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As their meal progressed, the tension eased, and finally Tate was laughing with them, until his phone signaled a text.
The men stopped in midsentence, looking at each other with an expression Nola didn’t understand.
“What?” she asked.
Tate’s eyes narrowed as he pulled out his phone. He saw the number, then looked up and nodded.
Nola was beginning to get scared. “What, damn it?”
“It’s from the Stormchaser,” Cameron said.
Shock rolled through her.
“It’s part of how he gets his kicks,” Tate muttered.
“So what did he say?” Nola asked.
Tate opened the text and felt the skin crawl on the back of his neck.
I am not the fly you swatted. I am the eagle you cannot see. I hunt not for food but for justice and revenge. You do not deserve joy when mine is gone. I will prevail.
Clearly the Stormchaser felt threatened and was trying to reassert himself because Tate had killed the copycat.
Tate shoved the phone across the table to let them read for themselves, then took it back and, within moments, was talking to a tech at Quantico. He gave him both phone numbers, his and the killer’s, and ordered a trace.
“Get back to me ASAP.”
“We’ve done this countless times before,” Wade said. “We know he’s in our area. He’s always right under our noses. It won’t be any different this time.”
Tate was stone-faced. “And I’ll keep doing it. Damn me for slacking before. Eventually something has to click.” He looked at Nola. She was pale and very quiet. “Nola?”
She looked up with a glint in her eye. “I’m fine. Just find the bastard.”
Tate moved back to the murder board and began going over the evidence again out loud as she got up and cleared the table.
“Okay. Even though this has been part of our profile on him, it’s the first time he’s come out and used the word revenge and if we put Hurricane Katrina into the equation, it leaves us all kinds of possibilities.”
Cameron picked up the conversation. “If he and his wife were waiting to be rescued and it didn’t happen in time…”
“Who would he blame?” Wade asked. “He’d blame the rescuers. Maybe the government. He’d want them to look bad. He’d want to pay them back.”
Tate added. “He uses a lot of biblical references in his texts. He could be angry with God for not saving his wife.”
“But why kill people who would most likely have survived?” Nola asked.
Tate began to pace, ticking off the potential reasons one by one. “If he felt let down by God for not saving his loved one, then he could have convinced himself that he’s getting back at God for taking people He would have saved. Or maybe he’s angry with the government for not responding quickly enough to save whoever he loved and then helping now. He resents other people for surviving when his loved one didn’t, or something to that effect. We need to put research on this. They can do it faster and much more thoroughly than we can.”
“I’ll call it in,” Wade said. “So what all do we need? Reports of people who were angry about not being rescued?”
“And coverage on anyone who might have made threats against the authorities in the aftermath of Katrina,” Tate added.
“Any particularly tragic stories about couples getting separated, a spouse or child dying, that kind of thing,” Cameron added.
“I’m on it,” Wade said, and headed back to his bedroom to start the ball rolling.
Tate scooped Nola up in his arms and kissed her soundly. Before now, they’d had nothing but hypotheses as to the reasoning behind the killings, but now they knew for sure that the motive was revenge, and maybe that Hurricane Katrina was involved, as well.
Her lips were still tingling after he’d put her down, and she could tell by the conversation and the phone calls being made that she needed to entertain herself for a while. She grabbed a cookie, traded her water for a cold pop and headed for the living room.