“Tell me about William Summer instead.”

“What about him?” she said.

“Why are you so convinced you would have found him earlier?”

“I found you, didn’t I?”

“I was waiting to be found.”

“So was William Summer,” Ellie said. “It’s another thing you two have in common.”

“Tell me more about that.”

“You both have an ability to control the pace of your killings more than most profilers believe is common. You both stopped when something else in your lives brought you satisfaction, a feeling of accomplishment. You both resurfaced when your lives started to feel weak again-him because a newspaper article made him sound like an irrelevant relic, and you because there’s cancer metastasized in your brain.”

“So would you say that I, like Summer, have an ‘insatiable ego’?”

“I don’t purport to know you, Mr. Kittrie.”

“Neither did Rachel Peck or Chelsea Hart. Go ahead and pick up those scissors.”

Ellie wiggled her restrained left arm.

“Cute, Detective, but I’m sure you can manage.”

She raised the scissors with her right hand.

“Your hair, Detective. Is it naturally blond?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. And is that the length you usually wear it?”

Ellie’s hair was well past her shoulders, longer than it had ever been since she became a cop five years ago. There had been no time for a haircut in the past two months. “No,” she said. “I cut it this short a few months ago.”

For reasons she would never be able to explain, she took comfort in the small lie.

“Please go ahead and cut the rest of it off for me now.”

“Excuse me?”

“You saw Chelsea Hart, I believe. Go ahead. Not too quickly,” he said, unbuttoning his pants. Ellie suppressed a gag reflex.

She tilted her head and held the scissors up to the lock of hair that fell forward, but could not force herself to bring the blades together.

“Would you like to put the scissors down and find another way to do this, Detective?”

She clenched her jaw and clamped the scissors shut. Six inches of her hair fell to the floor. She reached forward to pick it up, but he stopped her.

“Leave it wherever it falls. It looks good that way.” He was beginning to slowly pleasure himself. Ellie desperately wanted to avert her gaze, but knew that would disrupt the choreography. She opened the shears around another section and snipped again. Then a third section, and a fourth. She tried to stop thinking of the movement of his hand against himself.

She picked up the pace of her cutting and willed herself to look at Kittrie’s pinched face, starting to color. She told herself she had to do this. She had to do this for five girls who had suffered far worse.

She saw the muscles in Kittrie’s body begin to tense and she knew she would have only seconds to respond. She cut away another two clumps, feeling stronger with each lock that fell to the floor.

When Kittrie lurched forward, she was ready. She dropped the scissors and reached for the top of the left ankle boot crossed in front of her. She unsnapped her Kahr K9 and pulled the trigger softly to disengage the striker block and cock the weapon.

Kittrie opened his eyes and spun from his chair, dropping the knife as he reached for the Glock on the floor. She continued to press against the trigger, locking her elbow and tightening her forearm muscles to absorb the recoil.

She heard the blast of the pistol as her arm jerked against her will and searing pain tore through the wound in the back of her hand. A magenta stain slowly blossomed across the left sleeve of Kittrie’s white shirt. She had clipped him in the shoulder.

Kittrie winced as he moved his left hand to support the Glock. Even through the pain of the gunshot wound, he managed a slight smile as he looked down at Ellie, handcuffed on the sofa, and pulled the trigger. Realizing his mistake, his smug expression changed to one of confusion, then anger. He threw the gun at her and lunged for the knife he’d discarded next to his chair.

Ellie fired again, this time a pair of quick shots, compensation for the lack of control that came with one-handed shooting. One bullet through the screen of Kittrie’s television, one in his left side. Kittrie barreled toward her, the handle of his knife clenched in his fist.

She threw her body to the floor and drop-rolled in the direction of the end table. Using the leverage of her cuffed wrist against the wrought iron, she pulled herself up to a forty-five-degree angle. She leveled the butt of the K9 on her left forearm for support, and popped off three rapid-fire rounds.

All three shots landed in center mass. Kittrie’s mouth formed a large O as he stumbled backward, then collapsed to the floor. Ellie allowed her own muscles to relax as the convulsions in his body subsided.

The sound of a thousand cars crashing at once broke the silence. A helmeted ESU officer emerged from the shattered sliding glass door just as Rogan burst through the front door at the head of a battering ram. They must have coordinated the simultaneous entries with the first shot fired. What had felt like an eternity to her had taken place in just seconds.

Ellie then saw the scene in the living room through their eyes. Kittrie dead, shot five times with his pants around his knees. Ellie handcuffed to a table, lying on the floor in a pile of her own hair. She looked at Rogan and began to laugh, hysterically and uncontrollably, until she found herself sobbing harder than she had in years.

CHAPTER 49

“NO ONE TOLD ME it was prom night.”

John Shannon set his roast beef sandwich on his napkin and used the back of his hand to wipe a smear of mustard from the corner of his mouth. Given Rogan’s usual appearance, his black suit and gray silk tie would never have drawn Shannon’s attention. But Ellie’s wardrobe change in the locker room was apparently another story.

Thanks to their squad neighbor, all eyes in the room were on her. Shannon’s partner let out a wolf whistle. Someone else asked if she was already trying on outfits for this year’s Medal Day Ceremony, a reference to the broad speculation that she would be receiving the Police Combat Cross for her role in what the media were now calling the Manhattan Barber case. Apparently the press didn’t see the irony in retaining the sensationalist nickname originally conjured by George Kittrie for his own byline.

Ellie looked down at her black wool A-line dress and slingback pumps, and touched the fringe of her new, very short hairdo. The fact that this stood out as a special effort had her rethinking her everyday attire.

Dan Eckels emerged from his office and placed his hands on his hips. “Quiet down out here. So Hatcher cleans up all right. Leave the woman alone.”

She sucked in her cheeks and faked a model’s awkward pose, and a few more detectives broke into laughter. It had been four days since she killed George Kittrie, and she’d noticed the ongoing efforts to make her smile. It was too soon to know whether the new thaw in the ice was a sign that she had passed some kind of litmus test with the squad, or just a temporary warm front.

“Great. See what happens when I try to stick up for you? You’re encouraging these assclowns.”

She looked at her lieutenant for some kind of confirmation of the rumor she’d heard the previous night at Plug Uglies. Apparently questions regarding the whereabouts of Eckels’s gun when he was abducted had led to some kind of investigation into his extracurricular activities. If the rumors were true, Eckels seemed surprisingly untroubled. Perhaps surviving his night with Kittrie had given him a new perspective on life. Or maybe the rumors were just rumors.

“I believe the two of you have somewhere to be?” Eckels asked pointedly.

“Oh, they need to be somewhere all right,” Shannon said. “‘Going to the chapel, and we’re gonna get married.’”