“As if the Axeman’s Protégé was never out to kill them?” Dan asked. “They were victims because this group needed something to happen. Something that might help make Neil Browne appear to be different, not one of them, a gun-toting wannabe.”

“Dammit!” Ryder hammered his fist against the wall. “We didn’t stop him. Agents and officers are combing the city and environs, and we didn’t stop this attack.” He frowned. “Are any of them conscious? Did they identify anything about the Axeman?”

“Yes,” Axel said dryly. “Big tall man, slouch hat, boots, dark coat to his feet.”

“The description we already received,” Axel said. “This guy wants everyone in the city to believe the Axeman is immortal and he’s back.”

Katie was waiting in the reception area. She stood as she saw them all coming. Her face paled. “Has there been another attack?”

“Katie, stay here,” Dan said.

“Was there another attack while Neil Browne was in custody?”

Dan caught her by the shoulders. “Yes. We’re going there now. You need to stay here. Right here. It’s safe, Katie.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“Katie, you’re a civilian—” Dan said.

“So are you!” she exclaimed.

“You don’t want to see...” Dan realized that his excuse was a poor one, considering all that Katie had already seen.

“Ambulances will already be on scene, so there won’t be much to see,” Axel explained. “But Katie, we’ll have to leave you with one of the patrol officers. The crime-scene investigators won’t want any of us destroying possible evidence, so we’ll need to tread carefully.”

Dan started moving toward the exit. “All right, Katie’s in. Let’s just get there!”

Axel had a big Bureau SUV; he drove with Andre Broussard in the passenger seat. Dan sat in the back with Katie. Ryder followed in his own vehicle.

When they arrived at the scene, Dan hopped out quickly—an ambulance was about to leave the scene.

“I’m heading in with it!” he said.

“Go,” Axel agreed.

Dan left the car, called out to one of the officers to stay with Katie and leaped into the ambulance, surprising the EMT on the scene.

“I’m with the FBI,” he said. He looked at the stretcher in place in the ambulance. She was a pretty young girl, maybe seventeen. Or she would have been pretty, if not for the blood dripping down her head. “She’s alive and may make it?” he asked quietly.

The EMT nodded. “We have oxygen and a drip going. She’s lost a lot of blood. He was going for a major artery in her thigh, I think, but he didn’t hit the main. We have the bleeding stopped.”

“It’s incredibly important that I speak with her. May I? Gently, carefully?”

The young EMT nodded solemnly.

“Thank you. And the others?”