Alex slid into the red vinyl booth across from Trent and righted her overturned cup to await coffee from the approaching waitress. Trent did not follow suit.

"Not a coffee drinker?" she asked.

"Not really."

"Tea?"

"I'm fine. Thanks."

Alex slid her cup to the edge of the table. She watched the waitress pour coffee, shook her head at the offer of a menu, and watched the woman depart again, headed for another booth near the door. Across the table, Trent stared out the window, jaw clenched, fingers drumming on the worn tabletop. Alex suppressed the urge to reach across and smack his hand into silence. Partly because it would be rude, but mostly because she didn't dare touch him again.

She picked up the sugar dispenser, dumped a rough teaspoon's worth into her cup, and stirred her coffee. Then she set the spoon on a napkin she pulled from the dispenser. Determined to follow through on her decision—arrived at on the drive over—to try once again for a fresh start with her new partner, she cleared her throat.

"So. Nothing like coming into a new section in the middle of chaos," she said. "Talk about trial by fire."

"Are we going to talk about the killer or not?"

For a moment, Alex was speechless. Then, when words threatened to return, she opted to drown them in a gulp of stale, lukewarm brew so she wouldn't say something she probably shouldn't.

Like kiss my ass.

She scowled at the pedestrians passing by on the sidewalk, deciding she liked this man less and less with each of their encounters. Even without taking into account his propensity for sprouting feathered appendages or setting her soul on fire with the slightest touch. Maybe she should just flat-out refuse to work with him and take her lumps. Roberts wouldn't be happy, but facing his displeasure couldn't be any worse than this. Then again, how much worse could this get? If she and Trent could get past circling one another with raised hackles, and she could get past her unruly hormones, surely things would improve.

If.

"Look," she said. "I'm sorry if I offended you earlier, but I was just calling it like I see it, and what I see is someone who doesn't know the first thing about investigating one murder, let alone a serial case. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me; if I'm right, let it go so we can start over again. And if you can't let it go, then for chrissake, ask Roberts to put you with another partner. Please, because I can't work like this. I won't work like this."

Trent turned his face to the window. A muscle twitched in his jaw. "I don't want another partner."

Something in the way he grated the words made Alex study his profile with a fresh eye. It had nothing to do with her, she thought with sudden insight. He didn't want any partner. He didn't want to be here at all. She set down her mug with a determined thunk.

"That's it. I've had it," she informed her partner. "Just what the hell is going on? Why were you assigned to Homicide? You don't even want to be here—"

Ferocity flashed in the gray depths of Trent's eyes, so fast Alex almost missed it. So awful, she wished she had. For a millisecond, she remembered the rage she saw in a winged man in the office. She swallowed. Thought I saw, she corrected herself. Only thought.

Just as she'd only thought she'd seen wings, too.

"Why?" she asked again. "Why are you here?"

"Because I can catch him."

Alex might have laughed if the hairs on the back of her neck hadn't been standing on end. She lifted a hand to smooth them down. Outside the window, a flare of lightning illuminated a street gone gloomy beneath clouds she hadn't noticed until now. She stared at the man across from her.

"Let me get this straight. We have an entire police force out looking for this prick, we're using every forensic procedure at our disposal, every profiler, and you think you're the one who will find him? And just how, pray tell, are you planning to do that?"

"I can feel him."

Well. What this guy lacked in experience, he certainly made up for in balls. Alex picked up her coffee again and shot him a look of exasperation. "Newsflash, Detective Trent. You don't hold the monopoly on a cop's instinct."

"It's not instinct," Trent said, his voice deadly quiet.

Alex's hand froze with the cup hovering near her mouth. She so didn't like the way this man's reality seemed to operate. Or the way it skewed her own.

"It's fact," Trent continued, leaning toward her. His glare bored into her, held her immobile. "When he stalks a victim, I feel him. When he kills that victim, I feel him. I feel his hunger, his need, his desperation. And it's just a matter of time until I'm close enough to catch him."

Alex was sure she must look as stupid as she felt, with her jaw hanging slack and her eyebrows raised so high that her forehead felt stretched. But she couldn't help it. Because she didn't know how else to look when her new partner suddenly announced his psychic ability.

And she'd been worried about her own sanity?

With great deliberation, she set her cup back in its saucer. "You know," she said, reaching for her car keys, "I think we're done—"

Trent lifted a hand in a sudden, imperious gesture.

Alex raised just one eyebrow this time. "Excuse me?"

"Quiet."

Trent had gone rigid, his whole attitude one of intense concentration, alert to something she couldn't see or hear. Thunder rumbled faintly through the glass beside them, vibrating down Alex's spine alongside a sudden chill.

Her partner bolted from the booth. "He's near."

Her hand jerked, overturning her coffee cup. "Shit!"

She hastily righted the cup, then pulled a wad of napkins from the dispenser and dabbed at the coffee stain spreading down the front of her white cotton blouse, then at the coffee spilling over the edge of the table. She tried to remember if she had a clean shirt in her locker and jumped anew as Trent plucked the napkins from her hand.

She opened her mouth to object, but the ferocity in his eyes stopped her cold.

"Didn't you hear me?" he snarled. "He's near. Now."

People in the diner turned to look at them, some frowning, others only curious.

"Who's here?" Alex motioned at the napkins in his hand. "Can I have those back, please?"

The napkins sailed past her to land in a soggy lump by the sugar dispenser. Alex watched their progress, then turned a dumbfounded gaze on Trent. Christ, was normal conversation with this man even possible?

"What in the hell is the matter with—" she began.

Trent thrust his face down to her level, inches away. "He's near," he grated. "Not here, but near. And he's about to kill again. And I will not lose him because of you, do you understand?"

He seized her arm and pulled her unceremoniously from the booth. Too astounded to object, Alex found herself towed out of the restaurant, across the sidewalk, and into the middle of the street. Trent stopped there, in the center of four lanes of city traffic traveling in two different directions, and tilted his head as though listening.

Or sensing.

Car horns blared around them and Alex started, tugging without success at Trent's grasp on her arm. A part of her noted that, for once, his touch was just that. A touch. With no hallucinogenic effect whatsoever. Which made her theory about imagining the prior incidents all that much stronger—and her mental state that much more questionable. Shoving away the misgivings inherent in the thought, she pushed back a dripping lock of hair. It was raining, she realized. Hard.

"Damn it, Trent—"

"There." He whirled to face down the street, oblivious to the rain and Alex's attempts to free herself. "He's there."

Thunder cracked overhead. The rain came harder.

Trent advanced down the center line of the street, silent, watchful, towing her behind him toward the heart of Chinatown. Alex shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. He was serious, she thought. The man was serious—and seriously nuts.

They stopped across the street from an Asian grocery store, its front sidewalk cluttered with an array of produce on makeshift tables and stacked high with empty cardboard boxes. A narrow passageway stretched between the store and neighboring building, shadowed beneath the afternoon's clouds.

Alex shot a look at Trent and found him focused on the passage. One hundred percent focused. She fought off another shiver. Nuts, she thought again. Right off his rocker. Maybe now Roberts will listen. A cab swerved around them, horn blaring.

But what if he was right?

Against all reason, her free hand settled on her gun.

"You're sure he's in there?" she whispered.

Trent looked down at her as if he'd forgotten her existence and was surprised to find her still there. Without replying, he pulled her through a break in the traffic and thrust her into the midst of the boxes in front of the grocery.

"Wait here," he ordered.

"Are you kidding me?" Alex scrambled out of the sodden cardboard. "I'm not letting you go in there alone." No matter how much I don't like you. "I'm coming with you."

"No."

Trent's growl was so fierce it startled her into a step back. Seeming to take this as submission, he nodded his satisfaction. "Good. Now, whatever happens, do not come in after me. Do you understand?"

"No, I do not—"

Trent took hold of her shoulders and shook her. "Do you understand?"

A frisson of real fear crawled across Alex's shoulders. She wanted to deny him, to tell him to go straight to hell, but something in his face, in the urgency of his grip, held her back. Something she didn't want to identify.

She looked at the passageway again and the fear solidified, settling in her gut. She didn't understand. Didn't think she wanted to. But she nodded anyway, and in an instant, Trent released her and disappeared down the passage. She stared after him, the heat of his touch lingering on her skin, unsure whether she should be more shocked at his behavior or hers.

A sudden tap sounded beside her and she spun to face the store window, gun in hand, thumb reaching for the safety. A wide-eyed storekeeper stared back at her through the rivulets running down the plate glass, raising his hands above his head along with the phone he held. Heart pounding, Alex lowered her weapon and flashed the badge clipped to the inside pocket of her blazer. The storekeeper backed away from the window, looking unconvinced, hands still in the air.

Alex drew together the tattered remnants of adrenaline-ravaged nerves and peered around the corner of the store, down the passageway. Nothing moved in the rain-blurred depths. The blood in her veins chilled. Nutcase or not, there was no way Trent should have gone in there alone. No way she should have let him.

So much for keeping him out of trouble.

"Fucking hell," she muttered. She shifted her grip on her gun, clambered over the collapsed boxes, and stepped into the stale, sour gloom.