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then broke off and fell with a muffled plop onto Baldwin’s shoulder.

They sprang into action, no words needed. Baldwin sprinted back upstairs toward the bathroom to turn off the water. Taylor went to the kitchen and came back with a spaghetti pot. She stood under the dribble, catching droplets of water as they rushed through the surface of the drywall and fell to earth. God, what next?

Baldwin came back to the living room with a stepladder. “This house is built on an Indian burial ground, Taylor. I swear it. I turned the water off. We can set the pot on this. It might help keep the carpet dry.” He positioned the ladder under the leak and took the container from Taylor, setting it on the top. A happy plink rewarded his efforts.

They shared an exasperated laugh. In the month they’d been home from their pseudo-honeymoon, everything that could go wrong with their relatively new house had. A fitting metaphor for their life. No matter what they planned, how they tried, they couldn’t seem to get onto the right page and make it official. Taylor was content to remain unmarried. Baldwin was starting to come around to her way of thinking.

“Who do you want me to call? The home warranty place?” He started for the kitchen.

“Yeah. The number is in the folder in the server. They’re going to have to send out a plumber now, we can’t wait.”

He opened the drawer and pulled out an overstuffed file folder. “Okay, I’ll make the call. But I’ve got to finish packing. My flight leaves at ten-thirty.”

Judas Kiss

23

Taylor gave the ceiling a last hard stare, then joined Baldwin.

“Here, give me that. I’ll call. You go on and finish packing. Besides, the plane leaves when you tell it to. Director.”

He shot her a look. “I’m not the Director. I’m the Acting Director while Garrett has this stupid surgery. That just means I get to push his pencils around his desk and pretend to look important for two weeks. Seriously, I’d rather stay here, fight with the plumber.”

Garrett Woods, director of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and Baldwin’s boss, had called the previous evening. He’d gone for his routine yearly physical and ended up hospitalized, scheduled for a triple bypass. He needed someone he trusted to hold down the fort. Baldwin was the obvious choice. Taylor hoped it wasn’t a play to get him to come back and run the BSU permanently. There’d been quite a shake-up while Taylor and Baldwin were in Italy, celebrating what should have been their honeymoon. The man who’d been leading the BSU, Stuart Evans, had been summarily fired after a personnel issue made headlines. The Bureau wasn’t a big fan of having their personal laundry aired in the media. Garrett Woods took the position again, leaving his number three in the bureau spot. He hadn’t been happy working at that level anyway, was thrilled to return to the BSU and make things right with his investigative divisions and behavioral analysis unit profilers.

“You need to go tend to Garrett’s cases. And make sure he listens to the doctors. I can’t believe he’s so sick.”

“Me neither. He seems so indestructible to me, always has. So you think you can handle this?”

24

J.T. Ellison

She kissed him, then pulled back and raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah. It’s just a little leak.”

“Okay, then. I’m going to finish packing.” With a pat on her rear, he left the kitchen. She smiled after him. God, what a goof she’d become. Fools in love…

And their love nest was falling in around their ears. This would be the fourth time she’d had to call for service since they’d moved in two months ago. There had been contractors crawling all over the place for silly little issues—a broken fan blade on the heater, a squirrel who’d nested in the crawlspace and chewed through some electrical wiring, a faulty thermostat on the freezer. Now a leak in the master bath. They were making their bones with the warranty company. She got the plumber’s name and number, left them a message, then went upstairs, determined to make Acting Director Dr. John Baldwin regret that he was leaving for two weeks and prove her point. The Gulfstream couldn’t exactly leave without him. The phone rang as she hit the second stair. What now? She backtracked, went to the kitchen and saw the number on the caller ID.

“Hi, Fitz,” she answered.

Sergeant Peter Fitzgerald, her second in command, greeted her brusquely. “I know it’s your day off, but you need to come in. We’ve got a murder that’s going to have fleas.”

“Who?”

“Some sweet little mother out in Hillwood. I’m hearing words like Laci and Peterson.”

Taylor shuffled her fingers through a notepad that sat next to the phone, ready for an urgent message. No, thank you. I’m not in the mood for a murder. I think I’ll Judas Kiss

25

pass. But she couldn’t. She was the homicide lieutenant, and if her team needed her, that meant she would show.

“Fine. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be on the road.”

“The fed gone yet?”

“He’s finishing packing.”

“Well, go kiss his pretty little face goodbye and get your ass down here. We need you.”

She hung up and the phone rang again. The plumbers. They greeted her warmly. Of course they would, she’d be sending their children through college if this was more than a simple leak. They said their technician would be out in an hour. She told them where she’d hide a key, then ran up the stairs. Baldwin was zipping his suitcase.

“You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Good, come on. I’ll drop you off. I have to go in.”

“Who died?”

Ah, the bliss of living with a fellow law enforcement officer. He just got it.

“Fitz says it’s a young mother. It must be catching on fire for him to drag me in on my day off.” She pulled a black sweater over her gray T-shirt and went into the offending bathroom. She brushed out her hair and gathered it into a ponytail, frowned at the toilet, where she assumed the leak had generated, then went to her closet and grabbed a pair of boots. Hitching up the legs of her jeans, she slipped into the Tony Lamas without sitting down and jumped up once, landing softly to set her heels and drop the pant legs. Ready.

Baldwin was standing in the doorway to the master, 26

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watching with a bemused smile on his face. “Thirty seconds flat. Not bad. You look stunning.”

Taylor rolled her eyes at him. “Let’s go, lover boy. The sooner you get to Quantico, the sooner you can come home.”

Three

Taylor met Fitz in the parking lot of the Criminal Justice Center. Clouds scudded across the graying sky. Despite the beauty of spring in Nashville, the weather was wholly schizophrenic. Sunny one minute, stormy the next. She took off her sunglasses and slipped one temple into her sweater collar.

“Yo,” Fitz called, pointing to a white Chevy Impala, his official department issued ride. “I gotta run back to the office for a second. Want a drink?”

Taylor nodded her head and started for the car. She took the passenger’s side, pushing the seat back to accommodate her long legs. Fitz disappeared into the bowels of the CJC and returned a few minutes later with two Diet Cokes. He slid into the driver’s seat, handed over the soda. She cracked the lid and sipped, then put the can between her thighs.

The sun popped out for a brief second, enough to blind her, so she put on her new Ray-Bans, a purchase she made in the duty-free in Milan’s Malpensa airport. They were wide and black and made her feel glamor-28

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ous, a tiny homage to her new European sentiments. Traveling in a foreign country with a native speaker of the language had the tendency to make you feel more. She’d been on several trips overseas before, but had never experienced them the way she’d experienced the three weeks touring Italy with Baldwin.