We still don’t know his real identity, but in consulting with the DEA, we suspect he may have been someone on their radar for a while under another name. In the last ten years several new synthetic drugs appeared on the market, they suspect designed by the same person. Coming up with new drugs can be extremely lucrative. The designer never has to meet face-to-face with his clients. He never has to produce them in large quantities either. He gives them a formula and a process in exchange for a percentage of the profits. If they screw him over on the money, he takes the next new thing somewhere else.

As I walk around the table to the chair opposite of him, his gaze follows me. There’s the faintest of smiles at his lips. I sit down and stare back at him.

“This is a pleasure,” he says as he uses the remote to lower the volume.

“Is it?” We’d kept my disappearance out of the news. This is the first time he knows that I’m alive.

“Very much so,” he insists. “I was afraid . . .” There’s a hesitation in his voice. “I was afraid you weren’t worthy.”

“Worthy of what?”

He gives me a slim reptilian grin. I can tell he’s trying to compose himself. He wants everyone to think things are going the way he intended. He’s still processing the realization that I’m alive, and that his attempt on my life through his accomplice was botched.

“Have you been traveling much?” he asks.

I ignore the question and ask my own. “Why?”

“Exactly.” He says it as a statement.

“I have to call the parents and loved ones of the people you killed. They’re all going to ask me why. What should I tell them? That nobody paid attention to you when you were little? Girls wouldn’t talk to you? That you have such low self-esteem that you decided that the only way to feel anything was make people think you were special? Any words I should pass on to them when I tell them I met with the person that murdered Chloe, Denise, Claire and Jeff?”

His eyes drift to the floor and the expression vanishes. “Yes. I feel for them. I don’t expect them to see the shape of things. But I took no pleasure in their deaths. They are very much loved.”

“They may not quite understand what you mean by love.”

“Love is sacrifice. Isn’t it, Jessica? It’s dealing with inconsistencies and hypocrisies. It’s seeing the good among all the bad. It’s why somewhere deep down you’re capable of love, even though you’ve been surrounded by, shall we say, some very complicated men?”

“I don’t think you know the meaning of love.”

“Maybe not. Maybe not. But I’ll leave you with this question. What was I feeling in my heart when I watched you sitting there in the darkness all alone in my warehouse in Michigan? Why did my finger never waver over the button that could have cratered you in an instant, wiping away every sad thought from your face?”