CHAPTER TWO

Gina Sawyer hummed a tune to herself as she sliced the potatoes. The Hollingsworths were coming over for dinner, and she was making ribeye steaks with garlic mashed potatoes and roasted green beans.

Gina was not—as so many at the school district insisted—attracted to Jeff Hollingsworth. He really was just a friend, and anyway, his wife, Laura, was the sweetest creature alive. Besides, she was in love with her husband. It really was amazing the kind of stories people made up.

The doorbell rang, and she yelped in surprise. Was that them already? Goodness, she had said five o'clock! It was barely three! Maybe Henry had ordered a package?

She rinsed her hands and wiped them on the kitchen towel, then headed for the door. She looked through the peephole and saw two men in black suits with sunglasses on. She gasped slightly, and when she looked behind them and saw the navy-blue van with the words FBI emblazoned on the side, she gasped again.

She opened the door a crack and said, "Um… hello? Can I help you?"

"Gina Burgess?" the man to the left asked in a humorless voice.

"Um… it's Sawyer now," she said, "Burgess is my maiden name. Is this… what is this?"

"I'm Special Agent Heath Dawson," the man said, "this is my partner, Special Agent Garrett Edgely. May we speak with you for a few moments?"

"Um… I'm sorry." Gina took a step back and shook her head in confusion. "What is going on? Why is the FBI at my house?"

"Do you remember a Faith Bold, ma'am?"

"Faith Bold…" Gina's eyes widened. "From high school?"

"Yes, ma'am. You two were lab partners in freshman chemistry."

"Faith Bold from high school," Fina repeated incredulously. "Why are you two here to talk to me about Faith Bold from freshman chemistry?"

"May we come inside?" Dawson asked.

"I mean…" Gina hesitated, "am I in trouble?"

Dawson and Edgely shared a look. "I think it would be best if we had this conversation inside, ma'am," Dawson said.

Gina's heart pounded. What the hell was going on? Faith Bold? "Well… do I need a lawyer?"

"No, ma'am," Dawson said, "To be clear, you are not in any legal trouble, nor are you suspected of any criminal activity. However, we have a matter of a very sensitive nature that we must discuss with you."

Gina's heart continued to pound. If she wasn't in trouble, then why was the FBI here? "Um… sure," she said, "Come inside."

She stepped back and allowed the two agents to enter. Their eyes immediately scanned the décor and the furnishings, observing everything and cataloguing it. Gina felt like a bug under a microscope.

"Can I offer you something to drink?" she asked.

"No, thank you," Dawson said.

Edgely shook his head.

"Okay," she said, "Um, well, I suppose we can sit in the living room."

"Thank you, ma'am," Dawson replied.

Gina thought about telling him to call her by her first name, but somehow the thought of that robotic voice uttering her name was even worse than being called ma'am.

The two agents sat, their postures as stiff as their expressions. Gina remained standing, arms folded protectively over her chest.

"Ma'am," Dawson began, "there's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to be direct. We believe you may be targeted by a serial killer."

When Gina was eleven years old, her cousin had died after falling down an open manhole cover that the city had neglected to cordon off or cover. Gina remembered finding her parents crying on the couch and hearing them tell her that Cousin Georgie had passed into Heaven. The first words out of her mouth were, "But I just talked to him this morning."

She spent the rest of that week in a fog, unable to understand how Georgie could have been laughing and joking with her that morning and be dead that afternoon. It didn't make sense. It felt like she had stepped into a dream from which she couldn't wake up.

She felt the same fog now as she processed the agent's words. Her legs felt suddenly numb, and she sat slowly and tried to wrap her head around everything.

"Um," she said, "I… what?"

She hated that that was all she could think of to say, but her mind kept hitching back to those words like an old record player skipping over the last portion of the song.

Serial killer. Serial killer. Serial killer.

Dawson and Edgely glanced at each other. "Are you familiar with the Copycat Donkey Killer case?" Dawson asked.

Gina shook her head and unconsciously began chewing on her fingernails, a habit that, ironically, had ended the year she had started high school, the year she had met Faith Bold.

"Um," she said, "the guy who cuts people to pieces in Philadelphia?"

The agents shared another look. "More or less," Dawson demurred.

"Well, it's not more or less, it's what he does," Gina said with a touch of exasperation. Her senses were returning to her, but that was proving to be little comfort.

Dawson nodded. "Well, we believe that he's targeting a number of past and present associates of Faith Bold."

"Why?" Gina asked.

"We're not at liberty to say."

Gina stared at him. "You're telling me that a brutal serial killer is threatening my life because of a woman I haven't seen in over fifteen years, and you can't tell me why?"

"That's correct. I'm sorry, ma'am."

"Sorry? You're sure—" Gina bit her fingernails again and looked out the window. Yolanda Ramirez was working in her garden, carefully tending to the hydrangeas and poppies and chrysanthemums she had arranged in a long, narrow planter her husband Diego had built for her a few years ago. She looked through the window at Gina and smiled.

Gina lifted her fingers in a brief wave, then pressed them to her lips again. "So… why are you telling me then?" she asked.

"The Bureau is willing to place you and your husband under surveillance until the killer has been arrested," Dawson said. " We would station agents outside your home to watch for any suspicious activity.

Gina felt that fog settles over her again. "So, basically, you'd wait for this killer to show up and hope you get to him before he gets to me.

"Yes, ma'am."

"How would I recognize that it's you? I mean, how would I tell that your agents are the ones watching me and not the killer? If someone comes to the door and says they're FBI, how do I know they're telling the truth?"

"We don't anticipate the agents will need to speak with you. In the event they do, they will come to you in pairs, just as Agent Edgely and I have. We believe this killer is working alone. If an individual comes to you alone claiming to be FBI, you can reasonably assume they're not telling the truth."

"You believe he's working alone?"

"Yes, ma'am."

A point behind Gina's left eye began to throb. "When would… I mean… When would all of this happen?"

"Immediately."

Gina released a noise somewhere between a gasp, a laugh and a sob. "So, just to make sure I have everything straight, you're offering to put my husband and I under guard because I am in danger of being murdered by a serial killer because I once built a volcano out of papier mache, baking soda and vinegar with Faith Bold in freshman year of high school, and you can't tell me why that is. Is Faith Bold the Copycat Killer?"

"No, ma'am," Dawson replied.

"Stop calling me ma'am!" she snapped.

"I apologize, Mrs. Sawyer."

Gina stood and crossed the living room again. Her mind screamed at her to just take the deal, to do whatever she needed to do to be safe, but an irrational part of her brain insisted that if she did that, then she would somehow be putting herself in more danger, as though by admitting to the existence of that danger she made herself vulnerable to it."

"So you'd just watch us from across the street or something."

Dawson and Edgely shared a look again. Gina had to quell an irrationally powerful surge of anger.

Stop treating me with kid gloves! Goddammit, I don't have cancer!

A second thought echoed that one, a vaguely taunting thought, as though her own mind were reveling in the destruction of her sense of safety. No, you don't have cancer. You have a target on your forehead.

"No.," Dawson said. "We would also place video and audio recording devices around your house and station two agents to monitor your home and your activities."

"Does surveillance include protection? Like bodyguards?"

Dawson and Edgely shared another look, and if Gina had to see that look again, she would tear her own eyes out. "No, ma'am," Dawson said, "we would respond immediately if the killer was sighted, but we wouldn't provide personal protection."

"So I'm only safe as long as I remain in my own home where your agents can see me?"

Dawson and Edgely started to turn toward each other, and Gina couldn't hold back her anger. "Just answer the damned question!"

Dawson sighed. "To the best of our knowledge, the killer only targets people when they're alone. If you make sure that you leave your house only in daylight and in the company of others, you should be safe."

There it was again. "To the best of our knowledge." "You should be safe."

Gina folded her arms across her chest again. She looked around at her home, so small and quaint and quiet and safe . This was a safe neighborhood, dammit. How could she suddenly be targeted by a murderer?

"Can I have some time to think about it?" she asked.

"We can give you until nine o'clock this evening," Dawson said, "I'm afraid that's the best we can do. We have other people to visit."

Gina sighed and turned toward the kitchen. Her freshly peeled and sliced potatoes were slowly browning from the exposure to the air.

"I'll leave my card on the table," Dawson said. "If you decide to accept our offer, please let me know."

The two agents left her then, standing with her arms crossed and her fingers pressed to her lips. Gina tried to remember Faith, and couldn't come up with anything other than braces, blue eyes and pigtails. The two of them were friendly, but they weren't exactly friends.

And yet, that was enough to put her in the crosshairs of a psycho.