She knows two things about Padre Island: you can get in your car and drive the whole length of the beach, dodging rattlesnakes and tarantulas, and the seagulls are wild enough to swoop down and bite the French fry out of your mouth.
On the jet, she stares at the clouds. Details float and bob in her mind, bumping up against one another: dead jocks. Raped alpha males. Spring Break bacchanal. Tied up. Could it be a woman alone? She flashes back to New Orleans, the case with the med student, luring men with the promise of her body to an abattoir death”turning the old Jack The Ripper narrative inside out. Emily’s mouth quirks. At least Sarah Danlin gets points for style.
When she arrives in Texas, she learns more: there’s constant heat tinged with a scent of oil, muggy and blowing in off the water, hinting at its tropical birth. The sand is soft and littered. The sun is a hammer, beating bronze into skin and lassitude into bones. The streets smell like tar and Coppertone. The throngs of beach bodies, stupefied by alcohol-soaked hormones and gyrating to canned beats, set her teeth on edge.
Her room is on the top floor of the team’s high-rise, overlooking the garish lights of the on-season, lofty enough to erase the sounds of traffic and the frantic thump of club music. The décor is soothing and tasteful in its blandness. The carpet is soft, the lighting indirect. Watercolor portraits of seashells and pelicans hang on the walls.
She orders room service, spreads crime scene photos and witness accounts across the unoccupied bed. She wanders onto her tiny balcony in cutoff sweats and a sports bra, carrying an ice cold bottle of water by the neck. The sea stretches out flat and black beneath hazy stars. A light wind blows her hair against her cheek. It smells strongly of salt.
Her cell phone rings. She takes it out of her pocket. “Prentiss.”
“Hot enough for you?”
She sighs. “You know, you never did tell me what you wanted besides the sleepless nights, the changing of the locks, the nights at the shooting range, the constant obsessing over you and I have been, George, I have. I think about you all the time. I look for you all the time.”
He chuckles. “Is this the part where I tell you what I’m wearing?”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“I want to tell you what you’re wearing.”
“No one’s stopping you.”
“Hmmm, let’s see. Black linen skirt. Tasteful, knee-length. A purple sleeveless blouse, sandals and a ponytail.”
“Wrong.”
“So you changed your clothes.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I took them off.”
“Are you flirting with me, Agent Prentiss?”
She lets out a short laugh. “Hardly.”
“Well, I have been working out.”
“No, no. No no no no.” She strides back into the room. “This is the part where you tell me what you’re going to do to me if I don’t give you what you want. Then”you tell me what it is you do want. Otherwise I pick up the hotel phone, I call my team, and this bullshit dance comes to an end.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, yeah?” She sits on the bed and pulls on a pair of sneakers. “You feel like trying me?”
“If I told you I was on the other side of this door?”
“What?” Her hands freeze. “My door?”
“No, no. No no no no.” He chuckles. “That of the dashing and gallant Agent Hotchner.”
Her breath catches in her throat.
“Why…are you holding your breath, Emily?”
“What do you want?” She scoops her gun and badge off the nightstand and drops them into her purse.
“I want to tell you a story, and then you’ll tell me a story. Do you like stories?”
She crosses the room. “I like happy endings.”
“Of course. Of course you do…but there’s more than one way to be happy, isn’t there?”
“I suppose…yes.” Emily slips out the door. “I suppose there is.”
“Once upon a time, there was a man. He stood in the hallway of a second-rate hotel, the kind that would only impress a tourist. There was a bullet in his pocket and an unloaded revolver in his hand. He asked himself what to do but there was no answer, so he asked the girl on the other end of the phone instead: what should I do?”
“Put the bullet in the gun. Put the gun in your mouth. Pull the trigger.”
“I’m disappointed. I thought you were more creative than that.”
She heads for the elevator. “The girl on the other end of the phone thinks he should ask himself a different question.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. If he kills the man in the hotel room, he kills his leverage. She doesn’t doubt that he knows where to find more, but destruction creates more work for him. It’s no longer efficient.” The elevator doors make noise as they close and she winces. “When he breaks this moment, marked by a bullet in his pocket and a gun in his hand, marked by a question, he breaks his efficiency. All the power waits in that moment. How long can he keep her there? How good is he?” She watches the numbers light up and slide down. “That’s the question. How good are you, George?”
“I’m the best.”
The elevator glides to a stop. The doors open. “Prove it.”
“How quickly do you think I can get in through this door?”
She takes the stairs one at a time. “Do you have a key?”
“Getting the key was easy. It’s always so easy.”
Her footfalls echo in the stairwell. She comes to the exit on the third floor and peers through a narrow rectangle of wired glass. On the other side are two vending machines and ice. She leans against the cinderblock wall and reaches into her purse, loosening the holster. She makes sure the gun will slide free when she needs it to. “Why Hotch?”
“Why not?”
“You could have picked Morgan. Or me.”
“You need to ask yourself that question.”
“Oh.” She turns around and reaches for the handle, pushing it down, easing it until she feels the bolt disengage. There is a soft click. “I do.”
“Don’t you?”
“I know you broke into my storage space. I know you read my old journals. That’s how you know about Francesca. And the song.”
His tone turns confidential. “Was she beautiful in her death? You wrote so eloquently about the dirt in her eyes and the whiteness of her lips. Did you like the thought of fucking her cold flesh? Did it make you wet?”
She flattens herself against the wall. She looks around the corner and sees all the way down to the end, where it turns right. “It still does.”
His breath changes.
She crosses the hallway and keeps close to the opposite wall, her pulse fluttering in her ears. The carpet erases her footfalls. “A pubescent girl, bewildered and confused, waking up hot in the night from dreams about cold breasts and stab wounds, wondering what it might be like to put her fingers inside.” Her voice slides into a half-whisper. “She didn’t know anatomy back then and thought it might be soft. That her heart might feel soft and slippery after the blood stopped.” She moves her mouth close to the receiver and whispers, “like a piece of meat. You like that story, George?”
“I like it.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
She creeps up to the place where the corridor turns. She takes the phone away from her ear and leans, inching her toes, peeking past the edge. It’s a long hallway. A man with a slight tan sits in loose cargo shorts with his back against a door. He’s wearing a white button-up shirt and his knees are up, sandal-clad feet pointing to the door opposite.
“I don’t know. Is that in my profile?”
Emily hears him in stereo, softened with distance and rendered close and clear by a strong signal. She turns around, her shoulder blades pressed into the cool wall. Gooseflesh rises out of her racing blood and sinks back down again, making her hot and cold, transmitting nervous energy up through all the tiny hairs embedded in her skin. Her thumb hovers over the disconnect button.
“Emily? Oh Em-i-ly.”
She ends the call. Slides the phone into her pocket. Moves through a dreamy sense of seconds with her hand buried in her purse and her fingers caressing the gun.
Her feet bring him into view, awakening her mind to detail: hot tungsten light, rose-colored carpet, cream walls, the thick sinews of his feet bound up in their rubber prison. Her movement and sense of shadow, the reaction of his body, subtle chain of muscle and skin falling over inside him until his head turns. The charm in his weathered face, hiding in fine lines, dozing and dangerous. Her dizzy breath and a thunderstorm brewing in her belly, collision of overheated blood and cold adrenaline. She sees something in those hollow eyes, some flicker in the dark, the shift of his body and his crooked smile like a curtain lifting. Sweat coats her skin. She holds in the trembling; there is moisture between her palm and the metal but her mind is getting sharper.
“No,” she says. “It’s not.”
He stands. She soaks up the sight of him, the undersides of her emotions growing heavy with it. Hypnotized by herself, seduced by her own audacity, she starts to drip. He closes the phone with his fingers, letting the hand fall to his side. His eyes follow her neck to her shoulder, languid, sliding down the length of her arm. He looks at her purse and lifts his eyes, dimples hinting at the corners of his mouth. Her insides twist and open up a hollow space. Nascent thoughts fly around inside it, buzzing, bumping off one another, too primitive for words. The shape of the gun in hangs heavy in his pocket. Her breath settles there. She works up some saliva. She swallows.
“This is a surprise.”
“Did you think I would sit upstairs in my room?” Dry mouth, husky voice. Her finger threads through the gun. “Like a scared little girl?” She takes a step forward. She withdraws the gun a millimeter at a time. Her chin tilts upward. “You picked the wrong woman, George.”
“Not bad.” An intimate and admiring tone of voice. “Not bad at all.”
Emily points the gun at him. “If you run, I’ll shoot you.”
“I have no doubt.”
“I’ll enjoy it, too.” She takes a couple of steps closer. “In fact, I kind of want you to run.”
“Sorry.”
Emily pushes the muzzle into his navel. She leans on one leg, hips turning as she reaches into his pocket and takes hold of his revolver. He holds still, arms at his sides. She shoves it into her purse. He looks down, watching her hand writhe into his other pocket. Her fingers come up with a pair of bullets. She tosses them into the purse. Beneath his smirk she checks the thigh pockets. She takes a step and sticks her hand in one of the back pockets, fingers closing around a sheathed hunting knife. She turns her wrist and pulls it out, the inside of her forearm scraping along his beltloops. He lifts a finger up beneath a loose bit of her hair. His knuckle grazes her skin. She stiffens as he runs the hair through his fingers, letting it fall against her neck. Her skin is shy, blooming, warming up. It starts to hum. She clenches her teeth and yanks the knife out of his pocket. She tucks it into the back waistband of her shorts and hooks the hair behind her ear.
“Turn around.” Each breath bottoms out. She reaches up, scratches the side of her neck. “Put your hands on the fucking wall. Now.”
Her cell phone rings. She jumps. He starts to laugh. The tightening of his abdominal muscle thrums into her hand.
“You gonna answer that, Agent Prentiss?”
“Shut up.” Emily digs the phone out of her pocket. She glances at the display. “Yeah, Reid, what’s up?”
“Where are you? I’m with Hotch and we’ve been knocking on your door for five minutes.”
“F-Funny how that is.” She holds Foyet’s gaze. “I’ve been down here knocking on Hotch’s door for five minutes.”
“Are you all right? You sound…” He laughs. “I don’t know. Winded?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I was at the gym and decided to take the stairs. I don’t know what I was thinking, you know, I didn’t…”
Foyet reaches over, slides a hand beneath her arm. His fingers burrow into her purse. He eases out his gun.
“…b-bother cooling down, which is dumb I know. I had a thought on the StairMaster.” She keeps her voice neutral as she narrows her eyes. Foyet transfers the gun to his other hand, grinning at her, and goes back for the knife. Emily halts his wrist. He pushes and her fingers tighten. He pulls and she takes an unsteady step closer to him. “I figured I’d stop by Hotch’s room on the way back up to mine.” Emily turns her face. “I thought an extra couple flights wouldn’t hurt, but I overestimated my recovery time.”
“That’s not a good idea, you know, but you do know. So, uh, what was the thought you had? On the StairMaster?”
“I was thinking about Sarah Danlin.” Foyet leans in, the tip of his nose close to her hairline. “I wondered…I wondered…you know, in New Orleans?” He finds the tiny hairs in the hollow of her temple, brushes them with his mouth. She twitches. “I-I just totally lost my train of thought, there. Shit. What was I saying?” Her fingers dig into the tendons of his wrist. She wrenches it to one side and a blast of breath steaming the roots of her hair. “Yeah. Sarah Danlin worked alone.” His raspy smile unfolds across her skin. “Do you think it’s possible our unsub is working alone?”
“These are big guys and there’s the rape to consider. Unless she’s bringing semen along and using an implement like a turkey baster to mimic the biological residue of rape, it’s most likely partners.”
“But…I don’t know.” Foyet tugs himself out of her slippery grip. “I guess it seemed more plausible on the StairMaster.”
“Em, are you sure you’re okay? Maybe…I dunno, maybe your blood sugar is low? How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
“I’m fine.” Foyet pulls back. He waves his fingers and turns around. He moves away with an easy stride. “Really. No dizzies, no shaking. I’m just tired and I…probably need some water.”
“We can head back down there if you want.”
Emily holds up the gun. Foyet breaks into a jog. “Okay.” Her finger twitches oh-so-slightly against the trigger and he runs to the elevator. “That will…I guess that will be fine.”
“I was thinking about ordering some Chinese, too. You want anything?”
Ding.
“No.” Emily shakes all over. “I’m not hungry.”