“Aaron,” Mr. Shaw said. “If you could be so kind as to give us a moment.”
Aaron didn’t seem inclined to leave Sloane in a room with his father, and that told me volumes about them both.
“Aaron,” Mr. Shaw said again, his voice perfectly pleasant. The older man had a powerful aura. I knew, before Aaron did, that he would give in to his father’s demand.
You can’t fight him, I thought, watching Aaron go. No one can.
Once Aaron was gone, Mr. Shaw turned the full force of his presence on the rest of us. “I’d like a moment with Sloane alone,” he said.
“And I’d like a dress made of rainbows and a bed full of puppies who never grow old,” Lia shot back. “Not happening.”
“Lia,” Judd said mildly. “Don’t antagonize the casino mogul.”
I took Judd’s tone to mean that he wasn’t planning on leaving Sloane alone with her father, either.
“Mr. Hawkins.” The mogul in question surprised me by knowing Judd’s last name. “If I wish to speak to my daughter, I will speak to my daughter.”
Sloane’s expression was painfully transparent when he said the word daughter. He meant it as an expression of ownership. She couldn’t help hoping—desperately hoping—that it might be one of care.
“Sloane,” Judd said, ignoring Shaw’s display of dominance, “would you like to go back to the room?”
“She’d like,” Shaw said, his words very precise, “to speak with me. And unless you would like me to let it slip to interested parties that your agent friends have been visiting teenagers in the Renoir Suite, you’ll let Sloane do as she pleases.”
We should have set our base of operations up off the Strip, I realized.
Off the radar, out of the way—
“Cassie and Lia stay.” Sloane’s voice came out tiny. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You can go,” she told Judd, her chin held high. “But I want Cassie and Lia to stay.”
For the first time since he’d entered the room, Sloane’s father actually looked at his daughter. “The redhead can stay,” he said finally. “The lie detector goes.”
I realized then—Sloane’s father knows what Lia can do. He doesn’t just know that there’s a connection between us and the FBI. He knows everything. How could he possibly know everything?
“Sloane.” Judd’s voice was as calm as if he were sitting at the kitchen table, doing his morning crossword. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“It’s fine,” Sloane said, her fingers tapping nervously against her thigh. “I’ll be fine. Just go.”
Sloane’s father waited until the door was closed before turning his attention back to his daughter—and to me. Clearly, I hadn’t rated as a threat. Or maybe he’d just realized that Judd was never going to leave Sloane in here alone, and I was the lesser evil.
The fact that he’d kicked Lia out made me wonder what lies he was planning to tell.
“You look well, Sloane.” Shaw took a seat behind the desk.
“I’m twelve percent taller than I was the last time you came to see me.”
Shaw frowned. “Had I known you were going to be in Vegas, I would have made alternative arrangements for your little…group.”
Alternative arrangements as in farther away from him and his.
I replied so that Sloane didn’t have to. “You know what our group does.
How?”
“I have friends in the FBI. I’m the one who suggested Sloane for your Agent Briggs’s little program.”
Sloane blinked rapidly, like he’d just tossed a bucket of water in her face. Michael’s father had traded him to the FBI for immunity on white- collar crimes. Sloane’s, apparently, had just wanted her out of town and away from his son.
“You need to stay away from my family.” Shaw’s voice was deceptively gentle as he refocused on Sloane. He sounded like Aaron had, his voice calm and soothing, but there was no mistaking his words. “I have Aaron’s mother to think about.”
“And the little girl.” The words escaped Sloane’s mouth.
“Yes,” Shaw said. “We have to think about Cara. She’s just a child.
None of this is her fault, is it?” he asked, his tone still so gentle, I wanted to hit him as hard as Michael had punched the man at the pool.
None of this is Sloane’s fault, either. “Tell me you understand, Sloane.” Sloane nodded.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“I understand,” Sloane whispered.
Shaw stood. “You’ll stay away from Aaron,” he reiterated. “It would behoove you to encourage your FBI friends to do the same.”
“This is a serial murder investigation,” I said, breaking my silence. “You don’t get to dictate who the investigators do and do not talk to.”
Shaw turned his eyes—the same blue as Aaron’s, the same blue as Sloane’s—on me. “My son knows nothing that could be of use. The FBI is wasting their time with him as much as they’re wasting their time on this ridiculous idea that a killer who’s managed to evade arrest thus far would hog-tie himself to committing his next murder in the Majesty’s Grand Ballroom, come hell or high water.”
“It’s not a ridiculous idea.” Sloane stood up. Her voice trembled. “You just can’t see it. You don’t understand it. But just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you get to ignore it. You can’t just pretend the pattern doesn’t exist and hope it goes away.”
The way he pretends you don’t exist, my brain translated. The way he ignores you.
“That’s enough, Sloane.”
“It’s not ridiculous.” Sloane swallowed and turned toward the door. “You’ll see.”
YOU
Waiting is harder than you’d anticipated.
Every night, you sit with the knife balanced on one knee. Every night, you run through each iteration, each possibility, each second leading up to the moment when you will step up behind your target and use the knife to slit their throat.
Just another calculation. Another number. Another step closer to what you will become.
You want it. So badly you can taste it. You want it now.
But you are at the mercy of the numbers, and the numbers say to wait.
So you wait, and you watch, and you listen.
You’re told the FBI suspects that the next murder will take place in the Grand Ballroom. You’re told they’re watching it. Waiting, just like you. You take that to mean that someone has seen the pattern—just a fraction of it, just a piece. In your quietest moments, when you’re staring at the blade, you wonder who at the FBI figured it out.
You wonder if that person truly appreciates what you have done, what you are doing, what you will become. But how could they? Whoever they are, whatever they think they know, it’s only a fraction of the truth.
They know only what you’ve allowed them to know. You set them on the path to discovery.
It’s not their attention you want.
Slowly, contemplatively, you take off your shirt. You pick up the knife. You turn to face the mirror, and you press the tip of the blade to your skin and begin to draw. Blood beads up. You welcome the pain. Soon, you won’t even feel it.
Let the FBI come at you. Let them do their worst. And as for the rest of it, perhaps it’s time to send a message. You are at the mercy of the numbers.
Let the world be at their mercy, too.
