Val, clenching her teeth, kept inching forward, and as she did, she heard the sound of voices. Angry, threatening voices.

The skin at the back of her neck prickled.

Her throat tightened, and she kept her gun out in front of her as she moved closer to the argument, her ears straining.

She recognized the reverend mother’s voice, but there was someone else’s, someone she should identify. Oh, God! It was the raspy, disguised whisper she’d heard on her phone.

“Is thissss what you’re looking for?” it asked, and Val’s heart thumped wildly, spurred by adrenaline and pure, crystalline fear. “Her birth certificate?”

Birth certificate? Whose birth cer—And then she knew that it was hers, the record of Valerie Renard’s birth. It had to be. Her stomach became a fist.

“Give that to me.” The reverend mother was insistent. Panicked.

“Why? So you can dessstroy it? No way. Come on, move it! Let’s go!”

“I’m not leaving.”

“You don’t and I kill her. Got it? Like the others. She’s nexxxt.”

Val’s knees threatened to give out. She flipped off the safety of the .38.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Of course I would!” Pure conviction. Determination. Evil intent. “You should know that by now. Aren’t the others proof enough? Now get moving!”

For some reason, the mother superior was bargaining with the maniac for Val’s life.

She heard a movement ahead, then walking, an uneven tread, Sister Charity’s unwilling gait, probably, as she was being forced deeper into the bowels of the basement.

Somehow Val would have to stop this insanity. She had a gun. Did the killer? Could she take that chance? She stepped forward, ready to confront the murderer and his victim, when a switch was hit.

Click!

Darkness, stygian in its blackness, rained down on her.

Damn! Now what?

She could turn back, wait for Slade, find a cop in the gym, but she would lose time and probably the trail of the reverend mother and the killer in this rabbit warren that seemed to go on endlessly.

Who knew where the hallways and tunnels that made up this basement would lead? No, she had to follow. Not just for the knowledge on that birth certificate, but also for the mother superior’s life!

Surely Slade would catch up with her . . . right?

Val didn’t second-guess her instincts.

Hardly daring to breathe, her skin tight over her muscles, she followed the bob of a flashlight’s beam as it wended its way deeper into the darkness.

“Everyone stay where you are!” Montoya was working crowd control, the rest of the force who had attended the auction keeping the patrons in the gym. The scene was a madhouse, panic threatening to overtake everyone inside.

The smell of Sister Louise’s corpse had escaped, and a doctor had been called up to confirm what was so patently obvious: Sister Louise was dead.