AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She reached for her phone and started typing, but she didn’t know what to say. She triedHey, David! It’s me!
She shook her head and erasedIt’s me!
Hey, do you want to have dinner tonight?
No, too direct.
Thinking about you and was wondering if you wanted to see me.
Too desperate.
She thought about just sendingHey, David!and waiting for him to respond.
What if he didn’t, though? Should she follow up later and ask him to dinner? Maybe she should forget about dinner and just ask him for coffee the next day. That was much lower pressure than dinner. And the first time they had gone out, it was to a coffee shop. Well, actually, their firstdatedate was dinner. They just ran into each other at the coffee shop, or rather Turk led her there to meet him.
Poor Turk. He missed his vet just like Faith missed her boyfriend.
That was it! She could make an appointment for Turk! Then he’dhaveto see her.
Hey, I was wondering if I could bring Turk in tomorrow for his physical? It’s been six months, and he still has a bit of a limp when he wakes up in the morning. Can you check it out, and…
She read the text and sighed in frustration. Now she looked desperate and a little bit crazy. Really? Trying to force him to see her by making up a problem with Turk that he would immediately see wasn’t there? Was shethatdesperate?
She was. There was no hiding it. She absolutely was that desperate, and there was no way she could text him without that becoming clear.
This was stupid. She wasn’t going to satisfy her concerns by texting him, and she wasn’t doing herself any favors by holding onto hope that might be false. She would go see him. She checked her phone. Four-thirty. If she hurried, she could catch David at his office. If he told her to piss off, then she would know.
But maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would at least listen to her.
She got up from her desk and dropped the paperwork off at Clark’s office. He was on the phone, but he looked up when she arrived.
“Hey, Faith, you have a second?”
“Oh,” she said, “actually, I was just on my way to—”
“This will only take a moment,” he said. “It’s important.”
She sighed inwardly and took a seat in front of his desk. Supervisory Special Agent Gordon Clark was her immediate supervisor. The Boss had assigned him to babysit her after her obsession with the Copycat Donkey Killer case—which everyone simply called the Copycat Killer case—had caused her performance and her professionalism to deteriorate to unacceptable levels. She was out of the hotseat now, but the Boss apparently believed that was due to Clark’s leadership and allowed him to stay on as SSA of any cases involving serial or spree killers.
“Hey, I’m gonna call you back,” Clark said when Faith sat. He hung up the phone and smiled at her. “How you doin’?”
“I’m good, Gordon,” she said, keeping her irritation out of her voice. “I’m in kind of a hurry though, so—”
“Say no more,” Clark said, lifting his hand. “I’ll make this quick. I’ve talked with the Boss, and we both think you’re ready to help with the Copycat Killer case.”
A thrill of excitement and a chill of fear surged through Faith simultaneously. This Copycat Killer was using the same MO as Jethro Trammell, the Donkey Killer who had killed Turk’s previous handler and tortured Faith nearly to death herself. Trammell had been shot dead by Michael just before he killed Faith, but this copycat was tying people up and cutting them just like Trammell had. Faith had ignored repeated warnings to let the case go and pursued him for over a year.
Then she stopped. With the help of her therapist, Dr. Franklin West, she had finally managed to overcome that obsession and move on.
And now that she had stopped investigating without permission, Clark was about to give her permission.
“Help how?” she asked.
“A purely consultative basis,” he said. “No fieldwork, strict orders. The Boss doesn’t want you knocking doors down or interrogating people again, and I agree with him. However, I think you have a keen intellect and a knack for getting into the heads of killers. You’re familiar with the case, and it was your efforts that eventually led to us stopping the original Donkey Killer, so I think your perspective would be useful to Desrouleaux and Chavez.”
He pulled a file from his desk drawer and slid it over to Faith. “You’ve probably seen most of that,” he said with a chuckle, “from your earlier snooping. There’s a little more there now. There have been two more victims in the past three months. That brings the total to twenty-seven.”
Faith stared at the file without touching it. Her mind was reeling. “Do Desrouleaux and Chavez know I’m being asked to look at this?”
