Quantico, Virginia, January, 2078, Friday…

Caitlin's evenings and mornings more often than not were centered on Miss Boots. For one thing, she was going through a real dry spell on the dating scene. For another, the cat offered her better companionship than most men. It had a real personality, not a fake one some guy dreamed up to impress her. The cat was very happy to be on her master's lap purring while Caitlin read or watched TV, anything to get her mind off her ticking biological clock and the hypocrisy, prejudices, chaos and violence she had to deal with in her job.

It got to the point that she hated to leave the cat in the mornings. She always left early to take the long drive to Quantico, which never helped her mood.

This morning was no exception. Even with her two cups of coffee she was tired and irritable by midmorning. She was almost snapping at her people. Dan Summers told her to chill out.

"If you've got a bug up your ass, go back home, Caitlin," he told her. "Otherwise, we'll bring you up on harassment charges." He toned his comment down with a wink. "And lay off the caffeine or I'll call DEA."

She looked at him, ready to take his head off, then suddenly smiled. She realized that she had been a snapping turtle so far and decided she'd better cool it.

"You're right. What do you have for me so far?"

Ever since returning from Burlington, Dan's group had been working on various aspects of the five murders but paying more attention to the Clark case. Then Dan and the others had put four of the five on the back burner due to the information from Caitlin's informant. No one questioned why she wanted to focus on Sandy Clark. Everyone supposed there was a good reason for it which they would learn in time.

Dan explained that Asako and her people had found that the DNA in the epithelials under Sara Clark's broken fingernail matched the foreign blood found on Sandy Clark. It was the same murderer. The two murder scenes were definitely linked.

He also told her that a police report had come in from Burlington. A woman who lived there had heard about the murder of the Clarks and had become suspicious about the three men traveling together who had changed her tire.

"Did she sit down with a police artist?" asked Caitlin.

"Yeah, but they didn't get anything. She was really flipped out about the tire and says she didn't get a look at them or their license plate. We've just got general descriptions. Two Caucasians, one black. They could be anyone. She wanted to get home before it started snowing."