides Paige Jeffries.”

“Sir, you probably don’t want to know,” Brett told him. He didn’t want to get into all the drawings right now.

Ameling rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He studied the picture longer. “She looks pretty dead.”

“Look at the detail around the stairs, Captain,” Alex said. “I think this might be the same place Anderson held her before.”

For the first time the slightest smidgen of hope lit Brett’s chest. “I thought that place burned down. A warehouse, right?”

“She got away because of a fire, but the building didn’t completely burn down.”

“And it could make sense that he would take her there, given his obsessiveness with patterns. He’d want to finish what he’d started.”

“You two go,” Ameling said. “It’s worth a shot. If anything comes in here, I’ll let you know immediately.”

Brett and Alex were already running out the door.