"I don't like it, but I guess I do. Nothing else makes sense, because there may be a few coincidences in life, but none in crime. Everything has a motive."
"So what can we do?"
"We won't do anything," he said pointedly, "I will talk to the sheriff about it, but the fact is we can't arrest anyone without evidence, and all we have is a theory. We don't even have a suspect."
Her jaw set in firm lines. "Then you're passing up a marvellous chance."
He looked suspicious. "To do what?"
"Set a trap, of course."
"I don't like this. I don't know what you're thinking, but I don't like it."
"It's common sense. He failed in his—er, objective with me. Perhaps I could—"
"No. And before you get on your high horse, just think of what Wolf would say if you told him you were setting yourself up as bait. You might—might—be allowed out of his house by Christmas."
That was true enough, but she saw a way around it. "Then I just won't tell him."
"There's no way to keep it from him, unless it didn't work. If it did work—I sure as hell wouldn't want to be around when he found out, and something like that couldn't be kept quiet."
Mary considered all of Wolf's possible reactions and didn't like any of them. On the other hand, she was terrified that something might happen to him. "I'll take the chance," she said, making her decision.
"Not with my help, you won't."
Her chin lifted. "Then I'll do it without your help."
"If you get in the way of our investigations, I'll put you in the pokey so fast your head will spin," he threatened. When she didn't appear impressed, he swore under his breath. "Hell, I'll just tell Wolf and let him ride herd on you."
She frowned and considered shaking her schoolteacher's finger in his face. "You listen to me, Clay Armstrong. I'm the best chance you have of luring this guy out into the open. You don't have any suspects now. What are you going to do, wait until he attacks some other woman and maybe kills her? Is that how you want to work it?"
"No, that isn't how I want to work it! I want you and every other woman to stay alert and not go anywhere alone. I don't want to risk you or anyone else. Have you thought that sometimes traps don't work, that the animal gets the bait and still gets away? Do you really want to face the possibility of that?"
The thought made her sick to her stomach, and she swallowed to control the sudden rise of nausea. "No, but I'd do it anyway," she said steadily.
"For the last time, no. I understand that you want to help, but I don't like the idea. This guy is too unstable. He grabbed Cathy in her own driveway, and took you off of the town's main street. The chances he took are crazy, and he probably is, too."
With a sigh, Mary decided that Clay was simply too protective for him to be able to agree to use a woman as bait; it was totally against his basic nature. That didn't mean, however, that she needed his agreement. All she needed was someone who could act as a guard. She hadn't thought of any real plan yet, but obviously there had to be two people to make even the simplest trap work: the bait, and the one who kept the bait from being harmed.
Clay got in the car and closed the door, then leaned out the open window. "I don't want to hear any more about it," he warned.
"You won't," she promised. Not talking to him about it wasn't the same as not doing it.
He gave her a suspicious look, but started the car and drove away. Mary returned to her classroom, her thoughts darting around as she tried to think of a solid plan for luring a rapist with a minimum of danger to herself.
Wolf arrived at the school ten minutes before classes were over. He propped his shoulder against the wall just outside her classroom door and listened to her clear voice instructing her students on how geography and history had combined to produce the current state of Middle East politics. He was certain that wasn't in any of the textbooks, but Mary had a knack for giving her students a way of relating the present to their studies. It made the subjects both more interesting and more understandable. He had heard her doing the same thing with Joe, not that Joe needed encouragement to read. Her students responded easily to her; in such a small class, there was very little formality. They called her "Miss Potter," but weren't shy about asking questions, offering answers, even teasing.
Then she looked at her watch and released them, just as the doors to the other two classrooms opened. Wolf straightened from the wall and walked into her room, aware of how the kids' chatter halted abruptly when they became aware of his presence. Mary looked up and smiled, a private smile meant only for him, and it made his pulse accelerate that she was so open about how she felt.
He removed his hat and shoved his fingers through his hair. "Your escort service has arrived, ma'am," he said.
One of the girls giggled nervously, and Wolf slowly turned his head to look at the motionless teenagers. "Are you girls going home in pairs? Any of you boys making sure they get home all right?"
Christa Teele, Cathy's younger sister, murmured that she and Pam Hearst were walking together. The other four girls said nothing. Wolf looked at the seven boys. "Go with them." It was an order, one that the boys obeyed instantly. The kids left the room, automatically separating so that each girl had at least one male escort.
Mary nodded. "Very nicely done."
"You'll notice that they all had enough sense not to argue that they didn't need an escort."
She frowned at him, because she felt it hadn't been necessary for him to make that point. "Wolf, really, I'm perfectly safe on the drive from my house to here. How could anything happen to me if I don't stop?"