by J. J. Stone
James kept his eyes on the screen, mentally running through every relaxation exercise he knew. Despite his best efforts, his heart still continued to hammer in his ears.
“Not feeling well?” Janice murmured as she lowered one knee onto the bed. She finished loosening her dark hair and shook her head a few times, making her hair billow out around her face in voluminous waves. She removed her blazer and let it crumple in a ball on the floor. Her other knee came onto the bed as she yanked her shirttails from the waistband of her trousers.
“I had a report to turn in,” James finally replied, his voice husky. He swallowed in an attempt to relieve his parched vocal chords.
Janice slowly crept toward him on all fours, her hands and knees moving parallel to his stretched out legs. She reached his lap and paused, her progress impeded by his laptop. She let out a small whine and placed her fingertip against the lid of the computer. Watching his face, she slowly lowered the screen until it clicked shut.
With as much composure as he could muster, James looked up at Janice as she removed the computer from his lap and seated herself in its place. She leaned toward his face, her hair falling around them both like a raven curtain. “Everything OK, agent?” Janice whispered. She licked her lips as her eyes caught and held his.
James didn’t move. He watched as she closed the distance between them and enveloped his lips with hers, lingering there for a few seconds. He kept his eyes open, reveling in Janice’s look of confused disgust as she registered that his lips had not moved to return her kiss. She pulled back and sat up, frowning. “What?” she demanded, annoyance clouding her face and tone.
No longer able to hold back, James cleared his throat and dove in. “You talked to Ada before the press conference. Right?”
Janice rolled her eyes. “Yes,” she groaned. “I told her what you told me.”
“Which was?”
“That you were going to name me as the sole analyst for the case.” Clearly bored with talking, Janice leaned her forearms against his chest and brought her face close to his again. “I do not want to talk about work or Ada or the press conference.” She kissed the small crease in his chin, lingering for a few moments. She looked up at him through her lashes and slowly grinned. “I don’t want to talk at all.”
She moved to place her mouth over his once more, her ruby-tinted lips parting as she drew close. When she was a millimeter from touching him, James opened his mouth and hissed, “Get out.”
Janice reared back. “Excuse me?”
James pushed her off of him as gently as he could manage and stood from the bed. He unrolled his sleeves and buttoned the cuffs, refusing to look at her while he reigned in his temper. “Pack up and get someone to take you to the airport. Your flight leaves in an hour.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Since when do I fly back before the team?” Janice demanded, propping herself up on her elbows as she stretched out on the bed.
“Since you decided to let jealousy get the better of you!” James shouted, watching Janice cringe back into the mattress. He allowed himself to take pleasure from her fear. “You saw a chance to get rid of a threat and you jumped on it.”
Fury wove into Janice’s face and she sat up, her eyes shining with angry tears or fear, James couldn’t decide which.
“I told her you decided not to name her this time—”
“Because I was getting grief from the director?” James finished for her, his tone growing more sinister by the second. He watched Janice’s cheeks flame and at the same time felt his stomach drop. He hadn’t realized a small part of him had been hoping that Janice hadn’t actually done what Ada claimed. That small part shriveled and died as he watched Janice push her hair away from her face and stand, defiance beaming from her core.
“Why was she here, Deacon?” Janice asked, her eyes narrowed. “Sure, she knows serial killers, but so do I. I could have done what she did.” She jabbed a finger at him, her other hand clenching down on her hip. “You’re different around her. I see it. I know everyone else does.” Her voice cracked, and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth.
James chuckled and shook his head. He rubbed the back of his neck to stem the torrent of cursing he wanted to douse the analyst with. When he trusted his tongue to obey, he thrust his hand toward her, palm up. “Badge and gun.”
“What?” Janice asked, her voice spiking into a shriek.
James locked eyes with her and opened and closed his hand once. “Badge and gun. You’re on mandatory leave, effective immediately.”
Janice folded her arms tight and cocked her hip. “All because I made your new pet run away.”
“Because you’ve instigated disunity among the team and directly undermined an order from your superior,” James corrected. “That kind of poisonous behavior has no place on my team.” Janice’s mouth flew open but James cut her off. “I strongly suggest not saying another word. Don’t want to ruin what’s left of your record with the bureau.”
Two tears descended from Janice’s eyes as she unstrapped her gun holster from her waistband and slapped it into James’s palm. She crossed the room and retrieved her badge from the table. With bitter disdain mixing with the utter grief in her face, she launched the badge at him in a sloppy overhand. “I hope she’s worth it,” she hissed as she glared at him, her eyes already bloodshot. She pulled her quivering lips between her teeth and fled the room, never looking back.
As his door shut, James went to the closet and dumped Janice’s gun and badge into his bag. He lifted the bag from the closet floor and brought it back to the bed to pack. As he swiftly stowed his belongings, he tried to ignore the small voice in the dark corner of his brain chanting that he was losing his mind.
——
A month passed before Ada realized the odd hole in her life was not something she was able to remedy on her own. She’d joined a dog walking exercise group on her street. She had taken on two middle school students as writing mentees. She had even attempted to start a new book, something her therapist had often prescribed as a way to regain a normal balance in her life. At the end of every day, however, she found herself sitting in the silence of her home, waiting to hear her ringtone.
After the first week, no one from the BAU had contacted her. Not even a text from Brenda. Part of Ada wondered if this was because she had ignored all of Brenda’s calls the day she had arrived home. There was just no way she could have talked to the agent at that point. Her emotions had been running too high; her heart had been too fragmented. Old thrashings of brutal betrayal and cold abandonment had come out of hibernation in that hotel room and had held her captive for days after. It had taken another week for Ada to reach the point of clarity that allowed her to realize how wrong she’d been to let those emotions from her past come back to haunt her. In Ada’s mind, her father had replaced James that day in the hotel room and her reaction to the agent was fueled by long-repressed anger and bitterness she’d spent her life wanting to hurl in her father’s face. Common sense had fled her mind the moment she felt the familiar scratching of being tossed aside by someone she’d come to trust. Once she’d identified the culprit of her outburst and come to terms with the depth of damage she had almost certainly caused, it was her wounded pride that had prevented her from contacting Brenda.
Ada hated that she now felt like an addict, waiting for a hit that would never come. She obsessed over the news, combing through all the different websites. No new cases had popped up, no mention of the BAU being summoned anywhere.
Ada had tried multiple times to tell herself that was why she hadn’t heard from anyone. They just simply had no need for her at the moment. Yet part of her knew that wasn’t the case. Brenda would usually text Ada every now and then, to share a joke from Dade or to talk about the latest reality show, which was apparently the agent’s one weakness. Even those casual contacts had ceased. Ada
concluded that James must have told the team what had happened. They would want some explanation for her sudden radio silence. Knowing what had happened, she couldn’t blame them for wanting to put some distance between themselves and her.
There had been two separate occasions where Ada had been one keystroke from calling James. Both occasions she realized that she had no plan beyond dialing his number and decided to put her phone safely out of reach for a few hours after. Even now, as she drove home from work in a light December snowstorm, she could not think of one complete sentence that she would be able to tell the lead agent. Something had snapped inside her that day, causing her to utterly humiliate and discredit herself in front of an authority figure. What explanation could she possibly give to make herself seem anything but unstable?
Following days of reflection, Ada had meticulously inventoried everything that happened in Sacramento. Janice had feigned a “mutual understanding” with Ada, mainly because Ada had been so hell-bent on mending a bridge that had honestly never existed. In fooling Ada, Janice had left herself the perfect opportunity to rid herself of the “extra” analyst. Ada had let herself trust someone who had never deserved that kind of respect.
Ada wondered what it said about her that she had chosen to believe an enemy over someone who, in his own way, had had her best interests at heart. Ada blinked away tears that seemed to always be more than willing to make an appearance whenever she thought about the “Sacramento blowup” for longer than a minute. James’s face appeared in her mind, filled with the pain of Ada’s words and the grief that she had thought him capable of behaving like the monster Janice painted him to be. Ada wished she had had the clarity of mind the day everything had imploded to realize what she had allowed her damaged mind to do. If she could have regained control, like all of her therapists over the years had taught her to do, she could have called after James as he walked away from her room and tried to mend what she had broken. Instead, she shut down and let the monsters of her past forage across her, leaving desolate wasteland in their wake.
Ada cleared her throat as she pulled off the main road and onto her sleepy street. This break in communication with the BAU had been good, she told herself. Her focus was solely on her students, much to the delight of Dean Bridges. Now, with two weeks left before the end of the semester, Ada begrudgingly came to the conclusion that life was back to normal, something she had spent most of her time with the BAU craving, and she should be content.
Yet she wasn’t.
CHAPTER 9
There were few things Dade hated more than sitting at his desk. Doing his taxes, blind dates, and a sore throat were really the only things that fell higher on the list. Dade had joined the FBI so that he could be on the front lines, catching criminals and saving the day. Juvenile thinking, sure. But Dade had been the child who chose a Western flick over cartoons. He had crafted so many “guns” out of sticks and random objects he found around his childhood home that his mother finally contacted one of his late father’s old police buddies and begged him to educate eight-year-old Dade on firearms. She had probably thought a boring afternoon at the police station would shift Dade’s attention to something more appropriate for a young boy. Instead, Dade left the station that day utterly determined that he would one day be a cop, just like his dad.
Not that his BAU job didn’t toss him into heavy action. He’d had more than a few close calls during a case. There were at least two occasions that still caused the hair on the back of Dade’s neck to stand at attention. Lately, however, he was seeing far too much of his computer screen and not enough of his Glock. He made a mental note to reserve a slot at the range later that week.
A folder slapped down onto his desk, effectively snapping him back to reality and making his heart jerk. Dade readied a string of curses and whipped his chair around, only to find Brenda smiling coyly down at him. “I didn’t scare you, did I?”
“You’ll get yours, don’t worry.” Dade turned away from her and swiped the folder. “What is this?”
“Hopefully an excuse to get out of this office.”
Dade opened the folder and tried to focus on the blurry rows of type. He gave up after a few seconds and flung the folder back to his desk. “Summary?” he asked Brenda while he massaged his eyes with his knuckles.
“Young boys going missing near Milwaukee. One of the first to disappear was found deceased two days ago. Some of his organs were gone.”
“Lovely.” Cases involving children always consumed small pieces of himself Dade knew he would never recover. “Why do you think this is ours?”
Brenda harshly swiveled his chair around and cocked a brow at him. “I have spent all damn week trying to find us something, anything, to get this case on track again, and now you’re going to question my judgment?”
Dade had worked with Brenda for long enough to recognize when she was reacting out of exhausted crankiness. After a few failed attempts, he had finally figured out the perfect diffuser for the situation. He pulled himself up out of his customary desk slouch and leaned his elbows to his knees, casting a clear-eyed look of genuine interest at his partner. “I’m not doubting a thing,” he said in a serene and firm tone. “I just want to be on the same page before we bring this to Deacon.”
He watched the feral annoyance melt from Brenda’s eyes, and her lips parted into an embarrassed grin that showed off her alabaster teeth. Dade secretly regarded this as her toothpaste ad smile. He also knew this meant he’d calmed her down. “Right,” she said quietly, swiping a finger under her eyes. “The fact that it’s near Milwaukee, boys are being abducted, and we have a body with organs harvested really points to a Jeffrey Dahmer copycat to me.”
Dade mentally scrolled through his limited Dahmer database then realized Brenda had probably dedicated an entire day to researching enough to back up her theory. Why waste the brainpower when Brenda had done the hard work for them? Dade turned and pulled the folder off the desk, standing from his chair and giving his body a moment to adjust. His head started pounding and he rolled his neck to alleviate some of the pressure.
Brenda gave him a once over. “Why do we look worse when we’re not on the road?”
“Speak for yourself,” Dade said, stepping past her, “I think I look great.”
“Try telling that to the bags under your eyes,” Brenda said from behind him as they strolled down the short hallway to James’s office.
Through the floor-to-ceiling glass encasing half of their boss’s office, they could see that James was standing in the corner of the room looking out his office’s single window. He was on the phone, and from the deep scowl etched into his face it didn’t seem like the best conversation to interrupt. Dade hesitated outside the office door and contemplated turning around.
James pivoted away from the window and spotted Dade and Brenda. He crooked two fingers at them and strode back to his desk. Uneasy, Dade and Brenda entered the office and took up posts across from the desk.
“I have something I need to deal with. Just move forward with what you have. I’ll look for an update sometime next week.” James ended the call and stowed his cell phone into a desk drawer. He turned his attention to Dade and Brenda and raised his brows at them. “What’s with the firing squad lineup?” he asked.
Dade relaxed first and approached James. “Sorry to interrupt, but we think we have a new copycat case.”
James’s demeanor shifted as he took the folder from Dade’s outstretched hand. “Who’s ground zero?” he asked, using the team’s unofficial term for the serial killer being copied.
Brenda found her voice and came up beside Dade. “Jeffrey Dahmer. I’ve spent the last day going over everything, and the details are almost spot-on.”
James glanced up at Dade for confirmation, and Dade could feel Brenda bristle. “I think it’s solid,” Dade said.
Satisfied, James picked up his office
phone and punched in a number. “Get everyone ready to go. We’ll fly out within the hour if the pilot’s available.”
Without thinking, Dade said, “I’ll call Ada and get her on a flight.”
“That won’t be necessary.” James didn’t look away from his computer, but the iciness that had suddenly infiltrated his voice reminded Dade of the murky mess Sacramento had ended in.
“Who’s our analyst, then?” Brenda asked, and Dade felt a brief spike of pride at her unusual boldness. But then, Ada was her friend, so Brenda’s sensitivity to the topic was understandable.
The phone that James had had pressed to his ear abruptly slammed back down into its cradle. Both Dade and Brenda flinched. “We’ll tag team the work,” James said, standing from his desk and going into the small closet in the back wall of the room to retrieve his go bag.
“With all due respect—“
“This isn’t a discussion, Agent Stine.” James cut Brenda off before she could push them further into the topic of Ada. He looked at the two of them with his customary fierce glare, but Dade could sense something other than annoyed anger fueling the heat in James’s presence. Whatever had happened in Sacramento, it had not only angered James but it also seemed to have struck something deeper. Honed insight told Dade that James was attempting to conceal a hurt.
Brenda clamped her mouth shut and stormed out of the office. Dade winced at her loud stomping path back to her desk. He glanced at James to see him watching Brenda. Then his eyes shifted to Dade, silently questioning why he was still standing there.
“I’ll get everyone together,” Dade said and left the office in a more civilized manner. As he exited the room, however, he detoured to the left and headed for the adjacent hallway. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket as he arrived at a dark, unoccupied office.
——
“You have to come to the Christmas party,” Tiffany said as she trailed after Ada. They had both needed to run a last-minute holiday grocery stock up, so Tiffany suggested they brave the crowds together. Ada now wished she’d declined the bubbly blonde’s request.