Eternally

The body was found sprawled across Nicole Kidman's star on Hollywood Boulevard.

The tourists who'd spent all night partying, stumbled across what was left of Mary Alice Malone and ended their vacation with a whimper.

Sunlight glittered off camera lenses and shone down on the scene with a merciless glare. Pooled beneath the young woman's body, blood, in tiny dark rivers running from opened veins, crept into the gutter. The dead woman's wide blue eyes were frozen open in surprise, staring into the morning sky. Her left breast was gone, excised, as if by a talented yet depraved surgeon and her yellow silk blouse had been deliberately torn and arranged to expose the injury.

Belatedly a blanket was dropped over the body.

But Mary Alice Malone was long past appreciating the privacy.

Ghoulish crowds jostled for position, cameras clicked and the unfortunate tourists wept. Police strung yellow crime scene tape and hid the pity in their eyes.

In L.A., one murder more or less ' even one this vicious ' hardly merited more than a mention on the local news channels and a small article on page two of the newspapers.

One man took note, though.

One man stood at the edge of the crime scene, letting his gaze sweep over the gathered mob. He knew his quarry was near. He'd recognized the killer's handiwork. He'd chased him before. And won. Now he would be forced to do it again.

And he knew that this murder was only the beginning.

The party was in full swing and Julie Carpenter swiveled on her desk chair to impotently glare at the door separating her suite from the rest of the house. Eardrum-shattering rock music pumped through the place, the bass making the walls tremble like a tired old man looking for a place to lie down.

Her head throbbing and her stomach growling, Julie surrendered to the inevitable. No way was she going to get any work done tonight.