Tuesday morning, she said. Almost two days. Where do you think he starts, Dex? Does he take a leg off first? Or an arm? Will he do them both at the same time?

No, I said. One at a time. She looked at me hard. Well, it just makes sense, doesn’t it?

Not to me, she said. Nothing about this makes sense.

Deborah, cutting off the arms and legs is not what this guy wants to do. It’s just how he does it.

Goddamn it, Dexter, talk English.

What he wants to do is totally destroy his victims. Break them inside and out, way beyond repair. Turn them into musical beanbags that will never again have a moment of anything except total endless insane horror. Cutting off limbs and lips is just the way he— What?

Oh, Jesus, Dexter, Deborah said. Her face had screwed up into something I hadn’t seen since our mom died. She turned away, and her shoulders began to shake. It made me just a little uneasy. I mean, I do not feel emotions, and I know Deborah quite often does. But she was not the kind of person who showed them, unless irritation is an emotion. And now she was making wet snuffly sounds, and I knew that I should probably pat her shoulder and say, There there, or something equally profound and human, but I couldn’t quite make myself do it. This was Deb, my sister. She would know I was faking it and—

And what? Cut off my arms and legs? The worst she would do would be to tell me to stop it, and go back to being Sergeant Sourpuss again. Even that would be a great improvement over her wilting-lily act. In any case, this was clearly one of those times where some human response was called for, and since I knew from long study what a human would do, I did it. I stood up and stepped over to her. I put my arm on her shoulder, patted her, and said, All right, Deb. There there. It sounded even stupider than I had feared, but she leaned against me and snuffled, so I suppose it was the right thing to do after all.

Can you really fall in love with somebody in a week? she asked me.

I don’t think I can do it at all, I said.

I can’t take this, Dexter, she said. If Kyle gets killed, or turned into— Oh, God, I don’t know what I’ll do. And she collapsed against me again and cried.

There there, I said.

She gave a long hard snuffle, and then blew her nose on a paper towel from the table beside her. I wish you’d stop saying that, she said.

I’m sorry, I said. I don’t know what else to tell you.

Tell me what this guy is up to. Tell me how to find him.