The Sleeping Doll

"Ridiculous."

She continued, unfazed. "And the flash-bang? After the assault at the Sea View you were supposed to check all the ordnance back in. That's standard procedure. Why keep it? Because you were waiting for a chance to move in and kill him. And I checked the timing of your call for backup. You didn't make it from the i

"The suicide in L.A. was the most troubling. A woman who ran a cult committed suicide by jumping out of her sixth-story window, two days after you arrived to help out the LAPD. But it was curious-no one had ever heard her talk about suicide before that. There was no note, and, yes, she was being investigated but only for civil tax fraud. No reason to kill herself.

"So, I had to test you, Winston. I wrote the document in that file."

It was a fake email that suggested a girl with the name of Nimue was in the suicide victim's cult and had information that the woman's death was suspicious.

"I got a tap warrant on your phone, put a simple Windows password on the file and handed over the computer to see what you'd do. If you'd told me you'd read the file and what it contained, that would've been the end of the matter. You and I'd be on our way to Big Sur right now.

"But, no, you made your phone call to the tech, had the private company crack the code and you read the file. There was no wipe bomb. No mush. You destroyed it yourself. You had to, of course. You were afraid we'd catch on to the fact that your life for the past six years has been traveling around the country and murdering people like Daniel Pell."

Kellogg gave a laugh. Now, faint kinesic deviation; the tone was different. An excluded subject, yes, but he was feeling the stress. She'd touched close to home.

"Please, Kathryn. Why on earth would I do that?"

"Because of your daughter." She said this not without some sympathy.

And the fact that he gave no response, merely held her eye as if he were in great pain, was an indication-though a tiny one-that she was narrowing in on the truth.

"It takes a lot to fool me, Winston. And you're very, very good. The only variation from your baseline behavior I ever noticed was when it came to children and family. But I didn't think much of it. At first I supposed that was because of the co

"Then, I think you saw that I was curious, or suspicious, and you confessed that you'd lied, that you had had a daughter. You told me about her death. Of course, that's a common trick-confession to one lie to cover up another, related one. And what was the lie? Your daughter did die in a car accident, yes, but it wasn't exactly how you described it. You apparently destroyed the police report in Seattle-nobody could find it-but TJ and I made some calls and pieced together the story.

"When she was sixteen your daughter ran away from home because you and your wife were getting divorced. She ended up with a group in Seattle-very much like the Family. She was there for about six months. Then she and three other members of the cult died in a suicide pact because the leader told them to leave, they hadn't been loyal enough. They drove their car into Puget Sound."

There's something terrifying about the idea of being kicked out of your family…

"And then you joined the MVCC and made it your life's work to stop people like that. Only sometimes the law didn't cooperate. And you had to take it into your own hands. I called a friend in Chicago PD. You were the cult expert on the scene last week, assisting them. Their report said you claimed the perp fired at you, and you had to 'neutralize the threat.' But I don't think he did shoot. I think you killed him and then wounded yourself." She tapped her neck, indicating his bandage. "Which makes that murder too, just like Pell."

She grew angry. It hit fast, like a flash of hot sunlight as a cloud passed on. Control it, she told herself. Take a lesson from Daniel Pell.

Take a lesson from Winston Kellogg.

"The dead man's family filed a complaint. They claimed he was set up. He had a long rap sheet, sure. Just like Pell. But he never touched guns. He was afraid of the deadly-weapon count."

"He touched one long enough to shoot me."

A very faint shift of Kellogg's foot. Almost invisible, but it telegraphed stress. So, he wasn't completely immune to her interrogation.

His response was a lie.

"We'll know more after reviewing the files. And we're checking with other jurisdictions too, Winston. Apparently you insisted on helping local police all over the country whenever there was a crime involving a cult."

Charles Overby had implied that it was his own idea to bring in a federal specialist on cults. Last night, though, she'd begun to suspect that this probably wasn't what happened and she'd asked her boss point-blank how the FBI agent had come to work the Pell case. Overby hemmed and hawed but ultimately admitted that Kellogg had told the bureau's Amy Grabe he was coming to the Peninsula to consult on the manhunt for Pell; it wasn't up for debate. He'd been here as soon as the paperwork in Chicago was cleaned up.

"I looked back at the Pell case. Michael O'Neil was upset that you wanted a takedown at the Sea View, rather than surveillance. And I wondered why you wanted to be first through the door. The answer is so that you'd have a clear shot at Pell. And yesterday, at the beach at Point Lobos, you got him on his knees. And then you killed him."

"That's your evidence that I murdered him? His posture? Really, Kathryn."

"And MCSO crime scene found the bullet of the slug you fired at me on the ridge."

He fell silent at this.

"Oh, you weren't shooting to hit me, I understand. You just wanted to keep me where I was, with Samantha and Linda, so that I wouldn't interfere with your chance to kill Pell."

"It was an accidental discharge," he said matter-of-factly. "Careless of me. I should've owned up to it but it was embarrassing. Here I am, a professional."

Lie…

Under her gaze, his shoulders dipped slightly. His lips tightened. Dance knew there'd be no confession-she wasn't even after that-but he did shift into a different stress state. He wasn't a completely emotionless machine, it seemed. She'd hit him hard, and it hurt.

"I don't talk about my past and what happened with my daughter. I should've shared more with you, maybe, but you don't talk about your husband much either, I notice." He fell silent for a moment. "Look around us, Kathryn. Look at the world. We're so fragmented, so shattered. The family's a dying breed, and yet we're starving for the comfort of one. Starving…And what happens? Along come people like Daniel Pell. And they suck the vulnerable, needy ones right in. The women in Pell's Family-Samantha and Linda. They were good kids, never did anything wrong, not really. And they got seduced by a killer. Why? Because he dangled in front of them the one thing they didn't have: a family.

"It was only a matter of time before they, or Je