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is the same monster who murdered yours."
    "My son's death was an accident."
    "I'm sorry, but it wasn't."
    "My son drowned!"
    "He may have drowned, but it wasn't an accident."
    Furious that she would say something so heinous, he slapped his palms against the siding just a few inches from her face hard enough to make her jolt. "The police investigated," he snarled. "The parish coroner—" His voice broke at the memory. "There was an autopsy, for God's sake."
    "The coroner was wrong."
    Nick ground his teeth. Having lost Brandon in a cruel accident was bad enough. But to have this woman present him with the possibility that his son had spent his last minutes knowing evil existed was simply too much to bear.
    Afraid he was about to snap, he shoved away from her. He could feel his heart raging beneath his ribs, his breaths tearing raggedly from his lungs. pain slicing like a knife. When he raised his hand and shoved his finger in her face, he was surprised to see it shaking. "Get the hell out of here."
    Watching him with dark, frightened eyes, she pushed away from the wall and backed toward the porch steps. "I'm not wrong about this."
    A strand of hair had fallen into her face. When she lifted her hand to tuck it behind her ear, he spotted the scars on the underside of her wrists. Another emotion that was part anger, part disgust coursed through him. Before even realizing he was going to move, he snagged her wrists, yanked her toward him, then turned both hands wrist side up so that the bright pink scars were visible to both of them.
    His gaze drilled into hers. "You think these scars give you some kind of license to hurt people, or are you just fucking nuts?"
    "It's not my intent to hurt you."
    She tried to tug her wrists from his grasp, but he didn't let her. He didn't give a damn if she was ashamed of the scars.
    "Yeah, and I think you need to get back on whatever medication you're taking."
    He looked down at her wrists with a sneer. The scars were ugly, even though the wounds had long since healed. He could see stitch marks where some emergency room doctor had closed what must have been hideous wounds. He could only assume they were self-inflicted. One thing he knew for certain was that she hadn't hesitated. These wounds hadn't been a cry for help. She'd been totally focused on finding the most expeditious way to the radial artery and severe bloodletting. Jesus Christ.
    "Let go of me," she said.
    He looked away from the scars and met her gaze. Her eyes were the color of Arizona turquoise. large and fragile and fringed with sooty lashes. They were the kind of eyes a man could get lost in if he looked too long. He wondered what could have been terrible enough to make this pretty young woman think that death was a better alternative than life.
    He released her with a tad too much force, sending her stumbling back. "If you're not off this porch in the next ten seconds, I'm going to call the cops and have you arrested for trespassing."
    "I'll go,” she said. "But I don't see how you can think that burying your head in the sand and letting your son's killer go free is a better alternative than the truth."
    "Give me one reason why I ought to believe you."
    "Because the man who took our children from us is going to kill again if someone doesn't stop him."
    Nick stared at her, incredulous and shocked speechless. "How do you know that?"
    "I know. And I know we don't have much time to stop him."
    "Does this nameless, faceless monster have a name?" he asked. "An address? Hell, maybe you've got his home phone number?"
    "I don't have a name!'
    "That's convenient as hell." Sighing tiredly, he scrubbed his hand over his jaw, realized she'd given him a headache. "Go tell the police what you know and leave me the hell out of it."
    "The police won't believe me."
    "You think maybe that might be because your theory is total bullshit?"
    She looked fierce standing there on his porch with her eyes flashing and her chin jutting defiantly. But he could