Page 5 of So Silent

“The perfect victim.”

“Yep. No one to miss her. Well, I’m sure her family will miss her, but no one to miss her who might also be involved in her death or stick around to push the case forward.”

“Any sign of sexual assault?”

“The file didn’t mention anything, but it’s pretty thin right now. The case is only eight hours old, so I can’t imagine the M.E. has had time to perform an autopsy yet.” He looked at Faith. “What’s with you being in a rush all of a sudden?”

“I’m not in a rush. I’m just asking.”

“Are you sure? You seem antsy. Like you want answers to everything right this second: me and Ellie, this case.”

“That’s two things.”

"Well, okay, two things. Call it intuition, then. You seem anxious."

“I was assaulted in my own home by a sociopathic serial killer obsessed with ‘breaking me’ less than forty-eight hours ago,” Faith reminded him. “Frankly, I deserve a damned medal for functioning at all right now.”

Michael grimaced. “Good point. Sorry. I just… I don’t know, I got used to you being a superhero. That’s no excuse, though. I really am glad you’re safe, and if you need to take things easy and let me run with the case for a while, that’s okay.”

“Nice try,” she said with a wry grin, “but I’ll be all right. You know me, I just hate starting with nothing because then we have nowhere to go.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he assured her. “We always do.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

They fell silent when they reached the airport. Faith perused the file while Michael went for coffee. As Michael had said, there was very little information. Rebecca Wells had been murdered seemingly at random, and the only thing they had that resembled a lead was the possible connection to a year-old murder that showed only tangential similarity.

With nothing to focus on relating to their case, her thoughts drifted back to West. He seemed confident that whatever he was planning would succeed, but then, he was always confident. He was an obligatory narcissist, and Faith genuinely believed that if he was put in a boxing ring opposite God, West would walk straight to the center of the ring certain he’d put the Creator of the Universe down inside four rounds.

But now Faith and Turk were flying to the opposite side of the country. They would be out of West’s reach, but David and Ellie would still be vulnerable. Even with police protection, there was always the possibility that someone could sneak through.

But West was in jail under watch. He couldn’t get to anyone on the outside, and he couldn’t do anything himself. They were safe. Weren’t they?

“Here you go,” Michael said, handing her a cup. “They didn’t have vanilla, so I asked for extra extra extra caramel.”

Faith rolled her eyes and sipped her black coffee. “Thank you. Delicious as always.”

He chuckled and said, “Ellie thinks that joke is funny.”

“Ellie humors you because she loves you.”

“She does. I miss her already.”

"Just think about how good she'll feel the first night back home."

“Don’t be gross.”

The gate agent called their flight, and the three FBI agents boarded. Turk gave Faith an excited look, and despite her anxiety, Faith couldn’t help but smile. “Ready to catch a bad guy, Turk?”

Her trusty canine barked enthusiastically, and Faith’s smile widened. Let West try something. It would only be another chance to remind him why he had lost.

Chapter Three

Rebecca’s studio was in a modest business park six miles west of the town proper, a little less than halfway to Seattle from Redmond. The building was cordoned off by police tape and watched by a half-dozen officers, a rather hefty amount of cavalry for the suburban neighborhood.

The officers greeted the three agents with bored expressions. The senior officer, a grizzled sergeant who looked closer to sixty than fifty, pointed them inside to a short, thin woman with severe features and sharp gray eyes.

The woman greeted the agents with a curt nod. “Detective Wanda Simonich, Redmond PD. You guys got here fast.”

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