“Don’t thank me,” Michael returned easily. “Thank my father.”
A ball of unease began to unfurl in my stomach. I didn’t want to thank Michael’s father for anything—and under normal circumstances, neither did he. Without another word, Michael sauntered toward the master bedroom, claiming it for his own.
Dean came up behind me. He laid one arm lightly on my shoulder.
“This doesn’t feel right,” I told him softly.
“No,” Dean said, staring after Michael. “It doesn’t.”
Sloane and I ended up sharing a room. As I peered out our balcony window, I wondered how long it would take her to tell me what was wrong.
How long will it take me to tell her? To tell all of them? I pushed back against the questions.
“Did you have many nightmares while you were home?” Sloane asked softly, coming to stand behind me.
“Some,” I said.
I’d have more now that there had been a break in my mother’s case. And Sloane would be there. She’d tell me factoids and statistics until I fell back asleep.
Home isn’t a place, I thought. My throat muscles tightened.
“We shared a room for forty-four percent of the last calendar year,” Sloane said wistfully. “So far this year, we’re at zero.”
I turned to look at her. “I missed you, too, Sloane.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, and then she looked down at her feet. “I wanted him to like me,” she admitted, like that was some terrible thing.
“Aaron?” I asked.
Instead of answering, Sloane walked over to a shelf full of blown-glass objects and began sorting them, largest to smallest, and for objects of similar size, by color. Red. Orange. Yellow. She moved with the efficiency of a speed-chess player. Green. Blue.
“Sloane?” I said.
“He’s my brother,” she blurted out. Then, on the off chance that I might not have understood her meaning, she forced herself to stop sorting, turned, and elaborated. “Half brother. Male sibling. We have a coefficient of relatedness of point-two-five.”
“Aaron Shaw is your half brother?” I tried to make that compute. What were the chances? No wonder Sloane had behaved so strangely around him. As for Aaron, he’ d noticed Sloane. He’d smiled at her, talked to her, but she could have been anyone. She could have been a stranger on the street.
“Aaron Elliott Shaw,” Sloane said. “He’s 1,433 days older than I am.” Sloane looked back at the glass objects, perfectly arrayed in front of the mirror. “In my entire life, I’ve seen him exactly eleven times.” She swallowed. “This is only the second time he’s seen me.”
“He doesn’t know?” I asked.
Sloane shook her head. “No. He doesn’t.”
Sloane’s last name isn’t Shaw.
“Forty-one percent of children born in America are illegitimate.” Sloane lightly traced her index finger along the edge of the shelf. “But only a minority of those are born as a result of adultery.”
Sloane’s mother wasn’t her father’s wife. Her father owns this casino. Her half brother doesn’t even know she’s alive.
“We don’t have to stay here,” I told her. “We can go back to the other hotel. Michael would understand.”
“No!” Sloane said, her eyes wide. “You can’t tell Michael, Cassie. You can’t tell anyone.”
I’d never known Sloane to keep a secret. She didn’t have much of a brain-to-mouth filter, and what little she had disappeared under the influence of even the smallest bit of caffeine. The fact that she wanted to keep this between us made me wonder whether those were her words or someone else’s.
You can’t tell anyone.
“Cassie—”
“I won’t,” I told Sloane. “I promise.”
Looking at her, I couldn’t keep from wondering how many times Sloane had been told, growing up, that she was a secret. I wondered how many times she’d watched Aaron or his father from afar.
“There’s a high probability that you’re profiling me,” Sloane stated.
“Occupational hazard,” I told her. “And speaking of occupational hazards, the numbers on the victims’ wrists—any thoughts?”
Sloane’s brain worked in ways that were incomprehensible to most people. I wanted to remind her that here, with us, that was a good thing.
Sloane took the bait. “The first two victims were 3213 and 4558.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, then plowed on. “One odd number, one even. Four digits. Neither are prime. 4558 has eight divisors: 1, 2, 43, 53, 86, 106, 2279, and, of course, 4558.”
“Of course,” I said.
“In contrast, 3213 has sixteen divisors,” Sloane continued.
Before she could tell me all sixteen of them, I interjected, “And the third victim?”
“Right,” she said, turning to pace the room as she spoke. “The number on the third victim’s wrist was 9144.” Her blue eyes got a faraway look in them that told me not to expect decipherable English any time soon.
The numbers matter to you, I thought, turning my mind to the killer. The numbers are the most important thing.
Very few aspects of this UNSUB’s MO had remained constant. Victimology was a wash. You’ve killed one woman and two men. The first two were in their twenties. The third was almost eighty. Our killer had killed in a different location each time, using a different methodology.
The numbers were the only constant.
“Could they be dates?” I asked Sloane.
Sloane paused in her pacing. “4558. April fifth, 1958. It was a Saturday.” I could see her searching through her encyclopedic store of knowledge for details about that date. “On April fifth, 1951, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death as Soviet spies. In 1955 on that date, Churchill resigned as England’s prime minister, but in 1958…” Sloane shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Knock, knock.” Lia announced her presence the way she always did, without giving anyone time to object before she sauntered into the room. “I come bearing news.”
Lia slipped personas on and off as easily as most people switched clothes. Since we’d arrived, she’d changed into a red dress. With her hair pulled back into a complicated swirl, she looked sophisticated and a little bit dangerous.
That did not bode well.
“The news,” Lia continued with a slow smile, “involves some fascinating revelations about how our very own Cassandra Hobbes spent her Christmas vacation.”
Lia knew. About my mother. About the body. I felt like there was a vise around my chest, tightening centimeter by centimeter until I couldn’t manage more than shallow breaths.
After a few seconds, Lia snorted. “Honestly, Cassie. You go away for two weeks and it’s like you’ve forgotten everything I taught you.”
She was lying, I realized. When Lia said the news she’d heard was about me, she was lying. For all I knew, there might not even be news.
“Interesting, though,” Lia continued, her eyes eagle sharp, “that you believed me. Because that seems to suggest that something interesting did happen while you were home.”
I said nothing. Better to stay silent in Lia’s presence than to lie.
“So was there news?” Sloane asked Lia curiously. “Or were you just making conversation?”
That’s one term for it.
“There’s definitely news,” Lia declared, turning back toward the door and walking out of the room. I glanced at Sloane, and then we hurried to catch up with her. As we rounded the corner, Lia finally shared.
“We have a visitor,” she said airily. “And the news is that she’s very unhappy.”
Agent Sterling stood in the middle of the Renoir Suite’s sprawling living room, her eyebrows arched so high, they practically disappeared into her hairline. “This is your idea of low-key?” she asked Judd.
Judd walked into the kitchen and started a cup of coffee. He’d known Agent Sterling since she was a kid. “Relax, Ronnie,” he said. “No one is going to connect five spoiled teenagers
and an old man in a four-thousand-dollar-a-night suite to the FBI.”
“Given the average yearly salary of an FBI agent,” Sloane interjected before Agent Sterling could say anything, “that seems true.”
Michael strode into the room, dressed in what appeared to be a swimsuit and a fluffy white robe. “Agent Sterling,” he said with a tip of an imaginary hat. “So glad you could join us.” He made quick work of studying her. “You’re annoyed, but also concerned and a bit peckish.” He crossed the room and picked up a bowl of fruit. “Apple?”
Sterling gave him a look.
Michael took the apple for himself and crunched into it. “You don’t have to worry about our cover.” Dean entered the room, and Michael gestured first toward him, then toward the rest of us. “I’m a VIP. They’re my entourage.”
“Four teenagers and a former marine,” Agent Sterling said, folding her arms over her chest. “That’s your entourage.”
“The fine folks at the Majesty don’t know they’re teenagers,” Michael countered. “Dean and Lia could pass for early twenties. And,” Michael added, “I may have led them to believe Judd was my butler.”
That got nothing more than a slight eyebrow raise out of Judd, who poured himself a cup of coffee without responding.
“If anyone asks,” Michael called to him, “your name is Alfred.”
Agent Sterling seemed to realize that she’d lost control of the situation. Rather than argue with Michael, she crossed the room and perched on the arm of the sofa. She nodded to the seats and waited for us to follow the unspoken order. We sat. The position she’d taken up meant she was seated higher than the rest of us, looking down.
I doubted that was an accident.
“Persons of interest.” Agent Sterling laid a thick file folder down on the coffee table in front of her, then reached back into her briefcase. “Schematics of the first two crime scenes.” She passed those to me, and I passed them to Sloane. Finally, she held up a DVD. “The Desert Rose’s security footage from the casino floor for the hour before and the hour after Eugene Lockhart was shot.”
“That’s it?” Lia asked. “That’s all you brought us?” She leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the mahogany coffee table. “It’s like you want me to entertain myself.”
The evidence Agent Sterling had just handed over gave Sloane plenty to work with. Dean and I could weave through the information they’d collected on the persons of interest. Even Michael could scan the security footage for any emotional outliers.
But Lia needed witness interviews—or at the very least, transcripts.
“We’re working on it,” Agent Sterling told her. “Briggs and I will be conducting interviews of our own. I’ll make sure they’re recorded. If there’s something we need a consult on, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime”—she stood up and glanced around the massive, sprawling suite—“enjoy your accommodations, and stay out of trouble.”
Lia’s expression was all innocence—and all too convincing.
Sterling headed for the door. She stopped to talk to Judd on the way out. After a quiet exchange, Sterling called back to me. “Cassie?” she said. “A word.”
Hyperaware of the fact that the others were watching, I met Agent Sterling at the door. She pressed a USB drive into my hand. “That’s everything we have on the developments in your mother’s case,” she said softly.
No matter what. I hadn’t let myself think those words in years. And now, they were the only thing I could think. Forever and ever, no matter what.
“You’ve been through the files?” I asked Agent Sterling, my mouth going dry.
“I have.”
My hand closed tighter over the drive, as if part of me was afraid she’d take it away.
“Judd said he told you not to look at the files alone. If you want me with you when you look at them, Cassie, you have my number.” With those words, Sterling slipped out the door, leaving me to face the inquisition alone.
I forced myself to ignore the looks I was getting from Michael and Lia, the look I was getting from Dean. Part of me wanted to walk past them, shut myself in my room, and look at the contents of the drive in my hand, to read it, memorize it, devour it whole.
Part of me wasn’t sure I was ready for what I would find.
Trying my hardest to keep those thoughts from my face, I made my way back to the others and to the files Agent Sterling had brought us on the current case. “Let’s get to work.”
The FBI had collected the local police department’s notes on five persons of interest in the deaths of Alexandra Ruiz and Sylvester Wilde. I started with the first file.
“Thomas Wesley,” I said, hoping the others would follow my lead and focus on the case. I laid a finger on the man’s picture—the same one Agent Briggs had put up on the screen on the plane.
“Self-satisfied,” Michael declared, studying the photo for a moment. “And hyperaware.”
Filing Michael’s observations away for reference, I skimmed the file. Wesley had created and sold no fewer than three internet start-up companies. His net worth was eight figures, nearing nine. He’d been playing poker professionally for about a decade—and in the past three years, he’d ascended the ranks, winning multiple international competitions.
Intelligent. Competitive. I took in the way Wesley was dressed in the picture and processed Michael’s read on the man. You like to win. You like a challenge.
Based on the party he’d thrown on New Year’s Eve, he also liked women, excess, and living the high life.
“What are you thinking?” I asked Dean. He was a warm, steady presence by my side, reading over my shoulder, not asking the questions I knew he had to be thinking about the exchange between Sterling and me.
“I think our UNSUB likes a challenge,” Dean answered quietly.
Just like Thomas Wesley.
“How many of our POIs are here for the poker tournament?” I asked. Picking out potential suspects was significantly easier when there was variation among the people you were profiling. By definition, anyone capable of playing poker at an elite level was highly intelligent, good at masking their own emotions, and amenable to taking calculated risks.
Lia thumbed through the files. “Four of the five,” she said. “And the fifth is Tory Howard, stage magician. Four bluffers and an illusionist.” Lia smiled. “I do like a challenge.”
You’re methodical, I thought, my brain turning back to the UNSUB. You plan six steps ahead. You get a rush out of seeing those plans come to fruition.
In most of the cases we’d worked in the past few months, the killers’ assertions of dominance over their victims had been direct. The victims had been overpowered. They’d been chosen, they’d been stalked, and they’d died looking at the faces of their killers.
This UNSUB was different.
“Persons of interest two, three, and four.” Michael drew my attention back to the present as he spread the files out one by one on the coffee table. “Or, as I like to call them,” he continued, glancing at each POI’s picture for less than a second, “Intense, Wide-Eyed, and Planning-Your-Demise.”
The one Michael had referred to as Planning-Your-Demise was the only woman of the three. She had strawberry blond hair with a slight curl to it and eyes that looked several sizes too big for her face. At first glance, she could have passed for a teenager, but the dossier informed me that she was twenty-five.
“Camille Holt.” I paused after reading her name. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Because she’s not just a professional poker player,” Lia replied. “She’s an actress.”
The dossier confirmed Lia’s words. Camille was classically trained, had an undergraduate degree in Shakespearean literature, and had played small but critically acclaimed roles in several mainstream films.
She didn’t exactly fit the profile of your typical professional poker player.
You don’t like being put in boxes, I thought. According to the file, this was Camille’
s second major poker tournament. She’d gone far enough in the first to surpass expectations, but hadn’t won.
I thought about what Michael had said about her facial expression. To the untrained eye, she didn’t look like she was plotting anything. She looked sweet.
You like being underestimated. I rolled that over in my mind as I made my way through the next two files, skimming the information the FBI had gathered on Dr. Daniel de la Cruz (Intense), and the supposedly wide-eyed Beau Donovan, who looked more like he was scowling to me.
De la Cruz was a professor of applied mathematics. True to Michael’s assessment, he seemed to approach both poker and his field of study with laser focus and an intensity unmatched by his peers.
For maximal contrast, Beau Donovan was a twenty-one-year-old dishwasher who’d entered the qualifying tournament here at the Majesty two weeks before. He’d won, giving him the amateur spot in the upcoming poker championship.
“Shall we role-play?” Lia asked. “I’ll be the actress. Dean can be the dishwasher from the wrong side of the tracks. Sloane is the mathematics professor, and Michael is the billionaire playboy.”
“Obviously,” Michael replied.
I picked up the final file, the one that belonged to Tory Howard, the only POI who wasn’t an elite poker player.
The magician.
“I’m bored and approaching really bored,” Lia announced when it became clear that none of us were going to take her up on the role-play suggestion. “And I think we all know that’s not a good thing.” She stood, smoothing one hand over her red dress while the other grabbed for the DVD. “At least on a security video, something might actually happen.”
Lia popped the DVD into a nearby player. Sloane looked up from her spot on the floor just as the security footage began to play. A split screen showed the view from eight cameras. Sloane stood, her eyes moving rapidly back and forth, as she took in the data, tracking hundreds of people, some stationary, some moving from one frame to the next.
“There.” Sloane reached for the remote and paused it. It took me a moment to zero in on what she’d seen.