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Faith thought she had managed a dreamless sleep until Michael asked her over breakfast, “What was your nightmare this time?”

She blinked. “What? I don’t remember having a nightmare.”

He shook his head. "Well, you had one. You were screaming, 'He's back! He's back!' I assumed it meant West."

Faith colored a little and looked around at the other guests, grabbing their breakfasts in the hotel's dining room. None of them looked her way, but that didn't mean they hadn't heard her screaming. "Really? Why didn't Turk wake me up?"

“He tried. You just went back to sleep. You were peaceful, so we left it at that, but if Turk naps today, it’s because he spent the last three hours of the night watching you.”

Faith looked down at her dog, who watched her with concern. Were her nightmares the reason he was slowing down? Was he not getting good rest?

Her concern was relieved somewhat when he dipped his head toward the sausages she had on her plate. She rolled her eyes and handed him the sausages. One of the four links might have touched the ground before he devoured it, but he didn’t think so.

“Lovely. Now he’s going to stink up the room,” Michael complained.

“You think you don’t fart?” Faith retorted.

Michael adopted an injured expression, but before he could respond to her accusation, she said, “I have an idea where to go with the case.”

Michael perked up, dog farts and nightmares forgotten. “What is it?”

“We need someone who could have interacted with both victims. Aside from high-ranking members of the brass touring the front lines—which is unlikely and even less likely to result in meaningful contact with the victims—there’s only one job description that fits that bill.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense. What is it?”

“Medical officers.”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “I thought each branch had their own combat medics.”

“They do, but for injuries that require help more extensive than can be provided at a front-line unit, soldiers get sent to a triage center. The same is true for battlefield deaths. When bodies are recovered, they’re sent to the triage center, processed, and shipped back home.

This isn’t true in all cases, but it’s the most likely reason why someone would have interacted with both of our victims.”

“Either they provided medical care to the victims or watched them mourn the loss of their fallen comrades,” Michael summarized.

“Or both,” Faith agreed. “So we should look at medical personnel who could have interacted with our victims.”

“How do we figure that out?”

“We find out where our victims were deployed when they lost their unit,” Faith replied. “Then we figure out where the casualties from those events would have been sent. We determine who was on staff at those triage centers and we look for anyone at both places.”

Michael frowned. “Sounds tedious.”

“At least it’s tedious work with a definite payoff,” Faith replied.

“Unless we find out no one was at both places.”

Faith glared at him, and he lifted his hands. “Right. Sorry. Positive thinking.”

The two of them cleared their plates and returned to their room. Faith stopped for more sausages and let Turk eat them while she and Michael got to work. Once more, she looked into Kevin Barnes. His unit had been lost while they moved from Kabul to a forward operating base two hundred miles west.

As Michael had predicted, it was tedious work slogging through military records to figure out where the bodies of Barnes’s unit had been sent and where Barnes himself had gone for treatment of his own injuries.

Faith’s memory of the Marine Corps was that their records were very complete and very well organized—just not in any way that made any damned sense.

The Army was even worse. Faith had to talk to four different people before finally getting the answers she needed. Michael had a similarly difficult time with the Air Force, but finally, they were able to gather the pertinent facts.

Paul Martinez’s unit had been ambushed six months prior to the destruction of Barnes’s unit. Paul had sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was transported to the USS Comfort for treatment and eventual evacuation.

Barnes suffered superficial injuries but insisted on accompanying his unit to their final resting place.

For some reason, his superiors agreed, probably to give themselves time to process the paperwork that eventually cut his tour short and got him sent home on mental health leave.

His unit was sent to the Navy’s 53 rd Surface Warfare Medical Squadron, at the time deployed to the expeditionary force’s headquarters campus outside of Kabul.

Both Navy units, which was common. The Navy had the greatest number of fully qualified medical personnel and the most resources to handle the bulk of the armed forces’ medical needs.

Unfortunately, it seemed that with only a few exceptions, the entirety of the 53 rd Surface Warfare Medical Squadron had been deployed aboard the USS Comfort at the time Paul Martinez underwent treatment. That left them with thirty-four different medical personnel to investigate.

“I think our tedious work just got more tedious,” Michael said unhelpfully.

“We need to narrow it down more,” Faith replied. “Let’s prioritize people who suffered mental health problems after their time serving with the medical squadron.”

“Can we get that information?” Michael asked. “HIPAA should prevent us from accessing that, shouldn’t it?”

Faith frowned. “We’ll have to hope we can convince people to break some rules.

” Michael’s brow furrowed, and Faith said, “We’re running out of options, Michael, and someone out there is running out of time.

We need to figure out who’s doing this. I know you don’t like bending rules, but I don’t want to keep skirting around the answer until we find another dead body in a shallow grave. ”

He sighed. “Yeah, I know. You’re right. I just… Well, it is what it is. Let’s start making some calls.”

Convincing people to break rules turned out to be a monumental task.

The VA flatly refused to release that information without a court order.

Ditto the Navy’s Medical Corps. Faith tried calling the retired former head of the 53 rd Surface Warfare Medical Squadron while Michael called the captain of the USS Comfort.

Both officers regretted to inform their respective callers that they didn’t have access to the information requested.

Lunchtime found both of them desperate and frustrated. Faith had been so excited for this idea when it first came to her earlier, and now she felt like she had just slammed her head right into another wall.

Michael found the way out, and when he did, Faith only wished more fervently that they had reached their answer earlier. “We could try getting that court order. Then we’re not breaking rules, and we have legal pressure to make the Navy talk.”

Faith sighed. “That means looping Tabitha in and making this an official Bureau request. No way she works with us on that.”

“She’s not a witch, Faith.” Faith glared at him, and he amended his statement.

“Okay, she is, but she’s not so much a witch that she’s going to let a murderer run wild just to screw with you.

She’s your enemy because she genuinely believes that you’re a threat to the Bureau.

” Her glare strengthened, and Michael added, “And she’s wrong.

Obviously. I’m just saying that if I talk to her, I think I can get her to work with us. ”

Faith sighed. “And if not, then what happens? We get pulled off the case? Less capable agents get the job? She didn’t want me on this case, remember? She was trying to shut you up and practically begging Smythe to give me the instructor’s job at Quantico.”

“That’s why I’m going to talk to her,” Michael repeated. “You’re going to pace around the room staring moodily at the ground and imagining Tabitha getting booted out of the Bureau for being an asshole.”

Faith chuckled in spite of her frustration. “All right. Well, how about this? Instead of pacing, I’ll get us some lunch.”

Michael grinned. “Have I ever told you that I love you?”

“It’s come up. Just don’t let Ellie find out you’re still saying it.”

“Why are you so worried about Ellie? She likes you now.”

“She tolerates me now. That’s not the same thing.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “I’ll send her a picture of us passionately making out. Sound good?”

Now, it was Faith's turn to roll her eyes. "Call Tabitha. Get that court order. Get that list of possible suspects."

“Sir, yes, sir.”

She chuckled on her way out. Michael was a good partner, but he was also the little brother she never had, in all the best and worst ways.

***

By the time she returned with sub sandwiches for both of them, Michael was on the phone with the Medical Corps getting the answers they needed. It turned out he was right about Tabitha. Fine with Faith. As long as she didn’t need to deal with the smug ASAC herself.

According to the Medical Corps and the VA, four of the medical staff who interacted with both Martinez and Barnes were treated for severe PTSD as a result of their time spent in combat, three nurses and one doctor.

One of the nurses was female, five-one, and one hundred four pounds, and could be ruled out based on the fact that she wasn’t strong enough to carry dead men up hills and dig their graves.

That left three people. Faith’s excitement built again. Finally, they were closing in on their killer.

The first person she called was Chief Petty Officer Martin Coster. She dialed the number the VA had listed for him, and a female voice answered the phone. "Hello?"

“Hello. Is Martin available?”

There was a brief pause before the voice on the other end asked curtly, “Is this some kind of joke?”

Faith frowned. "No, ma'am, it isn't. This is Special Agent Faith Bold of the FBI, and I'm calling because I need to talk to Martin Coster about a very serious matter. Is he available?"

“Uh, no, he’s not available,” the woman replied, anger rising in her voice. “He took his own life two months ago.”

Faith blinked. “Really? His VA records don’t show that.”

“Because the VA is run like a piece of shit by pieces of shit,” the woman snapped, her already frayed emotional control gone. “If you think I’m lying, call the Clark County Coroner’s office. They also saw half of his head splattered across my kitchen table.”

She hung up without waiting for Faith to reply. Faith stared at the phone, kicking herself for flubbing that interaction so badly.

She felt a rush of sympathy for the woman on the other end of the phone call.

How horrible to be so affected by what one had experienced that silence was preferable to the echoed screams of the past. How horrible to love someone going through that pain and be unable to reach them past the walls of memory that imprisoned their mind.

Faith didn’t condone anything the killer had done, of course, but she could understand how someone suffering similar grief could think death was preferable to living with that pain.

That didn’t make it right, though. Not for the victims or for their families. That kind of darkness was another thing Faith had experienced personally, but whether it was administered by one’s own hands or the hands of another, death wasn’t the way out.

She called the next number for Commander Dr. Henry Paloma.

Dr. Paloma himself answered. He expressed regret at the loss of the victims and provided an easily verified alibi.

He was at work until after six in the evening the nights of both murders and back at work at six the following day.

Since he now lived and practiced in the U.S.

Marshall Islands, it wasn’t possible for him to have flown to the East Coast, committed the murders, buried the bodies and flown back.

She hung up just in time for Michael to inform her that his contact had an alibi too.

Once more, they were back at square… well, maybe not one, but it might as well be one.

They had no idea who their killer was, and they were on the wrong side of another afternoon.

It would be two days since the killer’s most recent victim, and if he kept to the same pace, he would kill again tonight.

“So what’s our next step?” Michael asked. “Where do we go from here?”

The corners of Faith’s mouth turned down. Once more, she had to accept an answer she didn’t like. “I think we need some help.” She sighed. “Call Dr. Sullivan.”