But pseudoscience wasn’t automatically wrong. It was simply a theory that hadn’t been adequately proven. What if it could be? After all, people in duress did extraordinary things. Claimed feats of strength, moments of heightened ability. Was the leap so extreme? Could something happen in that life-or-death moment, that tunnel between darkness and light? Was it madness, to believe? Or arrogance, to not?

The page loaded, and Eli’s heart quickened as he stared at the word across the top of the screen.

ExtraOrdinary.

XXIII

ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO

XXIV

EON

ELI knelt on the cell floor, a dozen pages spread before him. He’d narrowed the massive stack of killings to thirty. And then twenty. And now, at last, to six.

Malcolm Jones. Theodore Goslin. Ian Hausbender. Amy Tao. Alice Clayton. Ethan Barrymore.

Three drug dealers, two doctors, and a pharmacist.

He slipped the first three pages through the slot. “Run the ballistics in these against your executed EOs.”

Stell turned through the papers. “There are a hundred gang and cartel killings in this pile. Why these three?”

“A magician doesn’t reveal his secrets,” said Eli blandly.

“And you’re not a magician—you’re a murderer.”

Eli sighed. “How could I forget?” He nodded at the massive stack from which he’d culled the six names. “There are a hundred and seven gang and cartel killings in there, to be exact. Eighty-three of which we can rule out because they don’t fit the clean point-blank execution model I requested. Of the remaining twenty-four, fourteen had records for specializing in illegal weapons, ten in pharmaceuticals. Given the fact that your target has used the same gun for each and every execution, I decided to assume this wasn’t about acquiring weapons.

We can narrow the list down even further because Jones’s, Goslin’s, and Hausbender’s executions all involved other victims, which, in addition

to furthering my theory that the man you’re looking for is using a supernatural method of compulsion on his victims, negates the need for multiple samples from each scene, rendering three out of the original ten.”

“You’re sure it’s a man?”

“I’m not sure of anything,” said Eli, “but the odds favor a male killer. Female killers are rarer, and they tend to prefer more hands-on methods.”

“And you think he’s after drug dealers?” asked Stell.

Eli shook his head. “I think he’s after drugs.” He retrieved the other three profiles from the floor. “My theory is that your killer is either an addict, or very sick. Which brings me to these. Amy Tao, Alice Clayton, and Ethan Barrymore. The first two are doctors, the third is a pharmacist.”

Stell paced beyond the fiberglass wall. “And the dead EOs? How do they factor in?”

“I stand by my theory that our hunter was—and probably still is—

targeting specific abilities. Andreas’s was destructive, but also restorative. Connelly’s regenerative.”