The shrill chirp of his cell phone jarred him from his sleep and he snapped upright. “Jake Cole,” he said reflexively. His leather jacket was still on and he felt like his head was filled with hot soot. It was dark out and he checked his watch. Eleven thirteen.

“Special Agent Jake Cole?”

He took a deep breath and uh-huhed. Scratched the chunk of scar tissue at the base of his scalp.

“This is Sheriff Mike Hauser, Southampton SD. Got your number from the New York bureau office. Sorry to call at this hour but I got a problem and for some reason you’re five miles from where I need you.” The tone and word choice told Jake a lot about the man at the other end. Trim. Fifty. Flat-top. Sig Sauer P226 for a sidearm. American flag pin on his lapel. Ex-jock.

There was a pause and Jake realized that he was supposed to tell Sheriff Hauser that it was fine that he had called. That sure, he would listen. That, yessir, he was there to help. He reached under the cushion and slid the heavy revolver out. He checked the cylinder—a habit he had learned a long time ago—and tucked it into the pressure holster on his belt. All he said was, “How’d they die?”

The pause dragged out a little longer, and Jake recognized the pregnant silence of a man trying to build up courage. This silence told Jake a lot more about him. Hauser swallowed audibly, then said, “They were skinned.”

And the little current of emotion that he had refused to acknowledge a few hours ago came to the front of everything, blocking out the ocean and the moon beyond. It froze in his head and his blood pressure surged in one electromagnetic pulse that rattled his gray matter.

That old motherfucker fear was coming out to play.

3

Jacob Coleridge Jr.—now Jake Cole—downshifted from fourth gear into third and hit the gas. The 426 Hemi growled as the legion of water-cooled ponies dug into the asphalt and the ’68 Charger screeched through the corner, launching his pack of cigarettes across the dashboard. As he cleared the apex of the curve, the lights swung out over the shoulder and lit up one of the drift fences stretched across the beach that bordered the highway. There was a bright blue strobe of fence and sand and a brief glimpse of the Atlantic beyond, then the long expanse of his hood was through the corner and he was barreling up 27, almost due east, on his way to see the dead.

It was a weeknight and there was no traffic on the Montauk Highway. The gentle slalom of road brought Jake back to his sixteenth summer, driving up to Billy Spencer’s place in Billy’s ancient Corvette after their shift at the Montauk Yacht Club, pockets filled with two- and three-dollar tips that added up to just enough money to last the weekend. They’d rip up the coast with the torn canvas top folded down, listening to The Clash and smoking weed.

The windows were open and the cool night air buffeted the cabin. The wind that had been chopping up the surf had died down and all that was left was a strong thrum of air that pulsed along the coast like a heartbeat, pumping fresh air in from the ocean. Something metal in the back seat clinked rhythmically, probably the buckle on Jeremy’s baby seat, but the sound was muted by the static of the moment.

Jake was trying to get into character. He did this every time he went to work—every time, in fact, he was forced to face the dead, the mutilated, and the dishonored that made up his clientele.

It was an armoring process, only it was internal. Unlike most of the men he worked with in the bureau, the immediate threat was not to his body. As the first man on the scene of some of the most violent murders on the planet, Jake was continually at risk of being damaged by flak from the bloody human sculpture he decoded. Instead of a Kevlar vest and a riot helmet, he protected himself with a carefully tailored personality shield positioned to prevent the soft parts of his psyche from being damaged. Before Jake walked onto a murder scene, he wrapped parts of himself up and put them away in a secure area of his mind so they wouldn’t be part of a process that both repulsed and fascinated him. And when it was over, when he walked out of work, he was able to function without tension rot getting to him. At least that was the theory.

Lately, getting into the zone took a little force, and tonight the switch-line in his head that he depended on to let him go from a full stop to a full go seemed to be misfiring. With anyone else he would have understood it. Empathized with it. But he didn’t allow these things for himself. He couldn’t. He resented the image of his father, sedated in his hospital bed, contaminating his thoughts; he needed that space right now.

When he thought about it, it wasn’t just his father—it was the entire act of being here. Being back here. Stepping into the house. Seeing that goddamned cracked ashtray with the glued bit still sitting on the floor. Stepping over and around those grim little canvases that a once-great painter had scabbed together during a redline descent into madness. Smelling the ocean. Driving the Montauk Highway. Thinking about Spencer and the old Corvette. The sod in the fridge. The algae-infested pool. All of it.

Jake took a breath and pushed the extra mental inventory aside and concentrated on getting into the zone. He focused on his driving, on the road opening up in the bright glare of the headlights, and on keeping the car between the lines on the pavement. He punched the gas, double-clutched up into fourth, and felt a batch of mice let loose in his stomach as the car crested a small hill on the road that wove up the coast like a black serpent. His body strained against the seat belt as the Dodge peaked, then dropped down into a trough on the snake’s back, pushing him into the leather. He hammered down on the gas and the car lurched forward in a high-pitched wail that converted petroleum into momentum.

A few minutes later he spotted the Christmas-tree pulse of emergency lights up ahead, off the road and partially obscured by the dark teeth of tree trunks. He didn’t ease off the gas until he was a hundred yards from the gate, then rapidly downshifted from fourth to second. He hit the brakes and fishtailed into the entrance, the seat belt digging into his hips, the Hemi angry at the loss of juice to its heart.

Two imposing stone pillars that supported massive wrought-iron gates flanked the driveway. A pair of Southampton black-and-whites guarded the opening, a visual opera of sharp red, white, and blue flashes. Jake swung the Charger through the gate and stopped short as one of the uniformed officers scrambled up to his window, a Maglite hanging loosely from his hand.

Knowing cop protocol, he didn’t bother to look up—an eyeful of flashlight beam could set off one of his headaches.

“You Special Agent Cole?” the unseen officer shimmering at the edge of his peripheral vision asked and Jake’s software pulled up an image to go with the voice. When the beam of the flashlight was off his face he looked up.

“Spencer?” he said, and felt the corners of his mouth curl up with the closest thing to a smile he was capable of when on the job.

The cop took a step back and the flat expression on his face evened out into a question mark that flashed in the cruiser lights. “It’s Officer William Spencer.” And with his last name, the tone dropped off as he recognized Jake in the pulsing blue and red.

“Jakey? What the actual fuck!” The cop’s face switched to smile mode and it was a lot friendlier, even in the alternating Christmas glimmer of the roof rack. His eyes slid over Jake and his mouth managed a pretty good smile, which even after all this time surprised Jake because he had knocked half of it out back in second grade. Spencer swung the flashlight in the car, then over the baby seat in the back.