CHAPTER TEN

"Here's your Chardonnay, Mr. Hancock," the waitress said.

West smiled up at her and received a million-dollar grin in reply. No doubt this lovely young woman had earned many a tip by flashing that smile at lonely, desperate middle-aged men.

"Dr. Hancock, dear," he reminded her.

She paled slightly as her tip reduced itself by half in her mind. She recovered quickly, widening her smile and pushing her chest forward slightly so the collar of her already low-cut blouse widened a touch further. People were so predictable.

"Of course, I'm so sorry." She flicked her head playfully and said, "Sorry, I had a paper due last night, and I was up until three in the morning finishing it. Kind of ditzy today."

"That's perfectly all right, dear," he said. "My niece is in college right now. I understand how demanding that schedule can be. You've been lovely."

She smiled, relieved enough that she straightened and allowed her blouse to close once more. "Have we decided what we're going to order today?"

He found it intensely fascinating, the social convention of treating every decision as a collaboration. We weren't going to decide anything. We weren't going to order dinner. He would decide what he was going to order.

Yet somehow, the assumption—accurate in nearly every case save his—was that it would inspire some connection between them if she treated this interaction as a mutual endeavor and not simply a functionary receiving instructions to relay to other functionaries.

Most likely, the girl was unaware of this. Most likely she only wanted a good tip and was acting "cute" so he would feel affection toward her.

Still, it was another sign of how helpless people were when you separated them from the herd. "I believe I'll have the Chilean Sea Bass."

"Excellent choice, sir," she said, as she would have if he had ordered a head of lettuce drizzled with ketchup. "The fish was caught just this morning."

"Thank you, dear," he said, "I'm sure it will be exquisite."

She took his side order—seasonal roasted vegetables and rice pilaf—and promised a second glass of Chardonnay to be delivered with the fish.

He thanked her again, then, just to keep up appearances, watched her hips sway as she walked back toward the kitchen. As he expected, she glanced over her shoulder to see if he was watching and smiled coyly when she caught him.

So predictable.

He turned back to look out at the Pacific and allow his mind to return to the only woman—the only person at all—he considered worthy of his reflection.

Bold was stronger than he expected. When he kidnapped Turk, he expected that to be the final blow. Instead, she had recovered and even planned to ask for permission to go after him again as soon as she was physically healed. She grieved Turk, of course. She also felt foolish and guilty and alone and abandoned, all as he had hoped, but she hadn't capitulated. She was the only person he had met in his entire life who wasn't predictable.

Well, not entirely predictable anyway. She still proved rather easy to manipulate. She had accepted without question the return of her dog, seeming to believe that Turk really had somehow managed to escape on his own.

He looked down at his left arm, where a red welt was slowly whitening into a scar. Turk was stronger than he looked, too. Smarter as well. He had feigned sleep when West opened the cage and moved so swiftly that West barely had time to get his hand in between his throat and Turk's snapping jaws. The sap he carried in his other hand had knocked the dog unconscious without further incident, but it still impressed him how resilient these two were.

He might have to kill them after all.

He had considered killing Turk and sending Faith Turk's body, but in hindsight, that was more likely to send her into a murderous rage than to break her. He had no doubt he could handle himself in the event of any physical confrontation—hell, he had proven that twice—but he didn't just want to kill Faith. Killing someone was easy. All you needed to do to kill someone was find an opportunity, a tool, and a moment of courage. Any child could kill someone. Many children did kill people.

But to defeat someone, to make them admit that defeat to themselves, to make them know in their core that they had lost, that was true victory. That was true dominance.

Jethro Trammell, in his own brutish way, had understood that perfectly. He knew that the true liquor of the predator was not the simple destruction of their prey, but the consumption of them, the draining of their life force. The body was only a husk. The will was the true self.

Jethro Trammell had broken the will of his prey, and that was why West admired him. He hadn't lied to Faith when he said he'd been killing longer than Trammell, but it had never fulfilled him before as it did now. Trammell was an artist, and West would admit freely that he was, at the moment, only a cheap imitator.

But he would surpass the master. He would take the prize that Trammell couldn't take. He would take Faith Bold's will.

"All right, sir," the waitress said, pulling him from his thoughts.

He turned and smiled as she set the fish in front of him, leaning just far enough away to make it look plausible that she wasn't trying to invite him to look down her shirt. She set the wine carefully next to his first glass, acting as though it were perfectly normal to have two nearly full glasses of wine.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr.—Dr. Hancock? Sorry, I…" she flipped her hands. "I don't know what—"

"That's perfectly all right, dear. I am quite content for now."

"Wonderful," she said, beaming in relief again. "I'll be back to check on you in a few minutes."

West watched her walk away again, then turned back toward the gently rolling surf. He breathed deeply of the salt-scented air. He had always preferred the Pacific to the Atlantic. The Atlantic was tempestuous and stormy. Not unlike Special Agent Faith Bold.

In contrast, the Pacific was calm, smooth, and patient. Predictable. Like him.

He smiled broadly. He supposed he wasn't so far removed from humanity after all.

He took a bite of his fish. It was disappointing, rubbery and tasteless. Clearly not caught this morning or even the prior morning. It wouldn't surprise him to find out the fish wasn't fresh caught sea bass at all but instead frozen tilapia or Swai catfish.

He would tip the girl well anyway, say, twenty-five percent. He would do that because it was exactly what a lonely, desperate middle-aged man would tip a sweet, attractive, slightly ditzy young waitress who didn't mind that he stared at her ass when she walked away.

People were predictable, and for now, so was he.