H E R   L A S T

S H O T

(A Rachel Gift Mystery—Book Eleven)

B L A K E   P I E R C E

Blake Pierce

Blake Pierce is the USA Today bestselling author of the RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes seventeen books. Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising fourteen books; of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising six books; of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising seven books; of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising six books; of the JESSIE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising thirty-one books; of the AU PAIR psychological suspense thriller series, comprising three books; of the ZOE PRIME mystery series, comprising six books; of the ADELE SHARP mystery series, comprising sixteen books, of the EUROPEAN VOYAGE cozy mystery series, comprising six books; of the LAURA FROST FBI suspense thriller, comprising eleven books; of the ELLA DARK FBI suspense thriller, comprising twenty-one books (and counting); of the A YEAR IN EUROPE cozy mystery series, comprising nine books, of the AVA GOLD mystery series, comprising six books; of the RACHEL GIFT mystery series, comprising thirteen books (and counting); of the VALERIE LAW mystery series, comprising nine books; of the PAIGE KING mystery series, comprising eight books; of the MAY MOORE mystery series, comprising eleven books; of the CORA SHIELDS mystery series, comprising eight books; of the NICKY LYONS mystery series, comprising eight books, of the CAMI LARK mystery series, comprising ten books; of the AMBER YOUNG mystery series, comprising seven books (and counting); of the DAISY FORTUNE mystery series, comprising five books; of the FIONA RED mystery series, comprising eleven books (and counting); of the FAITH BOLD mystery series, comprising eleven books (and counting); of the JULIETTE HART mystery series, comprising five books (and counting); of the MORGAN CROSS mystery series, comprising nine books (and counting); and of the new FINN WRIGHT mystery series, comprising five books (and counting).

ONCE GONE (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1), BEFORE HE KILLS (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1), CAUSE TO KILL (An Avery Black Mystery—Book 1), A TRACE OF DEATH (A Keri Locke Mystery—Book 1), WATCHING (The Making of Riley Paige—Book 1), NEXT DOOR (A Chloe Fine Psychological Suspense Mystery—Book 1), THE PERFECT WIFE (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book One), IF SHE KNEW (A Kate Wise Mystery—Book 1), MURDER (AND BAKLAVA) (A European Voyage Cozy Mystery—Book 1), LEFT TO DIE (An Adele Sharp Mystery—Book One), A MURDER IN PARIS (A Year in Europe—Book 1), CITY OF PREY (An Ava Gold Mystery—Book One), and HER LAST WISH (A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller—Book One) are each available as a free download on Kobo!

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2023 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Tom Biel, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE

FINN WRIGHT MYSTERY SERIES

WHEN YOU’RE MINE (Book #1)

WHEN YOU’RE SAFE (Book #2)

WHEN YOU’RE CLOSE (Book #3)

WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING (Book #4)

WHEN YOU’RE SANE (Book #5)

MORGAN CROSS MYSTERY SERIES

FOR YOU (Book #1)

FOR RAGE (Book #2)

FOR LUST (Book #3)

FOR WRATH (Book #4)

FOREVER (Book #5)

FOR US (Book #6)

FOR NOW (Book #7)

FOR ONCE (Book #8)

FOR ETERNITY (Book #9)

JULIETTE HART MYSTERY SERIES

NOTHING TO FEAR (Book #1)

NOTHING THERE (Book #2)

NOTHING WATCHING (Book #3)

NOTHING HIDING (Book #4)

NOTHING LEFT (Book #5)

FAITH BOLD MYSTERY SERIES

SO LONG (Book #1)

SO COLD (Book #2)

SO SCARED (Book #3)

SO NORMAL (Book #4)

SO FAR GONE (Book #5)

SO LOST (Book #6)

SO ALONE (Book #7)

SO FORGOTTEN (Book #8)

SO INSANE (Book #9)

SO SMITTEN (Book #10)

SO SIMPLE (Book #11)

FIONA RED MYSTERY SERIES

LET HER GO (Book #1)

LET HER BE (Book #2)

LET HER HOPE (Book #3)

LET HER WISH (Book #4)

LET HER LIVE (Book #5)

LET HER RUN (Book #6)

LET HER HIDE (Book #7)

LET HER BELIEVE (Book #8)

LET HER FORGET (Book #9)

LET HER TRY (Book #10)

LET HER PLAY (Book #11)

DAISY FORTUNE MYSTERY SERIES

NEED YOU (Book #1)

CLAIM YOU (Book #2)

CRAVE YOU (Book #3)

CHOOSE YOU (Book #4)

CHASE YOU (Book #5)

AMBER YOUNG MYSTERY SERIES

ABSENT PITY (Book #1)

ABSENT REMORSE (Book #2)

ABSENT FEELING (Book #3)

ABSENT MERCY (Book #4)

ABSENT REASON (Book #5)

ABSENT SANITY (Book #6)

ABSENT LIFE (Book #7)

CAMI LARK MYSTERY SERIES

JUST ME (Book #1)

JUST OUTSIDE (Book #2)

JUST RIGHT (Book #3)

JUST FORGET (Book #4)

JUST ONCE (Book #5)

JUST HIDE (Book #6)

JUST NOW (Book #7)

JUST HOPE (Book #8)

JUST LEAVE (Book #9)

JUST TONIGHT (Book #10)

NICKY LYONS MYSTERY SERIES

ALL MINE (Book #1)

ALL HIS (Book #2)

ALL HE SEES (Book #3)

ALL ALONE (Book #4)

ALL FOR ONE (Book #5)

ALL HE TAKES (Book #6)

ALL FOR ME (Book #7)

ALL IN (Book #8)

CORA SHIELDS MYSTERY SERIES

UNDONE (Book #1)

UNWANTED (Book #2)

UNHINGED (Book #3)

UNSAID (Book #4)

UNGLUED (Book #5)

UNSTABLE (Book #6)

UNKNOWN (Book #7)

UNAWARE (Book #8)

MAY MOORE SUSPENSE THRILLER

NEVER RUN (Book #1)

NEVER TELL (Book #2)

NEVER LIVE (Book #3)

NEVER HIDE (Book #4)

NEVER FORGIVE (Book #5)

NEVER AGAIN (Book #6)

NEVER LOOK BACK (Book #7)

NEVER FORGET (Book #8)

NEVER LET GO (Book #9)

NEVER PRETEND (Book #10)

NEVER HESITATE (Book #11)

PAIGE KING MYSTERY SERIES

THE GIRL HE PINED (Book #1)

THE GIRL HE CHOSE (Book #2)

THE GIRL HE TOOK (Book #3)

THE GIRL HE WISHED (Book #4)

THE GIRL HE CROWNED (Book #5)

THE GIRL HE WATCHED (Book #6)

THE GIRL HE WANTED (Book #7)

THE GIRL HE CLAIMED (Book #8)

VALERIE LAW MYSTERY SERIES

NO MERCY (Book #1)

NO PITY (Book #2)

NO FEAR (Book #3)

NO SLEEP (Book #4)

NO QUARTER (Book #5)

NO CHANCE (Book #6)

NO REFUGE (Book #7)

NO GRACE (Book #8)

NO ESCAPE (Book #9)

RACHEL GIFT MYSTERY SERIES

HER LAST WISH (Book #1)

HER LAST CHANCE (Book #2)

HER LAST HOPE (Book #3)

HER LAST FEAR (Book #4)

HER LAST CHOICE (Book #5)

HER LAST BREATH (Book #6)

HER LAST MISTAKE (Book #7)

HER LAST DESIRE (Book #8)

HER LAST REGRET (Book #9)

HER LAST HOUR (Book #10)

HER LAST SHOT (Book #11)

HER LAST PRAYER (Book #12)

HER LAST LIE (Book #13)

AVA GOLD MYSTERY SERIES

CITY OF PREY (Book #1)

CITY OF FEAR (Book #2)

CITY OF BONES (Book #3)

CITY OF GHOSTS (Book #4)

CITY OF DEATH (Book #5)

CITY OF VICE (Book #6)

A YEAR IN EUROPE

A MURDER IN PARIS (Book #1)

DEATH IN FLORENCE (Book #2)

VENGEANCE IN VIENNA (Book #3)

A FATALITY IN SPAIN (Book #4)

ELLA DARK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

GIRL, ALONE (Book #1)

GIRL, TAKEN (Book #2)

GIRL, HUNTED (Book #3)

GIRL, SILENCED (Book #4)

GIRL, VANISHED (Book 5)

GIRL ERASED (Book #6)

GIRL, FORSAKEN (Book #7)

GIRL, TRAPPED (Book #8)

GIRL, EXPENDABLE (Book #9)

GIRL, ESCAPED (Book #10)

GIRL, HIS (Book #11)

GIRL, LURED (Book #12)

GIRL, MISSING (Book #13)

GIRL, UNKNOWN (Book #14)

GIRL, DECEIVED (Book #15)

GIRL, FORLORN (Book #16)

GIRL, REMADE (Book #17)

GIRL, BETRAYED (Book #18)

GIRL, BOUND (Book #19)

GIRL, REFORMED (Book #20)

GIRL, REBORN (Book #21)

LAURA FROST FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

ALREADY GONE (Book #1)

ALREADY SEEN (Book #2)

ALREADY TRAPPED (Book #3)

ALREADY MISSING (Book #4)

ALREADY DEAD (Book #5)

ALREADY TAKEN (Book #6)

ALREADY CHOSEN (Book #7)

ALREADY LOST (Book #8)

ALREADY HIS (Book #9)

ALREADY LURED (Book #10)

ALREADY COLD (Book #11)

EUROPEAN VOYAGE COZY MYSTERY SERIES

MURDER (AND BAKLAVA) (Book #1)

DEATH (AND APPLE STRUDEL) (Book #2)

CRIME (AND LAGER) (Book #3)

MISFORTUNE (AND GOUDA) (Book #4)

CALAMITY (AND A DANISH) (Book #5)

MAYHEM (AND HERRING) (Book #6)

ADELE SHARP MYSTERY SERIES

LEFT TO DIE (Book #1)

LEFT TO RUN (Book #2)

LEFT TO HIDE (Book #3)

LEFT TO KILL (Book #4)

LEFT TO MURDER (Book #5)

LEFT TO ENVY (Book #6)

LEFT TO LAPSE (Book #7)

LEFT TO VANISH (Book #8)

LEFT TO HUNT (Book #9)

LEFT TO FEAR (Book #10)

LEFT TO PREY (Book #11)

LEFT TO LURE (Book #12)

LEFT TO CRAVE (Book #13)

LEFT TO LOATHE (Book #14)

LEFT TO HARM (Book #15)

LEFT TO RUIN (Book #16)

THE AU PAIR SERIES

ALMOST GONE (Book#1)

ALMOST LOST (Book #2)

ALMOST DEAD (Book #3)

ZOE PRIME MYSTERY SERIES

FACE OF DEATH (Book#1)

FACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

FACE OF FEAR (Book #3)

FACE OF MADNESS (Book #4)

FACE OF FURY (Book #5)

FACE OF DARKNESS (Book #6)

A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)

THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)

THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4)

THE PERFECT LIE (Book #5)

THE PERFECT LOOK (Book #6)

THE PERFECT AFFAIR (Book #7)

THE PERFECT ALIBI (Book #8)

THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR (Book #9)

THE PERFECT DISGUISE (Book #10)

THE PERFECT SECRET (Book #11)

THE PERFECT FAÇADE (Book #12)

THE PERFECT IMPRESSION (Book #13)

THE PERFECT DECEIT (Book #14)

THE PERFECT MISTRESS (Book #15)

THE PERFECT IMAGE (Book #16)

THE PERFECT VEIL (Book #17)

THE PERFECT INDISCRETION (Book #18)

THE PERFECT RUMOR (Book #19)

THE PERFECT COUPLE (Book #20)

THE PERFECT MURDER (Book #21)

THE PERFECT HUSBAND (Book #22)

THE PERFECT SCANDAL (Book #23)

THE PERFECT MASK (Book #24)

THE PERFECT RUSE (Book #25)

THE PERFECT VENEER (Book #26)

THE PERFECT PEOPLE (Book #27)

THE PERFECT WITNESS (Book #28)

THE PERFECT APPEARANCE (Book #29)

THE PERFECT TRAP (Book #30)

THE PERFECT EXPRESSION (Book #31)

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

CUL DE SAC (Book #3)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #4)

HOMECOMING (Book #5)

TINTED WINDOWS (Book #6)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

IF SHE SAW (Book #2)

IF SHE RAN (Book #3)

IF SHE HID (Book #4)

IF SHE FLED (Book #5)

IF SHE FEARED (Book #6)

IF SHE HEARD (Book #7)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

TAKING (Book #4)

STALKING (Book #5)

KILLING (Book #6)

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (Book #14)

ONCE SHUNNED (Book #15)

ONCE MISSED (Book #16)

ONCE CHOSEN (Book #17)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

BEFORE HE LAPSES (Book #11)

BEFORE HE ENVIES (Book #12)

BEFORE HE STALKS (Book #13)

BEFORE HE HARMS (Book #14)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER ONE

Sam dunked the last bite of his danish into his cup of coffee, gobbled it down, and then stepped out of the security booth to go check on the Honda Civic that had been parked on Level B for way too long. It was 12:02 a.m., and the car had been there ever since three in the afternoon, just as Sam had clocked in for his shift. Now, with another worker to carry the late shift, Sam figured it was his duty to check in on the car. It would give him something to do so he could ignore Ed, the late-shift guy who always seemed to have a new, ignorant and racist joke to tell.

Sam walked right by the little souped-up gold cart parked by the back of the security booth. He needed to get his steps in. besides, it was good to stretch his legs after sitting on his butt for so long, checking people in and out of the Performing Arts parking garage. At sixty-four, he wasn’t sure why his hips hurt after so much sitting. His glutes, sure…but his hips? It made no sense.

He walked across the first level floor and took the stairs up to Level B. He really wasn’t even sure why he was bothering with this task. This happened at least once every two weeks, where a car would be left after hours, well after the Performing Arts Center’s closing hours of seven. Even if there was an event like the local orchestra playing, or the local theater group putting on a play, it was rare that the doors remained opened after eleven.

But Sam knew there were three bars within walking distance, and from time to time, someone might get so drunk that they took an Uber home. Or, like on one occasion, got into a fight out on the street and were put into a police car and taken to a holding cell somewhere. Sam was quite sure a bar and alcohol were related here. Even still, it was his responsibility to take the license plate number down to the security booth. There were security cameras stationed throughout the garage, but only one per level—and the Civic was parked too far away to get a glimpse at the license plate. So he needed to jot down the plate and the number of the ticket the driver claimed from the booth when he’d entered the garage. It wasn’t exactly exciting work, but it was the only job he’d managed to get last year when he realized retired life wasn’t for him.

Same came to the top of the stairs and stepped out onto Level B. The garage was L-shaped, meaning that he could see both paths when he came out of the door. The Civic was the only car left behind, with the exception of the old Ford pickup that had been parked at the far end of the lane to Sam's right. but that had been there for three months now, the secondary car of a cop that sometimes worked as a security guard for the Performing Arts center.

Sam walked toward the Civic, the gray car shining dully in the overhead lights. Even with about fifty feet remaining between Sam and the car, he could see the man in the driver’s seat. This was also nothing new to Sam. Several times, he’d come across people that had retreated to their cars during a lunch break only to inadvertently fall asleep. And though Sam had never seen this man come back into the garage, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He could have come back in while Sam was taking a bathroom break…and at his age, there were more than a few throughout the day.

He came to the car and sighed. Deep down, he rather enjoyed having to wake people up in this fashion. he’d only had to do it three times in the past, but the startled reaction was quite enjoyable. He reached out and tapped on the driver’s side glass three times. The man inside didn’t move a muscle. He was seated with his back fish against the dear, his neck tilted slightly back and his chin at an angle.

Sam stepped closer and knocked again, louder this time. "Hey, man. You got to wake up. You got to get out of here."

But the man still didn't move. Same started feel slightly uneasy. Maybe this was one of those closet druggies that had wandered off to get high wherever they could, away from the attention of their family and loved ones. It was hard to tell, really. The man looked relatively healthy: a thirty-something white male with a full face and a bit of a beard. But, healthy or not, he was dead asleep.

Are we sure about that asleep part, though, Sam asked himself.

His unease grew into something closer to panic as he reached out to see if the door was unlocked. He doubted it, though, because it was a newer car. It probably locked the moment the door was close and—

But the handle came up easily, and there was a click as the door opened. Sam opened the door and somehow, even before he reached out to nudge the guy, he knew what he was going to find. He tapped the man on the shoulder, and there was no response.

“Hey, come on, man…” Sam said.

He gave the man a tiny shove on the shoulder, and his head lolled to the right. Sam cursed. Wincing, he reached out to check for a pulse at the man's neck but then thought better of it. No sense in getting his prints on the body.

Because that what Sam was looking at was just that…a body. The man was sleeping, and the man wasn’t knock-out drunk.

The man was dead.

CHAPTER TWO

The slug from the gunshot that had torn through Rachel’s left side five and a half months ago was in a small frame that sat on her bedside table. Jack had given it to her as a very strange Christmas present but the thought behind it has been sweet. "Not only did you beat death," he'd joked, "but you now have its attempt in a frame. That's pretty bad-ass."

He’d said it in front of Paige and then she’d asked what “bad-ass” meant. Everyone had a good laugh over it (and Rachel had a conversation with Paige about appropriate and inappropriate language) and just looking at the slug in the frame brought a strange, warm feeling to her.

She was looking at it on the morning she woke up and found herself ravenous for breakfast for the first time in forever. The hunger in and of itself was great news because it was, according to one of her many doctors and specialists, it was a sign that her body was resuming its normal state of things. There had been so slightly disgusting bathroom-related milestones, and her sudden bursts of migraines had stopped roughly three weeks ago, but the return of her appetite was what they’d all been hoping for. And the bigger it was, the better.

In other words, after five months of an experimental treatment, she may finally be out of the woods. She might finally be back to normal…and the cancer may very well be gone.

Rachel got out of bed and carried on the same as she had every morning since she’d started the experimental treatment in Geneva. She brushed her teeth, she took her meds, she did a few simple kettlebell exercises and a bit of yoga. After taking a cold shower, her appetite was insane. Her stomach was growling and grumbling as she made her way downstairs. She found Paige and Grandma Tate already at the kitchen table. Grandma Tate had scrambled up some eggs and baked a rube of instant biscuits. Rachel was so hungry that she bypassed the coffee maker and headed directly for the table.

“Good morning, ladies,” Rachel said as she sat down to the table with a plate.

“Hey, Mommy!” Paige said. “Are you taking me to school today?”

It was a common question these days, as Rachel’s mornings had been hit or miss. Some days she woke up feeling overly energetic, almost to the point of feeling spastic. But there had also been the occasional mornings when she’d wake up with a migraine and feel as if she’d not slept at all. The headaches had gotten so bad on occasion that it had caused her to throw up. This, she knew, was one of the potential side effects of the treatment she’d been enduring.

“Yes, absolutely!”

“So it’s a good morning, I take it?” Grandma Tate asked.

“Very good. I woke up starving.” She shoveled a huge spoonful of eggs onto her plate as if to put an exclamation point on the comment.

“Oh, that’s wonderful!”

“That’s…a little cruel,” Rachel said, grabbing up two biscuits.

“Oh, you know what I mean!”

“Yes, it’s a good sign for sure.”

“So you’re all better now?” Paige asked hopefully.

“Well, we talked about this, sweetie. I’ll never be all better. But right now, I’m very close to being just as healthy as I was before they found the tumor. I can still be active, I can go back to work without worrying, and I can keep planning things for us to do.”

Paige smiled and nodded, beginning to bob her head to a song only she could hear. She then frowned a bit and said, “Does that mean no more airplane rides to Switzerland?”

The idea that she no longer had to travel to Geneva was uplifting, though Rachel supposed she would miss the scenery. She'd grown to love the city but hate the visits during the four times she'd been over there—once for a two-week stay. The treatments, which involved a copious amount of IV-fed drugs, UV light technology she didn’t understand, and a much gentler form of hemotherapy, had not been too strenuous but she sure as hell wasn’t going to miss them.

“I’ll have to go back one more time in a few weeks,” Rachel said. “But I’ll be sure to take you with me. Sound good?”

“Yeah!”

The three of them ate in a typical weekday morning silence, and when Paige was done eating, she hopped down from her chair and announced to everyone that she was going to pee and brush her teeth.

“Not at the same time, I hope,” Grandma Tate said.

“Eww,” Paige responded as she made her way upstairs.

When it was clear that he was actually upstairs—evidenced by her stamping feet above them—Grandma Tate reached across the able and took Rachel’s hand as it was reaching out for another biscuit.

“You’re being truthful, right? You really feel good?”

“I feel great, actually. You know, I usually wake up even on the good says with a bit of grogginess and brain fog. But that’s not here today. Actually…I can’t remember having it for the past few days.”

Her grandmother smiled and said, “Well, with your permission, I’d like to be optimistic about this.”

Rachel chuckled as she forked up another bite of eggs. “Why would you need my permission?”

“Oh, sweetie, you’re usually not one to look on the bright side of things.”

“Well, maybe that’s going to change.”

“Oh boy, I hope so,” Grandma Tate said with a mocking laugh.

Rachel knew what she wanted to bring up next. It had been on her mind for a few weeks now, but speaking it out loud terrified her for reasons she wasn't fully clear on. But she knew if she was going to bring it up, now was the time. If Paige came downstairs, she'd lose her nerve.

“To prove that point,” she said, pretty much forcing it out of herself, “I want your opinion on something. You enjoy living here with us, right?”

“I do. I love it. You know that.”

“And do you think you’d still love it if there was one more person living here?”

She didn’t seem to understand the question at first, but Rachel could see it slowly dawn on her over a few seconds. “Are you…are you talking about Jack?”

“I am. Would you be okay with that?”

The smile that quickly came to her face told her all she needed to know, but Grandma Tate still answered. “Of course! That’s wonderful. But…is he okay that I’m living here?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t even asked him yet. But he likes you a lot, and he adores Paige. And he’s been a huge part of getting me through these past few months.”

She was surprised to find that she was nearly choked up as she said this. Grandma Tate nodded and looked away for a moment, as if to make sure she wouldn’t see tears fall. Rachel kept them away, though, as she ran through a reel of memories over the past five and a half months. There had been weeks when he’d essentially lived in the house anyway, making sure she was fine and that Grandma Tate didn’t catch the brunt of the errands when it came to dealing with a sick cancer patient. She thought of the two trips to Switzerland where he’d come along and it had felt, at times, more like a romantic getaway than visiting for a cancer treatment. He’d been constant through her highs and lows, and at some point about three months ago, Rachel had finally decided to stop trying to fight the feelings that were starting to boil over and demanded to be acknowledged.

On the other hand, she knew this would be an enormous step. If she asked and he said no, it could alter things between them. But given how important he'd been to her and how she'd been in love with him for most of that time, she thought it was a risk worth taking. A small voice tried telling her how badly things could go, and she had to decide on a daily basis to shut it down

“I think I was careless with everyone I cared about back when the tumor was starting to affect things,” she said. “I chose work over you and Paige…over my own safety and common sense. And I think because of that, a lot of other feelings went to the wayside. But…I think this feels right. If he’ll move in. And after I’ve talked to Paige. Because if Paige is uncomfortable with it, I won’t even bother asking him.”

“Of course.” But she still wore her smile, clearly happy about the idea. “Will you ask Paige on the way to school?”

"No, I don't want to drop that in her lap before school. Maybe this weekend. I'll take her out for ice cream or something. And you know…I mean, even if she says she's good with it, there's still the whole thing of Jack wanting to live with me.” She chuckled and said, “With us.”

Grandma Tate waved the comment away and shook her head. "Of course, he'll say yes. At the risk of making you blush, I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I’m pretty sure he loves you…and I think you know it, too.”

Rachel wasn’t absolutely certain about that, but it was a lovely thought. Before either of them could say anything further, Paige came downstairs. Her bookbag was slung over her shoulder as she marched over to the counter to get the thermos she’d filled with water earlier in the morning. This was her telltale indicator that she was ready to go now.

“Oh, sorry,” Rachel said with a guilty smile, shoveling more eggs and biscuit into her mouth. “Can you give me ten minutes just to get ready? We’ve still got plenty of time.”

"Yeah," she said. Paige was trying her best to seem annoyed that she had to wait, but it was clear that she was perfectly happy to go back over to the table and pour herself another glass of orange juice.

Rachel excused herself from the table, taking one last glance at Grandma Tate’s knowing smile. She wondered if it had been a mistake to tell her what she’d been thinking; if Rachel decided to go back on her idea or perhaps realize that it was maybe a bad idea, Grandma Tate would constantly remind her of it and forever ask questions.

But that was a worry for another day…later in the week, probably. Because she’d told Grandma Tate the truth—that she wouldn’t even consider asking Jack to move in if Paige wasn’t on board. She did her best to push the entire scenario out of her mind as she made quick work of getting ready for the morning—throwing in a hoody, spending about two minutes with her hair, and slipping into a pair of running shoes.

After all, this attire was just to take Paige to school. She’d be coming back home to change again, this time to go into the office. It would be the third time in the past two weeks, a slow transition back into work as her health got progressively better. But this time, it would be third visit to the office, where he’d be actively looking at case files and maybe making calls to help another agent find a an elusive lead. It wasn’t the most exciting work, but she was thrilled to be included.

Also, it would be the first time she’d been in a work setting with Jack in almost six months. And she wasn’t sure if either of them were ready for that yet. Still, there was a level of excitement about it, something that made her feel like she was back in high school and secretly crushing on a boy.

It was a feeling that had her smiling as she went downstairs to take Paige to school. and after that, the remainder of the day may slowly begin inching her back toward the life she’d known and loved before the tumor had so rudely interrupted.

CHAPTER THREE

Rachel had been going into the office two days a week for the past three weeks. She'd started this schedule when the worst of the headaches waned off and after the experts in Switzerland had given her the all-clear to return to work in as limited a capacity as possible. At first, it had just been to check in with Assistant Director Anderson about her health and what the coming months would look like as she tried to get nestled back into the flow of things.

Then last week she’d been asked to familiarize herself with a new list of criminals that were part of a nationwide search—the idea being that when she came back on full-time, she could remain a part of the study and research end of things. And today, as she stepped into her cubicle for the first time in six months, she found herself excited about such a job—a desk job she would have balked at a year ago.

There was a small bouquet of flowers waiting at her desk. She sat down and plucked the letter from the plastic holder. She unfolded it and read the brief note: you can hold this vase to occupy your hands when you want to put them on me. No funny business at work! – Jack

Grinning, she slid the flowers to the side and started up her laptop. It took just a few seconds for a system update screen to come on—one of many irritations she’d expected to deal with after having been away for half a year. So as she waited for the loading bar to fill in (expected wait time of seven minutes, according to the prompt), she took out her phone, wanting to make sure her bureau mail was still going to link easily from the server. As she did, though, she saw that a note from her Reminder app had popped up.

The note was titled Paige’s Big Trip. Over the past month or so, when Rachel’s health had significantly improved, the original plans for the big trip she was going to take with Paige had changed. Six months ago, before she’d been shot and started the experimental treatments in Switzerland, the trip she and Paige had been planning consisted of nothing more than a four-day Disney World extravaganza. But just in the past few weeks, Paige had also requested doing “something with dolphins.”

Rachel had kept it a secret that Sea World was a very short drive away from Disney World and, for now, Paige’s only answer to such a trip was “We’ll see what we can do.” With a nervous grin, Rachel saw that she still had three minutes remaining on the software update. She then went to the travel app she’d been using to keep tabs on flight prices. She’d used the “freeze price” feature two days ago when she’d looked at the flights. Now, without even giving it much thought, she made a few taps on her screen and had the flight booked.

The sense of overwhelming excitement that came over her at having finally gone ahead and taken the first big step toward their trip took her by surprise. She instantly opened up the email on her phone (the system update still had one minute remaining) and shot a brief email to Director Anderson, requesting the additional week off following her final trip to Switzerland for what she hoped would be the very final visit of the year, scheduled for two weeks from now. She’d need to go back at six-month intervals for the following two years, but that was fine with her.

With the email sent, she found her laptop finally on its newly updated home screen. She spent the next several minutes double-checking to make sure the bureau email was linked to her phone, opening up the files on the big nationwide case she’d be assisting with from this very desk, and sorting out several months of internal department emails—all very boring, mundane stuff.

Oddly enough, after software updates and the familiarity of the office setting, Rachel couldn't seem to get her mind to focus on the tasks at hand. She was already thinking about what to pack for the trip she and Paige would be taking in two weeks. She was wondering about how Paige might respond to rollercoasters and which ones she may be scared of. This lack of focus was even more surprising because things had been the exact opposite in the past. Work had come first, even if she hated to admit it. Even over Paige and Peter…work had taken top priority.

This internal struggle came to an abrupt stop when she heard footsteps approaching from behind her. Her heart stammered a bit as she was certain this was Jack—hopefully as excited for her to officially be back at work as she was. Yet, when she turned around to see who was approaching the backside of her cubicle, she was surprised to see Anderson. He was carrying a mug of coffee, and there was a surprisingly cheerful expression on his face—not the sort of thing she was accustomed to when it came to Anderson.

He came to a stop at the edge of her cubicle tilted his coffee slightly towards her in a sort of mock toast. “Welcome back, Agent Gift.”

“Thanks. But…I mean, you’ve seen me a few times already over the last few weeks.”

“I have. But in terms of records, paperwork, and a normal billing cycle, today marks your first official day back.”

“Yes, I suppose it does.”

Anderson nodded to the flowers at the edge of her desk. “And I see Agent Rivers is glad to have you back as well.”

She nodded, worried that this was why he'd come to speak with her at her cubicle rather than calling her into his office. Was she about to get a lecture on how she and Jack were supposed to have while in a federal building?

"Look, I got your email about the extra week off," he said. "Quick, I know, but I just happened to be getting his cup of coffee when it came through. Look, I can put it down on the books, and you'll get it without a problem. But when you get back, I think we need to sit down to figure out what your career looks like going forward in terms of time off." He frowned and the way he started peaking again, choosing his words very carefully, made her feel quite sure he hated what he was saying—that it was just going by the book and being as thorough as possible. "Aside from the obvious appointments for check-ups and things of that nature, we'll have to start presenting you as an active agent sooner rather than later. And that means adherence to time-off policies and guidelines."

“Oh, yes, I know. And the hope is that this next trip to Switzerland will be the final step in achieving that again.”

“That’s good to hear.” He chuckled nervously and sipped from his coffee. Rachel could tell there was something on his mind but he was trying to delay it—yet another thing she was not accustomed seeing out Anderson. Perhaps, she thought, he was uncomfortable around her now because of the minor bit of celebrity she’d experienced after not only putting Alex Lynch into the ground, but taking a shot for Jack, saving her partner's life. She still wasn't quite sure how news of the tumor had reached the press, but once it did, there had been about two weeks of emails and phone calls requesting interviews.

And as for Lynch, she suspected her name would always be tied to him. From the first time she’d capture the notorious, maniacal serial killer, to her murdering him after he’s escaped and tormented her family. He would forever be a shadow trailing behind her…and that was a hard pill to swallow.

She'd declined all of the interviews, and eventually, the fervor of it all died down—even the Lynch stuff. But this was the first time she’d wondered if something about that entire period had rubbed Anderson the wrong way. She was glad he was bringing up the topic of her being treated like an equal, though; the last thing she wanted was to be handled with kids’ gloves.

“So, what’s the consensus right now? Is it a clean bill of health, or are things still up in the air?”

"Are you asking out of genuine concern or because you need to know what to tell the higher-ups?"

“Both, actually,” Anderson answered without apology. “And there’s a third reason, too. A reason that sort of ties into the others.”

“Which is?”

“A local case. Right here in Richmond. Local PD have requested a bureau assist. From the surface level, it seems like just putting some pieces together from crime scenes…likely not anything dangerous of physically demanding. And believe it or not, I feel like I know you pretty well. You’re welcome to stay on with an already-large team to help with this nationwide case, or I could set you and Jack on this case. And let me just say it again before that look of excitement on your face gets out of control…it’s only because it’s local. No travel. And based on the information I have, it should be a softball pitch. A good way to ease back into things. Now, just between the two of us, I personally think it’s too soon. But if you do plan to come back in a full capacity, you need to rack up some in-field hours to balance out the time you were away. I know it sounds cruel, but that’s the way it works.”

“Oh, I know. That’s been heavy on my mind, too. And as for the case, I’m absolutely interested,” she said. “And thanks for considering me.”

“Agent Gift, I’m just as anxious about you getting back into the field as you are.”

“Oh, I highly doubt that,” she said, letting out a genuine laugh.

“So let’s do this: I haven’t even told Agent Rivers about this case. It just came across my desk this morning and honestly, we’re stretched so thin that I almost told the PD they may have to wait a day or two. I’ll call Agent Rivers into my office for a meeting…let’s say half an hour from now. I’ll go over all of the details then.”

"Sounds perfect." And really, it did. Somewhere in the more conceited regions of her mind, she'd not expected to have to wait too long to get back into her normal role within the bureau. But she would have never guessed it might be this quick. And while she did understand that it was basically a pity-case, she was more than happy to take it.

“Good,” Anderson said. “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

Rachel watched him go, still slightly taken aback by his jovial attitude. It felt eerie, and she hoped whatever it was would only be temporary. But at the same time, when she turned back to face her laptop, she realized that she was the happiest she’d been in a very long time. Things were looking very positive in regards to beating the cancer; she’d finally booked a flight for her trip with Paige to Florida; and now she was maybe just half an hour away from stepping back into her job—which she had missed more than she was willing to openly admit.

For the first time in a very long time, things were looking up.

And if the only downside to that was some slight awkwardness with Director Anderson, she thought it was a very fair trade-off.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jack was having a strange morning, made even more dizzying by the presence of the engagement ring in his pocket. The ring was like a steady hum to everything else, a constant reminder pushing him along.

When Anderson buzzed him to come down to his office, Jack was in a conference room with five other agents—all five of whom were part of the nationwide sting on three men somewhere out west that were believed to be serial killers—men with a death toll of at least twenty over the past year. While Jack himself wasn’t officially assigned to the case, he had been assigned with two other more seasons agents to serve as liaisons and research outlets.

For the bulk of the morning, he’d been examining crime scene photos—some of which were very grisly. Six different bodies, one of which had been beheaded, another that had been brutally attacked with what appeared to have been a crowbar. Yet the entire time, despite the bloodiness and grim scenes, Jack had a strangely excited knot in his stomach.

He knew, of course, that it had absolutely nothing to do with the crime scene photos spread out over two different conference tables.

No, the excitement and jittery nerves were the result of the ring in his pocket.

He'd purchased it two weeks, knowing when and where he planned to use it. The case was a bit uncomfortable in his pocket, but he didn't care. He was barely even aware of it because he was so nervous.

He'd done the hard part already. Well,…one of the hard parts. Last week, on one of the days Rachel had come into headquarters, Jack had ventured across town and paid a visit to Grandma Tate and Paige just after school, knowing that Rachel wouldn't be showing up for another hour. He'd asked their permission to ask Rachel to marry him, and it had gone exceedingly well. Grandma Tate had cried. As for Paige, Jack wasn't sure she understood it fully, but she'd agreed right away and even hugged him fiercely.

Now came the next hard part: actually asking Rachel. And he figured there was no better time to do it than her first official day back at the bureau. it would be the last thing she expected, and he wanted to really hammer the day and moment down as one they'd both remember. He figured he'd do it just before they left for lunch. or maybe when they got back from lunch break…whichever his nerves would allow.

But then Anderson had requested a meeting—a meeting he said Rachel would also be attending. With that request, Jack sensed that his plans for the day would likely have to be set aside. He hoped it would just be a meeting about what the future might look like in terms of them working as partners while romantically involved. But Jack felt something like that would have already been discussed.

So shortly before ten o'clock, Jack made his way down to Anderson's office, not sure what to expect. Knowing he was about to see Rachel within these bureau walls for the first time in nearly half a year seemed to add some weight to the ring in his pocket. It made him wonder if he should stop by his cubicle for a second and stow it away. He nearly did it, but decided that there was no way to know for sure when the proper time might come along—or, rather, when his nerves would allow it.

So he kept the ring in his pocket and realized that by the time he came to Anderson’s door, it felt like a brick in his pocket. Surely Rachel would see it, right? There was no way she wouldn’t see the shape of it in his pocket.

You were just looking as corpses in crime scene photos and now are about to sit down in Anderson’s office for an unknown reason, he thought. And these are the things you’re really thinking about?

It did make him feel slightly ashamed as he stepped into Anderson’s office. Director Anderson was sitting behind his desk, looking at something on his desktop monitor. Rachel was already there, sitting in her usual seat in front of his desk. When they locked eyes, Jack felt like he may as well just have the damned ring in his hand already, showing it to her and letting her know it was there. She smiled at him, and he sat down quickly. So much for not making her first day back a little awkward, he thought.

“Thanks for the promptness, Agent Rivers,” Anderson said. He punched a few last keys on his keyboard and turned his attention to both of them. "Now, I've already gone over the basics with Agent Gift. There's a local case that the Richmond PD are asking for help on. Based on what I have been told, it's basically going to be studying a few crime scenes and maybe speaking to a few potential witnesses. I don't believe it will become anything taxing. I think it would be a great case for Agent Gift to come back in on. Agent Rivers, would you be okay in going out with her on this?"

"Absolutely, yes, sir."

Anderson nodded and let out a small sigh. “I also have to address the elephant in the room and mention that it will also be a good test run of sorts to see if the two of you are going to be comfortable working together now that you’re in a romantic relationship.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said. Of course, Anderson had no idea they’d been involved prior to Rachel’s hospital stay and medical trips to Switzerland.

Rachel remained quiet in the matter, but nodded her agreement.

"I just emailed you the police reports, but here's what we know so far. We've got two victims that, for now, seem to have no clear connection. At the end of the day, they may end up being the victims of two different killers. The only connection we have is that both had their necks snapped. No visible signs of a fight or attack, just broken necks. Quick and clean. No prints, no footage, no evidence, nothing. Now, in the case of the most recent victim, the body was discovered in a car in a parking garage. All the police know for certain is that it appears the car was initially locked, but was jimmied open from the outside…likely with a slim jim by someone who knew what they were doing. As for the first victim, the back door's lock had been destroyed and the door and frame indicate forced entry.”

“And both are here in town?” Rachel asked.

“Yes. Both. In fact, the parking garage is less than twenty minutes away, across from the Performing Arts Center. If you head out now, I’ll make sure someone from the police are there. Maybe the attendant who found the body, too.”

Jack was excited right away but made sure to look over to Rachel to see how he was handling the update. She looked, on the surface, calm and collected, but he knew her well enough to see through that. The way she drawn her lips together, in tandem with the serious gaze of her eyes, meant that she was holding in her true emotions. He was pretty sure she was about to jump out of her own skin just to get back into the field. And really, this truly was the perfect situation to ease back into her position with the bureau.

“Well then,” he said, still looking over to Rachel. “Let’s get going then.”

He stood up, maybe a bit too quickly, and, as such, showed his enthusiasm. He caught himself, trying to reel it in. He wasn't sure who was trying to stay cool and collected for the most…Anderson or Rachel.

Rachel got up next and, with just a quick and simple “goodbye” to Anderson, followed Jack out of the door. The receptionist wasn’t in the waiting area, so when Rachel reached out and took his hand, there was no one there to see.

“Are you okay with this?” she asked.

“Hell yeah, I am. Are you?”

“Maybe a bit more than I should be.”

Smirking, Jack said: “About working with me again, or just the job itself.”

Rachel gave him a similar, snarky smile right. “Ask me again at the end of the day.”

And then, releasing his hand before the stepped out into the hallway, Rachel took the lead.

Just like old times, Jack thought as he followed Rachel down the hall on their way to another case. Well, maybe not just like old times. The ring in his pocket actually made things very different indeed. He knew he'd have to alter his original plans of proposing at her favorite restaurant (he'd made reservations three days ago), and that was fine. His main worry was if things got postponed and changed, would he ever find the nerve to approach it all over again?

CHAPTER FIVE

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Rachel asked.

Jack was driving, now just ten minutes away from the Arts Center parking garage. Rachel had noticed something strange about his demeanor from the moment he’d come into Anderson’s office. He didn’t seem nervous…she wouldn’t go that far. But he definitely seemed jittery.

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re acting weird.”

“Don’t I always?”

“A bit, yes. But this is different.”

She kept her eyes on him while she waited for a response. Even in just watching his expression shift the slightest bit, she could see the nerves on him. “I guess it’s the quick speed in how my morning changed. I was looking over gory crime scene photos one moment and then getting a call about going out on a case with a woman I see naked on the regular. It’s just jarring.”

“If seeing me naked on the regular is going to come between us, we can fix that.”

“No, no, I think I’ll be okay,” he said with a wide, mischievous grin. “Really, though, I think I’m a little more spastic about working with you again. Things are…well, things are different now, huh?”

“Are you referring to the naked thing again, or the fact that I took a bullet for you?”

He gave her a playful sneer and shook his head. “It’s not fun working with you anymore. Actively sleeping together, the sexual tension and flirting falls a little flat.”

They made their way through the diminishing morning traffic and came to the Performing Arts Center just shy of eleven o'clock. When they came to the security gate, Jack flashed his badge at the young man in the booth.

“Agents Rivers and Gift, FBI. Is there a police presence already here?”

“Yes, sir. Level B, all the way at the end.”

Jack entered the garage and made the circuit around Level A. The garage wasn’t very packed at all, just a few cars here and there. It became even more vacant as they took the ramp up toward Level B. As they came to the top, a single police car was parked horizontally to the left, effectively blocking off the backside of the level. Jack turned in that direction and parked in an empty space directly beside the police car.

As they stepped out of the car, two policemen on the blocked-off side came walking over. One looked to be extremely irritated that they were being interrupted. But when Rachel showed him her badge as she closed her door, his attitude changed. As he nodded to them and waved them over to their side of the police car, Rachel noticed an African American male standing over in the corner. He looked to be just a bit north of middle age and not particularly interested in anything that was going on.

“So the first question I have,” Jack said as he stepped around the police car, “is where is the victim’s car?”

“It was impounded yesterday,” the formerly irritated cop said. “It’s down at a lot at the station. And the body is at the coroner.”

“No prints or clues of any kind on the car?”

“Nothing so far. We’re still waiting back on a suspicious hair sample we found on the rearview mirror. We should have results on that in the next few hours.”

Rachel looked to the bored man standing against the wall. “And who are you, sir?”

“Sam Dungee.” He stepped forward and offered his hand for a shake. “I was the one who found the dead man. Just sitting up here in his car.”

Rachel considered this as she took note of the second cop. He was taking pictures of the area and scribbling notes down in a notebook. She assumed he was trying to find potential ways a killer could have come and gone without being detected. Without even trying hard at all, Rachel could see the cameras mounted along the post that was positioned where Level B split off into two directions.

“And what made you even think to come check on him?” Jack asked.

"Well, when I saw the car on the security feed, I didn't even see the man inside. I was just coming up here to take down the license plate and tag it in my records. But then I saw him, and I thought he was just asleep."

“Did you open the door?” Rachel asked.

“I did. I was surprised it wasn’t locked. Sometimes people fall asleep in their cars and take a nap during work or sleeping off booze, you know? But they always lock their doors.”

The cop who had waved them over nodded. “I don’t know if you saw the reports, but there was evidence that the car was jimmied open by someone who knew what they were doing.”

"And you discovered him rather late, right?"

“That’s right. After midnight. And usually, this place is emptied out by ten or so unless there’s an event at the arts center.”

Rachel turned to the cop, who now had his arms folded and looked like he wanted to get out of there now that the feds were on the scene. "Has anyone had a look at the security footage?"

“Well, that’s where we hit another kink in all of this. The security cameras weren’t working between the hours of about eight and eleven.”

“More than that,” Sam said, “they’ve been hit or miss for the past two days.”

“Had they been messing up prior to this murder?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah, here and there. We had a guy come look at them, and he said it came down to faulty wiring. It’s in the budget to have it fixed in two months.”

For Rachel, it felt like a coincidence. But the window of time was so short and precise between the fault on the night of the murder and the murder itself that she couldn’t help but wonder.

She turned back to Sam, not sure how to approach the next few questions she wanted to ask. “After you opened the car door, did you touch the victim at all?”

“No…oh, wait, yeah, I did. I thought he was just asleep, so I sort of nudged him.”

“And had you ever seen the man before? Did he park here often?”

"No, I didn't recognize him. But then again, even though it's not a very busy garage, we do see a lot of faces in the course of any given week."

Rachel held on to a small suspicion…but one that was large enough for her to pin up on a mental bulletin board. She wondered if Sam was the killer…if maybe he’d come up to check on the car, had an argument with the man and accidentally broke his neck. Even just thinking it seemed like a stretch, but it wasn’t something she was willing to outright ignore.

“Have you worked any scheduled shifts since discovering the body?” she asked.

“Two. Got another one tonight.”

“And have you seen anything strange or out of sorts during the past two shifts?”

"No, ma'am."

“And besides,” the cops said, “we did have this entire back portion of this level blocked off.”

The other cop came over with his notebook as he tucked his pen into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Forensics came up with nothing from this area or from the victim,” he said. “They also ran a thorough search on the car and came up with nothing there as well.”

"He's right," the other cop said. "That's why we called in the bureau. I have no idea if this murder is connected with the home invasion murder we also pinged the bureau about, but both of them seem to have been committed by ghosts…a ghost that apparently knows how to cleanly break a neck. We have zero to go on.”

“So nothing at all from the location of the first victim?”

“Just clear signs of someone breaking in at the back door, but that’s it.”

“Would you happen to know who initially ran with that case?”

“Yeah, it was Detective Detweiler.”

“Do you have his number?”

The cop nodded and pulled out his phone. As he searched for the number, Rachel slowly studied the area of the lot where the victim’s car had been parked. She also looked back to Sam Dungee, satisfied that he likely wasn’t their killer. If he was, there was no way in hell he would have clocked in for work over the past two days. She figured if it came down to it, they could bring him in for intensive questioning, but for now she didn’t think he was a suspect at all.

Besides, there was something the first cop had said that stuck with her—how this killer seemed like a ghost, leaving no clues behind. The idea of it chilled her, and as she took down the number for Detective Detweiler, she did her best to suppress the chill that ran through her.

CHAPTER SIX

“The victim’s name is Lorrie Klein, aged thirty-one and a recent widow,” Rachel said, reading from the report on her phone. Jack was making his way across town to Lorrie Klein’s address, roughly twenty minutes away from the Arts Center parking garage.

“Does it say how the husband was killed?” Jack asked.

“No.”

“Do we know how long ago he was killed?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t seem like a very thorough report then, now does it?”

She knew he was only joking. There would be no reason to have a deep dive into the death of Klein’s husband, Troy, in a report about her own death unless there was suspicion that the two were somehow connected. Still, she hoped these were things Detective Detweiler would be able to expound on when they arrived at the murder scene.

As they drew closer, she continued to find herself aware of Jack’s attitude being slightly off-kilter. It was just slight enough for Rachel to not be able to put her finger on it. H was being fidgety and would, on occasion, give her quick, furtive glances that made her think he was nervous about something. She nearly called it out again, asking for the umpteenth time if he was okay. But she’d already tried that tactic and didn’t want to badger him with it—especially not on her first day officially back.

When they arrived at Lorrie Klein’s home on Summer Street, there was a slightly dated Ford Explorer parked in front of the house waiting for them. The house itself was small and quaint, tucked into the center of a middle-class street with slightly overgrown lawns and older vehicles. It was one of those neighborhoods with an abundance of hummingbird feeders, wind chimes, and yard signs promoting a few different candidates for upcoming local elections.

Jack parked behind the Explorer, and a middle-aged man wearing an old-school style newsboy flat cap on his head stepped out. He wore a very casual button-down shirt, untucked, and a pair of khakis. No attempt at all was made to conceal the holstered sidearm on his right hip. This, Rachel assumed, was Detective Detweiler.

Jack approached him first, already extending his hand. “Detective Detweiler?”

“That’s me,” the detective said. He had a deep southern accent, made even more unique by the harsh tone of his voice. It sounded like he’d smoked most of his life and occasionally gargled gravel.

“I’m Agent Rivers, and this is Agent Gift.”

Detweiler nodded and then smiled directly at Rachel. "Yeah, I recognized you, Agent Gift. I saw you on the news a while back. Hell, I guess everyone did."

She had no idea how to respond to this, so was very grateful when Jack swooped in and brushed it aside. “You were the man in charge here for the initial case, right?”

“Still am, technically. Of course, I guess you know that we don’t know a damn thing other than the fact that the killer busted the back door up a bit to get inside.”

“Care to show us?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah, come on.”

Detweiler led them through the small front yard, which was separated from its neighbor by a tacky-looking arrangement of overgrown shrubs. Rachel studied the yard as they made their way through it, as well as the house as they made their way around it. There were no security lights anywhere along the house—which she wasn’t expecting to see, really. While this may not be exactly a low-income neighborhood, it was still the sort where features like security lights and cameras beyond the occasional camera-oriented doorbell would be considered a luxury. Other than the fact that the vinyl siding was in need of a power washing, she saw nothing of note when it came to the house itself.

At the back yard, a small deck came off of the back door. It was low to the ground, just high enough up from the grass to allow the front end of a beat-up push mower to be stowed under it. Detweiler led them up the back porch steps and gestured to the door.

“Not much to tell, really. Looks like a pretty sizable crowbar did the job.”

Rachel agreed. The damage done to the door was actually minimal. There was a dent and some peeling right along the catch. The door frame was cracked and chipped at the exact same area.

After giving the agents time to look at the damage, Detweiler pushed the back door open and waved them on inside. They entered in through the kitchen. The room had taken on a slightly foul smell—like garbage that should have been taken out several days ago. And as Rachel neared the trashcan tucked beside the sink, she found that was exactly what it was. The kitchen was quite small and led into a tiny arched hallway where they could see the living room from the back door.

“Detective Detweiler, Lorrie was a widow, correct?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah. Her husband died about nine months ago in a car accident on his way to work.”

“Have you looked into people from his past by any chance?”

“Yeah, for a bit. But that’s a dead end. You’re welcome to look at my notes and research, though. I’ve got notes from speaking to her parents and friends. I’m still digging, of course, but can’t find anything.”

“Where’s the bedroom?” Jack asked.

“This way.”

The house was a single level, which meant the killer wouldn't have to search around for his victim for very long. Rachel put herself in the mindset of a killer, having just broken in through the back door. The house was small and quite simple in its layout. Even before they passed through the little arched hallway between the living room and kitchen, Rachel knew they’d find the bedroom in another small hallway to the right of the house. She’d simply been in enough smaller homes to know that there were essentially only five or six different blueprints.

She was proven correct when Detweiler brought them through the den and directly into another arched hallway. There were four doors along this hall, all opened. They passed a bathroom, a small office space, a small bedroom, and then, at the end of the hall, the master bedroom.

“She was found in her bedroom, still in bed,” Detweiler said. “The room hasn’t been touched since the body was discovered and, as you can see, it doesn’t look like there was a fight or struggle of any kind.”

Rachel studied the room closely. It was sparse in furnishings, just the bed, a bedside table, and a single dresser that looked old and beaten up. As for the bed, the covers had been pulled back an almost perfect angle, and the sheets and comforter were slightly wrinkled.

“She was still under the covers when she was discovered?” Jack asked.

“That’s right.”

Rachel walked back to the doorway and stood in it. She took a moment to try to slide right into the moment, trying to envision herself as the killer and looking into this room. He’d just broken into the house from the back door. He’d just made his way through the house, and he’d done it all without waking up Lorrie Klein.

One thing Rachel knew was that home break-ins were on the decline over the last few years, namely due to the rise of affordable, electronic home security systems. So for someone to break into a home like this one and kill this woman with such ease—and leaving no clues behind in the process—indicated that he must have known her. That, or the killer, had simply done his homework. He would have known the house had no security system and probably even where the bedroom was located. And even though the front door would have given him quicker access to Lorrie, he would have also known that entering through the back door would have been much safer, as there was a much smaller chance of being seen.

“I take it you’ve heard about the murder in the parking garage over by the Performing Arts Center?” Rachel asked.

“I have. Took a quick glance at the report. They’re trying to say it’s linked, right?”

“The police are speculating, sure,” Jack said. “As I’m sure you know. But based on your insights from this scene, having been here from the start, do you see any strong connections?”

Detweiler seemed like he was going to answer right away and then thought about it for a moment longer. He sighed and shrugged, looking to the bed. “This isn’t as big of a city as a lot of people like to think it is. Two deaths, both from broken necks, with no signs of a fight and no prints of any kind left behind…it does seem like much more than a coincidence, doesn’t it? But then again…it’s the lack of prints or clues that make me want to say they aren’t connected.”

Rachel understood perfectly because she felt the exact same way. There were too many oddities to the two cases to ignore, but at the same time, she didn't feel that there were any strong threads connecting them.

“Well,” she said, taking one last glance around a room that told them absolutely nothing. “If the crime scenes aren’t offering up any information, maybe the bodies will.”

“Could be,” Detweiler said. “The way I hear it, the coroner and forensics should have been done with the guy from the garage this morning.”

Rachel wasn’t sure why, but she felt that something was troubling Detweiler. It was something about the way he was looking at the bed—a look she thought she’d also glimpsed as he’d opened up the busted back door for them.

“Detective, is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I think it is,” he said, finally looking away from the bed. “It’s just that I get this gut feeling about this whole thing…a feeling I got when I first saw Lorrie Klein’s body. Snapped neck and all, it’s not all that noticeable at first. So when we saw her body, it was almost like she was asleep…really peaceful, you know? And I…I don’t know. The way he did this without causing any sort of racket or fuss almost makes me think he did it as a favor.”

“A favor?” Jack asked, confused.

Rachel answered because she understood this, too—maybe because of the absolute hell she'd been going through for the past six months. "Quiet and stealthy in the night, then a broken neck that she may not have even been fully awake for. It almost looks like he was merciful about it…like he was being careful and gentle. A mercy killing, almost.”

And though it did make a degree of sense as she spoke it out loud, a chill ran down her spine as she looked back at the bed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

She was sitting on her back porch, nursing a tumbler of straight whiskey, and thinking about murder.

She had never been a big drinker, but as of late, it seemed to be the only way to keep her mind centered. She'd started with beer, but all that did was upset her stomach and give her the worst headaches she'd ever had in her life. She resorted to whiskey when she recalled just how dependent on the stuff her father had become when she was a child. And as sad as it seemed, she had always preferred him when he was drunk. He'd been happier when he was hammered. He had been more willing to have fun with her and her five siblings after he'd had a few shots.

And it did seem to be working for her. Especially when she started drinking early in the day. She would be nice and drunk by dinner time and then force herself to stop once she got something to eat. In those drunken afternoons, she spent a lot of time thinking about Alex Lynch. She spent a lot of time thinking about getting revenge for him—for bringing him the sort of justice he’d never attained in this life.

Naturally, thinking about Alex made her think of murder. After all, if Alex had never taken a life, she would have likely never heard of him. She often wondered how many lives Alex had taken. When the headlines and news programs had been flooded with stories about him following his death, the number that everyone seemed to agree on was eleven. But Alex had been a man of intense passion. She didn't think he would half-ass anything. Considering how long his reign of terror had lasted, she thought eleven was a very low estimate.

In the seven months since his murder, she often wondered how she might be able to find out more about him—starting with the actual number of people he'd killed. She was quite certain she'd read every article ever written about him. It wasn't common knowledge, but there had actually been two books written about him; one was quite obscure. It was only available in Japan, and the translation was awful. Still, she bought it and read it, and cherished it.

The more she read about him, the angrier she became that she was never able to meet him. She supposed she loved him... and she also supposed that people would claim she was crazy for thinking such a thing. Not only because she'd never met him but also because of all the things he had done. All the things the media and most people in society pretended to be appalled over.

But it was just murder. It was just death. For some reason, the act of murder was somehow seen as the worst thing a human being could do to another human being. But as far as she was concerned, that made no sense. Almost on a daily basis, she was appalled with news stories she heard from all around the world. Whether it was child slavery for the materials that made cell phone batteries or the accepted rape culture running rampant throughout most of the world, humans were an awful bunch. And to think taking a life was any worse than the other atrocities humans had all become so desensitized to was silly.

She knew why she kept drinking. She knew what she wanted her brain to focus on, and it wasn't just Alex. When she got really drunk, she was also able to admit to herself that it also wasn't just about making sure Rachel Gift ended up dead.

No, it was about murder itself. It was about trying to convince herself she was strong enough to do it. Based on all of the interviews she had read while Alex was in prison (and he'd participated in quite a few of them), he had always said the act of murder was just like any drug. It was addicting, and it made him happy. But also like a drug, he had worked hard to get his addiction under control.

Looking at the remainder of her whiskey, this thought made her smile. She had no doubt that she'd be able to kill Rachel's gift. She would even enjoy it. What she was worried about was that even when Little Miss FBI agent was dead, that she wouldn't be able to stop. And maybe that was meant to be. Maybe what she felt for Alex was more than love. Maybe she was meant to emulate him, to carry out the work he had not been able to finish.

And if that was the case, she would be more than happy to do so.

But she also knew that now was not the time. The idea of murder was appealing, but she also understood that she would not be able to bring herself to do it just yet. She had to get herself in the right mental state. She had to plan appropriately. Currently, there were three states between her and Rachel's gift. Also, Rachel had no idea that someone out there wanted her dead... that not everyone saw her as the hero the media had painted her to be.

So if she planned it right and waited until she knew she was ready, she may be able to take Rachel Gift's life and get away easily enough. And if Rachel Gift was her first kill, she supposed that would be more than enough of a motivator to keep doing it…again and again and again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rachel was sure it was just because she hadn’t been out and moving around so much (and so quickly) in six months, but the day felt like it was rapidly getting away from her. Somehow, it was already inching toward one o’ clock. She was enjoying the hunt for answers even if the cases did seem like they may not be connected at all. The truth of the matter was that she had missed this so much more than she was willing to admit to herself.

Even now, as Jack pulled into a parking spot at the coroner’s office, she felt the old excitement of the job—even though visiting a coroner had traditionally been her least favorite part of being an agent. She found it hard not to hop right out of the car and march straight to the front door. God, she'd missed this.

There was no marching, though. She and Jack entered the coroner’s office in an orderly fashion, flashed their badges at the front, and were led back to one of the examination rooms. The assistant that led them to the back knocked on the exam room door, waited a moment, and then partially opened the door.

“Stu, we’ve got feds out here about Lorrie Klein and Joe Wickline. Can they come on in?”

“Send them back!” a man with a deep, southern voice called out.

The assistant said nothing. He simply opened the door for them and headed back to the front of the building. It was yet another example of why Rachel had always assumed working on a coroner’s office was a joyless job. Rachel and Jack entered the examination room. There were two tables mounted to the floor; one was empty, but the other held a body. It was covered up to the point where the only thing revealed was the face from the nose up. Everything else was hidden by a sheet. Because of this, Rachel couldn't be certain, but she thought it might be Joe Wickline, the dead man from the parking garage.

Before she could get a close look, the coroner came walking toward them from the back of the room. He was an older gentleman, maybe a bit past sixty. He wore a traditional white doctor’s coat, his cellphone tucked into the breast pocket.

“Stu Everett,” he said, offering a large hand. “Good to meet you.”

Jack shook the offered hand and ran through introductions. “Agents Rivers and Grace,” he said. “We’re hoping you might be able to help us find some answers for these two recent deaths.”

"Well, I can try. The Chief of Police had someone shoot me an email this morning asking if I thought the Wickline and Klein murders might be connected. But I have to say…I think it might be reaching. But it's just curious enough to be irritating, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, we do,” Rachel said. “What are your findings?”

“Well, first and foremost, I had to release the body of Lorrie Klein to the family for funeral arrangements. But rest assured, I have every bit of information you could possibly need on file here. Mr. Wickline, though, is right here,” he said, gesturing to the body on the table to Rachel’s right.

“Could you pull the sheet down enough for us to see his neck?”

With a nod, Everett did as he was asked. The bruise was plain to see, having had two full days to ripen. The bulk of it was right at the center, with some of the brown and purple spreading to the left side.

“Based on your experience,” Rachel said, “do you think this was done by someone with knowledge of how to properly break a neck?”

“That’s hard to say, really. On Mr. Wickline here, the attack fractured his windpipe as well. And if you really know what you’re doing when you break a neck in such a way, that wouldn’t have been done. Of course, it could have come from the angle. If Mr. Wickline was sitting or somewhat reclined in his car seat when our killer struck, it could have just made the action a bit more difficult.”

“Was it the same with Lorrie Klein?”

“No, that was more of a clean break. With hers, I’d have no problem believing the killer knew what they were doing—that they had a good understanding of how to break a neck. Understand that the breaking of the neck doesn’t instantly mean death…not like you see in movies. But without prompt medical attention, you have only seconds...maybe minutes. Based on the break in Mr. Wickline, I imagine he suffered a bit. But I believe Ms. Klein’s was almost instantaneous.”

“It all has something to do with the spinal cord, right?” Jack asked.

“More or less. It and several vertebrae high up near the skull essentially connect the brain to the rest of the body. When it is compromised or severed, the body can no longer breathe…and in some cases the heart stops beating as well. It depends on how badly the nervous system has been affected as a result of the break.”

“Do you have any idea if a weapon was used or if it was simply done with the killer's hands?"

“Well, if he used a weapon, he was incredibly gentle about it,” Everett said. He pointed to Wickline’s neck, to a spot on the right side. Right here, just before the bruise really starts to get nasty, do you see these two lighter shapes?”

Rachel followed his finger, and it was easy to see what he was talking about. It was actually two smaller marks; one was darker, almost tan in color, and the other was much more subtle. "Yes. What about them?"

Everett moved his large hands at an angle, as if miming the act of strangulation. “See how the darker area would line up with the ridge of my hand between the index finger and thumb? And then the lighter one would line up just about where the knuckle of my index finger would fall?”

Rachel did see, and she knew what he was insinuating. The only weapon this man had used was his hands. “Can you tell what sort of strength we’re looking at?”

“Not really. Both necks showed signs of wrenching and twisting, not brute force. But if this is indeed the very edge of a handprint right here, I’d say the killer’s hands were just a bit smaller than mine. Which says nothing, really, as I have big hands.”

Rachel felt a bit of stinging frustration working its way in to overshadow the excitement she’d been feeling all day. The only real answer they’d gotten from the coroner was that the killer had likely only used his hands.

“Mr. Everett,” Jack said, “do you think you could send us copies of the reports for both Mr. Wickline and Mrs. Klein?”

“Certainly. And…you know, I did find one thing that may be of interest. I suppose it depends if you’re trying to work hard to connect the murders or to try to keep them separate.”

“What’s that?” Rachel asked.

“Well, we know that Mr. Wickline was killed somewhere between nine and midnight two nights ago. We know that from the cameras at the garage, correct?”

“I believe it’s more of an assumption at this point,” Jack said.

“Well, let’s assume it’s a correct assumption. Now, I have no way of knowing for sure, but if I had to make an educated guess based on the bruising I saw, I’d say Mrs. Klein was killed early in the morning…somewhere between four and six.”

“So you think the killer is striking specifically during the night?” Jack asked.

That was what Rachel took away from Everett’s discovery, too…at first. But then she thought about Lorrie’s busted back door in a house with no security system. And then of Joe Wickline in his car, completely vulnerable and unsuspecting.

“That,” she said, “or these are all murders based on opportunity.” And as she said it, she once again thought about how the killer must have somehow known either the people or the locations—or both.

Jack smiled thinly, just enough for Rachel to see it. He nodded to Everett, already sensing that Rachel thought she might be on to something. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Everett,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye open for that email.”

Everett seemed a bit perplexed that they were leaving, so soon but nodded politely as they left. Rachel nodded politely on their way out and though she still felt that familiar stirring of excitement about what might come next, it was a bit muted due to the dead body on the table behind them.

CHAPTER NINE

"Go ahead," Jack said. "Tell me what brilliant idea came to you while we were in there."

“It wasn’t a brilliant idea…maybe just an observation.”

Jack pulled the car out of the coroner’s lot and got back out into the highway. “Well, maybe give me some indication of where I need to be driving in order to get to this observation, please.”

“To talk to the families, and then back to the HQ…for a while, anyway. I think the killer may have been familiar with the victims in some way. I think he knew how to get quietly into Lorrie's house, and I think he knew that Joe would be in his car. Maybe they weren't crimes of convenience at all. Maybe they were crimes committed by someone that had done their homework on these two."

"Lorrie's house was broken into," Jack pointed out. "I don't see how the killer was given an opportunity there."

“True, but that back door was the only sign of forced entry. Maybe he knew where to go right away…that the back door would provide the easiest access. True, that still doesn’t really mark it as ‘opportunity’ per se, but you know what I mean.”

“So, we…we what? Use the very limited information we have on them to try to find links?”

“Yes. And I think there were at least a few starting points in the police records.”

She could tell that Jack wasn't a huge fan of the idea, but Jack also had no clue how stifling it had been for her to be sitting at home while she knew he was still out in the field. Hell, she’d been excited when she thought her days were going to be filled with running basic research for another team. To be out on the move, trying to find answers to two deaths…she wasn’t going to apologize for being excited by the smallest detail.

So, as Jack drove, she pulled up the police records and got the information for the next of kin. There was only a single individual listed for Lorrie Klein. Mark Kelce was listed as her brother, and he lived in the Fan District of Richmond, just eight miles away from where they currently were.

She told Jack where to go, and he did so willingly enough. She still couldn't shake the feeling that something was slightly off about him. She didn't think it was any sort of resentment or disappointment, but it felt like it. She wondered if he had maybe built this moment up in his head a bit too much, that he’d envisioned her return to work a bit differently. She figured it was a conversation they needed to have sooner rather than later, but not while actively on a case.

They reached the Fan District twenty minutes later. It was an older part of town, nicely upkept with cobblestone streets that were bordered with trees to both sides, boasting the brightening colors of early spring foliage. Old homes and townhouses lined the sidewalks behind the trees, closely stacked together but quaint and peaceful in their packed space. Mark Kelce lived in a tall, thin townhouse. The brick façade was old enough to totter the line between “being in need of a cleaning” and “antique.”

Rachel realized that Jack was letting her take the lead, something she appreciated. He knew better than to hold her hand and carefully guide her through this. While she had certainly caught a few glances of concern ever since the meeting with Anderson earlier in the day, he’d not handled her with kids’ gloves.

Rachel knocked on the door, and after waiting for roughly twenty seconds, it was answered by a rather disheveled-looking man. Rachel guessed him to be in his early twenties, slightly overweight and with a carefree hairstyle that mirrored the brick on the house: in need of some care or on the verge of being stylish.

“Yeah?” he said in the way of a greeting.

“Are you Mark Kelce?”  Rachel asked.

“Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?”

“We’re agents Gift and Rivers,” Rachel said. She pulled her badge and ID as proof and was amazed at how good even that felt after six months without it. “We were hoping to ask you some questions about Lorrie.”

Mark’s entire face shifted in a mask of sadness. “I can. I mean, yeah, sure, but I already talked to the cops.”

“Yes, we know. But there’s been another murder in the last few days that we think may be linked to your sister’s murder somehow.”

“Oh.” When Mark went still and silent, she thought he might be trying to process through his emotions. She could easily see that the mention of his sister had sucked the life out of him. The question was if that would make him more agreeable to talk, or if he’d shut down. After a few more seconds, he stepped out onto the little concrete porch with them. He leaned against the brick wall and crossed his arms. “What do you need to know?”

“First of all,” Rachel said, “can you think of anyone she knew well enough who would have known the exact layout of her house? The police reports indicated that she didn’t have a boyfriend, but what about close friends?”

“Well, I’m ashamed to say I really don’t know. Lorrie and I were never all that close…I mean, not since high school. No drama or fights between us...we just sort of grew apart, I guess. We'd see each other a few times a year…Christmas, church at Easter, that sort of thing."

“Would you say she was a loner?”

“Yeah, for sure. Me, too, actually.”

“The police report states that you’re the only next of kin that was contacted. Is there no other family we could speak to?”

“No. It’s been…well, it’s been a bad year. Our dad walked out when we were kids, and mom passed away just a few months back. When Lorrie and I saw each other at the funeral, it was the first time we’d seen each other in nearly four months. We promised to see more of one another, but that never really happened. And now…here I am, having to manage her funeral and it’s…yeah, it sucks.”

Rachel’s heart broke for the man. It was one of the rare occasions when she actually felt bad for questioning someone. This poor man already had more than enough on his plate and was going through the emotional ringer. Still, they were here, and they may as well get as much information out of him as they could.

“You say you two weren’t close. Can I assume that means that if she maybe felt she was in danger or needed help, she wouldn’t call you?”

“No, probably not.” He had been looking back and forth between them the entire time, but now, Mark wiped tears from his eyes and looked to his feet. He was clearly ashamed, wishing he'd spent more time with his sister and finding it hard to accept he'd never be able to change that now.

“Do you know if there’s anyone she would have called on?”

He shook his head and let out a shaky sigh. "No. I don't. And I'm finding more and more things I didn't know about her. Now that she's dead, I'm learning so much new stuff about her.”

“Like what?” Jack asked.

“Like the movies she enjoyed, food she liked. I just found out yesterday through a woman who called me that Lorrie had been taking cooking classes for a few months. Things like that. Things a brother should know…”

“Did you know her husband, Troy, at all?”

“No. I met him once. That was it.”

“So you didn’t attend the wedding?” Rachel asked.

Mark shook his head, fighting back tears.

Rachel and Jack shared a glance, Jack giving her a slight nod that seemed to agree with what she was thinking. Yeah, it’s time to go.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Kelce,” Rachel said. “In the time between now and the funeral, do you have any kind of support system?”

“Yeah, my fiancé is helping out a bit, and my supervisor at work is being very understanding.”

“That’s good,” Rachel said. She then handed him one of her business cards from the inside of her jacket and said, “If you happen to think of anything, please give us a call.”

“I will,” he said. But his voice sounded empty and deflated.

Rachel and Jack left him to his grief. Mark Klein remained on the porch until the agents were back to their car. And as Jack pulled away from the curb, Mark slowly turned away from them and headed back inside with his head still turned down.

***

“Joe Wickline is the opposite of Lorrie Klein,” Rachel said, looking through the police records on her phone. “He’s got a very large family, but they all live in North Carolina—in the Greensboro area, from the looks of it.”

“Maybe we should just call the few point people called out in the reports and head to HQ to do a deep dive in the database, then.”

Rachel nodded, glad to see that some of the newfound excitement remained even after speaking with Mark Kelce—even if she was doing little more than calling up family members of the recently deceased. She tried the first number, which was listed as Wickline’s mother, but the phone didn’t even ring a single time before going to voicemail. The second and final number given on the report was for the father. Rachel called it and was surprised when it was answered on the first ring. She set the phone to speaker mode and set it on the center console.

“Hello?” a tired, worn-down male voice said.

“Hello, is this Mr. Paul Wickline?” Rachel asked.

“It is.”

She noticed that he didn’t bother asking who was calling. She figured with funeral directors, insurance companies and so forth, he was receiving plenty of calls from unfamiliar numbers. The weary tone of his voice was further proof of this.

“Mr. Wickline, this is Special Agent Rachel Gift, with the FBI. I was hoping you might have some time to answer a few questions about your son.”

A heavy sigh filled the other end of the line, but Paul Wickline said, “I can try. As I’m sure you understand, I’m a bit preoccupied. Not just with Joe…with his mother. This has hit her hard. She keeps passing out, and the doctors have put her on bed rest.”

“My apologies, sir. I’ll keep this as quick and as succinct as possible. I know the police have already spoken to you, but we have another murder in the area that we think could possibly be linked to your son’s. I just need to know if you were aware of any issues Joe had been having that might have created any enemies in his life.”

“No, I’m not aware of anything like that. The cops asked the same thing. And even after I told them no, I checked with Joe’s aunts and uncles, his brother, too. No one reported anything like that.”

“Sir, can you tell me why Joe was living in Richmond if the rest of your family is local to Greensboro?”

"Originally, it was a girl. He fell in love, and they got engaged. They decided to live there because they both had access to great jobs."

“Did they get married?”

“No. She…she died a month before their wedding date.”

“How did she die?”

“She had too much to drink when she was out with some friends. She ran a red light at two in the morning on the way back to the apartment she and Joe were sharing. She was just half a mile away from the apartment when the accident happened. She died on the scene.”

“What was her name?”

“Kara Spencer.”

“Does she have any family in the area?”

“I don't think so. Most of her family lives out in Oregon, from what I gather. But I’m not positive about that. After she died—and after the initial grieving period—Joe didn’t talk about her all that much.”

Once again, Rachel found herself doing her very best to not keep the questions going for too long. She wanted to respect the privacy and time of a family who had lost a member.

“Just one more quick question if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.” But it was clear, just from the sound of his voice, that Mr. Wickline was already done with the conversation.

“To your knowledge, had Joe reached out to family or friends in the past several months, asking for help or suggesting that he might be in some sort of trouble?”

“No. And that’s yet another question I asked of everyone else. One of his uncles said they’d had a text conversation about how maybe Joe needed to find a new job that offered annual raises, but that’s about it.”

Rachel knew they’d gained next to nothing—the same as the conversation with Mark Klein. But she also had a gut feeling that even if she pressed on and asked more questions, the end result would be the same. So it was yet again time to let an aggrieved family member go.

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Wickline. Please accept my sympathies for your loss.”

She ended the call and instantly caught Jack giving her a strange look. “What was that about?”

“What?”

“’Please accept my sympathies for your loss.’ Don’t get me wrong, it was very sweet but not at all like you.”

She nearly argued with him on this, but knew he was right. Where had that come from? Somewhere in the back of her mind, she began to wonder if her recent difficulties and her own crush on death had made her more aware of the pain and loss of others.

“Yeah, that was a little odd,” she admitted.

“It was nice, though.”

And with that, he reached across the console and took her hand. They rode back to the field office in mostly silence, hand in hand, with Rachel wondering if these small changes in her approach and demeanor signaled a new chapter in her career…and if so, if she was ready for it. Things would be different, sure, but how so? They might not all be for the better. On the verge of beating cancer and with a new appreciation for her family, maybe it would cause her to lose her edge.

And if that were the case, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to fully become the agents she’d once been.

CHAPTER TEN

Rachel did not miss the irony in the fact that the day had worked itself out so that she ended up behind a laptop doing research anyway—even after Andrews had assigned her to a case that had her out in the field. But it didn’t faze her in the slightest. She was working on research for a case under her own thumb, and six months ago she would have never dreamed such a day would come again.

Yet, the deeper into the research she went, the more convinced she was that Anderson had tasked her with this case because there may be no answer to any of it. Maybe he had given this to her, doubting there was a suitable ending in sight, just to get her feet wet—to make sure she knew he valued her and thought she was too valuable to be perched behind a desk doing someone else’s grunt work. If that was indeed what was going on, she supposed she appreciated the gesture but Anderson should have known better; he should know that she wouldn’t just give up. Especially not after being out of service for six months.

She sat at her cubicle, with Jack sitting beside her, having pulled a chair over from one of the nearby vacant workspaces. He'd also brought his laptop over from his own cubicle one floor over their heads. While Rachel absolutely hated to feel defeatist, she started to feel that they were chasing dead ends after less than half an hour. They checked on work histories, educational backgrounds, colleges attended, Facebook profiles…and came away with nothing.

Rachel finally spun her chair away from her laptop and let out a sigh. If there were no hard connection in the records, maybe there had been something to pull from the brief interviews they’d conducted with the family members.

“Mr. Wickline said Joe and his uncle had talked about troubles at Joe’s work,” Rachel said. “I wonder if there might be something worth looking into there.”

“Could be,” Jack said. He leaned forward and scrolled around Joe’s police record. “Seems like he was working at Lamont Advertising.”

Before Jack could even ask if she wanted him to call, she was already searching online for the number on her phone. She found the number and called, grinning at Jack as if she'd just won a race. He smiled back at her, and she felt a flush of warmth. Those eyes, that five o' clock shadow stubble, the way the corners of his mouth became almost sharp…

Yeah, it’s going to be pretty tricky working together as partners and lovers, she thought. The idea of asking him to move in with her came trailing in on the heels of that, making her very glad when someone answered the phone.

“Hello,” Rachel said. “This is Special Agent Rachel Gift, badge number 0086298C. I need to speak to someone about Joe Wickline, please.”

“Ah, that would actually be me,” the woman on the other end said. “He worked under me for a few years. And the…wow, the FBI is on this now?”

“Yes, ma’am. We believe Mr. Wickline’s death may be tied to another case that has just sprung up. So I was hoping to ask you some questions.”

“Oh, sure, yes, that would be fine.”

“First and foremost, can you think of any issues or arguments Joe may have had with anyone? Either there at work or outside of it, in his personal life?”

“Nothing here at work, no. As for his personal life, I really don’t know. Joe wasn’t really a social type. He stayed very much to himself, even on lunch breaks.”

“Would you happen to know if he had any interest in the arts? Did he often go to functions and events at the Performing Arts Center?”

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t know.”

Rachel wasn’t sure where to take the line of questioning, so she went in the most obvious direction. “Speaking to his father, I discovered that Joe was engaged to a woman named Kara Spencer for a while, but his fiancé died in a car accident shortly before the wedding. Do you recall a shift in his mood or work performance following that…after he came back to work, that is.”

“Huh,” the woman said, genuinely sounding as if she was taking some time to think about it. “I can’t recall precisely. I know he took two months off to sort of regroup, but that’s about it. I do think, though, that he actually went out with some of us to a local bar after work a few times much later on…maybe like six months after it happened. But that didn’t last very long.”

It was pretty much what Rachel had been expecting. Still, she did make a mental note of the fiancé. If they really got desperate, they could work on trying to track Kara Spencer’s family  down in Oregon. But as far as Rachel was concerned, that was a last-ditch effort.

“Well, thank for your time,” Rachel said. “Would you mind asking around the office to see if anyone else might be able to offer anything of use?”

“Absolutely. But, as bad as it may sound, I don’t expect much. As I said…Joe was a bit of recluse.”

As Rachel ended the call, she realized that the final comment struck something in her mind. It almost felt like finding the piece of a puzzle that had fallen from a table—the one piece that would help finish off the puzzle. “But, as bad as it may sound, I don’t expect much. As I said…Joe was a bit of recluse.”

She wasn’t sure why that comment raised a flag, but it stood out. She considered it for a moment, trying to view it from multiple angles.

Jack was rubbing at this head in frustration. It made Rachel wonder if he had been taken off of something bigger and more promising just to tag along with her. And this thought made her feel awful because it was the first time such a thought had occurred to her.

“Okay, so if it’s not the victims, maybe it’s the locations,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

"I wonder if we just go back to the speculation that, for some reason or another, the locations of these murders were just convenient for the killer. That maybe these murders were all about opportunity and convenience rather than some personal connection.”

It felt flimsy to Rachel, but she also knew that they were quickly running out of options. "But the police and forensics have been thoroughly over each of the sites,” she pointed out.

"True. But maybe we run records to see if either of the locations comes up in terms of criminal activity that seems remotely linked. Say, maybe over the past six months or so."

Rachel nodded, feeling slightly embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of this approach first. After all, the gentleman at the parking garage had even mentioned how the security cameras were faulty. That meant there was easily a chance that crimes had been committed on the premises that had simply never been caught. It irritated her that the cameras weren’t trustworthy, but she understood it. She knew that the vast majority of parking garages really only cared about security cameras for capturing accidents. Every now and then, they did pick up an attempted mugging or people engaging in sexual acts, but more often than not, parking garage security cameras were simply a means to help sort out insurance claims. So typically, unless the garage was owned by a corporation or large business, spending money on things like security cameras often took a back seat to things like garage maintenance.

“You take the garage, I’ll take Lorrie Klein’s street,” she said.

“Deal.”

And once again, they turned their attention back to the laptops. In doing so, Rachel was reminded of the afternoons she'd spent on the back patio during the winter months, sitting in layers and withstanding the chill of winter air just to get some fresh air. Jack would often sit with her, laptop perched on his knees as he did research and digging for cases he was working on. It hadn't happened a lot, but often enough to create a core memory of sorts. She'd always assumed he'd done it to keep her encouraged, asking her questions about her theories on certain aspects of the cases, wanting her to keep her mind active on things other than how the cancer was assaulting her or the battle the treatment and the cancer were waging with one another in her often weakened body.

Sitting side by side in her cubicle and doing research together was far more rewarding than those moments, but not nearly as sweet. Thinking back to those moments was a clear reminder of how she’d fallen in love with him and why she very badly wanted him to live with her. The sweetness of the moment caught her off guard, and she felt the question coming to her lips. This likely wasn't the most appropriate time to ask, but she felt that if she didn't ask him soon, she might burst. Or, even worse, lose her nerve. Yes, she still needed to speak with Paige about it, but that could come later, right? She could ask Jack first just to let him know how she felt, but let him know that it could ultimately hinge on Paige’s feelings on the matter.

But before she could get it out, Jack spoke up, tapping lightly at the edge of her desk. “Well, that didn’t take long. Look at this.” He then pointed to his laptop and gave her a summary of the report he’d found. “Three weeks ago, there was an attempted sexual assault at the Performing Arts parking garage. Once again, the cameras proved useless and the only reason the assault didn’t happen—according to the woman, anyway—is because other people were coming along and scared him away. There was no proof of this, though. So, even though he was arrested, he was let go on lack of evidence just six hours later. And right here…this is the key…she says once he decided to ‘go for it’—her words, not mine—he placed a hand at her neck, trying to choke her to keep her from screaming. But again, there were no witnesses. The people who came walking along and scared him off apparently missed seeing anything incriminating by about five seconds."

“If he was arrested, then there’s a record of it, right?”

“Yes. Donnie Copeland. Thirty-six years old, with a home address of…well, I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

“He lives on Braggins Street…just one street over from Summer Street, where Lorrie Klein lived.”

Rachel sat forward, feeling a prickling of goosebumps on her arm. It was a sensation she’d experienced quite often at the beginning of her career whenever a lead would fall into her lap in such a way. But time and experience had muted it a bit. She hadn't felt the sensation in at least three years, and it had her feeling younger and invigorated.

“That seems interesting, right?” she said.

Jack shrugged. “Or a coincidence. But definitely worth checking out. There’s an address here for his employer, too. It’s only three in the afternoon, so it might be worth looking there first.”

“Sounds good,” Rachel said, getting to her feet with enthusiasm.

Jack smiled at her and got to his feet as well. “God, it’s good to see you like this again. All smiling and excited.”

“It feels good, too.”

And once again, she nearly asked him the question that was now weighing heavily on her mind. But to do so would stymie the feeling of progress this small lead had created. So once again, she stuffed it down as she and Jack headed for the elevators to check on a lead for a case that, just fifteen minutes before, seemed completely hopeless.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

He stared at his wrists in the afternoon sun, tracing the ghosts of scars with his fingers. It was easy to remember when these scars had still been red and inflamed, held together with stitches that had been applied with expert speed and precision following the third time he had attempted to kill himself. Now, they were little more than raised lines. Little more than reminders of the failed attempts of the past. There were actually a network of lines, both vertical and horizontal, markers of his past life much like the rings of a fell tree.

Sitting by his living room window, the afternoon sun was essentially hitting him full blast. He closed his eyes against it and breathed it in. Though his window was closed, he could hear the living orchestra of the city three floors below him. He caught bits of conversation, the engines of passing cars, the honking of a horn, noisy birds singing away somewhere nearby.

The sounds of life were many. They were constant. And on most days, all of it welded together to create a wall of unsettling noise that he desperately wanted to escape. As recently as a year ago, these sorts of thoughts would have had him reaching for the razor again. Or the pills. The one time he had tried to take his life with pills, he'd not taken nearly enough. The result had been nothing more than four days in the hospital with revolving nurses giving him looks of pity.

But things were different now. He did not direct these frustrations toward himself, but to the great work, he felt he had been called to perform. He had always lived alone, so he had no one to share the details of this work with. Instead, he focused intently on them by himself. There were countless notebooks stuffed into the bookshelf in his bedroom, filled with his slanted handwriting and describing what needed to be done.

So far, he had freed two. He wasn't sure how many more there would be, but he was quite certain there would be at least a few more. There was not a day that went by where he did not wish that he was dead—that at least one of those suicide attempts had been successful. But he had come to the understanding that each of those attempts had failed for a reason.

He understood pain and what it meant to be want to be dead.

But God or the universe or whatever oversaw such decisions had seen fit to allow him to survive. It had taken him a while, but he finally knew why. And so far, he felt he’d done a good job.

Now, looking out to the afternoon traffic and the flow of daily life on the streets below, he knew it was time to get back to work. He knew where he needed to go and who he needed to free. It was getting riskier. And he knew it would only become more dangerous the more people he freed. Eventually, he'd be caught. He figured this was an eventual outcome, and he was okay with that.

It was a sacrifice he was willing to make for the better of others.

He supposed somewhere deep inside his heart, he hoped that freeing these others would get him out of his own rut. Perhaps helping people escape their own private hells would instill a great purpose in him. For now, yes, there was the work he had ahead of him, but it was the work he was happy to have.

But maybe, he thought, he would start to get happy if he continued to help others. Maybe that was what it would take to find happiness again—to find a strong and solid purpose in his absolute wreck of a life.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Donnie Copeland worked at an automobile accessory shop in the West End. This instantly rubbed Rachel the wrong way because, stereotype or not, small auto garages and other mechanical businesses tended to have employees that had each other’s backs. She was already worried they may not get an accurate picture of Donnie—neither form his co-workers or himself.

The garage turned out to be the sort of place that slapped decals or entire prints on cars, or installed lift kits on pickup trucks—a trend that was bafflingly popular in Richmond as of late. When they arrived, the shop appeared to be quite slow. Only one of the three garage bay doors were opened up. When Jack passed by it to park in the small lot, Rachel saw someone inside the garage working on a wrap for a new, sleek car.

They got out of the car and headed into the small front office. An overweight man with long hair was speaking on his cellphone, but when he saw the agents step into his office, he ended the call and gave them his undivided attention.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “Something I can help you folks with?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, flashing his badge and ID. “We’re looking for Donnie Copeland. Is he in today?”

The man, presumably a supervisor, Rachel thought, gave the badge a weary look and shook his head in disappointment. “Yeah, he’s in the shop. Follow me.”

The supervisor stepped from behind the small, cramped counter space and led them to the back of the front office. There, he opened a small door that led directly out onto the shop floor. There were apparently only two employees on the books today: one was standing at the back of the shop, cleaning off a paint-spraying device, while the other—Donne Copeland, presumably—was working on the car Rachel had spotted on the way in.

“Donnie!” the supervisor called out. “Some people here to see you.” He then muttered something under his breath before turning back to the front office. Based on his attitude, Rachel figured Donnie may be having a hard conversation with his supervisor at the end of the day over this visit.

Donnie set down the tool he’d been using at the time and eyed them with suspicion as he walked over to them. “Yeah?” he said nervously. “Who are you?”

Jack still had his credentials out, so he showed them to Donnie as he once again made introductions. “Mr. Copeland, I’m Agent Rivers, and this is Agent Gift. We’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”

“About that lying woman from the parking garage, right?” He didn’t even try to mask the fury that quickly spread across his face.

“In part, yes,” Jack said. “But it’s a bit more than that. A woman that lives not too far away from you was murdered about five days ago, and we—”

“Yeah, that Klein woman, right? Laura? Lorrie, something like that?”

“That’s right,” Rachel said. “Did you know her?”

"Not well. In fact, I think I only ever met her once, and that was by total accident. I was taking a walk around the block, and she was pulling out of her driveway to go somewhere. I only heard about her murder because of a neighbor that saw the cops coming in and out of her house."

“In addition to that,” Jack said, “a man was also murdered two nights ago in the Performing Arts Center parking garage. The very same garage where you were accused of trying to sexually assault a woman.”

“Well, you got accused right.”

“Then tell us your side of the story,” Rachel said. She and Jack had already read over it in the reports, but she wondered if he might trip himself up while trying to dance around two different narratives—one concerning Lorrie and the other concerning his previous trouble in the parking garage.

Copeland rolled his eyes and made a dismissive push sound. But after a moment, he went ahead and tried anyway. “Look, I’ll be honest. I might have made a remark toward her. She was nice-looking, you know? Wearing a really sexy dress because I guess she’d just come from an orchestra show at the center. I made a crude comment, she shot me down, and that was all.”

“How crude?” Jack asked.

“What?”

“Well, if it was really crude, it might have made her angry enough to lie about it just to try to get you in trouble.”

Copeland shrugged, and Rachel was surprised to find that he actually looked embarrassed. “Yeah, it was pretty bad. And, of course, I know it was stupid and immature. But I don't think it was necessary that I was arrested for it."

"You understand what she told the police, right?" Rachel asked. "You know why they arrested you?"

“She said I put one hand around her neck and the other one up her dress. But I swore to the police, and I'll swear to you right now that I did no such thing."

"And why were you in the garage at all that night?"

“My car was on Level A. I parked it there earlier in the night and met some friends at a bar a few blocks down.”

“Why not just park in front of the bar?”

“Because if one of my drunk asshole friends needed a ride, I could tell them I’d taken a cab and didn’t have my car.”

Rachel could sense the conversation, steering quickly away from the original point of things. But even now, after just three or four minutes of speaking to Copeland, she was already doubting he was their man. Hell, both she and Jack had sensed that coming to speak with him was pretty much grasping at straws.

“Look,” she said. “I’ll cut to the chase. These two murders we’re looking into….right now, you’re the only person that we can see as being linked to both of them. You have your unfortunate history with the parking garage, and you lived just a street over from one of the victims. However, if you can provide proof of your whereabouts for the nights they—”

“Hold on. Wait just a damn second. You think I killed these people? Just because I said something off-color to a woman one time in a parking garage?"

“Well, you were arrested on allegations of sexual assault, Jack pointed out.

“And promptly released because of lack of evidence or witnesses!”

Copeland had taken a step forward in his anger, and Rachel found herself suddenly ready to spring if necessary. And wouldn't that be something of a surprise for her first case back on the job—a case that was supposed to be boring and rather routine.

“Listen,” Jack said. “If you can provide alibis of where you were during the times of the murders, we’re done here.”

Rachel thought Copeland on the verge of answering but, at the last minute, he closed his mouth and shook his head. "No. I get that you're trying to figure out murders, and I should be all spoked because it's the FBI, but I've been here before. I was arrested because I said something I shouldn't have said, and that woman lied her ass off, and the result was an arrest on my record and four hours in an interrogation room. And now you FBI goons come into my place of work, in front of my boss, and want to accuse me without any proof? No. We're done here. If you happen to find evidence that actually links me to it, come back and we’ll talk. But for now,…hell no. I’m not taking another bogus fall.”

He instantly looked to Jack, worried about how he would respond. When it came to work, Jack did not like to be told no, and he certainly didn't like it when he felt a suspect was being intentionally difficult. She could see his face tightening, his jaw clenching a bit. She reached out and gently took him by the arm. She stepped back, trying to take the lead in stepping away.

“We’ll leave for now, Mr. Copeland, but we will indeed take you up on that. And I shouldn’t have to mention how suspicious it would seem if you suddenly left town, right?”

Still clearly upset, Copeland nodded and headed back to the other side of the car to resume his work. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Rachel had to give another tug on Jack’s arm—this time not so gentle—to get him to move along and move back to the front office with her. he eventually came along, sending one last scowl in Copeland’s direction. He didn’t say anything until they were back in the parking lot, heading for the car.

“He didn’t even bother trying to come up with an alibi,” Jack said.

“Well, you heard what he said about being repeatedly falsely accused. I don’t really blame him. And besides…it’s like I told him. If we do need to eventually truly speak with him, we know where he is. And if he blows town, there’s our definitive answer.”

He sighed heavily as he opened the door and said, “You’re right. Man. I forgot that part about working with you.”

“What?” she asked with a grin. “Always being right?”

“Exactly.”

She supposed it was a good note to end their failed visit to Donnie Copeland on. Sure, there was still no lead and they’d foolishly grasped at what had instantly seemed like a dead end, but at least they were still managing to remain mostly positive—a difficult feat, as the case seemed to be getting more and more unsolvable by the minute.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Shortly after leaving the shop and the dead lead of Donnie Copeland behind, Rachel started to feel a twinge of exhaustion creeping in. She supposed it made sense; her body had experienced very little adrenaline in the last half a year or so. Being reintroduced to it in such a sudden way was taking its toll on her. And though she knew a caffeine jolt would provide only temporary relief, it was the best thing she could think of in the moment.

So, as the afternoon wound around to five o'clock, Rachel convinced Jack to take them through a drive-thru for coffee. With no next clear destination in mind, she figured they could afford the extra five minutes taken out of their day.

“So, how are you handling all of this?” Jack asked as they waited in the drive-thru line for their order.

“All of what?”

“Being tossed right back into the deep end after six months away.”

“Oh. Well, I’d rather be tossed into the deep end than eased in with floaties. I’m glad it went like this.”

“Yeah, but you’re asking for coffee at five in the afternoon. I know you too well. Coffee for you is either in the morning or around midnight if you know you’re about to pull an all-nighter.”

“Oh. Sure, it’s exhausting. But in a good way.”

Jack pulled up to the window and handed over his credit card to the cashier. She gave it back, and then divvied out their coffee orders. When they pulled away and back toward the street, Jack shrugged and looked over to her.

“Any ideas where to go next?”

It struck her as an odd question. Was he trying to put floaties on her? She felt like he was relying on her opinions and thoughts much more than he had in the past. It was as if he wanted her to feel secure that he was welcoming her back with open arms, trying to make sure she nestled right back into the flow of things. She appreciated it, but it also came off as feeling fake…yet another thing that seemed slightly off about him today.

At first, she thought about what Joe Wickline's supervisor had said…about Joe being a lonely recluse. She thought about how that had made her feel as if there was something there to be discovered but wasn't quite ready to present itself. But where should they dig for more clues?

And just like that, it came to her.

“Let’s go over to the impound lot. I think we should take a look at Joe’s car. And yes…I know, I know. Forensics already looked it over. But they looked it over for prints, blood, clues, and things like that. Maybe we need to have a look at it to get a better picture of Joe.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” he said as he pulled the car out into the road and took a right.

“Are you just saying that to make me feel like I haven’t missed a beat?” She knew it sounded snarky, but she hoped he’d know what she meant. She also rather hoped it might serve as a small indication that she could tell something was different about him today.

“No, for real,” Jack said, reaching over and placing his hand on her knee. “I just assumed that if anything came up concerning the car, Forensics would have found it and put in the report. I was ready to totally dismiss it. But seeing as how we’re striking out so far, I think it’s definitely worth a shot.”

The drove on for another mile or so before Rachel more or less forced herself to ask the question that had been on her mind—not the one about him potentially living with her, but the one about why he was acting so out of character.

“Are you okay, Jack?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Why do you ask?”

“You seem…different. Maybe a little weirded out by the fact that you’re working with me again.”

To his credit, he considered it for a moment before answering. “No, I wouldn’t say I’m weirded out. If anything, I’m trying to restrain myself from annoying you. I’m really excited to be working with you again, but I don’t want it to come off like I’m a kid at Christmas that got this really awesome present, you know?”

She smiled and took his hand. “Are you sure that’s it?”

"Yeah, I think so. And again…please don't take this the wrong way, but it is a little strange to be working with a woman I’m sleeping with. You don’t find it weird?”

She laughed and said, “I think it might after a while. For right now, I’m just trying to find my groove again.”

“So it’s not like riding a bike?”

“Oh, no…I think it is, actually. But the bike feels a little different, and the roads are bumpier than I remember." She sipped from her coffee and grinned over at him, happy to see a smile on his face.

“So you’re good?” he asked. “We’re good?”

“Yeah,” she said, even though the idea of not having any leads on the case was nagging at her. “We’re good.”

Her grin widened even more when she realized just how much she meant it.

***

Until Rachel asked if he was weirded out, Jack thought he’d been doing a decent job of not seeming nervous. But the moment she asked, he was once again so very aware of the ring in his pocket—which he had moved to the inside pocket of his coat once they got out on the move. On one occasion during the day, when he’d reached for the leather cover with his badge and ID, his fingers had touched the ring case and a flicker of extreme anxiety blasted through him.

I should have just left the damn thing at work, he thought. What the hell was I thinking?

Fortunately, Rachel had seemed happy enough with his answer and by the time they reached the police impound lot, she had moved on. It was pretty much what he’d expected; the closer they got to the lot, the more in tune and focused she seemed to be toward the case, leaving her personal matters to the side.

The impound lot was located three blocks over from the central State Police headquarters. They skipped the building completely and pulled up to the lot's guard shack. All it took was a quick flash of his badge for the man at the booth to press a button inside to bring the white, pole-like barricade up.

“Hey, we’re looking for a car that was brought in yesterday morning,” Jack said. “An owner by the name of Joe Wickline—a Honda Civic. Can you find out where it’s parked?”

“Yeah, one second,” the portly man inside the shack said. The police uniform he wore looked a bit too tight…perhaps because the small smear of ketchup on his collar was an indication of his diet. He studied a print-put hanging on the wall to his right, ran his finger down it for a while and then nodded. “Wickline, Joe. A 2010 Honda Civic. That’s going to be located in Row Eight, Space Six.” He then rummaged around beneath his desk, and Jack could hear keys rattling around. He eventually reached out to Jack, holding the keys to Wickline’s car.

Jack gave the man a polite wave and continued on through the entrance. The impound lot was laid out very specifically, making it very easy to find the location they’d been given. When they came to Joe Wickline’s Civic, he parked directly behind it. Before getting out of the car, Jack popped the trunk so they could go into the back and get latex gloves. Even though the car had been impounded, they still didn’t need to be putting their own fingerprints all over everything.

“So let me ask you this,” Jack said as they met at the trunk, slipping on their gloves. “If this case turns out to be a dud and these murders aren’t linked at all, are you going to consider it a disappointing first case after your return?”

"Too soon to tell. Even if they aren't linked, people are still dead. There would still be killers to catch."

It was pretty much the answer he’d been expecting. Her confidence and surefire attitude was one of things he liked the most about her. It was a confidence she displayed in most areas of her life, even when she had been knocked down by the tumor and undergoing the experimental treatment in Switzerland. Even on the weeks when she'd not been able to keep food down and the headaches had been debilitating, she fought. Not once had he seen or heard her even think about giving up.

They walked over to Wickline's car, and Jack unlocked the doors. The interior was fairly clean, with just some standard dirt and grime from shoes in the floorboard. There was an empty aluminum water bottle in the back seat, but that was all. There was a very faint smell of fast food, a stale sort of scent that reminded Jack of flavorless French fries. He was looking in on the passenger side, so he checked the glovebox first. It contained the same old assortment of junk found in any glovebox: fast food napkins, an old auto insurance card, a forgotten pack of gum. he then looked under the seat and found more fast-food evidence in the form of crinkled paper from a drinking straw.

As he looked up, Rachel was rummaging through the storage space under the center armrest. She’s removed a few things and set them on the dashboard. There was an old air freshener, a punch-card for a local deli shop for a free sandwich, and a miniature word-scramble puzzle book.

“Ah, here we go,” she said, pulling another item out of the storage space. She showed it to Jack, revealing a business card. The name and title sat prominently in the center of the card. It read: Dr. Laura Jensen, LPC. The phone number given was local, and the address was for an office space downtown. “Oh, and…” she added.

She turned the card around and showed Jack where three dates had been written down. One was for ten days from now…an appointment Joe Wickline was clearly not going to make.

“Well, we’ve had two different people say that Joe was a bit of a loner, right?” Jack said.

“Yes. And we also know that when his wife died, it may have hurt him more than he may have admitted to anyone. So, I know it’s after office hours, but I believe we need to pay Dr. Jensen a visit.”

She backed out of the car right away, still holding the business card. This was the sort of clue that would have had both of them excited even before the tumor, the treatments, and her return. But seeing how on fire it made Rachel made him even more excited. It was almost like rediscovering the love of his job again—and, at the same time, remembering why he had fallen in love with her.

They got back into the sedan with a new lead, and though it still felt like a snoozer of a case, Jack couldn't recall the last time he's been so excited to track down a lead.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dr. Laura Jensen had a large apartment in the area Rachel often thought of as “the good part of downtown.” It was the area where there were farmer’s markets on Saturday’s, local live music on Thursday and Friday nights, and an area where you could go out to enjoy a nice and somewhat expensive dinner if you just wanted to get away from the rest of the city for a while. Jensen’s apartment building was a five-story brick square. The exterior boasted gorgeous six-foot windows all along the front, most adorned with flowerboxes.

The office address on the business card had led them here, making Rachel assume that Dr. Jensen had an office in her apartment. Living in this part of the city, Rachel didn’t blame her.

Jack parked the car, and as they got out, a huge exclamation mark seemed to flare up within Rachel's mind. She hesitated, frowned, and looked over to Jack. "Sorry…I just realized…I need to call Paige."

“Sure, of course.”

“I just…if I’m going to try coming back to work like before, this was one thing I know I need to get better about. I just need to let her and Grandma Tate know that I’m going to be late.”

Jack smiled and said, “Rachel, you don’t have to explain it to me. I get it, and I appreciate it. You want me to get out and give you some privacy?”

“No, you’re fine. I’ll be quick.”

She felt slightly ashamed of herself as she pulled up the number for home. Had she seriously almost forgotten to notify them that she was going to be late? As the phone started ringing, she decided it was okay to forgive herself…for now. After all, it had been so long since she’d been involved in a case. And this one was starting to seem a bit more intriguing that Anderson had made it out to be.

Grandma Tate answered on the third ring. “Hey, Agent Gift.” She chuckled as she said it. “How’s it feel to be back at work?”

“Sort of amazing, really. I was sent out into the field on a case.”

“Already?” There was some worry layered in with the surprise in her voice.

“Yes, but it’s fine…there’s nothing exactly dangerous about this one. It’s mostly research and interviews.”

“If you say so,” Grandma Tate said doubtfully.

“All the same, I am going to be late coming home.”

“On your f…nope, never mind.”

“What?” Rachel pressed.

“You’ve been officially back one day Rachel. And you’re already calling to tell us you’re going to be late.”

“I know…” Rachel didn’t at all like the anger that started to rise up. Grandma Tate did have a point, after all.

“It’s a good thing that Paige just so happens to be over the moon about your return to work. Don’t take this the wrong way, but she looked almost happy when she got home and saw that you weren’t here. She took it as a good sign…a sign that you’re healthier than ever and back to work. Sort of a sense of normalcy, I suppose.”

“Let me speak with her, please.”

“Okay. She’s got a friend over today. Amy Childers. They’re up in her room playing with her karaoke machine.”

"Oh, well, in that case, don't bother her. Would you just tell her that I called to let her know I'm going to be late?"

"Yes. And Rachel…I really don't want to sound like a nag, but please be careful. You’ve worked too damned hard to jeopardize things.”

“I know. And you’ll just have to trust me to remain smart about it.”

“Yes, I suppose I will. Goodbye, Rachel.”

Rachel put her phone back into her pocket, not quite sure how to feel about how the conversation had gone. On the one hand, she appreciated the concern, but on the other hand, it felt slightly like she was being babysat.

“Everything okay?” Jack asked. “That seemed a little tense.”

Rachel shrugged and opened the door. “I guess it could have been worse.”

“She’s only concerned about you, you know?”

“I know.”

But Rachel’s focus was already on the ornate double doors of Dr. Jensen’s apartment building. She had to focus back on the case, otherwise she’d dwell on the negative feelings toward Grandma Tate. Jack seemed to understand this as well because he asked no more questions. He joined her on the way to the doors and together, they stepped inside.

The address for Dr. Jensen had her placed on the second floor. They took the stairs, made of well-polished hardwood, just like the floors. When they reached the second floor, a gorgeous strip of red carpet ran down the center of the hallway, like a runner of sorts that left about a foot or so of the hardwood revealed on either side. When they came to her apartment, Apartment 23, Rachel knocked.

They got a response right away, a woman’s voice saying "One moment, please!" in a tired, but sing-song voice. Seconds later, soft footfalls approached the door, and after the sound of a lock disengaging from the other side, the door was opened.

Dr. Jensen greeted them with a curious smile that slowly morphed into a look of understanding. She looked to be in her mid-to-late forties. Her blonde hair was done up in a loose ponytail, and her button-down shirt was loosened around the collar. Her black-trimmed eyeglasses were pushed up atop her forehead, resting in her hair. She had the look of a woman who had just wrapped up a long day at work.

“Dr. Laura Jensen?” Rachel asked.

“Yes, that’s me. And you are?” But something in her tone told Rachel that she already knew who they were and why they were paying a visit.

“Agents Gift and Rivers, with the FBI,” Rachel said, showing her badge. “We were hoping to speak with you about two patients of yours.”

Dr. Jensen nodded and stepped aside and waved them in. With a frown, she said: “Lorrie Klein and Joe Wickline, correct?”

“That’s right,” Jack said as they entered. “How did you know?”

“Well, as you said, they’re my patients. As I understand it, Lorrie was murdered three days ago, though I just found out today. And not three hours after that, I got the call about Joe.”

“From who, might I ask?”

“His supervisor at work. Apparently, he spoke highly of me, and my name was listed on a form for emergency contact…which I think speaks volumes about how lonely that poor man was."

“Then it comes as no surprise to you that we’d like to ask you some questions about them, I take it,” Rachel said.

“Of course not. Please, have a seat.”

The front door opened directly onto a large living area. Dr. Jensen had it decorated in a posh yet minimalist style. Everything was cleaned and in various shades of white or light blue. The couch was small and looked like it would be uncomfortable, but Rachel found it beyond relaxing when she sat on it.

“Is this where you see your patients?” Jack asked.

“No, I have an office right there,” she said, pointing to the wall to the right.

“How long have you had an office out of your home?”

“Just three years now. I only see patients on a part-time basis now.”

"Dr. Jensen, let me go ahead and get the awkward part out of the way," Rachel said. "We've not been able to come up with any leads. There are no clues as of right now, and until we found your card in Mr. Wickline's car, we had nowhere to go. And not only are you linked to Mr. Wickline, but you're also linked to Ms. Klein."

“So you’re seeing me as a suspect.” She stated it matter-of-factly, as if she wasn’t bothered by the notion at all.

“No…just a person of interest for now.”

“I understand. But I’m quite confident I can prove I’m no killer.”

“Good,” Rachel said. “I’d like it if you could start with telling us a bit about each of the victims…maybe if you had noticed anything lately that might have made you think they were in some sort of trouble.”

“Well, they were both sort of drawn-in…loners, if you will. I can’t reveal too much due to doctor-patient confidentiality, but I can tell you that neither Joe nor Lorrie had many friends. And they seemed to prefer things that way. Now, in terms of warning signs they might be in trouble, I can't think of any. In fact, when I heard the news about Joe, I went back to my notes from the last few sessions just to see if there was something I was forgetting. Things were about the same with Lorrie…sort of sad and dreary but hopeful. Joe, on the other hand, had been showing some progress. He'd made plans to try one of those dating apps to get back out in the dating scene. I think he was always craving human contact but was afraid of it."

“We know about his wife’s death,” Rachel asked. “So I suppose that would make a degree of sense.”

“How long had you been seeing them?” Jack asked.

“For Joe, it was coming up on about eighteen months. For Lorrie, a little less than a year. But with Lorrie, I should also let you know that she stopped coming as much as usual about three months ago. She found some other outlet—a support group of some kind that she was hesitant to tell me about.”

“What sort of group?” Rachel asked.

“A grief sharing group.”

“Her husband had died not too long ago, correct?” Rachel asked.

“Yes. About nine months ago, I believe.”

“Did Lorrie have anything to do with it in any way?”

Jensen shook her head. “No. It was a heart attack. It was made worse by the fact that he was behind the wheel of his car when it happened. A heart attack at forty-one.”

“But Lorrie was a bit younger than that, right?” Jack asked. “Early thirties?”

“That’s right?”

“So,” Rachel said, “would you agree that they were both seeing you for issues pertaining to grief?”

“That was a big issue, yes. But there were smaller things here and there, mostly related to struggles they had with being in social situations.”

Rachel nodded, slowly knitting together a link—albeit a frail one—as Jack continued to ask questions. She listened vaguely while she studied the link on her own. He was asking Jensen about her whereabouts during the time of the murders. The only surefire, solid alibi she had was that she'd been visiting her mother in Alexandria on the morning Lorrie had been killed, and had stayed there overnight. By the time Rachel decided to speak her thoughts out loud, Jensen was pulling up her receipts for Apple Pay on her phone, proof that she’d had dinner with her mother the night before Lorrie was killed, and had grabbed Starbucks in Alexandria that morning.

“Is it safe to say their grief was the biggest stumbling block for whatever other issues they were facing?”

“Yes, that’s accurate.”

“In Joe’s case, his wife died about a year and a half ago, correct?”

“Fiancé, actually. But, yes.”

“And with Lorrie, her husband died roughly nine months ago?”

“Yes.”

“So both of them lost someone very close to them, but in very different ways. They were obviously heartbroken, and their states of mind likely stemmed from that. Would you say that’s accurate?”

“With other underlying factors, yes. But I’d say those two losses were surely the crux of their depressive and isolated states.”

Rachel looked over to Jack and saw that he was nodding. When they locked eyes, she saw that he had just come to the same conclusion she’d been putting together while he’d checked her alibi: grief may not be a tangible thing, but it certainly linked their two victims in a very real and clear way.

“We know that Joe has family in Greensboro which is, what, maybe three hours away?” Rachel said. “But Lorrie seems to have very little family, if any, and none of them live around here,” Rachel said. “Can you think of anyone else that may have been aware of their losses? Maybe someone close to them?”

"I really don't, other than Joe's parents."

Rachel nodded and then looked to Jack. “You good on the alibi?”

Looking at Dr. Jensen, Jack nodded tentatively. “Yeah, it’s good. But, Dr. Jensen, we’d appreciate it if you’d not leave town for a few days. Even if you’re cut loose as a suspect, we may need to speak with you again.”

“Of course. Call anytime. I’m happy to help however I can.”

She escorted them to the door, and when they stepped out into the hallway, Rachel started to understand that the day had come to an end for her. Sure, she could head back to headquarters and do more dives into record and criminal histories, but she also knew not to push it. She had her health to think about…and her family. She had a chance to correct so much right now, and the last thing she needed was to sabotage it all at the first moment.

She brought this to Jack's attention as they started back down the stairs to the lobby. "I need to get back to my car," she said.

“Calling it a day?”

“Yeah. I have to. It’s not just the health stuff, its Gra—”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” he interrupted. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad you’re heading home. If you’re going to keep doing all of this on a daily basis again soon, you need to put some limits in place. And I think one of those limits should be no all-nighters.”

He said it in a kind and loving way, with no judgment in it. Actually, it was almost as if he was choosing his words carefully, not wanting to upset her. And once again, she thought there might be something going on with him. Maybe he wasn’t ready for her to be back at work, tagging along with him like some sort of charity project.

“You know,” he said as they got back into the car, “I could call it a day, too. I don’t think Anderson is going to have anything else for me. Can we grab dinner?”

She smiled and said: “If you come to my place, yes. But after being away all day, I need to be with Paige.”

“Are you kidding? That’s even better.”

Before she was even aware it was happening, he leaned over the center console and kissed her. It was slow and sweet, but with just a bit of heat—just enough to leave her slightly light-headed and wanting more. It was the sort of kiss that made her doubt the things she’d been thinking just a few seconds ago—that maybe she was just far too inside her own head and over-thinking everything.

As they drove back towards headquarters and whatever a quiet night at home had in store, Rachel was amazed at just how easily she was able to transition from work-mode to at-home-mode. And she wasn’t even there yet. It was something she’d needed earlier in her career…something that a bout with a brain tumor had apparently helped her to evolve.

With a grin at the corners of her mouth while she looked out of the window at passing afternoon traffic, she thought all the suffering might have just been worth it.

Yet, at the same time, there was a little flicker in the back of her head—a flicker that understood there was still a killer out there. And even if Anderson had claimed this case was going to be pretty easy, she knew it was becoming more and more difficult with each dead-end they chased. There were a few theories to pursue, sure, but for now she couldn’t even quite see the roads they were pointing to.

Grief. Loss. Emotional pain. What would draw a killer to people like that?

She didn’t know, but it would certainly be someone trying to make sense of their own pain. Someone that not only knew pain but through they understood it—someone who maybe thought they were above it somehow. And that, Rachel thought, would have to be a truly dangerous individual.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Though he preferred dusk, he had to admit that there was something magical about the dawn. He preferred dusk because it indicated an end of things, the death of the day, if you will. But in the city, dusk also symbolized the beginning of an active night. Even on weekday nights, there was usually a bit of boisterous camaraderie on the streets as people came in and out of bars and restaurants. So, while dawn symbolized a new beginning and things starting over, he had learned to appreciate it in a very different way.

Currently, he was sitting in a somewhat slouched position, angled under a large plastic sliding board. All around him, the rest of the playground was an absolute silence. It was an eerie sensation to be sitting in a place that would be filled with so much laughter and joy in another four or five hours. But the playground wasn't the focus of his attention; it was just a place to hide.

From his place beneath the sliding board, he had a clear view of the sprawling lawn that separated the playground from the thin walking paths. There were three of these paths in total, and two of them made circuits around the small yet quite beautiful duck pond along the far edge of the park. In just a matter of minutes, he expected his next victim to come walking along one of those paths... probably the one to his left. If humans could be counted on for one thing, it was sticking to a routine. Especially once they got up there in age.

He had been watching his next victim for a while now. In a strange way, he felt close to the old man he was waiting for. There was a tepid sorrow that followed the old man like a secondary shadow. But more than that, the old man was lonely. It was evident in the way he walked and the way he paid so much attention to the ducks that made their way along the pond almost every morning.

His name was Larry Hoffman, and he’d lost his wife three months ago. And for the past six weeks, after the old fart had managed to finally pull himself off of the couch and out of the house, he’d started coming out to the park. Every single morning, Monday through Thursday, and the occasional Sunday, Larry would come to the park and sit on one of the benches along the western rim of the pond. He’d bring a few pieces of bread to break up and toss out to the ducks, and then work on a word puzzle of some kind out of the local paper—he wasn’t sure if it was a crossword or not, because he hadn’t gotten close enough to see just yet.

The old man also came extremely early. It was technically morning and the sun was indeed rising, but it was barely even light enough to be considered dawn. But that was all the better for him because there was very little traffic; he’d only seen one jogger, and they would be on the other side of the park by now.

He sat under the sliding board and waited. Through the thin grove of trees and weeds that separated the playground from the small, scenic area that held the pond, he watched Larry Hoffman take a seat on the same bench he always sat on. He had his little baggie with a few pieces of bread, and thew newspaper tucked under his arm. As soon as Larry’s butt was on the bench, he slowly slid out from beneath the sliding board. Slowly, he made his way across the dew-tinged grass. He didn’t bother going for a shortcut, making his way through the trees and weeds. That would leave prints and evidence. There were far too many things that could go wrong.

Instead, he made his way to the right, to the head of the playground where a sidewalk could take visitors either toward a single, decrepit softball field and the parking lots, or in the direction of the pond. He, of course, took a left to head over to the pond. He did his best to keep his footfalls soft; the park was dead silent, and he wanted to get as close to the old man as he could before being noticed.

Not that it would matter. He'd discovered that, in the end, the fight just wasn't there. His victims seemed to want to die. And he didn’t expect things to be any different with Larry Hoffman.

He got very close indeed, slowly making his way to the edge of the pond and heading for the benches. Larry looked up briefly, his bony fingers tearing apart the slices of bread. He gave the passerby a little smile but returned his attention to the bread.

The ducks were meandering closer as he sat down by Larry. He looked over to the old man and saw that Larry wasn’t pleased to have the company.

“Sorry,” he said to Larry. “It seems I’ve interrupted some private time.”

“Somewhat,” Larry said as he started tossing the bread into the water. “But that’s okay.”

“You’re hurting, aren’t you?”

Larry turned his head slightly and let out a soft chuckle. “You could say that. Is it that obvious?”

He became aware of a jogger near the other side of the pond. The jogger seemed to not even see them, but it still made him feel on edge. Maybe this wasn't going to be the best time to act.

“Maybe not obvious,” he said, “but it shows to those that bother paying attention to others rather than staying isolated in their own little worlds.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I understand that,” Larry said. “Me, though…I suppose I’ve gotten used to the isolation.”

He looked over and watched the jogger disappear around a curb in the trail that led away from the pond, leading him to the other side of the pond. The brief distraction had been enough of a reminder of how urgent his work was—of how quick and decisive he truly needed to be.

“I can tell. But I assure you, Larry,” he said, quickly taking the switchblade from his pocket and instantly flicking out the blade, “the pain is almost over.”

When he plunged the knife into Larry Hoffman's chest, the old man dropped the remainder of the bread to the ground. He didn't put up a fight, and he didn't even seem interested in trying to breathe just as soon as the knife pushed past his breastbone. In fact…he almost looked relieved.

“Rest now, old man,” he said as he pulled the knife out of Larry’s chest.

He wiped Larry’s blood off on the old man’s coat, retracted the blade, and put it back in his pocket. He then sat there for just a few seconds as the ducks came for their crumbs. he watched the ducks feed for a moment as more sunlight spilled across the park. Finally, a few minutes later, he left Larry Hoffman alone on the bench with his crossword left unfinished but is life (and pain) very much complete.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Hey. You awake?”

Rachel was indeed awake, and she came even more awake at the sound of Jack’s voice. “Mmm hmm," she said, rolling over to face him. "Have been for a while. Which is odd because I was sure yesterday's little adventures would have worn me out."

“Maybe there was too much adrenaline?”

“I don’t know…there wasn’t much excitement.”

They lay face to face, their noses just an inch or so away from one another. He'd stayed the night several times over the past six months, and Rachel had made sure to talk about this with Paige. Earlier on, the excuse of him staying just as one more person to take care of her was an easy one to sell. But things were different now. And the last thing she wanted to do was lie to her daughter. She didn't think Paige would care if Jack stayed over (she'd likely be very excited about it, in fact) but Rachel couldn't help but feel a little guilty about it.

Slowly, Jack lifted his head and looked to the bedside table behind Rachel. “It’s five after six. You wake up Paige at 6:30, right?”

“Yeah.” She loved that he knew these little details about her life.

“Well,” he said, his arm snaking over her wait beneath the covers. “What on earth could we find to do for the next twenty-five minutes?” He pulled her closer and kissed her lightly on the jaw.

“Jack, I know you don’t stay over very often,” she said, “but you know the rules. I won’t kiss you if I have morning breath.”

“That’s fine,” he said, moving his lips from her jaw to her neck. “I’ll just have to find some other places to kiss.”

As he moved from her neck to her collarbone, his head slowly moving under the covers, Rachel gave into the moment. It was more than just the feeling of Jack’s lips on her—which were still moving teasingly lower and lower—but the idea that despite all she’d been through, she could still be this happy upon waking up in the morning. She could recall being this happy with Peter near the start of their marriage, but when it became clear that her career was going to take a lot of time away from them, he'd grown slowly distant. So, to wake up to something like this after so long was a true gift… in more ways than one.

Jack was taking his time and had made it to her navel. She was tensing up slightly in anticipation of what would come next, as his slow progress was the ultimate tease.

So when his phone began to ring from his nightstand, she wanted to reach out and smash the damn thing. Worst of all, it wasn’t just any ring…it was the ring he’d assigned specifically for Director Anderson.

Jack’s kisses came to a stop, and he listed himself up a bit. She peered down at him as he peered up like a child hidden away in a blanket fort. "If it wasn't Anderson, I'd let it ring," he said.

“I know,” she said, surprised at just how frustrated she was at the situation. “But the next time we get the chance—”

“I’ll gladly pick up where I left off.” With that, he scrambled to his side of the bed and grabbed up his phone. “This is Rivers.”

Rachel nearly got out of bed and started to get dressed. But instead, she lay there propped her head up on her hand. She watched Jack move, his back slightly arched downward as he half-leaned off of the bed. She took in the bulky shape of his shoulders and the way the muscles moved slightly. he readjusted his body, the sheets slipping slightly to show his hips.

Okay, yeah, I damn well better get out of this bed now or Paige is going to be late for school.

With a heavy sigh, Rachel slipped out of bed. She and Jack were beyond modesty, so she changed out of her sleep clothes—an old band tee shirt and a pair of basic underwear—and into a tee shirt and jeans right in front of him. He watched her as he listened and, again, realized that she’d forgotten what it was like for a man to study and appreciate her body. It made her want him even more…enough to make her wonder if a side effect of the treatment she’d been receiving was periodic surges in sexual appetite.

She did her best to listen in to the conversation Jack was having with Anderson. But, as was the case with most conversations with Assistant Director Anderson, Jack’s part consisted of a few “Yeah”s and “Okay”s until he ended it with a, “I’ll be out there in half an hour. Oh, of course. Thanks.”

When he ended the call and got out of bed wearing only his boxers, Rachel made herself turn away. She walked into the master bathroom and began brushing her teeth. before placing the brush in her mouth, she asked: “Was that a break on our case by any chance?”

“Might be. We’ve got a murdered elderly man at Rogers Park. By himself, all alone on a bench. Anderson figured it seemed just sad enough to be linked to our other two victims.”

“Yeah, that does sound like a pretty sad scene. Next question…a bit awkward. Am I supposed to come as well?”

“Yeah, he specifically asked that you come along.”

She nodded and, though her first reaction was one of excitement, she also realized it would be the first time in a long time that she wouldn't be taking Paige to school. She wondered if breaking such a routine would throw her off and bring up that dreaded conversation about what this new life after cancer was supposed to look like. What truly surprised her, though, was to understand that if Paige did have issues with it, then Rachel had no problem choosing her family first. She’d explain that she had to go this morning because her boss had already asked, but she’d make every effort to make sure it didn’t happen again for quite some time.

“Now I have an award question,” Jack said as he slid into a pair of slacks he grabbed from the closet. When he’d started staying over on occasion during the worst of the treatment’s effects, he’d left a few changes of clothes for future occasions.

“What’s that?”

“Do you think Grandma Tate has already shipped up anything for breakfast? I’d really like to grab something quick before we head out.”

***

Rachel hoped the ease of the morning at home was a sign of things to come. Grandma Tate had whipped up something; she’d tried her hand at a Nutella crepe recipe she’d seen the day before and had a warm plate of them ready and waiting when they came downstairs. Not only that, but when Rachel pulled Paige to the side and told her about needing to leave for work early, she took it well. Actually, she took it very well. Rachel could only assume Paige was seeing this as a return to normalcy—a life where they didn’t have to constantly worry day after day if her mother was going to die less than a year after her father had been murdered.

It had sent Rachel and Jack out toward Rogers Park with a positive outlook on the day—or, rather, as positive as it could be knowing they were about to step onto the site where an elderly man had been killed.

It was just shy of 7:00 when they arrived. The runners and dog-walkers had started to show up, but the park was still quiet. Located fifteen minutes away from Rachel’s house, Rogers Park was relatively small. It consisted of just a few pavilions for picnics and gatherings, two separate playgrounds (one for toddlers and one for older kids), a duck pond, and about three and a half miles of trails that wound around the park and slightly into its wooded borders.

The information Jack had been given led them to the western edge of the park, where the duck pond was located. When they arrived, each entrance to the pons and the small walkway that circled it had been blocked off by crime scene tape. Three police officers were already on the scene. One was taking copious notes about the area, another was on the phone, and another stood just outside of the crime scene tape, standing guard.

They flashed their badges, and the office on guard nodded, gently lifting up the tape to let them through. They ducked under and came face to face with the dead man. The officer who had been taking notes walked over to them, frowning.

“It’s bad enough to see this sort of thing,” he said, nodding to the dead man on the bench, “but it’s so much worse when it’s a kid or an elderly person.”

“Do we have a name?” Rachel asked.

“Larry Hoffman, aged eighty-nine.”

“Did you get that from his wallet?”

“Nope. The body hasn’t been touched yet. But there were only three vehicles in the lot when we arrived. We ran the plates. One belonged to a woman of twenty-two, another to a gentleman that works the grounds here, and then one that belonged to an eighty-nine-year-old man named Larry Hoffman. The faces on the records we pulled matched.”

Rachel nodded as she and Jack stepped closer to Mr. Hoffman. From first glance, it appeared that he'd been stabbed in the chest, high up near the neck. The wound had bled freely, staining the front of his button-down plaid shirt. His head was tilted back, his stringy grey hair tossed gently by the slight morning breeze. She took note of the plastic nag on the bench beside him. There was a whole piece of loaf bread and a partial one inside the bag. The partial one looked like it had been torn apart.

“A forensics team is on the way,” the note-taking office said. “I expect them any minute now, actually.”

“Great, thanks,” Rachel said. And then, without saying anything to Jack or the cop, she turned slightly away and pulled out her cellphone. When she pulled up the document she’d been keeping her notes on and then copied and pasted a phone number into her dialer, Jack stepped behind her, looking over her shoulder.

“Dr. Jensen?” he asked.

“Yes. I figure we can ask if she ever had Mr. Hoffman as a patient. If she did, then I think the link becomes pretty solid and undeniable.”

“Yeah, but her alibi was pretty solid, too.”

“I’m not thinking she’s the killer…not really,” she said as she placed the call. “But maybe another patient, or—”

“Hello?”

“Good morning, Dr. Jensen,” Rachel said. “This is Agent Rachel Gift….from yesterday. I’m sorry to call so early, but I have a very quick question for you.”

“Of course, go ahead.”

“Have you ever worked with a gentleman by the name of Larry Hoffman?”

There was a pause of only two or three seconds before Dr. Jensen said, “No. That name doesn’t sound familiar. Should it?”

“Maybe not. We’re just….just checking up on something. Dr. Jensen, can you tell me what you’ve been up to this morning so far?”

“Well…I woke up at five and met an old patient of mine for coffee.”

“Where?”

“The Starbucks out on Memorial.”

“When did you meet this former patient?”

As she asked this, Rachel became aware of two other people approaching the crime scene tape. The lab kit being carried by the woman in the lead indicated they were the forensics team. On the other end of the phone, Dr. Jensen didn’t sound irritated as she went on, but it was very clear she knew exactly what Rachel was searching for.

“I met her at 5:45. I had a London Fog and a danish that was disappointingly dry. My friend had some weird vanilla cold brew thing. I’d say there were about five other people there when we sat down and had our coffees. I returned home about half an hour ago. I cannot give you the name of the friend because, as I said, she’s a former patient. But I can provide the receipt if necessary.”

Rachel didn’t feel at all attacked; in fact, she appreciated the forthright nature of the reply. “That seems a bit early to meet up with someone for coffee.”

“She works horrendous hours. I met with her as she was clocking out of her night shift as a facilities supervisor at the hospital.”

“Ah, I see,” Rachel said. There were just far too many details to the story to get hung up on. She would be incredibly surprised if Jensen were lying. And she had a receipt as proof. “Thank you, Dr. Jensen.”

“Anything else?”

“No, thank you. Have a good day.”

She ended the call and turned back to the scene. Jack had walked over to where the forensics team was taking their positions. The next few moments would consist of searching for hairs or fibers and dusting for fingerprints. And until they got results, there was nothing they could do at the scene of the crime.

“Jensen never had Mr. Hoffman as a patient,” she told Jack as she stepped up beside him. “And she was also otherwise in engaged when it appears he was murdered.”

“So…shit, there goes our only potential lead.”

“Seems that way. But maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe there’s something else.” She looked over to the note-taking man and said, “Do you have an address for Mr. Hoffman?”

It was the other cop who answered, as he was currently standing by with nothing to do while waiting for forensics to wrap up. “What’s your email address? I’ll shoot you what we have. Address, list of previous employers, everything.”

She just barely saw the look of disappointment on Jack’s face; he seemed to realize it was there, and then did his best to cover it up. She understood it. Already, it seemed like today would be nothing more than more hunting through records and backgrounds. For a moment, she wondered if her returning to work was dragging him down and making his own workload a bit less exciting.

But he said nothing as he looked back to the recently deceased Larry Hoffman. And as Rachel watched the forensics team dust for prints, she understood that there would be one of two outcomes: either there would be prints that would lead them to their killer or some other deranged individual, or there would be no prints or motive…and that would mean Mr. Hoffman was yet another victim of a killer that continued to elude them.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Well, according to the records,” Rachel said as she and Jack stepped out of the car, “there won’t be anyone home. Mr. Hoffman was a widower. He lost his wife about two years ago.”

Larry Hoffman lived on a street that resembled so many others in that part of the city. As they pulled up in front of his house, Rachel was a bit unsettle to find that a lot of the yards and houses along the well-to-do streets were similar to her own. His home was a cute and spacious one-level with a wrap-around porch. Two hummingbird feeders hung from the porch posts.

Looking sadly at the house, Jack nodded. “So let’s see what the neighbors have to say.”

They started at the house to the right, mainly because Rachel could hear the sound of a young girl speaking rather animatedly about something—a surefire sign that everyone else in the house was awake. Being that it was a weekday, she assumed the girl was getting ready for school.

She noticed that Jack allowed her to take the lead, purposefully falling a few steps behind while she knocked on the door. A dog started barking, and the little girl's voice made an announcement to rival that of the dog.

“Mommy! Someone’s at the door!”

The dog continued to bark as a set of hurried footsteps came toward the door. Rachel felt bad for intruding, imagining the chaos of the moment in a house where a girl was getting ready for school. She knew the feeling all too well; the slightest hiccup could throw the entire situation out of control.

The door was opened a foot so, and Rachel could hear a large-bodied dog scratching at the other side, anxious to get a glimpse at the visitors. A pretty but clearly annoyed woman peered out. She looked to be in her late thirties, but her expertly applied makeup made it hard to be certain.

“Yes?” she said.

“I’m so very sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Rachel said. She sowed her badge and said, “I’m Special Agent Rachel Gift, with the FBI. This is my partner, Agent Rivers. It sounds like you’ve got your hands full, but we’d really appreciate just a moment of your time.”

The woman looked at the badge with great interest as she shooed the dog away. She then turned her head slightly to face inside, and said, “Ben! Watch Sophie for a second!”

“Daddy!” the little girl said. “Mommy said watch me! I need to pack my lunch!”

Rachel did her best not to smile as the woman rolled her eyes and stepped out onto the orch. She actually looked slightly relieved to have stepped out of the situation going on inside the house.

“FBI,” she said with uncertainty. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s about your neighbor, Mr. Hoffman,” Jack said from his place on the stairs.

“What about him?” She looked over to his house with sad suspicion.

“What’s your name, ma’am?” Rachel asked.

The women cringed slightly at the term ma’am but looked beyond it. “Regina Flores.”

“Mrs. Flores, Mr. Hoffman was killed earlier this morning.”

Regina took in a sharp breath and looked to the house again. From what Rachel could tell, the sad look that came across her face was genuine. It took just a few seconds for the first tear to escape the corner of her eye.

“Were you close?” Rachel asked.

"Not really," she said. Her voice cracked a bit as she wiped the tear away and then caught another as it leaked over. "But we knew him well, you know? He was the sweetest old man…and he…God, he was murdered?”

"Yes. His body was found at Rogers Park. Right now, we're trying to get as much information as we can about him. I'm sure you know his wife passed away not too long ago, so there's no immediate source of information."

“Sure…sure, I can try.”

“Would you happen to know why he might have been to Rogers Park?”

“Yeah…he was…well, was he by the duck pond?”

“He was. There was some bread and a plastic bag at the scene. We assumed he was feeding the ducks.”

“Yeah. A few times a week, without fail.”

“What else can you tell us about him? Do you know if he ever had any visitors?”

“I don’t recall ever seeing any over there. I do know that he had a friend who used to come over to check in on him after his wife died, but he died just a few weeks back.”

“Do you know how he died?”

“Heart attack. Mr. Hoffman was sitting over there on his porch after the funeral. He was drinking vodka. My husband went over to talk to him and said he seemed to be doing fine. Just…just sad, you know?”

“How long had you been neighbors with him?” Jack asked.

“He was here when Ben and I moved in eight years ago.”

“And did you ever notice anything unusual about him?”

“No. Nothing at all. But what I can tell you is that when his wife passed away, we were worried about him. You know those stories you hear of lifelong loves…when one dies at an old age, the other one goes soon after from a broken heart? We were really worried about that. Mr. Hoffman wasn’t quite himself when he lost Lucy.”

“How so?”

“He was always so warm and charming…always good for a joke. He was still sweet and caring after she died, but you could tell…a lot of that warmth was gone.”

Knowing what Regina had waiting for her inside, Rachel handed her a business card from her inner jacket pocket. "When you get a chance, could you and your husband maybe think it over…see if you can come up with anything that might not be coming to mind? And please call if something comes up."

“Of course.”

“Sorry to break the news like this,” Rachel said.

Regina only nodded as he pocketed the card. She then went back inside to be with her family to get their day started off on this somber note.

Jack started walking down the sidewalk, heading for Mr. Hoffman’s house and the neighboring house beside it. She thought of what Regina said about how he’d been so utterly devastated when losing his wife. It was yet another victim of this killer who had dealt with immense grief from the loss of a spouse.

Was it just a coincidence?

“You okay, Rachel?” Jack asked.

She didn’t realize she’d zoned out until she heard his voice. She blinked and nodded, not quite ready to argue the grief aspect as a lead until she could ruminate on it a bit longer. In the meantime, there were more neighbors to question and, hopefully, more substantial leads to uncover.

The house on the other side of Mr. Hoffman netted nothing. There were no lights on inside, and no one came to the door when they knocked. There were no cars parked on the side of the road, but that meant nothing, given that the house was equipped with a two-car garage. For the sake of precision and getting as much information as possible, they tried the next house down, though Rachel was pretty sure they'd learned all they needed from Regina Flores.

At the second house down from Mr. Hoffman’s, the door was answered by a man who looked to be in his sixties. It also appeared as if he was in the middle of getting ready for work. He was working a tie into the collar of his button-down shirt as he greeted them. When Rachel showed her badge, he gave a look similar to the one Regina had shown them. He introduced himself as Stan Tozier and, at first, didn't seem as if he had much to say.

“Oh, God,” he said. “What’s happened?” He stepped out of the doorway and looked up and down the street, as if expecting to see something interesting.

Rachel went through the same spiel she’d shared with Regina, telling him how Mr. Hoffman had been murdered in Rogers Park earlier in the morning. Tozier seemed completely shocked by the news but didn’t have the same emotional reaction as Regina.

“Poor guy,” Tozier said. “I know he lost his wife not too long ago. But other than that, yeah…maybe I wasn’t the best neighbor. I didn’t really know him that well. My wife and I gave him oatmeal cookies every Christmas, just like we do for everyone on the block, but that’s about the extent of it. I did help him change a flat tire on his truck one time. He was friendly as hell, you know? Man, what sort of a sick bastard would kill a guy like that?”

It was a good question. And Rachel kept going back to the scant information they’d learned from Regina Flores pertaining to the personality shift in Mr. Hoffman after the loss of his wife, she couldn’t help but feel that they might have enough to at least start piecing together an answer.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Alice was getting braver.

This morning, she’d taken her first big step toward seeking justice for Alex Lynch—her first step toward making sure Rachel Gift’s reign of terror came to an end.

Alice had driven across town and parked across the street from Rachel’s house. Alice knew Rachel’s history very well. She knew that when Alex escaped from prison, Rachel’s house had been under close police scrutiny twenty-four hours a day for nearly an entire week and a half. And then she’d been moved to a safehouse that had also been watched under a careful eye.

But none of those safety measures were in place anymore. Alex Lynch was dead. He’d been painted as a villain several times over and little miss Rachel Gift had killed him. So now that the Boogeyman was dead and gone, everyone assumed Rachel was safe again.

Only Alice knew how wrong that notion was. She was going to make Rachel pay. Ideally, Alice figured she could kill her, but she didn't quite know if she was capable of the act of murder. There were times when she read through Alex's letters and thought about what might have been when the idea of killing Rachel seemed normal. A quick shot from a gun in an unsuspecting place—like her front yard, perhaps.

Only, she was beginning to piece together the idea that Rachel wasn’t home this morning. It became even more evident when she watched her daughter and an older lady—presumably. a grandmother or nanny—come out of the house. She knew that Rachel’s daughter was named Paige. She also knew that Paige’s father had been killed by Alex very soon after he’d broken out of prison.

For just an instant, the idea of striking right then and there crossed her mind. She could get out of her car and knock the old broad down. She could take Paige and drive somewhere…maybe back to her childhood home in rural Virginia, a little speck of a town with less than a thousand people. Maybe she’d hold on to Paige for several days before she released the first message, letting Rachel know that her daughter was safe but being held by someone that despised everything she, Rachel, stood for. Just imagining the grief and torment it would cause Rachel…to know that someone had taken her child from her and there was nothing she could do about it…it was delightful.

But even Alice had her limits. She would never endanger a child. Besides, it wasn't poor little Paige's fault that her mother was a narcissistic bitch.

However, seeing the older lady escort Paige to the car parked in the driveway did make Alice wonder where Rachel might be. As far as Alice knew, she was still somewhat sick, taking experimental treatments of some kind. Based on the bit of snooping she’d done, she was pretty sure Rachel was having to leave the country for some of the treatments, but she didn’t know where or how frequently the trips were.

Surely, the woman wasn't back at work already, was she? Then again…hell, maybe she was. Rachel Gift couldn't go very long without feeling that he was super-important. God forbid people weren't focusing on her in some way, shape, or form. And an FBI agent struggling with cancer, coming back to the office to hunt down bad guys? Yeah, that seemed like just the sort of fame that attention-seeking whore would need after such a long absence.

Alice stayed where she was and watched the car pull out of the driveway. She watched it putter away down the street, likely to take Paige to school. She looked back to the house and thought about breaking in. But she had done a bit of reconnaissance while Rachel had been sick. She knew there was a camera-based doorbell at the front and a wooden gate blocking off the backyard. If she broke in, there was a very good chance she'd be found out and the plans she'd spent so long formulating would be at risk of blowing up.

No, she’d been patient so far…she could wait a bit longer. She would do this right…for Alex. To make sure he was avenged properly.

Sneering at Rachel Gift’s perfect little home, Alice pulled away from the curb across the road. The perfect house, the perfect life, and a career that seemed to be perfect—Rachel Gift had it all. But if Alice got her way, she’d take it all…every last bit of it, right down to the breath in Rachel’s lungs.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“The link so far is grief,” Rachel said. “Other than that and the fact that all of them are dead, grief is the only solid link we have."

They were passing through a drive-thru for coffee, with Jack behind the wheel. She could tell that he wasn’t completely sold on the theory, and she didn’t blame him. However, when dealing with a killer who left nothing behind and the victims simply didn’t seem to line up at all, Rachel knew that sometimes looking at abstract approaches were necessary.

“So let's think that through," Jack said as he handed his credit card to the woman at the drive-thru window. “What’s the assumption? That we have a killer that is targeting people based on the fact that they’ve suffered losses and are depressed?”

“Maybe. Let’s face it, Jack. We’ve seen stranger things while working together.”

“That’s for sure.”

He took the offered coffees from the woman, handed them to Rachel, and then found a parking spot in the lot.

"So maybe," Rachel said, handing him his coffee, "the key could be in the people our victims lost. Maybe the lost loved ones is the connection.”

“Could be,” Jack agreed. “The hard part there is the fact that the people who would be best suited to interview about it are dead. We could run it through the database, though. See what comes up.”

“Lost loved ones…” Rachel murmured. There was another idea there—a faint and desperate one for sure—but it was better than nothing. And hadn’t she just ruminated on how the most abstract approaches were often the only routes to pursue?

“What about lost loved ones?” Jack asked.

“Well, we can go ahead and check the database. But the deaths of the victims’ loved ones will share at least one thing in common right from the start.”

“Care to share?”

“Funeral homes.”

“And you think….what? The owners of funeral homes are somehow colluding with someone to make sure they keep making money?”

“No, I wasn’t going to go that far. I was thinking more along the lines of guest books, maybe even methods of payment if it came down to life insurance payouts.”

Jack considered this as he sipped at his coffee. “I do think it might be a stretch, but it beats the hell out of sitting at. HQ and going through the database. We’ll need to get the names and dates of death for each one, though.”

“That’s fine,” she said, already grabbing for her phone. “I’ll make the call to Records and Research.”

He gave her a playfully aghast look. “My God, you really did miss this, didn’t you? You’re calling Records?”

She only smiled at him as she placed the call. Yes, she had missed it, even the most boring and monotonous parts. She’d fully expected a bit of ribbing if she showed any signs of being overenthusiastic, but that was fine so long as it was only coming from Jack. She glared at him, returning his playful scorn as the line was answered, and she began to ask about the final details of the dead and departed.

***

It had indeed been a boring call, but it had also ended up paying off. It did feel strange to be looking into the deaths of three people who weren't their victims, but the coincidence they found turned out to be enough to get them to follow up on the strange theory. As it turned out, all three of the victims' loved ones—the deceased loved ones who had caused the grief of the victims—had been serviced by the same funeral parlor.

In a city the size of Richmond, this wasn't unheard of, of course, but when you threw a murder case into such a coincidence, it became notable. Jack drove them to the funeral home, located in a nicer part of the city, roughly eight miles away from an exclusive golf course. Palmer Ridge Funeral home only looked like a funeral home because of the signage at the front of the building. Otherwise, it could have been mistaken for any number of businesses. There was a clean, modern aesthetic to the exterior. Rachel actually appreciated the approach. It was about time a funeral home tried to do away with the gloom and almost stereotypical funeral home approaches.

However, the interior of the Palmer Ridge Funeral Home wasn’t anything special. The lighting was a bit brighter than she’d seen in most other funeral homes and the carpet was a shade of calming blue, but everything else had that dour funeral home feel. There was a small alcove to the right as they came in that served as a welcome center and reception desk. As they approached it, a woman reading something on a laptop looked up at them.

“Good morning,” she said. “Can I help you?”

Rachel took the lead, again feeling the push and surge of excitement of being back after so much time away. She showed her badge and ID as she said, "We're looking into a series of murders that have us searching for information regarding the passing of loved ones in the lives of our victims. So far, the only link we have is that the funeral services for each one were held here.”

“I see,” the woman said with a sad expression. “If you’ll hold just one moment, I’ll get Mr. Hoffman for you. He’s the funeral director and owner. All requests like that do through him.”

As the receptionist picked up the phone to buzz Howell, Rachel again considered the question Jack had asked back in the car. Why would having the same funeral home in common be of any relevance? It was a good starting point, for one thing. And she’d learned long ago in this job that other coroners and funeral directors could prove to be vital sources of information.

After about two minutes, a tall man in a very nice suit came walking down the hall to their left. Rachel guessed him to be close to sixty. He was clean-shaven, and the black hair on his head that was going grey worked well on him. He was quite handsome but held a bit of the creep factor Rachel believed most funeral home directors possessed.

“Agents,” the man said, approaching with a smile that was clearly rehearsed and forced upon his face at all times. “I’m Dean Howell, the owner of Palmer Ridge Funeral Home. If you’ll follow me back to my office, I can see what I can do about getting you the answers you need.”

He didn’t even wait for them to respond before turning back around and heading back the way he had come. Exchanging a slightly irritated look, Rachel and Jack followed. Along the primary hallway, the walls were decorated with tranquil paintings of countryside pastures and seascapes. The place was very quiet and smelled like a cleaning crew had recently visited. Rachel thought she could smell carpet shampoo.

Howell entered a door on the right at the end of the hall. The door was already open, revealing a dark office—not because of the light, but because of the overabundance of oak and mahogany. From the desk to the bookcases, everything was a dark color, and the office smelled strongly of furniture polish.

“So, I understand you’re looking for information on different services that were held here?” he asked as he settled down behind a pretentiously large desk.

"That's right," Jack said. He then gave a very brief overview of the case as it stood, keeping bare-bones and simple. Howell listened intently, and even before Jack had finished up his summary, Howell began typing something into his laptop.

“What are the names of the deceased?” Howell asked. “Not the recently deceased, but the loved ones in question?”

Rachel listed them off, starting with Lorrie Klein’s husband and ending with Larry Hoffman’s wife. Howell nodded along as he typed each name in. And by the time he pulled up Mrs. Hoffman’s name and was able to confirm that Palmer Ridge had indeed conducted all three services, a tired look came over his face. Rachel could tell from his expression that Howell was now aware that he wasn’t going to be able to get rid of them so easily.

“So, now that we’ve confirmed that all three of their services were held here,” Howell said, “what is it you think I can help you with?”

Rachel knew she’d have to be crafty here, and she was up for the challenge. It was yet another of those moments that helped her to realize how much she’d missed this—and how good she could be at her job. In her own thoughts, she had Howell listed as a potential suspect. All three service at his funeral home, and then the grieving loved ones having been killed in such a clean way with no evidence…it did seem strange. Yet, at the same time, while trying to grill him, she also needed to get as much information about the services and the deceased as she could.

“It would be incredibly helpful if we could get the guestbooks,” Jack said. “But it’s my understanding that the family usually ends up taking those, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right. Now, I could give you the names of the people who took them, but it’s been my experience that those sort of trinkets usually get passed around and rarely stay with whoever took them.”

“What about flower arrangements?” Rachel asked. “Do you end up getting the receipts or invoices for the arrangements that come in?”

“We do. Not all of them, though. It really depends on when they arrive, who orders them, and things like that.”

“Can you have someone take a look to see if there are invoice and billing addresses for these three services?”

"Actually," Howell said, maneuvering his mouse around the trackpad by the laptop, "if you give me a minute or so, I can find that for you right now."

“And would you be able to tell us who was in charge of the services on the days in question?” Rachel asked. She’d asked it as casually as possible, hoping he wouldn’t realize he was, in a very subtle way, being accused.

"Well, that's actually rather simple," he said, still looking around for the flower invoices. "For Mrs. Howell and Troy Klein, the person in charge would have been me. I've only missed a week's worth of services since taking over here a little less than two years ago. But for this other woman, Joe Wickline’s fiancé, Kara Spencer …it appears that, given the date of the service, I wasn’t even here yet. That would have been about two months before I took the job.”

“Where did you come in from?” Jack asked.

“I was the assistant manager for a funeral home just outside of Nashville.”

“For how long?”

“A little shy of ten years.”

“What brought you to Richmond?” Rachel asked.

“This job. A friend of a friend told me the owner was wanting to get out of the game and was going to be looking for a replacement, so I applied. I never did like the Nashville area…it’s getting too damned big and crowded.”

Apparently, he'd not even began to understand her true reason for asking him the question. And given the nature of his answer, she supposed it made sense. If he wasn't even working at Palmer Ridge during Kara Spencer's service—if he hadn't even been living in the state at the time—then there was no connection to all three of the services. In other words, he'd been downgraded to a weak potential suspect to no suspect at all.

“Now, I just printed out the small bit of information I have on those invoices for flower arrangements,” he said. “You’ll find them up front at the reception desk as you make your way out.”

“Is there maybe anything we’re missing?” Jack asked. “What other forms of records are sometimes left behind that might help us make connections?”

Howell shrugged. “There’s payment, of course. But I’m sure you understand that without just cause or a warrant, I can’t just hand that sort of information over. I could dig into any sort of catering we may have had for those services for the family night portion, but we tend to always recommend one of two caterers that we specifically work with, so I don’t know that would be much help. Besides, nine times out of ten, it’s just going to end up being one of the same names you’d find on the flower arrangement invoices.”

Rachel nodded disappointingly and looked over to Jack. He returned her nod and got to his feet slowly, extending his hand over the desk to Howell. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Howell.”

“Of course, of course. I just wish I could have been more helpful.”

He exited the office with them, and as they walked, Rachel kept a close eye on him. She studied his facial expressions, his mannerisms, even the way he moved. From what she could tell, he wasn't nervous, scared, or even all that bothered by their visit. It made her even more certain that he had nothing to hide and was in no way involved with anything shady in regards to the murders.

Rachel honestly didn’t think the information on the floral receipts would be of any use, but she also didn't want to leave behind anything that could potentially be of value. So she accepted the printouts on their way out. Howell waved politely to them as he started back down the hallway, thus ending their expedition to the funeral home.

“I won’t say it was a wasted trip, but…” Jack said.

“It’s another item we can check off the list,” Rachel pointed out as they made their way back to the car. “And if we continue to get nothing from forensics or the corner, we would have ended up here eventually.”

“I know. It just feels like we’re scrounging…sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

He was right, and she knew it. And as defeated as she felt in that moment, she had to remind herself that she was still on a case—and that was something she would have ever expected even as recently as yesterday.

“So, now what?” he asked. “I hate to rush you right back to the office and your cubicle just so we can stare at records and files all day."

She knew where she wanted to go. It was strange, but the mere thought of going there calmed her a bit. She grinned, able to fully accept what it might mean.

“Any chance you want to hang out on my patio? In the glider?”

“What?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know…it’s the place I’ve done all of my heavy thinking these past few months. A lot of good thinking.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense, given everything you’ve gone through. I don’t think I could get away with that. If Anderson knew you and I were just hanging out on your patio, he’d get pretty pissed. But if that’s what you need, I think that’s fine. I can drop you off…it’s on the way back to the office. If Anderson asks, I can tell him you got a little overwhelmed…being your first case back and all.”

She didn’t exactly like the idea of Anderson seeing this as a weakness, but she was willing to risk it. And besides…even though she didn’t want to admit to herself, it was all pretty overwhelming. After all, she’d rushed out of her house this morning to study the scene of a murder for the first time in half a year. It was a lot to digest.

“Yeah, let’s do that,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

"Mind what? That you get to sit on your patio, overlooking your gorgeous backyard with a cup of coffee while I head back to the office to click away in front of a computer? Sure…sounds fine to me."

She chuckled as he reached over and took her hand. She didn’t think she’d feel so polarized to be working on cases involving murder while working alongside Jack. Things were much more serious than they had been six months ago, and she felt almost guilty for feeling this wash of love for him as they moved on to the next step in the case without having any real leads. It felt almost inappropriate to center on those emotions in the midst of a case.

You realize that asking him to live with you is just going to make that so much stranger, right? she asked herself.

She did realize that. But with a killer on the loose and with not even the slightest clue of how to find them, that was a worry she had to push to the side for now.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Though they shared a slow, lingering kiss in front of her house before she stepped out of the car, Rachel could tell that something was still bothering Jack. She was beyond thinking it was just the overall weirdness of having her back on the job. There was no distance to it, nothing crude or off-putting. There was just something off about him—the sort of small, barely-there disturbance that people in committed relationships start to notice about one another.

She found the house empty, as he'd expected. It was nearing ten o'clock, which meant that Paige was in school and Grandma Tate was either at her water aerobics class at the YMCA or the small knitting and crochet group she’d become a part of. The woman had such an active schedule that Rachel had a hard time keeping track of it.

She heated up the coffee remaining from the morning and poured herself a small bowl of cereal before stepping out onto the patio. She’d always enjoyed the time she spent out on the glider, but she supposed she had never expected to feel the threat of having it taken away. Even when the cancer had started to disappear and she'd started feeling significantly better, she'd never in her wildest dreams imagined that she'd be able to go back to work the way she once had. And because of that, she'd never had cause to think that her quiet, nearly-medicative sessions on the glider might come to an end.

That was the first heavy thought she studied and untangled as she sat down. If she was going to go back to work as an agent in the capacity she was used to, then yes…she was going to have to give up her patio time. This harsh realization also made her think of Paige. Her daughter had always been her biggest cheerleader, never wanting her mother to quit her job, even if it was because of a cancerous tumor in her brain. Now, if she was looking at returning to work in a full capacity—even if not right away, but perhaps over the course of the next few months—would she have to break the promises she'd made to Paige? These were promises about spending more time with her and about spending fewer nights away from home because of a case.

Now, Rachel, she thought to herself. That’s not why you came here.

“Yeah, I know,” she answered out loud and then sipped from her coffee. She realized she’d just barely finished the one she’d gotten at the drive-thru. She frowned at the cup; the last thing she needed was a case of the jitters. Se set the cup down on the nearby patio table and did her best to start thinking about the case from every angle imaginable.

She was mostly comfortable assuming that their three victims had indeed been targeted because of their grief. It was a ridiculous thing to think, but it seemed much more than just coincidental. But the only avenue she could think of that would cause a killer to target people for grief had been pursued in speaking to Dr. Jensen and that had been a dead end.

So what were they missing? The only real hope they had at this point was that forensics would be able to find something from the scene of Mr. Hoffman’s death, or from his body. And Rachel had never liked pinning her hopes on another department.

Oddly enough, her thoughts kept going back to the funeral parlor. Now that they were beyond that small speculation, she felt almost ridiculous for even thinking Howell might have been involved. She wondered if that vague hope had come from not having any leads or from six months away from the job and simply jumping at shadows. Still, the overall feel of Palmer Ridge Funeral Home kept sticking with her—despite its deceiving exterior charms. And when she focused on that feeling for too long, she started to feel a slight panic-tinged feeling.

It’s because it reminds you of death, she told herself. It reminds you of death and just how close you’ve some to experiencing it.

Realizing this bothered her because she hadn’t given death a lot of thought ever since the treatments in Switzerland had started going well. But now it was back, and she couldn't shake it. When things had been at their worst—when some of her hair had started falling out and the initial treatments had her feeling weak and sleeping for upwards of eighteen hours a day—Rachel had considered the idea that she could very well die. And she'd told herself that if she did survive it, she would never again take life for granted…not a single part of it.

Yet here she was, already tasked with a case that seemed to be unsolvable, finding it hard to prioritize her life the way it should be. With the image and feel of the funeral home still lodged in her mind, she thought about the collection of business cards and pamphlets she had upstairs. She'd amassed quite the collection ever since being diagnosed with the tumor, and she knew there were at least two very good therapists she could call to work through all of this. The specialists in Switzerland had referred her to an exceptional therapist in Australia who worked exclusively on a remote basis, dealing with cancer survivors.

Thinking of that particular therapist brought the cascading thoughts of death and defeat to a stop. Thinking about her had brought another thought to mind…something about the case…

“Referrals,” she said, thinking the word over.

Rockling gently on the glider, she slowly understood that maybe she wasn’t only hung up on the funeral home because of her own personal issues. Maybe there was a bit of unsettled business regarding the case. Thinking of the idea of referrals and how Dean Howell had come to Richmond from Nashville to run a funeral home did open up another possibility. And while it, too, may come to nothing, it was at least worth exploring.

Putting the idea into order in her head, she called the Palmer Ridge Funeral Home and asked to speak to Mr. Howell. She was connected right away, and Howell answered on the second ring. Rachel noticed at once that the voice he used when he had no idea who he was speaking to was much more rehearsed and sympathetic than when speaking to him in person.

“Mr. Howell, it’s Special Agent Gift again. I’m sorry to bother you, but I did have another question for you.”

"Sure. How can I help?" She noticed that some of the calm and reserve had dropped out of his voice when realizing there wasn't a potential job on the other end of the phone.

“I’m curious….coming from Nashville to a new place—a new funeral home—was it difficult to receive clients?” She nearly asked if clients was the right term to use in regards to a funeral home but figure it was best not to get sidetracked.

"No, not really. As morbid as it may seem, funeral home businesses are not all that competitive. Every now and then, you'll have someone that has a less-than-favorable experience and will switch funeral homes if they have another loved one pass away later on, but that’s about it.”

“I see. So…in moving to a new city and taking over a sizable funeral home, you didn’t need to get referrals to make sure the home didn’t lose traction in the switch in management?”

“Oh, no, I get a few. It’s just like any other business. Networking is always very important.”

“And what does networking entail in the funeral home industry?”

Howell chuckled, perhaps beginning to find the conversation a little odd. "Well, there are florists, caterers, even interior decorators. Then there are also things like grief counselors, the heads of grief support groups, and things like that."

“Ah, okay. I wonder…could you quickly take a look back through your records to see if the funerals of Troy Klien and Lucy Hoffman happened to come by referral?”

"Sure. And I can tell you right away that the Klein funeral was indeed a referral. It came from a close acquaintance of mine…someone I met and briefly dated when I first arrived in Richmond. She's a grief counselor. Or, rather, she was. I believe she's switched to addictions as of late. We broke things off as we haven't really kept in touch."

She said nothing, not really caring much about Howell’s love life. She was, however, very interested in hearing that at least one of the funerals was playing into her theory—a theory that those funerals may be linked after all, through a third party.

“Oh, and yes…right here,” Howell says. “It seems that the Hoffman funeral was also sent my way through the same therapist. Only for the Hoffman funeral, she’s listed as a support group leader…probably so that her name was already on file to suggest to the husband if he needed help in the days to come.”

“What’s her name?”

Howell hesitated for only a moment, but it was long enough for Rachel to understand that he might be a bit uncomfortable in sharing it. “Annie Brighton. She’s got an office somewhere over near the VCU campus.”

“Any chance you have her contact information?”

“I do. And this…this is just so you can ask her questions, right? Not because you suspect her of anything?”

“That’s right,” Rachel said, slightly annoyed by the question.

“All the same…things didn’t end the best between us. I’d appreciate it, if possible, if you don’t let her know I mentioned her or gave you her information.”

“There’s no reason she’d need to know that, Mr. Howell.”

Seemingly satisfied with this, he relented and gave Rachel the physical address of Annie Brighton’s office as well as her phone number. Rachel ended the call and nearly called Jack right away. Instead, she scrolled through her contacts and stopped at the first of two local medical examiners that ended up with just about every body Rachel had ever been connected to as an agent.

She placed the call and, after speaking to a timid receptionist, had the medical examiner on the phone after just two rings. Her name was Doris Coleman, and she possessed a voice that was far too bright and chipper for an ME, in Rachel's opinion.

“Agent Gift!” Doris exclaimed. “Back at work?”

“I am.”

“I take it, then, that you’ve kicked cancer’s ass?”

"I gave it a beating, but the fight isn't quite over. Thanks for asking, but I have a quick question for you. Did you, by any chance, get the body of a recently murdered elderly man by the name of Larry Hoffman?"

“I did, in fact. I’ve given him a preliminary look-over, but nothing detailed yet. Why? What are you looking for?"

“You still have all personal effects found on the body, right?”

“Right.”

“I need you or someone on your staff to take a look in his wallet. I’d like to know if there’s a business card or any sort of information for a woman named Annie Brighton.”

“Sure thing. Is it urgent, or can you wait about five minutes?”

“Five minutes is fine. Thanks, Doris.”

“Of course. It was nice to hear your voice after so long!”

Rachel gave her thanks and then ended the call. She knew that even if there was a link between Mr. Hoffman and Annie Brighton, it didn’t mean anything. The real missing link was Joe Wickline’s deceased fiancé—Kara Spencer. If there happened to be a link between her, Lucy Hoffman, Troy Klein, and Annie Brighton, that was just going to be too hard to ignore.

Flimsy lead or not, she figured it was time to call Jack. As she placed the call, she looked out over her backyard and smiled. Apparently, the glider was good for dissecting cases, too.

“Miss me already?” Jack asked.

“Terribly. But I do think I may have another link. Will you be free in about twenty minutes? I’m coming back to the office…maybe with a new lead.”

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

They met at Jack's cubicle, which was completely lacking in any sort of decoration or real organization. When Rachel stepped into the open space, she scowled at the pack of opened snack cakes. From just looking at them, she could tell they'd been there for a while, all dried out and hard.

“I know, I know,” he said. “But it’s not like it’s a place I should really take care of and be proud of, you know? I’m still angling for that office.”

“How’s that going for you?”

He shook his head at her as she propped her backside against the edge of his desk. “So, you say you have a new lead?”

“I do. I got an inkling of an idea and called Howell back.” She told him about her conversation with him, and then following up with Doris and having her check Mr. Hoffman’s wallet.

“And did she find a business card for Annie Brighton?” Jack asked.

“She did. So now, we need to really dig into Kara Spencer. We need to find out if she has any ties to Annie Brighton.”

“Can’t we just pay Brighton a visit and ask her?”

“Of course. But with no leads, clues, prints, ideas or anything, I’d like to know as much as possible before we go to her.”

“So, it looks like you’re going to end up fishing through the database anyway, huh?”

“Seems that way.”

Jack sighed and gave her a nod. “Make yourself at home. I’m going to need another cup of coffee.”

He walked away, and she sat down behind Jack's laptop. Before logging into the FBI database, she swiped the old, stale pack of donuts in the trashcan sitting under the L-shaped desk. She knew from experience that mining the database wasn't so bad when there was a clear path in mind. It was the directionless, monotonous searching for breadcrumbs that she'd always truly despised.

She started with Kara Spencer first, wanting to see if she could find any ties to support groups. Things as trivial was support groups weren’t often accessible on the database, but the any involvement with a therapist or mental health specialist was; this was often seen as a red flag of sorts in most investigations.

This turned out to be the case with Kara. Up until the day she died, she had been seeing a therapist in the Chesterfield area—a man named Dr. Snyder. As she jotted down Snyder’s name and number, Jack came back through with his cup of coffee. He dragged another chair over from a neighboring vacant cubicle and sat down beside her. “You want me to drive here, too?” he asked.

“No, I’m good.”

“Just so you know, I did check in on the florists from the Palmer ridge receipts. Called them up, spoke to them, even ran background checks. Everything seems to check out as far as I can see.”

She’d expected as much, because trying to find a lead off of the receipts from a florist working a funeral had indeed seemed like an impossibly huge stretch. She took the information in as she continued looking over Kara Spencer’s records. There honestly wasn’t much to see. In fact, the only reason she was listed as having seen a therapist was because she’d been briefly interrogated several years back when local pharmacies had been thought to be involved in illegal prescription drug sales—most notably behavioral drugs like Prozac and Zoloft.

"Well," she said, tapping at the piece of paper she'd jotted the number on. "This might not be much better than the floral receipts, but at least it's something."

She called the number for Dr. Snyder, not realizing until the phone started to ring just how anxious she felt. It reminded her of when she was a much younger agent, naïve enough to think that the next big break was going to be on the other end of every single phone call or interrogation. She’d only spent six months away, but it felt like so much longer in certain respects.

The line was answered by a cheerful woman. “Still Waters Counseling, can I help you?”

“Yes, this is Special Agent Rachel Gift, with the FBI. I need to speak with Dr. Snyder.”

“I’m sorry, but he’s with a client right now.”

“I understand, but this is quite urgent.”

“Unless it’s a life or death matter, Dr. Snyder has very strict policies about not being disturbed in the middle of a session. Perhaps there’s something I can help you with?” Some of the cheer had gone out of her tone during the exchange.

“Maybe so. I’m looking to the details of a former client named Kara Spencer. She passed away several years ago, but we know she saw Dr. Snyder. I'm trying to find out if she ever attended any support groups of during her time with Dr. Snyder."

“I do have access to that information,” the woman said. “When might this have been?”

“It’s been about a year and a half ago.”

“Okay, let’s see…”

Rachel knew there were certain details that couldn’t be shared over the phone—information such as diagnoses and patient histories. But things like support groups and, in some cases, prescriptions that were given, was usually fair game.

"Okay," the woman said after about twenty seconds. "I do see here that Dr. Snyder recommended Ms. Spencer attend a support group dealing with self-esteem issues. Of course, I can't give you details about that."

“I understand. Might you be able to tell us who led that group?”

“Well, the group is apparently no longer meeting. But for the time it was running, it was led by Dr. Annie Brighton.”

Rachel and Jack shared a triumphant glance. Sure, there was still no direct connection to Lorrie Klein’s husband, but two out of three was enough for them to now bring Annie Brighton and her support group into the pool for the case.

“Thank you very much,” Rachel said. “That was exactly what we’re looking for.”

When she ended the call, Jack leaned back in his borrowed chair and sipped from his coffee. “So how do we link Klein to this group?” he wondered out loud. “I mean, I personally think having two hits is enough to go have a talk with Brighton. If we can peg down a timeline of when our victims’ loved ones were attending this group, I think we should be able to get a list of people who were participating, right? And that’s like an entire list of suspects.”

“Maybe. And you’re right. I think two out of three isn’t bad.”

Jack chugged down the remainder of his coffee. “So we’re going to talk to another therapist?”

“Looks like it.”

“Man, how did you manage to live without this thrilling and exciting line of work?” he joked as they made their way to the elevators.

She only chuckled, mainly because she didn’t want to admit that she was finding this exciting. She'd missed just about every aspect of her job while she'd been away, and that included leaving no rock—no matter how boring—unturned. And now that they knew that Kara Spencer had been seeing Annie Brighton, there was yet another rock to look under.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Jack drove them along the western rim of the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. Even along the edge of campus, there were plenty of students out and about. Known to hold one of the country’s better public Arts programs, there were all manner of artists and musicians out enjoying the beautiful fall day.

He was doing his very best to focus on the case, but every time he and Rachel spoke for more than one minute at a stretch, his mind went to the ring. It was starting to feel heavy again, and there were moments where he felt there was a message written on his forehead in bright red marker—a message that read: I WANT TO MARRY YOU AND I HAVE A RING IN MY POSSESION!

He was feeling that way now as the car fell into silence. He was used to this; of course, he knew that whenever they were drawing close to a destination where they would be questioning someone, Rachel always took a few silent moments to think of her approach. It varied from person to person, so he was always treated to something of a surprise when they arrived at their destination.

Dr. Annie Brighton's office was located on the lower level of a larger building that housed Still Waters Counseling. Her name was one of three features in smaller print beneath the sign leading into the parking lot. Jack parked in an empty spot in front of Brighton's office. When Rachel unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out of the car as if on auto-pilot, he was once again amazed at just how quickly she was falling back into the groove of things. He could easily tell that there were certain things that she used to consider mundane that were getting her excited now, but he supposed that was to be expected. But in terms of finding her speed and hitting her stride, it seemed that she hadn’t missed a step.

They entered the office to an empty waiting area. A young woman with bright blonde hair sat behind the smell welcome desk, greeting them with a smile. “Good morning! Can I help you?”

“Yes, we need to speak with Dr. Brighton,” Jack said.

With a frown that almost looked sincere, the receptionist said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. You just missed her.”

“Where did she go?” Rachel asked.

The woman eyed them with a bit of suspicion before responding. "Can I ask what this is in reference to?"

Both Jack and Rachel pulled their IDs at the same time. “Special Agents Rivers and Gift,” Jack said. “We need to speak to her about former clients.”

“Oh, oh I see. Well…” She stopped for a moment, as if considering whether or not she really needed to give the next bit of information. “If you head out right now, you might be able to catch her. She’s just across the street at the Morrison Community Center. She leads a support group twice a week during lunch.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said and instantly headed for the door. Jack followed behind her, again finding it encouraging that she was so involved and concerned about every little detail and movement of the case. The Rachel he’d come to know and love before the cancer would have already been discouraged at the lack of clues and found the entire process of going from doctor to doctor, from therapist to therapist, a complete and total bore. But she seemed more determined than ever, and he found that it was actually encouraging him as well.

He was also impressed with how she was able to bounce back and forth between all-business and a little flirty. It was an area he was personally struggling with, but Rachel already seemed to have it down. In the car, confined in that space together, she seemed to be okay with acting like a girlfriend and broaching certain topics pertaining to them. But the moment she was out of the car, she was all business. This was the case as they stepped outside and crossed the street. She took the lead without much thought, her full attention on getting face-to-face with Annie Brighton.

Morrison Community Center was a non-descript brick building. It was hard to tell what it was from the outside; it could have been a gym or a municipal building. It was only the black letters over the glass doors that identified the place. However, once they were inside, things became a bit clearer. There was a small welcome center that more like a little kiosk just to the left of the entrance, but it was unoccupied. Ahead of them, on a large bulletin board on the wall, were two placards with a listing of all of the rooms within the two-story building. Rachel was already heading in that direction by the time Jack spotted it.

Looking over her shoulder, he saw that beside the placards, there was also a printout of weekly activities that took place in the building. One of the listings, about halfway down, read: Esteem Workshops – Dr. A. Brighton – M,W,F – Noon – 1. Room 131.

Jack checked his watch and saw that it was 11:50. “We’ve got ten minutes to catch her before the group starts.”

Though the maze of halls was quite extensive, from a pre-teen hangout room for after-school activities to what appeared to be a culinary class taking place, they were able to find Room 131 easily enough. The door was opened partially, and the sound of something being moved around greeted them. Jack knocked on the door but stepped inside at the same time. The room was rather small and smelled of fresh-brewed coffee. A small snack center was set up in the back with a variety of sandwiches and chips, as well as the coffee maker. A woman was in the center of the room, in the process of arranging several chairs into a wide, spacious circle. She was quite pretty, with her slightly greying hair up in a cute bun. She wore a pair of eyeglasses that were the stereotypical librarian-type, but she wore them well. Jack guessed her to be in her late forties, but on a good day she’d likely pass for much younger. She looked up as Jack and Rachel entered.

She opened her mouth as if to speak, waited a second, and then tilted her head. “I was going tell you that you’re a bit early for the meeting…but neither of you look like you’d be part of a self-esteem group.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a weird compliment or not,” Jack said. “But I suppose I’ll say thanks anyway. We’re actually with the FBI, Agents Rivers and Gift.”

They showed their IDs, the woman taking great care to look at both of them. “I see,” she said. “And is there something I can do for you?”

“Are you Dr. Annie Brighton?” Rachel asked.

“I am.”

“Good. We need to ask you a few questions about some former members of a support group you were in charge of. Nothing intimate or super personal.”

“How former are we talking about?” Brighton asked.

“A little all over the place,” Rachel said. “No further back than two years, though.”

“Their names are Lucy Hoffman and Kara Spencer,” Jack said. “We know Kara attended the group and while we aren’t one hundred percent certain about Lucy Hoffman, we know that her husband had one of your business cards in his wallet.”

“I remember Kara, certainly,” Annie said. “As for Lucy Hoffman…I think I remember her. Maybe. And older lady, right?”

“Correct.”

“If it’s who I’m thinking of, she came to at least one session, but that may have been all. Just to sort of try it out, I think.”

"Dr. Brighton," Rachel said, "we're currently working on a case where people close to them have been murdered. And so far, the only link we have to connect them all is the group they attended…a group headed up by you.”

“You should also know,” Jack added, “that both Kara Spencer and Lucy Hoffman died as well.”

Brighton nodded slowly, her eyes blinking rapidly as she processed it all. “I knew…I knew about Mrs. Hoffman. Her husband called me several weeks after she passed away and asked some questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Well, it started out as wanting to know how his wife had seemed when she came in for the that one time. It was a brief conversation. I think he was just looking for anything about Lucy…any details about her to sort of remember her by. But I told him that if he ever needed to talk through his grief, I’d be here for him. He told me he’d considered it…that he found my business card in Lucy’s beside table drawer.”

“Did he ever come to visit?”

“No. And he never called back.”

“By any chance, do you recall if Kara Spencer was in attendance on the day Lucy Hoffman showed up?”

Brighton thought about it for a moment, leaning her hands on the last chair she’d just set up. “I don’t know right off hand, but I could have a look back at the log sheet. Of course…not everyone signs them, but it would be worth looking, I suppose.”

“What about Kara Spencer? It seemed like you were able to recall her fairly easily.”

A small smile appeared at the corner of Brighton’s mouth. “I do. And I had no idea she had died. But she…”

“What is it?” Jack asked.

“I’m so sorry. Can I ask how she died?”

"A car accident," Jack answered. "We don't know any details other than that."

“She was…well, she was a ray of sunshine, honestly. I can’t share details, of course, but she had awful self-esteem, which many others in the group didn’t understand because she was beautiful and kind, and everyone loved her. “

“Dr. Brighton, there’s one other person we’re trying to link to all of this. How about the name Troy Klein? Did anyone by that name ever attend the group?”

Again, she slipped into her thoughtful pose. While it did look a little staged, Jack thought she was honestly doing her best to bring the information forward. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “It doesn’t sound familiar. But again, you have to understand that sometimes people don’t sign the sheets. They prefer to remain anonymous.”

“Do you think—” Jack started. But he was interrupted as someone came walking into the room.

It was a man who appeared to be in his late twenties, with scraggly brown hair and a nose that looked to have been broken several times and had never quite grown back correctly. He looked a bit thrown off at first, his eyes trailing nervously over Jack and Rachel. He looked doubtful for a moment, as if he was sure he’d walked into the wrong room by accident.

"Hello, John," Brighton said. "You're fine to come on in. I'm just now wrapping things up here with these two." She then nodded to the floor and said, in a near-whisper, "Agents, this way, please?"

She walked them to the door and then out into the hallway, where she took several steps away from the doorway. “So here’s what I can do,” she said. “When I get back to my office, I can find the sign-in sheets you’re looking for. I know for a fact that Kara signed in every time. It was an accountability thing for her, I think. But for right now, I need to get in and be ready for the rest of the group when they show up.”

Even as she said this, another person walked by them and headed into the room. This time, it was a woman about forty or so. She gave Brighton a little nod of acknowledgment as she passed by.

“I understand you’ve got this group,” Rachel said, “but you also need to consider where we’re coming from. We’re not investigating the three deaths we’ve already mentioned. In the last few days, loved ones of the deceased have been murdered…murdered by a single killer, from the looks of it. And so far, you and this group are the only links.”

Jack did his best to hide his grimace. There was a fine line between sharing too much about the case and revealing just enough to lure someone in, and Rachel had just crossed it. Rachel from six months ago wouldn’t have gone that far. He wondered if it was just rust showing around the edges from being away for half a year.

“What she means,” Jack said, “is that we have three bodies, no killer, and you just happen to be at the very center of the only link we can find between the victims.”

The reality of what he was suggesting seemed to register for the first time. Shock and anger filled her eyes, and the woman Jack had thought of as pretty just five minutes ago suddenly seemed vicious.

“If you’re suggesting that I somehow knew something about these murders, you may need to work a little harder at this case,” Dr. Brighton said.

“We’re suggesting no such thing,” Rachel snapped back right away. “What I am suggesting is that maybe your group can start five minutes later so that you can finish answering our questions.”

Yeah, it’s got to be a bit of rust, Jack thought. Rachel would never speak to a doctor in charge of a mental support group like this. She really wants to wrap this case.

But she also knew that if she continued to push the way she was right now, she might cross a line. That wouldn’t only be bad for the case, but for her trajectory toward finding her footing as well. He figured he may get pissed at her, but Jack knew he had to step in.

"Let's make everyone happy, then, okay?" he said. He gently placed his hand on Rachel's back, hoping it would serve as a sign that she needed to calm down. "Dr. Brighton, would you please make a call across the street to your office and tell the receptionist that we need copies of those sign-in sheets?"

“I can, yes,” she said, with a bit of anger still in her voice. “But I don’t know an exact date.”

“That’s fine. Just everything from the last two years.”

“Fine.”

Another member of the group went by, an overweight man wearing a tattered tee shirt and gym shorts. When he saw that there was some sort of argument taking place, he hurried along, not wanting to get ensnared in the drama.

“And please don’t leave the city anytime soon.”

"I'm a psychiatrist with patients relying on me," she said, injecting more venom into her voice. "I'm not going anywhere." She then took a deep, calming breath and leaned closer to them, lowering her voice. "If this is all true…someone killing the loved ones of deceased clients of mine, I want to help however I can. But I have people relying on me and I don't appreciate being badgered like this…made to feel like a suspect."

To Jack’s surprise, Rachel seemed to release all of the tension from her body in a moment. Her rigid back slouched a bit, and her shoulders, which had been squared and leveled, also drooped a bit.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

And with that, she gave a cut nod and started walking back toward the front of the building. Rather awkwardly, Jack hung back and did his best to recover. “Sorry,” he said. “She’s had a rough go of it and—”

“I recognized her,” Brighton said. “She’s Rachel Gift, right?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. He was baffled at first but then reminded himself that about seven months ago, Rachel’s name and picture had been all over the local press. Sadly, though, he thought it might mean that her name would now forever be linked to the Alex Lynch because of it.

“I can tell you right now,” Brighton said, “that I know nothing about what may have happened to these victims. And I’m sure it doesn’t take much digging for you to know that I certainly had nothing to do with the deaths of Mrs. Hoffman or Kara Spencer.”

“Please understand, we’re only doing our jobs.”

“I know. So, please let me do mine as well.”

“And you’ll make that call to your receptionist?”

“I’ll do it right now,” she said, digging her phone out of her pocket. “Just…please get out of here before you make the start of this meeting any more awkward than it has to be.”

“Of course,” Jack said. “Thank you.”

With that, he turned away just in time to see Rachel turning the corner up ahead at the intersection in the hallway. He wondered if she needed some time alone, just a moment to process what had just happened—namely how she’d maybe gone a touch too far. But at the same time, they were working on a case together…a was case that was supposed to be simple at the start but was now quickly getting away from them.

So he decided to think the way Rachel was thinking: out of the car and in the midst of a case, it had to be all professional. He couldn’t take their relationship or her personal feelings into account. So he hurried after her, making sure her head was still in the game and hoping that she hadn’t jumped back into the deep end too soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

When he saw the two new people speaking to Dr. Brighton, he nearly turned around and ran away. Ever since he had started his project, there had been an edge of paranoia to everything he did. Sometimes, when he woke up in the morning, the first thing he would do was look out his window. Sometimes he fully expected to see cop cars down on the street below his apartment, waiting for him. Although he had been very careful so far, he didn't know quite enough about police procedures or how certain forensics science worked. Because of that, he figured there was a good chance the police might come across something that he would never expect that would pin the murders on him.

He didn't think the two strangers speaking to Dr. Brighton were the police, though. They weren't dressed in police uniforms and didn't have that stuffy sort of arrogance to them that most cops seem to carry around. That led him to believe that they might even be with the FBI. Again, he wasn't sure how it worked, but he thought that once a murder case went unsolved for a while, the feds were called in. Or maybe they had made a link between at least two of his victims. Wasn't that also another way the FBI became involved in things like these?

It was frustrating because he knew he should have done more research before he began. In the long run, he wasn't sure he even cared if he was caught. Naturally, he preferred to free but would being arrested and convicted of murder really be the worst thing?

He had been wanting to feel something for so long that he really didn't care what the emotion was. If he was arrested, maybe he would feel fear. Or depression. The truth of the matter was that he had experienced so much loss that the grief and sadness inside of him had become nothing more than an empty void. Emptiness was a strange thing to feel. There was absolutely nothing there, but there was so much of that nothing that it was sometimes nearly paralyzing. Some days, he couldn't even drag himself out of bed. Ironically, today had been one of those days. The only thing that had really driven him to face the day at all was knowing that Dr. Brighton’s lunchtime meeting was just a few hours away.

As he settled down into one of the chairs that made up the circle, he looked out of the door. He was pretty sure the strangers had left. And given the troubled look on Dr. Brighton's face, he thought he was safe in assuming they had been with the FBI or some other law enforcement agency. Even though the strangers were gone, Dr. Brighton still looked flustered. She was pacing in front of the partially open doorway, speaking on her cell phone in a hushed tone that wasn't quite a whisper.

While he waited for the meeting to begin, he glanced quickly around the others in the room periodThere. They were a few familiar faces, but, like every week, there was at least one new one. This was a younger guy, a freckle-faced man of about 30, who was staring intently at the floor. He wondered what sort of trauma and loss this man had experienced. He wondered how deeply his emotional scars ran. He wondered if there was anything to be done to help him. Was his grief so bad that he would welcome death if someone willingly delivered it?

It was this question that had got him started several days ago. His own pain and loss was quite extensive. He had lost both parents by the age of eleven, and then, just eight months after his grandmother had taken him in, she had died. He had been put into the foster system, and though his foster parents were remarkable and loving people, their neighbors weren't. He had blocked out most of the trauma that the neighbors had doled out, but he did remember closed fists, a belt around his neck, clothing being removed, and threats of a slow and painful death if he revealed too much to anyone.

His foster parents had also taken in a younger girl. She had never been exposed to the abuse from the neighbors, and he had come to think quite highly of her. After a year or so, he loved her more than their foster parents and had engaged in more than one schoolyard fight to protect her. When she and their foster father had died in a car accident, he’d been sixteen. The foster mother had done her best to hang on blood had placed him back in the system. He had been confused at the time, but when he learned two weeks later that she had taken her own life, he supposed he understood.

He still didn’t quite understand why all of his grief and suffering had somehow turned into a self-esteem issue. He'd done a lot of reading about it and had visited a few state-provided therapists, and he had his own theories. The trauma and loss was presenting itself as a weird form of listlessness. And when he didn't want to get out of bed and face the world, it transformed itself into uncertainty and self-loathing. It was a vicious cycle, and since he couldn't seem to get a handle on the root trauma and grief, he figured he'd try the self-esteem route. The thinking was that he could tackle the smaller issues and then get to work on the root cause. And he hoped Dr. Brighton would be able to help him get there.

But when he’d started coming to her self-esteem workshop groups, he’d discovered something he really hadn’t been expecting: he cared about these people. His heart broke for their issues and the losses they’d dealt with. And after a few months, he began to understand that he could help them. He could help them escape their pain…and not just some stupid, temporary fix. No, he could help them for good.

He was still looking around the current group when Dr. Brighton came back into the room. She looked a little flustered as she grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down at the head of the circle of chairs.

“First of all,” she said, “I apologize if any of you overheard my heated discussion outside. I’m sure that didn’t seem very professional. But let’s not let that stop us from getting started and digging in.” She addressed them all with a smile he had come to know and love—a smile befitting of any motherly figure. “Now…who’d like to go first.”

He’d been to enough of these meetings, so he knew how it worked. There would be a bit of hesitation before someone would awkwardly raise their hand and start to talk. He’d gone a few times, opening things up, but he didn’t feel like it today. Instead, he listened attentively to each and every person who spoke…listening for pain, listening for pleas for escape.

He wished he could help them all. But if the FBI were sniffing around, he knew that meant his time was up. He needed to stop.

But maybe he could get one more. Maybe he could free just one more person and then go into hiding. And wherever he went, surely there would be people in pain there, too—people looking for an easy escape from the hell of the world and maybe even grateful to the one who provided the way out.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

“You think I crossed a line, don’t you?” Rachel asked.

Jack looked at her from the other side of the table. They were in a small diner just five blocks away from Dr. Brighton’s office, as well as Morrison Community Center. They had the copies of the self-esteem group log-ins resting between them. ever since they’d stepped out of the community center, things had felt strange between them. Rachel thought she knew why, but it was hard to admit…which is why she tried broaching the topic in the form of a question.

“Maybe a small one,” he said. “It’s not like you tossed out a punch or anything.”

She shrugged and took a bite out of her Philly cheese steak. Another thing she was finding about suddenly being out on a case was that it was making her incredibly hungry. Sitting around the house all day without a lot of exercise, she’d existed mainly on snacking, salads and light meals. But she’d found herself ravenous after they’d left the community center, and she was almost embarrassed at how quickly she was putting down this sandwich.

“I’m sorry, Jack. I just—”

"No need to apologize. You apologized to her, and even if she didn't think it was genuine, I know it was.”

“Still…”

“Do you believe she had anything to do with it? For real? Because if you do, I’ll sit here and hash that line of thinking out with you.”

Rachel only thought about it for a second. No. She didn’t think Dr. Annie Brighton was their killer, nor did she think she was covering for the real killer. “No, I don’t.” She nodded to the stack of papers—about a dozen pages tall—that sat between them. “I think we may have some answers in there. Maybe even the killer’s name.”

“But Dr. Brighton said not everyone left their name. And if a killer is maybe using that group as some sort of hunting ground, I doubt he’s just going to leave his name.”

“Well, if it comes to that, we’ll have to hope Brighton will be willing to help us. If it’s someone who attended several times—and I assume it would have to be if they were using the group to target people—she would be able to recall something like that, right?”

“Yeah, perhaps,” Jack said, taking the stack of paper and looking over them. “But there’s one thing that is sort of throwing me here. Hear me out, okay?”

She nodded, taking another bite of her sandwich. “We know that Larry Hoffman never attended the meetings. His wife did. And yet, he was targeted by the victim. The same was true for Joe Wickline. It was his deceased wife who attended the meetings, not him. And—”

“And the same would be true of the Kleins. Yeah, I know. So maybe he’s hunting these people down in a way to not be so direct. If you think about the planning of it—the layout and motives of it all—it really doesn’t make any sense.”

“But it is our only link.”

“Unfortunately,” she agreed. “So let’s start digging into this sign-in list.”

They did exactly that, and Rachel noticed right away that there were a few instances of a Jane Doe having signed in to the group. From what she could gather, it was the same woman because she was there at least once a week for a period of about two months. But the person they were still missing from making a strong, solid link to this support group was a man—Troy Klein. And she didn’t think a man would sign in as Jane Doe, even if he was trying to remain anonymous. A man trying to remain completely anonymous likely wouldn’t sign it at all.

“Okay, so look at this,” Jack said, placing a sheet in front of her and tapping it. “Here’s where Mrs. Hoffman came to the group. Looks like there were seven others that day.”

“Seven others who signed the log-in,” she pointed out. “There could have been a few more.”

“True. So we just look at those seven names, I suppose. See how much longer they came to the meeting, to if they were there at the same time Kara Spencer was.”

“And timeline-wise, Mrs. Hoffman died later, right?”

“Yeah, Kara died about four months before Mr. Hoffman, I believe. Maybe a bit longer. The files are in the car. I can go get them.”

“Hold on…”

Slowly, an idea came to Rachel. It seemed simple at first, but she wanted to make sure these copies of the log-in records had told all of the story before she shifted gears. She snapped a picture of the list with Mrs. Hoffman’s name on it and then began searching for Kara Spencer. Based on what Dr. Brighton had told them about Kara, Rachel didn’t think she’d be the type not to sign in. In fact, hadn’t she said Kara always signed as a form of accountability?

Finding the dates with her name signed to the sheets was simple enough; she just looked back to dates beyond the date of the car accident that had taken her life. And sure enough, she did sign in. More than that, she signed in a lot. There were weeks where she attended each and every session of Brighton’s self-esteem group. And then, of course, it came to an end. She jotted down the date of the first session Kara hadn’t attended and then looked forward in time on the sheets, to where Mrs. Hoffman had attended. It took a bit longer to find her name, but she had signed in, her name written in the elegant and practiced cursive of an elderly woman.

Rachel jotted that date down as well, now more irritated than ever that they had no direct confirmation that Troy Klein had attended the meeting. Slowly, she took her phone out of her pocket and pulled up a number they’d come across earlier.

“Who’re you calling?” Jack asked.

“I want to talk to Mark Kelce again. If he had this sudden change of heart about his sister after her death, I’m wondering if he has access to any of her personal affects. If so, maybe he has something that would tie Troy or Lorrie Klein to Brighton’s group—sort of like Alice Hoffman’s business card in her dead husband’s wallet.”

She tried the number, but it went straight to voicemail. She'd nearly expected this. Mark had been in bad shape yesterday. And with the funeral tomorrow, there would be all sorts of conversations and hard decisions to make today. She shook her head and hung up.

“Here’s the way I see it,” Jack said as Rachel started to habitually look over the sign-in lists again. “We can go over to Lorrie’s house again and do a thorough search, top to bottom, to see if we can find anything that links her or her husband to Dr. Brighton’s group. A note in an appointment book, a business card, something like that.”

“Absolutely,” Rachel agreed. “And I had a thought as well. People may not sign these sheets for anonymity, but they can’t remain anonymous from the security cameras in the community center.”

“That’s a damn good point. Okay…so do we call for some police assistance, or split up?”

“I think we can handle it.”

“Which would you rather take?”

She liked the idea of the security cameras and, hopefully, the operating and backup systems being just a few blocks away. But she also knew how monotonous it was going to be to go through all of that old footage—if they even had access to footage from that far back. She felt a bit selfish selecting the more adventurous task, but then again, Jack hadn't been sitting on the sidelines for six months.

“I’ll take Lorrie’s house,” she answered.

“Yeah, I figured that.” He waved quickly to the waitress for the check, and added, “You can drop me off at the community center and I’ll see what can be done about getting access to the security footage.”

She slid him the sign-in sheet she’d used to jot the few dates down on. “We’re looking for people who entered the building around the same time as these victims sometime around these dates. I’d check at least two weeks leading up each one.”

“Jesus…if this works out, we may need to check in on the others who attended the group on those same days. The killer could have a literal pool of victims to choose from…if we’re right about this, of course.”

Rachel nodded as the waitress brought over the check. As Jack took out some cash to cover their lunch, Rachel was already headed for the door because she did believe they were right on this hunch. And with the killer still out there, unnamed and unchecked, there was no telling when they might strike next.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The woman's car was just two spots ahead of him as she came to a stop at a red light. As he waited at the light, he tried to convince himself that he was acting irrationally. He had not put a lot of thought into this. Maybe he was making a mistake. Maybe he should run away now before the cops or the FBI got too close.

Perhaps seeing those two strangers—whom he now assumed were FBI—should be a sign that he was one…that he needed to stop and get out of Richmond. That would be the smart play, but he had to help at least one more person. Or, at least, that's what he was telling himself. But deep down, hidden in a much darker and pain-tinged part of his heart, he couldn't help but wonder if he was so bent on helping someone else because he liked it. Not just the idea of releasing these poor souls from their misery, but the act of killing itself. He knew this was a faint possibility but chose not to give it too much attention.

When he started trying to help people overcome their grief, he had taken his time and done some research on those he selected. He wasn’t a fool—he knew that murder was, on its face, a very bad thing. And he knew that if he was ever caught, he would spend the rest of his life in jail. So he couldn’t just take the lives of people he spent time with in Dr. Brighton’s support group.

Instead, he had listened closely, trying to pay attention to the reasons the people were coming to the group. He studied each and every word closely. Hearing others divulge their worries and pains helped him process his own wretched history. And then, roughly a year and a half ago, he noticed that one of the regulars had stopped coming to the group—a woman named Kara Spencer. Of course, Dr. Brighton had not commented on this; he understood that she wasn't supposed to share details about the lives of those who attended the group.

But he’d like Kara. She’s often gone quite deep into her pain. She’d had issues with cutting as a pre-teen, just wanting to feel something. And though she was quite beautiful, she'd always assumed that a lack of self-worth had been at the core of her desires to harm herself. She suspected it had come from an overbearing parent who would never seem satisfied with any of her school-based accomplishments, but he wasn’t sure about this because it was the one area Kara had never delved too deeply into.

Another thing she’d revealed to the group was her fiancé’s name. She’d boasted about the engagement during group and had named him: Joe. Two days after she’d not shown up, for group, he’d done some research and found rather easily that Kara had been killed in a car accident. He’d attended the funeral, sitting by himself, and located Joe. It wasn’t hard to do—he was the one crumpled up in the floor during the viewing, the one sobbing and screaming as the coffin had been lowered into the ground at the graveside service.

He'd kept this to himself as he continued to attend Dr. Brighton's meetings. He didn't go every week, sometimes missing as much as a few months at a time. He didn't start going with regularity until the day the skinny, handsome man had attended and spoke about sex problems at home. He'd said his wife had always been a bit cold in the bedroom, and he was thinking of leaving her. He'd also confessed to having thoughts of an affair…a confession that seemed to surprise him when he's said it out loud. He'd spent the remainder of the meeting crying.

This man had been Troy Klein. And when he had died, he’d left behind a wife. A grieving wife whom he’d also spotted when he snuck into Troy’s funeral.

So much grief…so much loss. And the world just accepted it. it was seen as okay for people to suffer in such a way. To him, it seemed barbaric.

The light ahead turned green, and when traffic started moving, he was yanked out of his thoughts. He'd released both of those grieving spouses from their pain. Not only that, but if certain theories on the afterlife were to be believed, they'd been reunited with their loved ones.

He’d done the same for poor of Mr. Hoffman. he’d gone by the old man’s house several times, right at dawn, and saw how sad and absolutely wrecked he’d become. Mr. Hoffman had been a shell of a man, a dried husk just waiting to be taken out of the world.

And now there was the woman in the car just ahead of him, a car turning left down Afton Street. Admittedly, he did not know a lot about her. She'd only been to three of the meetings over the space of about two months, but she'd always been eager to share. He knew she needed to be released from her pain. She was thirty-seven, had ended her third failed relationship just six weeks ago, had lost a grandfather to cancer earlier in the year, and the place where she worked had announced that lay-offs were coming, and she was quite sure she'd be among those let go.

The tricky part was that she’d be the first he’d ever approached from the group. It would be a more direct relationship. She’d know his face. And he supposed she may even embrace him when she knew why he was following her…why he was at her house.

He was fully prepared to leave the city when he was done with her. He’d go home, pack a quick bag, and retire to his father’s old fishing cabin in that small West Virginia town where he’d grown up. And something about this sense of urgency made him reflect a bit more on the question of whether or not there was a part of him that was enjoying all of this.

Having never followed or studied this woman before, he had no idea what to expect. He was fully prepared for the chance that he could get to her home and find a roommate or a neighbor that wanted to talk. But based on what he knew of her from the meetings, he knew she lived alone and that, like him, it was just so damned hard out get out of bed some days. She also worked remotely for an IT company, so she didn’t have much reason to really leave her home. her husband wasn’t in the picture anymore and though she’d once had a child, it had died within the past year.

It seemed like a lot to share at a support group she’d only been to a few times. But he knew better than anyone else how therapeutic it could be to just vent—to verbally process the pain to others who could sympathize.

After five more minutes of driving—now about twenty minutes away from the community center—she slowed and turned into the parking lot of a small apartment complex. With the two cars still between them, he felt comfortable turning into the same parking lot. He cruised by the spot she’d parked in and then, unseen by her, parked in another empty spot.

He waited a moment for her to get out of her car, taking a few deep breaths and trying to convince himself this needed to be done…that she needed to be freed. And after that, he’d run.

She opened her car door and stepped out into the afternoon sun. And then, with his heart in his chest and his palms sweating in anticipation, he did the same.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Rachel parked in front of Lorrie Klein’s house for the second time, realizing that she felt much calmer than she had before. In the past two days, she felt like she’d nearly found her groove again. The drive back to Summer Street had been surprisingly relaxing. It took this realization for her to understand that part of the stress and hesitancy she’d been feeling was because she’d felt like Jack had been studying her closely—whether to make sure she hadn’t missed a beat or if she wasn’t still sick and trying to hide it, she had no clue.

All she knew for sure was that when she walked across Lorrie’s front yard, she felt much more confident than she had the first time she’d taken the same walk. She’d not bothered calling Detective Detweiler because she knew the back door was still broken from where the killer had apparently broken in, she didn’t need an assist on getting inside.

She walked around to the back and made her way in through the back door. Usually, she did her best to take a murder scene in as if through the eyes of a killer. Now, though, she tried to see the small, modestly decorated house through the eyes of a woman who had felt very much alone in her grief—a woman who had just been trying her best to remember how to live a life now that she no longer had her life-partner.

She checked the typical places in the kitchen where a woman—either organized or a little more free-spirited—might keep notes pertaining to appointments. The refrigerator contained. a few magnets, but no sort of dry-erase board for notes or a weekly menu. She checked all of the drawers until she came to what she thought served as Lorrie’s junk-drawer. It was actually very well organized, stocked with extra pens, rubber bands, paperclips and other similar items. There were also a few takeout menus and two stacks of colorful post-its. Rachel checked them for any notes, but there was nothing.

She then walked into the living room. The only place to check was a small decorative tray on the coffee table, but all it contained was a paperback mystery and a succulent plant in a small clay pot.

The next stop was the bedroom. She walked into it with a subtle sort of reverence and respect. Though a woman had been killed in the room, it felt no different than any other room. She slowly examined every corner, starting with the dresser pushed against the front wall. She went drawer to drawer, and the only thing she found other than clothes was an envelope stuffed with printed photographs of Lorrie with a man she assumed was her husband, Toby. A few of them came from a novelty photobooth, the sort that came in strips with three different pictures.

When she walked to the other side of the bed and approached Lorrie's bedside table, Rachel felt certain that if there was anything at all to find, it would be here. It came down to the way her junk drawer had been organized. There was no office in the house, so it stood to reason that any important notes or phone numbers would likely be in something like a planner of journal, probably tucked somewhere inside the bedside table.

And as it turned out, she didn’t have to look all that hard. The bedside table was constructed in a way that allowed for a hollow space beneath the drawer. It was a space Rachel supposed most people would use for a small bookcase of sorts. Lorrie had done this in some respects, with a few paperbacks shoved into the space, hugged tightly by a decorative keepsake box roughly the size of a shoebox.

She slid it out and realized she’d struck gold at once. On top, written in simple, all-capitals handwriting was a single word: TOBY.

Rachel felt almost guilty when she opened it. But when she saw the sort of things that were collected inside, her heart softened and though she still felt guilty, there was something sweet about it, too. It was a shrine of sorts to the Kleins’ relationship. There were birthday cards, receipts, and brochures from trips away, more photos, a Foo Fighters tee shirt folded up nicely as nothing more than a souvenir, and things of that nature.

However, as she sifted through all of it, she found more memorabilia scattered along the bottom…smaller knickknacks that had filtered through the rest of the stuff. There was a small smiley-face pin, a few ticket stubs, coins that seemed to come from somewhere overseas (Nepal, if she was seeing it right), and several business cards. Rachel gathered up all of the cards, discovering that a few were rewards cards to local businesses. But among the actual business cards, there was a small collection. One came from a graphic designer, several were from real estate companies, one was for a doctor and, then, nearly at the end of the pile, was exactly what Rachel had been looking for.

It wasn’t for Dr. Annie Brighton, but it was a plain and rather drab card from the community center. And scrawled on the back of it was support group? Dr. Brighton??

She placed the card on the edge of the bed and then set everything back into the keepsake box with great care and respect. She was excited about this final connection, but she also felt the need to be gracious about the belongings of this couple who was no longer alive. She slid the box back into its proper place and hurried out of the room, pulling out her phone as soon as she was headed for the back door.

She called Jack, and he answered on the third ring. “Hey,” he said. “Any luck on your end?”

“Yes, actually.” As she made her way back through the house and out to the car, she told him what she’d found in the keepsake box. Revealing it all to him, she grew even more excited. They now had an undeniable link between all three of them and one way or another, she now knew the killer was somehow associated with Brighton’s group.

“Well, you’re not the only one with a hit,” Jack said. “I did manage to get one of the security guys here to pull up some of their old footage. I’ve got two confirmed appearances of a man who, from what I can tell, didn’t sign in to Brighton’s group. The issue I’m having is that he’s never seen actually entering the room. You see him come into the building and by the welcome kiosk, then take a left at the intersection of hallways that would lead to Room 131, but we don’t have footage of him going in.”

“Well, if you have him coming in, you have him leaving, too, right?”

“That’s what I’m working on right now. And if it pans out, I think we’ve got a very likely suspect. How soon can you be here?”

Hurrying to the car with the old yet all-too-familiar sensation of a case about to break flooding through her, Rachel couldn’t help but smile. “Faster than I should,” she said.

***

She reconnected with Jack in one of the first rooms just beyond the community center's welcome kiosk. The room was dimly lit by just a single lamp and the glow from several screens sitting at an L-shaped desk. Jack was perched behind the desk, with a member of the community center's security team sitting in a chair in front of the screens.

“Anything new?” she asked as she entered, closing the door behind her.

“I really think we’ve got him,” Jack said. “This,” he said, patting the security member on the shoulder, “is Lee. He’s helped me now find two instances of where the same man came in within ten minutes of one of the folks on our list, and then left within ten minutes of their departure.”

“Who do you have confirmations on?”

“Alice Hoffman and Kara Spencer. And in fact, the guy in question is directly behind Kara…we’re talking maybe thirty seconds.” He pointed to one of three screens to Rachel’s left—two laptops and a basic monitor. “This is him. This is both the shots we have on him coming. When he leaves, you obviously can’t see his face.”

Rachel studied the man in the stills. The resolution was quite clear, and in the first one, his face was fully captured. In the second, he was glancing down at his phone, but most of his face was still visible. In both images, he was wearing a long-sleeved tee shirt and jeans. He wore a baseball cap in the first one. She guessed him to be in his early thirties. His hair was short but shaggy, and he had the sort of face she thought some women would find cute if he smiled.

“We need to get Dr. Brighton in here to see if she can put a name to the face,” Rachel said.

"Already ahead of you," Jack said. "The meeting was over about an hour ago. She was in session when I called, but she's coming. I stressed how important it was, so hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later."

“So what are we doing now?” she asked, directing the question more to Lee than to Jack.

Lee, a man of about fifty or so with hands so large that they nearly covered the mouse he was using to search the footage, was staring intently at the screens. Currently, he was playing through footage of people leaving. The date in the bottom corner of the screen suggested it was from a little over a year ago.

“Trying to find evidence of the man coming and going from the other date Agent Rivers provided.”

Jack shrugged. “I figured if we took a shot at a three- or four-week window lining up with Toby Klein’s death, we could catch the guy again. Just taking a shot in the dark really. The timeline of these deaths is so all over the place, it’s hard to come up with an educated guess.”

“And it doesn’t help matters that Troy Klein apparently didn’t sign the sheets.

“Yeah…so far, no dice,” Lee said.

Though she knew it would be like trying to solve a particularly tricky puzzle, Rachel looked to the dates on both images of the man and checked over the list of people who had signed in for the group that day. For the date farthest back, there were the names of just two men. On the second, there were five. Only one of the names was the same on both lists, and Rachel's instincts told her that this was the man they needed to go after.

Before she could say such a thing, though, there was a knock at the door. Everyone turned to see Dr. Brighton inching her way hesitantly into the room.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “Has someone else died?”

“Not that we know of,” Jack said. He then pointed to the two screens with the still images. “Dr. Brighton, can you identify this man?”

Her eyes widened a bit, but her lips turned slightly down into a small frown. "Yes. He's not a regular, but he shows up every few months. And when he does, he sticks with it for several weeks."

“I don’t think he’s signing in when he shows up,” Rachel said. “Not based on the lists your receptionist provided.”

“No, he doesn’t. I just…do you think he has something to do with your case?”

“It’s looking likely,” Rachel said. “So you know his name?”

“I…I do,” Brighton said, clearly at odds with herself. “But it’s only because I’ve heard him introduce himself to others. He’s quite talkative and though he’s always in a depressive sort of mood, I think he came to the group expressly to help others…while maybe helping himself as well.”

“We need a name, Dr. Brighton.”

When she gave it, the stern tone of her voice and the posture of crossing her arms over her chest indicated that she wasn’t happy about it. “Gary Everson.”

“Has he ever shared anything in the group that caused you to be concerned?”

“No. And even if he had, I—”

Rachel was already pulling out her phone as she interrupted. “Right now, he’s the primary suspect in three murders. Anything you provide may help us to stop him and prevent more murders.”

She could see Brighton doing her best to come to terms with it all as she, Rachel, called into Research and Records at the bureau. Slowly, Dr. Brighton began to talk. "He…I know he had some childhood trauma…terrible foster care situations after losing both of his parents. But he never lost his temper in group, never really even seemed like an angry guy. He was—”

Rachel held up a finger when the line was answered. She jumped right over the woman who answered the phone, stating, “This is Special Agent Rachel Gift, and I need an address in the Richmond, Virginia area.” She gave her badge number and then the name” Gary Everson.

She was placed on hold, allowing her to return her attention to Brighton. Jack started asking another question once Rachel was on hold. “Did you ever see him make any sort of special connection with any of the other members?” he asked. “Maye even just coming off as if he might be trying to get to know them a little too well?”

“If he did, I never saw it. Like I said…it seemed like he was there to support people while also getting out some of his own stuff. I don’t recall ever seeing anything that would have led me to believe he was capable of murder.”

“And maybe he’s not,” Jack ventured. “But we’ve got him on security cameras, coming in on several of the days Kara Spencer came in and on the one single day Alice Hoffman attended. I know it sounds flimsy, but when you consider that everything about this case is currently pointing to this group…"

“And I did get confirmation that out third person of interest either came to your group or was interested in coming,” Rachel added. “I found a community center business card with the meeting information written on it and—”

“Agent Gift?” the male voice on the other end of the line said. “I’ve got that address for you.”

She looked quickly around the security desk set-up, grabbing a pen and an old, well-used notepad. She jotted down the address, thanked the man from Records and Research, and ended the call.

“Just a few more things,” Jack said, his gaze still on Brighton. “Was Gary Everson at today’s meeting?”

“Yes.” Brighton said it almost regretfully, in a whisper.

Rachel went cold for a moment. Had they passed the bastard on their way out of the community center? Had they come within feet of him earlier in the day?

“But he apparently doesn’t sign in, right?”

“Right.”

“Dr. Brighton, we need to see the list from today,” Rachel said. “If our hunch is correct, the people on that list, as well as their loved ones, could be in very serious danger.”

She thought Brighton was softening up a bit. It was clear she still didn't like giving out such information, strictly on the principles of anonymity. But there was sadness and understanding in her eyes as she took out her cellphone. Neither Rachel nor Jack interrupted her as she placed a call.

“Hi, Nina,” she said into the phone after just two seconds. “I need you to get the list of sign-ins for today. There weren’t many, so just read them to me, would you?”

She took the same pen and notebook paper Rachel had used to write down Gary Everson’s address. One by one, she wrote down the names of everyone who had signed in for today’s meeting. There were six in all. Brighton ended the call without a formal goodbye to her receptionist, clearly shaken by the entire experience.

“Thank you,” Dr. Brighton,” Rachel said. “You’re free to go. We’re going to have quite a bit of work to do.”

Brighton nodded and started for the door. Hesitantly, she looked back and in that same soft, saddened voice, said: “Just call me if you need anything else.”

When she was gone, Rachel and Jack looked down to the scrawled notes. There were lots of bases to cover, and just two of them. They were definitely going to need some assistance from local PD. Somehow, they’d gone from having no names to work with to six—and one of them might be in some very serious danger.

Rachel nearly laughed at the irony of it. For a case that Anderson assumed would be nothing but a day and a half of triviality, it sure had turned out to be a messy one.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Two days after being assigned to her first case after six months away, Rachel found herself at the epicenter of a small base of operations in a parking lot. Between her and Jack, they were bouncing between phone calls to local PD and the bureau, doing their best to put together a fast, efficient, and rather spontaneous group to help make sure each of the six names on the list were contacted—face-to-face if at all possible.

Immediately after making the first call to the police, Jack made the wise decision not to have the police arrive at the community center. If the killer was somehow keeping an eye on the building, the last thing they ended was for him to get a warning that they might be coming for him. Instead, they drove a mile away and began meeting with police units in the parking lot of a small strip mall containing a Chinese restaurant, a small convenience store, and a dollar store.

Two units arrived within six minutes of making the call. With another on the way, they began to divvy out the names on the list. As Rachel had suspected, Jack took the task of heading over to Gary Everson's house. They were standing at the hood of their car while the passenger from one of the police units worked on retrieving addresses for the six names from their precinct.

“I’ll go check on Everson’s residence,” he said.

“Not by yourself,” Rachel replied.

"Look, we aren't going to get all the help we need in the quick turnaround we're asking for. I think it will be okay. Besides, it's two three in the afternoon. The chances of him being home are slim. I can at least get a feel for his place, maybe speak with some of his neighbors. Meanwhile, you can speak with someone on this list of other group members…maybe see if they have anything to say about Gary—the nameless man from their lunchtime group."

She knew that he was right about all of it. Even if she wasn't dealing with the issue of coming back after a lengthy absence, this would be the best tactic. She was much better at speaking with people to let them know they were in danger without having them freak out. It also didn't hurt that of the six names on the list from today, four were women. And while Jack was charming in his own way, they always tended to give one-on-one conversations with females to Rachel.

“Fine,” she said, grabbing her phone from the hood of the car for what felt like the hundredth time in the last hour. “But you’d better call me if you even suspect that things are going to go sideways.”

“I will,” he said with a smile. “Believe it or not, I’ve missed sharing all of this with you. I’d prefer you come with me to Everson’s place. But it makes more sense to separate. Just for this small amount of time.”

“I know,” she said, trying her best not to be salty about it.

“Who are you calling?”

“Brighton again. We need to know if any of the names on today’s list were a little more vocal…maybe somehow who shared their grief. I’d think we start there if we don’t have the manpower to go with all six at once.”

As she said this and placed the call, a third cop car pulled into the lot. It coasted in behind the other two as Brighton answered the phone. This surprised Rachel, the call skipping the receptionist and going straight to Dr. Brighton. Rachel wondered if she had been expecting a call from her or Jack before the day was out and wanted to take out the middleman.

“This is Dr. Brighton. Can I help you?”

“Dr. Brighton, this is Agent Gift. I truly am sorry to keep bothering you. But we’re about to head out and check in on these six names on the list. I was wondering if one of them stood out to you. Let’s say we are dealing with a killer who is, for some reason or another, targeting people dealing with immense grief. Does anyone from your meeting today stick out?”

"Yes, actually," she said. The hesitancy and disagreement from earlier in the security room seemed to be gone. Rachel wondered if she'd finally had time to process the situation, understanding that she had just as much of an ability to bring the killer to justice as the FBI.

“Which one?”

"Courtney Biddle. She…well, she lost her daughter about eight or nine months ago—a one and a half year-old girl. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. And then, about six weeks ago, her husband left her. They are one of those cases of a marriage not being able to survive the death of a child. It's actually very common."

“And do you know if Gary Everson spoke to her today?”

“I honestly don’t recall. No offense, but I spent most of today’s session rattled by your visit.”

Rachel quickly tried to recall if she'd spotted the name Courtney Biddle on sign-in sheets from the past. She knew she'd seen it a few times but had no real idea of how far back it went. "Any idea how long she's been coming?"

“I don’t…I don’t know. Maybe two months. It wasn’t the death of her daughter that made her realize how bad off she’d become…it wasn’t until her husband started talking about leaving her.”

“Okay. Thanks, Dr. Brighton. I know sharing these sorts of details isn’t easy for you.”

It wasn't until Rachel ended the call that she realized her heart felt like it had been pinched. Immediately, she started to panic and wondered if it was some sort of symptom if she was getting sick again or having some sort of strange reaction to her newer experimental treatments.

But it took only a second for her to understand that it was just her physical reaction to the way Brighton had described Courtney Biddle. Losing a young child to SIDS and then having her marriage crumble. To even think about losing Paige in such a way was beyond heartbreaking. She had no idea how a parent—how a mother, in particular—could ever survive such a thing. In. response to her gut reaction, that’s how Rachel made her decision.

She walked over to the cop car where a short Hispanic man was speaking to someone on the police band radio, getting another address. As he jotted it down, he sighed and shook his head. “Okay, just one more to go,” he said.

“Do you already have the address for Courtney Biddle?” Rachel asked.

“I do,” he said. He leaned slightly over toward the in-car computer system and pulled up the list of addresses he’s already acquired. “You need it?”

“Yes, please.”

As the officer recited it, Rachel typed it into the map application on her phone. She felt Jack closing in on her, wanting to make sure he knew what she was up to. It made her feel safe and oddly comforted—which said a lot, because she usually hated to feel crowded.

“Do you have a phone number as well?” she asked the cop.

“Sure do.” He read that off for her as well, and she typed it into her phone right away.

“Did Brighton say she may be more at risk?” Jack asked as she placed the call.

“Yeah. And she’s had it rough over the past year. I’ll let her know what we’re up to, the danger she might be in…but hopefully in a way that won’t unravel her even farther.”

“See?” Jack said, subtly placing a gentle hand along her lower back. “I told you this was the way to go.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

The phone rang in her ear twice before there was a pulse-like clicking sound, and then the call went to automated voice mail. Rachel didn't bother leaving a message, and she really didn't like that Biddle wasn't answering her phone. There could be a hundred reasons why it was clicking over to voicemail after two rings, but with the speed in which the case was moving along, her mind went to the worst possible scenario.

"You go ahead and take the bureau car," Jack said, obviously taking note of the worry on her face. "I'll grab a ride with one of these guys. Just call when you're done over there, and we'll meet up."

"Jack, this is going to require a lot of moving parts. We're very likely going to need around-the-clock surveillance on these people—and maybe even some of their family members—until we get this guy."

“I know.” And then, with a shaky grin, he said: “So let’s go get the bastard.”

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Rachel knew that there was the hint of a smile on her face as she sped to Courtney Biddle's home. There was no reason to smile, really. Courtney could be in very serious danger, and she had lived an incredibly harsh life over the last year. But it was the drive itself, getting the car out on the streets and pushing it far past the speed limit that was causing the smile. It was, yet again, another part of the job she'd missed—a part she'd never even realized she enjoyed until it had been temporarily taken away from her.

Courtney lived just shy of downtown, roughly a fifteen-minute drive away from the VCU campus and Annie Brighton’s office. When Rachel turned onto Afton Street, her map told her she had just a mile left to go. She didn’t feel that Courtney was in any immediate danger, but then again, she also didn’t like the fact that their suspect, Gary Everson, had been in the group meeting with her and had then left at roughly the same time. She supposed the sense of urgency came in the fact that there was currently a coordinated effort between her, Jack, and the police to notify the six people on the sign-in list as quickly as possible.

When Courtney Biddle's small apartment complex came into view, Rachel hit the brakes, wanting to enter the parking lot as normally as she could; there was no sense in drawing unnecessary attention to herself. And she certainly didn't want Courtney's neighbors wondering what was going on.

The complex consisted of just three small buildings. Judging from the exterior, each of the three buildings consisted of three floors, each one holding around twenty-five or thirty apartments. Courtney Biddle lived in 23C, so Rachel parked in front of Building C, parked and hurried for the front door. Inside, she found the small lobby empty. To the right was a bank of mailboxes. Straight ahead was an elevator and a back entrance, and then there was a hallway and stairs to the left.

She took the stairs to the second floor, passing by an older gentleman speaking on his cellphone as she did so. Rachel could tell just from that quick glance that this was not Gary Everson, so she continued on her way. When she came to Apartment 23C, she wasted no time. She knocked on the door with a bit of urgency. When there was no answer or call out within five seconds, she knocked again.

“Mrs. Biddle? Hello, are you home? This is urgent.”

Another handful of seconds crawled by, just enough for Rachel to wonder if she was going to have to force herself inside. But finally, the knob shook a bit, and then the door was unlocked and opened. The door came open about six inches, and a thin woman stood on the other side, her face gaunt but also rather pretty. Her black hair was straight, hugging the sides of her face and not doing anything to help with the thin, tired look on her face.

“Yes, can I help you?” she asked. She looked bothered about something. Rachel wondered if she’d interrupted a nap.

“Yes, actually,” Rachel said. “You’re Courtney Biddle, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Can I come inside?”

Courtney’s eyes wandered a bit and she shifted uncomfortable for a moment before she said, “Who are you, exactly?”

Rachel showed her badge and ID. “Special Agent Rachel Gift, with the FBI. I just need to ask you a few questions and speak to you for a moment.”

“Oh.” Courtney looked almost scared now. “No, this isn’t a very good time.”

And in that one single exchange, she could tell that something was wrong. She didn't want to push, but she also sensed that something was off here. Courtney's eyes were wide, and they were shifting slightly to the right.

Is she trying to tell me something? Rachel wondered.

“I understand that,” she said. “But really, I won’t take up too much of your time. I have just a few questions. It won’t take any more than a few minutes.”

“Well, can you ask them from right here? I’d really rather you not come inside.”

She was nearly in tears and was leaning on the door. her gaze kept shifting slightly to the right, as if she were trying to look through the door and to something that might be behind it.

“Yes, I suppose that will be okay,” Rachel said. And then, without making any sound at all, she mouthed: “Behind the door?”

Courtney tilted her head in what could barely be considered a nod. Her bottom lip was trembling and she continued to hug the barely-opened door as if it was the only thing keeping her from falling over.

“I’ll be quick,” Rachel said as her internal alarms chimed endlessly. Something was wrong here. Something had Courtney Biddle spooked. “You attended a meeting today that was conducted by Dr. Annie Brighton, correct?”

“Yes, I did. But that…the things we discuss are supposed to be private.” The statement sounded forced…as if Courtney was doing her very best to come off as natural.

“Yes, I know. But your name was on the sign-in sheet.” She paused for just a moment, considering her next words carefully. She thought that if she phrased the next few sentences just the right way, Courtney might be able to tell her all she needed to know without even saying a word. “And right now,” Rachel went on, “the FBI is working in tandem with the Richmond police to reach out to everyone who attended the meeting today. We feel that you might be in some danger.”

At the word danger, she saw Courtney’s eyes shift again…back toward the door.

Rachel didn’t want to let the moment settle, nor did she want Courtney to feel any more awkward or uneasy so she carried on. “So, really, we’re looking for one individual. And we’re starting by asking if you got into any sort of arguments or heated debates with Dr. Brighton today.”

As she’d hoped, the mention of Dr. Brighton being the source of potential danger had confused Courtney. Her eyes came back to Rachel, not sure how to take the question. And when she did, Rachel gave a slight nod and then briefly shifted her eyes to the door.

"No," Courtney said. "No, Dr. Brighton s remarkable. I've never had a crossword with her."

“I see. And how long have you been attending the group?”

“About two months.”

“And you’ve never had any issues with Dr. Brighton?”

“None at all. But listen, I really…I really don’t have time for this.”

Rachel gave a small nod, making sure to keep her eyes ahead and on Courtney. If there was someone behind the door, as she was beginning to suspect, she didn’t want to clue them in. In fact, to make the entire situation seem more authentic, she went a bit beyond what she needed to do.

“I’ll go for now, Mrs. Biddle. But if we need to speak with you again and you won’t be more helpful, I may have to be more demanding. I don’t want to arrest you, but if it comes down to that, I may have to do it.”

“Fine…okay.”

“Well, thanks for your time.” And then she mouthed: “Step back…let go…”

“Of course. Goodbye.”

And then she did as she'd been asked. She let go of the door and took a single step back. At the exact same moment, Rachel drew her Glock and rushed forward, putting her shoulder hard into the still-opened door. Right away, she heard a cry of surprise and pain from behind the door. It halted as she pushed against it, stopped by the body trapped behind it.

“Don’t fight with me!” Rachel said. “I’m an FBI agent and—”

But the body behind the door slid right out, its back against the wall. It was a man of about thirty-five or forty, and he was holding a large butcher's knife in his right hand. As soon as he was free, Courtney ran deeper back into the apartment. The man looked conflicted for a moment, uncertain about who to go after. In the end, he dished out a lazy clashing attack in Rachel's direction, just enough to make her step back.

He then shifted his attention to Courtney. He was blind in his need to get to her, foolishly turning his back on an armed FBI agent. Rachel ignored the impulse to fire, maybe taking out a leg. Instead, she rushed after him and threw herself at him. She took him to the ground in a tackle, and he fell face-first to the floor.

Rachel instantly started slamming the butt of her gun into his wrist, trying to get him to drop the knife. But he had a death grip on it. Not only that, but her intense focus on the knife allowed him to maneuver himself in a way that almost allowed his escape from beneath her.

From his side, with her still fighting for position, he brought the knife around in a hard arc. it missed her left cheek by less than an inch. Sensing that she was losing control of the situation, Rachel took drastic action.

Cringing, she fired off a shot while still on the ground. It took him high in the left shoulder from behind. He instantly rolled over, letting out a scream of pain. He stumbled to his knees and again redirected his gaze to Courtney. He seemed undeterred as he took another stride in her direction.

Rachel got to her feet, planted them to take a shooter's stance, and fired again. This time, she aimed for his right shoulder. She caught him just as he was bringing his arm back into a stabbing motion. He screamed again, his right arm falling to his side. This time, when he stumbled, Rachel lowered her shoulders and charged at him just as he finally released the knife.

She caught him in a perfect tackle, and when they hit the floor for a second time, he landed on his right arm. The scream he let out was tortured and shrill. With both of his shoulders shot, it was going to be incredibly difficult to handcuff him. Thinking on the fly, she planted an elbow into his chest, knocking the wind and the fight out of him. She took the opportunity to grab her handcuffs and apply them to his ankles. The left one was easy enough to get on, but she had to wrestle a bit to apply the right one.

“Why?” he screamed from the floor. he tried getting to his feet but with his. ankles cuffed and both shoulder useless, he could do nothing more than flounder like a fish out of water. I’m only trying to help! She’s in so much pain!”

Rachel holstered her gun and reached out to Courtney. She took the woman’s hand and nodded toward the bedroom. “You okay?”

“I think so, yeah…” she said, though she was close to tears.

“Go stay in there until I tell you to come out, okay?”

She nodded. "Okay. he was…he came to the door, knocked like anyone else, and said he wanted to talk about the group. he said—"

But her words were broken by sobs, and she hunched over as if she might throw up.

“It’s okay,” Rachel said. “None of this is your fault. But for now, I need you to sit in your bedroom. “This will all be over soon enough.”

Courtney did as she was old, her cries mostly drowned out by the agonized screaming of Gary Everson down on the floor. The left shoulder was only bleeding a bit, but the right one was spitting out a lot, trickling down onto Courtney’s wood floor.

Rachel took her phone from her pocket and dialed Jack. She wasn’t at all surprised when he answered on the first ring.

“Done already?” he asked.

“Yeah, you could say that. I got him.”

“Got…what? You got him? Everson?”

“Yeah. He’s cuffed and bleeding.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s not pretty, but he’ll live.”

“Jesus, Rachel. Did you get there in time? Is Courtney Biddle safe?”

“She’s fine.”

“And you?”

She knew what he meant, and she could hear the concern in his voice. He wanted to know if anything had flared up. he wanted to know if her body was truly healed and if he’d been able to wrap this case without any interference from the cancer or the treatments.

She answered honestly, and it felt odd given what she’d just been forced to do, and with a crying woman in the next room. “Me? I’m good. I’m great.”

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Because Jack had called in for all of the units on their team to gather up at the residence of Courtney Biddle, two cops arrived on the scene before Jack did. As soon as they entered the apartment, Rachel heard the approaching sound of ambulance sirens in response to the call she’d made for a medical assist.

One of the cops was an older gentleman with a busy, mostly-grey moustache. After being slightly taken aback by the blood—which Rachel had done her best to dam up with paper towels while waiting—he observed the way Everson had been cuffed. The officer smiled uneasily, looking to Rachel with a look of playful admiration.

“Well, that’s one way to do it, I guess,” he said.

As the ambulance sirens grew louder, Rachel heard more footsteps approaching. She turned toward the hallway and saw Jack marching her way. He wasn’t quite running, but there was certainly speed in his step. And when he reached her, Rachel was shocked and slightly embarrassed when he wrapped her in his arms.

“Jack, it’s okay,” she said. “I’m good.”

“I know, I know,” he said, giving her a gentle, loving squeeze. “But the whole way over here, I just thought about the last few cases and how much your cancer was…I just…God, Rachel, I was terrified. The whole way here, I was terrified.”

Another cop had entered the room, and to his credit, he stepped around their embrace without saying anything about it.

“Agent Gift?” the new officer asked after Jack broke the hug. “I assume Mrs. Biddle is in there?” he asked, nodding toward the bedroom.

“Yes, she is. I’ve spoken with her to calm her down, but someone actually needs to take her statement.”

“I can get that done,” he said and slowly entered the bedroom.

Rachel turned back to Everson. He'd stopped screaming, though his face was pale, and he'd started weeping soundlessly. The knife he'd intended to take a fourth life with was on the floor beside him, untouched ever since he'd dropped it.

“Good work,” Jack said, nervously chuckling when he saw Everson’s cuffed ankles. “The ambulance was right behind me and…”

He stopped here, distracted by something. He seemed very much off his game, and she wondered if the on-the-clock hug was just the tip of it. Maybe he was more scared and bothered by the situation that he was able to admit.

"What is it?" she asked. "Jack, are you okay?"

“Yeah. Can we…can you step out into the hall for a second?”

"Yeah, sure."

She was worried because he looked pale—not as pale as Everson, but clearly bothered by something. She'd never seen him so upset before, and she hated that it might be because of his worry for her. She looked to one of the other cops on the scene and gestured toward Everson. "Can you keep an eye on him?"

“Absolutely. It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

Right away, Jack started down the hallway. When they stepped through the doorway and out into the hall, they did so just in time to hear the elevator dinging. At the end of the hall, less than thirty feet away, the doors slid open and two paramedics came out, pushing a gurney. Jack seemed to barely even notice this as he took Rachel’s hand and stepped off to the side, allowing the paramedics unhindered access to the apartment.

“Jack, I’m not even going to lie. You’re sort of freaking me out.”

“It all came racing back when we were on the way over here,” he said. “I saw all those times you’d passed out, I saw all the times you looked so weak and helpless in bed over those six months and I…I was terrified.”

“But I told you I was fine. I told you I had him and that I—”

“Oh, I know. I think…I think it just hit me…how many times I’d come so close to losing you and…an…well, I guess it made me realize something.”

“Realize wh—”

The question froze in her throat as Jack slowly started to kneel down. She didn't understand what he was doing at first, but when she saw him also reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket, it all registered. he wasn't kneeling down on both knees…just the one. And he was pulling a small jewelry box out of his pocket.

“Rachel….”

“Jack, no, don’t do this. Not here. Not now.”

He didn't look hurt, just very confused. "It's…it's what I have to do," he said with a smile. Holding the box in his right hand, he started to open it with his left.

“Jack. No.” She dropped to her knees, too, in order to face him. She held his hands in hers, the jewelry box between them. She now understood why he’d seemed so odd these last few days. He’d been sitting on this huge secret. She wondered how long he’d been holding on to the ring.

This time, she thought she did see a bit of rejection in his eyes. He looked away from her for a moment, but she reached out and took his chin, pointing it back to her.

“I’m only saying no because of the situation,” she said. “When we look back on this moment, we’re going to remember paramedics, a traumatized woman, and a man handcuffed at his ankles, bleeding from both shoulders. And while that all sounds exciting, it’s not the backdrop I want for our engagement.”

Jack sighed, and the hurt in his eyes shifted into something more like embarrassment. He slowly placed the jewelry box back in his pocket. "Shit. You're right. You're absolutely right. I wasn't thinking. I was…I was  just so…"

“Scared,” she said, getting back to her feet and pulling her up with him. “I get it, and it’s so sweet. But, Jack…not like this.”

“Yeah. You’re right. But, well…I guess that particular cat is out of the bag now.”

“And that’s fine,” she said, smiling. “And maybe it doesn’t have to go back in the bag for long.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded and leaned forward, kissing him briefly on the lips. “In the meantime, though, let’s go do our jobs.”

He still looked a bit embarrassed, but they walked back into Courtney Biddle's apartment, where Gary Everson was being carefully set on the gurney, and Courtney was recounting the story of Everson's visit. Rachel listened in to her story, asking questions when appropriate and mining for more information when Courtney skipped over details.

It really is like riding a bike, Rachel thought as Courtney wrapped up. It made her even more exciting to get back to work and find out how to better balance this amazing job with her family life. And now that she knew about Jack’s true feelings and the little treasure resting in his pocket, the future suddenly seemed brighter and more promising than ever.

***

Rachel had expected the adrenaline of the case and stepping back into work to completely drain her, but the opposite turned out to be true. Two nights after apprehending Gary Everson, she found herself lying in bed, unable to sleep. When 11:30 rolled around, she considered calling Jack and inviting him over. But she knew that was a bad idea because things were still slightly weird between them following her refusal of his proposal. he seemed to have understood her reasoning, but he’d still been hurt.

So, after heading downstairs and brewing up some lavender tea, she went ahead and tackled something that had been on her to-do list for what seemed like forever. She took her laptop and the tea up to her room and, using the endless number of bookmarked links she’d been saving up over the past year or so, booked the Florida trip for her and Paige. When all was said and done—after researching the parks, the best times to go, the best rides and attractions, (and after spending far more money than she’d planned) it was done. Three days of Disney parks and one full day at Sea World, with a special personalized dolphin experience thrown in.

Oddly enough, the stress of booking the trip had finally caused her to grow tired, and she finally drifted off around two. Her usual weekday alarm tore her awake at 6:30, and she was surprisingly refreshed as she got out of bed. Even before she'd made her way across the room and to the bathroom, she knew what else she wanted to do. And if she played her cards right, it could be done in the next hour.

She could barely contain her smile as she brushed her teeth, dressed for the day, and headed downstairs. Grandma Tate was eating oatmeal at the kitchen table while Paige poured out a bowl of cereal.

Rachel sat down at the table and looked at both of them, not quite able to believe what was on her mind. She was also about to burst in, keeping the news of the Florida trip from Paige. But she'd tell her soon enough. First, there was something else that needed to be done.

“Hey, Paige? I think I’m going to take you into school a bit late today. Do you mind?”

“Really? No, that’s cool.” She frowned as she brought her cereal over, adding, “But I wished I would have known before I woke up. I could have slept more!”

“I know. But listen…I have something I need you and Grandma Tate to help me with. Something I want you both to be a part of.”

“Oh, okay. What is it?”

She told them what she had planned as they shared breakfast together. And as she spelled it all out, she got a glimpse of what she assumed Jack had felt two days ago, kneeling in the hallway outside of Courtney Biddle’s apartment. She also hoped that what she had planned wouldn’t backfire on her.

When she revealed everything, Paige was basically squealing with excitement, and Grandma Tate was crying. Still, they both pitched in and helped. And while they were in the midst of it all, Rachel snuck off to her bedroom and called Jack. She knew he'd be awake. Hell, it was late enough that he may even be on his way into the office already.

“Good morning,” he answered.

“Same to you. Are you still at home?”

“Yeah. About to head out for work. You?”

“Well, I’m having breakfast with Paige and Grandma Tate and they’re both asking about you. You haven’t been over in like two days, so they’re concerned.”

“That’s sweet. but I’m good….rejected marriage proposal aside.”

“Haha. Do you think you could swing by? Even if it’s just for like five minutes? And then from here, we could just drive in to work together.”

“Sounds like fun. I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes.”

When they ended the call, Rachel stood in her bedroom, momentarily paralyzed. Fifteen minutes…

Downstairs, Paige and Grandma Tate were helping to set the scene. Even from upstairs, she could hear Paige cackling about something. Rachel was just relieved that Paige adored Jack so much. It had been just a bit over a year since Alex Lynch had killed her father, so it would have been almost natural for her to be hung up on that and not want any other male presence in their home.

But for Paige, it had been exactly the opposite. And as Rachel thought about how the morning would hopefully go, she found herself thinking about Peter. While they’d ended things on a massive argument over how she’d kept her cancer a secret, she’d never doubted that he loved her. She wouldn’t go so far as to say Peter would be fully supportive of what she hoped was about to happen, but she didn’t think it would offend his memory.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d stood there. When she checked the clock, she was mortified to see that seven minutes had passed. And when Jack said he’d be somewhere in fifteen minutes, he didn’t mean sixteen or twenty. He was punctual to a fault.

Slowly, on knees that were suddenly shaky, Rachel walked back into the kitchen. When Paige saw her, she gave her mother a wide smile. She looked like she was about to burst with excitement.

“Are you happy, sweetie?” Rachel said, laughing.

“Yeah! Aren’t you?”

“I am! But it hasn’t happened yet.”

Grandma Tate came in through the back patio door. “All set up and ready,” she said. “Want to have a look?”

Rachel walked out onto the patio and saw where her daughter and grandmother had set the scene. Rachel had never been one for cheesiness and cliches, but after she’d turned Jack down at a crime scene, she thought she should flip the script and give him the exact opposite. She wanted there to be no doubt that this was what she wanted…him for the rest of a life that she was starting to appreciate in a whole new way following her scary brush with cancer.

Grandma Tate had dug out the fancy tablecloth Rachel never used—plain white with basic lace patterns at the edges. One of them, either Paige or Grandma Tate, had gone to the front of the house and taken a few late-blooming wildflowers and spread them around the cloth. Roses might have been better, but they had no rose bushes and no time to buy any. Besides that, it was just past seven in the morning and no florist would be open anyway.

Lastly, even though it was quite bright out, roughly a dozen candles were lit and cupping the back edge of the cloth.

“Thoughts?” Grandma Tate asked.

“To be whipped together in ten minutes, this is perfect.”

From inside, Paige yelled out from the living room. “He just pulled up! He just pulled up!”

Grandma Tate quickly gave Rachel a hug before heading back inside. When the door closed, Rachel felt herself on the verge of weeping as she listened to things play out inside. Jack rang the doorbell, and Paige ran to answer it. There was some chatter, then Paige laughed. For a second, Rachel worried her daughter would give it all away, unable to contain her excitement. But Jack eventually made it to the kitchen and she could hear him say: “Where’s Rachel.”

“Oh, on the patio,” Grandma Tate said. “Would you mind telling her to get in here already? She has to leave in ten minutes if she wants to get Paige to school on time.”

“Sure thing.”

Rachel took a deep, steadying breath as the patio door opened. Jack came walking out, dressed in his standard black burau attire. There was nothing particularly different about him, but maybe because of the intensity of the moment, Rachel didn't think he'd ever looked so handsome. He smiled uncertainly and looked around the patio. His smile widened as he started to understand what he'd just stepped into.

“Jack?” she said, unable to keep a tear from escaping the corner of her eye.

“Yes, Rachel?” he answered with a tremble in his voice.

“Would you happen to still have that ring on you?”

He opened his mouth to answer but ended up only nodding, maybe not quite trusting himself to speak. She stepped closer to her, not once taking his eyes from hers. He then reached into the same pocket he's reached into two days before and pulled out the box.

This time, when he opened it, Rachel didn’t stop him. She also didn’t stop the question that came out of his mouth.

“Rachel…will you marry me?”

This time, the word no was the furthest thing from her lips. In fact, the “Yes” that came out was shaky and brought another few tears with it.

He took her hand and slid the ring on. She barely even saw it as he stood up and wrapped her in his arms. She felt her heart surge with love and gratitude. This was a new chance. A new life. And it all seemed impossibly overwhelming as those emotions continued to grow when she saw Paige and Grandma Tate looking on through the kitchen window—both smiling, both applauding.

Rachel felt an onslaught of grateful tears coming on, so she snuck in a kiss before they came. She kissed her fiancé sweetly under the morning sun and breathed the moment in deeply, taking in this new chapter of her life.

A chapter she hoped would continue on as brilliantly as it had begun.

CHAPTER THIRTY

One week later

Just the sight of the house pissed Alice off. It was a massive two-story home with at least four bedrooms. The rustic black gate along the side bordered a large, minimally designed swimming pool. A three-car garage sat to the left, connected by a closed-in connecting walkway that was bigger than Alice’s own house.

At night, the place nearly looked like a castle. She'd seen it during the day as part of her research on Rachel Gift. This was one of the primary doctors who had served as a liaison between Rachel and the specialists in Switzerland. Dr. Garland Helmsdale specialized in certain types of immunotherapies and was one of the few doctors in Richmond that was pushing hard for the use of stem-cells in progressive and often cutting-edge treatments. he'd been in the field for thirty years, which was probably how he afforded this massive house.

It was 10:10 at night, and a few of the lights were still on downstairs. She knew what she had to do…that she was about to cross a line she had never considered before. But she’d seen Rachel’s name in the paper twice in the past eight days. Once for stopping a killer who had already taken three lives, and again for her engagement announcement. Ironically, it was the announcement that pushed her over the edge. She’d never felt such fury, dark and hot like poison in her veins.

Something had to be done. She had to send a message. She had to somehow make Rachel know that she was in danger. Killing the bitch wasn’t easy enough. She was going to have to go above and beyond. She was going to have to think about Alex Lynch and how he's gone about his business when he'd been active.

There really wasn’t much planning to it. Alice had parked her car at the end of the block after placing several strips of electrical tape over the license plate. Then, dressed in a baggy gray hoodie and jeans, she’d walked up the half a block to Dr. Helmsdale’s house. She knew he had one of those camera doorbells, and that was going to be the tricky part. But she thought she knew how to get around that. She hoped so anyway. If Helmsdale was cold-hearted or just straight up non-caring, her journey may end tonight.

Quickly, she walked up the driveway and started up the brick-lined sidewalk. Motion lights switched on from the porch—something she hadn't been expecting. No matter…she just lowered her head and continued up the walk. As she did, she kept her hands in the pouch pocket of the hoodie. She felt the blade of the knife and then found the shape of the box-cutter sheath. They made her feel more powerful and sure of herself as she stepped up on the porch.

With the hood pulled up and her head still lowered, she knocked on the door. She avoided the doorbell, not wanting to leave prints of any kind. After a few seconds, a woman’s voice came through the doorbell.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

Alice knew this was Helmsdale’s wife. She’d seen her a couple of times while scouting out the area. A pretty, older lady that still looked cute in a sun visor and sunglasses.

“My name is Kate,” she said, purposefully making her voice rattled. She worked some saliva up to make it seem as if she was having trouble talking. “I need to see Dr. Helmsdale. Please…it’s my mother…I don’t know what else to do…I…please…”

"I'm sorry," the wife said. "But you need to go to the hospital."

"I know! But I don't have a car, and my boyfriend took my phone! My mother…please, she asked for Dr. Helmsdale."

“Look…you can’t just come up to a doctor’s house. I’m sorry about your mother, but you need to—”

Her voice stopped, and a few seconds later, a man's voice came on. "Who is this?"

“I already said my name is Kate! You saw my mother and…and…please…”

“Where is your mother?”

Here we go, Alice thought. Her acting skills would have to come into play next. “I don’t…my chest is…God, it’s…”

And then she stumbled and fell. When she did, she used the palm of her hand to strike the ornate stone of Helmsdale's porch. it was loud and would transfer nicely through the speakers of the doorbell. her head was turned away from the door, but she heard everything. As she suspected, there was a commotion and then the door opened. She heard Dr. Helmsdale telling his wife to call the emergency line at the hospital. And then he was at her side.

"Kate? Kate, can you hear me—"

Alice rolled over. At the same time, she brought the box cutter out and slashed it upwards. It felt…weirder than she she'd thought. It sank into his throat easily, and she slashed the blade up. There was more blood than she was expecting. It was disgusting, and she hated herself for spilling it. It felt unnatural and wrong…but more than that, she had to allow room for the part of her that seemed to enjoy it, even the smallest bit.

When she got to her feet, she jabbed it into his throat again. And again.

She thought of Alex and how he seemed to enjoy this act. She didn’t quite understand it, but she stabbed again and again and again.

She didn’t stop until the idiot wife was screaming. She was essentially nothing more than a deer in headlights. Alice tucked the boxcutter back into her pouch and took out the knife. She then stepped into the Helmsdale residence, knowing she would have less than two minutes to get in and out before the police or an ambulance was on the scene.

As it turned out, it took much less than that. And when she started working with the knife, the wife barely even had time to scream or beg for her life.

By the time she was done, rushing back across the Helmsdale’s lawn with a confused smile on her face, she thought she might be able to finally understand why Alex had taken such pleasure in his work.

NOW AVAILABLE!

HER LAST PRAYER

(A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 12)

When the victim of a new serial killer turns up murdered, investigators are perplexed: it is the second body to appear who suffered from a rare ageing disease. FBI Special Agent Rachel Gift knows a thing or two about limited time left to live—and she knows that she and this killer may just have more in common than she wishes….

“A masterpiece of thriller and mystery.”

—Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Once Gone)

HER LAST PRAYER (A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller) is book #12 in a long-anticipated new series by #1 bestseller and USA Today bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose bestseller Once Gone (a free download) has received over 7,000 five star ratings and reviews.

FBI Agent Rachel Gift, 33, unparalleled for her ability to enter the minds of serial killers, is a rising star in the Behavioral Crimes Unit—until a routine doctor visit reveals she has but a few months left to live.

Not wishing to burden others with her pain, Rachel decides, agonizing as it is, not to tell anyone—not even her boss, her partner, her husband, or her seven-year-old daughter. She wants to go down fighting, and to take as many serial killers with her as she can, but she can feel herself slipping.

While investigating the murders, a hospice worker recognizes the tired look in Rachel’s eye. She can’t hide her condition anymore and she knows it.

It is time to confess her truth—but not before she catches her last killer.

A page-turning and harrowing crime thriller featuring a brilliant and tortured FBI agent, the RACHEL GIFT series is a riveting mystery, packed with non-stop action, suspense, twists and turns, revelations, and driven by a breakneck pace that will keep you flipping pages late into the night. Fans of Rachel Caine, Teresa Driscoll and Robert Dugoni are sure to fall in love.

Future books in this series are now available!

“An edge of your seat thriller in a new series that keeps you turning pages! ...So many twists, turns and red herrings… I can't wait to see what happens next.”

—Reader review (Her Last Wish)

“A strong, complex story about two FBI agents trying to stop a serial killer. If you want an author to capture your attention and have you guessing, yet trying to put the pieces together, Pierce is your author!”

—Reader review (Her Last Wish)

“A typical Blake Pierce twisting, turning, roller coaster ride suspense thriller. Will have you turning the pages to the last sentence of the last chapter!!!”

—Reader review (City of Prey)

“Right from the start we have an unusual protagonist that I haven't seen done in this genre before. The action is nonstop… A very atmospheric novel that will keep you turning pages well into the wee hours.”

—Reader review (City of Prey)

“Everything that I look for in a book… a great plot, interesting characters, and grabs your interest right away. The book moves along at a breakneck pace and stays that way until the end. Now on go I to book two!”

—Reader review (Girl, Alone)

“Exciting, heart pounding, edge of your seat book… a must read for mystery and suspense readers!”

—Reader review (Girl, Alone)

HER LAST PRAYER

(A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 12)

Did you know that I've written multiple novels in the mystery genre? If you haven't read all my series, click the image below to download a series starter!

Blake Pierce

Blake Pierce is the USA Today bestselling author of the RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes seventeen books. Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising fourteen books; of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising six books; of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising seven books; of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising six books; of the JESSIE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising thirty-one books; of the AU PAIR psychological suspense thriller series, comprising three books; of the ZOE PRIME mystery series, comprising six books; of the ADELE SHARP mystery series, comprising sixteen books, of the EUROPEAN VOYAGE cozy mystery series, comprising six books; of the LAURA FROST FBI suspense thriller, comprising eleven books; of the ELLA DARK FBI suspense thriller, comprising twenty-one books (and counting); of the A YEAR IN EUROPE cozy mystery series, comprising nine books, of the AVA GOLD mystery series, comprising six books; of the RACHEL GIFT mystery series, comprising thirteen books (and counting); of the VALERIE LAW mystery series, comprising nine books; of the PAIGE KING mystery series, comprising eight books; of the MAY MOORE mystery series, comprising eleven books; of the CORA SHIELDS mystery series, comprising eight books; of the NICKY LYONS mystery series, comprising eight books, of the CAMI LARK mystery series, comprising ten books; of the AMBER YOUNG mystery series, comprising seven books (and counting); of the DAISY FORTUNE mystery series, comprising five books; of the FIONA RED mystery series, comprising eleven books (and counting); of the FAITH BOLD mystery series, comprising eleven books (and counting); of the JULIETTE HART mystery series, comprising five books (and counting); of the MORGAN CROSS mystery series, comprising nine books (and counting); and of the new FINN WRIGHT mystery series, comprising five books (and counting).

ONCE GONE (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1), BEFORE HE KILLS (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1), CAUSE TO KILL (An Avery Black Mystery—Book 1), A TRACE OF DEATH (A Keri Locke Mystery—Book 1), WATCHING (The Making of Riley Paige—Book 1), NEXT DOOR (A Chloe Fine Psychological Suspense Mystery—Book 1), THE PERFECT WIFE (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book One), IF SHE KNEW (A Kate Wise Mystery—Book 1), MURDER (AND BAKLAVA) (A European Voyage Cozy Mystery—Book 1), LEFT TO DIE (An Adele Sharp Mystery—Book One), A MURDER IN PARIS (A Year in Europe—Book 1), CITY OF PREY (An Ava Gold Mystery—Book One), and HER LAST WISH (A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller—Book One) are each available as a free download on Kobo!

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE

FINN WRIGHT MYSTERY SERIES

WHEN YOU’RE MINE (Book #1)

WHEN YOU’RE SAFE (Book #2)

WHEN YOU’RE CLOSE (Book #3)

WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING (Book #4)

WHEN YOU’RE SANE (Book #5)

MORGAN CROSS MYSTERY SERIES

FOR YOU (Book #1)

FOR RAGE (Book #2)

FOR LUST (Book #3)

FOR WRATH (Book #4)

FOREVER (Book #5)

FOR US (Book #6)

FOR NOW (Book #7)

FOR ONCE (Book #8)

FOR ETERNITY (Book #9)

JULIETTE HART MYSTERY SERIES

NOTHING TO FEAR (Book #1)

NOTHING THERE (Book #2)

NOTHING WATCHING (Book #3)

NOTHING HIDING (Book #4)

NOTHING LEFT (Book #5)

FAITH BOLD MYSTERY SERIES

SO LONG (Book #1)

SO COLD (Book #2)

SO SCARED (Book #3)

SO NORMAL (Book #4)

SO FAR GONE (Book #5)

SO LOST (Book #6)

SO ALONE (Book #7)

SO FORGOTTEN (Book #8)

SO INSANE (Book #9)

SO SMITTEN (Book #10)

SO SIMPLE (Book #11)

FIONA RED MYSTERY SERIES

LET HER GO (Book #1)

LET HER BE (Book #2)

LET HER HOPE (Book #3)

LET HER WISH (Book #4)

LET HER LIVE (Book #5)

LET HER RUN (Book #6)

LET HER HIDE (Book #7)

LET HER BELIEVE (Book #8)

LET HER FORGET (Book #9)

LET HER TRY (Book #10)

LET HER PLAY (Book #11)

DAISY FORTUNE MYSTERY SERIES

NEED YOU (Book #1)

CLAIM YOU (Book #2)

CRAVE YOU (Book #3)

CHOOSE YOU (Book #4)

CHASE YOU (Book #5)

AMBER YOUNG MYSTERY SERIES

ABSENT PITY (Book #1)

ABSENT REMORSE (Book #2)

ABSENT FEELING (Book #3)

ABSENT MERCY (Book #4)

ABSENT REASON (Book #5)

ABSENT SANITY (Book #6)

ABSENT LIFE (Book #7)

CAMI LARK MYSTERY SERIES

JUST ME (Book #1)

JUST OUTSIDE (Book #2)

JUST RIGHT (Book #3)

JUST FORGET (Book #4)

JUST ONCE (Book #5)

JUST HIDE (Book #6)

JUST NOW (Book #7)

JUST HOPE (Book #8)

JUST LEAVE (Book #9)

JUST TONIGHT (Book #10)

NICKY LYONS MYSTERY SERIES

ALL MINE (Book #1)

ALL HIS (Book #2)

ALL HE SEES (Book #3)

ALL ALONE (Book #4)

ALL FOR ONE (Book #5)

ALL HE TAKES (Book #6)

ALL FOR ME (Book #7)

ALL IN (Book #8)

CORA SHIELDS MYSTERY SERIES

UNDONE (Book #1)

UNWANTED (Book #2)

UNHINGED (Book #3)

UNSAID (Book #4)

UNGLUED (Book #5)

UNSTABLE (Book #6)

UNKNOWN (Book #7)

UNAWARE (Book #8)

MAY MOORE SUSPENSE THRILLER

NEVER RUN (Book #1)

NEVER TELL (Book #2)

NEVER LIVE (Book #3)

NEVER HIDE (Book #4)

NEVER FORGIVE (Book #5)

NEVER AGAIN (Book #6)

NEVER LOOK BACK (Book #7)

NEVER FORGET (Book #8)

NEVER LET GO (Book #9)

NEVER PRETEND (Book #10)

NEVER HESITATE (Book #11)

PAIGE KING MYSTERY SERIES

THE GIRL HE PINED (Book #1)

THE GIRL HE CHOSE (Book #2)

THE GIRL HE TOOK (Book #3)

THE GIRL HE WISHED (Book #4)

THE GIRL HE CROWNED (Book #5)

THE GIRL HE WATCHED (Book #6)

THE GIRL HE WANTED (Book #7)

THE GIRL HE CLAIMED (Book #8)

VALERIE LAW MYSTERY SERIES

NO MERCY (Book #1)

NO PITY (Book #2)

NO FEAR (Book #3)

NO SLEEP (Book #4)

NO QUARTER (Book #5)

NO CHANCE (Book #6)

NO REFUGE (Book #7)

NO GRACE (Book #8)

NO ESCAPE (Book #9)

RACHEL GIFT MYSTERY SERIES

HER LAST WISH (Book #1)

HER LAST CHANCE (Book #2)

HER LAST HOPE (Book #3)

HER LAST FEAR (Book #4)

HER LAST CHOICE (Book #5)

HER LAST BREATH (Book #6)

HER LAST MISTAKE (Book #7)

HER LAST DESIRE (Book #8)

HER LAST REGRET (Book #9)

HER LAST HOUR (Book #10)

HER LAST SHOT (Book #11)

HER LAST PRAYER (Book #12)

HER LAST LIE (Book #13)

AVA GOLD MYSTERY SERIES

CITY OF PREY (Book #1)

CITY OF FEAR (Book #2)

CITY OF BONES (Book #3)

CITY OF GHOSTS (Book #4)

CITY OF DEATH (Book #5)

CITY OF VICE (Book #6)

A YEAR IN EUROPE

A MURDER IN PARIS (Book #1)

DEATH IN FLORENCE (Book #2)

VENGEANCE IN VIENNA (Book #3)

A FATALITY IN SPAIN (Book #4)

ELLA DARK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

GIRL, ALONE (Book #1)

GIRL, TAKEN (Book #2)

GIRL, HUNTED (Book #3)

GIRL, SILENCED (Book #4)

GIRL, VANISHED (Book 5)

GIRL ERASED (Book #6)

GIRL, FORSAKEN (Book #7)

GIRL, TRAPPED (Book #8)

GIRL, EXPENDABLE (Book #9)

GIRL, ESCAPED (Book #10)

GIRL, HIS (Book #11)

GIRL, LURED (Book #12)

GIRL, MISSING (Book #13)

GIRL, UNKNOWN (Book #14)

GIRL, DECEIVED (Book #15)

GIRL, FORLORN (Book #16)

GIRL, REMADE (Book #17)

GIRL, BETRAYED (Book #18)

GIRL, BOUND (Book #19)

GIRL, REFORMED (Book #20)

GIRL, REBORN (Book #21)

LAURA FROST FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

ALREADY GONE (Book #1)

ALREADY SEEN (Book #2)

ALREADY TRAPPED (Book #3)

ALREADY MISSING (Book #4)

ALREADY DEAD (Book #5)

ALREADY TAKEN (Book #6)

ALREADY CHOSEN (Book #7)

ALREADY LOST (Book #8)

ALREADY HIS (Book #9)

ALREADY LURED (Book #10)

ALREADY COLD (Book #11)

EUROPEAN VOYAGE COZY MYSTERY SERIES

MURDER (AND BAKLAVA) (Book #1)

DEATH (AND APPLE STRUDEL) (Book #2)

CRIME (AND LAGER) (Book #3)

MISFORTUNE (AND GOUDA) (Book #4)

CALAMITY (AND A DANISH) (Book #5)

MAYHEM (AND HERRING) (Book #6)

ADELE SHARP MYSTERY SERIES

LEFT TO DIE (Book #1)

LEFT TO RUN (Book #2)

LEFT TO HIDE (Book #3)

LEFT TO KILL (Book #4)

LEFT TO MURDER (Book #5)

LEFT TO ENVY (Book #6)

LEFT TO LAPSE (Book #7)

LEFT TO VANISH (Book #8)

LEFT TO HUNT (Book #9)

LEFT TO FEAR (Book #10)

LEFT TO PREY (Book #11)

LEFT TO LURE (Book #12)

LEFT TO CRAVE (Book #13)

LEFT TO LOATHE (Book #14)

LEFT TO HARM (Book #15)

LEFT TO RUIN (Book #16)

THE AU PAIR SERIES

ALMOST GONE (Book#1)

ALMOST LOST (Book #2)

ALMOST DEAD (Book #3)

ZOE PRIME MYSTERY SERIES

FACE OF DEATH (Book#1)

FACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

FACE OF FEAR (Book #3)

FACE OF MADNESS (Book #4)

FACE OF FURY (Book #5)

FACE OF DARKNESS (Book #6)

A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)

THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)

THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4)

THE PERFECT LIE (Book #5)

THE PERFECT LOOK (Book #6)

THE PERFECT AFFAIR (Book #7)

THE PERFECT ALIBI (Book #8)

THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR (Book #9)

THE PERFECT DISGUISE (Book #10)

THE PERFECT SECRET (Book #11)

THE PERFECT FAÇADE (Book #12)

THE PERFECT IMPRESSION (Book #13)

THE PERFECT DECEIT (Book #14)

THE PERFECT MISTRESS (Book #15)

THE PERFECT IMAGE (Book #16)

THE PERFECT VEIL (Book #17)

THE PERFECT INDISCRETION (Book #18)

THE PERFECT RUMOR (Book #19)

THE PERFECT COUPLE (Book #20)

THE PERFECT MURDER (Book #21)

THE PERFECT HUSBAND (Book #22)

THE PERFECT SCANDAL (Book #23)

THE PERFECT MASK (Book #24)

THE PERFECT RUSE (Book #25)

THE PERFECT VENEER (Book #26)

THE PERFECT PEOPLE (Book #27)

THE PERFECT WITNESS (Book #28)

THE PERFECT APPEARANCE (Book #29)

THE PERFECT TRAP (Book #30)

THE PERFECT EXPRESSION (Book #31)

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

CUL DE SAC (Book #3)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #4)

HOMECOMING (Book #5)

TINTED WINDOWS (Book #6)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

IF SHE SAW (Book #2)

IF SHE RAN (Book #3)

IF SHE HID (Book #4)

IF SHE FLED (Book #5)

IF SHE FEARED (Book #6)

IF SHE HEARD (Book #7)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

TAKING (Book #4)

STALKING (Book #5)

KILLING (Book #6)

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (Book #14)

ONCE SHUNNED (Book #15)

ONCE MISSED (Book #16)

ONCE CHOSEN (Book #17)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

BEFORE HE LAPSES (Book #11)

BEFORE HE ENVIES (Book #12)

BEFORE HE STALKS (Book #13)

BEFORE HE HARMS (Book #14)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY