She caught it, just a whiff of blame, but it was enough. Her job had already caused her to injure herself. And now, her detective’s instincts had endangered her entire family.

“Do we even know today’s intruder is the same person as the killer?” she whispered, an exercise in wishful thinking.

Phil supplied what, deep down, she’d already known. “Same brand of champagne was left here as at the two murders, a detail that wasn’t in the papers. We’ve considered it a minor victory. Got the damn media to omit at least that much.”

“So it was definitely the killer who was in our house,” D.D. summarized, looking up at Alex. “A predator obsessed with harvesting human skin and taunting injured detectives.”

She didn’t want to sound bitter, but she did. She didn’t want to sound scared, either, though she still wasn’t quite that lucky.

“So what kind of killer is obsessed with removing strips of skin?” Neil asked.

D.D. sighed heavily. “Oh, I have some ideas on that subject, too.”

They regarded her blankly.

“Introducing Harry and Shana Day.”

• • •

SHE STARTED WITH HARRY DAY, walking them through Harry’s spree of terror of forty years ago. The women he abducted, tortured and eventually killed. His own obsession for removing body parts, including the jars of excised skin found beneath the floor of his bedroom closet.

Alex and Neil remained blasé on the subject. Until she got to the last two tidbits. Harry Day’s older daughter, Shana, was a notorious killer in her own right, currently serving life in the MCI. And, oh yes, his other daughter was none other than Dr. Adeline Glen, D.D.’s new pain therapist.

“What?” Alex exploded. “That can’t possibly be coincidence. What if this doctor’s the one who just broke into our house? She knows all about your injury, as well as details from both murders since you discussed them with her. A daughter of a serial killer, she has good reason to be obsessed with a cop. Maybe she even pushed you down the stairs of the first crime scene, just so you’d become one of her patients.”

D.D. rolled her eyes, exasperated. “Oh, for the love of paranoid thinking . . . For starters, I was personally with Dr. Glen this afternoon—”

“What time?”

“I don’t know. One to two.”

“Break-in happened around three thirty. Doesn’t count her out.”

“Come on. I only started seeing Dr. Glen because Superintendent Horgan recommended her. And even then, if my fall had led to a minor injury or a different kind of injury, I wouldn’t need her services. So to assume some malevolent shrink shoved me down the stairs at a crime scene just to get me into her office . . . large margin for error in that master plan.”