Johnny Unitas looked like a miniature leopard as he glared at the captain from two inches away. He meowed again, a high-pitched roar.

  “Okay, okay,” Davis said, pushing the cat off his chest. “I’m awake.”

  He tried to sit up. His stomach lurched and soured. His head felt like it had indeed exploded.

  The pain turned throbbing and searing. Captain Davis flopped back, panting, disgusted to find his pillowcase clammy and sweat-soaked. His eyes felt like they’d been parboiled. What the hell did I do to myself this time? I hope I didn’t get behind the wheel.

  Meow, Johnny Unitas protested. Meow. Meow.

  The cat’s aggressive voice felt like a saw going in one ear and out the other. Davis pushed off the blankets and sat upright.

  He immediately regretted that. The turbulence in his gut turned violent.

  Davis lurched to his feet, threw his hand out against the wall to steady himself, then took hurried and wobbly steps across the large master bedroom into a well-appointed bathroom. There he went to his knees and defiled the porcelain throne. The retching went on so long and the aftertaste was so vile he thought that he must have been poisoned.

  What the hell did I eat last night? Captain Davis wondered as the dry heaves faded.

  Meow. Meow. Meow!

  He shut the bathroom door to keep the cat out and managed to get up off his knees and over to the counter, which he held on to with trembling hands. Davis forced himself to raise his head and look in the mirror.

  The captain was forty-eight, but that morning he looked like he was pushing sixty. Though his body had retained some semblance of his old athletic form, his hair was thinning and going gray. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, his skin sallow and waxen.

  What did you do to yourself, dude?

  Davis tried to recall the previous night and simply couldn’t. He remembered going up the steps and entering Bowman’s, his favorite sports bar, around noon, but nothing beyond that. A total blackout.

  The captain filled the sink with cold water and plunged his face into it. That woke him for good. He knocked back four Motrin and two Tylenol and chased them down with two glasses of water, then donned a Baltimore Ravens bathrobe and opened the bathroom door.

  Johnny Unitas was pacing in circles.

  “What’s the matter? I left food for you yesterday. I know I did.”

  The cat trotted out of the large master bedroom into the hallway. Davis was about to follow him when he happened to look over at his clock radio, which informed him that the time was 9:45 a.m. and the day of the week was Tuesday.

  “Tuesday?” he muttered. He ignored the cat’s whines and looked around for his phone. Not seeing it, he picked up a pair of jeans from the floor and rifled through the pockets—empty.

  Then he spotted a tan workman’s coverall and a Ravens hoodie crumpled on a chair in a corner. Davis liked to tinker with cars and had coveralls like that, but his were blue. And he had several Baltimore Ravens sweatshirts and hoodies, but that wasn’t one of them.

  And yet when Davis reached into the pocket of the tan coverall, he found his phone, the battery dead. And his wallet and car keys were in the hoodie’s pouch.

  Meow!

  The captain grabbed his charger from beside the bed, went into the hallway, and padded its long length toward Johnny Unitas, coiled at the top of the stairs and ready to bound down. Davis passed three closed doors, acutely and devastatingly aware of how empty his large house was. If he let loose a yell, he was sure it would echo. But the thought of raising his voice made him shudder. He held tight to the banister and went down the stairs to a beautiful foyer with blue-gray slate tiles that always reminded him of Jenna’s eyes.

  The gauzy image of her had barely begun to form in his sodden brain when the cat meowed and loped away. Davis shook off the memories and followed the cat through a formal dining room into a gourmet kitchen that was neatly arranged—no dishes in the sink, no pots on the red Aga stove. When he looked into the short hallway to the laundry and utility room, he saw Johnny Unitas sitting next to two empty bowls. No food. No water.

  “I’m so sorry, Johnny,” he said, feeling guilty; he snatched up the bowls and hurried back into the kitchen with them. “You know that Daddy is Johnny’s best friend. Yes, he is.”

  The cat wound through his legs, purring, as Davis poured fresh water and set it down. Johnny lapped it up while the captain got him dry food and a can of tuna.

  As the cat gorged himself, Davis started the espresso machine. He made himself a triple shot, carried it to the kitchen table, and sat down. On the wall across from him were three picture frames. Two were empty; the third held a photo of a much younger Captain Davis wearing a flight suit and standing beside a U.S. Air Force F-14 Tomcat.

  Waiting for the coffee to cool, he avoided looking at the empty frames and instead stared at his younger, brasher, more confident self, wondering where that man had gone.

  “It’s Tuesday, Captain Davis,” he whispered hoarsely. “Where in God’s name have you been the past two days?”

  Chapter

  13

  My cell phone buzzed and hummed, dragging me from a deep, dark, delicious sleep remarkably free of the nightmare scenes at Reagan National. I cracked my eyes open and looked at the clock radio.

  It was 10:10 a.m.

  The phone went silent. I shut my eyes and was just starting to drift off when it began to buzz again; it vibrated off the end table and landed with a crack on the floor.

  Now it was 10:12 a.m.

  Not even four hours of sleep? This is gonna hurt.

  I hated when my life got like this, when I had to fight to find scattered bouts of real sleep amid multiple cat naps. But that was the nature of working big cases like the shooting down of American Flight 839.

  Your life was not your own. Your life was spent in service to the dead.

  The cell began to vibrate a third time. I leaned over and snatched it up, figuring I’d see Ned Mahoney’s name on the caller ID.

  It was John Sampson.

  “We’ve got another Dead Hours corpse. Found about forty-five minutes ago in Marlow Heights.”

  “Out of the District,” I said.

  “Maryland state troopers have already asked us in.”

  “They’re sure it’s our guy?”

  “Same MO. Sheet and all.”

  “Text me the address,” I said.

  “ASAP. I’ll grab you in fifteen and drop Willow with Jannie and Nana.”

  I dressed as fast as I could, given that I was still recovering from a chest wound. I heard my cell phone ding with a text, glanced at it, and saw an address on Olson Street in Marlow Heights, which surprised me. I got on my shoulder harness and holster, then tugged on a jacket.

  Up to that point, the victims had all been found in and around DC in densely populated inner-city areas with, for the most part, lower-income residents. But Olson Street in Marlow Heights was deep in the heart of suburbia.

  Why break the inner-city pattern at death number five?

  And why kill again so soon?

  The first four killings had all been at least a month apart. The body of Trey O’Dell had been found a little more than twenty-four hours ago.

  Over the years, I’d worked my share of serial-killer investigations, and when we saw dramatic decreases in the length of time between slayings, it often meant the murderer was going out of control. That tended to result in even more victims.

  But it also meant the killer was ripe to make a mistake.

  That thought had me fully awake as I left my bedroom and pounded down the stairs. I found Ali, my almost-eleven-year-old, and Jannie, eighteen, in the front room working on their laptops. Ali’s school was closed this week for teacher conferences. Though Jannie had a dorm room at Howard University, she liked to come home to study before big tests. Ali was engrossed in a math lesson, and Jannie sat with her laptop in one of the overstuffed chairs and sighed when she saw me. She’d been doing that a lot lately.

  “Dad, I have to study, and Uncle John texted me that—” she began.

  “We need your help and he’s bringing Willow,” I said. Willow’s school was closed this week too. “There’s been another Dead Hours killing. I’ve got to eat and get out of here in four minutes.”

  “Really?” Ali said. “Another one so soon, Dad? That’s not good.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said and headed to the kitchen.

  Nana Mama was reading in the great room but she struggled to her feet when I came rushing in. “You need breakfast, Alex. I’ll make you some eggs.”

  “Thanks, but no time, Nana,” I said. “I’ll just grab coffee.”

  “You and Bree have to learn to eat right!” she scolded.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, pouring the coffee into a go mug and snapping the lid in place. “Love you. Willow’s coming over.”

  “I figured as much,” she said as I went back to the front room.

  “Dad?” Ali said.

  Outside, Sampson honked. “Come help, Jannie,” I said.

  Irritated, she put down her laptop. “I don’t even have time to study anymore. It’s like I’m a full-time babysitter.”

  “Willow has to do homework too,” I said.

  “Lot of chatter when she does it,” Jannie said, getting up and following me to the front door. Sampson was coming up the porch stairs with his young daughter, who was wearing a puffy coat against the cold and had a knapsack strapped tight to her back.

  “Hi, Jannie!” Willow said, throwing her arms up as if seeing my daughter was the greatest thing in life. “I’m back again!”

  Jannie couldn’t help but smile. “C’mon, we’ll get you set up in the dining room.”

  “You can call me if you need me, Jannie,” Sampson said.

  Jannie sighed and nodded. “She’ll be fine, Uncle John. Go on. You too, Dad.”

  Chapter

  14

  Ali looked up from his math homework when Jannie came back in with Willow.

  “Hi, Ali,” Willow said, grinning.

  “Hey, Willow,” Ali said and went back to his laptop.

  Nana Mama came in. “Want some juice and peanut butter toast, young lady?”

  “Yes, please,” Willow said, and she followed Jannie into the dining room.

  “Nana?” Jannie said. “Why would Uncle John text me an address in Marlow Heights?”

  “I have no idea,” Nana said.

  Ali got up and went over to her. “Can I see?”

  “Why?” Jannie said.

  “Because he may have texted a group of people accidentally, including you.”

  She looked at the screen. “Yup, that’s it. Dad got it too.”

  “I need help, Jannie,” Willow said, struggling to get her school bag off.

  Jannie set her phone down on the table and turned to help Sampson’s daughter. Ali looked at the screen of his sister’s phone before it went blank.

  “Boy, that is tight,” Jannie said.

  “Unzip her coat,” Ali said, walking toward the kitchen. “That will help.”

  He heard a zipper unzipping and then Willow laughing. “That worked!”

  “Always does,” Ali said. “You should know that. Basic second-grade skill.”

  Willow giggled.

  “Nana,” Ali said when he reached the kitchen. “I’m going to go out for a bike ride.”

  “What about math?”

  “I finished.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of hours. I wanted to stop at Lonnie’s house at some point to go over the English homework.”

  “Have your phone with you,” she said.

  “Promise,” Ali said. He got his jacket and cap from the front hall and went out the back door, then he got his bike from the shed and rode down the alley. He stopped out of sight of his house and locked the bike to a chain-link fence.

  As he walked away, Ali called up the Uber app on his phone and entered the address in Marlow Heights. It wasn’t that far. He’d be there in twenty minutes, tops.

  I’ll slip in, take a look around. Get a feel for the crime scene. Slip back out.

  Chapter

  15

  Across the Potomac in Alexandria, Bree Stone made Elena Martin and Jill Jackson put on blue paper booties, head coverings, and latex gloves before they entered the apartment Leigh Anne Asher was staying in while her Rosslyn apartment was renovated.

  “I don’t know why we’re wasting time here,” her boss complained as she put on the blue head covering. “I told you, I’ve already been through the place.”

  “I have too,” Asher’s personal assistant said.

  “But I haven’t,” Bree said. “So humor me, and if anything is going to be disturbed, let me be the one disturbing it. If this is a crime scene, we don’t want to contaminate it any more than it already is.”

  She stood aside as Elena used her electronic key to open the missing entrepreneur’s flat. It had none of the raw grandeur of the apartment under renovation in Rosslyn. In fact, the place struck Bree as surprisingly ordinary despite the building’s tony address. The furniture looked rented. There were very few personal objects to make it homey.

  “I get the idea Leigh Anne wasn’t here a lot,” Bree said.

  “She lived at the office and on the road,” Jackson said.

  “Start calling every hospital in the area,” Bree said. “See if she or someone fitting her description has been admitted since Friday.”

  Then she started methodically going through the apartment, beginning with Asher’s bedroom. In one closet, Bree found a business suit and a dress. The rest of the clothes were jeans and white button-down shirts. Even her shoe collection was limited. The other closet held a stack of moving boxes and several large pieces of high-end luggage.

  “Something missing?” Bree asked Jackson. “Her overnight bag?”

  Asher’s assistant’s right hand traveled to her mouth. “I didn’t see that. You’re right. That is where she usually keeps it.”

  “Okay, then,” Bree said. “Something that supports the new-boyfriend angle. Or at least the idea that Leigh Anne left here with an overnight bag, heading somewhere specific.”

  “Rather than what?” Elena asked.

  “I don’t know. Rather than being abducted?”

  “Oh, dear God,” Jackson said. “Thanks for that.”

  “But it still doesn’t explain the radio silence,” Elena said.

  Bree nodded and crossed the hall to Asher’s home office. While the entrepreneur had skimped in the rest of her apartment, she’d spent freely on powerful Apple computers, cameras, speakers, and the kind of overhead microphone you’d see in a radio studio.

  “Does Leigh Anne use an iPhone?” Bree asked.

  Asher’s assistant nodded. “Yes, she’s got the latest one.”

  “You have the passwords to her computers?”

  Jackson looked over at Elena, who hesitated and then shrugged. The PA sat in Asher’s desk chair and typed something on the keyboard.

  The screen shifted to an image of a tropical scene.

  “That’s Fiji,” Elena said, distraught. “That’s where we were supposed to go!”

  “You may get there yet,” Bree said. “Pull up the Find My iPhone app.”

  “Oh, that’s a good idea,” Jill said. “I should have thought of that.”

  She called up the app and found that Asher had indeed linked her phone to it. But when Jackson tried to track it, it blinked for almost a minute before saying, Leigh Anne’s iPhone is inactive.

  Elena said, “Can it tell us when and where it was last active?”

  Bree said, “I don’t think so. We’ll have to contact the wireless carrier to do that. We’ll also need her credit card accounts to check on their most recent uses.”

  Asher’s assistant said, “I can help with that.”

  “Can you get me into her e-mail?” Bree asked. “Messaging system?”

  Again, Jackson and Elena Martin exchanged glances. Elena said, “Bree, we are working for Leigh Anne. She is our client. Are we clear?”

  It was clear as day to Bree: Elena was telling her she might see information in the e-mails and texts that was potentially damaging.

  They accessed her most recent messages and saw that Leigh Anne Asher had gotten many but hadn’t responded to any of them since noon on Friday. The texts from Friday morning, before the silence, seemed routine: reminders and questions going back and forth between the entrepreneur and the various people involved in the upcoming IPO of her company.

  “The e-mails?” Bree said.

  Jackson called up Asher’s Gmail account, which had nearly two hundred unread e-mails. Bree’s attention was caught by the subject line of several of them.

  She looked at her boss and then at the entrepreneur’s assistant, but they both avoided eye contact.

  “Leigh Anne Asher’s married?” Bree said. “Why didn’t either of you mention that?”

  Elena said, “I can explain.”

  Chapter

  16

  Olson Street bends northeast past the campus of Stoddert Middle School, which sits a little more than a mile as the crow flies from the southeast boundary of Southeast Washington, DC, where the previous Dead Hours murders had taken place.

  A crowd of people had gathered across the street from the chain-link fence at the south end of the middle-school campus, where the grounds narrowed considerably. Lacrosse and soccer goal cages were stored there.

  The field’s grass had been allowed to grow, making it almost impossible for anyone to see the corpse from the road. But as Sampson and I walked through the wet grass toward the yellow tape around the scene, we saw the body. It was covered in a white sheet and propped up in a sitting position against the school fence.

  At the head, two bright blossoms of blood had seeped through the sheet and dripped down the front; it looked like some macabre horror-film costume.