The eighth book in the Alex Cooper series

"You think we've got a case?" Mercer Wallace asked me.

"The answer's inside that cardboard box you're holding," I said, opening the glass-paneled door of his lieutenant's office in the Special Victims Squad.

I placed my hand on the shoulder of the young woman who was slumped over a desk, napping while she waited for my arrival. She lifted her head from her crossed arms and flicked her long auburn hair out of her eyes.

"I'm Alex Cooper. Manhattan DA's office." I tried not to convey the urgency of what we had to get done within the next few hours. "Are you Jean?"

"Yes. Jean Eaken."

"Has Detective Wallace explained what we need?"

"You're the prosecutor running the investigation, he told me. I've got to go through the details with you again, and then make a phone call that you're going to script for me. Is Cara still here?" Jean asked.

"She's in another office down the hall," Mercer said. "It's better we keep you separated until this is done. Then we'll take you over to the hotel and let you get some rest."

I had been the assistant district attorney in charge of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit for more than a decade, and Mercer had called me into the case to try to add something from my legal arsenal to speed the arrest process and increase the likelihood that Jean Eaken would be a successful witness in the courtroom.

Mercer told me that the twenty-four-year-old Canadian graduate student had met the suspect at a conference on adolescent psychology at the University of Toronto, which she had attended with her friend, Cara, four months earlier.

I sat opposite Jean, who stifled a yawn as I asked the first question. It was almost midnight. "When you met Selim back in January, how much time did you spend with him then?"