Got to put a stop to that soon, kid,he thought to himself.That road leads to a dead end.
Cox's face swam into his vision.His piercing eyes and smug smile never concealed the sickness and rage that boiled underneath.He imagined his fingers wrapping around Cox's neck, feeling them sink deep.He pictured that smug look vanishing, replaced by fear, then terror, then helplessness as he realized he'd finally pushed too hard and gone too far, and now he was going to die.
A sting in his left palm jolted his mind back to reality.He looked down and saw his hands balled tightly into fists.He uncurled his fingers and saw blood welling in a quartet of half-moons he’d dug into his palm.The right hand hadn’t split, but it was close.
He sighed and walked into the nearest bar.He headed for the bathroom, and a female voice called, “Hey, buddy!Restroom’s for customers only!”
“Pour me a beer then,” he called back.
“What kind?”
“A cold one.”
He entered the restroom and started to wash his hands.He stopped when he heard moaning coming from one of the stalls.He frowned and reached into his jacket, closing his hand around the handle of his service weapon.
“Oh yeah.God, sweetheart.Just like that.”
Marcus rolled his eyes and took his hand off the weapon.He finished washing his hands, then returned to the bar to see a woman in her late twenties, strikingly pretty with pale skin, jet-black hair, and even darker lipstick, gesturing at a can of Coors Light."It's cold," she said snarkily.
He plucked a twenty from his wallet and tossed it on the counter.“Keep the change.”
She chuckled behind his back as he walked out without the beer.“Whatever you want, buddy.”
The cold hit him like an icy blast.His few minutes inside the bar had allowed him to warm up, and the return to below freezing weather shocked his system.
He welcomed it.It calmed down some of the frustration he felt, allowed him to give it a name.
Failure.He was a failure.He’d failed as a SEAL, failed to make his marriage to Cheryl work, failed to make his relationship with Kate work, and failed to find Elijah Cox, a failure he was still compounding.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed back for the hotel, eyes drawn moodily together.What was he missing?He considered himself a smart guy.Not a genius like Kate and not shrewd like Winters but a smart guy.He understood people well as long as they weren’t people he loved.
That earned a chuckle, but it was a bitter one and the snowflake that fell on his tongue was just as bitter.
He looked up and saw more of the bitter snow falling from the sky.He decided he didn’t want to think about what could have made it bitter.
What was he missing?He could solve puzzles with the best of them.He’d come up with breakthroughs on his cases with Kate.He’d held his own.
So why was Cox beating him so easily?It made little sense that he was giving Kate a hard time.Kate has the sharpest mind in the Bureau, but her father's death and her own near-death experience with Robert Denton were easy vulnerabilities to exploit.Cox was very good at exploiting them, had studied very hard to make sure he could exploit them.
Marcus didn’t think Cox perceived a special connection with Kate, though he might have deluded himself into believing he did.Marcus was pretty sure Cox had just figured out early that Kate was the greatest threat to his safety and taken steps to protect himself by exploiting the chinks in Kate’s armor.
That was where Marcus was supposed to come in.He was supposed to be the tough guy, invulnerable to Cox’s mind games, using hard work and relentless dedication to overwhelm Cox’s deception and cowardice.
Instead, he was being led around by the nose.They both were.Cox was out there killing with impunity despite the fact that the entire damned Bureau had put out multiple APBs and PSAs on him.The man’s face was at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list, but he’d killed six people and no one had thought to wonder why this priest sort of looked like the serial murderer terrorizing the entire country.
It wasn’t fair.It was goddamned embarrassing, in fact.It didn’t ease his embarrassment knowing that he was far from the only individual who couldn’t figure out how to keep Cox chained.
“Hey.”
He frowned and looked up.He was in the parking lot of the hotel, having covered the distance without realizing it.Kate leaned against the wall just outside the entrance.She was wearing a running outfit: joggers and a hoodie.Her hair was matted with sweat, her cheeks flushed red with the cold that sweat caused evaporating off her skin.She looked small and vulnerable, and if Marcus wasn’t afraid of getting blood on her sweater, he would have pulled her into an embrace.
Instead, he replied, “Hey.Go for a run?”
“No, I’m looking for a date.I thought the hoodie made me look sexy.”
“It does, actually.”
She smiled, but it faded as quickly as an ember landing on the fallen snow.“I guess you didn’t find what you were looking for either.”