Sometimes, she reflected, your colleagues’ mistakes and carelessness—as well as your own—can be as much an adversary as the perps you’re pursuing.

The miss was, of course, frustrating enough. But far more troubling was that he’d possibly been planning another attack. A theater would be a perfect venue in which to instigate a stampede. No, Steve Number One, he’s not a thousand miles away at all. Perhaps, since he knew he’d been spotted, he’d now flee the area. Certainly he was going to change his appearance or at least ditch the clothes. But was he still determined to strike again? They’d have to assume so. She sent out a second memo to all local law enforcers to alert managers of venues that she believed their unsub had likely attempted a second attack.

Reaching for the phone to call Michael O’Neil, she was interrupted by TJ Scanlon. He was in a T-shirt that bore the name BECK (not, like you’d think, the Grateful Dead). He was in jeans too. And a sports coat, striped. It was of the Summer of Love era and might actually have come from the 1960s; TJ stocked his hippie house in Carmel Valley with counter­cultural artifacts from an era and way of life that had ended long before he was born.

He dropped into the chair across from her.

“Oh-oh, boss. Oh-oh and a half. Something wrong?”

“You didn’t hear? Our friend from Sacramento leaked the description of the unsub.”

“Oh, man. Foster?”

“Yep.” She added, “And somebody spotted the perp.”

“Good news but then, given your expression, I guess it isn’t.”

“He spotted the spotter and vanished.”

“Hell. So he’s left town.”

“Or become a quick-change artist—who knows? Platform shoes. Dyed his hair. New clothes. And,” she added grimly, “maybe he’s still going forward, targeting someplace else. Right now. Before we can regroup.”

She told him about the movie theater.

The young man nodded. “Right up his alley. Crowded multiplex.”

Dance glanced at the folder in the young agent’s hand.

TJ said, “Something helpful maybe. I tracked down the girl. Trish.”

Dance had given him the job of finding the teen she’d met at the Solitude Creek crime scene.

“Michelle Cooper—the mother who died. Her daughter’s Trish Martin. Her father’s name.”

Like Maggie and Wes were Swenson.

“The girl’s seventeen. Don’t have her mobile but here’s the mother’s home number.” He added, “It’s on Seventeen Mile Drive.”

Dance could see the scenario. Husband cheats on wife, she catches him, he pays through the nose and foots the bill for a house in the poshest neighborhood of Pebble Beach.

“You have the father’s address and number? Mr. Friendly. She’d be staying with him now, I’d guess.”

“Sorry, didn’t get it. Want me to check?”

“I’ll try her mother’s first.”

As it turned out, though, there wouldn’t be any conversations of any kind.

“Hello?” A man’s voice. Abrupt. Hell, she knew who it was.

“I’m calling for Trish Martin.”

“Who is this?”

Unfortunately, you had to play the game honestly. “Agent Kathryn Dance, the California Bureau of Investigation. Is this Mr. Martin? I—”