Cat & Mouse

I loved the sound of her voice, the softest cry, the song she sang when she was with me like this.

Then I was singing, too. I had found my voice again, for the first time in many years. I don’t know how long we were like that. Time wasn’t part of this. Something in it was eternal, and something was so very real and right now in the present.

Christine and I were soaking wet. Even the wall behind me was slippery and wet. The wild ride at the begi

I was barely moving inside her. She tightened around me and I thought I could feel the edges of her. I surged deeper and Christine seemed to swell around me. We began to move into each other, trying to get closer. We shuddered, and got closer still.

Christine climaxed, and then the two of us came together. We danced and we sang. I felt myself melting into Christine and we were both whispering yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No one could touch us here, not Thomas Pierce, no one.

“Hey, did I tell you I loved you?”

“Yes, but tell me again.”

Chapter 121

KIDS ARE so damn much smarter than we usually give them credit for. Kids know just about everything, and they often know it before we do.

“You two are late! You have a flat tire-or were you just smooching?” Ja

“We were smooching,” I said. “Satisfied?”

“Yes I am,” Ja

Di

I believe the simple yet complex word that I’m searching for is joy.

It was so obvious around the di

We repeated stories that had been in the family for years, and are always repeated at such occasions. Nana was lively and fu

Later on, I played the piano and sang rhythm-and-blues songs. Ja

One moment, one picture, sticks out in my mind, and I’m sure it will be there until the day I die. It was just after we’d finished di

I was washing dishes in the sink, and as I reached to get another plate I stopped in midturn, frozen in the moment.

Ja

Joy-that’s the word. So easy to say, so hard to find in life sometimes.

In the morning, I had to go back to work.

I was still the dragonslayer.

Chapter 122

I SHUT MYSELF AWAY to think, to quietly obsess about Thomas Pierce and Mr. Smith.

I made suggestions to Kyle Craig about moves that Pierce might make and precautions he should think about taking. Agents were dispatched to watch Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Agents camped out at his parents’ house outside Laguna Beach, and even at the gravesite of Isabella Calais.

Pierce had been passionately in love with Isabella Calais! She had been the only one for him! Isabella and Thomas Pierce! That was the key-Pierce’s obsessive love for her.

He’s suffering from unbearable guilt, I wrote in my notepad.

If my hypothesis is right, then what clues are missing?

Back at Quantico, a team of FBI profilers was trying to solve the problem on paper. They had all worked closely with Pierce in the BSU. Absolutely nothing in Pierce’s background was consistent with the psychopathic killers they had dealt with before. Pierce had never been abused, either physically or sexually. There was no violence of any kind in his background. At least not as far as anyone knew. There was no warning, no hint of madness, no sign until he blew sky-high. He was an original. There had never been a monster anything like him. There were no precedents.

I wrote: Thomas Pierce was deeply in love. You are in love, too.

What would it mean to murder the only person in the world whom you loved?

Chapter 123

I COULDN’T MANAGE any sympathy, or even a modicum of clinical empathy, for Pierce. I despised him, and his cruel, cold-blooded murders, more than any of the other killers I had taken down-even Soneji. Kyle Craig and Sampson felt the same, and so did most of the Bureau, especially the good folks in Behavioral Science. We were the ones in a rage state now. We were obsessed with stopping Pierce. Was he using that to beat our brains in?

The following day, I worked at home again. I looked myself away with my computer, several books, and my crime-scene notepads. The only time I took off was to walk Damon and Ja

My mouth was full of poached egg and toast when she leaned across the kitchen table and launched one of her famous sneak attacks on me.

“Am I correct in saying that you don’t want to discuss your murder case with me?” she asked.

“I’d rather talk about the weather or just about anything else. Your garden looks beautiful. Your hair looks nice.”

“We all like Christine very much, Alex. She’s knocked our socks off. In case you wanted to know but forgot to ask. She’s the best thing that’s happened to you since Maria. So, what are you going to do about it? What are your plans?”

I rolled my eyes back, but I had to smile at Nana’s dawn offensive. “First, I’m going to finish this delicious breakfast you fixed. Then I have some dicey work to do upstairs. How’s that?”

“You mustn’t lose her, Alex. Don’t do that,” Nana advised and warned at the same time. “You won’t listen to a decrepit old woman, though. What do I know about anything? I just cook and clean around here.”

“And talk,” I said with my mouth full. “Don’t forget talk, old woman.”

“Not just talk, so

“I have a game plan,” I said, and left it at that.

“You better have a wi

The walk with the kids and even talking with Nana revitalized me. I felt clear and alert as I worked at my old rolltop for the rest of the morning.

I had started to cover the bedroom walls with notes and theories, and the begi