“Didn’t you spend last weekend shutting down churches all over London because you feared for clergy’s safety?”

A rumble of reactions circulated through the room. Grant took the microphone and attempted to quell the spreading uneasiness. “It was a supposition we were working on at the time . . .”

“A supposition?” Ferguson mimicked. “It proved to be more than that. Only trouble was you missed it by a whole continent. At least with Leeds you narrowed it down to the proper city.”

Grant lifted a hand to quiet the room that was on the verge of exploding. “Besides pointing out what you see as my shortcomings, Mr. Ferguson, what exactly is the question you’re asking?”

“I’m wondering if you’re ill-equipped to be running this investigation. Your track record is hardly comforting,” said Ferguson. “You and Detective Frankel are obviously holding on to information giving you a line on the victims but not following through on time. The public deserves to know what that is exactly—as you’re not keeping them safe and none have a clue as to what—to use your colleague’s own words—they are keeping vigilant about.”

Frankel gave Grant a slight shrug. He might as well have been saying, “Whatever you come up with will be as good as anything I can.”

“It’s the Ten Commandments, isn’t it?”

Grant was shocked to see Rachel stand up in the next to last row.

“Your killer is murdering people according to the Ten Commandments,” she clarified. “Timothy Leeds was number five and the person you’re searching for isn’t stopping until he reaches ten. Unless someone gets him first.”

That was when the room erupted into the shit show Frankel had predicted.

“Your daughter,” Frankel simply said.

The implications in the two words were multifold. Not only hadn’t Grant mentioned Rachel to Frankel, he’d neglected to say she was a reporter who resided and worked in Manhattan, and with whom he’d discussed the case at length the previous morning at breakfast at the Surrey.

“I thought the two of you knew each other,” Grant said to Rachel, trying to calm the situation.

“I said we’ve crossed paths a couple of times,” reiterated Rachel.

“But I didn’t realize she was your daughter,” repeated Frankel.

The three of them were in Grant’s cubbyhole of an office after extracting themselves from the near riot that had once been a press conference.

After Rachel dropped her bomb among her fellow Fourth Estaters, Frankel and Grant huddled with Harris in an emergency sidebar. They quickly decided it would be pointless to deny the Commandments connection to the killings.