Page 9 of Absent Feeling

“Butyoudidthe training,” Simon pointed out. It looked as though he mightbe about to say more, but his phone rang. Simon set it in a holder and put iton speaker to answer it. “Hello?”

“AgentPhelps, it’s me.” It was Palliser’s voice. Amber found herself wondering ifsome new information had come through on the case, or if she’d simply decidedto call to make sure that Amber was aware of the limits of what she was allowedto do without having a full job as an agent.

“Iseverything all right, ma’am?” Simon asked.

“Ihave some bad news, and I thought that you should hear it from me. ColmO’Rafferty has escaped.”

Ambercaught the sudden burst of worry and anger that flickered across Simon’s face.

“What?How is that even possible? He was being held in one of the most secure federalpenitentiaries we have.”

“Hesomehow arranged for a transfer,” Palliser said. “With O’Rafferty, nothing isimpossible. He was on the way to his new facility when the prison van he was inwas attacked, we think by cartel members out to kill one or both of the othercriminals being transported with him. Somewhere in it all, the van went over abridge into a river.”

“Yousaid ‘escaped’ not ‘dead’,” Simon pointed out.

“Diverswent down to check the wreckage. They found the bodies of two prison guards andthe two other prisoners. Colm O’Rafferty’s body was not in the vehicle. It’spossible that he was swept away, but …”

“Butit’s him, and he wasn’t. Do you need me to head back to help with the manhunt?”Simon asked.

“No,that’s a matter for the Marshals. I want to make that clear, Phelps.”

Itsounded to Amber as though Palliser was worried that if she weren’t firm aboutit, Simon would hurry off to try to catch O’Rafferty.

“I’mtelling you as a courtesy, but you need to focus on your case. I figured youdeserve it since you were involved in catching him in the first place.”

Palliserhung up, and Amber found herself looking across to Simon, waiting for an explanation.

“Whois Colm O’Rafferty?” Amber asked.

“Oneof the first cases I worked at the bureau,” Simon answered. “A killer with afondness for games and puzzles. The shrink who examined him says that he’s ahighly intelligent sociopath who gets off on manipulating and tricking peoplebefore he kills them. We only caught him the first time by accident because awitness got away from a house that he was breaking into to kill someone.”

Itwasn’t the words that affected Amber so much as the note of fear in Simon’svoice as he said them. She hadn’t known him to be afraid of anyone, but thisO’Rafferty person seemed to achieve it.

“ButPalliser wants us to focus onthiscase?” Amber said.

“Youheard her.” Simon nodded to the road ahead.

Ambercould see a town in the distance, buildings rising up like jabbing fingersagainst the sky, framed by a small scattering of hills that lent it an unevenappearance.

“What’sour first move when we get there?” Amber asked.

“Weneed to talk to the local PD, see if there’s anything about these murders thatdidn’t make it into the files.”

Andin the meantime, they could only worry about the fact that there were not one,but two serial killers out there.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Simonwas determined not to waste even a moment as he pulled up outside theGuisborough PD. With an active killer who had murdered two people in two days,every minute was precious. He all but leapt from the car, hurrying towards thepolice department’s entrance with Amber following close behind.

Simonhad been glad when Palliser had acceded to his request that Amber become hispartner. He hadn’t thought that she would since it would mean taking on someonenewly trained in a department where any failure was literally a matter of lifeand death. Yet Palliser seemed to recognize just how well he and Amber workedtogether, and that her problem-solving abilities could be a valuable additionto his own more direct and action-oriented approach.

Now,Simon just needed Amber to realize it too. He hadn’t expected her to beambivalent about signing up to keep working with him. He’d seen how much she’dcome alive during their previous cases, and he’d thought when she’d signed upfor training at Quantico that she was all in on becoming an agent. Now, itseemed that she was having cold feet, and Simon couldn’t really understand why.

Therewas no time to delve deeper into it, though. They had a case to solve.

GuisboroughPD was a single large, brick building that looked as though it had been thereforever, as if it had been put in place first and the rest of the town had beenbuilt up around it. Inside, it was relatively quiet, with only a few copshurrying back and forth through the main waiting area and a couple of civilianssitting there on plastic seating, obviously waiting for their turn to be seenby the duty officer who stood at a desk behind a plastic screen.

Thatofficer was an older man, probably in his sixties, with shaggy, white hair anda round face that was currently a mask of mild boredom, as if he’d been dealingwith too many reports of minor crimes all day. A woman was just walking awayfrom him, suggesting that he’d just finished dealing with whatever she’d comein to report. Simon took the opportunity to move forward.

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