I tried to jump right up, but it was no good. Everything spun. The ground turned sideways, and I was down again.

“Alex?”

I heard Huizenga now, moving through the woods behind me.

“Sixteenth Street!” I shouted back. “Keep going!”

I wasn’t even sure about that, but a guess was better than nothing at this point. All I could do was kneel there waiting for some sense of equilibrium to come back while the seconds ticked away—when seconds mattered.

By the time I finally caught up to Huizenga, our guy was gone, gone, gone.

CHAPTER

32

I MISSED A GOOD HALF HOUR WITH THE PARAMEDICS BEFORE HUIZENGA would let me get back to work. There was no concussion, just a gash and a bad headache. Even then she wanted me to go home, but she didn’t insist.

By the time I was back in the loop, Chief Perkins was on-site, along with Jessica Jacobs as well. Jacobs was the primary investigator on the Cory Smithe murder. By all indications, we either had one very busy psychopath on our hands, or more likely, two cases that had more to do with each other than we’d previously imagined.

Neither of the latest victims had been identified yet, but it had already been decided that MPD was going to hold a major press conference later that morning, to report out on the situation.

“Are we sure that’s a good idea?” I said. “I know I’m coming late to the conversation, but—”

“You also weren’t on the receiving end of the mayor’s calls,” Huizenga told me. “It’s done, Alex. This is our reality now. Let’s move on. Tell us what you’re thinking here.”

For better or worse, I’m the go-to profiler in the Homicide Division, not that there’s any official title to that effect. Either way, I’d already started working up a few new ideas.

“Assuming we’re talking about two killers,” I said, “I’d say they’re both white, like their victims, just going by statistics. Also bright, and well organized—but angry, too. Not necessarily about the same thing.”

It wasn’t such a stretch that murder and anger would go hand in hand, but that was the quality that struck me the most about all four of these homicides. None of them were simple or straightforward, in terms of methods. The knife work in particular had gone above and beyond the necessary, in terms of strictly taking lives.

That meant there was some emotion to it. Maybe some level of fantasy playing out here as well. And almost certainly some kind of high-functioning psychosis, which is the slipperiest aspect of all when it comes to pinning down any perpetrator.

Much less two of them.

I gave the others my spiel, and then shut up and listened again while D’Auria divvied the work to be done in the coming hours. If nothing else, we had a pretty good investigative machine up and running.

Valente was going to work IDs on both victims. Jacobs would run the 6 a.m. briefing at headquarters. Chief Perkins was going to be with the mayor’s people for the next few hours, and then D’Auria would be the face of the department for our press conference, while the rest of us stood behind him in a show of force. Sometimes, it is about appearances, and Washington was going to need some reassurance that MPD was on this.

Huizenga and I were both going to start pulling teams together, to go back through every report and witness account, and reinterview every first responder on all four of these murders. We’d also need to start from scratch on our victims’ profiles. Maybe there was some connection, some cross-reference we’d missed. There had to be.

Something was attaching these cases to each other. We just had to figure out what it was.

CHAPTER

33

JUST AFTER THE SUN CAME UP, I STOLE AN HOUR I DIDN’T HAVE AND SWUNG back by the house before Ava left for school. Jannie and Ali were already gone when I got there, but Bree had told Ava she’d write her a note for being late. We had to talk.

There were plenty of reasons to be concerned. The smiling, happy Ava from Kinkead’s the other night had turned out to be a momentary bit of sunshine. Most of the time these days she was sullen, withdrawn, and almost impossible for me to get through to. What I’d just seen the night before only added another layer.

“I wasn’t high,” she insisted, almost as soon as we sat her down in the living room. “I wasn’t! Serious.”

“You were pretty out of it, Ava,” I said.

“Whatcha want me to say? Swear to God, okay?”

I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. I wanted to, desperately, if only to establish some kind of mutual trust. But Ava was also an easy liar, and that wasn’t a pattern I wanted to reinforce. I wanted her to use those smarts of hers for something more than a quick lie and squirming out of trouble.

“Why were you still dressed, in the middle of the night? Did you sneak out?” Nana asked.

For the first time, some of the fire went out of Ava’s eyes. She jutted out her jaw and looked at the floor, answering and not answering at the same time.

“We can’t have that, Ava,” Bree told her. “Not even a little.”

“I know,” Ava said. “But I wasn’t on anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Either way,” Nana said, “things are going to change around here. No more running out to the store, or whatever it is you’re doing with your friends around Seward Square. No more dawdling on the way home from school like you’ve been doing. And absolutely no leaving the house by yourself at night. Don’t test me on that, Miss Ava.”

“Whatever,” she said, and started up. “Can I go now?”

“No, you can’t go,” Bree told her. “Sit down.”

Ava sat back again and folded her long arms over her chest. She was two years younger than Damon but just as tall and lanky.

“Ava, do you understand where all this is coming from?” Bree said. “We love you. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you. If it did, that would be like something bad happening to us. Does that make any sense?”

Ava tossed off another shrug, but I could see her getting smaller, the longer this went on. She was breathing through her nose, and if I wasn’t mistaken, trying not to cry.

So far, I’d been holding back. The truth was, Ava responded better to Nana and Bree than she did to me. But I didn’t want to stay silent anymore. I pulled the hassock around and sat down right in front of her. She was going to hear me.

“Do you want to be part of this family?” I asked her.

“Huh?”

“I’m not saying you have a choice about where you live right now. You’re kind of stuck with us for the time being,” I went on. “But what I am saying is that there’s a family in this house, if you want one. Do you?”

Nana, Bree, and I had all agreed that we’d wait until the end of the school year to think seriously about adoption, either way. The foster system was still overseeing Ava’s case, and maybe I shouldn’t have said anything yet. But then again, I was the one who’d been dragging his feet.

Ava seemed to fold in on herself a little more, pulling her arms tight around her own thin frame. When I saw the first tear start down her cheek, I didn’t think about it. I just wrapped her up in a hug and held on tight.

At first, she stiffened up. But then, all at once, she broke. It was like she’d turned into a rag doll in my arms, and she started sobbing like I’d never heard her before. Nana reached over and put a hand on Ava’s back. Bree did the same from the other side, and none of us said anything for a long time.

In fact, Ava was the first one to speak.

“I miss my mom,” she said against my chest. That was all she got out before she started crying, even harder, as if just saying it was its own kind of pain.

“Of course you do,” I said, rocking her gently. “I would, too.”