CHAPTER ONE

"Hey, Bold," Decker called. "Ten bucks says I get Gutierrez to sleep with me by the end of the week."

Faith scoffed. "Make it a hundred. Your sorry ass couldn't convince Garth to sleep with you."

Garth, a six-foot-four, two-hundred-eighty pound behemoth who liked firing his M249 from the hip and had once bent a length of rebar into a pretzel in Faith's presence, leered at Decker.

"Hell, I ain't proud," Decker said, "Be gentle with me, Daddy, and I'll do whatever you want me to do."

They all laughed at that, and Garth said, "Fortunately for you, I'm worn out after spending the night with your wife, so you get a pass."

The banter continued, one of the few constants in Kajran, along with long, uninterrupted stretches of mind-numbing boredom, something the banter often relieved, and the occasional roadside bomb, something no one acknowledged and everyone thought about.

They had been fortunate enough to avoid the roadside bombs on the three-hour journey from Gadamsa. The Taliban had been unusually quiet recently, probably dealing with the resurgent offensive toward Mazar-i-Sharif in the North, that—if successful, when successful—would cut them off from Russian support.

How funny that less than forty years ago, they had fought the Russians, but now that the U.S. was the foreign power, they were right in bed with them. Probably the same people that strategized how to kill Afghani people was now planning ways to use them to kill Americans.

Not that there was anything Faith could do about that. Those decisions were so far above her pay grade she would have to pay someone to be allowed to look at the building where those decisions were made.

So she just picked up her rifle, cracked crude jokes with her brothers and sisters, and waited for them to call her number and send her back home.

"Well, what about you then, Bold?" Decker called with a grin, "You want some help keeping warm tonight?"

Faith smiled sweetly at him and said, "Thanks, but I prefer men."

The others howled laughter. Decker widened his grin and offered Faith a finger. She kept her smile on him a moment longer before turning to face forward. The drab two-story concrete wall of Camp Ghost rose a half-mile distant. Faith relaxed a little. The risk of bombs was gone. The Taliban couldn't get within a mile of the base without being picked off by the long-range snipers posted at each corner. They were home safe again.

She glanced back at Decker, who grinned and winked at her. She rolled her eyes and shook her head but kept her smile.

Decker was cute. He wasn't remotely her type of personality, but he was good-looking enough. Maybe she could use a little help keeping warm.

"You know him?"

Faith looked up from the pictures at Desrouleaux and nodded. "Yeah. Knew him anyway. I hadn't seen him in over eleven years, but I know him. That's Corporal Decker."

"Staff Sergeant Decker," Desrouleaux said, "but yeah, that's him. You two serve together?"

"Yes," she said, "briefly. When did he die?"

"Coroner says night before last. Looks like he was hit before he could put up a fight."

"That makes sense," Faith said, "Decker wasn't the kind of man you fought fair. He was the unit's boxing champion. That means something in the Corps."

"No doubt," Desrouleaux said. He sighed and slumped in his chair. "So why did West go after him? Just to mess with you?"

Faith felt a stab of guilt. "Yes," she said reluctantly. "I think so."

"Christ." Desrouleaux shook his head. "Why you? Just because Trammell couldn't kill you?"

"I guess so," Faith said, shifting uncomfortably. "Look, you know he was in California. Have you tried retracing his steps? If we find out where he came from, maybe we can have an idea where he's going?"

"We're working on it," Desrouleaux said. "So that's all this guy was to you? Just someone you served with?"

Faith knew that Desrouleaux needed to ask her these questions. She wasn't allowed to work on the Copycat Killer case, but she was a person of interest right now since his latest victim was someone known to Faith, and it was now known to the FBI that West was motivated—at least recently—by a desire to torment Faith.

Still, Faith felt like a criminal under a microscope while the seasoned detective worked steadily to break her down and elicit some terrible secret.

"That's all," she said. She didn't think it important for Desrouleaux to know about the brief romantic fling they'd had in Kajran.

"So how did West know? Did you guys talk about your military service?"

"So what was serving in the Corps like?"

Faith chuckled and shook her head. "That's kind of like asking what it's like being in the FBI."

West shrugged. "Well? What was it like?"

She shook her head again. "Um… God, where do I start?" It was an honest question. Any answer she could think of seemed as reductive as the question. Finally, she settled on, "Well, it was fun while it lasted."

"Why?" he asked, not noting the sarcasm in her voice, or else noting it and choosing to ignore it.

She shifted in her seat, not sure why she was suddenly so uncomfortable. "Well… I mean, there's a lot to unpack there."

"Unpack some of it," West insisted. "There's no rush. We don't even need to start with anything particularly important. I'm just trying to get a sense of who you are, and to know that, I need to get a sense of who you were."

Faith hesitated while she tried to think of something to say. She didn't want to talk about combat. That wasn't a subject she looked forward to broaching with a psychologist. The rest of it was mostly stuff that civilians wouldn't understand, private jokes and unique experiences that would make no sense to anyone who wasn't in the Corps.

So what could she tell him that would satisfy his curiosity but not risk sparking a conversation she wasn't ready for?

"Well," she said, "I hooked up with one of the guys in my unit, and our platoon sergeant caught us."

He blinked, clearly not expecting that kind of revelation. Faith was nearly as surprised as he was. What did it say about her that she decided to avoid a personal conversation by telling West about the time her platoon sergeant caught her having sex?

Maybe that was a question for another session.

"Really," Dr. West said. "That sounds… interesting."

She chuckled. "Do I win the most shocking revelation award?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised the things people tell me," Dr. West replied, "but that is definitely not what I thought you'd say."

"What did you think I'd say?"

"I thought you would comment on the brotherhood you felt for your fellow Marines and what an honor it was to follow them into battle."

"A Marine doesn't need to say that out loud," she replied, "It's understood."

"Of course," Dr. West said. "When people go into war together, there is a bond there that can never be severed."

A stab of guilt shot through Faith. When was the last time she had talked to anyone from Dog Company? She hadn't even gone to the five-year reunion.

"Of course," she said, keeping her voice neutral.

"So tell me about this boy," he said, "or this man, I apologize."

She smiled slightly, "No, boy, just about sums it up. He was the stereotypical bad boy with a baby face. Movie star smile, nice arms, blue eyes. Not much of a lover, but you took whatever you could get over there."

So much for avoiding personal conversations.

"Did this boy have a name?"

She furrowed her eyes. "Well, yeah, but why do you want to know?"

"Well, you were intimate with him. He must be important to you."

She laughed. "Decker? No, he was never important. I wasn't important to him, either, though. We were just young and horny and available. That's really all it came down to. And since the platoon sergeant walked in on us, it never happened again."

"Well, this Decker was important to you, Faith, even if you don't realize it," West insisted. "You were intimate with him, and even if it seemed to you like it was only scratching an itch, it was certainly far more than that. You chose to reach out for human contact, and when you did, you chose Decker."

"So why him?"

Faith blinked and looked back at Desrouleaux. "Why, who?"

Desrouleaux glanced at his partner, a young agent named Chavez, who stood nervously, unsure what to do. Faith was the most well-known and respected agent in the Philadelphia Field Office, and Chavez was barely out of her training uniform. She still raised her hand to speak in meetings.

Faith spared her the need to interrogate a senior agent. "I don't know. Best guess, he just recalled me mentioning the name once and decided to hunt him down."

"How many other names do you think you mentioned to him?" Desrouleaux asked.

The corners of Faith's lips turned down. For a while, West was the only person Faith really talked to. She had shared a lot of names with him, far too many to recall.

But she had to recall them. "I don't know off the top of my head," she said, "but a lot."

Desrouleaux sighed. "Dammit."

"Yeah," she said," I know."

"Do you think you could come up with a list?" he asked. "Of any name you can remember telling him and what their relationship is to you? I don't know how it would matter how closely they're related since his first choice was a guy you hadn't talked to in over a decade. Was he an old boyfriend or something?"

"No, not a boyfriend," Faith replied. Which was perfectly true.

Desrouleaux shook his head and scratched his chin. "Well, we'll file it all away with the rest. Sorry about this, Faith."

Faith managed a half smile that disappeared the moment the door closed.

So West hadn't been in Philadelphia after all. He had gone as far away from the Atlantic Coast as he could. Now James Decker was dead. He probably hadn't thought about her in years, and now he was dead just because West knew that he had once known her.

When Franklin West, ostensibly a psychologist, in reality the Copycat Killer whose murders far outstripped those of the original Donkey Killer, killed her friend and mentor Gordon Clark, he left her a note that explicitly threatened her boyfriend, David Friedman, her partner, Special Agent Michael Prince and his fiancée, Ellie West, who turned out to be the ex-wife of none other than Franklin West.

Ellie Prince now. They had married. She hadn't been invited to the wedding, primarily because, as part of her obsession with finding the Copycat Killer, she had interpreted Turk's initial dislike of Ellie as evidence that Ellie was the Copycat Killer herself.

She was certain that West would be here in Philadelphia and that his next move would be against David. Instead, he—likely anticipating her thought process—had traveled across the country and murdered a man she hadn't thought of in years.

Except for ten minutes in West's office.

He knew that Decker wasn't important to her. She told him he was just the other party in a funny memory and nothing more. There were dozens of more important names she had given him.

And maybe he would go after one of them next.

She left the office and headed home, feeling everyone's eyes boring into her back. Since being reinstated a few weeks ago, Faith had felt like an outsider. People she'd worked with for years avoided her in the hallway. Everyone treated her like a bomb waiting to go off, and the fact that she had earned that reputation didn't make it feel any better.

And now this. Death followed Faith like a cloud, and if not for Turk's enthusiastic greeting when she walked inside, she might have spent a sleepless night staring moodily at her blank tv screen.

But how could you not smile when an eighty-pound puppy jumped into your arms and started exuberantly licking your face?

"Hey, boy," she said. "Sorry, I'm home late. I had to talk to Desrouleaux. You remember him? Short, dyed hair, smells like maple donuts?"

Turk barked, and Faith laughed. "Well, he… he just needed to talk to me." She wasn't ready to talk about it, not even to Turk.

"Let's eat some dinner, huh?" she said. "Then we'll watch that movie you like about the dog who rescues all those kids."

Turk barked exuberantly, and Faith headed to the kitchen. An hour later, she sat on the couch, Turk in front of her, his tail switching back and forth with excitement as a Saint Bernard carefully navigated his way down a snow-covered slope to help a crying toddler. When the dog slipped, Turk, who had seen this movie at least fifty times before and knew that the dog would regain his balance and successfully rescue the last child, barked and whined anxiously. When the dog deposited the child safely into the arms of her waiting mother, Turk leaped and barked and howled for joy.

Faith smiled as she watched him. He turned to her, panting and smiling, and she saw the chipped tooth on his left side.

Her smile faded slightly. West had tried to take Turk from her, too, but Turk had escaped and left West a little present on his way out the door.

"He's not getting you," she said. "Nope. Not you, boy."

Turk wasn't sure why Faith was suddenly serious, but he barked in solidarity and turned back to the movie, where the Saint Bernard was proudly accepting a medal for bravery from the Governor of Colorado.

After the movie, Faith put Turk to bed. He closed his eyes and fell asleep almost immediately, a skill he had no doubt learned from the Marine Corps. Faith herself had shared that skill up until two years ago. Jethro Trammell had seen to it that she rarely slept without nightmares, and sleep was no longer so easily attained.

Nor would tonight be any different. West may have been a stand-in for Trammell in Faith's psyche at first, but he was the big Evil now. Trammell was dead and gone, West was still active. He had killed one of Faith's friends and one of Faith's former comrades, and she had no doubt he wouldn't stop there.

So, she thought back to her many sessions with West, to the names, both important and unimportant, that she had told him, and began to write. She had no idea if there was any rhyme or reason to Faith's choices. Decker was a fond memory of hers but not a particularly important one.

He's spreading us thin , she thought. He's trying to overwork us and find cracks in the armor.

She knew this was true, but she had no choice. He would keep killing until he got what he wanted or until he was caught. At the moment, they weren't anywhere near catching him, so he would keep killing.

Just like a chess master, he had forced Faith and the Bureau into a corner. They had no choice but to play his game right now and hope he made a mistake.

Before they made a mistake.