Mendez listened, a sick feeling curdling in his stomach like bad milk as he took in the information. He hung up the phone and looked at Tanner and Hicks.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said. “The print comes back Michael Craig Houston.”

The silence between the three of them swelled like a balloon as the implications set in.

“Oh my God,” Tanner murmured.

Michael Craig Houston. Roland Ballencoa’s former cellmate. His suspected accomplice in the unproven murder of his aunt.

The first thing Lauren did was go to a copy center near the McAster campus and photocopy every page of the journal dated 1985–1986. She put the copy in a manila envelope and mailed it to Detective Mendez at the sheriff’s office. Whatever might happen with Ballencoa, this would end up in the hands of someone who might be able to derive something from it.

She then went into a small electronics store and purchased a mini-cassette recorder, batteries, and cassette tapes. She kept her head down and her sunglasses on, and still she drew some curious looks from other shoppers. Her forearms were scratched and her clothes were dirty, she realized. She probably looked like she’d been living in a cardboard box.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she went into the ladies’ room and looked at herself in the small mirror above the sink. It didn’t matter. She had more important things to think about than her appearance.

She set up the cassette recorder, tested it, then went about finding a way to conceal it on her body, finally wedging it inside her bra beneath her right breast. It was uncomfortable, but it worked. The T-shirt she wore had been Lance’s and was several sizes too big for her, hanging loosely away from the slight curves of her body.

She checked the positioning of the Walther pressed snugly against her belly by the control-top panty. It had shifted some as she’d run away from Ballencoa’s house. She adjusted it now and thought back to her last day at the shooting range.

Body, body, head shot.

Body, body, head shot.

She held her hands out in front of her, fingers spread wide. She had expected the shaking to be much worse.

Would she be able to point and pull the trigger if she needed to?

She had imagined that moment so many times in the last four years. Roland Ballencoa had died a thousand deaths in her dreams. Was she really prepared to make that dream a reality?

I’m ready to be done with this, she thought.

She needed an answer from him. She couldn’t say with certainty what she might do when she got one.

How stupid are you, Lauren? she wondered. He’ll tell you what you want to hear if you have a gun to his head.

Her answer to herself was: I’ll know.