Dark Moon - By Lori Handeland Page 0,3

before leaning forward and lowering his arms to the table. "I've been working on a case for years. A lot of people are no longer where they're supposed to be, and they haven't shown up anywhere else."

"Since when do missing persons come under FBI jurisdiction?"

"Since we have good reason to believe we're dealing with more than disappearances."

I heard what he wasn't saying. The FBI thought they had a serial kidnapper, if not a serial killer, on their hands. Hell, they probably did. What they didn't know was that the culprit was most likely less than human.

"A lot more people vanish in this world than anyone knows about," I murmured.

Nic lifted a brow. I guess I didn't have to tell him that. His business was finding the missing. Which made him dangerous to my business.

To keep the populace calm, part of the J-S job description was to invent excuses, smooth over the edges, make sure that those who were murdered by evil entities were not searched for by the authorities or their families.

"I still don't understand how we can help you. Is one of the missing people from this area?"

"No."

"Did you trace someone here?"

"No."

I threw up my hands. "What then?"

"We were sent an anonymous tip."

I resisted the urge to snort and roll my eyes. The bad guys were forever trying to throw the government at us. If we were unwinding red tape we weren't hunting and searching for monsters.

Until today, all such attempts had been quelled higher up. The word in Washington was that Edward Mandenauer stood above reproach. He was not to be bothered, and neither were any of his people.

Obviously Nic hadn't gotten the top secret memo.

I glanced at him as another possibility came to mind. The Jüger-Suchers might be a clandestine organization, and the location of our compound closely guarded, but recently many of our secrets had gone on the market. We had a traitor in our midst, and we never knew when someone might die.

"What was this tip?"

"E-mail. Said I'd find what I was seeking here."

I frowned. "Not much of a tip."

"Imagine my surprise when I saw your name on the employee roster of the Jüger-Suchers."

Which explained how he knew so much about me, how he'd remained so calm upon seeing me, while I'd been paralyzed. He'd already known I was here.

"There was precious little information in those personnel files, considering this is a government installation."

Since quite a few of our agents had been on the wrong side of the law at one time or another - sometimes it took a monster to catch a monster - it wouldn't do for their records to be available to anyone who cared to look. Our personnel files were carefully constructed to reveal the very least necessary - or in some cases nothing at all.

"I thought you were dead," he murmured, "and you were right here."

Strange how one small thing was often all it took to break a mystery wide open. People don't realize how often killers are caught because of an accident, a coincidence, nothing more than a sharp eye skimming an unrelated report and finding a connection.

No, I wasn't dead, but that didn't mean I didn't want to be.

As if realizing he'd skirted too close to an emotional edge neither one of us wanted to cross, Nic withdrew a sheet of paper from his jacket.

"Can you check with your people, with Manden-auer, see if anyone knows any of the names on this list of missing persons?"

His face was set, his eyes gone icy blue - back to business. I was alive; I was no longer missing. I could almost see him checking my name off a list in his brain.

Would he ever think of me again once he walked out of this room? Probably not, and that was a good thing.

So why did I feel so bad?

Nic still stood with the list in his hand. I took the paper and tucked it into a pocket without a glance.

"My number's at the top."

He rose and his gaze was captured by something on my desk. My breath caught as he stared at the small stuffed crow he'd once won for me at a local fair.

Actually won was too lenient a term. He'd spent five times what the cheesy toy was worth trying to sink a basketball into a hoop. Back then he'd been more bookish than buff.

My eyes touched on the broad shoulders packed into the dark suit. He could probably make a basket now, or ram the ball into