Dallas, Texas

"I'm sorry, Ms. Gallagher. I know this is terribly difficult, but unless there's someone else who can make a positive identification —"

Kate shook her head. "No. There's no one else."

"All right then, if you will please follow me." The medical examiner, Dr. Jerome Maxwell, a man in his fifties, had thick black hair finely threaded with gray. He started down the hall, but Kate stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Are you ... are you completely sure it's my sister?" She smoothed a hand nervously over the skirt of her navy blue suit. "The victim is definitely Christina Gallagher?"

"There was a fingerprint match to your missing sister. I'm sorry," he repeated. "We'll still need your confirmation."

Kate's stomach rolled. Her legs felt weak as she followed Dr. Maxwell down a narrow, seemingly endless hallway in the Dallas County morgue. The echo of her high heels on the stark gray linoleum floor sent a sweep of nausea through her.

The doctor paused outside a half-glass door. "As I said before, this is going to be difficult. Are you sure there isn't someone you can call, someone else who could make the identification?"

Kate's throat tightened. "My father's remarried and living in New York. He hasn't seen Chrissy in years." Frank Gallagher hadn't seen either of his daughters since he and his wife had divorced.

"And your mother?" the doctor asked kindly.

"She died of a heart attack a year after Chrissy ran away." For Madeleine Gallagher, losing both her husband and her daughter had simply been too much.

The doctor straightened his square black glasses. "Are you ready?" "I'll never be ready to see my sister's murdered body, Dr. Maxwell. But I'm all Chrissy has, so let's get it over with."

The doctor opened the door, and they walked out of a hallway that seemed overly warm into a room that was icy cold. A shiver rushed over Kate's skin, and her heart beat faster. As Dr. Maxwell moved toward a rollout table in front of a wall of cold-storage boxes, Kate could see the outline of a body beneath the stark white sheet.

Emotion tightened her chest. This was her baby sister, only sixteen the last time Kate had seen her two years ago, before she had run away.

The doctor nodded to a female assistant in a white lab coat standing next to the table, and the woman pulled back the sheet.

"Oh, my God." The bile rose in Kate's throat. She swayed, and the doctor caught her arm to steady her.

"Is this your sister, Christina Gallagher?"

The body on the table in no way resembled the beautiful young girl who had been her little sister. At only eighteen, this young woman was gaunt, her cheeks hollow, her skin chaffed and sallow and clinging to her bones. Her closed eyes were dark and sunken. Bruises covered her face, shoulders and chest, all Kate could see of the body.

Tears welled and slipped down her cheeks. "It's her." It wasn't Chrissy in any way Kate remembered her, and yet there was no doubt she was the thin, brutalized, lifeless form lying on the stainless-steel table.

The doctor nodded at the assistant, who drew the sheet back over Chrissy's face. Dr. Maxwell kept a firm grip on Kate's arm as he turned her toward the door and guided her out of the room, back into the hallway. Her legs were shaking, her throat too tight to speak.

"I'm sorry for your loss," the doctor said, finally letting her go.

"Thank ... thank you."

"We have your contact information. You'll be notified when the body has been released."

She swallowed, wiped at the tears on her cheeks. "Do you ... do the police have any leads on the killer?"

"I'm sure they're working hard to find whoever was involved."

Kate nodded. Without saying more, she started back down the hallway. The doctor didn't follow and she was glad. There was nothing left to say, nothing more he could do.

Tears blurred her vision and her head swam as she walked out into the sunlight and crossed the parking lot to her car. She wouldn't be returning to her office today. She needed time to deal with her crushing emotions, the sense of loss and pain. The terrible sense of failure.

She needed time to grieve.

Kate slid in behind the wheel and shoved her key into the ignition. Fresh pain struck so hard she couldn't breathe. Instead of starting the engine, Kate put her head down on the steering wheel and started to weep.

Jason Hawkins Maddox sat at the old-fashioned long bar in the Sagebrush Saloon, a country-western hangout with a live band for dancing on the weekends and a jukebox that served the same purpose the rest of the week. The place, out I-30 on Bruckner Boulevard, was a spot Jase had been to before but not for a couple of years.

He was there tonight on business, meeting an informant he hoped would give him a lead on the fugitive he was hunting.

Randall Darren Harding, a cement contractor, had been arrested for the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend. He'd been out on bail when he'd decided to flee instead of standing trial, where most likely he would have been convicted.

On the outskirts of Dallas, he'd had a firefight with police, shot two sheriff's deputies and escaped. The guy was tough. He wouldn't go down easy.

From what Jase could find out, Harding was a rotten, self-centered, mean-tempered bastard, the kind who could wind up killing again. He'd strangled his girlfriend in a fit of rage, but a fancy lawyer had gotten him out on bail.

Jase had a warrant for Harding's arrest — rearrest, technically, since the guy had already been charged with murder-one, the premeditated kind that could earn you the death penalty in Texas.

The reward for catching him was a fat 15 percent of his million-and-a-half-dollar bond. Jase planned to collect.

Thus his meeting with Tommy Dieter at the Sagebrush Saloon.

It was relatively early, a little after 9:00 p.m., but the place was already more than half full. A big dance floor dominated the interior, surrounded by a sea of wooden tables. Being Wednesday, there was no band, but the juke was belting Willie Nelson so a few couples two-stepped out on the floor.

It was a decent place, not one of the rat holes he occasionally frequented for information, the crowd a mix of cowboys and bikers, couples of various ages, and a smattering of tourists, there to try some real Texas line dancing.

From the mirror in the carved oak back bar across from him, Jase could keep an eye on the front door and watch for Tommy's arrival. Between a row of liquor bottles, he could see himself on a bar stool next to a little guy in a blue Texas Rangers baseball cap. The little guy made Jase look even bigger than his six-foot-four-inch, 210-pound frame, a size that in his job often came in handy.

So far Tommy hadn't shown, but he wasn't due for another few minutes. In the meantime, Jase was enjoying the local scenery, his attention fixed on the tall blonde with the pretty face, sexy curves and amazing cleavage, but then half the guys in the bar were watching her.

In a short denim skirt, a pair of cowboy boots and a bright pink tank top, she had danced to five songs in a row. Jase figured as long as her stamina held out, she wouldn't lack for partners. If he weren't there on business, he might have asked her for a turn around the floor himself.

The blonde finished the dance and sat back down on a bar stool a ways down from him. He noticed she was drinking tequila shooters. Looked like...