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“Predators are all about control,” Kent said. “Part of their personality entertains grandiose notions of superiority, but another part has to dominate everyone around them in order to cover deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.”
Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.”
“What does it say? How did they solve it?” Bianca scrolled down with her finger. “They divided the numbers thirty-two, eighteen, ten, and thirty-six by two to get sixteen, nine, five, and eighteen. Swapping those numbers for letters of the alphabet, that spells P-I-E-R. The numbers were followed by the letters F and R. They figured the letters represented six and eighteen. Using the same logic, they divided those numbers by two, coming up with C and I. If you do the reverse of the first part of the message and exchange the letters for numbers, that makes three and nine. Put it all together,
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“Oh no, oh no, no, no.” “What?” Nina backtracked to peer over Bianca’s trembling shoulder. “The Cipher posted a picture after their message,” Bianca said between her fingers. Nina reached forward to tap the image, expanding it. The tiny screen showed a girl’s body floating facedown in murky water, blonde hair rippling out like a golden fan. A caption below the picture read TOO LATE, WARRIOR GIRL.
“From what we’ve been told, she’s nothing like you physically. That’s why I want to get a look at her in person and hear what they’ve dug up about her background. She must have something else in common with you. Whatever that point of convergence is will tell us a lot about him.”
“Do we have an ID yet?” “The girl was nude,” he said. “No ID. A few families of missing teens came forward to see if it was their daughter, but so far, no luck. Some of the guys who work the area think she might be homeless.”
He’d suppressed his darkest impulses throughout his adolescence and young adulthood, denying himself. All of that changed the moment he laid eyes on Nina for the first time. She was the one.
He’d gathered the equipment and set up the shed that very night, but by the time he was ready, Nina had disappeared. He spent three days hunting her. He had been furious with her at the time, but the chase had added to the thrill. And given him a reason to punish her. He had bestowed one mark upon her for each day she made him wait. Then he had taken her three times, completing the triangle of retribution.
He would have her again. And he would punish her so much more for escaping. He would take everything...
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He studied the series of numbers on the card: 75, 73, 3, 9, 101, 8, 75.
The cops thundered past him in the direction he had indicated, guns drawn. They were not looking for a dark-skinned Latino Public Works employee. They were looking for a blue-eyed white man. Nina had seen his eyes and the skin around them all those years ago. She was supposed to take that information to the grave but had no doubt shared it with police, giving them a rough idea of his appearance. Today, he had found a way to turn what had been a setback to his advantage.
He glanced down at the blood on his wrist. Panic bloomed within him.
“Agent Guerrera bit the unsub’s glove, tearing off a few fibers. Our evidence techs collected them from the pavement where she indicated she spat them out. Those fibers come from a manufactured fabric that is an exact match for an existing sample in our database, otherwise we wouldn’t have managed such a fast response.”
“How many cases can we link?” Buxton asked. Baker answered after a long moment. “A total of thirty-six murders.”
“The murders you connected, is the Megan Summers case one of them?” Nina remembered the girl’s name from her days as a street cop before she joined the Bureau. Every law enforcement officer in the DC metro area had been on the hunt for the so-called Beltway Stalker. It had seemed as if the entire region breathed a collective sigh of relief when his reign of terror ended. She tried, and failed, to put the puzzle together with several pieces missing. “Yes, it is.”
“What are the odds?” “The odds of what?” Nina said, unable to stop herself. Strain clipped Kent’s words. “Of two serial killers with the same MO, wearing the same obscure brand of MMA fighting gear, operating at the same time.” “Unless they were partners,” Wade said. “It’s happened before, serial killers working together.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “But it had all the earmarks of one perpetrator acting alone. I’m sure of it.”
