“Which supports your theory that he’s sick.”

There was, thought Eli, a grudging respect in Stell’s voice.

“It’s still only a theory,” he demurred. “Let’s start by confirming the ballistics.”

* * *

THE results came back two days later.

Alice Clayton and Malcolm Jones.

A doctor and a drug dealer, added to the tally of three dead EOs.

Eli’s picture was growing. But it was still missing something.

He kept coming back to the gun.

Their hunter was methodical, precise—he had to know that varying the style of execution would have helped cover the trail. And yet he’d chosen to maintain a single technique. There were reasons people adhered to such a pattern—sometimes it was a signature, other times a matter of comfort, or precision, but in this case Eli had a feeling that the killer didn’t want to get their hands dirty. Shooting was cold, efficient, and distant. But it was also clean. Sterile. It could be done at a distance, with no risk of biological data at the scene. The killer’s choice of weapon, despite the drawbacks of pattern, suggested they cared more about maintaining their own anonymity than hiding the trail of bodies.

Which in turn suggested that the killer’s DNA was already in the system.

An EO who was known to authorities.

Eli’s pulse quickened as pieces clicked together in the back of his mind.

It was madness. Irrational. Impulsive. But Eli felt again that gentle pressure at his back, guiding him forward as he booted the computer and started searching for strange or sudden deaths in the practicing medical field.

Eli spent the next forty-eight sleepless hours skimming every database and obit and news story. He knew he was making leaps instead of strides, but the ground was smooth and sloped beneath his feet. So instead of catching himself, Eli let gravity do the work.

And then, finally, he found an obituary for Dr. Adam Porter. A leading neurologist, discovered dead after hours at a private practice. It had been a heart attack, according to the coroner’s report, but not at his desk, or on the way to his car, or safely at home. No, the body had been found on the hospital linoleum floor, next to a smoking MRI, its power blown.

A freak accident.

A massive current.

The patient records from that night were missing, a neat hole carved out in a busy schedule, but Eli could read the outline by the edges it left behind.

He knew the shape.

He’d seen it before.

Angie’s body, twisted on the floor of the lab at Lockland, her back arched, mouth open, the last seconds of her life immortalized by pain.

A heart attack, they’d said.

A freak accident.

A massive current.