Free So Close the Hand of Death by J. T. Ellison

how this happened.”
    Taylor crossed her arms on her chest. “You need to be looking closely at your staff. Someone leaked sensitive information out of the SBI. I hate to tell you this, but you’ve got a traitor.”

Eight
    T aylor and Baldwin went over the details with SSA Hall for another forty minutes, but nothing else shook loose.
    Taylor had to admit, Hall was a good cop. He ticked off his checklist just like she would, methodical and thorough, not rushing, moving ahead to another point only once every available detail had been squeezed out of the moment. They’d all been bamboozled by the imposters, and no one wanted to make any more mistakes. She respected that, and tried to keep her impatience to a minimum. She was worried about Fitz, just wanted to get back on her own turf. Someplace she knew she could defend herself properly.
    All those agents. She didn’t envy Hall the job of informing the families, something that couldn’t happen until they had all the details of the crime scene down pat.
    She had a crazy thought, one that tore through her mind like a storm. Could Sansom’s imposter be the Pretender? Could it have been a woman all along?
    That would be almost too far-fetched. They had DNA from several of the crime scenes, but that was easilyplanted. She thought about how the woman leaned in to hear the details, her eyes shining at the descriptions of the kills.
    No, that didn’t feel right. It was possible, but so unlikely that Taylor forced it from her head. This maniac was a man who used women, then disposed of them like dirty Kleenex, tossed to the floor without a second thought.
    When the SBI lead was finished with them and started working the scene, she called in to her boss, Commander Joan Huston, and filled her in on the situation. Talking to Huston helped settle Taylor’s mind—her boss was as pragmatic as she was capable. Huston assured Taylor that Fitz had arrived and was scheduled for surgery with Vanderbilt’s ophthalmologic team later in the day. Lincoln Ross was with him.
    Taylor finally felt as if she could breathe again. Fitz was safe.
    Now she could focus on the problem at hand.
    The Nags Head Police Station resembled a kicked-over anthill. Crime scene techs swarmed the scene. The bodies had yet to be moved, there was too much evidence to collect first. Despite the chill, a lone lazy fly bumbled through the hallway, drunk on blood. She swatted at it and missed, cursing as it darted into a heating vent. It would be back, and it would bring friends. She hoped they could get out of here quickly.
    She and Baldwin were taken to separate rooms to do an Identi-Kit on the three suspects. She missed the days of actual artists working on sketches; while the Identi-Kits were quick and convenient, they lacked a certain level of perfection, a way of layering in the slight details that a human could seize upon with a flick of a pencil. While the officer plugged her description ofthe suspects’ features into the program, Taylor had a bizarre sense of déjà vu, of sitting with another artist, in another police station, giving a detailed description of the man she thought might be the Pretender.
    This case. This goddamn case, with its maybes and theoreticals. She had to stop him. Nothing else existed for her now.
    When they were finished with the artists, Hall debriefed them again, in the same room where they’d spent the morning talking to a killer.
    “So I just got a call. A body was found out on Highway 64, out by Plymouth. Fits the description of the goon who impersonated Wally Polakis.”
    “How was he killed?” Taylor asked.
    “Shot in the head, tossed out of the car. He was found sprawled on the side of the road, you know how bodies do when they’re shoved out of moving cars.”
    “So the car will have blood in it.”
    “If we find it. There’s so many back roads in this area, bridges and trails—they could dump the car, catch another ride and it will take us a week to find