“Babe?”
I sigh and exhale the air between my teeth. “I don’t know, Kace.” Maybe a part of me deep down longs for Kace’s touch—to feel the warmth of his skin touching mine—but that part of me is buried under hours of wishing for life to rewind. No matter how much I miss the feeling of being loved, I miss my baby more. “I don’t know how to exist without him.”
“Exist with me, Ellie.” He puts both hands on my thighs and turns me toward him, locking my legs in between his knees. “We were us before him.”
I hate Kace for being able to move on. For seeing life without our child—without Tyler—in it. “It’s not the same anymore.”
His finger slides under my chin, and he tilts my head up to meet his gaze. “It can be. We can rebuild. I want to be us again, Ellie.”
It hurts to hear the hope in his voice, especially when I don’t find anything to be hopeful for. “I’m not the same person.”
“Yes, you are.”
He doesn’t know what he’s saying. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s always wanted children. Lots of children that I can no longer carry for him. He doesn’t understand the ache in my bones—the need for revenge that flows through me with every passing moment.
“I don’t want to be those people anymore, Kace.”
He doesn’t release me, but a glimmer of shock flickers over his face before he says, “You don’t mean that, or you wouldn’t still be wearing this ring.” He brings my hand up in the air and thumbs the diamond.
“You’re right.” I remove my hand and slide my ring off. I hold the engraved side up and read the inscription. Three become one. Before he can say anything, I remind him, “We’re not going to be three ever again.” I don’t have a uterus anymore, and adoption requires someone financially and emotionally stable, and that’s not me.
“So let’s work on being two first. Then figure out the rest.” Though his tone has become harsher, he’s still trying.
Something I’m no longer willing to do. “The only thing I want to do is find who killed our son.”
“Then let me help you find who is responsible.”
“They took you off the case.” It’s low priority since it’s not considered a homicide. Last time I was in the precinct, they were chasing down a killer known as the Bullet Man. It took forever for the cases to be connected, and only recently did they realize they were searching for a proxy killer. “Any leads?” I switch the subject to something I’m more comfortable talking about—murderers.
“No, and we are up to eight victims now. He’s escalating, and we have no leads.”
“Eight murderers, you mean.”
“They are still victims. He solves cold cases and gives the grieving families a bullet with the name of the murderer on it. We’ve looked into every private investigator, cop, lab tech, and gun shop. Nothing turns up. We don’t know how he’s choosing his victims, or how he’s solving the cases we couldn’t.”
“There’s no interaction between the people who receive the bullets and the sender?” I ask.
Kace smiles softly. “It’s dropped off through couriers. None trace back to the same person. We’ve hit the pavement, tracing leads, and have nothing except more bodies and more solved cases.”
“Have you pulled out all the cold cases and tried to find similarities?” Hope finds a way to embed itself in my tone.
Kace picks up on it and smirks. “There’s the girl I fell in love with. I can pull a few strings. Maybe if we play our cards right, we can get you back to work, or I can talk to Cap about bringing you in to consult. Your expertise could come in handy.”
I slip my ring back on and force a tiny smile, playing the part. “Maybe this is what I need? A case to distract me.”
But I don’t want to arrest him, I want to hire the Bullet Man.
2
Subjects
Dr. Nolan Mills
I have a theory about a bullet and a tortured heart. When both items exist, the only variable is opportunity.
That’s where I come in. I solve the unsolved cases and provide the survivors with the chance to get their justice. Of course, choosing my test subjects requires time and a bit of social interaction. Being a cognitive neuroscientist with an emphasis on psychiatry, who specializes in grief counseling, gives me an in. With the right questions, I pinpoint key details of the investigation and find ideal candidates. An emotional scorecard, which I fill out during my first few sessions with the patient, is crucial in my selection process.
Priors, registered weapons, level of education, forms of abuse during childhood, relationship status, intelligence quotient, medical history, trauma, and much more become data points in my study. Quantifying the quality of a patient’s past and present provides a solemn hypothesis on his or her future. I have three groups based on scores: those I presume will not seek revenge, those who I’m quite positive will, and those who I’m unsure of.
Despite my initial assumptions, I’m very strict about hindering my own investigation by adding bias, so I never sway results. Patients come to me for support, and I help them through their emotional process, never pointing them in a particular direction or dwelling on revenge. Exploring their feelings is the ultimate goal, not finding test subjects.
I confess to finding it much more enjoyable when the two overlap. It’s my only sense of entertainment.
As a survivor of crime, I understand grief. My first opportunity to help someone through their ache and guilt came in college.
Then, six years ago, I was recruited to help with the exclusive Kaleigh University’s Forensic Program. They reached out to me after reading one of my less famous papers on quantifying neuronal processes via mapping and image analysis. They wanted my cognitive behaviorist perspective in order to help attribute a number to each member of society—the criminal probability.
Awarded a billion-dollar, renewable ten-year funding by the government, the goal of IQ3, Intelligent Quantum Quality Quantification, is to create nationwide ballistic fingerprinting database that can assess for wear, use, and batch similarities of weapons, and combine this information with psychological profiles of people within the vicinity and pinpoint likely assailants. It gives me access to everything I need to solve the unsolvable cases, including access to The Tank—the place where State’s evidence goes to be forgotten.
One of those cases should be solved within the hour.
Yesterday, I slipped the evidence from Elijah R. Bitten’s unsolved case to the top of the pile, and if everything comes back the way I expect, I’ll have a bullet to engrave tonight.
Bitten Senior survived his son, who was shot twenty-six times in multiple parts of his body. Before this, or more likely during—according to the coroner—Elijah had been tied to a chair and burned. His torture lasted over three hours until a final, fatal shot pierced his main artery.
It had been a brutal murder, televised all over the state, and believed to be gang-related. Elijah’s best friend, who was the main suspect at the time, had recently involved himself with one of the deadlier crime syndicates in the neighborhood.