All she could do was scream. As loud and intensely as she could.

  Juliette opened her mouth and used the only weapon still left to her, her voice. She screamed as loudly as she could, and let her voice ricochet around the room.

  But it didn't help. His laughter was louder. His looming presence seemed to muffle her cries.

  He raised the knife. It made a screaming, shrilling sound as it cut the air.

  And as he brought it down, her dream shattered into a million fragments and she was launching herself upright, sweat prickling her skin, gasping for air as she stared into the darkness.

  But the shrilling noise was continuing, her phone's ringtone pealing into the night.

  Quickly, trying to control her breathing and get a handle on that night terror, Juliette grabbed it and swiped the screen.

  She saw, as she took the call, that it was Detective Dario, and already she knew this was going to be bad.

  A call this early, at five-thirty a.m., could mean only one thing.

  She feared the killer had struck again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Juliette answered the call, feeling cold and shaken from the terror of that dream, which had seemed horrifyingly real. Now, she was waking to what she knew was going to be more bad news.

  "Morning, Dario," she answered, snapping on the light to banish the shadows that still loomed in her mind and the hotel room.

  "Agent Hart. We have a problem. Another victim has been found." Dario sounded stressed. Juliette drew in a quick breath. The worst case scenario had landed, and now all they could do was try to deal with it, and hope that the scene offered more clues.

  "We'll get there as soon as we can. Where is the location?"

  "Near the Bay of Naples, literally on the road to Capo Miseno,” Dario sounded breathless as he spoke, and she could hear sirens faintly in the background. He must be on the scene now, she realized. “The road has been closed. Initially, they thought he had been hit by a car, but paramedics then saw it was one of these murders."

  "We're on our way. Please send coordinates."

  With her stress levels spiking, Juliette got on the phone. She called Wyatt, who sounded as if he’d already been wide awake, and then she called Sierra, who sounded as deeply asleep as Juliette herself had been. Quickly, she updated both of them.

  "Another body's found. We need to get going. Downstairs, in the lobby, now," she said. It was all she had time for before she herself was busy whirling around the hotel room, grabbing up her things, pulling on clothes, and then hustling out of the door as fast as she was able.

  "On the road to Capo Miseno," she said, seeing her team members hustling downstairs. "Let's get out there and see what we can find."

  "We need to find something," Wyatt said, his voice urgent, as they hurried out. The lobby was quiet, with not a soul around except for a sorrowful looking night porter who was texting on his phone as Juliette detoured to place the access cards on the desk. Then, she rushed out into the coolness of the early morning.

  “What the mob boss said last night, we should keep in mind,” Juliette advised.

  “It sounds crazy, though. Are you sure he wasn’t just misleading us by telling us about that weather balloon?” Wyatt asked as they piled into the car.

  “He didn’t sound like he was, but I haven’t had that many dealings with the mob, and none with him personally. So my points of reference are sketchy,” she admitted.

  They were all quiet for a while as Wyatt accelerated away.

  "Dario sounded extremely worried," Juliette said, as they reached the main road. "The victim landed right in the road. This is going to cause traffic issues and a whole lot of media attention."

  She had received the coordinates, so she navigated while Wyatt drove, threading his way through the streets of the still darkened city.

  The closer they got, the more tense the atmosphere became. Heading out of downtown and onto the main road, Juliette found herself wondering - why this area? Was there even a reason?

  "I see that these coordinates are near the junction of the coastal road," Sierra said from the back. "And there's already a tailback forming. This is going to cause major chaos."

  Staring ahead at the darkened road as Wyatt sped along, Juliette knew her words were prophetic.

  When they arrived at the scene a few minutes later, they found it as chaotic as they had feared. The road was closed off, with vehicles barring the way in both directions, leaving an area of about thirty yards of road in between the two barricades. At both barricades, a crowd of onlookers had gathered. Police cars and paramedic vehicles were parked on the sidewalks. Drivers were turning around and accelerating in the opposite direction, to the accompaniment of blaring horns and a few choice Italian swear words being shouted into the gray morning.

  As they got out and showed their IDs and badges to get past the officers on guard, she could see why the sprawled body, looking very small and crumpled in the middle of the road, might first have been mistaken for an accident victim.

  As Juliette walked toward the scene, her mind was abuzz with questions. Who was this victim? Had he been the intended target, or had he just been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Had he known the killer?

  She shook her head, her heart heavy as she took in all the details.

  The forensic officers were searching the road, looking for any clues or evidence. After having quickly pulled on foot covers and gloves, Juliette walked out onto the blacktop to view the body.

  The police had set up a light near the victim, and it cast ghostly shadows over the blacktop as people moved, bringing to mind the spooky threat of her dream.

  But this was no dream; it was a stark, brutal reality. A man had died, plunging from a height. How was the killer doing this?

  She focused carefully as she looked at his wrists. There were the same nylon ropes and abrasion marks she'd seen on the other two bodies in the autopsy room. But here, there was something more.

  Something else, something attached to the string that this time had not been dislodged by the force of the fall.

  A tiny piece of rubber, its color a baby pink.

  "Look at this!" Juliette could hear the wonderment, the astonishment in her own voice. "Look here, Wyatt. This is matching up exactly with what I was told last night by Salvatore. I think they were telling the truth, and that someone saw what happened. They said a weather balloon. Could this killer have rigged up some oversized helium balloons? This piece of rubber could be from a burst balloon?"

  Sierra was hovering nearby and already searching on her phone.

  "I'm checking out the feasibility here," she said. "It looks like you'd need thousands of ordinary sized helium balloons to float a person. But large, supersized ones, you could do it with fewer. Maybe ten or twenty really huge balloons. You'd need a lot of helium. And obviously somewhere out of the way, where you could attach the balloons real quick." She paused, blinking in surprise. “Listen here! Now this is interesting.”

  “What?” Juliette asked.

  "It looks like when they reach a certain height, these helium balloons tend to burst. There’s a sort of threshold where they end up failing. I guess that would account for these guys falling, if they all burst at once."

  Juliette felt impressed by her quick and thorough research.

  "If they burst, there must be traces of them nearby." Juliette stared up, analyzing the wind direction. "I'm guessing that if this was the case, then this man would have been at the mercy of the winds. Which, at the moment, are blowing from the land, out to sea. So this man would have come from inland. If all these balloons burst, maybe we can follow his trail."

  It was just starting to get light. Feeling enthused by the information they had, Juliette faced into the wind, seeing the rocky outlines of the mountainous, volcanic coastal area start to take shape.

  Juliette took a deep breath of the salty sea air and looked to the sky, wishing she could trace this poor victim's terrifying ride back to its starting point. The sun was starting to rise, casting a warm glow over the rugged landscape. The thought of someone being lifted into the sky by a bunch of helium balloons, then plummeting to their death, was morbidly fascinating.

  She squinted, her eyes scanning the terrain ahead. She could see the rough outlines of trees and bushes, but there was no clear path or trail. They would have to rely on their instincts and the evidence they found along the way.

  The team set out on foot, casting around for the trail that the balloons might have left behind. As they walked, the tension in the air was palpable. They were in uncharted territory, with no idea what they would find.

  Gradually, the sky was lightening, and the rising sun over the mountains was illuminating spectacular scenery. The sun glimmered over the waves in the Bay of Naples, picking up on the colorful houses clustered around the steeply sloping hills, leading down to waters that were calm, blue, and filled with the tiny white outlines of boats and yachts. Then, on the other side, the terrain rose sharply, the rocky outcrops of the volcanic area providing a dramatic contrast to the ocean view. Juliette's heart was pounding with excitement as they walked further into the rugged terrain.

  And then, she saw it.

  "There!" she said. A white scrap was all she needed.

  It was proof, and more than that - it was a breadcrumb trail that might just lead them back toward where the killer had set this man to fly.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As the sun rose, becoming almost blinding in its white gold light on the calm sea, Juliette picked her way over the rough terrain, with Wyatt and Sierra following. She was glad of their expertise. Wyatt was athletic, like a mountain goat as he scrambled over the rocks, and he was extremely sharp-eyed when it came to finding tiny pieces of burst balloon. There were more and more of them now visible in this area, as the three of them walked.

  "I'm getting something," Sierra said excitedly. "I've plotted where these pieces are, and where the victim’s body was found. I’m comparing that to the prevailing wind that blew last night, and mapping out that direction, and I think I'm going to have something soon."

  Juliette turned to her in pleased surprise. That would be incredibly helpful. It was bizarre to think that these tiny pieces of balloon plus a large dose of technology and information might trace back to the starting point. But perhaps it would be possible?

  There was definitely a line she was following here, and Juliette now realized that there had been a moment when a lot of the balloons popped at once.

  "Is it time or altitude?" she asked. "What makes them all burst at the same time?"

  "It’s altitude," Sierra said, after some quick research online. “Altitude is what makes them burst.”

  That made sense, but it was utterly chilling to contemplate. Juliette felt sick as she imagined what the victims must have endured. The fear, the terror, the sense of helplessness as they soared up and then plummeted down.

  She breathed in deeply, taking the time to process this and come to terms with it before she moved on. Empathy was such an important quality for an investigator. Putting yourself into someone else's shoes would often allow you to take the logical leap in solving the crime. But in circumstances like this, it was so very hard.

  This harsh, beautiful countryside, with its complexity and history, had been the site of struggles and battles for centuries. And now, they were fighting one, against a still unknown killer.

  Juliette shook her head, clearing her thoughts. She couldn't let herself get bogged down in the emotional aspect of this case. She needed to stay focused on the evidence and the trail that they were following.

  "I think these scraps are becoming less frequent now," she said. "I haven't seen any for a couple hundred yards."

  "We're lucky it was a fairly still morning," Wyatt said. "Coming here so early, before the wind strengthened, could just have given us a breakthrough."

  Juliette nodded.

  "We have a possible direction that can be plotted at some stage. And more importantly, we know for sure how the killer has been doing this. He, or she, must have used oversized balloons, and have had access to a lot of helium. That's not widely available."

  "Can it be stored?" Wyatt asked the question of Sierra, who was on her phone in an instant to find out the answer.

  "Yes," she said. "It can be stored. Indefinitely, as long as the container is sealed."

  Juliette sighed. Were they not going to get a break in this case at all? This killer could have been quietly stockpiling for months or even years. Who knew how long these killings had been planned for, or how many canisters of helium were waiting?

  "Where did he get the helium from? He must have access to bulk supplies of it. He must have stockpiled it in large scale containers. So surely the suppliers would have a record of people in Naples who had bought across months, or probably years?

  "We're going to track him that way, too," Juliette said. "Now, we have two directions we can go. Two ways we can try."

  "And then there are the balloons themselves. They have to be much bigger than average for this entire crime to be practical," Sierra reminded her. "That size might not be so easy to find, and I'm going to take a look and see if I can locate any nearby suppliers."

  "That will work," she agreed. "I don't know if this victim had ID on him, so we'll have to wait for that, but as soon as we have it, it might also provide a lead."

  Juliette straightened up. While she'd been scouring the rocky terrain for balloon fragments, the sun had risen. Now, it was full, bright morning.

  "Let's go and explore every single angle we have now," she decided. "The families of the victims might know something. Perhaps they are all linked to the balloon industry somehow and that's why they were chosen. Perhaps the suspect is one of the major helium suppliers. We need to start networking, and try to track him. We have some routes to go. Now, we need to follow them."

  She stopped, took a deep breath, pushed her hair back from her face.

  "Let's go to the police station where we worked last night. I think that'll be the best place to carry on this hunt."

  ***

  Half an hour later, they were in the police station again. At this hour, it was far more crowded. The espresso machine in the back office was working overtime as police crowded in for their morning caffeine fix - which, in Italy, was nothing more than adding sugar to a tablespoon-sized amount of ultra strong coffee before downing it, and chasing it with a glass of water.

  She had never really embraced the idea of espresso. Try as she might - and she had during her travels - Juliette was more of an American coffee drinker at heart. She liked savoring the brew, lingering over it. There seemed to be something unseemly and hasty in the action of just knocking it back.

  Sierra went to fix them three Americanos, while Juliette got settled in the police station. They’d handed in the scraps of rubber. There was surely a chance one of them might hold a fingerprint, or contain some other easily traceable information, even though she felt the killer had probably been too clever to leave any prints.

  As she opened her laptop and waited for it to power up, her phone beeped. It was Lucien.

  "I enjoyed our short date yesterday. How's the case going?"

  Juliette smiled as she read it, feeling a strange thump of her heart that had nothing to do with the pressure of this murder.

  "It's a tough one," she replied. "The way this killer is working - it's getting to me. I hope we make progress today."

  "I will leave you to work on it, and have faith you are the best person to handle it! Let me know if you need any help," he messaged back.

  "I will, and thank you." As she wrote the message, she found herself imagining how Lucien might have looked if he'd spoken the words, and the expression in his dark eyes.

  She was definitely falling for him. That, she could see.

  "Speak later," he ended the brief chat with a smile emoji. A smile with hearts for eyes. She replied with the same.

  She felt buoyed by the brief conversation, and by a few sips of the good, strong coffee which compensated for the short hours of sleep. She turned to her computer, ready to look up the victims' address details and next of kin. As the only Italian speaker of the three, she would be the one who had to go and ask these tough questions.

  Who should she go to first?

  Gianni had been the one with the mob connections. But even so, she still needed to speak to his relatives. Vincenzo had been the one with the gambling problem, and perhaps there was a lead there.

  The third victim had not yet been identified although she knew the police were prioritizing this. But the killer was clearly removing identification before sending them into the sky.

  Juliette decided she was going to start with Vincenzo. He was the one she instinctively felt might have more history to explore. He'd lived in the area for long enough. He would have connections and a network.

  He seemed to her like the strongest lead so far.

  As she turned to Wyatt to tell him what the plan of action should be, he looked at her with excitement in his eyes.

  "I think I've got something here from Dario," he said. “They’ve just found the ID of the latest victim. He’s Claudio Pitti, and he has a wife, Morgana. She called in early this morning to report her husband, Claudio, as a missing person.”

  “This is the first of our victims to have a close relative?” Juliette immediately saw the importance of this lead. They needed to speak to Morgana urgently, because if Claudio Pitti had known his killer, then the wife might know him, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Morgana Pitti might have critical information for them, and Juliette knew they needed to speak to her immediately. Thinking quickly, she decided what the best plan of action for the team would be.