“We’re looking for someone in his early twenties,” Dean continued. “Someone who had a reason to target the casinos in general and the Majesty in particular. It’s likely our killer has extensive experience with Las Vegas and is used to going unseen. This is both his greatest asset and the fuel for much of his rage.”
“Our killer is used to being dismissed,” I continued. “He almost certainly has a genius-level IQ, but probably performed poorly in school. Our killer can play by the rules, but feels no guilt for breaking them. He’s not just smarter than people give him credit for—he’s smarter than the people who make the rules, smarter than the people who give the assignments, smarter than the people he works for and with.”
“Killing is an act of dominance.” Dean’s voice was quiet and understated, but there was conviction in it—the kind of conviction that spoke of firsthand experience. “The killer we’re looking for doesn’t care about physical dominance. He wouldn’t back down from a fight, but he’s lost his fair share. This killer dominates his victims mentally. They don’t lose because he’s stronger than they are—they lose because he’s smarter.”
“They lose,” I continue, “because he’s a true believer.”
“Beau isn’t religious.” Tory latched on to that—which I took to mean she recognized just how well everything else we’d said fit her foster brother.
“Our killer believes in power. He believes in destiny.” Dean paused. “He believes that something has been taken from him.”
“He believes,” I said quietly, “that now is the time to take it back.”
We didn’t tell Tory about the cult. With Nightshade’s attention on Vegas, knowing could put her in danger. Instead, I stopped telling Tory about our killer’s present state of mind and starting extrapolating backward.
“Our killer is young,” I said again, “but it’s clear from the level of organization in the kills that these murders have been years in the making.”
There was a reason we hadn’t been able to pinpoint the UNSUB’s age until we’d identified Michael as the intended fifth victim. So much about these kills spoke of planning—experience, grandiosity, artistry. To have reached that point by the age of twenty-one…
“In all likelihood, our killer has one or more traumatic events in his past—most likely, prior to the age of twelve. These events may have included physical or psychological abuse, but given the lengths the killer is going to”—to get their attention. I didn’t say those words out loud—“in order to prove himself worthy, it’s also likely we’re looking for someone who experienced a sudden loss and severe emotional or physical abandonment.”
“The cessation of abuse,” Dean said with heartrending calm, “would have been as traumatic and formative as what came before.”
“Stop.” Tory whispered the same thing she’d said when she’d answered the phone, but this time, her voice was rough and low and desperate. “Please, just stop.”
“He was killing in a pattern.” Sloane spoke suddenly, her whisper a match for Tory’s. “It was going to end in the Majesty’s theater. February thirteenth, the theater—that was where it was going to end.”
“You matter to our killer, Tory.” Dean bowed his head. “It was always going to be you—just like it had to be one of your biggest rivals, just like it had to be Camille, just like it had to be a young girl with dark hair that first night.”
“Just like it had to be Aaron,” Tory choked out, her voice no longer a whisper.
Michael caught my gaze. He held up a pad of paper. On the verge, it said. I gave a nod to show that I understood. Whatever we said next had the potential to push her one way or the other—to believe or fight back against every word we said, to help us nail Beau or throw up a wall.
I chose my words carefully. “Have you ever seen Beau draw a spiral?”
That was a gamble, but the violence we’d seen these past few days was years in the making. If our profile was right, if Beau had been working toward this for years, if his sick needs and plan could be traced back to an early trauma…You planned and you dreamed and you practiced. You never let yourself forget.
“Oh, God.” Tory broke. I could hear the exact moment she shattered. I could almost see her sinking to the ground, pulling her knees to her chest, the hand holding her phone dropping to her side.
Dean caught my eyes in his. His hand made his way to my shoulder. I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch.
I did this to you, I thought, unable to get the picture of Tory out of my mind. I broke you. I shattered you, because I could. Because I had to.
Because we need you.
“He used to draw them in the dirt.” Tory’s voice was hoarse. I wanted to tell her that I knew how it felt to have your insides carved out. I wanted to tell her I knew what it was like to feel hollow—like there was no grief left to be had. “Beau never drew on paper, but he used to draw spirals in the dirt. No one ever saw them but me—he never let anyone see them but me.”
It was always going to be you. Beau would have killed her. She was his family. He loved her, and he would have killed her. He had to, had to, for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp.
“You need to talk to the FBI,” Dean said gently. “You need to answer their questions.” He gave her a moment to process his words. “I know what I’m asking, Tory. I know what it will cost you.”
From experience. He knows from experience. Dean had testified against his father. We were asking Tory to do the same to Beau.
“I heard our foster mother talking about him once,” Tory said after an extended silence. “I heard her say…” I could hear the effort it took for her to even form the words. “They found Beau half-dead in the desert. He was six years old, and someone just left him there. No food, no water. He’d been out there for days.” Her voice shook slightly. “No one knew where he’d come from or who left him. Beau couldn’t tell them. He didn’t say a word, not to anyone, for two years.”
No one knew where he’d come from. Like dominoes, falling one by one, everything I knew about Beau’s motivation, about the murders, began to shift.
YOU
They think they can arrest you. They think they can charge you with murder. They think they can put you in a box. They have no idea—what you are, what you have become.
They have no proof.
There’s talk of security footage at the Desert Rose, the day you anointed the one who was to become your fifth. The same pawn store that caught Victor McKinney assaulting you on camera has provided footage of you there hours before, loosening the brick. The FBI claims they have a plastic baggie with your fingerprints on it. They claim to be scanning it for Aaron Shaw’s blood.
Tory is talking. About teaching you hypnosis. About what little she knows of your past.
You won’t be in here forever. You’ll finish what you started. You’ll take your seat at the table. The ninth seat.
Nine.
Nine.
Nine.
Four more, and then you will be finished. Four more, and you can go home.
Agent Sterling and Agent Briggs sat in the interrogation room opposite Beau Donovan. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit. His wrists were handcuffed together. A public defender sat beside Beau, continually advising his client not to speak.
Back at the safe house, Lia, Michael, Dean, and I watched. Sloane had tried to watch, too, but she couldn’t.
She’d been wearing the shirt Aaron gave her for three days straight.
We needed a confession. We’d laid out enough evidence to convince the DA to press charges, but to avoid a trial, to be sure that Beau would pay, we needed a confession.
“My client,” the lawyer said forcefully, “is pleading the Fifth.”
“You have nothing,” Beau told Briggs and Sterling, his eyes simultaneously dead of emotion and strangely alight. “This is the second time you’ve tried to put me in this box. It won’t work. Of course it won’t.”
“My client,” the lawyer repeated, “is pleading
the Fifth.”
“Nine bodies.” Agent Briggs leaned forward. “Every three years. On dates derived from the Fibonacci sequence.”
This was the final card we had to play.
“Keep going,” Michael told them, his words going to the earpiece both agents wore. “He’s surprised that you know about the others. And the way his eyes just darted toward his lawyer? Agitation. Anger. Fear.”
Beau’s lawyer was an outsider. He didn’t know why his client had done what he’d done. He didn’t know what had inspired him to kill. We were banking on the fact that Beau might not want the man to know.
One by one, Briggs started pulling pictures out of his file. Kills—but not Beau’s. “Drowning. Fire. Impaling. Strangling.”
Beau was getting visibly agitated.
“Knife.” Briggs paused. That was as far as Beau’s pattern had gone. “You would have beaten your sixth victim to death.” Another picture.
You weren’t expecting this. You weren’t expecting the FBI to know. Beau went pale. The FBI can’t know.
You only meant to hint at age-old secrets. To get their attention. To make them see you.
You never meant for it to go this far.
“Number seven would have been poison,” Briggs continued. He laid the last picture down. In it, a woman with blond hair, green eyes, and a face that tended more toward quirky than cute lay on her back. Her mouth was crusted with blood. Her body was contorted. She’d ripped her own fingernails off.
I swallowed as I remembered what Judd had said about Nightshade’s poison. Undetectable. Incurable. Painful.
“She was my best friend.” Agent Sterling brought her fingers to the very edge of Scarlett’s picture. “Did they take someone from you, too?”
“They?” the lawyer said. “Who’s they?” He gestured angrily toward the pictures. “What is the meaning of this?”
Briggs locked his eyes onto Beau. “Should I answer that question?” he asked. “Should I tell him why we’re showing you these pictures?”
“No!” The word burst out of Beau as a snarl.
You don’t talk to outsiders. Lia’s insight into cult mentality rang in my head. You don’t tell them what they’re not blessed enough to know.
“Get out,” Beau told his lawyer.
“I can’t just leave—”
“I’m the client,” Beau said. “And I said get out. Now.”
The lawyer left.
“You’re under no obligation to speak with us without your lawyer present,” Briggs said. “But then, I’m not convinced you want him to hear about this. I’m not convinced you want anyone to hear about this.” Briggs paused. “You’re right when you said we might not have enough for a conviction.”
Sterling picked up where Briggs left off. “But we do have enough for a trial.
“Twelve people on a jury,” Sterling said. I recognized her strategy of playing up the numbers, playing into his pattern of thinking. “Dozens of reporters. The victims’ families will want to be there, of course….”
“They will destroy you,” Beau said.
“Will they?” Sterling asked. “Or will they destroy you?”
Those words landed. I could see Beau straining against the handcuffs, straining to keep from turning back and looking over his shoulder.
“Tell him a story,” Dean instructed the agents. “Start with the day someone found him in the desert.”
Dean and I were used to using our abilities to catch killers. But profiling was just as useful in knowing how to break them.
“Let me tell you a story,” Briggs said on-screen. “It’s a story about a little boy who was found, half-dead, in the desert, when he was six years old.”
Beau’s breath was coming quicker now.
“No one knew where he’d come from,” Briggs continued.
“No one knew what he was,” I said. Briggs repeated my words to Beau.
We weren’t positive how Beau had spent those first six years, but Dean had a theory. I’d wondered, days ago, if Dean had seen any of himself when he looked at Beau. I’d thought that if the UNSUB was young, his profile wouldn’t be dissimilar from Daniel Redding’s apprentices’.
You didn’t just stumble across the pattern. You knew to look for it. You spent your whole life looking for it. And the reason you did that lies in those first six years.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Beau’s voice was no louder than a whisper, but it cut through the air. “You couldn’t possibly know.”
“We know they didn’t want you.” Sterling went for the kill. Beau’s murders had taken the cult’s pattern to the next level. He’d been appealing to them, attacking them, showing them just how worthy he was. “They left you to die. You weren’t good enough for them.” Sterling paused. “And they were right. Look at you. You got caught.” Her eyes trailed over his orange jumpsuit, his cuffs. “They were right.”
“You have no idea what I am,” Beau said, his voice shaking with emotion. “You have no idea what I’m capable of. Neither do they. No one knows.” His voice rose with each word. “I was born for this. The rest of them, they’re recruited as adults, but number nine is always born within their walls. The child of the brotherhood and the Pythia—blood of their blood. Nine.”
“Nine is a name to him,” Dean said. “A title. Tell him it’s not his. Tell him he doesn’t deserve it.”
“You’re not Nine,” Sterling said. “You’re never going to be Nine.”
Beau lifted cuffed hands to his own collar. He latched his fingers over his shirt and pulled it roughly off his shoulder. Underneath, etched onto his chest, was a series of jagged cuts, halfway healed and on their way to a scar.
Seven small circles forming a heptagon around a cross.
I stopped breathing. That symbol—I knew that symbol.
“Seven Masters.” Beau’s face was taut, his voice full of fury. He ran his fingers around the outside of the heptagon. Seven circles. “The Pythia.” He pressed his finger into the wound and pulled it down the vertical line on the cross. His hand trembled as he went to do the same with the horizontal. “And Nine.”
The symbol. I know that symbol. Seven circles around a cross.
I’d seen it carved into the lid of a plain wooden coffin, uncovered at the crossroads on a country dirt road.
“You wish you were Nine,” Agent Sterling said, still pressing. I felt my limbs going numb. Blackness crept in on my field of vision.
“Dean,” I wheezed.
He was with me in an instant. “I see it,” he said. “I need you to breathe for me, Cassie. I see it.”
The symbol Beau had carved into his own flesh had also been carved into my mother’s coffin. Not possible. June twenty-first. Not a Fibonacci date. My mother died in June.
On-screen, Beau’s hands were still trembling. His fingers tensed. They clawed at his neck. His back arched. And then he fell to the floor, convulsing.
Screaming. I registered the sound as if it were coming from very far away. He’s screaming.
And then he was gargling, choking on blood as it poured from his lips, his fingernails clawing violently against his own body, against the floor.
Poison.
“Breathe,” Dean repeated.
“We need help in here!” Sterling was screaming. Beau is screaming, and Sterling is screaming—and finally, the convulsions stopped. Finally, Beau was still.
Seven small circles forming a heptagon around a cross.
I forced myself to suck in a breath. And then another and another.
Beau’s cracked lips moved. He looked at Briggs in one final moment of clarity. “I don’t,” he struggled to say. “I don’t wish I was Nine.” He sounded like a child.
“You’ve been poisoned,” Briggs told him. “You need to tell us—”
“I don’t believe in wishing,” Beau murmured. And then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he died.
Beau was poisoned. I thought the words, but didn’t understand them. The
cult killed him. Nightshade killed Beau. Beau, who’d carved a symbol onto his own chest—a symbol someone else had carved into the box that contained my mother’s remains.
“My mother didn’t die on a Fibonacci date,” I said. “It was June. There are no Fibonacci dates in June, none in July….”
I realized on some level that Michael and Lia were staring at me, that Dean had wrapped his arms around me, that my body had collapsed against his.
My mother had disappeared five years ago—six in June. The person who’d attacked her had used a knife. It was poison that year. In the pattern, it was poison. Nightshade was the killer. The knife was New York, six years before that. There wasn’t supposed to be another one for twenty-one years.
Nothing about my mother’s death fit the pattern—so why was the symbol etched onto her coffin?
I struggled out of Dean’s arms and went for my computer. I pulled up the pictures—the royal blue shroud, the bones, my mother’s necklace. My finger hit at the keys again and again until the symbol showed up.
Lia and Michael came up behind us. “Is that…”
“Seven Masters,” I said, forcing my hand around the circles on the outside of the symbol. “The Pythia.” The vertical line. “And Nine.”
“Seven Masters.” Sloane appeared in the doorway, as if the mere mention of numbers had called her to us. “Seven circles. Seven ways of killing.”
I pulled my eyes from the screen to look at Sloane.
“I always wondered why there were only seven methods,” she said, her eyes swollen, her face pale. “Instead of nine.”
Three.
Three times three.
Three times three times three—but only seven ways to kill.
Because this group—whatever it was, however long it had been around—had nine members at a time. Seven Masters. The Pythia. And Nine.
“Beau Donovan is dead,” Lia told Sloane. “Poison. Presumably Nightshade’s.”
Sloane’s hands smoothed themselves down over the front of the shirt Aaron had given her. She trembled slightly, but all she said was, “Maybe the flower was for him.”