The Soul Catcher - Alex Kava

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most of that, didn’t you? Come on, now, I’m not telling you anything new here. Why did you really call me for dinner? What do you really need to talk about?”

      The silence continued longer than Gwen normally allowed.

      “To be honest—” Maggie grabbed the menu again and avoided Gwen’s eyes “—I’m really, really hungry.” But she glanced over the top and managed a tense smile at Gwen’s frown. “And I needed to be with a friend, okay? A living, breathing, wonderful friend whom I absolutely adore.”

      This time Gwen got a glimpse at Maggie’s deep brown eyes. They were serious, even a tad watery, which was why she went back to hiding them behind the menu. Gwen could see she was trying to cover up a vulnerability that had slipped too close to the surface; a vulnerability that the tough Maggie O’Dell worked hard to keep to herself and harder to conceal from others, even from her living, breathing, wonderful friends.

      “You should try the hickory burger,” Gwen said, pointing to the menu.

      “A burger? The gourmet is recommending a burger?”

      “Hey! Not just any burger, but the best damn burger in town.” She saw Maggie relax. The smile genuine now. Okay, so Gwen would pull and prod next time. Tonight they would eat burgers, have a couple of drinks and simply be living, breathing friends.

      CHAPTER 13

      He needed to sit. The haze seemed thicker this time. Had he taken too much of his homemade concoction? He needed it only to enhance, only to help him see beyond the dark. He certainly didn’t need this. He needed to sit. Yes, sit and wait for the haze to move from back behind his eyes.

      He’d sit and concentrate on his breathing, just as he was taught to do. He would ignore the anger. Wait. Was it anger? Frustration, maybe. Disappointment, yes. But not anger. Anger was a negative energy. Beneath him. No, it was simply frustration. And why wouldn’t he be frustrated? He honestly thought this one would last longer. She had certainly tried. And he was almost sure that on the third time he had seen it. Yes, he was quite certain he had seen the light behind her eyes, that glimmer, that flash, that moment of life escaping the body, just as she drew her final breath. Yes, he had seen it and he had come so close.

      Now it would be days, maybe even a week before he could try again. He was running out of patience. Why the fuck did she have to give in so soon? One more chance was all he needed. He had been so close. So close that he didn’t want to wait.

      He gripped the book and let the feel of its leather binding soothe him. He sat on a hard bench in a dim corner of the terminal, ignoring the screech of hydraulic brakes, the endless clacking of heels rushing, bodies shoving—all of them in such a fucking hurry to get where they were going.

      He closed his eyes against the lifting haze and listened. He hated the noise. Hated the smells even more—diesel fuel and something that smelled like dirty wet socks. And body odor. Yes, body odor from the assholes who abandoned their cardboard homes in the alley to venture in and beg for pocket change. Worthless assholes.

      He opened his eyes, pleased that his vision was clearing. No more haze. He watched one of the worthless assholes by the vending machines, checking the return slots for change. Was it a woman? It was difficult to tell. She wore everything she owned, layer after filthy layer, pant cuffs dragging behind her, adding to the slow motion of her absent shuffle. Her ragged and stretched-out stocking cap gave a crooked point to her head and made her dirty blond hair stick out like straw. Such a coward. No survival instinct. No dignity. No soul.

      He lay the book in his lap and let it fall open to the page where he had left his homemade bookmark—an unused airline ticket, creased at the corners and long expired. He needed to let the book calm him. It had worked before, the words offering guidance and inspiration, even direction and justification. Already his hands grew steady.

      He pulled his shirt cuff down over the caked blood. She had scratched him good. It had hurt like hell, but nothing he couldn’t ignore for the time being. He’d wash his hands later. Right now, he needed to feel some sense of completion and validation. He needed to calm the frustration and find some reserve of patience. Yet, all he could think about was having come so close to his goal. He didn’t want to wait. If only he could find a way so he didn’t need to wait.

      Just then the pointy-headed loser stuck her smelly, gloved hand in his face. “Can you spare a dollar or two?”

      He looked up into her smudged face and realized she was quite young, maybe even once attractive underneath that dirt and smell of decay, of rotten and sour garbage. He searched her eyes—clear, crystal blue and, yes, there was light behind them. No hollow look of despair. Not yet. Maybe he didn’t need to wait, after all.

      CHAPTER 14

       Newburgh Heights, Virginia

      The cold wind pricked at Maggie’s skin, but she continued running, welcoming the sensation. Delaney’s death had triggered a swell of emotions that she hadn’t anticipated, that she wasn’t prepared to deal with. And his funeral had released an avalanche of memories from her childhood, memories she had worked long and hard to keep safely behind a barrier. The battle to contain them left her feeling numb one minute and angry the next. Amazing that both emotions could be so exhausting. Or perhaps the exhaustion came from keeping them concealed, shoving them down away from the surface, so that no one could witness how easily she could feel nothing one moment and explode the next. No one, that is, except Gwen.

      Maggie knew her friend could sense her vulnerabilities, despite Maggie’s effort to hide them. It was one of the curses of their friendship, a comfort as much as an annoyance. Sometimes she wondered why the hell Gwen put up with her, and at the same time, she didn’t want to know the answer. Instead, she was simply grateful for this wise, loving mentor who could take one look into her eyes, see all the turmoil, sift through the hidden wreckage and somehow manage to inspire strength and good from some reserve Maggie hadn’t even known existed. And tonight Gwen had been able to do all that without a single word. Now, if only Maggie could hold on to that strength.

      When she first became a criminal profiler she thought she could learn how to compartmentalize her feelings and emotions, separate the horrors and images she witnessed as part of the job from her personal life. Not that Quantico taught them such a thing. But since she had done it all her life with the unpleasant memories and images of her childhood, why wouldn’t she be able to do it with her career? The only problem was that every time she thought she had the technique down pat, one of those damn compartments sprung a leak. It was annoying as hell. Especially annoying that Gwen could see it no matter how hard Maggie tried to hide it from her.

      She picked up the pace. Harvey panted alongside her. The big dog wouldn’t complain. Ever since she had taken him in, he had become her shadow. The pure white Labrador retriever had become a bit overprotective with her, jumping at sounds that Maggie never heard, barking at footsteps whether they belonged to the mailman or the pizza-delivery person. But then Maggie could hardly blame him.

      Last spring the dog had witnessed his owner being violently kidnapped from their home, by a serial killer named Albert Stucky, who Maggie had already put in jail once and who had escaped. And though Harvey had put up a good fight, he hadn’t been able to stop the attacker. For months after Maggie had taken him in, he looked out the windows of Maggie’s huge Tudor home, looking, waiting for his owner. When he realized she wouldn’t return, he attached himself to Maggie with such a protectiveness that she wondered if perhaps the dog was determined not to lose a second owner.

      What would Harvey think if he knew, if he could possibly understand, that his previous owner had been taken and killed simply because she had met Maggie? It was Maggie’s fault that Albert Stucky had taken Harvey’s owner. It was one of the things she had to live with, one of the things that caused her nightmares. And one of the things that was supposed to have its own little compartment.

      Her breathing came in rhythmic gasps, timed to the pounding of her feet and the beat of her heart, which filled her ears. For a few minutes her mind cleared, and she concentrated instead on her body’s

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