Lover Beware

Killer, Zodiac, Twin Cities, the Colonial Parkway Killer.”
    They remained silent for a moment, each watching the cars crawl along the street, then Jerry looked at her in that way he had of staring right into her psyche. He reached out and took her hand.
    “What the hell is going on with you, Anna?”
    Feeling his fingers close around her hand, tightly, so tightly she almost flinched, she looked up at the moon before responding. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m here to do a job, and I’m attempting to do it. I simply don’t have the desire, or the time, to get emotionally involved—”
    “That’s not what I mean.” He tucked her hand in his lap, then reached for her face, forcing her to look into his eyes, his own staring hard, narrowed like two hard cold blue stones.
    “When I picked up your message for me at the St. Louis, you had another message. A Dr. Jeff Montgomery. I know the name, Anna.”
    Heat rushed to her face and she attempted to tug her hand away. He wouldn’t allow it.
    “Montgomery once worked for the CIA’s Stargate unit. Parapsychology stuff. ESP and psychic investigations. I want the truth out of you. All of it. You owe me that. This is my goddamn case and my neck is on the line and I want to know what the hell I’m dealing with.”
    “Then speak to Dr. Montgomery,” she said, annoyed. “I have my orders to keep my mouth shut.”
    “I already did.”
    She blinked, felt her heartbeat accelerate and her body begin to sweat again. “You’re lying.”
    “PID, Special Division. Classified. You’ve been trained—or brainwashed into believing—that what you do is some psychic bullcrap.”
    “And you don’t believe in psychic bullcrap. Not Jerry Costos. Just the facts, ma’am.”
    His grip on her hand turned more gentle, but his gaze continued to hold hers. “Maybe. Maybe not. Even during our relationship, there were times when I recognized there was more going on in your head than you were willing to admit. There was buzz about you from the field agents after the California Interstate Killer case. Billy Cowan, a San Jacinto, California, truck driver who liked to pick up teenage hitchhikers to rape and mutilate, leaving their bodies along the freeways of Southern California. You rescued his next victim—the daughter of the Los Angeles mayor, Ralph Lasley. Sheila Lasley and her friend Michelle had hitched a ride with the infamous killer. Michelle had escaped. You reached the young woman as she clung to life, too near death to pass on information to the authorities. But somehow, without her muttering a word, you got the description of the killer, the interior of the truck, and the cubbyhole in which he hid his victims until he found the time to kill them. Thanks to you, Sheila Lasley was located—tied and gagged, but alive—in the truck parked at a truck stop on the California-Mexico border.
    “Shortly after that, you disappeared from the field. I assume that’s when you went underground into the PID. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine that this Dr. Montgomery, formerly of Stargate, had something to do with it.”
    Raising one dark eyebrow, he continued. “When I came up behind you at the Cox crime scene, you were humming ‘Happy Birthday.’ It just so happens that Bobbie’s mother’s birthday was the day after she was killed. Now I want the truth out of you. All of it. Anything you tell me will continue to be classified information. You know me well enough to know that I’ve got your back, Anna.”
    Anna remained silent, focused now on the hazy moon overhead that was fast becoming diluted by the fog that was crawling over the city, diffusing the light of the street lamps. She had lived the last years in total secrecy—alone in a world where the slightest slip of the tongue could jeopardize the PID Division. If she must confide, she knew Jerry Costos would keep the information at the cost of his job…and his life.
    She took a deep breath, and her confession trembled. “Leave it to you to dig up the dirt even on the FBI. You realize that if you breathe a word of this to anyone, the government will come down on you like a jackhammer.”
    “I understand. Anna, I just want to help.”
    Anna nodded. “Okay. I’m a PID special agent. I don’t work the BSU Profiler Division by sitting on my ass in a cramped office punching computers and paralleling previous serial cases, victims, and perps. I leave that to others, VICAP, et cetera. To do my