While we waited for the food, I retreated to take a shower. I’d been going a million miles an hour since Sloane had explained the dates to me that morning. A shower would be good for me. Even better, it might quiet my mind enough that I could really think.
When I’d first joined the program, we’d been restricted to cold cases, fed no more than the occasional scrap about whatever case our handlers were currently working. In the three months since the rules had changed, we’d worked a half-dozen active cases. The first one we’d solved in less than three days. The second, even faster than that. The third had taken almost a week, but this one…
So many details. The longer the case dragged on, the more information my brain had to juggle. The UNSUB’s profile evolved with each kill, and now that it looked like we might be dealing with a repeat offender, my brain had kicked into hyperdrive. The files I’d read. The interviews I’d watched. My own first impressions.
I was learning that the hardest thing about being a profiler was figuring out what information to discard. Did it matter that Beau and Tory had both spent time in foster homes? What about the way Aaron both resented and bowed down to his father? The slightly clingy vibe I’d gotten from Thomas Wesley’s assistant? The drink the professor had ordered, but only pretended to drink?
Even now that our suspicions were targeted at suspects over the age of thirty, I couldn’t turn off the part of my brain that arranged and rearranged what I knew about everyone involved, continually looking for meaning.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something. Then again, being a profiler meant that I always felt like I was missing something, right up until the case was closed. Until the killing stopped—and not just for a day or two days or three.
For good.
The sound of the shower spray beating against the tub was rhythmic and soothing. I let it drown out my thoughts as I stepped into the shower and under the spray. Breathe in. Breathe out. I turned, arching my neck and letting the water soak my hair and dribble down the front of my face.
For a few, blissful minutes my mind was quiet—but it never stayed quiet for long.
June twenty-first. That was where my brain went when I wasn’t trying to force it to think about one thing or another. My mother’s dressing room. Blood on my hands. Blood on the walls.
“Dance it off, Cassie.”
I could compartmentalize. I could distract myself. I could focus on the current case to the exclusion of everything else—but still, the memories and the fears and the sinking certainty about the skeleton in that dirt-road grave were there, waiting for me, just below the surface.
My dreams were proof enough of that.
June twenty-first, I thought again. I remembered standing in front of the calendars Sloane had drawn, pressing my fingers to the date. No Fibonacci dates in June.
And still, my mind cycled back. June twenty-first.
Why was I thinking about this? Not about my mother—I didn’t need my expertise in the human psyche to figure that one out—but about the date? I pictured myself standing in front of the calendar, going through it month by month. A handful in April, only two in May. None in June.
A breath caught in my throat. My hand lashed out of its own accord, turning the shower off. I stepped out, barely remembering to wrap a towel around my torso on my way back into the bedroom.
I walked over to the wall with the colored objects sitting—large to small—on the glass shelf. I looked past the sheets Sloane had put up for January, for February, for March, for April.
Two dates in May.
“May fifth,” I said out loud, my entire body tensing. “And May eighth.”
Six years, this May, Judd had told me. But that wasn’t all he’d told me. He’d told me the date on which Scarlett was murdered. May eighth.
I didn’t remember walking to the kitchen, but the next thing I knew, I was there, towel and all, dripping on the floor.
Michael’s gaze went to my face. Dean went very still. Even Lia seemed to sense that now wasn’t the moment to make a comment about my state of undress.
“Judd,” I said.
“Everything okay there, Cassie?” He was standing at the counter, doing a crossword.
All I could think was that the answer had to be no. When I asked, Judd had to say no.
“The UNSUB who killed Scarlett,” I said. “Nightshade. How many people did he kill?” I realized, distantly, that the question I’d asked couldn’t be answered with a yes or a no.
Judd’s expression wavered, just for an instant. I thought he would refuse to answer, but he didn’t.
“As far as we know,” he said, his voice hoarse, “he killed nine.”
YOU
Everything can be counted. Everything but true infinity has its end.
Without the knife in hand, all you can do is lightly trace the pattern on the surface of your shirt. You can feel the cuts underneath, feel the promise you etched into your own skin.
Around. Up and down. Left and right.
Seven plus two is nine.
Nine is the number. And Nine is what you were always meant to be.