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A myriad of emotions flashed across Marly’s features. Revulsion. Horror. Disbelief. But she didn’t turn away. She didn’t send him packing. She was listening whether she wanted to or not. “You’re not suggesting something like that is going on here, are you?”

  “I’m suggesting you need to keep an open mind if you want to stop this.”

  She tore her gaze from his and stared across the yard where a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. A breeze whispered through the orange trees in the front yard, and overhead, the rain beat a steady staccato on the porch roof.

  It was a long time before she spoke. And even then, she avoided his gaze, as if sensing eye contact with him could be a dangerous thing. She watched the rain with a brooding frown. “In those cases you cited, the bodies were all found together. It’s happening one at a time here. And the incidents appear unrelated. An elderly woman. Two teenagers. A construction worker. Where’s the connection?”

  “That’s what we have to find out,” Deacon said.

  “We?”

  “Like I said, I can help you.”

  He saw her shiver at the prospect. “If you have information regarding any of these deaths, you should take it to Chief Navarro. He’s heading up the investigations.”

  “I’m telling you, Marly. Because you know something bad is happening is this town. You know something’s not right about these deaths. I can see it in your eyes.” His gaze challenged hers. “And whether you want to admit it or not, you may be the only one who can stop it.”

  DEACON FIDDLED WITH THE RADIO dial in his truck as he kept an eye on the front porch of Ricky Morales’s house. After his conversation with Marly, he’d left the scene at her rather adamant insistence, circled the block a couple of times, then pulled his truck to the curb a few houses down where he could unobtrusively observe the comings and goings of the authorities.

  A hearse from a local funeral home had arrived on the scene just after Deacon had left which meant they would soon bring out the body. Onlookers mingled on the sidewalk, and Deacon knew that word would soon be all over town about Morales’s death. In a day or two, the autopsy would confirm suicide, and the case would be closed. There would be lingering speculation, of course, but no one in Mission Creek would seriously suspect homicide. No one except Deacon…and now Marly Jessop.

  She was still standing on the front porch, speaking to another deputy. Deacon couldn’t see her features through the rain, but he remembered all too vividly the nuances of her face—those golden eyes, those lips that were neither thin nor full but lush, nonetheless, and pliant, he somehow knew. He imagined running his thumb along that mouth, then tasting her with his tongue, teasing and coaxing until she opened like a flower beneath him.

  Did she have any idea how attractive she was? How sensual? Deacon knew instinctively that she was a complicated woman, and he wondered if any man had ever taken the time to really know her. If any man had taken the time to nurture her latent passion into full bloom.

  Because she was a passionate woman, he thought. Beneath her cool, almost nondescript façade he’d glimpsed an ember, a tiny, ardent flame just waiting to be stoked, by a patient hand, into a raging inferno of needs and desires.

  He rubbed a hand across his eyes, trying to erase the vision of an aroused Marly Jessop. That kind of thinking was dangerous because it could make him lose sight of the mission. He was here for one reason only. To stop a killer, and to do so, he needed Marly’s help. Beyond that, his feelings for her couldn’t be allowed to matter.

  But what if she refused to help him? What if he couldn’t make her accept the truth?

  He had ways of gaining her cooperation, of course. Ways of convincing her. But afterward, she would never trust him again.

  Well, so be it, he decided grimly.

  The cell phone on the truck seat rang and he lifted it to his ear. “Cage.”

  “Deacon, it’s Camille.”

  At the sound of his colleague’s voice, Deacon tensed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Grandfather—”

  “He’s worse?” Deacon’s hand tightened on the phone.

  “No, no, it’s not that,” Camille rushed to assure him. “He just wanted to make sure you’re okay. He has a bad feeling about this job, Deacon.”

  Deacon let out a breath of relief. “He has a bad feeling about every job.”

  “I know. It’s because…he feels we’re running out of time.”

  Deacon sometimes felt that way, too. There were so many of them out there. A secret army of soldiers who had been trained and programmed to kill…and couldn’t stop.

  And Deacon had once been one of them.

  He didn’t like to contemplate what his life might have been like if Dr. Nicholas Kessler, a renowned quantum physicist, and his granddaughter hadn’t found him when they had. Hadn’t recruited him to the good side as Camille liked to tease him.

  “As much as it pains me to admit it, Grandfather isn’t going to be around forever,” she said. “He’ll be eighty-nine his next birthday.”

  “And still as sharp as ever,” Deacon reminded her.

  “His mind, yes, but his body is failing him, Deacon. You know how frail he is. I can’t help worrying what will happen to our work when he’s gone.”

  Deacon shrugged. “We’ll carry on as we have been.”

  “You’ll take over the organization when the time comes?” she asked anxiously.

  “You’re more qualified to run it than I am,” he said with a frown. “Besides, I like being in the field.”

  “I know you do. And that’s what worries me because one of these days…”

  “One of these days, what?”

  She hesitated. “One of these days you may meet your match out there.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” But Deacon knew it could easily happen because on every mission the killer always had the advantage. He was on his home turf, and the only way for Deacon to even the odds was to recruit someone locally to help him. Someone like Marly Jessop.

  He said none of that to Camille, however, because she tended to be a worrier and she had too much on her plate as it was. She was right. Her grandfather might not last much longer, and when the time came, Nicholas’s death would hit her hard. She’d lost her only child not so long ago, and though she put up a brave front, Deacon knew she hadn’t recovered from the blow. Her grandfather and her work were all she had left.

  And at that, she had a damn sight more than Deacon.

  “So how are things going down there?” she asked, and Deacon could tell she was deliberately changing the subject.

  “There’s been another death,” he said, his gaze riveted to the front of Ricky Morales’s house. They were bringing out the body. He watched as they hauled the stretcher down the steps and across the soggy yard to the hearse. Marly was talking to Navarro now, and Deacon frowned. There was something about her body language…something about the way she looked up at her superior…

  “Deacon?”

  He gritted his teeth and glanced away. “Yeah, I’m still here. I’m at the scene now.”

  “Is it…a suicide?”

  “There’s suicide and there’s suicide,” he said.

  “Yes, I know.” Deacon could picture her seated behind her computer, dark hair pulled back and fastened primly at her nape as she scowled at her screen. Her full lips would be pursed in concentration, her violet eyes shadowed with a grief that had only deepened in the months since her son’s death. “Do you have any leads?”

  “Nothing concrete. I have a couple of names I’d like you to run through the usual databases, though. I don’t expect anything to turn up, but you never know. The first one is Tony Navarro. He’s the chief of police down here.”

  “Any particular reason you’re interested in him?”

  Deacon’s gaze went back to the couple on the porch. “Just a gut instinct.”

  “You really think the chief of police could be one of them?” Camille persisted. She must have sensed something in his voice.
Sometimes her instincts were uncanny.

  “One of us, you mean?” Deacon countered.

  She hesitated. “You know I don’t think of you that way. Besides, not everyone who went through Montauk was or is a killer. Some of the men have even gone back to their normal lives.”

  “Yeah,” Deacon said. “And some of them are in psychiatric wards. Some of them are living on the streets.” And some of them had continued to kill.

  “You said there were two names,” Camille prompted.

  “The other is Sam Jessop. I haven’t met him yet, but from everything I’ve learned, he matches the profile. He was in the army, and he comes from a military family.”

  “Okay. I’ll check them out and get back to you. Anything else?”

  “There’s an abandoned army base not far from here. See what you can dig up about it.”

  He heard her catch her breath. “You don’t think it was part of Montauk, do you?”

  “We know they expanded the operation,” Deacon said. “And we’ve never discovered the other locations. It’s worth checking out.”

  “That should keep me busy for a day or two,” Camille said. “In the meantime, keep in touch, okay? Grandfather worries about you. So do I,” she added reluctantly.

  Deacon’s features tightened. “I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t deserve it.”

  Camille sighed. “You’re never going to get past it, are you?”

  A muscle began to pulse in Deacon’s jaw. “Get past who I am? What I did?”

  “You were following orders,” Camille said. “You were programmed to—”

  “Kill people.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “Face it, Camille. Just because I can’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I was an assassin. You don’t move on from something like that. There’s no redemption for what I did.”

  “There might be,” she said softly. “If you could somehow find it in your heart to forgive yourself.”

  Chapter Four

  Nona had left her front door open, and as Marly climbed the porch steps a few minutes later, she could hear the woman banging around inside.

  She walked up to the door and called through the screen. “Nona?”

  “It’s open!”

  Marly glanced around as she stepped inside. The layout of the house was almost identical to the one across the street. The front door opened directly into a small, cramped living area decorated in country blue. Perky gingham curtains with crisp sashes hung from the windows while an army of bonneted geese marched in single file across a ceiling border.

  The homey décor surprised Marly although she’d really had no idea what to expect. Nona’s mother had once worked for her family, but Marly was ashamed to admit that she’d never really taken the time to know Nona or Mrs. Ferris.

  But it wasn’t because she was a snob. Far from it. Truth be told, Marly had always been a little intimidated by Nona’s brassy good-looks and her rather disconcerting habit of speaking her mind without regard to the consequences.

  She’d been one of the bad girls in high school, running with a crowd that had voraciously smoked, drank, or popped whatever drug they could get their hands on at the moment. They’d gone to raves every weekend, skipped school every Monday, and generally didn’t give a damn what anyone in town thought of them. Marly had envied their freedom.

  Even now, with the evidence of all that hard living etched poignantly in Nona’s face, Marly suspected the woman still managed to live life on her own terms. She might not be particularly happy with the hand she’d been dealt, but she accepted it and made no excuses or apologies for it.

  And Marly still envied her.

  “Well?” Nona demanded from the kitchen. “Are you going to stand there all damn day or are you going to tell me about Ricky?”

  Marly walked over to the bar and pulled out a stool. “Sorry. I was just admiring your house.”

  Nona gave a derisive snort. “Yeah, right.”

  “No, seriously.” Marly glanced around. “It’s really warm and cozy. I like it.”

  Nona shrugged. “Well, thanks. But it’s hardly in the same league as your house.”

  “I don’t have a house,” Marly said. “I live in an apartment.”

  “I meant your parents’ place.”

  Cozy and warm were not adjectives Marly would ever use to describe the house where she’d grown up. The split-level ranch, decorated so meticulously and beautifully by her mother, had always seemed cold and unwelcoming. Oppressive.

  “You want some coffee?” Nona grabbed two cups from the dish drainer by the sink and placed them on the counter.

  Marly shook her head. “No, thanks.”

  “You sure? It’s fresh. I just made it,” Nona said as she poured herself a cup.

  “I’m not much of a coffee drinker,” Marly told her.

  “A Coke then? Some juice?”

  “I’m fine.” Marly’s gaze fastened on a flyer that had been tossed on the counter. Even before she scanned the text advertising an old-fashioned revival meeting at a local church, she knew the leaflet had come from the Glorious Way on Sixth Street. Joshua Rush’s church. The emblem on the front was unmistakable. The rays of light emanating from an eye symbolized enlightenment—or so Joshua had once told her.

  For some reason, that eye made Marly a little uneasy, probably because she now knew Joshua’s true, pathological nature.

  Noticing her gaze, Nona said, “Someone slipped that under my door the other day. I guess they’re trying to tell me something.”

  Marly smiled. “I wouldn’t take it personally. They’re probably passing out those leaflets all over the neighborhood.”

  “Maybe.” Nona picked up her cup, cradling the thick ceramic mug in both hands as if she were suddenly chilled. “So tell me about Ricky. What happened to him?”

  “The medical examiner will make the final determination as to cause of death,” Marly said. “So what I’m about to tell you isn’t for public consumption. Keep it to yourself until there’s an official announcement, okay?”

  Nona nodded, but her expression seemed doubtful. She would probably talk, Marly thought, but it didn’t really matter. Everyone in town would know about Ricky’s death in a matter of hours. Already a crowd had gathered on the street outside his house.

  “It looks like Ricky died from a gunshot wound,” she said.

  “Son of a bitch.” Nona let out a shaky breath. “I used to worry about him hurting someone with that damn pistol of his, but I never thought he’d up and shoot himself.”

  “I never said it was suicide,” Marly said quickly.

  “It was, though, wasn’t it?” Nona wrapped her arms around her middle. “What the hell is going on in this damn town anyway? Why are all these people killing themselves? Why Ricky?”

  Marly lifted her shoulders helplessly, but she couldn’t help wondering the same thing. Could Deacon Cage be right? Was there someone in town, someone she knew, who could compel people to commit suicide?

  Her gaze lit on the flyer again, and an uneasy shiver crept up her backbone. “I’m no expert on human behavior,” she tried to say evenly. “It’s going to take us a while to figure it all out, I guess. In the meantime, I need to ask you some questions about Ricky. Is that all right with you?”

  “What kind of questions?” Nona asked with a frown.

  “Just routine.” Marly got out her notebook. “You said the two of you had a recent falling out. Tell me about that.”

  “If you’re thinking that might be the reason Ricky killed himself, no way. He wasn’t losing any sleep over our breakup,” Nona said bitterly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he had himself a new girlfriend. I walked in on them one night. He was…entertaining her on the living room couch. Couldn’t even make it to the bedroom.” Her voice was edged with lingering anger and hurt. “We had words. Things got a little out of hand. I ended up tossing her clothes out the front door, and then Ricky thre
w me out. Told me it was over between us, he was in love with someone else, and I’d better leave them alone if I knew what was good for me.” She sniffed and drew a hand across her nose.

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Nona thought for a moment. “Last Saturday night. I met some friends for drinks at that new country and western place out on Highway Seven. Used to be the Tin Roof. Anyway, Ricky was there with Crystal.”

  Marly glanced up sharply. “Crystal.”

  “Crystal Bishop, the new girlfriend. She’s Gus Bishop’s niece. You know, the high school custodian? I’d bet good money that creepy old bastard has dirt on somebody over there because I don’t know how else Crystal could have ended up working in the school office. Her experience is not exactly clerical in nature, if you know what I mean.”

  Yes, Marly thought with her own unexpected bitterness. She knew only too well where Crystal Bishop’s talents lay.

  She remembered, with vivid clarity, the day she’d found the woman in Joshua’s office, the way Crystal’s long, black hair had cascaded down her tanned back…how her slim, nude body had moved rhythmically as her cries mingled with Joshua’s…

  Marly had stood frozen in place, too shocked to move let alone speak. Crystal’s back had been to her, but Joshua, sprawled beneath her on the sofa, had spotted Marly in the doorway. He hadn’t looked particularly surprised to find her there and certainly not repentant. He’d merely encircled Crystal’s waist and lifted her off him, but not before—Marly would have sworn—he’d finished.

  She was annoyed now to find that the memory still rankled—not because she harbored feelings for Joshua Rush—but because, for a short time, she’d allowed him to have power over her.

  But that was all in the past, she reminded herself. And it had been a lesson well learned.

  “What else you want to know about Ricky?” Nona prompted.

  Marly forced her attention back to the conversation. “Did you talk to him on Saturday night?”

  Nona shook her head. “No. I didn’t stay long. Luanne MacAllister dropped me off here before ten. Ricky came in around midnight. I heard his truck pull into the carport.”