“Okay. As long as you don’t forget. It’s my only copy.” Sandra Harvey got up, too. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’ve got to go. Thank you again,” I said.

I ran next door and trotted up steps into the back of the house, where cold water was an inch deep on the floor and dripping slowly from the roof. Agents were moving about, taking photographs and talking amongst themselves.

“Teun!” I called out.

I carefully moved further inside, stepping over missing areas of flooring and doing my best not to trip. I was vaguely aware of an agent dropping the burned carcass of a cat into a plastic bag.

“Teun!” I called out again.

I heard sure feet splashing and stepping over fallen roofing and collapsed walls. Then she was mere inches from me and steadying my arm with her hand.

“Whoa. Careful,” she started to say.

“We’ve got to find Lucy,” I said.

“What’s going on?”

She began to carefully escort me out.

“Where is she?” I demanded.

“There’s a two-alarm fire downtown. A grocery store, probably an arson. Kay, what the hell . . . ?”

We were out on the lawn and I was clutching the videotape as if it were my only hope in life.

“Teun, please.” I held her gaze. “Take me to Philadelphia.”

“Come on,” she said.

16

MCGOVERN MADE THE trip back to Philadelphia in forty-five minutes, because she was speeding. She had radioed her field office and talked on a secure tac channel. Although she was still very careful what she relayed, she had made it clear that she wanted every available agent out on the street looking for Carrie. While this was going on, I reached Marino on my cellular phone and told him to get on a plane now.

“She’s here,” I said.

“Oh shit. Do Benton and Lucy know?”

“As soon as I find them.”

“I’m out the door,” he said.

I did not believe, nor did McGovern, that Carrie was still in Lehigh County. She wanted to be where she could do the most damage, and I was convinced she somehow knew that Lucy had moved to Philadelphia. Carrie could have been stalking Lucy, for that matter. One thing I believed but could not make sense of was that the murders in Warrenton and now here were intended to lure those of us who had defeated Carrie in the past.

“But Warrenton happened before she escaped from Kirby,” McGovern reminded me as she turned onto Chestnut Street.

“I know,” I said as fear turned my pulse to static. “I don’t understand any of it except that somehow she’s involved. It’s not coincidence that she was on that news clip, Teun. She knew that after Kellie Shephard’s murder we would review everything we could find. Carrie knew damn well we would see that tape.”