Say Goodbye

Rachel made a few calls, ordering up a fresh crime scene van and enough experienced agents and law enforcement volunteers to conduct a line search. Fifteen minutes later, a crowd of county deputies and FBI agents were dutifully gathered in the woods. Harold passed out thin probes to each volunteer, then briefed them all on the importance of looking up and down. As the line monitor, he would do his best to keep everyone in a row, which often got tricky in this kind of terrain.

According to the local sheriff, one Ronald “Ro

“It took her three days to realize he was missing?” Fellow agent Tony Coble wanted to know. “Feel that love.”

“Sounds like they’d been having some problems,” Harold reported. “Girlfriend’s pregnant and apparently moody.”

Harold absolutely did not look at Kimberly when he said that. So, of course, everyone else did.

“Hey, I am not moody,” Kimberly said. “I’ve always been a bitch.” The cramp in her left side had finally eased, leaving behind an entirely different sensation, like a little hiccup beneath her lowest rib. The sensation was still new and miraculous to her. Her hand remained curved around her lower abdomen, a singularly motherly gesture, but she couldn’t help herself.

The rest of her team was gri

“Here’s the deal.” Rachel spoke up. “We thought we’d have the luxury of going home tonight, or for those of us who never go home, at least visit the office to tend our current cases; that ain’t go

The volunteers groaned.

Rachel simply smiled. “All right, people. Find me Ro

THREE

“The brown recluse spins a medium-sized irregular web with a maze of threads extending in all directions without definite pattern or plan.”

FROM Biology of the Brown Recluse Spider,

BY JULIA MAXINE HITE, WILLIAM J. GLADNEY, J. L. LANCASTER, JR., AND W. H. WHITCOMB, DEPARTMENT OF ENTOMOLOGY, DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, FAYETTEVILLE, MAY 1966

KIMBERLY ARRIVED HOME SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT. She moved through the darkened house with the ease of someone used to late hours and dim lighting. Bag, coat, and shoes deposited on the bench in the hall. Brief pause in the kitchen for a glass of water, glance at the answering machine.

Mac had left the lamp burning on the built-in desk. In the small pool of illumination he’d piled mail, topped with a purple Post-it bearing the hand-scrawled message:?

An empty pizza box indicated he’d been home for di

She chewed the first slice of pizza while standing in the middle of the kitchen, going through the mail. She discovered the Pottery Barn Kids catalogue and ate the second slice while eyeballing all items made with pink gingham.

Kimberly was convinced she was going to have a girl. For one thing, she didn’t know anything about little boys, so a baby girl made more sense. For another, she had lost her mother and older sister ten years ago to a psychopath. In her opinion, God owed her something, and clearly, it was a daughter.

Mac was holding out for a boy, of course, whom he was pla

Kimberly thought her little girl (Abigail, Eva, Ella???) could out-pitch Mac’s little boy, no problem. And round and round they went. Wi

Kimberly and Mac had met nearly five years ago at the FBI Academy. She’d been in New Agent Training, he’d been attending the National Academy as a Special Agent with the GBI-Georgia Bureau of Investigation. First time they’d run into each other, she’d gone after him with a knife. He’d responded by trying to steal a kiss. That had pretty much summed up their relationship ever since.

They’d been married a year now. Long enough to have worked out the kinks in basic logistics-who was responsible for taking out the trash, bringing home the groceries, mowing the lawn-while still newlywed enough to forgive small faults and inevitable oversights.

Mac was the romantic. He brought her flowers, remembered her favorite song, kissed her on the back of her neck just because. She was the type-A workaholic. Every day an agenda, every hour a task that needed completing. She worked too hard, compartmentalized too little, and probably would have a nervous breakdown before the age of forty, except that Mac would never allow it. He was her rock; while, most likely, she was his ticket to sainthood.

No doubt about it: Mac would make an excellent mother.

Kimberly sighed, poured another glass of water. Her first trimester had gone well. Some tiredness, but nothing she couldn’t push through. Some nausea, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied by eating pudding. A normal woman would’ve gained thirty pounds; fortunately, with her athletic build and high-strung metabolism, Kimberly had barely gained ten, and was only now, at the twenty-two-week mark, begi

She was healthy, her baby was healthy, and her handsome, dark-haired husband was over the moon.

Which was probably why, on nights like tonight, Kimberly wondered what the hell they’d done.

They were hardly a traditional couple in a traditional marriage. They’d met over a crime scene and dated while trying to stop a serial killer. In the past few years, the most consecutive days they’d spent together was in Oregon working another case-the abduction of Kimberly’s stepmother.

They didn’t do Friday nights out. They rarely even had Sunday morning snuggles. Her pager would go off. His pager would go off. One of them would be gone, and the other simply understood it would be his or her turn next. They both loved their jobs, they both gave each other space, and that made things work.

Last Kimberly knew, however, babies definitely required Friday night caring and Sunday morning snuggles and lots and lots of time in between.

What would give? Her job? His job? Or maybe they could do it with help from Mac’s mother? Then again, what was the point of having a child if you were only going to hand it over for someone else to raise?

Lately, Kimberly had started to have nightmares, terribly vivid dreams where Mac was killed in an auto accident, or shot on the job, or mowed down on his way to the Chick-fil-A for sandwiches. The dreams always ended with her holding the phone, We’re terribly sorry to inform you of your husband’s death, while down the hall came the high-pitched wail of a newborn.

She’d wake up, drenched in sweat and shaking from terror. She, a woman who’d once stood in a hotel room with a killer’s gun pressed against her temple like a lover’s kiss.