"At the end points of the highway."

"Yep." Bell went on: "What the media doesn't know, and what you will be directly involved with for the next few weeks, is that we've had undercover teams picking up hitchhikers along the highway. We're setting the bait for the killer."

"And the next time he strikes the FBI'll nail him," Svenson said.

Bell grinned. "Exactly."

JAKE Blaine was aware that the dark blue Chevy Berreta was a fed when it pulled up. He'd noticed the same car pass by in the opposite direction ten minutes earlier. Had been cognizant of the silver, window-tinted Dodge van with exempt plates following. And so somewhere down the highway the Berreta had flipped a bitch and was now going in his direction.

It was believed by the FBI that the intelligence level of a sociopath was extremely high. Indeed, institutional testing as a juvenile years earlier had shown Jake to have an IQ way beyond that of his peers. For him to have become promptly aware of the undercover patterns of the federal agents wasn't luck. It was reconnaissance.

He had known the feds were staking out hitchhikers along Highway 50 and had realized that it was only a matter of time before they would set the bait by offering him a ride. What the feds didn't know was that over the years Jake had picked apart most of their investigative procedure. Sure every now and then the feds would try something new, but he could counter their move just because of the fact that something new was to be expected on occasion.

And so now, not only did Jake Blaine recognize the vehicle pattern set, he predicted it.

He slung the backpack he was carrying over his shoulder, his ball cap, sunglasses, and a few other things inside. He approached confidently to the passenger side of the Berreta. The window descended.

Agent Mark Svenson, nervous and a little hesitant, leaned across the passenger seat. Forcing a casual tone, he said, "Do you need a ride?"

No shit, stupid fucker. But Jake didn't say that. He kept that thought to himself. Instead, he smiled. He said, "How ya' doing? I'm trying to get to the Flying J truck-stop."

"Well I'm going that way," Svenson said, sizing up the potential suspect. From his training in serial crime, he knew that the body language and verbal cues normally used to measure up criminals didn't apply to sociopaths. The thought patterns and mental drive of a sociopath—which was just another name for an extremely violent nut case, as far as Svenson was concerned—were usually so complex that to pursue one under the normal investigative techniques was extremely difficult, or so he had been taught. He would have been more at ease if the hitchhiker he was now picking up was clad in rags with a threatening demeanor than this well dressed stranger before him. It had been a week now since he'd been assigned to the rapidly expanding hunt for the Highway 50 serial killer—a.k.a. Nose Eater—and during the brief time that he'd been undercover he'd already encountered nine hitchhikers. Nine potential suspects. Nine potential killers. He'd been extremely suspicious of each one. Later, reflecting on his paranoia, he'd decided that it was justified.

The hitchhiker, his reddish-hair nicely combed, climbed into the front seat of the Berreta. The thought that this could be him—the suspect, the perpetrator, the killer—flashed through Svenson's mind.