At Becker’s direction, all of us, as well as the agents, fanned out so they could take in what I was sure the papers would call a horrific tableau. They liked saying shit like that.
“This is new,” Ian said to no one in particular, scanning what was clearly a presentation before pointing to the words For Miro done in beautiful flowing cursive. “What is that?”
“Paint,” Adair answered with a cough. “Like I said, the only blood in here is on the front window.”
“So where do we think their blood is?” Ian continued.
“We have a—oh, here,” Adair said quickly before gesturing to the other side of the room, where a man stood surrounded by several others. It looked like a trench coat convention. “Kelson! Here!”
I expected him to be talking to one of the older men, but a younger one I hadn’t noticed stepped out from the circle and strode, almost strutted, across the room, followed closely by two others.
“This is our behavioral profiler, Kol Kelson, from Langley.”
Kelson had to be older than he looked because, if I had to go on a guess, I would have said twenty-three, twenty-five tops. He was about five nine, thin, with lean muscles, golden-brown skin, delicate features, and honey-colored eyes. He was easily one of the prettiest men I’d ever met in my life.
“Oh, Marshal Jones,” he said reverently, rushing forward, hand out, eyes wide, staring at me like I held the secrets to the universe. “I wish we could have met under better circumstances, but really, it’s a pleasure.”
“Likewise,” I muttered, shaking his hand as he put his other over the clasp.
It was eerie. I felt strange, like the air in the room was slowly being sucked out, and I was starting to have that prickling, uneasy feeling where my clothes felt too tight and my skin started to itch, and there was a cramp in the back of my neck.
“What do you think of your love letter?” he tossed out nonchalantly, almost arrogantly.
“I’m sorry?” I snapped, pulling back my hand, glaring at him because these were men he was talking about, people who were now dead, and his callous disregard made me want to punch him in his smug elfin face.
“Did you not tell him?” Kelson asked, squinting at Adair.
“No, I-I thought you would want to.”
Kelson’s face brightened. “Thank you, that was thoughtful.”
He made me uncomfortable. I felt that quirk of something I didn’t like. Kelson was… off somehow. His reactions didn’t match what was happening. He should have been horrified like the rest of us, sickened, but instead he was enthralled. And I wasn’t stupid; I knew people processed trauma differently. At her grandmother’s funeral, Catherine could not stop laughing until I finally took her out of the synagogue to the car, where she dissolved into a deluge of tears. But this wasn’t that. This was Kelson hopped up on adrenaline, and I had to figure out why.
After taking hold of my bicep, he walked me closer to the three bodies, letting go once we were within touching distance of the wall.
The three panels were arranged as a trifold, like those pieces of posterboard kids bought to stick their projects to when they presented them to the class. Each man hung on a separate moveable wall.
The man on the left was turned on his side, facing the middle, stuck to the wall with what looked to me like fishing line, posed as though he were running and throwing roses in the air. Each petal was glued down, and a small mound of petals lay on the floor in front of the wall. The man on the right had his left hand on his chest, and in his right, he held out a bouquet of roses. Another mound of petals on the floor. The man in the middle faced front, holding a human heart, presumably his, in his cupped hands, along with several roses, as though offering it to whoever was standing in front of him. It was horrifying and stunning at the same time.
“Jesus,” Ian said, his breath rushing out as he stopped beside me, his hand on the small of my back, not caring who might see him touching me.
“Marshal Jones.” Kelson almost sang my name.
“Do we—” I coughed. “—know who these men are?”
“Yes,” Kelson said, “and that’s why Hartley dedicating them to you is interesting.”
I waited, irritated he wasn’t just telling me, instead making it more dramatic than it needed to be.
“These are three of the FBI’s Most Wanted.”
“Are you kidding?”
He shook his head. “No. And from what the forensic team has been able to determine already, one of them has been dead for a month, and the other two between one and two weeks.”
“So he hunted these guys down and killed them.”
“Yes.”
I stared at the dead men because this was getting further and further from anything Hartley had ever done in his life.