Chapter 28
Mateo pushed open his hotel room door to the sound of his work cell vibrating across the desk.
He glared at the phone and ignored it, knowing it couldn’t be anyone other than Donovan.
Mateo was thirty minutes late meeting him for Glow Night, and the agent probably wondered where he was.
He couldn’t answer that phone. He couldn’t go to Solstice. Not in his current state.
Snatching his sidearm free of the holster, he slipped the clip loose and dropped both it and the gun on the nightstand.
He ripped off his jacket and hurled it over a chair.
Stomping to the desk, he cursed under his breath when he found the overturned bottle of Scotch.
He really should have tried to rescue it earlier.
The bottle shattered when he slammed it into the trash can.
He fell over the desk, bracing himself up with his hands and closing his eyes.
It wasn’t too late to salvage the night.
He could take a moment to compose himself and then meet Donovan at the club.
He could mingle, have a few drinks, and pretend to enjoy the party while observing Korenic and his crew.
He could pull himself together and do his fucking job.
It was all he had left other than Angelica, and to get back to her, he had to put this case to bed.
He had to wipe the UNSUB and everyone who associated with him off the face of the earth, making the world safe for her again.
But he was filled with molten fire, vibrating from the force of his humiliation and rage.
Even the slight prick of guilt over the way he’d handled Melody tonight couldn’t overcome it.
Every time he found himself feeling even the slightest bit sorry, that goddamn wire audio played itself through his mind.
The evidence he had seen with his own eyes flipped through his mental theater like a slideshow.
Her confessions echoed in his mind, resounding on rippling waves that left him reeling.
Were you his when you met me?
Yes.
He had known better. Had trained other agents to keep their defenses erected and maintain a certain distance from witnesses and victims. It was a fine line, showing them empathy and care while protecting one’s own sanity and vulnerability.
But he supposed Mari’s death and his resulting isolation had resulted in a blind spot. He hadn’t seen Melody coming.
The phone began to buzz again, its insistence grating on his nerves.
Snatching it up, he frowned to find that the call was coming from a blocked number.
That didn’t make sense because only a handful of people had this number, and if anyone from the D.C.
office was trying to get a hold of him, the number and area code would have shown up.
He wrinkled his forehead as he noticed a notification at the top of the screen for three missed calls.
He swiped down and saw that they were all from a private number.
He had only received a call on this phone from a private once before.
The phone went still and silent in his hands, and Mateo cursed, stumbling across the room.
He tightened his fingers around the phone and waited.
The UNSUB had called him several times already, and the profile said he was a narcissist. He wouldn’t tolerate being ignored.
Mateo released his breath on a rush when the phone vibrated in his hand, the screen lighting up once more.
He tapped to answer and held it up to his ear. Silence greeted him on the other end, though Mateo could hear someone breathing. It stretched on long enough for Mateo to grow impatient.
“I know it’s you,” he growled. “And I know you didn’t just call so I could listen to you breathe.”
“Blood and breath … blood and breath … blood and breath. Before flesh, there was Shadow. Before voice, there was Breath. And before Death bore its name, there was Azrael, He Who Stands Upon the Threshold. Blood and breath … it always begins and ends with those, does it not, Agent Garcia?”
Mateo’s throat seized and he was instantly transported to that dark bathroom with a rasping voice whispering in his ear. The scars along his torso burned and throbbed, phantom knives lodged into each one and twisting in the wounds.
Blood and breath.
“We come into the world amid so much pain and the shedding of blood,” the UNSUB went on. “And cry out our first breaths on a roar, a scream, a howl, declaring ourselves to the world. But little do we know it will end much the way it begins … blood and breath … blood and breath … blood and breath.”
Mateo heard the distinct sound of clicking. Rhythmic clicking that went on between each utterance of ‘blood and breath’, six clicks each time. Then silence.
“Save your religious drivel for the compliant idiots who believe in your bullshit,” Mateo snapped. “Tell me what the fuck you want.”
“Why, I want what everyone wants, Agent. Spiritual ascension and intellectual understanding. Power. Eternity.”
“Yeah? I got a case file that says otherwise. It says you’re a textbook malignant narcissist who’s just barely functional.
You wet the bed until you were in your teens, isolated yourself from the other kids, tortured small animals, and jacked off to snuff films. You’re just intelligent enough to be dangerous, but stupid enough to think you can leave a trail of bodies in your wake without me following them straight to your doorstep.
You’re a sniveling, impotent incel with mommy issues, compensating for lack of daddy’s approval.
Every woman you rape, mutilate, and murder is just a proxy for her, isn’t she?
A replacement for the woman you really want to degrade and obliterate.
You want people to believe you’re some big, scary phantom, when in reality you’re just a sadist with a god complex and a superiority kink. ”
The UNSUB’s laughter blasted through his ear, unsettling. The man laughed as if he’d never heard anything funnier in his life than Mateo’s meticulously cultivated profile.
“Oh, well done, Agent!” he boomed, and Mateo could hear him delivering a sarcastic slow clap.
“There’s the man I’ve been waiting for! The cold, ruthless, calculating profiler with the flawless jacket.
Never rendered an inaccurate profile, never failed to bring in a suspect alive.
After our first meeting, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed.
You didn’t quite live up to the legend.”
Heat flared at the back of Mateo’s neck, and he took up pacing, a restless energy making him thrum from head to toe.
“Sorry to disappoint you. I can promise that next time I’ll live up to the hype, and without that Breath of Azrael shit in your system, you won’t have the juice to take me. You can count on that.”
More clicking in the silence that followed. Six clicks. Then twelve. Then eighteen.
“There’s that arrogance I so love about you, Agent. I thought that perhaps losing Mari would have humbled you, but I ought to have known better. Even now, after I have snatched the thing you love most out from under you, you think you are still in control.”
Mateo gripped the phone so tight his knuckles ached and his hand shook. “Don’t ever say her name again, you son of a bitch. Don’t you say her name!”
“Oh, we don’t have to talk about her,” the UNSUB crooned, as if soothing a cranky child.
His voice rippled through the phone like a river, almost soothing, lulling Mateo into a trance.
“In fact, I’d much rather talk about Agent Leah Williams. Such a good egg, that one.
Did you know she volunteers for multiple victims’ advocacy groups?
Truly, it is so touching the way she has dedicated her life to the pursuit of justice.
And such a lovely woman … I’ve never had one with dreadlocks before.
I think I might enjoy shearing them off her pretty little head. One. By. One.”
“You motherfucker—”
“And how about Agent Smith? He ought to be coming up on retirement age, but he won’t be laying down his shield anytime soon.
Not with his favorite supervisory special agent still at the helm of the ship.
A true first mate, ready to execute your orders without question.
I wonder if he can see the cracks in your facade, Agent …
how close you’re coming to leading him right over the edge of a cliff.
And young Agent Jones, so fresh and bright-eyed.
So green. I think I’d like to make him watch me work, snuff out the innocence in those eyes by degrees. ”
Mateo drove his fist into the wall with a snarl, then fell against it, feeling as if the world had fallen out from beneath his feet.
“If you touch them,” he rasped between ragged breaths. “I will end you!”
“That Jackson Donovan’s a true golden boy, isn’t he?
A real boy scout with a promising career ahead of him.
Did you know he has four younger brothers?
More young, promising Donovans ready to take on the world.
Of course, even the most deserving of us meet the cruelest of fates at times.
Accidents do happen, and life is so fragile …
so easily lost. When the breath stills, and the heart weeps no more, the door yawns wide.
Azrael, in silence, takes the hand that trembles, and leads into the dark beyond the dark. ”
Mateo sank to his knees on the carpet, where it was still soaked from his Scotch spill.
The liquor soaked through his jeans, cold and biting.
It was a match for his blood, which was frozen in his veins, hardening him from the inside.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely hold his head up as the weight of the UNSUB’s threats bore down on him with crushing force.