He's no ordinary kidnapper. Not only does he strike again and again, but he collects the ransom, gets away safely, and leaves his helpless hostages dead. Now, after months of eluding the best that law enforcement can put against him, this monster has left nothing in his wake but a cold trail of unconnected victims. He's no ordinary cop. Lucas Jordan, a key agent and profiler in Noah Bishop's Special Crimes Unit, has an extraordinary he locates missing people. But his uncanny ability comes with a price, and his methods rouse mistrust in the hard-nosed cops forced to call him into their investigations. Now Jordan has come to Clayton County, North Carolina, where the latest in a string of kidnapping victims has turned up dead. Complicating the situation is the presence - and predictions - of someone who's even more of an outsider than Jordan carnival psychic Samantha Burke, a woman out of his own haunted past. Her warnings meet with skepticism from the local police but spur Jordan on to do what he does hunt fear. But the killer he is hunting is hunting Jordan - and he's already several moves ahead in a twisted game whose rules Jordan must learn in order to have a fighting chance. For his psychopathic opponent has extended a very personal challenge, and he's about to threaten the one life the profiler values even more than his own.
Author
Kay Hooper (aka Kay Robbins) was born in California, in an air force base hospital since her father was stationed there at the time. The family moved back to North Carolina shortly afterward, so she was raised and went to school there. The oldest of three children, Kay has a brother two years younger and a sister seven years younger. Her father and brother are builders who own a highly respected construction company, and her mother worked for many years in personnel management before becoming Kay's personal assistant, a position she held until her untimely death in March 2002. Kay's sister Linda works as her Business Manager, Events Coordinator, and is playing a major role in the creation and operation of The Kay Hooper Foundation. Kay graduated from East Rutherford High School and attended Isothermal Community College—where she quickly discovered that business classes did not in any way enthrall her. Switching to more involving courses such as history and literature, she also began to concentrate on writing, which had been a longtime interest. Very quickly hooked, she asked for a Christmas typewriter and began seriously working on her first novel. That book, a Regency romance titled Lady Thief, sold to Dell Publishing in 1980. She has since published more than 60 novels and four novellas. Kay is single and lives in a very small town in North Carolina, not far from her father and siblings. Deigning to live with her are a flock of cats—Bonnie, Ginger, Oscar, Tuffy, Felix, Renny, and Isabel—of various personalities who all like sleeping on manuscripts and whatever research happens to be spread across Kay's desk. And living amongst the many felines are two cheerfully tolerant dogs, a shelter rescue, Bandit, who looks rather like a small sheepdog, and a Sheltie named Lizzie.
