The Perfect Husband (FBI Profiler, #1)

The first installment in the FBI Profiler series opens in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where young police officer Jim Beckett watches seventeen-year-old cheerleader Theresa Matthews. He has studied her family: her domineering, abusive father, her submissive mother, and Theresa's quiet obedience. He identifies her as the perfect target, a vulnerable girl desperate for approval. He approaches with his badge, and her wariness gives way to hope. His father once told him the parable of the scorpion and the tortoise: The scorpion stings because it is his nature.

Five years later, J. T. Dillon, a former marine and retired mercenary, lies in the middle of a tequila binge at his villa in Nogales, Arizona. Every September, he drinks for five days to mark the deaths of his wife, Rachel, and their young son, Teddy, killed by a teenage driver. A woman arrives uninvited, calling herself Angela. Thin, exhausted, and disguised with a coarse black dye job, she offers one hundred thousand dollars for a month of training in self-defense, shooting, and evasion. When J.T. moves to force her out, she reaches for a gun. He tackles and disarms her. She reveals she is being stalked by her ex-husband and that the police lost him. She mentions a daughter before collapsing, and J.T. reluctantly puts her to bed. That night, his manservant Freddie secretly reports Angela's arrival to an unknown caller, who reveals that J.T.'s father, a retired colonel, is dying.

Angela is actually Tess Williams, formerly Theresa Beckett, Jim's ex-wife. She has been running for two years with her four-year-old daughter, Samantha, under a series of aliases. Three weeks ago, Jim escaped from a maximum security prison by killing two guards. Tess contacted Lieutenant Lance Difford, the officer who helped capture Jim, and Difford connected her to J.T. She hid Samantha in protective custody and traveled alone to Arizona, believing J.T.'s combat skills and personal losses make him the right person to train her.

J.T.'s younger sister, Marion MacAllister, an FBI special agent, arrives at the villa after Freddie reported an intruder to local police. Marion's personal life is crumbling: She has been passed over for promotion, her father is dying, and her husband Roger has left her. She agrees to stay one week as J.T.'s sister, not an agent, to persuade him to visit their dying father. Secretly, she lifts Tess's fingerprints and submits them to the FBI.

Over days of tense cohabitation, the Dillon family's fractured history emerges. J.T. accuses the colonel of being an abuser who impregnated a seventeen-year-old and discarded her. He reveals the girl was Rachel, the woman he later married, and that Teddy was the colonel's illegitimate child. Rachel came to J.T. only after Marion turned her away. J.T. agrees to train Tess, telling her he does it for himself, driven by what he describes as the worst case of orphan envy in the world.

Tess's nightmares expose Jim's abuse during their marriage. He burned her possessions as punishment, dictated her behavior, sabotaged her birth control, and raped her. He once blindfolded her in the basement and forced her hands into jars of what he claimed were human remains, then revealed they were household items and called her paranoid, a manipulation designed to erode her sanity.

An FBI interview with Jim, conducted by Special Agent Pierce Quincy, reveals Beckett's psychology. Quincy reconstructs Beckett's first murder: He pulled over a woman while on duty and killed her, triggered by the birth of his daughter. When Lieutenant Difford praises Theresa's role in Jim's capture, noting she kept a secret log of his movements, Beckett describes in detail his fantasy of killing her.

Training begins. Tess cannot do a push-up or hit a target at close range. Marion's fingerprint results soon reveal Tess's true identity, and J.T. confronts her. She recounts the night Jim returned after his first arrest: He cut the phone line, emerged from her closet with a baseball bat, and strangled her nearly to unconsciousness before shattering her femur. She found a hidden gun and shot him in the shoulder. Difford burst in, and Jim was arrested. Tess refuses FBI protection, insisting Jim's law enforcement background renders police procedures useless.

On the range, J.T. stands behind Tess, correcting her flinch, and she finally hits the target. Their attraction deepens, but when they kiss, J.T. pulls away. After Marion departs following a confrontation about the colonel's sexual abuse, J.T. and Tess sleep together. Meanwhile, Beckett infiltrates a task force briefing disguised as a police officer. He kills Shelly Zane, a woman who corresponded with him in prison, and leaves a note quoting a phrase Quincy spoke at the briefing, proving Beckett was present. Quincy discovers a pattern: The first letters of the cities tied to Beckett's murders and attacks, rearranged, spell JIM BECKETT. The phrase is unfinished.

Beckett, elaborately disguised as a police officer, infiltrates the safe house where Samantha is guarded. He attacks and tortures Difford for Tess's location before killing him, then shoots Officer Harrison. He takes Samantha, who recognizes his voice, and drives away with Difford's body.

Tess collapses at the news. She and J.T. fly to Massachusetts, where Beckett ambushes them at the former safe house. He seals a plastic bag over Tess's head and breaks J.T.'s forearm with a bat. J.T. wounds Beckett with gunfire, but Beckett escapes. J.T. finds Tess handcuffed to a table, her skin blue, and slits the bag to save her.

J.T. calls Marion for help. She shares Beckett's files and reveals that Shelly Zane had call-forwarding on her phone, which Beckett exploited during monitored prison calls to reach 247 different numbers. Quincy reports that Beckett is decompensating, his killing cycle collapsing as he murders six people in four weeks. Tess proposes returning to her old house in Williamstown as bait, and a massive police operation is assembled.

Marion, studying maps, deduces the full pattern: "JIM BECKETT WAS HERE." On the first night, she lets her blond hair down and walks alone through dark streets as an unofficial lure. She has left J.T. a farewell note acknowledging she remembers their childhood together. She signs it "Merry Berry." Beckett, disguised as a campus security guard, attacks her on Hoxsey Street and kills her.

Meanwhile, in nearby Lenox, an elderly woman named Edith Magher realizes through psychic visions that her neighbor "Martha Ohlsson" is actually Beckett in elaborate disguise. He has been hiding in the community for two years with Samantha. When the truth registers, Edith grabs Samantha and runs.

J.T. finds Marion's body before racing to the safe house, where Beckett blasts through the door with a shotgun. Both Quincy and J.T. survive because of Kevlar vests. Beckett drags Tess upstairs and strangles her. J.T. staggers upstairs, pulls a hunting knife from inside his cast, and throws it into Beckett's shoulder. They fight until Beckett beats J.T. down. Tess grabs the shotgun and shoots Beckett twice, killing him. Officers recover Samantha from Edith at a gas station.

Months later, J.T. sits in a Nogales bar, haunted by visions of Marion and Rachel. He has tried to drink whiskey but cannot; every time he raises the glass, he sees Marion shaking her head. Tess finds him and tells him she loves him. He breaks down and asks her to make him whole. She takes him home to meet Samantha. Nearly a year later, he dreams of Marion and Rachel laughing in a field of wildflowers. He wakes beside Tess, now his wife, and pulls the covers over her shoulders.