CHAPTER ONE
Warmth spread through Kate Valentine’s body. Soft lips moved against her ear, and Marcus’s deep, rough voice breathed, Kate. She shivered and moaned his name, then turned into him.
Her hand fell against the bed. She opened her eyes.
He wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. In the dream, she was in her apartment. Marcus was with her, and they were about to engage in activities that had yet to occur between them in real life.
In the real life her senses were slowly beginning to admit was different from the dream, she was in her old bedroom at her mother’s house. Marcus wasn’t here, and the warmth she felt came from the sunlight streaming through the window.
She checked her phone. Only seven a.m. Septembers in Portland weren’t frigid, but they definitely weren’t this warm. That meant the warmth came because her mother had turned the heat on.
She frowned. That wasn’t like her mother. She preferred not to turn the heat on until later in the autumn after the first snowfall.
She rolled out of bed and received two exuberant kisses.
Not from Marcus. Not from a human at all.
These kisses came from Sapir and Whorf, her mother’s two Irish setters, both of whom enthusiastically welcomed her to the land of the living.
Kate spluttered and did her best to keep the dogs off of her face, but they got a few good licks in—literally—before she was able to stand.
"Good morning to you two," she said, sliding her feet into thick woolen slippers, then sliding them right out when the warmth in her body threatened to increase to blazing heat. She chose flip-flops instead and trotted down the stairs, the dogs following.
Her mother was in the kitchen sprinkling bits of feta cheese over two spinach omelets. She beamed when she saw Kate. “Good morning. Sweet dreams?”
More heat climbed Kate’s cheeks. Had she been moaning out loud when she was dreaming?
She studied her mother’s face, but Catherine Valentine had a better poker face than nearly anyone Kate had ever met, and even with her powerful deductive skills and her intimate knowledge of her mother, she couldn’t tell for sure if Catherine’s question was coy or not.
She opted for a neutral reply. “I slept fine. You?”
“Wonderfully as always.”
Now that Kate looked more closely, there was a hint of something in her mother’s smile. “All right, spill it. What’s going on?”
“Nothing!”
She brought the omelets to the dining room and set them in front of chairs opposite each other on the carved oak table. Sapir and Whorf sat as close to the plates as they dared and whined plaintively. They knew better than to attempt a theft.
Kate's stomach growled. She was certain now that her mother planned to hold her hostage to a conversation she definitely didn't want to have, but her mother was a damned good cook, and a home-cooked breakfast beat the hell out of the microwave burritos she usually consumed.
She took a seat and resigned herself to an hour of probing and deflection before she eventually got tired and tossed her mother a bone.
Not that she had many to toss. She and Marcus had been dating for three months and done nothing more scandalous than make out briefly in his car after her birthday dinner last month.
“So!” Catherine said brightly, setting a mug of steaming coffee in front of Kate, then carrying hers to her own seat. Sapir and Whorf took a respectful step backward but didn’t yet cease their pleading. “How’s Marcus doing?”
“You can ask him when he comes downstairs,” Kate replied. “He sneaked in through the window last night.”
“Really?” Catherine asked.
The hope in her voice made Kate feel guilty. “No, not really. He’s doing fine.”
“Oh.” Catherine pursed her lips.
Great. Now I’ve made it worse.
“Mom, we’re going great. We like each other, we’re spending quality time together, we’ve kissed—”
“That was a month ago.”
“Well, I’m not going to give you a play-by-play of our physical relationship.”
“I’m not asking for a play-by-play. I just want to know when that boy is going to get serious about you.”
Kate sighed. “That boy is a thirty-two-year-old man who is in the middle of a divorce. I am a thirty-seven-year-old woman who is perfectly comfortable taking things slowly.”
“At thirty-seven, taking things slowly is an odd choice.”
“But it’s my choice," Kate said, a little more snappishly than she intended. She softened her tone and said, "We're moving forward. Neither of us wants to push too hard too fast and end up ruining things."
There was more to ruin than their nascent relationship, too.
Marcus was Kate’s partner, and he was a damned good one.
The two of them worked well together, and thanks to their professional chemistry, they’d saved many lives and kept the Commandment Killings from graduating from a national sensation to a national fear.
Of course, they hadn’t saved everyone. Elijah Cox, despite being ensconced in one of the most secure prisons in the country, still exerted his influence through a series of Disciples determined to carry out their master’s work.
But they’d done far more good working together than they would apart, so Kate wasn’t interested in rocking that boat just to rock another boat.
Her cheeks flushed at that analogy. Catherine caught the expression, and, of course, misread it. “I’m sure spending the night together every now and then wouldn’t cause either of you to collapse.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Mom! Can you please just let it go? It’s not that simple!”
Catherine gave her a frank look. “Yes, it is. Sex is one of the simplest things in life. If it feels complicated, it’s only because you make it complicated.”
Thankfully, Kate’s phone rang before she had to respond. “It’s Marcus,” she said. “Maybe he’s calling to ask me for a quickie in the back of his car.”
Well, she almost managed not to respond.
“Insist on the bed for your first time,” Catherine said, unperturbed by her daughter’s snappishness. “You’re a high-class woman.”
Kate rolled her eyes and stepped onto the front porch lest her mother attempt to commandeer the conversation. “Hey, Marcus. What’s up?”
“Morning,” Marcus said. “Boss wants to see us.”
His tone was clipped and brusque. Kate's smile faded. "She says, ' Why?"
He sighed. “Yeah. We’ve got another.”
The warmth dissipated from Kate’s body in a puff. She managed to say, “All right,” and hang up, then headed inside. When her mother saw her climbing the stairs to her bedroom instead of returning to the breakfast table, she called, “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” Kate called back.
Catherine surely knew that wasn’t true, but this time, she wisely chose not to pry.
***
The Portland Field Office was no one’s idea of resplendent.
The worn brick facade, faded stripes in the cracked asphalt parking lot, and tarnished bronze letters spelling FBI—PORTLAND FIELD OFFICE looked more like an old run-down high school in a neighborhood that gentrification had passed by a generation ago than the headquarters of federal law enforcement in upper New England.
Still, it had its own rough charm that Kate appreciated.
Like the beat-up compact SUV, she slid into the first available badly-striped space, and like Kate herself, the old building with its humming ventilation, flickering fluorescent lighting, and pervading odor of stale coffee and fresh malaise was paradoxically a reminder that while life was a wheel that ground everyone and everything to powder, it still wasn’t all that bad.
Kate couldn’t articulate the reason for that any more than she could convince her mother to stay out of her relationship with Marcus. She just knew it was true.
Speaking of Marcus, the burly New Yorker met her in the lobby.
He gave her a perfunctory smile and a perfunctory kiss on the cheek.
Kate’s kiss was equally perfunctory, but when her lips brushed against the stubble on his cheeks, a tingling sensation shot through her from head to toe.
A brief, intense memory flickered through her mind, and the fact that it was a memory of a dream and not something that had actually happened did nothing to soften its intensity.
"Looks like multiple bodies this time," Marcus said. "I don't know how many, but more than one."
Yeah, that softened the intensity. “And we’re sure it’s a commandment killing?”
Marcus didn’t answer, just held the door to their boss’s office so Kate could step through.
Assistant Director Victoria Winters looked up from the paperwork on her desk. She was dressed in a tan pantsuit today, the pressed slacks doing little to hide the shape of long, elegant legs that age hadn’t yet softened.
She was a somewhat severe-looking woman, but it worked for her.
The fitted clothing and expertly applied makeup finished with a generous amount of dark red lipstick made her look like a high-powered defense attorney more than the head of a major FBI office.
Not that she would ever admit to that comparison.
Kate couldn’t help but feel frumpy by comparison.
She wasn’t ugly, and she couldn’t honestly say she was plain either.
Just awkward. She was tall, which was good, but though she was athletic, her appearance was more lanky than toned.
Her auburn hair framed a smattering of freckles and a nose that wasn’t quite a button but was definitely more cute than hot.
Mostly it was the clothes. Kate dressed for comfort and looked comfortable. Winters dressed to impress and looked impressive.
This morning, Winters also wore a taut frown, but her eyes lit up a little when she saw Kate. That was a good sign. It wasn't so long ago that Winters would darken at her presence.
That encouragement was ephemeral, however. Winter's words killed any remaining good feeling Kate had.
“Two bodies,” she informed them. “Husband and wife murdered in their bed in Miami. Surrounded by a cipher, but there was one clear symbol.”
She lifted a photograph from the desk and showed it to Kate and Marcus. The Hebrew word sheva. Seven.
“Shit,” Marcus cursed. He rubbed a hand across his stubble and pointed out, “We don’t know that Cox is involved, though. This could be another copycat case like that woman in Pittsburgh who killed her husband.”
Kate had a feeling he was saying that for her benefit, not their boss’s.
Elijah Cox, self-styled as the Lawgiver, had precipitated the commandment killings by murdering ministers he believed had broken the first commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
The case had culminated when he tried to kill Kate and himself together, claiming that he had orchestrated her past suffering and brought them together as a final symbol to the world of God’s justice.
At the time, Kate believed that Cox was just another garden-variety psychopath. His knowledge of her past and apparent obsession with Kate disturbed her, but she didn't put any stock in his claims that she was the crux of "God's plan" or that there would be others to carry out his work.
She wished she could be that na?ve again.
"Even if it's not directly related to Cox, the existence of a copycat is disturbing," Winters said. "Perhaps even more disturbing than if it was Cox. However, you won't jump to that conclusion. You two will examine the case and let the evidence lead you to a resolution, just like always."
“Can you tell us anything about the victims?” Kate asked.
Winters responded by shuffling the papers on her desk together and handing them to Kate. “That’s all of the information we have. Good luck you two.”
They left the office, dodging curious glances from the other agents and analysts there. Kate could almost hear the whispers. There’s another one. Cox strikes again. I wonder why he’s so obsessed with her?
Knowing that her coworkers probably didn’t spend more than a second or two wondering those things before returning to their own jobs didn’t make her feel any better.
“You good?” Marcus asked when they were outside.
That didn’t make her feel any better either. “Fine.”
She left it at that and allowed Marcus to drive them to the airport. On the way, she thought of the Hebrew word carved into the victims’ headboard. Seven.
Three to go. And when they reached ten would Cox stop?
No. Much as Cox tried to convince others he was a servant of God; it wasn’t God he served. It was another being, one compared appropriately to a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
The message to the world wasn’t clear yet, but the message to Kate was bright as the morning sun shining through her passenger window.
I’m not done with you yet.