Both Cathy and Markham knew the SAC was bluffing, but it was the FBI agent who called him on it.

“If she goes, I go.”

Burrell looked at him incredulously.

“I mean it,” Markham said. “I’m done-I’m through with the Bureau for good. You can’t fire me, Bill, but I can quit. I can fly back to Quantico and hand in my resignation first thing in the morning.”

Bulldog’s cheeks flushed red.

“Leave us alone,” he said.

Cathy looked uncomfortably to Markham. He nodded, and she quietly left the room.

“Bill, I know what you’re going-”

“You don’t know shit,” Bulldog bellowed, his fists clenching. “You think you can scare me with ultimatums? You think I give a fuck if you resign?”

“Yes I do,” Markham said calmly. “I think you know how bad it would look if word got out that your obstinacy got in the way of this investigation. And I think you know how bad it would look if I let it be known how close we were to catching this guy, and that you of all people let him get away.”

“Close, my fucking ass-”

“I can catch this guy,” said Markham, leaning on the SAC’s desk. “But I can do it only with your full support and that means Cathy’s support, too. I can’t do it without her.”

The bulldog just stood there-fuming.

“It’s in her book, Bill. The answer is in her book. I know it. It was Cathy who got me close to him that night-Cathy who figured out it was the lighting, the key to the parallel between the environments that was so important for The Sculptor’s exhibition. Don’t you see, Bill? Together we can catch him. You just have to trust me on this.”

“I’m not an idiot, Markham. I know you two have been playing patty cake these last few weeks. And girlfriend or no girlfriend, I’m telling you now that if anything happens to her, you’re done. Meaning, I’ll see to it personally that you’re demoted to the fucking mail room. You understand me?”

“Yes, I do.”

Burrell turned his back to him-his eyes once again falling to the Boston skyline.

“We’ll set her up in your building for two weeks-change her hair color and give her contacts. At the end of those two weeks we’ll reassess the situation. Understand, however, that if at any time I decide it’s too risky-if the press finds out about her, if the location of the safe house is blown, whatever the fuck the reason-if I don’t like the way things are playing out and you two balk, then she’s out and you can do whatever the fuck you want.”

“I understand.”

“But let me be perfectly clear on this, Sam. No matter what happens, you are the one who’s responsible for her. You got me?”

“Yes. Thank you, Bill.”

“Now get the fuck out of my office.”

Chapter 39

The FBI safe house was the only one of its kind left in Rhode Island; it had been initially set up as a surveillance unit after the terrorist attacks of 9-11, and was located on the second and third floors of a commercial building in downtown Providence, directly across the street from the former law offices of a suspected Al-Qaeda sympathizer who was eventually prosecuted. Its original purpose now abandoned, the FBI had since re-outfitted the property into an operations suite with separate apartments, and only in the last year had begun using it as temporary housing for its itinerant agents. The phony placards in and around the building indicated that the second and third floors were occupied by an import/export business, but the private access of the underground parking lot, as well as the building’s card-key security system to the elevator and each floor, made it a doubly safe location for all types of FBI operations.

In an odd way it all felt so normal to Cathy Hildebrant. It looked almost identical to her former digs in Boston, but that she should be staying there with Sam Markham gave Cathy a sense of being home-a feeling of being a newlywed, like when she was first setting up house with Steve Rogers.

Steve Rogers.

Cathy tried not to think of her ex-husband-tried not to think about the images from The Sculptor’s DVD that had been branded into her brain. She knew deep down that it was not her fault and that The Michelangelo Killer had begun hunting victims even before he’d ever heard of Dr. Catherine Hildebrant. But more than the degree of her culpability in her ex-husband’s death, Cathy tried not to think about the mixed feelings she had now that he was gone. No, she would never have wished what The Michelangelo Killer had done to him even on her worst enemy; but what chewed away at Cathy’s guts was the feeling that she had lost him twice, and that, as much as she hated to admit it, the first time around had been harder than the second.

There’ll be time to sort it out later was her mantra-the same one she had repeated to herself over and over during her mother’s battle with breast cancer. Yet instead of following up with encouraging words to stay focused, to finish her book and secure tenure, Cathy now had a new tagline: after I catch The Michelangelo Killer.

Cathy stood before the bathroom mirror and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She did not like how she looked with blond highlights. They made her look cheap, she thought, like a porn star. But it had to be done as part of the deal with Burrell and Boston. What would take more getting used to would be the contact lenses-she had never liked those; they always felt dry and made her eyes look puffy. Again, another necessity, but she would take along her black-rimmed glasses with her just in case. The worst, however, was when she donned her sunglasses. She thought she looked silly. Like a porno-Asian La Femme Nikita.

“You ready?” asked Markham, his head poking through the bathroom door. His presence calmed her, grounded her, but at the same time made her feel ashamed. Yes, despite everything that had happened since she met him, Cathy actually felt happy to finally be alone with him again.

“Yes,” she said. “If you don’t mind being seen with me.”

Markham kissed her neck and left her at the sink. They had spent the night in each other’s arms-made love like a pair of adulterers into the wee hours of the morning-and Cathy’s nostrils were still filled with the strange scent of her hair coloring and Sam Markham’s cologne.

As Cathy brushed her teeth, she suddenly had the impulse to call Janet Polk-to open her cell phone and leave her surrogate mother a quick message saying she was okay. But that’s a no-no, Cathy thought. Yes, Cathy knew damn well that she was not supposed to talk with anyone other than the FBI until Bill Burrell gave the go ahead-another part of her agreement with Burrell which, like her hair, she regretted. Cathy had not spoken to Janet and Dan since she left the hospital; she had gotten messages to them through Rachel Sullivan, but still she felt guilty, for Cathy knew how worried Janet was since learning about the murder of Steve Rogers.

There’ll be time to sort it out later.

Cathy emerged from the bathroom to find Markham standing in the middle of the common area-his copy of Slumbering in the Stone open before him as if he were an actor about to give a reading.

“What is it?” Cathy asked.

“Nothing, really. Just trying to gather myself before we go-overtired, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, ever since the teleconference with Quantico yesterday, there’s a quote in your chapter on the Pietà that’s been bothering me-a quote attributed to Michelangelo himself, and related by his contemporary biographer, Ascanio Condivi.”

“You mean the quote regarding the Madonna’s youthful appearance?”

“Yes. In your discussion of the various reasons as to why Michelangelo might have sculpted his Pietà with the Virgin Mary as a young woman, you say that the artist himself told Condivi, ‘Don’t you know that chaste women stay fresh much longer than those who are not chaste? How much more so then with the Virgin, who never had even the slightest lascivious desire that might alter her appearance?’”