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"Would it be inappropriate to say I didn't like that guy?" Michael said as he pulled into the parking lot of their hotel in Danbury.

“No?” Faith asked.

“He was like a ghoul,” Michael said, shivering with disgust.”

Faith raised an eyebrow. “Wow. You really didn’t like him.”

Michael sighed. “I have a hard time with pompous, arrogant intellectuals. Add to that his macabre fascination with death, and you have a good recipe for a tough personality to deal with.”

“I didn’t take it as a fascination with death,” Faith said, punching the call button for the elevator.

“Just the dealers of death,” Michael said. Faith’s lips thinned, and he sighed again. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just feel like people shouldn’t be so concerned with the reasons people die.”

“ We’re concerned with the reasons people die,” she reminded him.

“No, I mean… Forget it. Never mind.”

The elevator arrived, and the group rode it in silence. Turk wagged his tail and looked between his humans, wondering why they were upset at each other.

They weren’t really upset with each other.

They were both frustrated with their lack of progress and taking it out on each other in different ways.

They’d worked together long enough that they knew how to handle this occasional strife, though, and by the time they reached their room, they were able to work together again.

Faith made Turk some dinner, and Michael ordered food for the two of them. While the Turks ate and waited for their food to arrive, they got back to the job.

“Let’s give Marcus the benefit of the doubt,” Faith suggested. “We don’t really have a better idea at the moment.”

“Fair enough,” Michael allowed, starting coffee in the pot. “So our killer is a warrior who reveres other warriors. Why is he showing his respect to these warriors by killing them?”

“I think the respect lies in how he's killing them," Faith replied. "I think the reason he's killing them is different. Related, maybe, but different. Remember, Marcus said that he believes he's granting them a warrior's death. So why would they need a warrior's death?"

“A warrior’s death is achieved in combat with a superior foe,” Michael countered. “He isn’t a superior foe. He’s ambushing them. Maybe he thinks that makes him superior, but it clashes with the idea that he respects them.”

“Maybe he thinks they were denied a warrior’s death,” Faith replied. “If that’s the case, then he wouldn’t need to grant them the circumstances of a warrior’s death.”

“He would just need to change the ending,” Michael concluded.

“Exactly. They were supposed to die a warrior’s death, but for some reason or another, they didn’t. The killer is fixing that by giving them the death that was stolen from them.”

Michael nodded. “Well, it’s an idea.”

“It’s the most complete idea we’ve had to work with so far.”

“Fair enough,” Michael admitted.

He poured two cups of coffee and set one in front of Faith, then sat with the other in the second of the room’s two chairs. He looked at Turk to see that he’d finished his dinner and was now sleeping in between the beds again. “He’s been sleeping a lot this time around, huh?”

Faith’s shoulders tensed. “Well, he’s recovering from the Messenger’s attack. He’s probably not at a hundred percent yet. I know he passed his physicals, but he’s probably got a little way to go before he’s back at his peak.”

“Yeah.” Michael lowered his gaze. “Look, I fought for you two to stay in the field because I think it’s best for you, but if you really feel that Turk needs to be put to pasture, I won’t stand in your way again.”

Faith sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Let’s not talk about this right now, okay?”

“Okay,” Michael said. “I just realize I was being kind of selfish before, and I’m sorry for that.”

“So be un selfish and focus on the case,” Faith snapped.

“Right. Sorry.”

Faith felt immediate guilt for snapping at Michael, but she really wasn’t ready to have another heart-to-heart about the future.

And it was frustrating. He was the reason she was still here.

She had one foot out the door, and Michael pulled her back in.

It was too late for him to have second thoughts about this.

Don’t blame him. You didn’t want to leave. You were just scared. He reminded you what the future looks like if you give into fear.

And now she was fixating on exactly the subject she didn’t want to fixate on. She took a deep breath and pushed forward. “I think we’ve chased the thread of the locations as far as we can. I think we should focus on the victims again, especially now that we have a good picture of our killer.”

“What else is there to know about our victims? They both pretended to be happy when they were actually dying inside. The only difference is that Paul showed his happy face to his wife and enjoyed a good marriage while Kevin showed his depression to his wife and lost his marriage.”

His eyes widened. “Actually, that could be part of the killer’s motive.

Not the marriage part, but the dying inside part.

Maybe that’s why he chose these victims. He could feel like he was responsible for helping them because no one else knew the struggle they were facing.

He had to kill them because he was their only chance. ”

“I think you’re right on the money,” Faith agreed. “But for the killer to know that about the victims, he would have to know them personally, and we’ve got alibis for everyone close to them.”

Michael stroked his chin. “Maybe it’s a therapist. He could have heard both of their woes and elected to provide them with a compassionate death.”

Faith tensed slightly. That made a lot of sense.

After all, she knew all about therapists who moonlighted as killers.

"Let's look into the victims' backgrounds and see if anything comes up.

Since the victims were murdered, we can ignore HIPAA concerns and get their insurance companies to provide the information we need. "

“I’ll take Paul Martinez, you take Kevin Barnes?”

“Deal.”

The two of them got to work, calling the appropriate VA contacts and determining if the victims ever shared a therapist. This turned out to be a more difficult task than Faith had anticipated, not because the VA was uncooperative but because neither victim had attended therapy for any length of time, and they didn’t seem to have ever seen the same therapist. In a bout of frustration and desperation, they just asked for the entire VA and military history of both victims, anything on public record.

That didn’t yield a common contact, but it did yield an interesting fact.

Both men had lost people under their command in combat.

Paul Martinez was an Air Combat Controller who’d lost his entire platoon in a Taliban ambush outside of Mosul.

The vehicle in which Barnes’s squad was travelling had been destroyed by an IED leaving him the only survivor.

“Well, that adds another layer to the motive,” Michael said when they had finished sharing their findings. “He’s not just targeting veterans. He’s targeting survivors.”

“Specifically survivors who show survivors’ guilt,” Faith said.

“But why these two ?” She sighed and dropped her chin into her hands.

“Two men from two different branches of service working two different jobs: an Air Combat Controller and an infantry squad leader.” She shook her head. “Who could have seen both people?”

“A general, maybe?” Michael asked. “Or another high-ranking officer?”

Faith shook her head. "It's extremely unlikely that anyone high enough up the chain of command to have authority over units from multiple branches would have any kind of face-to-face contact with first- or mid-rank NCOs.

" She crossed her arms. "It's like we keep learning more and more about the why, but we still can't figure out the who. We know why the locations, we know why these victims, we know why the MO… but who? Damn it, who ?”

She got to her feet and started pacing. After a minute or two, she sat down again. She was exhausted, mentally and physically. It was nearing midnight, and while they knew much more about the case than they did at the start of the day, they were still no closer to finding their killer.

“I say we call it for tonight,” Michael said. “We’ve dug as far as we can, and we’re hitting a wall. If we keep banging our heads against it, all we’re gonna get is a migraine.”

Faith scowled. “We slept last night and woke up to another body.”

“I know. I’m not happy about this. But I can’t think where else to look right now. Can you?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Exactly. Let’s get some rest, and in the morning, with fresh eyes, we’ll start again.”

Faith’s jaw tightened until it hurt. She held that tension for a moment, then relaxed. “All right.”

Michael squeezed her shoulder, then headed to the shower.

Faith returned to her seat, swiveling it to face Turk.

She watched his chest rise and fall, letting her eyes travel over his powerful haunches and sinewy shoulders.

He didn’t look like an old dog. He didn’t limp, he wasn’t slow, and he didn’t have any trouble eating.

His eyes were clear and alert, and his teeth were still sharp and healthy. His hearing was just as good as ever.

But there was the white spreading on his muzzle and the gray popping up on his back.

And he had been sleeping a lot more than usual.

He usually slept through the night, only waking if she had a nightmare, but he had taken several naps during the day as well.

Most of the time they spent driving or in the hotel room, he was sleeping.

It could just be that he was recovering from the attack he’d suffered, but even if that were true, it could be that the attack had only accelerated an aging process that had begun years ago.

She was ready to leave out of fear for him. She had stayed because leaving meant the Messenger had defeated her.

Maybe it was better if the Messenger did defeat her.

Was Faith's pride worth driving Turk to an early grave?

Would it really be the end of the world if someone else brought the Messenger to justice?

Let her and West go to prison, laughing at how they'd overcome the great Faith Bold.

So what? They'd still be in prison, and she and Turk would be free of the fear that dominated their lives.

She tried to convince herself of that, but something cold and hard in the back of her mind couldn’t quite accept that ending to her story.

Michael stepped out of the shower and hooked a thumb back toward the bathroom. Your turn. Faith grabbed her change of clothes and headed for her own shower. The warm water soothed the tension in her body but did nothing to ease the worry in her mind.

She’d have to make a choice soon. And she’d have to stand by that decision, no matter what Michael or anyone else said.

No matter if the choice satisfied her pride or not.