Glancing over his shoulder, Paul watched Sheriff Collins hold up both his hands, gesturing in a “quiet down” movement to the crowd of media. Paul was relieved he’d handed it off to the sheriff. Right now Paul was agitated enough to say something he shouldn’t. He was definitely going to have a private talk with Regan Simmons tonight. He spotted her blonde head in the crowd, her lips moving as she shouted a question at the sheriff. What if she pushed for a repeat performance of last night? He pondered the dilemma for a split second. He could handle her for one more night, but this time he’d keep his secrets to himself.

Hopefully, the search and rescue team was finding a blackened, charred wreck full of crispy skeletons. That would take care of his biggest problem. That would be a perfect end to the huge thorn in his foot, and everything could return to normal. All secrets would be secure. No loose ends floating around. Surely Darrin’s attorney wouldn’t see a plane crash as a suspicious death. Planes went down in bad weather all the time. An attorney wouldn’t suspect anything unusual about that.

Would he?

The female moved up the hill and out of his sight. Darrin sighed and turned the binoculars back on the three men below, wondering what she was up to. She’d left her pack behind, so she wasn’t going far. The other men stared at each other for a few seconds, then the biggest one ducked into the cockpit while Kinton and the short guy talked.

It still bugged him. How had Kinton known where to find him? Maybe he’d been unconscious longer than he realized after the crash.

No. He hadn’t lost a complete day. He could tell by how hungry he felt and how much he’d pissed.

Stubborn. That was the only word to describe Alex Kinton. Alex’s brother, Samuel, had been stubborn too. Not nearly as bad as Alex, but enough to drive Darrin into action.

Darrin had been sloppy with Samuel. And it’d been Darrin’s undoing.

But he’d learned his lesson: don’t kill the brother of a federal agent.

Darrin smirked. He pictured himself wrapping his hands around the neck of a grandma in a nursing home. “Oh, by the way, any relation to government agents?”

He nearly dropped the binoculars as he slapped his hand over his mouth, stopping the laugh, knowing how easily sounds could carry over the snow.

He hadn’t asked any questions of Samuel.

Samuel had kept following him, harassing him, whining about Rosa and her dog. He’d seemed more upset about the dog than the woman. Darrin hadn’t realized Samuel had seen him kill Rosa until Samuel accused him of throwing Hero in the pool. He’d drowned Rosa first. The yippy little dog had been next. Sort of like the cherry on top of the sundae.

Darrin had tried to bribe Samuel. Usually with the retards it didn’t take much to distract or convince them they’d seen something incorrectly. A little chocolate or a soda usually did the trick. He should know. He’d been dealing with frail-minded seniors and retarded adults for two decades. But Samuel was persistent.

Nursing homes. Group care homes. He’d worked in several. They were rife with easy kills and vulnerable victims who’d finished their necessary roles in society.

He’d wanted to be a doctor. That had been his original plan. He’d done what he could at the community college and transferred his credits to a state school where he could get a real degree. Then he’d planned to apply to medical school, driven by a fascination with life and death. He’d wanted to feel that power that doctors exercise when their patients are close to death. Like on the television show ER. To be an emergency room doctor was his long-term goal. But first he’d move to a big city like New York or Chicago. Someplace more violent. The doctors at his local emergency room dealt with a lot of sore throats and ear infections. He wanted the big stuff. Shootings and car accidents.

Death.

But Dad had lost his job and spent his time drinking instead of looking for a new one. Mom had held down two jobs, but it was never enough. Darrin had to work and pay for his own tuition. Not easy at minimum wage. So he’d left home. Why give money to Mom to pay her bills when he could simply pay his own bills? He’d become a certified nursing assistant and found work in a nursing home. Everyone else had hated working there. He’d loved it.

In a nursing home he’d been as powerful as a doctor. His hands had determined who lived and who died. As they died, he would study the fading light in his victims’ eyes and wonder what they saw. Some looked happy; some looked scared. And then he’d watch the families as he drank in the range of emotions at the news of the death of a loved one. Some relief, some sorrow.

It was delicious.

Darrin swallowed hard, new anger burning his throat. Would he ever get another chance to play God?

Switching to the group homes for the mentally challenged from the nursing homes had been a good move. The victims had more emotions, posed greater risks and bigger challenges. Silent kills took more creativity. One time he’d set up an accidental overdose, slyly letting a patient get into another patient’s medications. Another time it’d been a fateful slip in the shower.

He used to spend hours plotting a kill; that was part of the fun. But with Rosa and the two women before her, he’d hardly planned at all. He’d seen and he’d reacted. The kills had stopped being about the control. He’d killed for the thrill and instant gratification. It became his undoing.

Darrin’s breaths sped up, creating a heavy minicloud around the binoculars.

Samuel had been an overreaction. If the guy hadn’t pissed him off so bad with his relentless questions and whining he would’ve let it go. It’d been simple to get Samuel to follow him to the pool on the pretext of talking about Rosa. Because the retard had been highly distraught over the woman’s and dog’s deaths, Darrin had figured he could play up the suicide card if anyone questioned him. And then Alex had shown up, never believing that his brother had committed suicide. Samuel’s and Rosa’s deaths had been perfectly clean with absolutely no connection to Darrin, but Alex’s pure tenacity had managed to put him in prison.