We had eleven hours and twenty-seven minutes until midnight.
First order of business was calling Sterling and Briggs. It took them two
hours to extract themselves from the case and get to us. They questioned Michael and Lia about their little foray to the Desert Rose. What had they done there? Who had they seen?
“You don’t remember anything out of the ordinary?” Briggs asked Michael. “Running into someone? Talking to someone?”
“Letting someone write a number on my arm in invisible, poison-ivy ink?” Michael suggested archly. “Shockingly, no. I remember dropping something. I remember bending down to pick it up.” He closed his eyes. “I dropped something,” he repeated. “I bent to pick it up. And then…”
Nothing.
“Pattern interruption,” Sloane said. “It’s the second-quickest method of inducing hypnosis.”
To be hypnotized, you have to want to be hypnotized. Tory’s words rang in my ears. Either she was lying, or Michael hadn’t been on guard around the UNSUB.
Or both.
“You don’t remember anything else?” Dean said.
“Well, when you phrase it like that, I remember exactly what happened.
You have unmasked the killer, Redding. How do you do it, you profiling
fiend?”
“You know who the killer is?” Sloane’s eyes went comically wide. “That was sarcasm,” Dean told her, sparing a glare for Michael. “What about the moments leading up to the gap in your memory?”
Agent Sterling said, redirecting the conversation. “You said you were playing poker, Lia?”
“With a group that included Thomas Wesley,” Lia filled in. “I trounced all of them. Michael was just my arm candy. After that, we split up. He went to cash in the chips, and I went to sign him up for mud wrestling against his will.”
I tried to picture it in my mind—Lia at a poker table, Michael beside her. Lia is winning. Her fingers play at the tips of her dark hair. Beside her, Michael fastens and unfastens the top button on his blazer.
What had made our UNSUB stop and take notice? Why Michael?
“What happens if the intended victim isn’t in the Grand Ballroom on January twelfth?” Briggs posed the question to the room as a whole.
“Four variables.” Sloane tapped the thumb on her right hand to each of her fingers as she rattled them off. “Date, location, method, and victim.”
“If the equation changes, the UNSUB has to adapt.” Sterling worked her way through the logic out loud. “The date and the method are necessary to achieve the UNSUB’s primary objective. The location and making sure the number shows up on his victim’s wrist—those are psychologically meaningful, symbols of mastery. To adapt, the UNSUB would have to give up some portion of the power and control that mastery represents.”
“I’ll want that back,” Dean said. “The power. The control.”
January twelfth. The knife. Those were the constants in this equation. If it came down to the location and the victim…
The spiral is your greatest work. A sign of rebellion. A sign of devotion.
It’s perfect.
“You would change victims rather than location,” I said, sure enough of that.
“I’ll adapt,” Dean ruminated. “I’ll choose someone new—and whoever I choose will pay for the fact that I had to.”
I didn’t want to think about the ways that a killer could go about reclaiming power and control with a knife.
“My father won’t cancel tomorrow?” Sloane asked, her voice tight. “He won’t even consider moving it to a different part of the casino?”
Briggs gave a shake of his head.
Power. Control. Sloane’s father wouldn’t let go of that any more than the UNSUB would.
“If I were to go to the tournament tomorrow,” Michael spoke up, “then we wouldn’t just know where this guy’s going to be, or what he’s planning to do. We’d know who the target is.” He turned to Briggs. “You used Cassie for bait on the Locke case. You paraded her out for an UNSUB to see, because there was a life at stake, and you thought you could protect her.
How is this any different?”
My gut twisted, because it wasn’t.
“If I’m not there,” Michael continued unflinchingly, “this guy just chooses someone else. Maybe you catch him, maybe you don’t.” He paused. “There’s a good chance someone dies bloody.”
I didn’t want Michael to be right. But he was.
Someone dies tomorrow. At the appointed time. At the appointed place.
By your knife.
“This UNSUB isn’t the only one who’ll be there tomorrow.” Judd appeared in the doorway. “You go, Michael, and you’ll be wearing more than one target on your back.”
I didn’t hear a trace of doubt in the old man’s words. He thinks Nightshade will be there.
Agent Sterling met Judd’s eyes. “I’d like to see the note he sent you.”
Judd nodded to one of the agents on guard detail, and the man disappeared and returned a moment later with an evidence bag. Inside was the envelope from the plane.
Agent Sterling took a pair of gloves out of her pocket. She reached into the envelope. She pulled out a photo. After a moment, she flipped it over to read the back.
She looked over at Briggs. “Flower,” she reported hoarsely. “White.”
I remembered Judd telling me that Nightshade had sent each of his victims a flower—the bloom of a white nightshade—before they died. And now he’d sent Judd a photograph of the same.
“He sent you a flower?” I asked Judd, panic winding its way down my spine, my heart in my throat. Not Judd. Not here, not now, not again.
“He did,” Judd allowed. I remembered what he’d said about Nightshade’s poison of choice. Undetectable. Incurable. Painful. “Maybe
it’s too late for me,” Judd continued, his voice hard, “and maybe it isn’t, but I’m telling you, he’ll be there tomorrow.”
Nightshade hadn’t wanted us leaving Las Vegas. He’d tampered with the plane. He’d made sure Judd knew we had nowhere to go.
Had he known that the UNSUB had marked Michael? Had Nightshade been watching? Was he watching us still?
Don’t, I told myself. Don’t give him that kind of power. Don’t let your mind make him into anything other than a man.
“Nightshade chose all of his victims beforehand,” I said, treating him as no more significant than any other UNSUB. “He sent them flowers.”
A warning. A gift.
“Stalking behavior,” Dean said shortly. “Not indicative of an opportunity killer. If I’m Nightshade, if I’m focused on Judd? If I’ve received permission from the cult to eliminate any and all problems, or finally reached the point where permission doesn’t matter? I’d rather take something from Judd here than at the Majesty tomorrow.”
Nightshade had gotten to Scarlett in the FBI labs. He had to know we’d been taken to a safe house. And to a man like that, us being in protection might just look like a challenge.
“It’s settled, then,” Michael said, even though it was anything but. “No place is safe, and I’m going.”
