“Detective Somerset, I’ve got twenty-five years of experience. I know a guilty son of a bitch when I see one, and that freak is guilty as sin.”

“Chief—”

“You got your orders, Detective Somerset. Get the fuck out of my stationhouse and do your job.”

Riggle’s polished boots clicked against the linoleum as he strode away.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Somers said quietly to Dulac. “In there, I mean.”

“No matter which way this goes, dude, somebody’s going to be the bad guy. It might as well be me.”

The comment was so strange that Somers didn’t know what to say, and before he had recovered, Dulac was moving toward the doors.

“Let’s go,” Dulac said. “We’ve got orders.”

CHAPTER TEN

JULY 2

TUESDAY

9:10 AM

HAZARD GOT OUT OF BED, washed his face, and stood at the sink. Water ran down his cheeks, beading along his jawline before sliding to his chin, where heavier drops fell to splatter against the porcelain. After Somers brought him home from Mitchell’s, he had pretended to sleep so that Somers would leave. But pretending had turned into a kind of restless dozing. The tsunami of panic that Hazard had experienced in the elevator of Mitchell’s building had drained him, and however Hazard might disagree with some of Somers’s conclusions, he had to admit that Somers was right about one thing: the attacks were getting worse.

Drying his face, he went back to the bedroom and grabbed jeans and a tee. He tossed the wet towel over the back of a chair, dressed, and went downstairs. He grabbed a container of yogurt and ate standing at the sink, staring out the window. A cardinal perched on the branch of a wild plum, feathers ruffled as though he’d just had a scare. Hazard saluted him with the yogurt.

Ok. A plan.

The Keeper of Bees was active again. He had killed Susan Morrison, and from what Hazard had seen the night before, the Keeper was continuing to refine his technique. He had also played them for a bunch of fools, using the spotlighted murder to draw attention away while he abducted Mitchell.

Was Mitchell dead already? Hazard could still see him the way he’d found him in the college sub-basement, the vicious gut wound, the boy left to die slowly and painfully.

Hazard’s spoon stilled in the yogurt. Then he tossed the spoon in the sink and pitched the yogurt, half-eaten, into the trash. He grabbed the sink with both hands, and the stainless steel was gritty with dried soap scum under his touch. He could go at it, really scrub it with some Ajax. He could do the floors too. He could do the windows, inside and out, and get into the tracks where Somers never cleaned and make sure they were spotless.

Because what the fuck else was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to come up with a plan? How was he supposed to find Mitchell? How was he supposed to stop the Keeper when he’d been cut off from the crime scenes, the physical evidence, the witness statements, security footage from police and civilian cameras? He knew—he hoped—that Somers would give him access to whatever he could, but Hazard suspected that with Riggle on watch and with the FBI getting involved sooner or later, the amount of information Somers could pass along would be limited at best. His hands tightened until they ached.