by Mary Stone
Winter wasn’t a bar-hopper by nature and didn’t socialize a lot, so she let Bree pick the place. The Blue Room was crowded.
“Mai-tais,” Bree declared to the bartender. “It’s too damned cold out there for us Virginians to be dealing with this. We need something tropical to take our minds off the weather.” She claimed a couple of bar stools and asked the waitress to let them know when a quieter two-top was ready.
Winter sipped at the fruity concoction. The lime and rum provided a stronger kick than she’d expected from the fru-fru name. Bree’s dark brown eyes glowed with enjoyment as she raised her glass and her voice, attempting to be heard over the crowd of mostly college kids. “Cheers.”
“Ditto,” Winter replied, clinking her glass against Bree’s. The rum slid a slow, sweet burn down her throat, and she cautioned herself to go slow. She set her drink on a napkin on the bar in front of her but had to grab it again when a laughing kid in a VCU sweatshirt bumped into their table. At the front of the room, on a makeshift stage, a band of black-dressed girls started tuning guitars with a wail.
“Doesn’t it make you feel old to go to places like this?”
Bree laughed out loud. “You don’t pull any punches, do you? I like that in a person.”
Embarrassed, Winter flushed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant it makes me feel old to come here, and you’re a couple of years older…”
“Oh, don’t ruin it and get coy now. I’m forty-five.” Bree grinned, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I know I don’t look old, but I’m not exactly young, either. I’ve got twenty years on you, right?”
Winter grinned too. “Something like that. You wear it well.”
“Have you met my fiancée, Shelby? Hell, she’s fifty and doesn’t look a day over twenty sometimes. It’s downright intimidating dating a model.”
They fell into a comfortable conversation for a while and ordered another round.
“Got your table ready, Agent Stafford.” The perky blonde waitress grinned. “You want to grab those drinks to go?”
She led them away from a Courtney Love cover that managed to butcher the song worse than the original, to a table that was surprisingly quiet. It was tucked back in a small hallway that Winter had assumed led to the bathrooms and kitchen. There were a few other people there, having conversations they could actually hear over the thrumming baseline just outside.
“Only the regulars know about the quiet tables,” the waitress told Winter before turning to Bree. “You want your usual?”
“Yep. The appetizer trio and a Coke.”
“Make it two, please. And a glass of water.” Winter felt a little lightheaded. She hadn’t been sleeping well and had been forgetting meals altogether. The late hours and two-hour-roundtrip bike commutes weren’t helping.
Bree seemed to be noticing the same thing. “You doing okay lately? You look a little scrawny and peaked. Not that you had much color before, but you’re worse now. Like, transparent.”
Winter blinked. “Speaking of not pulling punches.”
Bree smiled, but it was tinged with concern. “Don’t work yourself to death, Winter. He’s not worth it. Give it your best but put yourself first. Good advice from an old-timer like me,” she acknowledged wryly before taking another small sip. “Easier said than done, I know, given your connection.”
The waitress brought their food. When she left, Bree pulled out a manila envelope. She slid it across the table to Winter. “Very clandestine, no?” She faked a French accent and a furtive manner.
Before Winter could open it, Bree shook her head in the negative. “The pictures aren’t pretty. Save them for later so you can at least get some calories in yourself first.”
Winter didn’t care about mozzarella sticks dipped in ranch dressing or greasy, deep-fried pickles. The thought already made her stomach want to turn.
Her fingers itched to undo the clasp on the envelope, but she tucked it away in her bag instead and pulled out an identical envelope. FBI standard issue, apparently.
“I brought you a present too.”
Winter had filled it with the printouts that she’d pulled off the thumb drive Aiden had given her. She printed them from home the night before, figuring that even if she was caught accessing the info from home, Aiden really couldn’t say much.
He was blackmailing her, essentially. And she always had the option to quit.
She didn’t include the sketch she’d made of The Preacher.
“As long as we’re switching to shoptalk,” Bree commented, tucking her own envelope away, “did you hear about the big break? Our pint-sized witness?”
“I did. The story traveled around fast.”
“It was glorious.” Bree popped a fried pickle into her mouth. “I watched this nine-year-old kid take down the Roanoke detective in a debate on police procedure when dealing with minors. Little dude knew his rights and wasn’t about to let her push him around.”
“So, his story checked out?”
“Absolutely.” She looked grim for a moment. “I’m just glad the kid wasn’t spotted. Apparently, he likes to sneak out of the house and play cops and robbers by himself in the woods. His mom thought he was in his room all afternoon.”
“He was too close.” It was chilling. The kid was lucky The Preacher hadn’t seen him. Goose bumps raised on her arms as another thought occurred to her. Had her brother still been alive in captivity at nine years old? She pushed away the thought, along with the half-eaten platter of food. “Is he protected? The boy?”
Bree’s gaze softened. “Of course.”
“Good.”
“It may not be in the reports yet, because Roanoke is holding up their official verification of the kid’s witness statement, but the guy looked like Santa Claus.”
“Santa Claus?”
The Preacher’s face flashed into her head. His soft, Southern-accented voice whispering sibilant sounds inside her mind that made no sense. His white hair and beard, beatific smile, and dead, black eyes.
“I know,” Bree went on. “That narrows it down to approximately ten percent of the old white guy population. I feel like we’re playing Guess Who, flipping down cards. What’s next? A mall Santa lineup for a child witness? A defense attorney would have a field day with something like that.”
Winter didn’t reply.
She didn’t know what was going to come next, but there was a slight, nagging pain behind her eyes—one that had been there for days—that told her she might not have to wait long to find out.
16
Aiden watched Winter, feeling an unaccountable pang of guilt.
She was hunched over her computer, her shoulders rounded, her back curved. She wore a black, long-sleeved t-shirt. Even from his place behind his desk, he could make out the knobby ridge of her spine. She’d quit dressing for the job, leaving off the blazer, trading jeans for the dress pants she normally wore. It was like her professional shell was melting away under the fire of stress and obsession.
She’d always been slim and fair-skinned, but her face was paler than usual. Her cheekbones were more pronounced, her dark blue eyes shadowed with gray smudges of fatigue. She hadn’t been eating or sleeping, he could tell. Even her hair, usually gleaming like black steel in the thick braid she wore it in, looked lank. Diminished.
The Winter who had made a habit of popping by his place with Chinese food and sarcastic banter to cheer him up during his recuperation was gone. This Winter burned with an intensity of purpose that would likely consume her whole.
He pushed away from his desk and left his office, heading for her cubicle.
“Break time,” he pronounced.
She jumped skittishly, and her fingers flew over the keyboard, minimizing whatever window she had pulled up on the screen.
“I don’t need a break.” She looked up at him, exhausted but defiant.
“Fine. Meeting, then.”
He walked away, heading toward the small conference room he used for team status upd
ates. She’d follow, he told himself. He was the boss. In the last several weeks, he was confident that she’d come to understand and accept that.
Still, Aiden was relieved when Winter followed him in with her laptop and sat down at the small table. He picked up the office extension and asked one of their interns to get some bagels and coffee and bring them in.
“Is it your turn to feed me now?” Winter asked with a ghost of her old humor.
“Someone has to,” he replied harshly. “What the fuck are you doing to yourself?”
She sank back into the chair, humor gone, arms folded. “I thought this was what you wanted.”
It was. But not at this cost.
“You look half-dead.” His tone was harder than he’d intended. “You don’t show up for work half the time, so I have to assume you’re pursuing things on your own. That ends now.”
“If you don’t like the way I work,” Winter offered, her eyes glittering, “you could always fire me.”
It was a standoff. He wanted to grind his teeth. He thought he’d had her where he wanted her. No, he did have her where he wanted her, but he couldn’t physically force her to take care of herself.
Looking at the waifish figure in front of him, he felt like a monster. He didn’t appreciate guilt. It wasn’t an emotion that he’d ever had to battle with before.
“You and I are working together from here on out,” Aiden decided out loud.
Her face shuttered instantly. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Yes. Yes, you fucking do need a babysitter.”
“Don’t pretend you’re doing this for me. That your motives are virgin-pure.”
Winter was shooting in the dark, but the bullets were coming close. Fortunately, she was young. Impulsive. He had more practice developing a shell and ruthless self-control. He focused on what mattered, no matter what it took to get there. Manipulating others to get the results he needed was a talent and a skill that he’d begun to cultivate in the last few years, and he was good at it.
He smiled. Slowly.
“Quit if you need to, but today would be a bad day for that. We have another possible victim.”
Angry color bled into her cheeks as she stood and planted her hands on the table.
“Then why wouldn’t you say that instead of playing these Machiavellian games, Parrish? You enjoy pulling puppet strings so much, you’re going to keep doing it. Forget about the unlucky women who could die while you’re getting off on your power games, right?”
He ignored that, but it stung a little. Winter would be a force to be reckoned with in a few years. The thought brought a strange stirring of pride.
“Sit down.” He kept his tone mild. “If you’re done with your temper tantrum, I’ll tell you what I’ve come up with. I know where he’s going to hit next.”
The steel in Winter’s blue glare could have sparked fire to wet kindling, but she sat back down in her chair. “Where?”
“Murder number three. Ocean View, New Jersey. Gabby Dean.”
He waited, giving her a significant look. She opened up her notebook to a fresh page and jotted a few words down. Satisfied that she was with him now, he went on.
“Gabby was a student at Rowan University. Twenty-three years old. Lived alone in a small apartment near campus. She was found by a study partner who came to pick her up for a class.”
Winter didn’t look up. “And the MO is the same.”
“Surprisingly different. If not for the set of numbers on the wall and the fact that we’re watching for him, we might have missed it. On the ceiling in blood, where the vic would have been able to see it, he wrote 31:30. This time, a cross on the victim’s forehead, almost like a benediction. Cause of death, throat cut, but no genital mutilation.”
Winter had stopped writing and was staring off into the middle distance. “She was pretty. Vivacious. Charming.”
“Yes. The sorority girl type. Physically fit and attractive, with a regular, predictable running and exercise routine. How did you know?”
“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”
“Proverbs 31,” Aiden agreed with a short nod.
“The ultimate blueprint for the perfect woman. What did he do to her, if it wasn’t something sexual?”
Aiden hesitated for a moment, and then turned his own computer around so she could see the image pulled up on the screen. He watched Winter’s face. There was no reaction, and that, more than anything, made him want to question everything he’d done up to this point.
“You see what’s been done to her?” he pushed, almost angrily. Where was her disgust? The emotional connection?
Winter just looked up at him, her eyes flat. “Yes. She’s been flayed. Like the adage, beauty is only skin deep. So, he removed her skin to show the ugliness on the inside.”
Aiden wanted to yell at her. Shake her out of this dispassionate zombie mode. Ask her when she’d gone so cold. But he screwed the lid down on his own unwelcome conscience and drew a deep breath.
This was his fault, not hers.
He turned the laptop away and closed the screen.
“You said you know where he’s going to hit next?”
There was no mistaking the gleam of anticipation in her eyes, and he regretted telling her. It was too late. He couldn’t change his mind now without weakening his position.
“Yes.” Aiden pulled a printout out of a folder and turned it around. It showed Richmond and the surrounding areas. He’d marked the locations of the murders in red ink.
“You told me that the killer had a Southern accent.” It had been skimpy information at best. He knew she had more info in that brain of hers but had a feeling he’d need to work at her to get it out.
“We’ve been looking at priests, religious figures, and church members who have an obvious obsession with scripture and the idea of a perfect woman. Hence the nickname, The Preacher. But I think I’ve figured out his killing pattern. Watch.”
He pointed to Washington, D.C., where Officer Delosreyes had been killed first. Then, Roanoke, Virginia, to the south of Richmond. Ocean View, New Jersey, to the east.
“It’s the Holy Trinity.” For a moment, her face was animated at the discovery. Winter lifted her own hand to her forehead, her chest, her left shoulder, and her right. “The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Is he Baptist?”
Aiden grinned, and let himself enjoy the shared moment. It was discoveries like this that reminded him why he’d joined the FBI to begin with. The satisfying click of a conclusion made when you snapped it into the rest of the puzzle and just knew it was the right one.
“I think so, if my theory holds. I’ve got a couple of people working on the old cases, grouping them geographically and checking to see if this has been his MO all along. And look what’s west of Richmond, within that radius.”
“Harrisonburg.” Her face lifted, lit with anticipation. Shit. Time to backtrack. “He’s going to hit in Harrisonburg.”
“It’s a big maybe. But we stay here.”
“Of course,” Winter murmured, looking down again. “Tucked up nice and safe behind our desks in the BAU.”
“And that’s where we should be. We’re BAU. Not VC.”
“You’re BAU.”
“And so,” he concluded, his voice silky, “are you. Remember that.”
“Are we done here?” Winter asked, her tone remote and face distant.
“No. I have a theory on when he’ll hit again.”
“Spill it,” Winter invited, life coming back into her pretty features.
Aiden narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think so.”
She’d go rushing off to Harrisonburg, and there would be no holding her back. He wasn’t a profiler for nothing. He could see that the obsession had tipped over far enough that she wasn’t worried about the consequences.
Winter was only focused on her one consuming goal. Getting to The Preacher.
“Fine.” She gave him
a deceptively casual smile. “Holding back information for personal gain fits your profile…the BAU has taught me a few things. I can figure out the rest.”
She stood up, gathering her things.
He’d lost control of the situation.
Aiden picked up his Montblanc pen, running it through his fingers lightly. It had been a gift from ADD Ramirez on the day his promotion to the SSA of the BAU had been officially announced.
“We’ll meet again this afternoon. End of day.”
“Sorry.” Winter shook her head in mock-regret. “I’m leaving soon for a doctor’s appointment. Girl stuff. For a very personal, embarrassing reason that’s most definitely off-limits to Aiden Parrish, my supervisor. Ramirez, HIPAA, and Human Resources will all tell you that you can’t question me about it or dig too deep without getting punched in the teeth with a lawsuit. And, gosh…” she batted her lashes at him, “wouldn’t that be a black eye on your record.”
She gave him a cool, triumphant glance on her way out. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d booked an appointment already, just to give herself the alibi.
He could easily picture the smirk on her face as Winter’s voice quieted the hum and bustle of his hardworking, effective, completely controlled department.
“You have to work within the strictures of the system, Parrish,” she called out. “The FBI frowns on going rogue.”
Aiden flinched as the snap of his breaking pen echoed sharply in the small room.
17
Winter held back the fierce grin that threatened to split her face. She didn’t stop in her office, just stuffed her computer in its laptop case and slung it over her shoulder with her messenger bag. She grabbed her leather coat and insulated steel water bottle and left everything else. If she forgot anything, it would probably just get boxed up by HR and sent to her house after she was fired.
God, that had felt good.
The last vestiges of that hero worship she’d always felt for Aiden Parrish had burned away in that little conference room. She’d finally let herself see him for what he was.
She rounded the wall of her cubicle at a fast clip and headed toward the exit. She wasn’t worried about Aiden catching up to her. Finding a reason to keep her here. He couldn’t. He wasn’t some infallible epitome of the perfect FBI agent, all-seeing and all-powerful.
