The Record Keeper (Murphy Shepherd, #3)

by Charles Martin

did so from both memory and experience. “People who steal people, and then line up a train of miscreants and perverts deserving only of a single bullet, don’t think like you and me. Their business model is rape for profit. Twenty times a day. They open the door. ‘Please, come in.’ Then they sit at the table and count the dollars or smoke a Marlboro as some little girl or little boy’s spirit slowly exits their body beneath a blanket or another’s sweat. The only way you and I ever catch those people, the only way they ever pay for their sin, is when we learn to think more like them and less like us.” He held up a finger. “Notice I didn’t say ‘become like.’ I said ‘think like.’ There’s a difference. And one way we force ourselves to do that is to override what our body is telling us. Pain is a signal. That’s all. The body’s response to discomfort. We are here learning to mute it. Because if we don’t . .