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Disclaimer and thanks are in the prologue.

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Chapter 1
July 9, 2008 (three weeks earlier)
FBI Field Office, Los Angeles

"Hey, David, what's the word on the Nicholson case?" Don called over his shoulder.

"Almost wrapped up, Don. A couple more forms to fill out and we can file it away."

He shifted the coffee stirrer in his mouth. "Okay, sounds good. Liz dump that on you?"

"We, uh, had a bet of sorts. I guess you could say I lost." David didn't look up from the paperwork he was filling out, his voice indicating that he didn't want to go into further detail.

On another occasion, Don would have teased and pried until he got an answer out of the younger man, but they were all stretched a little too tight right now. The Nicholson kidnapping represented their first successful case as a newly-constituted team of four, Liz rounding out the group since Megan's departure. He would like to think it hadn't taken them any longer than it would have if Charlie was around, but he couldn't be sure of that.

He sucked a little on the coffee stirrer and turned back to his own workstation. They had only two active cases right now: either good fortune or an indication that the powers that be were still wary of assigning too much responsibility to a team tainted by association with someone accused of passing information to enemy agents. He let out a sigh and took the white plastic out of his mouth, dropping it in the trash before taking a gulp of coffee.

"Hey, Don, you got a minute?" It was Colby, approaching from the far end of the bullpen.

He rotated in his chair. "Yeah, what is it?"

Colby dropped into the chair at Liz's desk, a manila folder in his hands. "This just came in from upstairs; they wanted you to take a look because your name's on it."

He frowned and reached for the folder. "How so?"

"Looks like you were the agent in charge a long, long time ago."

Apparently Colby didn't have the same qualms about giving a verbal elbow to the ribs. Don shot him a mock glare as he plucked the folder from his hand. "I haven't exactly been an agent for a 'long, long time', much less agent in charge."

But then he opened the folder. And drew in a sharp breath that instantly caught the attention of both of his teammates.

"What is it?" David asked, turning around at his desk.

Don looked at the pencil sketch clipped to the top sheet. "Shaun Gillis," he said quietly. "Man, that's a name from the past."

Colby nodded at the folder. "Says you were in charge from the mid-nineties. That was right when you started with the FBI, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," he answered almost absentmindedly. That was, what, twelve -- no, thirteen years ago. He shook his head. It still stuck out in his mind like it was yesterday.

"Colby, I've got more on the Long Beach shooting." Liz was walking up to them with a few sheets of paper in her hand.

"What shooting?" Don looked up at her, confused.

She nodded at the folder. "An Anton Levski was found dead near the port early this morning. Fingerprints on the scene match this Gillis guy."

Don instantly tensed. "Single shot to the forehead? A .22?"

Liz looked down at the papers she held. "Yes on the first, unknown on the second."

"Damn." He rubbed a hand over his face, scratching at the day's worth of stubble along his jaw. "He's here. He's right here, in L.A." He started mentally rearranging their workload: the two open cases had already waited a week while they restored a six-year-old to his parents; they could wait another few days.

Liz had crossed her arms across her chest and was looking pointedly at Colby. He gave a sheepish grin and rose from her seat, only to perch on the edge of her desk as she sat down. "How well do you know this guy, Don?" he asked.

"Well enough to know that if we don't move fast, we're not going to get him." He flipped quickly through the folder, looking for a key piece of information. "Here we go." He handed the sheet to Colby along with a copy of the sketch. "He's got a couple of aliases. Check the airport, trains, car rental agencies, everything. Fax this picture around and let them know he's armed and extremely dangerous. They should not try to stop him from leaving, but notify us right away."

"Got it." Colby hopped off the desk and headed for his own workspace, suddenly all business.

"Liz, I'm going to need everything there is on the victim. Levski, you said?" When she nodded, he went on, "Age, address, employment, anything that might explain why a professional killer would be after him."

"A .22 seems an odd choice for a contract killer," David put in. "It's not exactly the most powerful kind of ammo."

"No, but it makes it more of a challenge for him; he has to get close enough that accuracy and firepower aren't an issue. Trust me, he's that good," Don replied.

"Give me a break," Liz responded. "If he was that good, he wouldn't be leaving fingerprints." It was funny that now that Liz was working with them again, she was noticeably less deferential than she had been when they were involved. He hadn't decided yet if he liked that or not.

He shook his head. "It's kind of like rubbing our faces in it. This guy has gotten away too many times and he's full of himself because of it. I think it's like a signature or a calling card at this point, showing how good he is that he can leave evidence and we still can't track him down." Megan could confirm that, he added in his head, but he didn't need to say it out loud. His teammates were all painfully aware that there was a hole in their midst right now and pointing it out wasn't going to help matters. Getting another behaviorist in would help, but he didn't have time for that right now. Not while he was closer than he'd been in years to nailing this bastard.

"You've been after him a long time?" David asked.

"A damn long time," he replied. He stared at the sketch in the file for a moment, seeing not a pencil drawing but a narrow alleyway and a terrified young agent encountering a professional killer for the first time. Then he realized he was holding his breath. He let out a deep sigh and deliberately looked away.

Funny how quickly old emotions could be stirred up after all these years.

"When did you take on the case?" Liz was typing briskly on her keyboard, but she could still multitask.

"Really early on. 'Course, it wasn't much of a case then. Only three murders." He flipped through the file again, looking more closely. Now there were seven deaths, besides this morning's victim, that matched Gillis's weapon and fingerprints. The latest was in 2006. He tried to remember the sequence of events, the last time he'd seen this man face to face. "Thing is, I almost had him in Minneapolis. I guess it put the fear of God into him and he started being more careful." He looked up for a moment as a thought struck him. "How'd this end up coming back to me, anyway?"

"Ask him." Liz jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Colby, who was busy making phone calls.

He briefly looked over at the sandy-haired agent. Not that it really mattered, anyway. He'd been given a chance here to fix a mistake he'd made years ago, one that had apparently cost the lives of four people in the interim. No, scratch that -- five. He sighed. Well, one thing was for sure: he wasn't going to screw it up this time. Shaun Gillis was going to be in custody before the week was out if he had anything to say about it.

"David, finish that up later," he said, rising from his seat and draining the last of his coffee. "We're going to Long Beach."

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July 29, 1995
(thirteen years earlier)
East Boston, MA

"Whaddya got, Eppes?"

Don looked up at the short, heavyset man entering the garage. "Agent Boswell. It's, uh, one shot to the forehead. Looks professional."

"And what makes you say that?" Pat Boswell came forward and stood next to him, looking down at the dead man sprawled on the cement floor.

"Well, it's a clean shot. No obvious signs of a struggle, so it was probably quick. The victim, um, Mr. Carlos Depina, works here at the body shop, and according to the records in the office here, he would have been alone last night."

"Is there a time of death?"

Don flipped back through his notes. "The coroner's initial estimate was 11 P.M., but they'll have more details once they do the autopsy."

Boswell grunted. "You see anything missing, Eppes?"

Just the weapon and the suspect, he wanted to say, but kept his wisecracks to himself. No sense ticking off his boss and partner after only a few weeks on the job. "I'm not sure I know what you mean, sir."

"This is a body shop. So what was he working on? Where's the cah?"

Don almost asked, "The what?" but caught himself. His supervisor's strong Boston accent kept throwing him for a loop. They talked like perfectly normal people here, except for when the letter R simply disappeared from their words. "I don't know. Maybe he was cleaning up last night."

"Anything else?"

"Actually, yes, there is. I, uh, was looking over some of those old case files that you put on my desk and something here reminds me of one of them."

"Eppes, I gave you those to file away, not to spend hours working on. Most of them are pretty cold."

"Well, okay, but there was this one from Hartford, two years ago. Single shot to the forehead, just like this."

"Guys get shot in the forehead all the time." The word came out more like "foah-head," but the context made it easier to understand.

"I'm not sure I can put my finger on it, but there were some notes in the Hartford file that indicated you had already made a connection to an unsolved case in Baltimore. I wasn't sure why, since the victims had nothing in common, but the MO was the same. And it's the same as this one."

"Yeah, I remember that case. Found out later he owed a whole bucketload of money to some guys at Pimlico and figured they'd had enough of his stalling. Big black guy, shot outside his downtown condo. A buddy of mine sent it up here when he heard about the one in Hahtford, thought it might be related."

"Well, then, that's one commonality in the victims," Don said, looking down at the dark-skinned man who lay dead on the floor.

"Not really. This guy's Cape Verdean, not African-American." At Don's puzzled look, he went on, "Little bunch of islands off the coast of Africa. They used to work on the whaling ships back in Colonial times. There's still a big immigrant community today, including the gangs from home."

"So you think that's what this is? Gang violence?" East Boston was known to have a few rough spots, but the neat bullet hole in Depina's forehead didn't fit that pattern.

"No, I agree with you. It's a professional hit. I even agree there might be a connection to the other two. But you're going to have to do some digging to prove it."

Don nodded absentmindedly, nibbling on his lower lip as he tried to remember the details of the other two cases. There had been a suspect in Hartford, but a round of questioning hadn't yielded anything useful. Maybe if he went back and looked up that guy, he could trace him here to Boston. And if he looked over the files more closely, it would help him to know what to look for on this case.

If they were related. He didn't know why he felt so strongly that they were, but it was a good hunch. And he'd learned in his training at Quantico that his hunches were right more often than not. More often than anyone else's except --

He cut off that train of thought before it could go any farther. No use dwelling on what was past. "The medical examiner's office said they're ready when we are. I'd like to get back to the office and start looking at those files, if you don't mind."

Boswell regarded him for a moment, then shook his head. "Ah, the energy of youth." He clapped a hand to Don's shoulder. "I'll see you back at the office, Eppes."

Don nodded and left the garage, blinking as he came out into the sunlight. He fumbled in his pocket for his sunglasses, then realized he'd left them in his apartment. He'd gotten out of the habit of carrying them everywhere once he realized they weren't as necessary on the East Coast as in Los Angeles. Now that another cold, grey winter was past, he'd have to get back into the habit.

He climbed into his Corolla and paused, keys in the ignition. If this guy was from Cape Verde and was part of the immigrant community, how did he attract an enemy rich enough to hire a professional killer? What had he done to earn that kind of attention? Inter-gang violence often traveled across the ocean with migrants, but it usually stayed within the community. There was something strange about this case.

His mouth was set in a determined line. This was the kind of puzzle he had joined the FBI to solve. He was going to figure out who had killed Carlos Delpina and get him off the streets. And with any luck, he'd have it solved before the week was out.

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