“You’re awake, sweetheart,” a sultry voice murmured in Jess’s ear.

Jess lay facedown on glossy wood flooring, her head pounding, her stomach churning, her mouth burning with bile. She groaned and tried to move, but her arms, stretched over her head, wouldn’t respond. She turned her head to look up, and a hazy face swam into view.

Female. Long black hair. Pale whiskey-brown eyes.

“Teri?” Jess shook her head, trying to clear it. Trying to make sense of where she was, of what was going on. “What’s... where are we?”

Her tongue slurred and stumbled over the words. She didn’t remember drinking — had she and Teri gone drinking? Barhopping? Jess hadn’t been drunk in years, but this felt like a bad hangover. And she couldn’t think.

“Help me up, would you?” she managed to say.

Teri laughed. “After all the trouble I went to getting you there, Jess? I don’t think so.”

That was wrong. Teri should have helped her, but something about what Teri had said was wrong, too.

Name.

Yes, name.

Teri should have called her Grace. Or Gracie.

And then Jess remembered that she was in trouble. From Teri. Teri wasn’t a friend.

But why not?

“You’re going to dance for me,” Teri said.

And Jess remembered the coffee. And the costume trunk.

Teri continued, “I so wanted to fuck you. Like I did your sister, she was my first. I was thirty, and she was twenty-one, and I was so excited. But she slept through it all because I gave her too much stuff. She died before I could kill her. I was so disappointed. But, see, I didn’t know what I was doing then. I know now.”

Teri’s hand was stroking in little circles around the small of Jess’s back. “Andi was my friend. And I fell in love with her. And then she went and fell in love with Lenny. Lenny. That pig. He really did fuck me when I was fifteen, but only because I lured him into it. I couldn’t stand his dad, and I wanted them out of our house.” Teri’s hands ran up and down the backs of Jess’s legs, and she could hear Teri’s breath quickening. “And then poor old Lenny woke up after a night he couldn’t remember, and there was his beloved Andromeda, dead underneath him. Where I put her when I was done with her, when his party boys were gone. And me standing over him with lots of photographs of him on a naked dead girl. I owned Lenny after that.”

She laughed softly. “Know when I fell in love with you? When I saw you standing in my office in that tan silk skirt.” Teri made a little sound in the back of her throat, and her hands began kneading Jess’s buttocks. “Oh, God, you feel good,” she whispered.

Jess became uncomfortably aware that she was naked. She didn’t say anything. She tried to figure out how to get her hands out of the padded leather handcuffs and away from whatever it was that was keeping her arms stretched over her head. That was forcing her facedown onto the polished wood floor.

“You were sisters, weren’t you? You and Andi? You dance alike, you move alike, you sound alike. And God, you look alike. But I could never be sure. It doesn’t matter to me, you know. It won’t change the way this ends. But... if you are sisters, it would be so perfect.”

She was dizzy and woozy and queasy, and having the killer fondling her was not helping anything.

So Jess compartmentalized. Let one part of herself listen to Teri while pretending she couldn’t feel anything Teri was doing. She put the bulk of her attention on figuring out an escape.

Jess didn’t answer Teri’s question about Ginny. Teri said, “If you don’t talk to me now, you will later. I’ll make you tell me.” And she laughed. She kept touching, and kept talking. “When I met you, I’d already started getting ready to move on. Dropped my first few public kills. But I hadn’t found my perfect finale yet.

“And then you walked into my office, and — perfect. You, the perfect omega for my unfortunately flawed alpha.” She leaned her head so close to Jess’s that her breath brushed Jess’s cheek. And she whispered, “The finale was going to be private. Just for you and me, darling. Only you and I would ever have the secret — and you’d never tell.”

Jess said, “You think?”

Teri laughed. “I know. I took such pains to be sure.” She straddled Jess’s calves, and Jess felt lips, and then teeth, on her ass. And then a tongue licking its way up the small of her back. “Alpha and omega,” Teri said in between bites.

Jess tried to kick, but Teri had her lower legs over the backs of Jess’s, holding them down. And Jess was still too weak to be effective.

Teri scooted up Jess’s legs. Hands slid around to grope and squeeze her breasts, that goddamned tongue kept licking, and Jess thought, Bitch, if this room will stop spinning for a minute, I am going to rip you into pieces.

But then Teri stopped, and sighed, and stood up. Her voice turned businesslike. “I wanted to fuck you. Wanted to spend all day and all night making you realize that you wanted me. Loved me. That I was better for you and better with you than any man could ever be. I wanted to make you beg, baby. I wanted to hear you scream. Because your sister never did. She slept through all the fun.”

Jess’s badge and empty shoulder holster dropped to the floor in front of her face, and Jess’s empty stomach spasmed and flipped.

Teri said, “Unfortunately for both of us, what I found when I undressed you put us on a whole different timetable. Who would have thought that you were a police detective? Or that the APD could field such a convincing stripper?”

“You need to let me go,” Jess said.

“Because you were wired?’ Teri nodded. “I already figured that out. I knew the police were recording us. I just didn’t know you were one of them. I wish I’d figured that out before I put you in the trunk and brought you home. The gun and badge gave me a few bad moments, I confess.”

Jess tried to move forward or sit up, and discovered that the thing forcing her hands above her head had been the stripper’s pole to which Teri had handcuffed her.

She focused enough to see that while her hands were cuffed, the handcuffs weren’t connected the pole. She managed a glance out of the corner of one eye and saw that the pole was bolted to the ceiling, though, as well as the floor.

“I found your transmitter. Figured the belly-button jewel had to be the wire. Very nice. And the transmitter in the purse — well, that was clumsy, but the police have planted transmitters all over the club, too, so I knew what I was looking at. I have no idea what the range on those things is, but in case they go very far, I’ve disposed of both. You do have some rather nasty rips in the skin around your navel as a result.” Teri leaned down and gave her a cold, hard smile. “On the bright side — if you’re inclined to look at it that way — you won’t have to suffer with them for long.”

“You kidnapped me,” Jess said. She managed to get her legs under her and struggled to a kneeling position. “So HSCU will know you’re the one they’re looking for.”

“Oh, they’ll figure it out eventually,” Teri agreed. “Right now, I guarantee you they’re still marveling over Lenny and the thirty-five dead girls beneath my old house. I owned that place for six years before I told Lenny to live there. I suppose they’ll find Lenny’s and my shared house, where the true thirty-sixth for that square is buried. Your sister.”

Jess glared up at Teri.

“As for your colleagues finding you in time to help you... well, don’t count on that. Or on any justice for your death. I’m going to disappear. Become someone else, doing something else. Different job, but same hobby. Everything’s in place.”

Hank had told them all along they had the wrong people — that the men they’d arrested had not been killers. She wished she had a chance to tell him that she was sorry she’d doubted him. She wished she had a chance to do a lot of things. If she had it to do over again, she would change her priorities. Make a place in her life for him, make sure that place stayed at the top. She would not neglect the one bit of joy and magic that had found a way into the dark spaces of her life. If she had the chance.

But she was unlikely to have another chance.

Jess could hear a police scanner in the background. She frowned, studying Teri, wondering how soon Teri intended to kill her, and wondering how she could buy more time. Wondering if she could somehow earn herself a second chance. She couldn’t let herself think about Ginny — about what this monster had done to Ginny. Because if she didn’t focus, Teri was going to do the same thing to her.

“How did you do it?”

“Do what? Kill them all? Keep it such a secret?” Teri reached down and ran a finger down Jess’s spine. “Dance for me and I’ll tell you. We have a little time. No one is coming to get you yet.”

“Dance?”

“The dance is always my finale. After all the sex, after all the fun, after all the begging and pleading, my sweethearts get one last private dance. As long as they keep dancing, I let them live. When they fall... well...”

“I have things I do, but those take a lot of time, and what I don’t have with you is a lot time. So I’m going to have to use my shortcut. Have had to use it a couple times now for different reasons.”

She held up an enormous hypodermic syringe — big enough that Jess could see the 50cc marking at the top — and Jess saw that it was full of something cloudy and brownish.

“It’s amazing what you can put together from things you keep at home.”

“So you don’t want to fall. This is horrible stuff, a horrible way to die. And once I’ve injected it, it will take up to an hour to kill you. Meanwhile, it will take me a mere three minutes to vanish from the face of the planet, never to be seen again. It doesn’t matter how close your colleagues get. I’ve planned for this moment for years. I’ve practiced. I’ll have no problem leaving. But for now, you can buy yourself a little more life. A few more minutes. As long as you keep dancing.”

The leather handcuffs were too tight to slip out of. Jess had tried folding her thumbs into the palms of her hands to make her hands no wider around than her wrists, but Teri had strapped the cuffs on tight enough that nothing short of amputation was going to get her out of them without a key.

“So start dancing, sweetheart. Remember, your hands are my hands. The pole? Well, that’s me.”

Jess got to her feet, still wobbly and sick. Discovered that Teri had put her in shoes so high they were crippling.

But... dance or die.

The pain in her feet drove straight up her legs; she felt as if she were standing on nails.

Teri had walked away while Jess was getting up — she’d moved off the little stage in the round and down to a lone theater chair bolted to the floor in front. If Teri came within range, the stiletto heels were sharp enough to make a good weapon — but with Jess’s arms cuffed around the pole so that her hands hung useless in front of it, she had no way to get leverage for a balanced kick. Balancing put her in a position of weakness. She’d have one attack. No matter what the outcome of her attack, she would lose her balance and fall to the floor, leaving her wide open for Teri’s follow-up, the poison-filled needle.

So Jess bought time. She swung her hips a little. Balancing. Desperate.

In the background, the music Teri chose played — Elvis Presley singing the suddenly creepy “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Beneath that, the usual chatter on the police band. Nothing over the scanner indicated that she’d been missed or that help might be on the way. Jess kept moving.

And Teri said. “But you asked... how did I do it? Let’s see. Until I went public, I called dancers I wanted into my office when I’d scheduled them for a two-day weekend or when they were getting ready to go on tour. I’d use various pretexts — having heard about a movie part, having a feature spot opening up in the schedule, discussing a rumor that they were whoring on the side. Anything that worked. They’d come in, I’d give them a cup of coffee, dump them into my trunk, roll them to my van, and they would disappear from the world.” She smiled. “Nothing could have been easier. And no one ever suspected a thing. Taking women you work with works just fine when no one realizes they’re missing for months. Or more. When I decided I wanted to move out of the area, though, I decided I didn’t want to leave without making a splash. That would be... dull. Taking chances at getting caught is part of the fun. So I made nice to Lenny just long enough that he and I could play the same games we played when I was fifteen. This time, though, instead of getting pictures, I just saved hair, and used condoms.” She winked. “Unlubricated, of course. You claim an allergy to chemicals, men will fall all over themselves to jump through the hoops that will hang them. Oh, and skin from the inside of his cheek. He might have felt a little funny about donating that for my collection, but he was as easy to drug back then as he was last night.”

Jess, dancing on feet that were in agony, stumbled. The music segued to Boyz II Men singing “End of the Road.” Jess righted herself, finding Teri’s sound track creepier by the minute. She watched Teri glance at the hypodermic she held. That had been too close.

“Nice save,” Teri said. “And I gave Jason Hemly a bunch of freebies at both his place and mine. His so I could plant pictures and mementos, mine so I could save condoms. Same thing with Wayne Alton. That’s the only thing I have ever loved about men. If you’ll do anything they can imagine, and you’ll do it for free, they’ll come back as long as you’ll let them and never think to ask why. I had keys to their places, full access — and every once in a while, just to be sure they didn’t get the silly idea that they should change their locks, I’d show up by surprise, call them to come home, and be naked and ready when they’d get home.” She laughed. “I still have their keys. Isn’t it great what a trip around the world will get you?”

“That’s sick.”

“Oh, come on. It was brilliant. And it was funny. Don’t tell me you people hadn’t been going insane trying to figure out why your serial-killer victims had three different DNA samples in them. Getting all excited when my paid witnesses told you what they saw. When you found evidence.”

Jess kept dancing. She used the power of silence — let it hang there.

And after a moment, sure enough, Teri said, “I’m surprised your question wasn’t ‘Why?’ actually. I would think the thing you’d really want to know would be what changed me, twisted me, turned me into a killer.”

“No,” Jess said. “I couldn’t be less interested in that.”

And for an instant, Teri’s composure cracked. Then she said, “Liar. You have to be wondering what forces could drive a woman to kill seventy-seven other women. Well, including you.” She laughed. “Plus Lenny, of course, but I consider his death a public service. So, your real question is why, isn’t it?” And she smiled with evident self-satisfaction.

Jess swallowed her fear. “No.” She kept moving, though no one could call what she was doing dancing. She was simply not falling down.

Teri’s eyebrows went up.

Through her pain, maintaining her balance as best she could, Jess said, “Nothing drove you to kill all those women. You chose to be the piece of shit who did that. That’s all.”

“That’s not true,” Teri said. “My stepfather molested me. Studies show that women who are sexually abused—”

Jess cut her off. “I’m sure you’ve found ways to rationalize it to yourself. But no matter what happened to you, worse things have happened to other people — people who didn’t use personal pain and tragedy as an excuse to destroy others.” She swallowed against pain and nausea, and she kept moving. No help was coming. The pain in her feet was becoming more than she could ignore. She was going to fall. She had... minutes. Maybe less.

Jess needed the bitch to move into range before she fell over and couldn’t get back up. She was going to have one really lousy shot at saving herself, and she had to get it while she was still on her feet. She said, “You’re common sidewalk shit, that’s all. You used what happened to you as an excuse — but you would have been the same disgusting animal if nothing at all had happened to you. Shit, through and through.”

“I’m a goddess,” Teri said, walking toward Jess and the stage with that damned hypodermic in her left hand — and with Jess’s gun in her right. “And now you’re going to worship me.”