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“How do I stop seeing them?” Faith pleaded. “How do I stop thinking about everyone I couldn’t save?”

Dr. West leaned back in his chair and tapped his chin with his pen. He looked at Faith with empathy, but there was a sternness in his eyes that told Faith that what he was about to tell her wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Faith, I’ve said this before, and I truly mean it: you are the most selfless person I’ve ever met. Perhaps more than any other quality save your willpower, that selflessness is what makes you such a phenomenal agent. But you’re not being selfless right now.”

“I know that,” she said irritably. “I know that I should be focusing on the people I’ve saved, and that I’m being selfish by thinking about all the times I’ve failed instead of the times I’ve succeeded, but—”

“Exactly,” he said, gently but firmly. “You’re being selfish because you’re not thinking about everyone you couldn’t save. You’re thinking about all the times you’ve failed.”

Faith blinked twice. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No. If you were thinking about the ones you couldn’t save, it would be their deaths that you found tragic, not your failure. But instead, it’s your failure that bothers you. You’re not grieving their loss, you’re raging against the fact that you aren’t perfect. That will of yours is, as I said, your greatest asset. But in times like this, it’s your greatest weakness. It all comes down to Trammell.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she insisted. “I’m over that.”

“You’re not over it, or the Bureau wouldn’t have insisted that you see me. You’re not over it, or you wouldn’t see relive your torture in your dreams every night.”

“That’s not—”

He held up his hand. “You’re not over it, or you would be able to grieve the loss of those you couldn’t save, find closure for their loss and rejoice in the fact that you saved many more than you lost.

“But that’s not how you feel. You are still trapped in that barn, still tied to that chair, still raging impotently against the realization that there are some things you can’t do, some monsters too big for you to kill.”

Faith lowered her eyes. She wanted to protest further, to argue that West was wrong, and it had nothing to do with Trammell.

But the nightmares came every night, and the feeling of helplessness lingered throughout the day. She had done everything she could possibly do, and he had still beaten her.

West was right. She wasn’t upset because the victims she couldn’t save had died. She was upset because she was still being beaten, still being outsmarted and outmaneuvered by violent people who she could never stop in time. She wasn’t good enough.

Maybe she had never been good enough.

***

“It’s a no for the mail,” Michael said.

Faith started. “What?”

“Different routes for all four victims,” Michael explained. “Makes sense since they live in four different parts of town.”

“What about the publishers?”

“No on the current publishers. Most of them were self-published anyway. Grimes is the only one who sold his work to other people. I’m still cross-referencing names in the industry to see if any of them visited all four people, but it’s a big damned industry. What about you?”

Faith felt heat climb to her cheeks as she realized her mind had wandered. She had spent the past several minutes remembering West’s manipulation and not searching through the victims’ social media accounts for any names that popped up in all four.

Damn it, she had beaten him! Why was he still on her mind?

She took a deep breath. “No, nothing yet.”

He sighed. “Keep looking. I think that’s going to be our best bet.”

She nodded and resumed her search through their social media. It wasn’t looking good. Somehow, none of them had interacted with each other that she could see so far. It was a big industry, sure, but all four of them worked in it. How was it that they had never interacted?

Well, just because they’d never interacted didn’t mean the killer hadn’t interacted with them. Somewhere among the thousands of followers and friends and connections that each of them had was a name that would show up in all four accounts. That person would be their killer.

But as the hours wore on, she still found nothing. Not a single name. She couldn’t understand it. She would have expected many names to show up. She thought she would have to sift through dozens of them to find the few most likely to be the killer.

Instead, she had nothing.

She looked out the window and her shoulders tensed until a dagger of pain lanced down her neck. It was twilight now. A few more minutes, and it would be full-on night. Their killer was almost certainly out there taking another victim. Hell, he might already have taken that victim and the Philadelphia Police were trying to decide when they could tell her without the news descending on them. Maybe the news had already descended on the scene, and PD was busy trying to explain why they hadn’t already told her. Maybe.

She sighed and stood abruptly. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

“Now? You can’t wait until after you look through their accounts?”

“It’s going to be hours until I finish,” Faith said. “Hours before you do too. My mind’s already starting to wander, so I need caffeine if I’m going to stay effective.”

“All right. Well, since you’re up, make some for me too.”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I thought I’d make the world’s smallest pot of coffee.”

“We’re both frustrated, Faith,” Michael reminded her. “Don’t take it out on me.”

She bit back an angry retort and headed to the kitchen. This was stupid. They had spent the whole case scouring for leads, and each time they had one that seemed solid, it turned out to be useless.

To be fair, this one wasn’t useless. Just elusive. It wouldn’t be useless until they exhausted every possibility and determined there was no one who was at each victim’s house each time.

Or until they got a call for another body.

Faith started the coffee and stared at the liquid as it slowly dripped through the filter. The first few drops were light, nearly clear, but as the percolator got up to speed, they darkened until they became a steady stream of rich brown.

***

Faith bit back her tears and swiped a fist angrily across her eyes. West had his back turned to her as he made a fresh pot of coffee for both of them. He wore a brown turtleneck today, perhaps not quite as dark as coffee but dark enough to clash rather unpleasantly with his khaki pants. She found that a little odd. He was usually very well-dressed, probably the most well-dressed person she’d ever known.

Well, everyone has a bad day. She just had a few more than most.

West took the pot off of the percolator and poured two cups. He set the pot back and carefully opened two packets of hazelnut flavored creamer which he emptied into one of the cups. He stirred the creamer into the coffee with his usual fastidiousness then discarded it and the two empty creamer packets into the nearby wastebasket. He grinned sheepishly at Faith and said, “I can’t get used to the taste of it black. I tried, I promise. It seems I’m not up to the task.”

Faith managed a smile, but it didn’t last long.

West sighed and set her cup in front of her before sitting with his. “I don’t mean to be cruel, Faith. I really don’t. I have been stern, but I don’t mean to hurt you. It’s just important that you understand the difference between grief and shame. If we are to help you come to terms with your shame, we can’t hide from it.”

“Is that what I have to do? Come to terms with my shame?”

“Of course. The longer you leave it in the back of your mind, the more it will fester. Leave it long enough, and it will consume you until there’s nothing left but darkness. Believe me, Faith, I understand the danger of leaving something rotten to fester.”

She met his eyes and saw a blackness in them she’d never seen before. She frowned slightly, and West lifted his cup to his lips. He closed his eyes to savor the brew, and when he opened them, the blackness was gone.

He smiled compassionately at Faith and said, “We all have demons, Faith. But we don’t fight them by pretending they don’t exist. Now, let’s talk about how you really feel.”

Faith was silent for a long while before replying. She lifted her coffee cup, and though the liquid was still scalding, she drank, pushing through the burn in her throat.

Finally, she said, “I can still feel his knife.”

***

“Faith? You okay in there?”

Faith inhaled sharply and blinked the memory away. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just waiting for the coffee to finish.”

“Christ, you are tired. Normally I’m the one kneeling at the altar of caffeine.”

“Well, it’s been a long case,” she said. “I’m just about ready for it to be over.”

“I don’t blame you. I’m ready to be done with all this crap myself. How much longer ‘til the coffee’s done?’

She looked at the pot to see it full. She didn’t think she had daydreamed for that long. “It’s done. You want cream?”

“You wanna die?”

She chuckled and poured two black cups of coffee for them. It was Michael who had first gotten her to take the stuff black. She used to enjoy fairly sugary drinks, but after working with him for years, she had slowly come around to enjoying the taste of the pure beverage.

She handed him his cup, and he didn’t even wait for it to cool. She watched incredulously as he sipped greedily. “How do you not burn yourself?”

“The burn is part of the enjoyment,” he explained. “That, and I’ll nod off in front of my computer if I don’t wake up soon.”

“I know how you feel,” she said, taking her own seat. “If only we could all be Turk.”

They both glanced at the dog, who slept soundly on the floor in front of the couch, uncaring of the noise the two of them were making.

“If I die, I hope I come back as a well-loved dog,” Michael said. “I could spend my days getting belly rubs, eating and playing, scaring delivery drivers. It would be wonderful.”

She stopped with her own coffee cup halfway to her lips. “Delivery drivers.”

“Yeah, you know. How dogs always bark at delivery men. I used to have trouble growing up with drivers not wanting to leave things at our house because our dogs—”

“That’s it!”

Michael blinked. “What’s it? Dogs?”

“No! Delivery drivers! These four have different mailmen, but a delivery driver from a parcel service could have gone to all four of them.”

Michael’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. You’re right.”

They forgot all about their coffee as they both opened websites. “I’ll check Amazon,” Michael said. “You check Fedex and UPS. We’ll start with those three and work our way down to the smaller carriers.”

They worked in silence, both of them intensely focused now that they had renewed hope. The big three didn’t have any drivers that delivered to all four of them, but when Faith looked through food companies, she found a driver for Food2U, a local online food delivery service, who had visited all four victims.

And had delivered packages to them within a week of each victim’s death.

“Michael!” she cried. “I have someone!”

“Who?”

“Tyler Grant.”