Judd looked at Sloane for several seconds. Then he walked over to her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She won’t stop. She can’t. You know that.
His mouth set into a firm line, Judd turned back to Lia. “No,” he grunted. “If Sloane were illegally hacking her father’s casino, I would not want to know.” Then he glanced back at Dean and Michael and me. “But, hypothetically speaking, what can I do to help?”
You had less than a minute to do what needed to be done.
As Sloane watched the security footage she’d hacked, murmuring numbers under her breath, I slipped into Beau’s perspective, trying to imagine what he’d been thinking and feeling in those moments.
You knew exactly where your target was standing. You knew Aaron wouldn’t panic when the lights went off. Aaron Shaw was at the top of the food chain. You knew it would never occur to him that he might be your prey.
“Suspect was walking toward the stage at a rate of one-point-six meters per second. Victim was twenty-four meters away, at a forty-two-degree angle to suspect’s last marked trajectory.”
You knew exactly where you were going, exactly how to get there.
Sloane froze the footage and did a screen capture, the second before the lights went out. She repeated the process when the lights came back on. Before. After. Before. After. Sloane toggled back and forth between the still images. “In fifty-nine seconds, the suspect moved forward six-point-two meters, still facing the stage.”
“His pupils were dilated,” Michael put in. “Before the lights went off, his pupils were already dilated—alertness, psychological arousal.”
“If I can do this,” Dean murmured, “I’m invincible. If I can do this, I’m worthy.”
Aaron was the Majesty’s golden son, the heir apparent. Killing him was an assertion of power. This is your inheritance. This is what you are. This is what you deserve.
“Beau’s posture changes,” Michael continued. “It’s subtle, but it’s there, beneath the poker face.” Michael indicated first one image, then the other. “Anticipation before. And after: elation.” He swung his eyes back to the first photo. “Look how he’s holding his shoulders.” He glanced at Sloane. “Play the footage.”
Sloane brought up the video and let it play.
“Restricted motion,” Michael said. “He’s fighting tension in his shoulders. He’s walking, but his arms are still by his sides.”
“The knife,” Dean murmured beside me, his eyes locked on the screen. “I had it on me. I could feel it. That’s why my arms aren’t moving. The knife is weighing me down.” Dean swallowed, shifting his eyes to me. “I have the knife,” he said, his voice pitched unnaturally low. “I am the knife.”
On-screen, everything went black. Seconds ticked by in silence.
Adrenaline surged through your veins. I imagined being Beau. I imagined sidling up behind Aaron in the dark. No hesitation. He’s stronger than you are. Bigger. All you have is the element of surprise.
All you have is a holiness of purpose.
I imagined sliding the blade across Aaron’s throat. I imagined letting it drop to the floor. I imagined walking back, through the dark. I imagined knowing, with an unworldly, overwhelming certainty that death was power. My power.
On-screen, the lights came back on, jarring me from the brief instant when I’d stopped talking to Beau and let myself be him. I could feel the heat from Dean’s body beside me—I could feel the dark place he’d been the moment before.
The place I’d gone, too.
“Look at his arms,” Michael said, gesturing to Beau.
They swing slightly as you walk. You’re lighter now. Balanced. Perfect.
“I’ve done what needed to be done.” Dean looked down at his hands. “And I got rid of the knife.”
“The knife was found less than a meter away from the body.” Sloane spoke at a stilted, uneven pace. “Killer dropped it. He would have backed away. Couldn’t risk stepping in Aaron’s blood.” There was something brittle in her voice, something fragile. “Aaron’s blood,” she repeated.
Sloane looked at crime scenes and saw numbers—spatter patterns and probability and signs of rigor mortis. But no matter how hard she tried, Aaron would never just be number five to her.
“The suspect’s not wearing gloves.” Lia was the one who made the observation. “I doubt he left fingerprints on the knife. So what gives?”
Sloane closed her eyes. I could feel her cataloging the possibilities, going through the physical evidence again and again, hurting and hurting and pushing through it—
“Plastic.” Judd had never weighed in on one of our cases before. He wasn’t FBI. He wasn’t a Natural. But he was a former marine. “Something disposable. You wrap the knife in it, dispose of it separately.”
That’s it. My heart skipped a beat. That’s our smoking gun.