Sweet Spot. Susan Mallery

his original profile. He saw the faces of Kane’s victims in his nightmares every night. And a day didn’t go by that he didn’t think of them and the families they’d left behind. Think of them and curse the fear, the pain, the crippling grief Kane had caused.

      Trent picked up the stack of photographs he’d glanced through in Kane’s cell. “I’ll sort through the things we found in his cell and take a look at the files. I’ll be ready by the time the task force gets here.”

      He focused on the photographs in his hands. The wedding shot of Kane and Dixie. The seductive snapshots of Farrentina Hamilton. The uneasy tension he’d experienced in the cell descended on his shoulders again. Something was definitely wrong with these pictures.

      He set the photos back on the table and reached for the closest box of old case files. He plucked a file from the box, flipped open the manila folder and leafed through the contents. His fingers closed over a stack of crime-scene photos. One of the coeds Kane murdered stared back at him with unseeing blue eyes. Ashley Dalton. A twenty-year-old with two younger sisters and an interest in biochemistry. Her mutilated, naked body glowed white in the photographer’s flash. Her long, blond hair tangled around her face.

      He snapped the folder shut and reached for another, the haunting details of Kane’s crimes rushing back to him. Rushing back to him, hell. They had never left. They were as much a part of him as his pounding heart, his straining lungs, his racing mind.

      The woman in the second file was Dawn Bertram, a grad student studying psychology. A beautiful girl, Dawn had green eyes, not blue. But long, blond hair framed her lifeless face.

      That was it.

      That was what bothered him about the photos of Farrentina Hamilton. Her hair. Her brunette hair.

      Kane preferred blondes.

      Wiley leaned toward him from across the table. “What do you see, Burnell?”

      Trent pushed the crime-scene photos toward him. “All of Kane’s victims were blond. It was a big part of his signature. He killed blondes. Only blondes.”

      Rook raised his black eyebrows. “A hair-color fetish? What, was his mother blond or something?”

      “Not his mother, though she probably inspired a good deal of his hatred. His rage has been building since he was a child. Rage and violent fantasies. We do know that he acted out many of those fantasies on small animals he hunted and captured in his neighborhood.”

      “Then where does the blond hair come in?” Rook asked.

      “A few months after his mother died of cancer, he married a blonde. She was in college when they met. When she started having affairs with other men, Kane began acting out his violent fantasies on women who looked like her. Fantasies that culminated in murder. It made him feel powerful, in control. Power and control he didn’t have in his normal life. Every time he killed a blond college student, he could fantasize that he was asserting power over the wife who’d humiliated him.”

      “Until he got around to finally killing her.”

      Trent nodded. He could almost smell the hot tang of blood mixing with the scent of spruce trees and lilac bushes. Fresh blood.

      Damn. If he had been a little faster he could have saved Kane’s first wife. Faster identifying Kane. Faster locating him. Faster…

      But he hadn’t been. Kane had beaten him by mere hours.

      The memory of the worried tremor in Rees’s voice echoed in his ears. He looked down at the mutilated photo of her and Dixie. He couldn’t let Kane beat him this time.

      Wiley studied the crime-scene photos and the snapshots of Farrentina Hamilton side by side. “So he wouldn’t be turned on by a brunette.”

      Trent snatched his thoughts from past regrets and focused on the case at hand. “No.”

      Wiley screwed up his forehead in concentration. “Didn’t I read something in one of the Hamilton woman’s letters about coloring her hair? Maybe she dyed it blond for him.”

      Trent skimmed through the letters until he found the one Wiley was referring to. He read aloud. “As you can see, I colored my hair for you, Dryden. The red lingerie looks nice on a brunette, don’t you think?”

      Wiley tapped a ballpoint pen on the tabletop. “But that sounds like she dyed her hair brunette for him. Not blond.”

      Yes, it did. But that didn’t make sense. A serial killer didn’t change his signature. The emotional need his crime fulfilled was always the same, crime after crime. He might change his modus operandi as he learned more efficient ways of committing his crimes, ways he could avoid getting caught. But he didn’t change the emotional satisfaction, the sexual charge he got out of the act. And Kane fed on his victim’s fear as he exacted revenge. Revenge against the ex-wife who’d humiliated him. The ex-wife with long, blond hair. “The sequence of this hair color change is important. Are there any other photos? Any of Hamilton as a blonde?”

      Wiley flicked through the stack of photos they’d found in Kane’s cell. “Yes. This head shot.” He handed a photo to Trent.

      Rook leaned over the table to get a glimpse.

      In the picture, Farrentina Hamilton’s platinum blond hair flowed over her shoulders. She wore a trendy suit, the style outdated by today’s standards, and she looked appreciably younger than she did in the lingerie shot.

      Damn. He didn’t know what to make of this. Kane couldn’t have changed his signature. But if he hadn’t, why had he asked Farrentina Hamilton to dye her hair brunette?

      “Dixie.” Dixie was a natural brunette, like Rees, but she had bleached her hair blond for as long as Trent had known her. He picked up the wedding picture and the mutilated picture from the table. In both photos Dixie’s hair was platinum and arranged in ringlets falling to her shoulders. If Kane’s preference had changed to brunettes, why had he married a blonde only a month ago?

      Unless Dixie, like Ms. Hamilton, was no longer blond.

      Trent’s gaze skimmed the mutilated photograph, landing on Rees. Her happy, wholesome smile, her arms circling her sister, her teddy bears cuddled around them on the bench. His gut tightened. “Professor Madsen might have some answers for us after all.” He stood and walked to the door.

      Behind him, Wiley snorted and drummed his pen on a file folder. Trent ignored his obvious disapproval.

      Risa was half out of her chair before the door swung open. “Did you find anything?” Desperation tinged her voice and tightened her every muscle. She looked small, delicate among the square, government-issue furniture lining the wall. Feet rooted to the floor, she leaned toward him, straining to find answers in his eyes.

      Answers he didn’t have. “Will you come in here?”

      Head snapping up and down in a quick nod, she scurried across the reception area and through the door he held open. As she moved into the room, his fingers stroked the small of her back as if of their own accord. The way they always had when he’d ushered her through a door. Back when the two of them were together. Back when he had a right to touch her.

      The silky texture of her sweater grazed his fingertips. The warmth of her skin beckoned to him from under the thin silk.

      Her body stiffened under his fingers, but she didn’t look at him. Instead, she bolted into the room and took a seat at the table.

      What the hell was he doing? He had no right to touch her. No right to let himself fall back into familiar patterns, familiar gestures. He’d given up those rights two years ago. Given them up to keep her safe from just the kind of evil threatening her now.

      He closed the door and circled the table. Pushing away memories of holding her, touching her, he folded himself into the chair next to her.

      She kept her eyes riveted to the tabletop. Following her gaze, he spotted the stack of file folders hastily shuffled together. The corner of a crime-scene photo peeked