“You know that doesn’t feel right; try again.” He stood over me, and for the first time in a long time I felt like the inexperienced newbie and he was the mentor again, telling me how to kill the monsters. He was one of the few people on the planet I would have taken that attitude from.

“They wanted the bodies to match the other bodies, at least superficially. They hoped the police would think it was the same killers.”

“But it’s not,” Edward said.

“The first body and the third were savaged. They were literally torn apart. There were internal organs and guts everywhere. It was like a disorganized killer with maybe an organized partner directing, or controlling him. This is all organized. He, or they, are doing the kills like they’ve been told to, matching the first kill, but their heart isn’t in it.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“This was a cold kill like the second one. The other two kills, the murderer took joy in it.”

He came down beside me on the balls of his feet, too. “My kills are neat and clean, but I enjoy my work.”

“You enjoy the planning and being faster, stronger, just better than whoever you’re hunting, but do you actually enjoy the kill?”

“Yes,” he said, and he was looking at the body as he said it.

I studied his profile. I asked him something I’d never asked him before. “What is it you enjoy about it?”

He turned those pale blue eyes to me. They’d faded so the blue was grayish. It was never a good sign when his eyes changed to that cold winter sky color.

“I like watching the light die in their eyes,” he said, his voice as cold and unemotional as his own eyes.

I met that winter gaze and said, “That’s why you like a close kill.”

He nodded, still holding that winter gaze on me. I don’t know what my face showed. We’d started out with him being my teacher, and then he’d paid me the ultimate compliment.