A real home and a happy family weren’t in the cards for him. Never had been. Never would be.

Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself. You’re not the first man who’s been in this situation, and you won’t be the last.

He had no idea what to do. Would Cathy tell Seth? And if she didn’t, did he have the guts to do it? He sure as hell had the right.

Jack wished he could cry. But the last time he’d shed a tear, he’d been a bruised and battered boy, scared to death of his stepfather. He held the tears inside, a pain without any form of release.

When his cell phone rang, he hesitated checking the caller ID, halfway certain it would be Cathy. But when he saw that it was Mike, he answered.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“The Fire and Brimstone Killer has struck again,” Mike told him.

“Who?” Jack asked.

“We’re pretty sure the intended victim was Reverend Dewan Phillips.”

“What do you mean the intended victim?”

“The reverend and his wife had company, Perry and Dionne Fuqua. Perry and Dewan are about the same size, close to the same age…”

“Fuqua got turned into a human torch instead of the reverend?”

“He’s still alive. It doesn’t look good,” Mike said. “But we caught a break. Seems Fuqua’s wife saw a glimpse of the killer as she ran off.”

“She?”

“Yes, she. Our Fire and Brimstone Killer is definitely female.”

Jack felt like shit. Not only had he gone all night without any sleep, but he’d been working with the ABI team since midnight on the new Fire and Brimstone Killer case. The urgency of the situation at work had left him with no choice but to push aside his own personal dilemma. Mike had left the office thirty minutes ago, leaving Wayne Morgan, Jeremy Vaughn and Karla Ross here at the office with Jack. They had gone over the information from the crime scene and Dionne Fuqua’s description of the person she had seen leaving the Phillipses’ yard moments after she heard her husband’s first agonized screams. There hadn’t been any point in bringing in a sketch artist, because the deacon’s wife had not seen the woman’s face.

Medium height, medium build, which covered 80 percent of the women in Dunmore.

“All I saw was a woman hurrying away. I never saw her face, and it was too dark to see her hair color. She was wearing pants, and she was carrying something square, about the size of an overnight bag, in her hand.”

The first officers on the scene had taken Mrs. Fuqua’s statement, and Mike had chosen not to requestion the lady whose husband had died less than an hour ago. Perry Fuqua was the sixth victim, a man who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one had any doubts that Dewan Phillips had been the intended victim, and only the fact that Deacon Fuqua answered the door at the Phillipses’ home had saved the reverend’s life.

“I don’t think Missy Hovater is our killer,” Karla Ross said, breaking the silence that had lingered in Mike’s office after he left.

Her boss, Special Agent Wayne Morgan, who was busy preparing a fresh pot of coffee, paused for a half second and asked, “What makes you say that? You must have a specific reason.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy Vaughn from the Huntsville PD added. “We’re pretty sure the locket found on the Phillipses’ sidewalk belongs to her. It has her name engraved on it, and the picture inside the locket could be her mother. You’ve got to admit that there’s a strong physical resemblance.”

“Sure, the locket probably belongs to her, but I think it was planted at the scene to make us suspect her,” Karla said. “The killer has been very careful not to leave behind any evidence the first five times. Why would she be so careless this time?”

“Good point,” Derek Lawrence said as he entered the room without knocking or alerting the others beforehand.

All eyes focused on the former FBI profiler.

“Glad you decided to join us,” Jack said, the tone of his voice gruffer than he’d intended.

“I’ll let your surly attitude pass this time, considering you’ve been up all night,” Derek told Jack. “Our killer wouldn’t be careless enough to leave behind evidence, not at this stage of the game. If she left something, she did it on purpose.”

“Let me get this straight,” Special Agent Morgan said. “You believe the killer left the locket to cast suspicion on Melissa Hovater.”

Derek nodded.

“How did she get hold of Missy’s necklace?” Detective Vaughn asked.

“And why single out Missy?” Morgan asked and then shook his head before anyone could respond. “Yeah, sure. I get it. Missy was a suspect in her father’s murder, so why not point the finger at her and lead us in the wrong direction.”

“It’s going to be rough on the girl having to be questioned for a murder we’re all pretty sure she didn’t commit,” Karla said.

“That’s why Mike has gone to see the Harpers,” Jack reminded them. “He wanted to talk to them and explain the situation. The last thing any of us want is to traumatize Missy Hovater more than she’s already been traumatized.”

“I’ll be as gentle as possible when I question her,” Morgan assured them. “But I have to question her. If she can ID the necklace, she should be able to tell us where she kept it and who had access to it.”

“If she took the locket with her to the Harpers’, then I’d say that narrows down the possible suspects,” Derek said.

“To the people living in the Harper house.” Detective Vaughn lifted the coffee pot off the warmer and brought it over to the desk where Karla sat. “More?” he asked. When she nodded, he filled her mug to the brim.

“That’s right,” Jack said. “The people living in the Harper house or anyone who has visited them recently and had free access to the house.”

“At least we now know that our killer is definitely female,” Derek said. “That rules out about half the population. And just in the Harper household alone, we have four females-Mrs. Harper, her mother and her two daughters.”

“Any other new, brilliant insight into the case?” Jack asked.

Derek eyed him with curiosity and hitched his thumb toward the door. “Got a minute for a private chat?”

Jack huffed. When he glanced around the room, each person avoided making direct eye contact with him. Okay, so he needed an attitude adjustment this morning. Who wouldn’t, considering the news Cathy had laid on him last night?

“Sure thing.” Jack opened the door and held it for Derek.

They walked through the outer office, where Mike’s secretary nodded at them and a couple of the deputies acknowledged them with a smile or a wave. Once they entered the entrance hall, Jack turned to Derek.

“Let me have it with both barrels,” Jack said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Personal problems.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough.”

“Take some time off to deal with them.”

Jack shook his head. “That won’t work. There’s no easy solution. For now, I’m better off working.”

“Then bring it down a notch,” Derek suggested. “For your own sake as well as for the people you’re working with.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that.” He looked right at Derek. “Are we good?”

Derek grinned. “We’re good.”

When the two men returned to Mike’s office, they came in on a conversation about-what else?-the identity of the killer and what motivated her to kill clergymen and in such a gruesome way.

“She’s pissed,” Karla said. “Some preacher screwed with her in some way and messed up her mind. Right? We figure out the motive, we’re one step closer to figuring out her identity.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Detective Vaughn agreed.

“Our killer won’t stand out,” Derek told them. “Not the way you’d think. I still believe that she appears to be relatively normal. She’s got a hard-on for clergymen, all right. She’s handing out punishment as if she’s on a mission from God. Somewhere in her past is a clergyman who, like Karla said, screwed with her and messed up her mind.”