Dawn came and went, but time did not exist in the darkened underground stage of a killer. Many arrived and departed, but Boss' team never moved from their assigned duties.

Off-duty officers delivered coffee and meals at intervals while those working the case barely abandoned their posts to do their business and did whatever needed doing in record time.

Gillian marveled at their dedication as the luminous letters on her watch proclaimed the midnight hour. A full twenty-six hours had passed since she crossed the station house's threshold. They were finally on the way back there, hitching a ride with a converted bus that was one part field office and one part transport.

Colt nodded, motioned her closer, and Gillian joined her. The detective sent another officer on an errand with her car some hours earlier, and he hadn't returned yet.

The summons wasn't unexpected, and she awaited it with bated breath, knowing she deserved a good chewing out for her disobedience. How humiliating would it be if Boss shunted her off to another unit before the end of her first shift? Her choice started their working relationship off on a bad foot, but these officers would never have discovered the boy.

Bruise-like smudges darkened the undersides of Colt's bloodshot eyes, and she kept suppressing a yawn. The slight jittery tremble of her hands spoke of countless cups of coffee as the tension in her slumped shoulders incrementally lessened.

"What the hell were you doing back there?" Senior Detective Boss demanded before Colt could speak, looking about thirty and carrying authority as if he was born to it.

"I overheard a detective mention that the murders were much like those of Peter Hendricks twenty years ago. One male and one female victim, not related or married, strangers for all intents and purposes, were discovered with their bodies positioned like the dials of a watch. These victims had their arms and legs cut off and placed like time markers on a round watch face. Except that there was no third body, so I checked the internet. The killer always forced the third body into a small crevice within thirty feet of the others."

His dark brows almost touched, but he didn't interrupt her.

"The killer positioned the third body like a fetus. There was never any mention of the victim holding their own head and cradling it like a precious object or that it was a child."

Everyone's attention focused on her. She didn't even expect them to hear her out, never mind listen to her.

The small lie she told to disguise how she found the body created an invisible wall between herself and them. A barrier that would grow every day.

"So, you decided to go look beyond thirty feet?"

Even though she realized it was a trick question, she nodded. Detective Boss was rather intimidating for a human, but not as much as her grandfather.

"If you ever go off alone again, I will send you back where you came from so fast your head will spin."

The unexpected attack startled her, but he reined himself in before saying something he couldn't take back. Strong underlying emotions created undercurrents like some slithering evil in the darkness.

Had one of them gone off alone and never returned?

She kept her face emotionless as she nodded, too glad they bought her lies. She had never used her phone. Instead, she listened and learned, drawing her own conclusions, but they had no idea she could hear conversations no human ear would catch.

"Good job." The compliment caught her as off guard as it did the others, "But you are not a detective. Next time, share your insights with Colt or me. You have no training in this area and should be on patrol, not running around unsupervised in violent crimes," he bristled.

The slap on the wrist barely registered. She was unprepared for this.

"The minute hand pointed toward the third body, and the adults were in the open, but he hid the child. At face value, one could almost think he tried to say, "Time to hide, little one."

Gillian hadn't meant to say it out loud. Her predator had an uncanny insight into the human version of its kind. She needed them to know this, even if they dismissed her thoughts as fancy.

Boss froze mid-stride as if she had shot him. His gaze almost burned with intensity as he turned to face her, and nothing happened as the world seemed to come crashing to a halt.

Had she said the wrong thing?

"Who the hell are you? Three profilers, thirty detectives, hundreds of man hours, thirty dead people, and you walk in here and find a body we did not? How can someone so wet behind the ears draw the only conclusion that has ever made any sense?" he demanded.

He strode from the back area into the office section, and everybody followed as if joined to him with strings.

No one noticed when they stopped at the station. Boss and Colt searched through the photos on record, printed them out, and mounted them on the whiteboard.

They revealed the same thing—the minute hand indicated the position of the child's body in every picture.

"They are in the wrong order, but 10, 3, 6, 9, 1, 4, 7, 2, 8, 11, and 12. Where's five?" Gillian asked, frowning at the wall.

Boss and Colt stopped what they were doing, glanced at her, and then stared at the board. Tension gripped their shoulders, the fatigue briefly lifted from their shoulders, and the silence made her ears ring.

"You're right. Somewhere out there's another crime scene. He was biding his time, waiting for something special to happen," Colt murmured, putting up the last picture.

Detective Boss took them down and arranged them in a circle with the minute hand pointed at the center, where he wrote the victims' names with a marker, making another circle in the heart of that with a question mark.

"The children are a substitute for himself, and he sees himself as the victim," Boss deduced, turning to Gillian.

She wasn't comfortable being the center of such focused attention.

"Why?" he asked of her as if she should know the answer.

Everyone stared at her, the weight of their expectation resting on her shoulders.

"Perhaps someone abused him as a child and put him in a small, dark space. The pitch-black isolation made him feel like he was losing his... mind, no, his head. Never knowing when they would come for him taught him to fear the passage of time. He faces his fear by using the clock to speak his message and tell the world his secret."

Like some foul tendril touching her mind, Gillian sensed his fear, darkness, and madness. She knew his smell, grasped the deranged workings of his intellect, and understood what drove him. It seemed far too easy for her to peer into his insanity.

"He's highly intelligent, methodical, patient, and planned all of this. He stopped for a reason and started again with a specific agenda," Colt concluded, and Boss nodded in agreement.

"Why wait for twenty years?" someone asked.

"Maybe he was in prison?" Boss murmured.

"Or they were. You don't plan murders around your own prison sentence," Gillian again spoke against her better judgment.

With all these humans pressed so intimately into proximity with her and her last meal thirty hours away, she had trouble breathing the thickening air or focusing on the discussion instead of her feral hunger.

"You okay, Beaumont?" Colt asked unexpectedly as the others buzzed over her conclusion.

"I got straight off a plane from DC an hour before reporting for duty," Gillian found the half-truth easier than a lie.

Colt stared right at her. Had the detective sensed her deception? Colt's expression softened, revealing compassion and pity.

"Go home, all of you. This will keep," Boss ordered.

Gillian noted his ability to listen to more than one conversation—not something you wanted to forget at the wrong moment.