Jo Robertson - The Avenger

He took a deep breath and let it out on a straggled sigh. And then the whole fantastic story spilled out. He'd already explained why he hadn't met her at the dugout graduation night, but now the rest of the incredible story spat from his mouth like a bitter herb.

A story of how Invictus had cleaned up the evidence of Roger's death and then whisked him away. The death missions of the last ten years, although she suspected he held back the more egregious things he'd done. The preternatural powers that he unleashed when he hunted a killer during one of the missions. All the pieces of the puzzle that she'd already suspected.

"When I'm with you, Livvie," he added, "somehow these powers intensify. I'm deathly afraid I'm going to hurt you."

She took a giant leap of faith. "You didn't," she said simply. "You didn't hurt me."

The kiss he gave her was more tender than anything she'd known. A vow and a benediction. Her heart began to hope again. After he'd finished the story, Jack held her and dropped gentle kisses on her forehead and temple. She sighed and snuggled closer.

"I still want to talk about the case," she mumbled as her brain drifted off to a dark resting place. "Don't think you can shut me out of it now that I know everything."

When Olivia woke two hours later, Jack was rubbing her back with small gentle circles. He propped himself on one arm and over her shoulder watched the long play of her dark lashes against her cheeks. He didn't think the danger to her had completely vanished. He sensed the power barely restrained beneath the surface of his love for her and believed that somehow being with her both unleashed and tamed the beast within. A crazy paradox he didn't quite understand. He hoped he was right. What the hell was he going to do if he couldn't control it?

A satisfied groan escaped Olivia as she opened her eyes and smiled. "That feels good," she said, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, "but I'm ready to get to work now."

"Later," he whispered, nuzzling her neck.

"No." She smiled and softened the rejection. "I want to go over it while my mind's fresh."

"Livvie…" he groaned.

A stubborn set to her face told him this wasn't the time to argue. "Fine," he grumbled, "but don't expect me to service you like a stud any time you ask."

Her laughter trickled behind her from the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, they'd set up an area downstairs in the library. Olivia sat on the chaise surrounded by resource books, papers, and files. Jack leaned against a plush arm chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, and balanced a yellow legal pad on his knee while he took notes.

"As I said before," Olivia explained, "the earlier notes don't indicate much facility with Latin." She picked up one of her texts and opened it to a page marked with a post-it note. "The writing is clichéd and uneven, and there's no logical segue from one note to the next."

Jack pulled a typed paper from his file. A vertical line split the page, with the words of each message in the left column and their translations in the right. He scrutinized the paper. "The first note was 'Hell calls hell,' but we don't know if it goes with the Peterson girl or the Walker man."

Olivia shrugged. "Maybe the killer sees himself as the keeper of the gates of Hell." She tapped a pencil against her teeth. "But if hell is his theme, so to speak, wouldn't he repeat the message?"

Jack massaged his neck. "Okay, here's the next note: 'Never faithful,' found with the waitress, Angela Buckley."

"The first victim, Laura Peterson, was promiscuous, but I was thinking of something else." Olivia told him about the vestal virgins, how breaking their vows meant death by burial.

Jack puzzled over the idea. "Unfaithful could mean another kind of betrayal, like unfaithful to an ideal to an ideal or goal."

When Olivia nodded, he continued, "That could go along with the note found with Keisha." He trailed a finger down the list. "Here, 'fame lives in great things.' Sounds like he's praising someone who accomplishes something."

Olivia ran her hands through her hair in frustration. "Or the notes could be all out of order."

Before Jack could respond, the doorbell rang, and moments later Slater walked into the library. "I just got the cub's autopsy," he said, sitting down in an occasional chair opposite Olivia. "The results were sent to the zoo instead of my office."

He dug in his pants pocket and pulled out a folded note. "It's long so I wrote the message down. The page was small and the writing degraded, but here's what the lab pulled off."

He read aloud, "'us est ad portas.' The first part was torn off and never recovered." He looked at Olivia. "What do you think?"

"First, 'us' isn't complete," Olivia answered. "It's the ending of a word. The rest translates, 'is at the gates.'" Tiny lines formed between her brows. "Someone is at the gates, I think, and 'est' is singular, so the person at the gates is singular."

"I am at the gates?" Jack guessed.

"No, that'd be 'sum,'" Olivia answered. "It's third-person singular, and masculine, so it'd have to be… " Her eyes widened dramatically. "Deus!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "'God is at the gates.' That's what it says! That makes sense."

Jack wrote the translation on his note pad. "The message with the two lions, then, is a warning, 'As fierce a lion as possible attacked the beast-fighter' and 'God is at the gates.'"

"And if a section of the note in the cub is left out, there could've been a 'but' in between the two notes: 'As fierce a lion as possible attacked the beast-fighter, but God is at the gates,'" Olivia concluded.

"That makes sense to me," Jack said.

"That's good," Slater grumbled, "because it makes no sense at all to me."

Olivia took the paper from Jack's hand. "You know what it sounds like to me," she said staring at the writing. "Sounds like his messages sort of evolved. The first one was lost, maybe a warning about infidelity, maybe not. But the second one about hell is general, almost like he was trying to get attention rather than send a message."

"He got our attention, all right," Jack said. "But the rest are specific to the victims. What about that?"

She held up her hand. "Just hear me out. The killer was learning his craft as he continued to murder. By the time he got to the latter victims, the notes make more sense because he became more efficient in his delivery. The last two notes are more sophisticated than the first ones."

"What about the other kinds of deaths?"

"In ancient times crucifixion was reserved for criminals or political prisoners," Olivia murmured.

Slater raised his eyebrows. "The lawyer? The way they twist the law around – that's gotta be a crime." He laughed ruefully.

"And the beatings?" Jack asked.

Olivia thought a moment. "The Roman legions had a practice called decimation. They instilled discipline by beating every tenth legionnaire to death. Brutal, but effective."

Jack stood abruptly and looked out the front window, his back to the other two. "I know what he's doing. They're all warnings." Turning around, he continued, "The son of a bitch is punishing the victims for supposed crimes and he's warning them. But after the fact. After he's already killed them."

The Avenger was sure she knew, that he could read the knowledge in those bright green eyes as surely as he read a storm brewing on the California horizon. He'd seen the emotions flit across her face – speculation, mistrust, suspicion. Clever girl that she was, she'd soon fit the puzzle pieces together.

And if his cohort were arrested, further chaos would ensue. He didn't think his trusted accomplice would crumble under the thug-like interrogation methods of the police, but one never knew.