“Herod? Are you sure that’s what he said?”

Voss rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows, where a dull ache had been growing all day. She held the phone a few inches away, her partner’s voice sounding strangely loud to her.

“Pretty sure,” she said. “Something about Herod not feeling remorse for his beliefs.”

She had returned to the Fort Myers hotel where they’d set up their command center for the Greenlaw investigation. A couple of Advil and a few minutes with her eyes closed had helped her headache a little, but she had not wanted to wait any longer to call Josh and fill him in on what had gone down in Sarasota.

“Christ,” Josh said.

Voss uttered a small, dry laugh. “Are you being funny?”

“No. Sorry. Just my natural response. But it’s crazy, right? Isn’t al-Jubouri a Muslim? It seems pretty weird to have a terrorist worshipping some two-thousand-year-old Roman king—”

“Herod wasn’t Roman,” Voss said. She’d done a quick online search before calling Josh. “He was … I can’t remember now. One of the Maccabees or something. Doesn’t matter. He was a local ruler, and his people had been sort of absorbed by Rome, like a corporate takeover where they leave the CEO in place to give the illusion of stability.”

“We’re talking about the same guy, though?” Josh asked. “This is the Herod that ordered the execution of all the babies in Bethlehem, trying to kill Jesus?”

“First of all, it’s biblical,” Voss said, “so let’s not confuse that with history. The story shows up in only one of the gospels. Matthew, I think. From what I read, it seems like it does refer to actual events, but the details are impossible to lock down. According to the Bible story, Herod heard a prophecy that the King of the Jews was going to be born in Bethlehem.”

“And since he was King of the Jews—”

“Yeah. He didn’t like the sound of that. He ordered all of the newborn males executed.”

“And this is the guy Karim al-Jubouri holds up as his ideological hero when he’s dying on the floor?”

“Yeah.”

The phone line fell silent for a few seconds.

“You still there?” Voss asked.

“Just processing. I’m having some pretty dark thoughts about what this means for the Kowalik baby.”

Voss massaged the ridge of her brow. “Yeah. I’ve had the same thoughts. They haven’t named the baby yet?”

“No. I think the process was put on hold when the baby was taken.”

Neither one of them mentioned that the Kowaliks might end up naming their baby only for the purposes of it being engraved on the newborn’s gravestone. But Voss knew they were both thinking it.

“What do you make of the Greenlaw killings in light of this?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s all about the kids, but with Greenlaw’s military background, that seems unlikely. And we can’t jump to conclusions based on the ravings of one dying terrorist. We don’t know that he was the leader of the cell.”

“We don’t know a hell of a lot, do we?” Josh said.

Voss leaned back in the hotel room desk chair, about to agree with him, but then there was a knock on the door.

“Hang on,” she said, rising to answer it.

A glance through the peephole showed Ed Turcotte waiting in the hallway. She unlocked the door and hauled it open. Turcotte noticed the phone in her hand.

“I can come back,” he said.

“No, you’re good,” Voss said. “I’m talking to Josh. Let me put him on speaker—”

“Inviting Turcotte into your boudoir now?” Josh teased.

If she’d been alone, Voss would have invented some kind of snappy comeback about the cobwebs and dust bunnies in her lonely boudoir. She and Josh often commented on the poor romantic prospects for people in their line of work. But even if she was working relatively comfortably with Turcotte at the moment, she wasn’t about to talk about her personal life with him around.

She hit the button to put Josh on speaker and set the phone on the desk, then slid back into the chair, leaving Turcotte to sit awkwardly on the end of the bed.

“Say ‘Hi,’ Josh.”

“Agent Turcotte. How are you holding up?” Josh asked.

“About as well as you and Agent Chang, I expect,” Turcotte said. “It’s frustrating as hell being so completely in the dark. Especially since we had one of these guys in our grasp and fucking shot him.”

“Can’t get answers from a dead man,” Josh replied.

“Exactly,” Turcotte said.

Voss couldn’t hide her surprise. Turcotte had once competed with her and Josh over certain cases, back before the ICD existed. Normally he kept them at arm’s length, so it felt peculiar—even awkward—for him to be so open now.

Seeing her reaction, Turcotte smiled grimly. “Yeah. I know what you’re thinking. It was a long night, and today’s looking even longer. I did turn up something weird on this ‘Herod’ thing, though.”

“Really?” Voss asked, intrigued.

“She’s got you doing research now?” Josh asked.

Turcotte’s grin was tired. Josh couldn’t see it anyway.

“I went to my best researcher, back in D.C. She’s been doing searches, cross-referencing files, trying to find anything that connects terrorist groups, murders, or Middle Eastern radicals with Herod the Great or, really, with any reference to the word Herod.”

Voss arched an eyebrow. “She actually found something?”

“Not in our files,” Turcotte said. “I’ve got her scanning it right now so we can read the whole thing.”

“Wait, scanning what?” Josh asked. “If it wasn’t in FBI files—”

“It’s in an article from Rolling Stone,” Turcotte said. “In May of 1971, they ran a long piece that included interviews with an FBI agent named Nixon—no relation—and an anonymous source he had supposedly been working with. The article apparently covered a lot of ground, ticking off the reasons why Vietnam was a clusterfuck, but in one section, Agent Nixon and this anonymous source talked about what they called the ‘Herod Factor.’ ”

Voss narrowed her eyes. “The same phrase al-Jubouri used,” she said. “What the hell does it mean?”

“According to my researcher, they claimed that—for lack of a better word, I guess—breeding between enemy cultures could help bring about peace.”

“Gotta love Rolling Stone, especially in the seventies,” Josh said.

“It makes a certain amount of sense,” Voss said. “I mean, when people fall in love, that doesn’t just connect them, it connects their families, and it impacts the people around them … the people who see them.”

“It wasn’t the relationships that these guys thought could influence the war,” Turcotte went on. “They claimed that the babies born from those relationships actually had an effect on hostilities.”

“Again—” Voss began.

“Wait, you mean on, like, a metaphysical level?” Josh interrupted.

“It’s clear from the article that Agent Nixon was some kind of conspiracy nut. A fan of the Grassy Knoll,” Turcotte said. “But, yeah, that’s the gist of it. And remember, this was the time of the Vietnam War.”

Voss exhaled. “Mrs. Kowalik is Iranian.”

Turcotte flinched and stared at her. “You’re not seriously—”

“Just pointing it out,” she said. “This Agent Nixon obviously believed in this stuff. Is it so hard to buy that someone else might believe it, too?”

“There’s always someone willing to believe, no matter how crazy something sounds,” Josh said.

Voss massaged her temples. Her headache was spreading. “What happened to Agent Nixon? We should at least track him down.”

Turcotte stood up. “He’s dead. Heart attack in ’73. The guy who wrote the article is also no longer with us.”

“Which is going to make it hard to ID the anonymous source,” Voss said.

“Unless it’s somewhere in Rolling Stone’s files,” Josh added, his voice sounding strangely far away on the phone. Voss wished that the case hadn’t split them up, but they both had a job to do. “Something that confidential, I’d guess the writer probably didn’t put it on paper anywhere.”

“That’s what I figured, too,” Turcotte said, heading for the door. “But we’ll look into it.”

“You realize how unlikely it is that there’s a connection between some conspiracy nut from the Vietnam War and this case?” Voss asked.

Turcotte shrugged. “Given al-Juroubi’s comment about Herod, we’ve got to look into it, and this is all we’ve got. But it’s not like we’re putting all our efforts into chasing ghosts from thirty-odd years ago. We’ve got real bad guys in the here and now. The second we get another lead, we’re going to run them down. That’s when we’ll get real answers.”

“Thanks, Ed,” Voss said.

Turcotte nodded and left, pulling the door shut behind him. Voss picked up the phone and turned off the speaker.

“You doing all right up there?” she asked.

“Personally, yeah. Chang’s good company. Though we’re not as chummy as you and Turcotte.”

“Funny guy.”

“Listen, I just want to find this guy. And I want to find the Kowaliks’ baby alive.”

“Josh—”

“I know, Rachael. I know. But I can hope, right?”