Page 47 of So Lethal

Another voice asked, “Could this be the Messenger Killer following you across the country?”

Faith stiffened. She almost turned around, but Michael grabbed her shoulder firmly and pulled her along. She pressed her lips so tightly she could feel their circulation cut off.

Assholes. Goddamned assholes.

They reached the cruiser, and Michael quickly pulled away from the curb. He drove away from the neighborhood and then turned right instead of left, taking a circuitous route back to the hotel so the news van didn’t catch them.

Faith slowly calmed down as they drove away. Somehow, despite her celebrity status, she'd managed to avoid personal interactions with the media while investigating her cases. If that was going to change, then Tabitha might have a real point about keeping her out of the field.

Maybe that was for the best. Maybe she couldn’t handle the job anymore.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Michael handed Faith a bag and set a cup of coffee next to her. “In that bag is your very own individual pepperoni pizza, a bag of Cheetos, and a pack of Hostess powdered donuts. If you eat all of your good food, there’s Reese’s peanut butter cups to share.”

She chuckled. “Good food?”

“I didn’t say healthy food. Just good.”

She laughed again. “Fair enough.” Her smile faded, and she looked away.

“Hey. Stop beating yourself up because some dipshit reporter revealed herself to be a dipshit.”

“That’s not it,” she said. “I just… I can’t stop thinking that if I hadn’t lost my cool over the ringing in my ears, then we would have been at the house ten minutes sooner, and we might have saved Marcus.”

“We wouldn’t have saved him. CSI report just came back. Marcus was dead for thirty minutes before we got there. The killer took a while to get him set up in the woodshed.”

“Well, we might have been able to catch the killer, though.”

“Maybe. Or maybe Turk would still have been affected, and he still would have gotten away from you.”

He sat on the other chair and rested his forearms on his thighs. “Look, I’ve worked with you for a long time, Faith. I understand the urge all law enforcement officers have to blame themselves when things go wrong, and I understand that urge is a thousand times stronger in your case, but it’s misplaced and not helpful.”

Faith didn’t want to get into an argument with Michael now, so she said, “You’re right. I know. I’m just upset.”

“Hence the junk food. Eat it, it’ll make you feel good.”

“Or it’ll make me groggy and slow.”

He rolled his eyes. “Which is why you have coffee. For God’s sake, when you’re moody, you are determined to stay that way.”

She couldn’t quite resist a chuckle. “Thank you, Michael. This was really nice of you.”

“See? Was that so hard?”

“Quit while you’re ahead.”

She reached into the bag and pulled out the pizza. It bore a picture of a cartoon man with an impossibly wide mouth and eyes that pegged him as a heavy meth user in the middle of his best high. He held a slice of pizza up like a ceremonial goblet and proclaimed—according to the speech bubble over his head—that the pizza was hot and fresh.

It was neither hot nor fresh, but it was salty and savory and greasy, just like pizza should be. Against all odds, the tension in Faith’s shoulders relaxed somewhat, and she was able to think rationally again.

“We need to roll this back to basics,” she said. “We’ve been chasing the flavor of the moment when it comes to our suspects. We need to figure out what the connection is between all of them, not just the most recent connection to the most recent victim.”

“I agree,” Michael said, “with the additional criterion that the connection has to be more than just the fact that they’re all deaf or hearing impaired. We believe that’s what motivates the killer to ‘liberate’ them, but we still need to know why them specifically.”

“Well, Monica and James were both at the same clinical trial,” Faith suggested. “They were also at the same career day at the community center. Marcus and Sarah were both attending a support group at the community center.”

“True,” Michael said, leaning back and crossing his arms, “but Sarah and Marcus never saw Dr. Crane.”

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