Page 56 of So Bleak

“How do I stop seeing them?” Faith pleaded. “How do I stop thinking about everyone I couldn’t save?”

Dr. West leaned back in his chair and tapped his chin with his pen. He looked at Faith with empathy, but there was a sternness in his eyes that told Faith that what he was about to tell her wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Faith, I’ve said this before, and I truly mean it: you are the most selfless person I’ve ever met. Perhaps more than any other quality save your willpower, that selflessness is what makes you such a phenomenal agent. But you’re not being selfless right now.”

“I know that,” she said irritably. “I know that I should be focusing on the people I’ve saved, and that I’m being selfish by thinking about all the times I’ve failed instead of the times I’ve succeeded, but—”

“Exactly,” he said, gently but firmly. “You’re being selfish because you’re not thinking about everyone you couldn’t save. You’re thinking about all the times you’ve failed.”

Faith blinked twice. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No. If you were thinking about the ones you couldn’t save, it would be their deaths that you found tragic, not your failure. But instead, it’s your failure that bothers you. You’re not grieving their loss, you’re raging against the fact that you aren’t perfect. That will of yours is, as I said, your greatest asset. But in times like this, it’s your greatest weakness. It all comes down to Trammell.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she insisted. “I’m over that.”

“You’re not over it, or the Bureau wouldn’t have insisted that you see me. You’re not over it, or you wouldn’t see relive your torture in your dreams every night.”

“That’s not—”

He held up his hand. “You’re not over it, or you would be able to grieve the loss of those you couldn’t save, find closure for their loss and rejoice in the fact that you saved many more than you lost.

“But that’s not how you feel. You are still trapped in that barn, still tied to that chair, still raging impotently against the realization that there are some things you can’t do, some monsters too big for you to kill.”

Faith lowered her eyes. She wanted to protest further, to argue that West was wrong, and it had nothing to do with Trammell.

But the nightmares came every night, and the feeling of helplessness lingered throughout the day. She had done everything she could possibly do, and he had still beaten her.

West was right. She wasn’t upset because the victims she couldn’t save had died. She was upset because she was still being beaten, still being outsmarted and outmaneuvered by violent people who she could never stop in time. She wasn’t good enough.

Maybe she had never been good enough.

***

“It’s a no for the mail,” Michael said.

Faith started. “What?”

“Different routes for all four victims,” Michael explained. “Makes sense since they live in four different parts of town.”

“What about the publishers?”

“No on the current publishers. Most of them were self-published anyway. Grimes is the only one who sold his work to other people. I’m still cross-referencing names in the industry to see if any of them visited all four people, but it’s a big damned industry. What about you?”

Faith felt heat climb to her cheeks as she realized her mind had wandered. She had spent the past several minutes remembering West’s manipulation and not searching through the victims’ social media accounts for any names that popped up in all four.

Damn it, she had beaten him! Why was he still on her mind?

She took a deep breath. “No, nothing yet.”

He sighed. “Keep looking. I think that’s going to be our best bet.”

She nodded and resumed her search through their social media. It wasn’t looking good. Somehow, none of them had interacted with each other that she could see so far. It was a big industry, sure, but all four of them worked in it. How was it that they had never interacted?

Well, just because they’d never interacted didn’t mean the killer hadn’t interacted with them. Somewhere among the thousands of followers and friends and connections that each of them had was a name that would show up in all four accounts. That person would be their killer.

But as the hours wore on, she still found nothing. Not a single name. She couldn’t understand it. She would have expected many names to show up. She thought she would have to sift through dozens of them to find the few most likely to be the killer.

Instead, she had nothing.

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