Page 3 of If She Sensed

She started slow.Jab, cross, hook, a short right to the body.Reset.She kept the combinations tight and controlled in the first round, just finding the rhythm of it at first.It helped to loosen the shoulders, getting the breath moving and even.The bag barely swung.

By the second round she had picked up the pace and by the third she had stopped thinking about structure entirely.She was working the body more, dropping her level and coming back up, moving her feet.The combinations got less clean as her arms tired and her form began to slip, which was precisely the point.Clean form on a fresh body was training.Sloppy form on an exhausted one was something closer to honesty and she felt there was more growth in it.

She had been coming to this gym three mornings a week for two years.She had started because the job required a standard of physical conditioning and she had always preferred this to running.She’d kept at it because she had discovered that standing in front of a heavy bag and hitting it until her arms went hollow was cathartic and almost relieving in an odd way.It was also one of the more reliable ways she had found to move things through her head and out the other side.It did not always work.This morning she was not entirely sure it was working.But she kept going anyway.

Because the Rizzo thing was back.

It came and went, and she had learned over time to accept the pattern of it.She could go weeks without it surfacing in any way that cost her anything, and then something would shift and there it was again: the meet location, the light in the room when she pushed the door open, the quality of the silence that had told her what she was about to see before she actually saw it.Rizzo on his back with his arms crossed over his chest.The cuts across both hands and up his forearms where he had tried to defend himself against someone.She could see his hands even now, even in the middle of a round on a heavy bag at 5:45 in the morning.

She had told Kate about it.She knew that was what had stirred it back up, and she did not regret telling her.Kate had needed the information.Rizzo's killer had a method, and that method had a shape.Of course, by the time law enforcement understood what they were looking at, Rizzo had already been dead for years.

Kate had needed to hear all of that because of what she found in the old case files—the troubling overlap between that documented signature and a murder that had happened four years before anyone in law enforcement had formally identified or named Rizzo at all.A man named Harold Ryan had been convicted of that murder and had been incarcerated ever since.And if the overlap meant what it appeared to mean, then the wrong person had been sitting in a correctional facility for twelve years.

Sloane had told the story clearly, keeping her voice level, watching Kate process it in the passenger seat of a bureau sedan.She had not anticipated how much it would cost her afterward.She had told the story before, in post-operation debriefings and internal reviews.She’d even told it once in the office of a therapist she’d gone to four times before concluding she was managing fine on her own.She’d believed that for longer than she probably should have.

She drove her right hand into the bag hard enough that it swung back and caught her on the return.She sidestepped and reset her feet.

She finished the round and stepped back.Her shoulders were burning and her knuckles were aching inside the gloves.She went two more rounds, taking the last one down deliberately in pace, and then she was done.She stood with her hands on her hips and let her breathing settle and looked at nothing in particular on the wall behind the bag.

The locker room was still mostly empty when she got there.She showered, dressed, and stood at the mirror running a hand through her damp hair.She looked tired, but functional.That was a reasonable baseline for a Tuesday, she supposed.

The drive to the field office took twenty minutes; the morning traffic had not yet built up properly on the approach into the city.She parked in the structure, badged through the lobby, and took the interior stairs up to the third floor where her cubicle waited.The office had the quiet, concentrated quality it always had before 8:30.A handful of agents were already at their desks, the overhead lights at their full brightness but the general volume of the place still low.She dropped her bag at her desk, checked her phone, and opened her email.She had a scheduled check-in with DeMarco at 8:00… just nine minutes from now.

She used the time to go through the overnight messages.She flagged two that needed responses, cleared the rest, and checked her phone once more out of habit before heading down the corridor.She found DeMarco's door half open, which usually indicated she was available and expecting someone.She pushed it wider and stopped.

DeMarco was on the phone, standing at the window with her back to Sloane.She had not heard her come in yet.Her posture looked tightened through the shoulders and the back of the neck, and her free hand was at her side with the fingers slightly spread.Sloane had been checking in with DeMarco for several months now and she had learned her tells.That hand position meant the conversation was not going the way she wanted it to go.She was tense… upset about something.

She turned from the window and registered Sloane in the doorway.She held up one finger, to which Sloane nodded and waited.DeMarco looked at her for a moment over whatever the person on the other end was saying, and something passed across her face that Sloane didn't fully have a name for, somewhere between concern and the careful blankness.

Her eyes held Sloane’s for a second longer than necessary and then she mouthed two words.

Call Kate.

Sloane looked at her for a moment, reading what she could from her expression, then stepped back into the corridor and pulled out her phone.

CHAPTER THREE

Nineteen days had passed since Kate had set foot in FBI headquarters.The semi-retirement arrangement she had with the Bureau was loose by design, and DeMarco had never pushed her to fill it with structure she didn't need.She came in when there was a reason and for little more than that.It was freeing, sure, but she did miss this place that had, for so long, felt like a home away from home.

Today, Kate had a reason to be there.Sloane had called an hour ago at the request of DeMarco.She badged through the lobby, took the elevator to the fourth floor, and walked the familiar corridor toward DeMarco's office.A few agents she recognized nodded as she passed.She nodded back, wondering if she was being called in because DeMarco had somehow found out about her visit to see Harold Ryan.

When she arrived at DeMarco’s office, the door was open.She stepped in, smiled, and took the chair beside Sloane in front of DeMarco’s desk.DeMarco sat behind it, quickly reading over something on her laptop before she looked up at Kate.

"Thanks for coming in quickly," DeMarco said.“We have a case that may need your eyes, if you’re willing.”

“Let’s hear it, then,” Kate said.She appreciated the fact that they weren’t making a big deal about her appearance.This was just another case and it was time to get down to the facts.

"A woman named Carol Paige was found dead in her home this morning," DeMarco said."Mid-fifties, recently divorced, lives alone in a residential neighborhood in the northwest part of the city.Her neighbor found her at 6:15 this morning when she came by for coffee.She said the back door was standing open.She called it in immediately.Local PD responded, determined quickly that it needed to come to us.We got the call an hour ago."

"Why us?"Kate asked.

"The staging," DeMarco said."Or rather the lack of it.The first responding officers noted that nothing in the house appeared to be disturbed beyond the living room.Nothing stolen, no signs of forced entry.The back door was unlocked, but the neighbor says that’s not unusual, as Paige left it unlocked most of the time.”

"Cause of death?"Sloane asked.

"Pending the ME's determination, but preliminary indication at the scene is that she was stabbed.Twice in the chest, and once in the throat."DeMarco looked at Kate directly.

DeMarco picked up a folder from her desk and handed it across."I want you both out there this morning while the scene is still fresh.Local PD is holding it for us."