Maybe Celine Delacroix was still alive. Maybe she hadn’t been doused in kerosene. Maybe the person who had abducted her from her home hadn’t burned her alive on March twenty-first.
But that wasn’t a risk we could take. The entire team—plus Agents Starmans and Vance—were on the jet and flying to upstate New York in under an hour.
Near the front of the plane, Briggs checked his watch. Across the aisle from him, Agent Sterling thumbed through a copy of the case file, like she hadn’t already memorized the entire thing. The lengths the two of them were going to in order to avoid eye contact might have triggered my interest if I hadn’t been more focused on the fact that Celine Delacroix might be victim number one—of nine.
I felt the weight of that pressing down on me, suffocating me. Beside me, Dean’s fingers brushed the tips of mine.
Every time he reaches for your hand, I heard Daniel Redding whisper in my memory, every time you touch his scars…
I jerked my hand back. “Cassie?”
“I’m fine,” I said, falling back on a childhood habit and focusing on assessing the other occupants of the plane. Michael sat in a row by himself, Sloane and Lia side by side across the aisle. Near the front of the plane, behind Sterling and Briggs, Agent Vance—short, compact, by the book, and pushing forty—and Agent Starmans—recently divorced, unlucky in love, and deeply uncomfortable with teenagers who saw more than they should— awaited orders. They’d been a part of Briggs’s team since before I’d joined the program, but hadn’t started traveling with us until after Vegas.
Until every single one of us became a possible target.
That just left Judd. I could tell by the way he was sitting that he was armed. The plane hit cruising altitude before I could think too hard about why.
Agent Sterling stood and ditched the file in her hand for a digital version displayed on the flat screen at the front of the plane. “Celine Elodie Delacroix, nineteen-year-old daughter of Remy and Elise Delacroix.” Agent
Sterling began the briefing like this was any other day—and any other case. “Remy is a hedge fund manager. Elise runs the family’s charitable foundation.”
Agent Sterling didn’t say a word about the Masters—or the Delacroix family’s connection to Michael. I took my cue from her, setting aside conjecture in favor of focusing on the pictures on the screen. My first impression was that Celine Delacroix was the kind of girl who could make anything look elegant while giving off the general impression that she thought elegance was overrated. In the first picture, she wore her black hair wavy and chopped in artistic layers, the longest reaching past her chest and the shortest barely brushing the bottom of her chin. Her black cocktail dress was formfitting, and a gold medallion—most likely vintage—brought out the rich undertone of her brown skin. In the second picture, Celine’s dark hair spiraled out around her head in seemingly endless curls. Black pants. White blouse.
Red heels. My mind cataloged the details, even as I turned my attention to the final picture. Celine’s tight curls were pulled into a loose bun on the top of her head, and her white T-shirt hung purposefully off both shoulders, revealing a white tank underneath.
You wear solid colors, not prints. You’re always aware of the camera.
Agent Sterling continued, “Celine was reported missing by her college roommate when she didn’t return to campus after spring break.”
“Which campus?” Michael asked. I wondered why he was asking. I wondered why, if he and Celine had been at all close, he didn’t already know.
“Yale.” Agent Briggs was the one who answered Michael’s question. “According to police interviews, Celine’s friends were under the impression that she was joining them for a spring break trip to Saint Lucia, but she canceled at the last minute and went home instead.”
Why? I wondered. Did someone ask you to? Did something happen?
“Our victim was reported missing by her college roommate.” Sloane brought her feet up onto her seat and rested her chin on her knees. “It’s statistically unlikely that such a report would be made immediately. The percentage of college students who return late from breaks increases in a curvilinear fashion as the school year proceeds to its close.”
Agent Sterling recognized the question inherent in Sloane’s statistic. “The report was made yesterday morning, after Celine’s roommate had been unable to get ahold of her for three days straight and Mr. and Mrs. Delacroix confirmed that they hadn’t heard from their daughter in several weeks.”
A muscle ticked in Michael’s jaw. “They didn’t even know she went home, did they?”
“No,” Agent Briggs replied evenly. “It appears Celine’s parents were abroad at the time.”
I integrated that into what I knew about our victim’s last-minute trip
home. Did you know no one would be there? Did your parents even bother to tell you they would be gone?
“If she wasn’t reported missing until the twenty-eighth…” Sloane did the math and zeroed in on the money question. “How do we know she disappeared on the twenty-first?”
Agent Sterling clicked forward to the next slide in her presentation. “Security footage,” she clarified as a split-screen video began to play.
“Twelve cameras.” Sloane cataloged them instantly. “Based on the coverage and the length of the hallways, I’d estimate the house is a minimum of nine thousand square feet.”
Sterling enlarged footage of what appeared to be an in-home art studio.
Celine Delacroix was visible, smack-dab in the middle of the frame. The date on the footage was March 21.
You were painting something. As I watched Celine, I tried to sink further and further into her perspective. For you, painting is a whole-body endeavor. You move like you’re dancing. You paint like it’s a combat sport. The footage on the screen was black-and-white, but the resolution was excellent. You wipe the sweat from your brow with the back of your hand. There’s paint on your arms, your face. You take a step back and—
Without warning, the footage jumped. One second, Celine was on-screen, painting, and the next there was shattered glass everywhere. A broken easel lay on the floor. The entire studio had been ransacked.
And Celine was gone.
