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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He was starting to think he really was invisible. This morning at the staff meeting, he had raised his hand and asked if they were still going to use a lottery for vacation time. He had asked twice, and Derek, the janitorial manager, hadn’t even looked his way.
He had been run into three times this morning, and the people who ran into him didn’t even turn to see what or who they had hit. He himself had bumped into a woman, but when he apologized, the woman passed him to run after her kids without seeming to realize she’d been nearly knocked off her feet.
If he really was invisible,l’homme que tu ne peux pas voir,then it would make his work that much easier. It would take away the hassle of needing to wait for cover and a lull in traffic. It would take away the haste with which he had to work, the haste that meant he might make mistakes, like he did with the second victim.
If he could take his time and focus on the victim without needing to fear getting caught, well then, he would be home free.
He walked behind his target, pushing the cart slowly but rapidly enough that he gained slowly on his prey. He smiled at a girl of about eleven or twelve who didn’t notice him.Good,he thought.Very good. He really was invisible.
As he passed the girl, he pulled the needle from the cart and pushed it up his sleeve, taking care to keep the point of the needle just past his fingertips. He pushed his cart until he was only a few feet from the quarry. He pushed the cart behind a bench, leaving it there and making as though he was going to clean the bench.
He glanced around. No one was looking.
He stepped forward and with a swift movement jabbed the needle into the neck of the target. She gasped and scratched at her neck, perhaps wondering if a bee had made it underground and stung her.
The poison worked quickly. He slipped his arm around her, and she didn’t even realize it happened. She slumped down, and he felt his heartbeat quicken as hers slowed.
By the time he lowered her onto the bench, she was dead.
He stood and looked around, walking slowly back to his cart. No one even glanced his direction. No one noticed that the older woman sitting with her head slumped onto her chest on the bench wasn’t napping but was dead, asleep forever, not for a minute.
He looked around, and a wide grin spread across his face. He was truly invisible. Unnoticeable.
He wondered how long it would be before anyone noticed his latest kill. He found it didn’t matter so much to him anymore.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Faith stood outside of the break room, arms crossed. A few maintenance workers wandered over, chatting about some new video sharing app. They looked at Faith, and her expression was enough to convince them to look for another break room.
Another dead end. Faith should be used to this by now. After all, Faith often told Michael that investigative work was a whole lot of very little and then everything all at once. This was no different from any of the other cases they had solved.
Still, Faith felt the looming threat of another murder hang over her like a dark cloud. Nearly ten years with the bureau and that had never gotten easier.
And Michael was once more pissed with her. It seemed like he’d been pissed at her for almost a year straight.
It was Ellie. It all came down to Ellie.
She didn’t blame Ellie directly. Whatever Ellie’s faults, she didn’t seem the type to sow discord between the two of them. She even seemed to genuinely want Faith to like her.
Still, ever since she had arrived, Michael had been growing more and more distant. He couldn’t accept that Faith didn’t love her as much as he did. Faith wasn’t sure if that was because he also suspected her of being dishonest with him, or if he genuinely hated that Faith wasn’t head over heels with her, but either way, Faith could see their friendship ending soon.
If it hadn’t already.
She had been around long enough to see partners split. She had seen them grow to resent each other, then to hate each other, then to despise each other, then to settle into a resigned contempt that lasted long after one or both of them retired.
She never suspected that would happen with Michael. Even when they broke up, and she was afraid that the loss of their romantic relationship would drive a rift between them, she never imagined their friendship would end.
Now, it seemed it was ending like most things ended. A lot of very little and then everything all at once. When Michael returned with his coffee, Faith said, “We need to go back and look at the cameras. We need to widen the search and check footage from the entrance to the ticketing booth to the waiting area—”
“We did that, Faith, remember? There’s no coverage anywhere, and where there is, there’s nothing useful.”
“We said that earlier, but when we looked again, we found Presley.”
Michael scoffed. “Right. Presley. Yet another dead end. Hey, but we managed to force a few junkies to find another dealer. Yay us.”
Faith sighed. “Michael, what do you want me to do? You want me to give up? You want me to grouse bitterly about how frustrating everything is?”
