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“We now commit into your arms the soul of our brother, Grant Monroe. Lay him on your bosom and carry him to the highest Heaven. Permit him to drink of the river of life and rest at the throne of grace for all of eternity. As he served you in life, so now reward him in death, that in his new life, he may glorify God.”

“Faith?”

Special Agent Faith Bold stirred. “Yes. Sorry. Um… can you repeat the question?”

Dr. Perth smiled sympathetically. She always smiled sympathetically, just as she spoke sympathetically, walked sympathetically, tapped her chin sympathetically and laughed sympathetically. Faith wondered sometimes how much of her sympathy was real and how much had been practiced in front of a mirror so she could pass her Board of Psychology exam.

“I was asking if you’ve thought about taking some time off to grieve.”

Faith resisted the urge to laugh. Why did so many people react to grief by stopping? When Faith scraped her knee as a girl, her parents would always tell her to walk it off. This was no different. “No, I’m not going to take time off. I’m going to find the person who did this and bring them to justice.”

Dr. Perth shifted in her seat. That meant she was about to disagree with Faith. In a completely sympathetic way, of course.

"Faith, you, of all people, know how damaging grief is. This isn't just a scraped knee you can walk off."

That was another greatly irritating trait of Dr. Perth. She seemed to be able to read Faith almost as easily as Faith read killers. Easier, even. Faith really didn’t like that. The last time someone was able to see through her so easily, he’d used that knowledge to psychologically torture Faith for years, not to mention beat her boyfriend nearly to death and kill her mentor and an old friend from the Marine Corps.

Not that she suspected Perth of the same intention. She’d vetted Perth so thoroughly that she could recite the woman’s internet history for the past eight years if she needed to.

It just bothered her.

“Faith?”

She sighed in exasperation. “Yes, I understand that. I’m not saying that I want to ignore my grief and pretend that it doesn’t exist, but I also don’t want to wallow in it. That fucker’s still out there, and I’d very much like to make him not out there.”

“And do you feel you’re in the right state of mind to accomplish that?”

“Do you feel I’m not in the right state of mind?”

Dr. Perth reminded Faith of yet another frustrating trait by looking over her glasses at her in the matronly way an old teacher might. Faith rolled her eyes and said, “I’m angry, yes, and I’m grieving his loss. But I have accomplished quite a lot while angry and grieving.”

Dr. Perth shifted in her chair again. Come on. You’re going to disagree with that?

“We’ve agreed in our previous sessions that your insistence on returning to work after the Trammell incident and again after West’s abuse of you was detrimental to your performance and wellbeing. Do you disagree with that conclusion now?”

Faith sighed. “No. But this is different.”

Dr. Perth did a passable job of hiding the expression that said she’d heard that many times from many patients and each of them had been wrong. If Faith hadn’t been a twelve-year veteran of the FBI, she might not have seen through Dr. Perth’s sympathetic smile.

But she was a twelve-year veteran, and she had brought dozens of killers to justice. Even when suffering from grief and anger.

“Maybe it’s not different,” she backtracked, “But I’ve shown that I’m capable of functioning even when I’m not at a hundred percent.”

“Do you trust your fellow agents?”

Faith lifted her hands and let them drop. “Yes, I trust my fellow agents. Yes, I think they will catch this killer eventually. Yes, I understand that the ‘right’ thing to do is to stay out of it. I’m too close to the case. I’m still suffering psychologically from Trammell’s attempted murder of me and West’s mental and emotional torment. The Boss—SAC Monroe—was my friend and a mentor and not just my superior, and I’m mourning his loss. All of that is true, but you know what else is true? I’m the best agent in the Field Office at hunting these kinds of killers.”

“I say this gently, but—”

“You don’t have to be gentle.”

Dr. Perth nodded. “All right. That was a very arrogant statement you just made.”

“That doesn't make it untrue. Killers manifest in different ways. Most serial killers don’t try to advertise their murders; they try to conceal them. Most of them target people in their extended social circle—not friends or neighbors, but residents of the same community or members of the same social group: church, school, business, et cetera. Some of them have a type and arrange to be near the people they target. Some of them are drifters who kill opportunistically. There are agents who specialize in hunting those killers. Desrouleaux, the lead agent on the Messenger case, is excellent at hunting the type who arrange to be near their preferred targets. Think Bundy, Gacy and Dahmer. He’s probably better than I am at those cases.”

“And you don’t feel the Messenger has arranged to be near his preferred targets?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t operate the same way other killers do. He’s not burying his bodies or dumping them somewhere people could see him. No weird smells are going to emanate from his house. He’s not going to hang out with people and then suddenly those people disappear from his life.”

“So he’s not going to leave the same clues.”

“Yes! Exactly. He’s highly ritualistic, which isn’t exactly unusual among serial killers, but what is unusual is the way he displays his kills. He's a show-off. He wants people to see his victims, know why he killed them, and be afraid that more people will die if the goal he's created in his mind isn't achieved."

“So he’s more like West.”

Faith sighed. “No. Well, yes. Sort of. West is a show off, but he doesn’t— didn’t —have a point beyond wanting people to view him as a god. There’s no moral there.”

“Is that why it was so difficult for you to find him?”

Faith stiffened. Her lips thinned, and she looked away from Mr. Perth.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Perth said. Somehow, she managed to make her damned apology sympathetic too. “But I have to point out that your reaction to that question supports my point that you’re not in the right emotional state to hunt this new killer. I’m not an FBI agent, and I won’t pretend that I understand firsthand the stress you endure, but I am endorsed by the FBI to determine if their agents are fit for duty.”

“And I’m not fit for duty.”

“No. Not right now. I’m sorry, Faith.”

Faith nodded. Then she stood abruptly. “Okay. Thank you. I’ll see you next week.”

“We still have fifteen minutes left.”

Use them to go screw yourself. She was able to stifle those words and instead said, “I’m not in the mood to talk right now.”

“We will have to talk through this, Faith, if I’m to ever give you a clean bill of health.”

Faith stifled another insult. “Well. Not today.”

Dr. Perth lowered her gaze and pursed her lips. That was a sign of extreme disapproval. One day, someone would have to compare the training of psychologists and librarians and determine at what point, if any, they diverged from each other.

Faith gave Dr. Perth a perfunctory goodbye, then stalked out of the clinic. The receptionist gave her a wary look and clearly very much hoped that Faith didn’t need anything from her. Faith didn’t, so she gave her a perfunctory nod and stepped out onto the street.

The sun was high in the sky, but the day was cold. Faith’s feet crunched in the snow as she stalked to her car, an old Crown Victoria that now sported winter tires but was otherwise the same as it had been when it rolled off the lot nearly twenty years ago. She started the engine and pulled smoothly out onto the road, irritated that the snow on the ground meant she had to drive slowly and carefully. Not that she was a speed demon, but…

“Damn it!” She smacked her steering wheel, not too hard, but enough that the impact stung the palm of her hand. “Damn it.”

She tried to hold onto that anger, but it faded quickly. She knew going into the session that it was going to end with Dr. Perth recommending her suspension. She also knew that trying to protest that decision to the ASAC from New York, who was babysitting the office until a permanent replacement for the Boss could be found, would be futile. The ASAC would be by the book, and by the book, you followed psych recommendations religiously.

So she was once more about to be removed from the field, left with nothing to do but sit at home and stew about the fact that the Boss was dead, his killer was still out there, and she wasn’t allowed to stop him.

Well, she’d have David. They could finally get some quality time together, and maybe Faith could finally have the conversation she’d been meaning to have for months but hadn’t gotten around to.

At least Perth didn’t rake me over the coals for that. Not this session, anyway.

Faith and David were on the verge of moving in together, something David was very excited about and Faith was very terrified about. She loved him, she just…

“Ugh. I can’t do this. It’s too damned much. I can’t be upset about David and upset about Grant and upset about my career and therapy and—”

She jumped when the vehicle behind her blasted its horn. The light had turned green. Faith resisted the urge to give the aggressive driver the middle finger and sped forward.

Maybe Dr. Perth was right. Maybe she should take some time off. Her instinct was to hate that, but her knowledge told her that she really wasn't in the right place to continue working. She could take a few weeks to let some of the emotion cool down. Then, she'd be ready to jump back into the job.

“But not the right job.”

And therein, as the Bard once said, lay the rub. She could take a few weeks off and go back to work, but the FBI would never let her work on the Messenger case. They would decide that she was too close to the case—or rather would continue to believe that she was too close—and assign her somewhere else a dozen states away. Just as with West, they would never let her officially work the case. The problem was that West was only caught because he couldn’t stay away from her. If the Messenger was in control enough to keep his distance and only contact her through his murders, then the FBI would actually need to hunt him to find him, and as good as Desrouleaux was, this just wasn’t his wheelhouse.

And the killer was escalating. First, it was a man Faith didn’t even know. Then it was one of her neighbors. Now it was her boss. He was working his way closer to her. Who would he come for next? David? Michael? Turk?

It didn’t matter that she was suffering. She was the right agent for this job. She needed to be on this case, or more people would die.

Her phone buzzed. It was the new ASAC, Tabitha Gardner. She answered. “Bold.”

“Special Agent Bold, this is ASAC Gardner.”

Faith rolled her eyes. “Yes, ASAC. What can I do for you?”

“I need you to bring your K9 unit to headquarters. You and I need to talk.”

Did Dr. Perth call them already? “Of course. I’m on my way.”

“Thank you.”

When Tabitha hung up, Faith called David. “Hey, baby. I hate to do this to you once again, but we have to reschedule dinner. The new b—ASAC Gardner needs to meet with me and Turk.”

“Ah. No worries. Do what you have to do. How are you feeling, by the way?”

In no mood to talk about it . “I’m all right. This sucks, but I’ll get through it.”

“All right. Well, I’m here if you need to talk.”

“Yeah. I know. Thank you.”

She hung up and sighed heavily. Somewhere out there, a psychopath was plotting his next murder. And Faith was about to get boxed out and forced to sit on the sidelines while he did it.

That could only happen for so long before she was pushed too far and decided to take the case whether she was allowed to or not.