Code Name: Grace (Jameson Force Security 6.5)

“Bloody hell,” Kynan mutters, raking his fingers through his hair. “Am I to assume your parents were his victims?”

I nod, looking down at my lap and noting my hands are clasped so tight my knuckles are white. While I can talk about the way Richard Katz killed in general, it becomes infinitely more difficult when it comes to my parents’ deaths.

Without lifting my gaze, I tell him the worst of it. “I was away at college—my senior year at Duke. I wasn’t supposed to come home until Thanksgiving, but I decided to come in the night before to surprise my parents the next morning. I planned to sneak in, get some sleep, and be awake before them with coffee waiting and get an early start on preparing the turkey.”

I take a breath, trying to ground myself. I’m sitting in Kynan’s office, and the chair under my butt is solid. I am not back in my parents’ house. That’s done, and this is just a straight recounting so Kynan understands why I need some time off.

Letting my breath out, I continue, but I do so by raising my face so I can look him in the eye. “I let myself in quietly through the front door. The alarm wasn’t on. I thought that was a little odd, but I didn’t really pay it much attention. Instead, I just locked the door and set it. I tiptoed down the hall to my room, and I was about to go in there when I heard something… strange. It came from my parents’ room.”

“You don’t have to—”

I hold up my hand again. Because yes, I have to. I can’t start a story like this and not finish. “Their door was open. By the glow of light coming out, I could tell maybe a bedside lamp was on. And that sound… it was rasping and repetitive. My curiosity made me go look.”

Kynan’s expression is tense, and he looks like he’s about to crawl out of his skin. I’ve felt that way myself. Honestly, years of therapy is the only reason I can talk about it now.

Clearing my throat, I say, “It was The Salt Slasher… His name is Richard Katz, but I didn’t know that then. In fact, I couldn’t even comprehend what I saw at the time, but both my parents were already dead. Both in bed, blood all over the place, with their throats slashed open by his knife. And I just watched in horror as he held a Morton salt canister as he loomed over my dad, steadily shaking it. That was the rasping sound I heard.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Kynan mutters.

Truer words were never spoken. I smile sympathetically because I can imagine how horrifying it is to hear this for the first time. “I don’t know what came over me. I could have screamed, fainted, or done something to call attention to myself. Instead, I quietly backed down the hall to the front door. He was never the wiser I had been there watching. I didn’t kill the alarm, though, knowing it would go off when I opened that front door. It’s amazing how collected I was at the time. As soon as I pulled it open, I bolted and ran as fast as I could down the road with that alarm shrieking behind me. I just wanted him to leave, you know? Leave my parents alone before he could defile them anymore.”

“Where did you go?” he asks, his voice barely audible.

“About three blocks down before I stopped running and had the presence of mind to call 9-1-1. I hid in some bushes. My phone had been in my hand the entire time, and I didn’t even know it.”

“Was he caught?” Kynan asks.

“Not that night,” I murmur. “But not long after.”

A million questions are burning in Kynan’s eyes, yet he doesn’t ask a single one. I’ve told him the important stuff, but I’ll tell him more if he wants. However, I know him well enough to know he’ll leave me in peace and probably google all the details later.

It’s enough he knows the background.

“Just a bit ago, I ran into the FBI agent who was in charge of the case,” I say.

Kynan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Clay Brandeis? Did he know you worked here?”

“No,” I reply with a mirthless laugh. “We were both kind of shocked.”

“I’m sensing it wasn’t a great reunion,” he opines.

“We have a very complicated past,” I say, knowing it’s a vague answer, but it’s personal. “Let’s just say he was a hero to me, but he pushed me away.”

I can see the inner workings of Kynan’s brain as he puzzles over that cryptic statement, but I don’t wait for him to come to any conclusions.

“I want time off to spend with Clay,” I say with a wave. “And I don’t know how long that might be.”