“I took a metaphorical swing,” Michael told me. “Redding hit back.”
“But not with his fists,” I clarified. Dean’s gift was like mine. We knew exactly what to say to hurt someone the most. We knew what people’s weak spots were. And Michael’s was his father. The idea that Dean might have used that to get at Michael made my stomach twist sharply.
“I punched him,” Michael added in the kind of casual tone most people reserved for chatting about the weather. He took a step toward me, giving me that patented Michael smile. “I get it, you know.”
“Get what?”
“You. Redding. I get it. I get that he’s going through something, and I get that you need to be there. That’s who you are, Cassie. You care about people. You need to help. Believe me when I say that I am trying to step back and let you do whatever it is you need to do. But it’s not easy.” Michael tore his eyes from mine and picked the power sander back up. “I haven’t had a lot of practice at being a decent person. It’s not something at which I particularly excel.”
Before I could reply, Michael turned the sander on, drowning out the sounds of the night. I stood there for a couple of minutes watching him. Agent Sterling’s car eventually pulled into the driveway. It was getting dark enough that I couldn’t make out much of her posture or the look on her face, but as she cut across the lawn, Michael tilted his head to the side. He turned the sander back off.
“What?” I said.
“She’s not happy,” he told me. “Brisk pace, no bounce to her step, hands glued to her sides. I’m guessing the exploration of the professor’s writing cabin did not go particularly well.”
My stomach dropped. I could suddenly hear the sound of my own breathing, my own heartbeat.
Now it was Michael’s turn to ask: “What?”
I’d been so focused on Dean when I’d been on the other side of that observation glass that I hadn’t spent much time thinking about his father. I hadn’t let myself really dissect him or the things he’d said. But now, all I could think was that Redding had—at great cost to Dean—finally given the FBI a tip about where the professor might be hiding.
As an organized killer, Daniel Redding was a man who thrived on mind games. On misdirection. On power. If Redding had thought, even for a moment, that the professor was the killer, he wouldn’t have told Briggs where to find him. The only way Redding would have really told Briggs where to find the professor was if Redding suspected, based on the letters he’d received, that finding the professor would remind Briggs—and Sterling and everyone else at the FBI—that they weren’t nearly as smart as they thought they were.
The only truly remarkable letters were from students.
When I didn’t respond, Michael called after Agent Sterling. “Professor’s cabin a bust?”
She didn’t answer him. She went into the house and shut the door behind her. And that, as much as anything else, told me that I was right.
“It wasn’t a bust,” I told Michael. “I think they found the professor.” I swallowed. “We should have seen this coming.”
“Seen what coming?”
“I think they found the professor,” I said again, “but our UNSUB found him first.”
YOU
The professor was a problem. You’re a problem solver. It was quick and clean—a single bullet to the back of his skull. And if there was no artistry to it, no method, at least you were showing initiative. At least you were ready, willing, and able to do what needed to be done.
It makes you feel powerful, and that makes you wonder, just for an instant, if this isn’t the better way. Guns and neat little bullet holes and the glory of being the one to pull the trigger. You could knock the next girl out, tie her up, take her to the middle of nowhere. You could let her loose deep in the forest. You could track her, catch her in your sights.
You could pull the trigger.
Just thinking about it sets your heart to pounding. Take them. Free them. Track them. Kill them.
No. You force yourself to stop thinking about it, to stop imagining the sound of bare feet running through the brush—running away from you. There is a plan. An order. A bigger picture.
You will abide by it. For now.
Sterling didn’t say a thing about the professor. Dean didn’t say a word to any of us. Living in the house with the two of them—and a vulnerable, seething Lia—was like trying to tap dance through a minefield. I felt like any second, everything would explode.
And then Director Sterling showed up.
The last time the FBI director had put in an appearance at our house, a senator’s daughter had just been kidnapped.
This did not bode well.
The director, Sterling, and Briggs locked themselves in Briggs’s office. From the kitchen, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but every few minutes, voices were raised.
First Sterling’s.
Then the director’s.
Briggs’s.
Finally, there was silence. And then they came for us.