They put Michael in a bulletproof vest. They put a wire on him. Video, audio—whatever he saw, whatever he heard, Sterling and Briggs would, too. The other agents were also wired—video only—and those feeds would be accessible not only by Briggs as he coordinated the mission, but by the
rest of us back at the safe house.
It only takes one detail, I thought. One moment, one realization for everything to fall into place.
I couldn’t push down the part of me that was thinking that it only took one moment, one mistake, for this to go wrong, too.
Dean, Lia, Sloane, and I sat huddled on the couch as we waited. Lia refused to show any sign of nerves. Sloane, in contrast, was rocking back and forth.
Beside me, Dean shook his head. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Townsend’s unpredictable. He has no regard for his own safety. He’s constitutionally incapable of backing down from a fight.”
“Tell you what, Dean,” Lia replied. “When Michael gets back, we’ll get the two of you a room. Obviously, there are feelings involved.”
“We’re all worried,” I told Dean, ignoring Lia. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”
Sloane whispered something beside us. I couldn’t make out what she said.
“Sloane?” I said.
“January twenty-third,” she whispered. “February first, February third, February thirteenth.”
It took me a second to register that she was rattling off the next four Fibonacci dates.
I need nine.
We’d been focused on the next kill—January twelfth. But if we didn’t catch the UNSUB, this was what was next.
“The parking garage,” Sloane said. “Then the buffet, then the day spa.” The spiral was centered on the Majesty. It started out and spiraled in—and once it settled there, it kept going, closer and closer to the spiral’s center.
“Where does it end?” I asked her. We’d been so focused on what the UNSUB had already done that I hadn’t given much thought to the rest of the pattern. My heart pounded.
One detail. It only takes one detail.
Michael was still in transit. He wasn’t there yet. It would be minutes yet before the plan was put in motion.
Please, I thought, not sure who or what I was begging—or even what, precisely, I was begging for.
“It ends in the theater,” Sloane said, truly surprised the rest of us didn’t know. “On February thirteenth.”
“The poker tournament ends today.” Lia pointed out the obvious. “It’s going to be hard for most of the players to explain hanging around Vegas for long.”
Wesley. The professor.
“I chose the Majesty for a reason,” Dean said. “It was always going to end here. I knew, from the beginning, how this was going to end.”
Why the Majesty? My eyes were so dry they hurt, my throat the same.
My heart threatened to shatter my rib cage in my chest.
On the coffee table, the tablets Briggs had left for us jumped to life one by one, the screens going from black to active.
The video feeds were live.
The Grand Ballroom. January twelfth. Michael was there.
“The theater.” I said the words out loud, my eyes on the screens, looking for anything, any hint of someone moving Michael’s way. “It ends in the theater with victim number nine.”
And that was when I saw it.
Alexandra Ruiz. Sylvester Wilde. Camille Holt.
What did they have in common?
“Victimology,” I told Dean. “We don’t have four victims. We have five.”
Michael’s not a victim. Not Michael. Not our Michael. I pressed back against the chorus in my head. The UNSUB had chosen him.
Why Michael?
“If you add Michael into the profile,” I said, “then four out of the five victims are under the age of twenty-five.”
Most killers had a type. If you set aside Eugene Lockhart as an outlier, our UNSUB’s type was young. Beautiful. By some definition, privileged.
“A college girl celebrating the new year in Vegas. A stage magician with a show at the Wonderland. An actress who moonlighted playing professional poker.” It hurt me to look at Michael on the screen. “A trust- fund boy.”
“Average age of twenty-two,” Sloane commented.
The spiral ends in the Majesty theater, I thought.
“Alexandra had long dark hair.” The words tumbled out of my mouth, one after the other. “Who would she look like if you looked at her from behind?”
Dean answered first. “Tory,” he said. “She’d look like Tory Howard.” He turned to face me head-on. “Sylvester Wilde was a stage magician.”
Like Tory.
Camille had died after going out for drinks with Tory that night. And Michael?
You saw him at the poker table next to Lia. She’s got long, dark hair. Like Tory. And Michael? He fastens and unfastens the top button on his blazer, perfectly sure of his place in this world.
The pieces began falling into place in my head. I’d thought—multiple times—that we were looking for someone who planned ten steps ahead.
Someone who planned as meticulously as this killer, my own thoughts played back on a loop, who was as grandiose as this killer, who prided himself on being better, being more, would have a plan to circumvent suspicion.
I’d asked myself about our UNSUB’s relationships, about why he only chose to kill women when he could kill them cleanly.
The pattern ends in the Majesty theater. The final kill. The greatest sacrifice.
Nightshade’s ninth kill had been Scarlett.
“Yours,” I said out loud, “was always going to be Tory.”
The Majesty. Tory. Planning ten steps ahead—
I knew who the killer was. My fingers scrambled for the phone. My hands shaking, I dialed Agent Sterling.
YOU
You make your way through the crowd toward the stage. Like you’re supposed to be here. Like you own the place.
The knife is concealed by your sleeve.
There are cameras everywhere. Agents everywhere. They think you don’t know. They think you can’t see them, far more easily than they see you.
Your eyes land on your target. He’s wearing a blazer. His fingers play at the top button.
Everything can be counted. The steps until you reach him. The number of seconds it will take your blade to cross his throat. And to think, this almost went differently.
To think, you almost settled for an imitation. Three.
Three times three.
Three times three times three.
This is your inheritance. This is what you were always meant to be. A man bumps into you. Apologizes. You barely hear him.
1/1.
1/2.
1/3.
1/4.
1/12.
Nine seats at the table. Three seconds until it begins. Three…two…and—the power goes off. Just like you planned. No lights.
Chaos. Just like you planned.
You walk with purpose. You sidle up behind number five. You catch him in a chokehold and press the blade to his throat.
And then you start to slice.
