“Yes, yes,” Travis prodded. “Just give us his name, age, and occupation for now.”

“He’s a medical student, presently in his internship at Shalev General Hospital.”

“A doctor!” Travis cried out. “Who’s he doing his residency under?”

“I don’t have that here. Just a moment.” She punched some keys. “Dr. Chester Abernathy, sir.”

“Abernathy!” the Major exploded. “I should have known.”

“What about the others?”

“Stanley R. Kooska is forty-seven and owns his own lumber mill. His wife does their bookkeeping. Brownley is a chemistry professor at the Technical College and is also a partner in the Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer Company.”

“I have the Metcalfs,” Nicole said. “Care to guess who the other partner in Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer is?”

“So,” the Major said, stepping back to glare at the monitoring board, which was now nearly covered with flashing lights, “they’re tapping their close associates. That’s how they choose their next victims.”

“But why take the whole family?” Travis said, staring at Nicole’s screen.” The girl is sixteen, the son eighteen. Why take them?”

“I can answer that,” Nicole replied. “I heard them one night on the radio. They said they’d take only single men or whole families, in case you tried to apply pressure through their relatives.”

“Thus providing a very close and tight-knit group,” the Major added.

“The teams should be arriving at the two locations any moment now,” Travis said. “Maybe we’ll catch them.”

“Don’t count on it,” the Major snapped back at him. “Eric’s no dummy. He knows how swiftly we can pinpoint the locations. He’s got some kind of transportation away from the site, and he’ll fix them up someplace else.”

“They must have found additional heavy-duty bolt cutters,” Nicole volunteered. “All four of the Metcalfs were cut so close to the same moment that the computer registered them all at the same time.”

“Yes,” the Major said. “But now they’re going to have to fix their people up. They have eight bleeding people; they’re not going to be easy to hide.” He glanced up at the clock. “Nicole, how long ago was it when the first person was severed?”

She punched a button again, recalling Dawson’s profile. “Dawson was cut at 3:13, nearly eight or nine minutes ago.”

“Okay,” the Major said. “They can’t have gone far. Travis, tell your men to start cordoning off both sectors. Once they are secure, begin a house-to-house search. I want every garage, every basement, every possible hiding place covered.”

“Yes, sir.”

The phone rang sharply, and Travis snatched it up. “This will be the first team reporting in now, sir.” He jammed the phone to his ear and barked, “Captain Oakes speaking…Yes, put him on.” He covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Captain Burton from Serenity. I—yes, this is Captain Oakes. Hello, Cal, what is it?”