“You want me home. You want me to leave the FBI.”

“I want you home, but that doesn’t mean I want you to quit your job. I’ve never told you I wanted you to leave the FBI.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Sometimes, for someone so damn smart, you’re deliberately obtuse.”

“Chris—”

“I know you better than anyone, Catherine, and this is in your soul. You can’t walk away from it, not like this. Not because of Beth.”

She closed the doors again. Because part of her mind would be analyzing, thinking, coming up with questions. And that part of her mind would be closed to Chris and anything he had to say.

She walked over to her kitchen and topped off their wineglasses with the rest of the sauvignon blanc though they didn’t need to be.

“How’s Lizzy?” she asked.

“Come home with me tonight and see her in the morning.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“It’ll confuse her.”

“That’s bullshit, Catherine, and you know it.”

Catherine was taken aback. Chris never swore.

“She knows we’re separated,” Catherine said. Why was she nervous? She had wanted the separation. Needed it. At least, that’s what she thought.

You want to punish yourself for Beth. You’re a shrink, you know exactly why you left Chris. If your sister is dead, you can’t allow yourself to be happy.

“I don’t want to get her hopes up that I’ll be moving back in,” Catherine said.

“Lizzy is a smart kid. She gets it.”

“She resents me.”

“You do not believe that for a minute.”

“I can’t let this rub off on her. I know I’m not a loving mother. I want to be...but...please. Don’t push.”

She didn’t want the darkness she dealt with every day to touch her child. What happened with Beth was the final straw—the pain on Lizzy’s face at her aunt Beth’s funeral had affected Catherine in a fundamental way. Lizzy was only ten. She shouldn’t have experienced pain like this: deep, numbing grief.

She’d put the pain there. She’d brought the darkness to her family. And the darkness had taken her sister. The only good in her world, the only good left that touched her, was Chris and Lizzy, and Catherine would do anything to keep them far away from the dark side of humanity.

“Lizzy doesn’t resent you,” Chris said. “She knows what you do. She knows how the people you hunt affect you. Like me, she wants to be there for you.”

“She’s a child. She shouldn’t know anything about this life. About the evil in the world. I’m supposed to be there for her.”

And that was the crux of her problem. She was never completely present because her mind was always working on tracking a killer. Getting into his head. Doubting her own morality. She couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t leave it alone. Why couldn’t she turn it off? Others could. Chris did. He held life and death in his hands every day and sometimes death won—but he could see blessings where Catherine only saw pain.