LITMIR.BIZ

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him. He hated people who loomed.

      “I know what you want, Corrigan, and I’m warning you now, I will not have vigilante justice in my department. I’ll say it again.” She punctuated her words by shaking her glasses at him. “This. Is. Not. Your. Case.”

      Billy relaxed his stance, as if in preparation for physical combat rather than a battle of wills. “Jenna was everything I had,” he said quietly. “I won’t stop looking for him. You can fire me now, if you have to, but I won’t ever stop.”

      She didn’t even blink. “Turn in your badge and your gun.”

      Without hesitation, Billy walked to where his jeans lay on the floor and took his badge wallet out of one of the pockets. His gun rested on the fireplace mantle, and he picked that up, too, then handed both items to her.

      The room grew quiet for several seconds as they stared at each other. Parker was the first to crack. “Damn you, you stupid, stubborn male.” She sighed and shook her head. “This is an extended leave of absence. When you’re ready to give up any and all delusions that you’re John Wayne, give me a call.”

      She placed the items he’d given her onto the recliner she’d just vacated. “Now. Promise me one thing, Corrigan,” she said.

      “If I can,” he answered.

      “If, through some giant stroke of luck, you run into that son of a bitch before the Violent Crimes Division does, you follow the law to the letter. Because if I hear just a hint of the words excessive force in a sentence with your name in it, I will not lift a finger to save you.”

      She spun around and walked to the door, then stopped just before exiting. “Live, Billy,” she said. “Please, just live.”

      MAGGIE’S VISION CLOUDED and tunneled until all she could see was the vicious hunting knife, the serrated teeth on its top edge tearing into the wood on her door. She remembered that knife. The Surgeon had worn a mask when he’d taken her, and she’d never seen his face, but she’d remember that knife for the rest of her days. Every time she looked at the scars on her stomach.

      “Addy, get a plastic bag from the kitchen, would you?” Her own voice sounded tinny and remote to her ears. She didn’t notice Adriana leave the room, but suddenly, the plastic bag was in her hand. She wrapped it around her fingers and pulled the knife out of her door. A piece of paper fluttered to the floor.

      Then her vision cleared, widened, and she could see beyond the door, outside, down her sand-strewn driveway to the copse of trees across the street, so thick she wouldn’t know if someone were standing among them right now, watching.

      The tremors were small, at first, starting with her fingers and vibrating up her arms, but soon, her entire body was shaking and jerking hard enough to make her teeth chatter. Her hand loosened its grip on the knife and it clattered to the floor, but still she stood in the open doorway as if rooted to the spot. Staring at the trees.

      Adriana gripped her shoulders and steered her toward the couch. She pushed a glass of water in Maggie’s hands before moving away to shut the door. She was saying something, or her mouth was moving anyway, but Maggie had no idea what was coming out. She barely managed to catch the words “—calling 911.”

      He’d been at her doorstep. In the trees outside her home. And all she could do was stay holed up in her house like the proverbial sitting duck, practically inviting him to come inside and finish what he’d started. She glanced at the thin panes of glass that separated her from the Surgeon’s terrible hands. How had she ever thought this house, that glass, could keep her safe when it would shatter so easily?

      “Little pig, little pig, let me come in…”

      Oh, no.

      She stood up and backed away from the window.

      “…Maggie? Maggie, please.”

      Maggie glanced down at the hand on her arm. Focused on the thin silver rings and graceful fingers. Focus. She had to focus.

      “Maggie, James esta aqui. I have answered most of his questions but you have to talk to him, por favor.” Adriana’s voice brought her out of her thoughts. “Please?”

      She shook her head, scrubbed her hand over her eyes. She’d obviously been in la-la land for some time, it didn’t seem like enough time had passed for the police to be here already. “Sure, Addy. Of course I’ll talk to him.” She tightened her mouth upward in what she hoped was a smile and looked around until she zeroed in on the real James Brentwood, a tall, brown-haired man in a rumpled shirt and tie, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He wore a pair of trendy brown glasses, behind which were sparkling brown eyes, set deeply in a face that seemed to crinkle into a smile naturally. There was an almost frenetic energy about him—even his hair cowlicked wildly about his head, as if it, too, couldn’t stand still. “Hello, Detective Brentwood,” she said, putting on her best I’m-a-sane-productive-member-of-society voice.

      He reached forward and clasped her hand in his in a brief handshake. “Maggie Reyes. A pleasure.” Brentwood introduced her to his partner, Detective Elizabeth Borkowski—Billy’s friend, she noted—who had gathered up the knife and the note in plastic bags. Borkowski was a petite brunette with short, curly hair, milk-white skin dotted with pale freckles, and a wedding ring on her left hand.

      Borkowski quickly excused herself and headed outside to check the yard and exterior of the house. Maggie gestured for Brentwood to have a seat. He sank down into the overstuffed, sage-green sofa in the living room and had a brief battle of wills and elbows with the throw pillows piled up near the armrest. When they’d been beaten into submission, Brentwood leaned back and settled in. Adriana lowered herself next to him.

      “So,” Brentwood began after they’d dispensed with the kind of pleasantries that usually made Maggie irritable. This time, however, they were a welcome delay of the inevitable. She really didn’t want to think about what that knife or that note meant just now.

      But obviously, Brentwood wasn’t going to give her the reprieve she was craving. He placed the note, bagged in plastic, on the table and shoved it toward her. “Any idea what this means?” Sitting back, he batted his too-long brown hair out of his eyes.

      She scanned the letter that had been impaled to her door moments before. Someone had scrawled Do you want to live forever? in heavy, uneven letters. Underneath was scribbled, S10 M0. Seemingly meaningless, but if she knew the Surgeon, the message was just as important as the words she knew well.

      As soon as she saw the three men in black come through the door of the rotting cabin, she instinctively jerked against her bonds, the movement nearly exhausting what remained of her strength. A sharp pain shot through her wrists as the fishing line cut into her skin, and then she could feel something wet dripping down her arms. Her mind felt thick, ponderous, and it took her a few moments to comprehend that her wrists were bleeding.

      She blinked, her eyelids closing and opening in the slowest of motions, and the three men before her coalesced into one. One man, with a neoprene ski mask on his face and a nylon stocking over his hair. One man with a starving, frenzied look in his too-bright eyes.

      The springs of the rusty cot creaked as he climbed on top of her, and she heard the sound of metal sing against leather. Slowly, ponderously, she turned her head and saw the large hunting knife he held next to her cheek. With one hand, he looped a leather cord around her neck; the other brought the tip of the knife to the hollow in her throat.

      “Do you wanna live forever, Maggie?” he whispered, and he trailed the knife down her breastbone, leaving a thin red line in its wake.

      Lost in her thoughts, Maggie barely noticed as her hands jerked upward to clutch at her throat. At the sudden movement, Adriana sprang up from her perch on the sofa arm. “Maggie?” she said.

      Maggie shook her head, coming fully back to the present. She waved her friend off with an apologetic smile. “That question—” She picked up the bagged note Brentwood had passed to her and tapped its shiny surface with a fingernail. “—was something the Surgeon

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