LITMIR.BIZ

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hate and righteous fury emanating from her…it had frightened Sam. Perhaps her best friend was a better actress than she gave her credit for. She’d always kept the dark side of herself hidden.

      Sam pushed her bangs off her forehead and regloved. She went back into the suite, made the rounds, looking at the hearts in situ, then returned to her table, took up the scalpel and made the incision into the dead man’s chest a bit harder than absolutely necessary.

      She felt so worthless. She could blame no one but herself. She was the one who’d let the monster into their lives. And he’d taken from all of them—her child, Fitz’s eye, Taylor’s voice.

      The man’s breastplate was off now, the rhythm of the posts around the room underway. The bone saw whirred to life, a few moments later there was an audible pop and Stuart called out, “Head’s ready.” Sam dropped her scalpel and went to the body, smoothed her fingers across the young man’s brain, saw nothing unusual, then nodded her okay. Stuart took the brain from the cavity with a few quick cuts, set it in the scale to be weighed, and as she went back to her own table again, he shouted, “Brain’s ready.” It would wait; she’d have to dissect the organs of all five bodies in turn, searching for the clues that would affirm the cause of death. No murders this morning, nothing extraordinary, so no special precautions were being taken. Just another day at the office.

      Cutting and sawing and weighing and measuring soothed her tired mind. This was her world, finite, sure, and expected. Unlike Taylor, she had the luxury of being able to work, of finding herself again through her job. To throw herself into the sameness of each day. Every body held its secrets, but in side, they’re all alike.

      Was she still?

      She didn’t think so.

      Oh, the rational part of her understood that all of her organs were in their proper places. The doctors said there was even a chance she could conceive again. But the thought of losing another child brought her up short. Her grief had been tremendous, but it was the reaction of her husband, Simon, that had been more than she could handle. He did blame Taylor, hadn’t wrapped his head around the situation yet. They still went to bed stiff and unloving, his back turned to hers.

      He blamed Sam, too. She knew that. And she agreed with him. She could have fought harder, could have seen what was coming. Could have protected their child. She vacillated between understanding his frustration and hating him for blaming her. She hated herself a bit, too. What kind of mother lets her child be murdered?

      The haze of the past weeks had finally been lifted by her son’s first steps. The twins, Matthew and Madeline, weren’t fazed by their mother’s inability to pick them up, to look at them. They had each other. They knew, inside, that she loved them, that she was afraid that if she touched them, she’d taint their souls with the rot permeating hers. She saw it in their eyes—the forgiveness, the patience. They would heal her, if she’d let them. For their sakes, she had to come to grips with this.

      When she began to bleed yesterday, that’s when the rails came off the train again. It was her first period since the miscarriage, and such an open acknowledgement that her life was inextricably altered. She was empty again. No child growing, no soreness in her breasts, no morning sickness. When the child was cut from her, so were the symptoms, with such suddenness that she wondered if it were all a dream.

      A nightmare, more likely.

      She realized she was standing with both hands on her stomach, her left holding the skin down flat, her right poised at the ready, a scalpel between her fingers, pointed toward her own flesh.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Edinburgh

      The papers screamed the news, the radio and television repeating the story over and over at ten-minute intervals, making Memphis’s head ache. Another girl was gone. Hannah Straithwhite—an eighteen-year-old student. London was up in arms—she was the third girl to go missing in the past three months. No bodies had been found, no signs of foul play. Just a regular girl, from a regular world, disappearing from the streets of her life.

      A clear pattern had emerged. All three girls were blonde, eighteen, students, though from different areas of London and wildly different socioeconomic backgrounds. It was a nightmare, and he knew he was going to get dragged in.

      Ever since he’d participated in the capture of the Italian serial killer Il Mostro and his literally evil twin, the Conductor, anything that remotely smacked of a serial case was dumped in his lap. His superiors expected a good close. Not that he wasn’t willing, of course. More work meant less downtime, less time to think and thus dwell. And around the holidays, that was for the best.

      Thank God for the train. An escape. He was looking forward to seeing his father. Being away from New Scotland Yard for a bit. Tomorrow his commander, Toy McQuivey, was sure to pull him into the wet-wool-scented head office and ask him to take charge of the Straithwhite case. But that was tomorrow. He had all night ahead of him.

      He stared out the window. Into the darkness, the quickening night.

      He couldn’t stop thinking about the offer he’d just made to Taylor. It was selfish of him to want her near. He could delude himself into thinking it was about work; she was a damn good investigator. In addition to being the loveliest woman he’d ever set eyes on. He had no business pursuing her, he knew that. But he’d been brought up to take what he wanted, and she presented a challenge. She loved her G-man, no doubt about it, but there was an opportunity. He could feel it. Her catastrophic injuries had changed her, made her…afraid wasn’t the right word. Cautious, then. And he knew they weren’t getting along. It wasn’t very sporting of him to try and separate them, but if there was ever a time….

      God would strike him down for this, but he didn’t care about eventualities. Not anymore.

      Memphis didn’t know if he loved Taylor or simply wanted to acquire her, but either way, having that gray-eyed woman in his life made him feel alive for the first time since his wife, Evan, died.

      Besides, he wasn’t lying about his psychologist friend. Dr. Madeira James was married to one of Memphis’s best chums from school, Roland MacDonald, the second son of the Earl of Killicrankie. Roland was content to live the squire’s life, not having to work, spending his time hunting, fishing and otherwise engaged outdoors. He’d gone to America in the late ’90s and returned with Madeira, already in possession of a doctorate at the tender age of twenty-two, already ripe with his child. Maddee, as she was known, was great fun, a beautiful woman with long, dark hair and a wide smile: a good mother, a good wife, and a good friend to Memphis and Evan. She’d helped pick up the pieces after Evan’s death, and Memphis trusted her with his life.

      She’d be perfect for Taylor.

      If only Taylor would agree to come over. He doubted his money or title impressed her; she’d grown up with largesse and wasn’t enamored of its abilities to smooth one’s life. It was going to take much more to steal her away from Nashville. It would take compassion, and understanding, and freedom. Freedom most of all. And that he had the ability to give her.

      They had so much in common, more than she really knew. Privileged upbringings, yet a desire to eradicate evil, to solve crimes, to put away the bad guys. He knew Taylor was reacting to her father’s illegal activities when she decided to become a cop. His path was more direct.

      There was a killer, famous in the U.K., who was on a rampage while Memphis was in school. He was known as the Jeweler. He started killing the same year as the infamous Babes in the Woods murders, 1986, and was forever linked to the two young girls found strangled in the woods outside Brighton, even though he wasn’t actually responsible for their murders. He’d killed eight women, all by stabbing, then disappeared off the map. He’d been suspected in the murders of dozens more, women who were lost and never found. Mostly prostitutes, but a few upscale schoolgirls as well.

      During the killings, Memphis was just finishing at Eton, on his way to Cambridge, and was convinced that those murders, plus the two lost girls in the woods, with their constant news coverage, instilled the investigative bug into his world. He was captivated

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