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her to come home
for lunch, and then convince her to get in his car. Once restrained in his
basement, Jillian would become number seven, bringing him one step closer to
reaching Emily.
    Number seven for Emily, David thought, as Jillian climbed
into her Eclipse. The others before Emily hadn’t been receptive to him. They
denied his presence in their mind, shoved him aside, and gave up the chance to
become one with him. After just a couple tries, he realized that each one
refused to connect with him through the women chosen to die for them.
    He had wasted too much time with the others. Even during the
time he spent seducing them through the women he used as conduits to reach them,
he knew someone else waited for him.
    After years of searching the country, the moment David saw Emily,
he forgot about all the others. Emily had brushed up against him in line at a
coffee shop and gushed out a polite apology. In that moment, her immense psychic
ability stilled his heart and he knew she would help him fulfill his work and
make him whole.
    Yet as difficult as it had been for him to find her, it had
taken an even greater patience to connect with Emily. He had almost stopped trying
after number three, but he pushed himself to continue. Then with number five,
he made the connection, and number six strengthened it.
    While successful, the last two connections had an
unexplainable delay. He almost didn’t notice it at first, as he thought both
girls connected with Emily when they screamed her name. It wasn’t until several
hours after he dumped number five’s body that he sensed Emily and her reaction
to the girl’s voice.
    To reinforce the connection, he focused his thoughts on
Emily and wrote the words “hear me” over and over, until he covered the fronts
and backs of several sheets of paper. He resorted to writing the words on a
whim, but it worked. With the last girl, number six, he achieved the same
result of reaching Emily, but only when he scribbled the phrase on paper.
    Much stronger than the other women, Jillian would close the
time gap and help him forge a bond with Emily. If Jillian failed him, if Emily
didn’t remain receptive to him, he would have to give up on her, too. He didn’t
want to think about it, as it would force him to kill her, like all the others
before her. Jillian wouldn’t fail, though, and soon he would be with Emily,
forever.

Chapter Four
    The cursor hovered over the print
icon on the monitor and Emily punched the left mouse button. She waited until the
printer started up before closing out of the case file on her computer. She
disliked the hours wasted on necessary paperwork, but Cassie had spent that afternoon
in the field, leaving Emily to catch up on case files.
    When Monroe & Reid Investigators opened its doors seven
years earlier, cases were hard to come by, the same as any other new business
struggling for its place in the world. In those days, Emily loved the
opportunity to do paperwork. Cassie’s five years as an officer with the Wichita
Police Department paid off during their early search for clients. Well-liked as
a police officer, Cassie had planned a lifelong career in law enforcement, but
responding to one bad domestic violence call altered her plans. Shot in the
thigh, she suffered through a lengthy recovery and resigned her position.
    Due to her outstanding reputation as a police officer,
business trickled in from her contacts on the force. It turned out to be a
great source of referrals, and gave them an occasional case to work. Outside of
Cassie’s contacts, Emily used every marketing trick she could find to bring in
more cases. Between their hard work to drum up business and word-of-mouth, Monroe
& Reid Investigators soon became exactly what they imagined.
    With only the two of them on staff, they often turned away clients
and could be choosy about which cases to take. Despite the onslaught of clients,
they long ago decided against adding another investigator to the firm. Though