Ten Plagues

“He killed Juanita after his last call to me,” he said in a voice so weak and frightened Keren wouldn’t have recognized it as his if he hadn’t been standing right in front of her.

Keren glanced up at O’Shea. She saw her partner’s face twist into a look of compassion. O’Shea shook his head and left to finish rousting the people from the house.

“No, Paul.” Keren grabbed Paul’s arm. “That’s not right. The ME said Juanita was killed hours after the explosion. And if he killed her at that fountain—or even just before he took her there—we have a chance of anticipating where he’ll go. We have to keep pushing.” She shook him, hoping to shake some courage into him. “We go on the assumption we have time to save her.”

“But we didn’t thwart his explosion before. You heard him, he was so furious he was raving. He’s killing her right now.” Paul faltered, and Keren worried that he might collapse. “I can’t get to her. She trusted me, maybe the first person she’s ever trusted in her life, and now she’s dying because of it.”

Keren knew she ought to yell at him, goad him, and harass him to bring out the cop in him. When he was being his old, logical self he was more useful; unfortunately, she couldn’t stand him when he acted that way. She was drawn to the gentle pastor, but he felt everything so deeply he couldn’t function. Not in the face of this insanity.

She’d seen the pictures of LaToya on the wall in her apartment, and she’d seen pictures of her from old arrest records. The change in the young woman was enough to prove to anyone there was a God. It was possible that a sweet, redeemed woman was dying horribly right this moment, and Keren couldn’t play tough with Paul right now, even if it might help solve the case.

So she hugged him instead.

In the midst of the gas fumes and dinginess and thwarted destruction, he grabbed her and clung until she couldn’t draw a breath. She hung on, knowing she was only feeling a fraction of his despair.

When Keren trusted her voice, she said, “We’ve got to keep trying.” She lifted her head off Paul’s chest and put her hands on his shoulders. He straightened away from her, and she looked him square in the eye. “Our only other option is to do nothing.”

Paul held her gaze for a long time. She could feel him gathering his strength. He knew they didn’t have any choice.

“All right.” His voice broke. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Let’s get to work on those files.”

Keren nodded silently and led him upstairs and toward the back of the house, where she’d left her car. The inhabitants of the crack house were emerging from their rooms, grousing and threatening the cops. She turned back to these people who were alive because a man had risked his life for them. They were throwing their lives away, with no notion of what a precious gift they’d been given.

“Bust every one of them,” she snapped. “Lock ‘em up and keep ‘em there. We don’t have to charge them for forty-eight hours, so stall the bond hearing. Maybe the idiots will sober up enough to realize they’re lucky to be alive.”

“It’s for their own protection,” O’Shea added. “There’s a demon after them.”

“Does browbeating these poor, sleeping people make you two feel better?” Paul asked.

O’Shea tipped his head and shrugged and nodded. “Yeah.”

“A little.” Keren hauled him out the back door.

The FBI was at the station when they got back.

They’d commandeered a small office, and when they called Keren, Paul, and O’Shea in, they made a tight fit. Keren had met several of the local agents over the years and usually worked fairly well with them.

“I’m Special Agent Lance Higgins.” A tall man with golden eyes so predatory, Keren had a feeling those eyes would be the last thing a lot of bad guys would see when Higgins pounced. He had black hair swept off his forehead like a mane. He was leaning against the wall behind the gray metal desk in the office, and he uncoiled and stepped forward with leonine grace. He offered Keren his hand.

Keren couldn’t help responding to the man’s powerful strength. She shook his hand just a second too long before he pulled away. Higgins turned to Paul and O’Shea and gave them the same greeting. He was wearing the standard FBI black suit, but on him it looked great. Two other black-suited men Keren knew were from the Illinois FBI office were standing against the wall on Keren’s right.

Higgins gestured to the left. “This is our profiler, Agent Mark Dyson.”