The private airstrip was clear, but for the jet. It sat on the runway, ready to spirit us to safety. This isn’t over. It isn’t done. The objection was just a whisper in my head this time, drowned out by a dull roar in my ears and the numbness that had settled over my whole body.
The agony of not knowing what had happened to my mother—of never being able to silence that last sliver of maybe—had been with me so long, it felt like a flesh-and-blood part of me. And now, that part of me was gone.
Now, I knew. Not just in my gut. Not just as a matter of deduction.
I knew.
I felt hollow, empty inside where the uncertainty had been. She loved me more than anything. I tried to summon up the memory of her arms around me, what she smelled like. But all I could think was that one day, Lorelai Hobbes had been my mother and a mentalist and the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and the next, she was just a body.
And now, just bones.
“Come on,” Michael said. “Last one on the plane gets their initials shaved into Dean’s head.”
Every time I felt myself going under, they pulled me back up.
Dean was the last one on the plane. I went in front of him, trying to fight through the fog with each step. I was better than this—better than
giving in to the numbness and going hollow inside because I’d found out something I already knew.
I knew. I made myself think the words. I always knew. If she’d survived, she would have come back for me. Somehow, some way. If she’d survived, she wouldn’t have left me alone.
By the time I turned down the aisle, Lia, Michael, and Sloane had already claimed seats near the back. On the first seat to my left, there was an envelope with Judd’s name on it, written in careful cursive scrawl. I paused.
Somewhere, beneath the numbness and under the fog, I felt something.
This isn’t over, I thought. This isn’t done.
I picked the envelope up. “Where’s Judd?” I said. My voice was rough against my throat.
Dean eyed the envelope in my hand. “He’s talking to the pilot.”
My heart beat once in the time it took Dean to turn around and go for the cockpit.
This wasn’t Agent Sterling’s handwriting. It wasn’t Agent Briggs’s. I’d learned, months ago, to stop telling myself it’s nothing, it’s probably nothing when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Judd.” Dean’s voice reached me a second before I turned toward the cockpit myself.
“Just a little electrical trouble,” Judd assured Dean. “We’re taking care of it.”
This isn’t over. This isn’t done.
I held the envelope wordlessly out to Judd. My hand didn’t shake. I didn’t say a word. Judd eyed it for a moment, then looked at me.
“It was on the seat.” Dean was my voice when I had none.
Judd took the envelope. He turned his back on us to open it. Fifteen seconds later, he turned back around.
“Get off the plane.” Judd’s voice was gruff, no-nonsense, calm. Michael responded like Judd had shouted. He grabbed his bag and
Sloane’s. He pushed Sloane lightly in front of him and turned to Lia. He didn’t say anything—whatever she saw in his face was enough.
Off the plane. Into Judd’s rental car. Michael didn’t say a word about leaving his own car behind.
“The envelope,” Dean said as we pulled away from the runway. “Who was it from?”
Judd gritted his teeth. “He signed it ‘an old friend.’”
I froze, unable to exhale, a breath turning stale in my lungs.
“The man who killed your daughter.” Lia was the only one with balls enough to say it out loud. “Nightshade. What did he want?”
I forced myself to start breathing again.
“To warn us,” I answered without meaning to. “Threaten us. Those electrical problems with the plane. They weren’t an accident, were they?”
Judd was already on the phone with Sterling and Briggs.
Nightshade’s here in Vegas, I thought. And he doesn’t want us to leave.
I’d feared that thinking about Scarlett’s killer might conjure him up like a ghost in the mirror. I’d known that our UNSUB was attempting to attract the attention of Nightshade and the others like him. I hadn’t thought about what it would mean if the UNSUB succeeded. The organization—group— cult—
They’re here.
Five minutes later, Judd was at the airport ticket counter, attempting to book us on the next commercial flight anywhere. But the moment the woman behind the counter typed his name into the computer, her brow knit.
“I already have tickets reserved under your name,” she said. “Six of them.”
I knew before I’d even fully processed what she was saying that this was Nightshade’s doing, too. You chose Scarlett for your ninth, I thought, unable to stop myself. You chose her because she mattered to Sterling and Briggs and they dared to think they might stop you. You chose her because she was a challenge.
Of all of Nightshade’s victims, Scarlett was his greatest feat. She would be the one he went back to. The one he re-lived. You’ve watched Judd, haven’t you? Every now and again, you like to remind yourself of what you took from him—from all of them.
I wanted that guess to be off the mark. I wanted to be wrong. But the fact that Nightshade wanted us to stay in Vegas—the fact that Nightshade even knew there was an “us”…
Six tickets. The woman behind the counter printed them off and handed them to Judd. I knew before I looked that they would have our names on them.
First names. Last names.
The flight was to D.C.
You know who we are. You know where we live. The implications were chilling. Nightshade had been watching—quite possibly since he’d killed Scarlett Hawkins and Judd had moved in with Dean.
Killers don’t just stop, I thought, but in this group, they did. Nine and done. Those were the rules. Some killers take trophies, I thought. To re-live what they’ve done, to get some portion of that rush.
If Nightshade had been watching off and on, whenever he needed a fix
—if he was in Vegas—then he knew what was happening here.
You’ve never killed Judd—never killed us, because the rules say you stop at nine. But an organization like yours—a cult like yours—would have a way of dealing with threats.
Lia had said it herself: if the Vegas UNSUB had been a part of this group, he would be dead. And if the cult realized that we’d made the connection, if they saw us as a threat…
Nightshade would probably love for the kids Judd was caring for to be the exception to the rules.
Judd slammed the tickets down onto the counter. He turned and was on his phone again in an instant. “I’m going to need transport, a security detail, and a safe house.”
