To catch this killer, she must break every rule and cross every line.

Out Of The Shadows

A picture-perfect Tennessee town has just become a monster's hunting ground. Two bodies are found tortured to death. A third person goes missing. What little evidence is left behind defies all explanation. Is the terror just beginning? Or have the good citizens of Gladstone harbored a dark secret for a long time? Sheriff Miranda Knight is determined to make her small town safe once more. And she does what she swore she would never do: involve FBI profiler Noah Bishop. He's the one man who knows about her unique abilities, and that knowledge almost destroyed her and her sister years ago. Now, as Bishop arrives with his team of agents, Miranda must learn to trust him and use her abilities once more. For they're about to go on the hunt for a killer whose madness has no bounds, a killer who knows exactly how to destroy Miranda: by preying on her sister.

From the Paperback edition.

Thursday, January 6The body had been exposed to the elements for at least two or three days. And before last night's heavy rain had washed them away, the tracks of dozens of paws and claws must have crisscrossed the clearing.

It was shaping up to be a long, cold winter, and the animals were hungry.

Deputy Alex Mayse shivered as he picked his way gingerly past the town's single forensics "expert," a young doctor who'd been elected coroner because nobody else had wanted the job. The doctor was crawling around the clearing on his hands and knees, his nose inches from the wet ground as he found and flagged the scattered bones and other bits the animals had left.

"You don't have to hum to yourself, Doc," Alex muttered sourly. "We all know how happy you are."

Remaining in his crouched position, Dr. Peter Shepherd said cheerfully, "If a murdered teenager made me happy, Alex, I'd be worse than a ghoul. I'm just fascinated by the puzzle, that's all."

Waiting patiently just a few steps behind the doctor, camera in hand as he waited to take pictures of each flagged spot, Deputy Brady Shaw rolled his eyes at Alex.

Alex grimaced in sympathy, but all he said to Shepherd was, "Yeah, yeah. Just find something helpful this time, will you?"

"Do my best," the doctor replied, studying what appeared to be a bleached twig.

Alex walked to the area where most of the body had been found, noticing with a certain amount of sympathy that Sandy Lynch was over behind a tree puking her guts out. She was having a lousy introduction to the job, poor kid. Not that the old hands were handling it any better, really. Carl Tierney had had the misfortune to find Adam Ramsay's mortal remains, and the ten-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department had promptly lost his morning Egg McMuffin.

Alex himself had suffered through a few teeth-grittingly queasy moments during the last couple of hours.

In fact, the only member of the Cox County Sheriff's Department who had shown no signs of being sickened by the gory sight was the sheriff.

There was an irony there somewhere, Alex thought as he joined the sheriff, who was hunkered down several feet from what was left of Adam Ramsay, elbows on knees and fingers steepled. In its entire history, the small town of Gladstone had seldom been troubled by murder. A long line of sheriffs had grown old in their jobs, dealing with petty crime and little else of consequence, needing no more police training than how to to load a gun, which would in all likelihood never be fired except at targets or the occasional unlucky rabbit. It was a local saying that all the Cox County sheriff had to be good at was filling out the Santa suit for the annual Christmas parade down Main Street.

Until last year, anyway. The town finally elected a sheriff with an actual law degree and a minor in criminology--and what happened? Damned if they didn't start having real crimes.

But they were blessed in that this particular sheriff had very quickly displayed an almost uncanny ability to get to the bottom of things with a minimum of time wasted.

At least until recently.

"This makes two," Alex said, judging that the silence had gone on long enough.

"Yeah."

"Same killer, d'you think?"

Startling blue eyes slanted him a look. "Hard to tell from the bones."

Alex started to reply that there was a bit of rotting flesh here and there, but kept his mouth shut. There was little remaining on the skeleton of Adam Ramsay, that was true enough, and what was there didn't immediately offer up any evidence as to who had killed him and how. Impossible to tell if the boy's body had borne the same...

"Kay Hooper keeps me guessing until the very end."