Michael going had been deemed a last resort.
By two in the morning, it was looking like the only option.
No matter how many times I went back over the profile, nothing changed. The ritualized elements of the crimes made it difficult to nail down even the most basic aspects of the UNSUB’s demographic.
Drowning. Fire. Impaling. Strangling. The methods told us nothing about the killer, other than the fact that he was going in a fixed order.
Young or old? Intelligent, definitely, but educated? It was difficult to say. If we were dealing with an UNSUB between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, I would say that person was filling a role similar to the role Webber had played to Dean’s father. Apprentice. A younger UNSUB committing these murders was proving himself. He was grandstanding, looking for approval—yearning for it. Much older than that and the UNSUB wouldn’t see himself as an apprentice at all. Viewed from that perspective, this became less about approval and more about proving himself dominant. An older UNSUB, executing this plan to perfection, would be setting himself above the cult—likely from a position of power himself.
You want power—either because you’ve already had a taste of it and want more, or because you’ve been made to feel powerless for too long.
I forced my mind back to the victims. In the prior Fibonacci cases, victimology had been one of the distinguishing features that allowed us to tell the killers apart. There has to be something, I kept thinking. I have to be missing something.
Drowning. Strangling. Those victims had been young, female. The gorier deaths had been reserved for males.
You don’t like hurting women. I turned that over in my head. You will, of course, to suit your goal. But given a choice, you’d prefer it to be neat. That made me wonder about the UNSUB’s other relationships. A mother? A daughter? A love?
My temples pounded. What else? I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t let myself stop. We had five hours before Michael left for the Majesty. No matter how heavily guarded he was, no matter how much we knew, that wasn’t a risk I wanted to take.
January twelfth. The Grand Ballroom. The knife.
I had to keep going. I had to think. I had to see whatever it was that we were missing.
Think. We were looking for someone highly intelligent, organized, charming enough to put people at ease. Alexandra Ruiz. The girl at Tory’s show. Michael. The UNSUB had hypnotized at least three people.
“Cassie.” Michael’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Go to bed.” “I’m fine,” I said.
“Liar.” Lia was two-thirds asleep on the couch. She didn’t even open her eyes to speak. She’d been going back over interviews, looking for anything she might have missed the first time.
Sloane had been staring at the pattern for hours.
“Briggs and Sterling are calling in the cavalry,” Michael said. “There will be no fewer than a dozen agents, armed to the teeth, watching my every move. The moment they catch sight of a knife, the UNSUB goes down.”
That was how this was supposed to go, but there was a reason this plan was a last resort.
Victimology, I thought. Four victims. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t. Not until the agents came the next morning to take Michael away.
