Free Quinn by Iris Johansen

he pleases and thinking no one is going to catch him.” He was scanning the files in front of him. “Seasons don’t seem to make any difference to him. In some instances, killers only murder in certain seasons or time of the month. Here we have victims in summer, fall, winter…”
    “Maybe they’re not all dead,” Eve said. “We keep talking about killings. Maybe some of them were runaways or taken by relatives. Maybe they’re not— But I have to think of them as victims, don’t I? I have to look at these damn reports and think that a monster grabbed them and how and why he did it.”
    “You don’t have to do it. Let me bundle up all these reports and take them away. No one is forcing you but yourself.”
    “I know that.” She focused her gaze on the report in front of her. “Linda Cantrell.” The picture of the girl showed a child with dark hair and eyes and a wide white smile. “She was Hispanic, but that didn’t seem to have anything to do with her being chosen. The other children were black, white … no Asian…”
    *   *   *
    “I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS.” Eve glared up at him even as she lay down on the couch three hours later. “I can keep on going. I don’t want to sleep. You have no right to threaten me with your damn doctor.”
    “No, I don’t. But might is always right, and I have the advantage.” The sun had gone down an hour ago, and he turned off the lights in the living room. “So go to sleep.” He sat down in a chair across the room. “Four hours at least. Then I’ll let you work a little longer before I leave and go back to my place.”
    “Go now. I don’t want you sitting there in the dark like a guard at an asylum.”
    “Asylum. Strange choice of words. Why not a guard at a jail?”
    She didn’t answer.
    “Unless you’re worried because you might have a nervous breakdown. Do you think about it?”
    “No, I don’t think about myself at all. I don’t matter. That just came out. Now stop trying to dig into my psyche.”
    “Naturally, you’re distraught, and all kinds of crazy ideas are going through your mind. You’re walking a fine line, but we’ll get through it.”
    “We? I’m the one who is walking that line. You’re strong and sane, and everything is in control in your world.”
    “I’ll walk the line with you. If you think you’re going to fall, reach out, and I’ll be there.”
    She was silent. “Why are you being so kind to me? You’re tough and cynical and … I don’t think that you’re one of those do-gooders who want to save the world.”
    “The world is too big a project. You’re damn right I’m not a do-gooder. I usually run the other way. But every now and then, I run across someone who it bothers me to see struggling. I want to see you come out on top of this. It will make me feel good. It’s purely selfish.”
    “Well, that relieves me,” she said dryly. “I’d hate being someone’s project.”
    He chuckled. “No chance. You’d toss me out on my ear.”
    “Maybe not,” she said. “I told you that I didn’t feel as alone when I was with you.”
    “Then I may be safe for a while. Until the situation turns around, and you don’t need me any longer. Now why don’t you stop talking and try to nap.”
    “I don’t want to sleep. You can force me to lie here, but you can’t make me sleep.”
    “Are you paraphrasing that proverb about leading a horse to water?”
    “I guess so.” She was silent again, and the next words came haltingly in the darkness. “Three months. The pattern is wrong for Bonnie. She has a chance that it wasn’t that monster, doesn’t she?”
    “She has a chance.”
    “You’re so damn encouraging. Give me a break.”
    “I’d like to give you anything that you want from me. But I won’t give you lies … or false hope.”
    “Damn you.” She said a moment later, “No, bless you.”
    “Go to sleep, Eve.”
    “If I do, the nightmares will come.”
    “No, they won’t. I’m here for