Silent Storm. Amanda Stevens

      “Deacon?”

      He gritted his teeth and glanced away. “Yeah, I’m still here. I’m at the scene now.”

      “Is it…a suicide?”

      “There’s suicide and there’s suicide,” he said.

      “Yes, I know.” Deacon could picture her seated behind her computer, dark hair pulled back and fastened primly at her nape as she scowled at her screen. Her full lips would be pursed in concentration, her violet eyes shadowed with a grief that had only deepened in the months since her son’s death. “Do you have any leads?”

      “Nothing concrete. I have a couple of names I’d like you to run through the usual databases, though. I don’t expect anything to turn up, but you never know. The first one is Tony Navarro. He’s the chief of police down here.”

      “Any particular reason you’re interested in him?”

      Deacon’s gaze went back to the couple on the porch. “Just a gut instinct.”

      “You really think the chief of police could be one of them?” Camille persisted. She must have sensed something in his voice. Sometimes her instincts were uncanny.

      “One of us, you mean?” Deacon countered.

      She hesitated. “You know I don’t think of you that way. Besides, not everyone who went through Montauk was or is a killer. Some of the men have even gone back to their normal lives.”

      “Yeah,” Deacon said. “And some of them are in psychiatric wards. Some of them are living on the streets.” And some of them had continued to kill.

      “You said there were two names,” Camille prompted.

      “The other is Sam Jessop. I haven’t met him yet, but from everything I’ve learned, he matches the profile. He was in the army, and he comes from a military family.”

      “Okay. I’ll check them out and get back to you. Anything else?”

      “There’s an abandoned army base not far from here. See what you can dig up about it.”

      He heard her catch her breath. “You don’t think it was part of Montauk, do you?”

      “We know they expanded the operation,” Deacon said. “And we’ve never discovered the other locations. It’s worth checking out.”

      “That should keep me busy for a day or two,” Camille said. “In the meantime, keep in touch, okay? Grandfather worries about you. So do I,” she added reluctantly.

      Deacon’s features tightened. “I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t deserve it.”

      Camille sighed. “You’re never going to get past it, are you?”

      A muscle began to pulse in Deacon’s jaw. “Get past who I am? What I did?”

      “You were following orders,” Camille said. “You were programmed to—”

      “Kill people.”

      “You don’t know that for sure.”

      “Face it, Camille. Just because I can’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I was an assassin. You don’t move on from something like that. There’s no redemption for what I did.”

      “There might be,” she said softly. “If you could somehow find it in your heart to forgive yourself.”