“Please do,” Amarok said, but he was skeptical that Bobby Knox was behind what’d happened today—that he’d hired someone, or convinced someone, to kidnap Evelyn. Amarok was grasping at anything. “Have you heard of him or anyone else making threats or creating any particular problems for Evelyn?”

She wrung her hands as she thought the question over. “No. Since you caught Jasper last November, everything has been peaceful around here—or as peaceful as it’s going to get in a maximum-security prison that houses so many psychopaths. There’s always danger, but we have protocols to minimize that. To be honest, I’ve never seen Dr. Talbot so carefree and happy, not in the two and a half years that Hanover House has been open.”

He felt the same about Evelyn’s state of mind. After twenty-three years of feeling as though it was only a matter of time before Jasper followed her to Alaska and attempted to finish what he’d started when he attacked her the first time, that threat had been eliminated. They’d both felt more secure knowing he was finally behind bars.

So what the hell was going on? This shouldn’t be happening!

“Sergeant Murphy?”

Dr. James Ricardo, a slender, rather nondescript man in his late forties with close-cropped dark hair, and the only neurologist on staff, appeared in the doorway of Evelyn’s office. Although none of the doctors on Evelyn’s team had any more authority than the others, James had made it clear that if Evelyn ever left Hanover House, he wanted her job. He’d stated as much when things went awry last winter. “Yes?”

“Where the heck is Evelyn? She was supposed to join me on the situational-versus-dispositional empathy tests I’m running right now, but I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes.”

Preoccupied with the desperation he felt to find some clue, something to tell him what he should do next, Amarok turned in a full circle. “We don’t know where she is, Jim. That’s why I’m here.”

His eyebrows came together. “What do you mean?”

“She’s in trouble, and I need to get her out of it.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I wish I knew. Is there one inmate, in particular, anyone on Evelyn’s roster, who’s had it in for her lately?” Amarok had heard various names since he’d entered Evelyn’s life, men who’d given them both cause for concern. Jasper Moore, of course, but not only him. There’d been Anthony Garza, Hugo Evanski and Lyman Bishop, all psychopaths she’d studied here at Hanover House. Even her onetime colleague Tim Fitzpatrick, the very psychiatrist whose reputation and support had helped make Hanover House a reality, had become a problem in the end. He’d quit two years ago, before he could be fired, and returned to Boston.

But none of those men were likely culprits. Jasper was in prison and, as an only child who’d murdered his parents not long ago, he didn’t have a lot of friends or family who might be willing to assist him in getting revenge on Evelyn. Anthony and Hugo were both dead. Lyman, nicknamed the Zombie Maker because of his penchant for performing ice-pick lobotomies on his victims to render them dependent and compliant, was in a mental institution, being fed through a tube, after suffering a severe brain hemorrhage. And Tim Fitzpatrick was grateful to Evelyn for helping to get him out of prison after he served time for a crime he didn’t commit. He’d had a thing for Evelyn when they worked together, an obsession that’d caused him to cross certain boundaries. Maybe there was still some of that left. But, surely, he hadn’t had anything to do with this.