Her arms burned because she’d hung too long, but she was going to make it if she killed herself. She would not fail, and damn if she was going to let a cocky, authoritative instructor make her feel like a failure-or, worse, a victim. She wasn’t a victim, and she wasn’t going to let anyone make her feel victimized.
Lucy felt her shields rebuilding as she pulled her chin over the bar. It was almost as if the last eight months hadn’t happened, that she hadn’t learned to be almost normal. If she was going to survive the FBI Academy, she’d have to regain her distance, her detachment, bury her emotions again. Failure wasn’t an option-she was going to survive, she was going to be an agent, and if she had to be cold and unemotional she would be.
Everyone here had stories. Not hers, but the eleven trainees who’d served in the military had faced life and death. Different, but no less soul-searching than her own past.
Margo had joined the Army right out of high school. She’d been a poor kid from New York with a drunk for a mom and no hope for the future. The Army gave Margo a future.
“Your nose didn’t even top the bar,” Harden said. “You may be a decent runner, but are you going to run away from danger, or face it? Let’s see a real six.”
The Army had given Margo her college education. She’d wanted to be a cop but she’d been recruited into the FBI when she was a twenty-seven-year-old college senior. Lucy felt closer to her than anyone else-and not just because they shared a bathroom.
She and Margo had fallen into a small, dedicated group of new agents-two other military veterans, a paramedic, a prosecutor, a detective, a linguist, and an accountant. The accountant, Reva Penrose, was a math teacher with a Ph.D. in accounting. Reva was Margo’s opposite. Petite, feisty, a bundle of energy. Growing up in rural Texas, Reva had been raised with guns and had aced her first firearms test. But while she was a whiz on the range, she’d gotten the minimum acceptable score on the PT test.
Focusing on her friends and thinking about them gave Lucy the ability to handle the eyes on her. She’d never forget they were there, that the other thirty-three agents in Class 12–14, and Harden, and the field counselors were all staring at her.
But she could overcome it.
Her shell was growing again. Guilt flooded through her. All the time her boyfriend, Sean, had spent helping her be as normal as possible, after three weeks and one punishment it was gone.
A sense of loss filled her. She had almost been one of the group, just another new agent among many. But no one else here had these fears, this overwhelming sense of panic. While everyone had baggage, hers still weighed her down. Without a hard shell, she wasn’t going to survive the stress of training.
She only hoped she could find a balance between putting up the barrier and having friends.
She dropped down, hoping everyone in the room thought the sweat coating her skin was from her exertion and not the simmering panic attack.
But she’d won. This time, she’d battled and won.
She stared at Harden. His expression was unreadable.
He turned his back to her and looked at the assembled group. “Twenty laps. Go.” He didn’t look at Lucy but said, “That means you, too, Kincaid.”
She caught up with Reva, kept to her slower pace, but felt better being in the middle of the pack instead of leading or trailing. Her sister-in-law Kate, who’d worked as the cybercrimes instructor at Quantico for years, had told her to blend in as much as possible. Do well, but keep her head down, don’t stand out. Somehow, no matter how much she wanted to be just like everyone else, she’d never been good at keeping a low profile.
Lucy was on her third lap when the new-agent class supervisor, SSA Paula Kean, stepped into the gym and approached Harden. As Lucy passed Kean and Harden, Harden said, “Kincaid, SSA Kean needs you for the rest of the class. I’ll expect you to make up the laps tonight.”
“Yes, sir.” She grabbed her towel from her gym bag and put it around her sweating neck, then followed Kean out of the gym.
They walked down the hall toward Kean’s office. The senior agent was in her forties, tall and thin, with shoulder-length brown hair. She wore little makeup except for shiny lip gloss. “Do you know Special Agent Suzanne Madeaux?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. She’s out of New York.”
“She’s on the phone for you about a homicide.”
“In New York?”
“She said she had to speak with you immediately, didn’t give me any details.” Kean sounded irritated, but Lucy couldn’t tell if it was because of the interruption or the lack of information.
When Sean’s seventeen-year-old cousin Kirsten Benton went missing last February, Lucy had helped him track her to New York, where they landed in the middle of a serial killer investigation led by Suzanne Madeaux. Lucy had talked to Suzanne a couple of times since but always related to the Cinderella Strangler investigation, statements, and paperwork.
Lucy sat in the chair across from Kean’s desk. The supervisor sat down and surprised Lucy by putting Suzanne on speaker.
“Agent Madeaux?… Paula Kean here. I pulled New Agent Kincaid out of class; she’s here in my office.”
“Am I on speaker?”
“Yes. I’m Kincaid’s class supervisor; unless there’s a reason this needs to remain confidential, I’ll be in the loop.”
“Understood,” Suzanne said. “Lucy?”
“Hi, Suzanne.”
“I’ll cut to the chase. Have you been contacted by a true crime writer, Rosemary Weber? She’s writing a book about the Cinderella Strangler case.”
Lucy’s chest tightened. She remembered the conversation she’d had with Weber, and it wasn’t one of her finer moments. She’d never told anyone to go to Hell before.
“Yes. It was the Friday before I reported here.”
“What did she call about?”
“The Cinderella Strangler investigation. She told me you were cooperating.”
When Weber said that Suzanne had already talked to her Lucy had been at first stunned, then angry, then deeply sad.
“She said that? No way was I cooperating.”
Lucy thought back to the conversation. “She strongly implied it. I assumed that’s where she got my name.”
“I guarantee, Lucy, I did
Lucy was both relieved and upset with herself for being manipulated by Weber. “I should have called you. But I didn’t tell her anything about the case.”
Kean interrupted. “Agent Madeaux, what was so urgent that you couldn’t speak with Kincaid later?”
“She’s been murdered. Last night, in Queens.”
Weber had been killed? Before Lucy could ask any questions, Suzanne continued.
“NYPD thinks there may be a connection between whatever project Weber was working on and her death. I’m creating a time line, and because Kincaid’s name was in her notes, I needed to know if and when she spoke to her. Lucy, what was she fishing for?”
“She wanted to interview me about my involvement with the case. I said I had no involvement, and that’s when she said she’d been talking to you and NYPD.”
