Undercover Hunter(84)

                He picked up the photo, staring at it, wondering if her eyes had really been as dark as they appeared in the photo. He couldn’t recall them now, except flashes from the moments when she had been cleansing him, and then they had indeed appeared black as night.

                A thin woman, with a severe face and a will of iron. Sometimes when he thought about her, he could understand why his dad had killed himself. Other times, he thought his dad was a rat for abandoning his wife and child.

                But the woman, DeeJay, had those dark eyes. Short hair, like his mother, who had called hair a vanity and often took her shears to both of them. Kate Sweet had been tall, too, like DeeJay, as if life had stretched her out in some way, making her all lean angles. She had towered over him for most of his life. He hadn’t equaled her in height until he was almost eighteen.

                Taking a woman would change his pattern, cover himself, but it didn’t quite answer the questions that loomed in his mind each time this happened. Maybe it was like the time he had finally turned on his mother and whipped her with his belt until she left him alone. Maybe he hadn’t felt his mother was pure enough to be cleansing him. It was possible. Certainly the two other women he’d fixated on hadn’t been pure, had probably been past purification.

                He set down the photo and told himself to stop wondering. He was the person she had made him to be, a man with a mission. Whatever went on inside him that he occasionally needed to take a woman like her—well, she had made him. Maybe this was part of what she wanted, too.

                But satisfying a dead woman was the least of it. The urges that goaded him came from deep within him, like an ebbing and flowing tide he could only ride. The tide was flowing strong in him again, and he had to find a way to meet this DeeJay.

                Dreaming about it, he set out for the barn. He was stuck because of the snow, and the urges were riding him hard. Maybe spending some time with his boys would help. Especially if he climbed all the way up so he could look down on them.

                Looking down always made him feel more powerful. It juiced him, to use a term he’d learned on city streets, although he meant it differently. It zapped through him like an electrical surge, making him feel big. Huge. Important.

                Like a man with a mission.

                * * *

                Gage arrived in the late afternoon. Surprisingly, he walked through the door with a bag of takeout from the diner and began putting foam cartons on the table. “Emma’s making pizza for the boys. I’m tired of the sound of video games, and she’s been wearing headphones and listening to music to avoid it. I just decided to escape.” He was half smiling, though, and appeared to be enjoying himself.

                “How are things otherwise?”

                “What you’d expect after a storm like this,” he answered. “Some outlying ranches without any power, a couple of women who decided now would be a good time to have a baby, some injuries from falls, a few heart attacks from shoveling...” He trailed off. “Thank God we’ve got a great emergency response team. They’ve been flying those helicopters since the wind died down enough. So what’s up? Was Craig any help?”

                “Maybe you’d better explain,” Cade said to DeeJay. “I wish we could get to Lew’s email. It would make everything clearer.”

                Gage spoke as he opened containers. He’d brought disposable utensils and napkins, so all they had to add was mugs of coffee. “Lew who?”

                “Lew Boulard. An FBI profiler. We had him do a little research. He called this morning, and promised to send an email with the information.”