Page 31 of So Insane

Michael nodded. “I feel you. Coffee?”

“If I have any more coffee, my heart’s gonna pop,” Kinzel said, “but if you bring me a croissant, I’ll recommend you for the Medal of Freedom.”

Michael chuckled. “You know, you’re not a bad guy when you’re too exhausted to be a pompous ass.”

“I’m sure there’s a brilliant retort floating around somewhere in my mind,” Kinzel replied, “but as you’ve observed, I’m exhausted, so I’ll have to content myself with telling you to go screw yourself.”

Michael laughed again and said, “What do you think? Quick nap, and we let him stew?”

“Yes, but I’m not holding myself accountable to the quick part.”

“Fair enough,” Michael said.

He headed to the break room and looked out the window to see the sky brightening with dawn. Faith sat at the lone table, staring pensively out the window. Turk sat next to her, fast asleep.

Michael looked at her and tried to make sense of the conflict in his head. On one hand, the woman sitting in front of him was his oldest and dearest friend, a woman he loved and had once been in love with, someone he considered a partner in a deeper way than just professionally.

On the other hand, the difference between this woman now and the woman he knew prior to the Donkey Killer manhunt two years ago was almost complete. So little of that Faith seemed to remain that he almost couldn’t believe it was the same person.

But then she turned to him and smiled, and he remembered all of their years together. His heart broke for the thousandth time, and he shuffled to the coffee maker, poured two cups and headed to her table.

“Black like your soul,” he said, handing her the cup.

“Thank you,” she said, taking the cup. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Really? Turk isn’t having any trouble.”

“Turk’s a superhero,” she said, smiling affectionately at the sleeping dog.

Michael noticed a touch of gray beginning to spread on Turk’s muzzle and thought to himself that even superheroes got old.

He was going to be forty next year. He wondered how much longer he could keep up this kind of life before it became too much.

He looked at Faith and saw the hurt in her eyes, the pain she tried to mask but never could with him. He had known her too long not to see through her cocky grin.

He always thought it would be him. If one of them snapped, he thought for sure he would be the one to go. Either he would lose his cool on a suspect, or he would finally fizzle out under the weight of accumulated depression.

Instead, it was Faith in danger, not of fizzling out but of flaming out, Faith who had lost her cool so many times it was becoming rarer for her to find it than to lose it. Faith, someone he once thought of as the strongest person he had ever known, who was rapidly losing any sense of who she was in her single minded obsession to catch the man who reminded her of the killer she couldn’t get, the one Michael had killed to save her, the one who for the first time in Faith’s life had stripped away her strength and dignity.

West wanted to break Faith, but the job had already been done. He was fighting a ghost.

“You want to tell me what happened up there?” he finally asked.

Faith sighed and rolled her eyes. “Well, my Spanish is a little rusty, but I can try telling you in that language since you won’t accept the English version.”

“I believe that he tried to kill you, Faith,” Michael said, “and I would one hundred percent rather it be him looking like that than you. I’m not saying you did anything wrong—”

“Yes, you are,” she said, chuckling bitterly. “Please don’t treat me like I’m stupid. You’re mad that I got a little carried away, but can you actually say I was carried away? I had to subdue him, and I had to do it in a way to make sure he wouldn’t try to fight back while I led him back down the side of a mountain in the dark.”

“And why were you up there alone again?” he asked gently.

“So I should have let him get away, right? You didn’t want to follow me. Once again, Michael, I had to go after a killer by myself because you couldn’t be bothered.”

He recoiled, shocked and hurt by the comment. He felt a second pang because it was true. He had given up before she did. She had found a way to keep going on when he had decided there was no way.

For the first time, he could understand how frustrated she was about the West case.

In that way, at least, she was exactly like the Faith he once knew. She was an unstoppable force, someone who would keep going long past the point where everyone else gave up.

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