His hair was combed neatly back, making his widow’s peak more prominent, but masking the salt-and-pepper coloring. He remained clean-shaven.

They had last seen each other in the courtroom. Naturally, Ruby took the stand during the trial, cementing the details that led to Vallejo’s arrest.

She’d worn black. In so many ways, that trial had been more like a funeral than standing over Asher’s casket as it was lowered into the ground. She still had the dress, hanging in the back of her closet, untouched since.

Ruby sat across from Vallejo. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, hoped for. Maybe at the very least she would have liked evidence he was uncomfortable behind bars.

“I wondered when we might see each other again,” Vallejo said, a polite smile on his face, as if he were her academic advisor, not a man in chains.

Ruby set her jaw, feeling a surge of animal instinct to get her hands on him. It had been three years since she’d had that opportunity. Part of her still wondered what it would have been like to shoot him dead instead, to lie and say she thought he was armed.

The truth was, he had come too quietly. That fact had never sat right with her.

“I imagine you have a lot of time to wonder,” Ruby said.

That spiraling alternate reality without Vallejo would be so different. Maybe there would be no suspicious copycat wound patterns to investigate.

“I have you to thank for that, Ruby,” he replied, but without any of the resentful venom a caught killer should have had.

Ruby forced a smile.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Vallejo finally asked. “What could possibly bring you here after all this time?”

To Ruby’s ears, it sounded like a taunt. Even if she recorded it and replayed it for an audience, it would still sound like an innocent question. Vallejo wasn’t the kind of man who asked questions unless he already knew the answer.

There was no doubt in her mind that Vallejo took the utmost pleasure in this. Maximum security prison was not exactly known for its wealth of entertainment. What could please him more than Ruby, of all people, coming to ask questions?

It annoyed her to be providing Vallejo any kind of amusement, but she was not so stubborn as to avoid an obvious lead. Women were dying and Ruby knew in her heart that Vallejo was somewhere entangled in it.

“I thought you might like to know someone out in the real world is committing sloppier versions of your crimes,” Ruby said.

Vallejo tsked at her, his face like a patient mentor figure.

“Let’s not be so harsh. I’m sure he’s learning,” Vallejo said. “Besides, if your man were truly sloppy, you wouldn’t need to come all this way.”