with you?”
“Kaminsky and Crane. Their plane didn’t get out of here, either.” In the background Charlie could hear the other members of the team—FBI Special Agents Lena Kaminsky and Buzz Crane—demanding to know what was up. They were quickly silenced, and Charlie imagined Tony, who was their boss, gesturing at them to be quiet.
Charlie gave Tony a quick, condensed version of events, finishing with “The trail’s still fresh. We’ve got a real chance to catch this guy if you can get here fast. We—”
“We?” Michael erupted. He was giving her the kind of hard, intimidating, you will bend to my will look that she hoped she had just turned on Sager. Once upon a time, coming from the big, scary convict in the orange jumpsuit who she was pretty sure had lied to her about her inkblots, she might actually have found that look alarming. Now, though, she found herself battling the impulse to stick her tongue out at him. “If you mean you and him, there is no we in this, buttercup. Your boyfriend there’s a federal agent who gets paid to lay his life on the line. You’re a shrink. You get paid to listen to people talk. Damn it, Charlie, I’m going to say this one more time: messing with serial killers is stupid. It’s fucking dangerous. Didn’t anybody ever teach you that if you poke a sleeping bear enough times sooner or later it’s going to wake up and eat you?”
Charlie shot Michael a narrow-eyed mind your own business look. Replying to him was, of course, out of the question.
So she continued talking to Tony instead.
“—have a survivor, we have an envelope with handwriting on it as well as other possible trace evidence, we have a knife that may or may not be a murder weapon, we have—”
“We’re out the door,” Tony interrupted her to say. “Thirty minutes, max.”
That was exactly the response Charlie had hoped for. Tony and his team were as invested in the apprehension of serial killers as she was in the studying of them. She knew how good they were at their jobs because she had watched them work: on the very day that Michael had been killed, Tony and his team had come to her and asked for her help in finding the Boardwalk Killer, the serial killer who had murdered her best friend, Holly, and Holly’s family when she and Holly were only seventeen. Charlie had been staying the night with Holly at the time, and had hidden from the killer and survived. When the Boardwalk Killer had resurfaced after fifteen years, she had been reluctant (okay, afraid) to get involved—but she had done it anyway. As a result, the Boardwalk Killer had been captured, and, not incidentally, Charlie had been freed of the secret terror she had lived with ever since she’d survived the attacker who had killed Holly: that the Boardwalk Killer would, sooner or later, come back and kill her, too. And in the process, she had been enormously impressed with Tony and his team.
Now there was another madman, more victims, fresh horror. Another serial killer who had turned his eyes toward her. Simply thinking about it made Charlie imagine that she could feel the darkness closing in. Her darkness, her own private one, the one that came from looking evil in the face and barely surviving. The darkness of her own mortal fear.
She could feel a tightening in her chest.
I don’t know if I can go through this again.
Tony was saying, “Did you say the local police are there now? Could you let me speak to whoever’s in charge?”
Stay in the moment. “That would be Detective Todd Sager.”
Passing her phone to Sager, Charlie told him, “This is FBI Special Agent Tony Bartoli, from the Special Circumstances Division out of Quantico. They’re an elite team whose sole purpose is to track and catch serial killers. They’re on their way here right now.”
“Well, hell, there goes the neighborhood,” Michael said with disgust, leaning back against the breakfast bar and folding his arms over his chest. Charlie shot him an
“Kaminsky and Crane. Their plane didn’t get out of here, either.” In the background Charlie could hear the other members of the team—FBI Special Agents Lena Kaminsky and Buzz Crane—demanding to know what was up. They were quickly silenced, and Charlie imagined Tony, who was their boss, gesturing at them to be quiet.
Charlie gave Tony a quick, condensed version of events, finishing with “The trail’s still fresh. We’ve got a real chance to catch this guy if you can get here fast. We—”
“We?” Michael erupted. He was giving her the kind of hard, intimidating, you will bend to my will look that she hoped she had just turned on Sager. Once upon a time, coming from the big, scary convict in the orange jumpsuit who she was pretty sure had lied to her about her inkblots, she might actually have found that look alarming. Now, though, she found herself battling the impulse to stick her tongue out at him. “If you mean you and him, there is no we in this, buttercup. Your boyfriend there’s a federal agent who gets paid to lay his life on the line. You’re a shrink. You get paid to listen to people talk. Damn it, Charlie, I’m going to say this one more time: messing with serial killers is stupid. It’s fucking dangerous. Didn’t anybody ever teach you that if you poke a sleeping bear enough times sooner or later it’s going to wake up and eat you?”
Charlie shot Michael a narrow-eyed mind your own business look. Replying to him was, of course, out of the question.
So she continued talking to Tony instead.
“—have a survivor, we have an envelope with handwriting on it as well as other possible trace evidence, we have a knife that may or may not be a murder weapon, we have—”
“We’re out the door,” Tony interrupted her to say. “Thirty minutes, max.”
That was exactly the response Charlie had hoped for. Tony and his team were as invested in the apprehension of serial killers as she was in the studying of them. She knew how good they were at their jobs because she had watched them work: on the very day that Michael had been killed, Tony and his team had come to her and asked for her help in finding the Boardwalk Killer, the serial killer who had murdered her best friend, Holly, and Holly’s family when she and Holly were only seventeen. Charlie had been staying the night with Holly at the time, and had hidden from the killer and survived. When the Boardwalk Killer had resurfaced after fifteen years, she had been reluctant (okay, afraid) to get involved—but she had done it anyway. As a result, the Boardwalk Killer had been captured, and, not incidentally, Charlie had been freed of the secret terror she had lived with ever since she’d survived the attacker who had killed Holly: that the Boardwalk Killer would, sooner or later, come back and kill her, too. And in the process, she had been enormously impressed with Tony and his team.
Now there was another madman, more victims, fresh horror. Another serial killer who had turned his eyes toward her. Simply thinking about it made Charlie imagine that she could feel the darkness closing in. Her darkness, her own private one, the one that came from looking evil in the face and barely surviving. The darkness of her own mortal fear.
She could feel a tightening in her chest.
I don’t know if I can go through this again.
Tony was saying, “Did you say the local police are there now? Could you let me speak to whoever’s in charge?”
Stay in the moment. “That would be Detective Todd Sager.”
Passing her phone to Sager, Charlie told him, “This is FBI Special Agent Tony Bartoli, from the Special Circumstances Division out of Quantico. They’re an elite team whose sole purpose is to track and catch serial killers. They’re on their way here right now.”
“Well, hell, there goes the neighborhood,” Michael said with disgust, leaning back against the breakfast bar and folding his arms over his chest. Charlie shot him an
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