Second Honeymoon

Chapter 30

THE DO NOT DISTURB sign outside Sarah’s hotel room in Tallahassee hung there a little late the following morning. Let it be, let it be.

After sleeping in, she went for a four-mile run, returned for a long shower, and then happily ate the cheesiest of cheese omelets from room service, putting back all the calories she’d burned the previous day. Bacon and toast, too. Yum.

She watched barely a minute of CNN before flipping over to VH1 Classic to check out a few videos. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that.

Most of the songs she didn’t know—or even like—but that didn’t matter. She cranked up the volume anyway, even more so when they played the old Guns N’ Roses video for “November Rain.” She absolutely loved that song. It reminded her of her teenage years in Roanoke, Virginia. Back then, a girl either had a crush on the lead guitarist, Slash, or thought he was gross. Sarah was definitely one of those who had a crush.

As for the plan for the rest of the day, that was simple. There was no plan.

Maybe she’d go lie out by the pool, do a little reading. Sarah loved biographies and had been carrying around a biography of the cartoonist Charles Schulz, which she never seemed to have the time to start. Now she did.

A whole twenty-four hours, she figured.

This was her mental health day, long overdue, and while the aftermath of nabbing Travis Kingslip involved a mountain of paperwork, she had no intention of tackling any of it right away. Not a chance.

Tomorrow, Agent Brubaker would return to work at Quantico. Today, Sarah Brubaker was playing hooky.

And it felt positively fantastic. All the way up until she spread her towel on a chaise lounge by the pool, stretched out, and turned to page 1 of the Schulz biography.

That’s when her cell rang.

Oh, no. Please, no…

It wasn’t her personal phone. That she could’ve ignored. This was her satellite-encrypted work phone, property of the FBI.

On the other end was her boss, Dan Driesen, and he wasn’t calling just to say hi. He’d already sent his congratulatory e-mail for the Kingslip capture. This was something else.

“Sarah. Need you back here for a briefing,” he said. “Fast. Today.”

In person, Driesen was relatively easygoing and patient. On certain subjects—government bureaucracy, fly fishing, or classic cars, for instance—he could even talk your ear off.

But on the phone, he was like a talking telegram.

“Three homicides submitted to ViCAP from three different states,” he continued. “All pointing toward a lone serial killer on the move.”

ViCAP stood for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, the FBI’s national inventory of every violent crime committed in the United States.

“Over what time period are we talking?” asked Sarah.

“Two weeks.”

“That’s fast.”

“Superfast.”

“Three murders?”

“Yep.”

“Three different states?”

“So far,” said Driesen.

“What’s the connection?”

“The victims,” he answered. “They all have the same name. O’Hara. Damndest thing I’ve ever heard.”