“I think I may take that offer for an attorney,” Browne said and yawned.

Dan leaned closer again. “Why has it taken you so long to ask? Was your immortal leader supposed to send you one? But he’d be afraid of an association with you, wouldn’t he? I mean, he had you kill Jennie, and now he’s denying you an attorney!”

“I’ll take the lawyer,” Browne said flatly. He wasn’t smiling. He glared at Dan, and Dan was glad—he had hit a nerve.

Dan nodded. “Think about helping us, though. Keeping that mortal shell of yours. I know you all are careful. Gloves, hair caps probably. You leave nothing behind. But you see, you weren’t wearing gloves the whole time you were with Jennie, and there’s this amazing way of getting fingerprints off a body now. I believe they found yours, and that puts you with her—”

“Yes, so? That doesn’t prove I killed her!”

“Well, yes, it does.” He was playing, grabbing at straws, but good ones, Dan hoped. “Because you didn’t want to kill Jennie, you were just terrified not to do it. And you touched her face, you had your gloves off, and you touched her face. So you see, there’s blood on those prints we’re going to get. Won’t matter if we know who you really are or not. Your fingerprints here, same prints on Jennie’s corpse...”

He let his voice trail.

“Lawyer!” Browne said. His voice had changed.

“Suit yourself,” Dan said, standing. Ryder followed suit. He pretended to be oblivious to the fact that Browne was listening as he spoke to Ryder. “We need to figure out that sixth person, and I don’t think it will be that hard. We have records on the Baton Rouge couple, and we have Browne’s phone now... We can trace some calls. When we don’t need this asshole anymore, we won’t have to worry about trying to get the federal and state prosecutors to make any kind of concessions.”

He let the door close on his last words, feeling just a little bit triumphant.

But that feeling was quickly gone.

Axel and Andre were looking at him and Ryder with grim expressions, and Dan knew; Browne was going to be able to make people doubt his guilt when it came to the axe murders.

Because someone else had been attacked.

“Who? Where?” he asked, feeling his heart sink. “When was it called in. How fast can we get there?”

“The Bywater area. The victims are Jillian and Andy Dean, and Andy’s sister Ashley,” Axel said. They started walking quickly down the hall away from the interrogation room.

“But,” Andre said, keeping pace easily, “here’s the good part—”

“There’s a good part to axe murders?” Dan asked, feeling numb.

“They’re not dead,” Andre said. “Seriously injured, but it was almost as if—”