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having only managed to furnish half of her tiny apartment. Forced to send a third of her salary home to her
impoverished family south of the border, she seemed to have given up on her once responsible attitude and thrown caution entirely to the wind.
    Lopez shot Jarvis a dirty look as she tore an image of Hayden Decker from the wall and tossed it into a waste-basket with a flourish.
    ‘Eighteen thousand bucks down the drain,’ she said to him. ‘Thanks.’
    Jarvis said nothing as Ethan and Lopez gathered cameras, notepads, cans of pepper spray and, from the safe, two sports bags that contained a change of clothes for each of them. Jarvis surveyed
them from one side of the office, checking his watch every few moments.
    The old man had once been Captain of a United States Marines rifle platoon, and Ethan’s senior officer from his time in the Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their friendship, cemented first
during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and later when Ethan had resigned his commission and been embedded with Jarvis’s men as a journalist, had led to Warner & Lopez Inc.’s unusual and
discreet accord with the Defense Intelligence Agency, where Jarvis continued to serve his country. So far, Ethan and Lopez had been involved in two major investigations for the DIA, both of which
concerned what the agency liked to discreetly term
anomalous discoveries
.
    ‘So what’s the story?’ Ethan asked as he hefted his pistol thoughtfully in his hand. Then he stuffed it into his kit bag. Better safe than sorry.
    Jarvis frowned at the weapon but did not protest.
    ‘Homicide, way down in Miami. County Sheriff sends in officers to investigate a witness report of a man fleeing his home under suspicious circumstances. The cops arrive, gain entry and
find a dead woman and child, both executed with a single shot to the head.’
    Ethan grimaced.
    ‘Any idea on the perpetrator? Could be family if the kid was shot too.’
    ‘The man who fled the scene is one Charles Purcell, the husband and father of the victims. He hasn’t been seen since, but he has contacted the police.’
    Both Ethan and Lopez stopped what they were doing.
    ‘Why’d he do that?’ Lopez asked.
    ‘That,’ Jarvis replied, ‘is why you’re heading down there right now. He made a call to the officer heading up the investigation and told him to contact you,
Ethan.’
    Ethan stared at Jarvis for a long moment. ‘I don’t know anybody down in Miami.’
    ‘We’ve already run checks,’ Jarvis agreed. ‘There’s nothing to show that the two of you have ever met.’
    Ethan felt a wave of foreboding sweep over him. Visions of a psychopathic serial killer with twisted plans of vengeance for some unknown or long-forgotten offense flickered darkly through his
mind. Most all victims of the truly insane had no real understanding of why they were targeted, often because the reasons made sense only within the tortured crucible of their killer’s
mind.
    ‘Then how does this guy Purcell know who I am?’ Ethan asked. ‘And what the hell’s a suspected murderer want with me?’
    ‘That’s what’s bothering us,’ Jarvis admitted. ‘This guy must have gone to some lengths in order to locate you.’
    Ethan almost laughed at the absurdity of it all, but he glanced out of the office windows as though he were being watched. ‘How would he know where to find me if he doesn’t know me?
It doesn’t make any sense.’
    ‘Believe me,’ Jarvis replied, ‘not much about this case makes any sense right now. You two ready?’
    Ethan, his thoughts fogged with confusion, zipped up his bag as Lopez slung hers over her shoulder and they walked out of the office onto the street outside. Ethan had just locked the door when
a UPS truck pulled up alongside and the driver stepped out with a board-back envelope in his hand.
    ‘Ethan Warner?’ the driver asked him.
    Ethan stepped forward and signed the driver’s palmtop, then took the envelope and looked at it.
    ‘You can