“Where you live.” It did not appear to be a guess.

“Yeah,” he said. “Most of the single professionals around here do.”

Hollis looked at him steadily, entirely unconscious of the effect on someone else when her exceptionally bright, oddly luminous blue eyes fixed on the subject she was addressing with a certain interested, curious intensity. “Do you think she will? Stay here, I mean. In Salem.”

“I think she feels an affinity for the place whether she wants to or not. And a responsibility to the Cavendish family.” Finn looked at Bishop, adding briefly, “You were right.”

“He almost always is,” Hollis said in a tone that robbed it of any compliment. “About what, this time?”

“You,” Finn returned pleasantly. “I imagine a lot of people underestimate you. At first.”

“A few,” she conceded without visible surprise. “But they never underestimate Reese, so it evens out.”

Finn imagined it did. The very big blond man, for all his calm expression and voice, pretty much radiated the kind of intensity Finn had been aware of before only in some cops and a lot of former military people. A sort of wired-and-ready-to-react inner energy that might be contained but could still be felt.

Probably from ten feet away.

Hollis was looking at her boss. “Have you been casting aspersions?” she demanded of Bishop.

From his position at the far end of the big table, he was looking at her thoughtfully. “Never. What are your impressions of the town so far, other than the energy?” His glance swept the room but settled back on Hollis.

She countered with a question of her own, mostly directed at Finn. “How many of the Five know there’s a danger?”

“Only the heads and a few other elders that I know of,” he replied readily. “Though Aylia may have shared her farseeing within the adults of the Blackwood family.”

Hollis had no trouble following that. “She didn’t see enough to point us at the potential killer, just enough to scare her into warning others, especially her own kin.”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“So, potentially, that knowledge could have spread like wildfire by now.”

“Could have,” Finn agreed. “Probably more likely than not.”

“And he could know people have been alerted. The unsub.”

“Also more likely than not,” Finn confirmed grimly.

—

NELLIE TRIED TO concentrate on work after Finn left to get his people started in searching for Cole Ainsworth, and for a time managed it. She ate lunch from a take-out box at her desk, which was the norm, her eyes on spreadsheets and other financial reports. But by midafternoon she was edgy, restless. She fought it for a time, then finally got up from her desk and went to the window.

Maybe it was a storm, forecast or no forecast. She was ridiculously sensitive to storms, and—

Outside her office window, Salem’s Main Street appeared almost as it usually did on a weekday afternoon. Almost. Cars moved along at the slow speed demanded, and on the sidewalk people walked briskly in the chill, in and out of stores and the downtown restaurants and other businesses, many of them talking to each other, smiling brightly. And they hurried.