He got lucky with the Russian assassin, but next could be someone closer to Elizabeth.
And that would only go one of two ways.
It would break her.
Or it would put her over the edge to the point of no return—and that was the scariest part.
As she ate the burger on her plate, she was focused on the men around her. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t scared shitless.
The bottom line was this.
She was going to have to go off her normal route when solving shit because Devon had marked one of them.
Only, reading the clues…
She didn’t trust them.
It would be just like him to fuck with the evidence—like he’d done using a hacker. Oh, he wanted a game, but he didn’t want a fair game.
He wanted one that only he could win by stacking the deck. Everyone’s life depended on her skill in playing it, too.
That was a lot to carry alone.
Over the last twenty-plus years, she’d played plenty of games. It had been twenty-five years of bullshittery, tomfoolery, and straight-up chaos.
Only, in those games, she had a chance. There was no doubt in her mind that in this one, she did not.
He was fueled by hate.
The man hated women.
He hated her.
So, someone at this table was in danger, and she didn’t think it would be her. Well, not until she gave herself over to him if he took one of the men in her life.
If she focused too much on protecting them, he popped up and took out someone she wasn’t watching. What she needed now was to figure this out.
Elizabeth had to get through the story he was telling, and figure out the truth.
Lives depended on it.
“He’s going to escalate,” Ethan said, eating a fry. “At some point, he’s going to try to shock you. When you put the bounty on him, it threw him off, and that attempt might give you something we can use.”
Elizabeth was to the point.
It wasn’t that she doubted her profiler.
She didn’t.
It was just that he missed one important thing.
“I’ve seen it all, Ethan. Shocking me is going to be difficult. There’s not a scene I haven’t walked onto, or a travesty that I’ve yet to navigate. I’ve seen everything that humanity has done to itself.”
He was aware.
“He’ll try to shock you with who you find then. That’s his only hope. He has to keep you off your feet. While your struggle is anticipating the clues and the outcome, he has to worry about slowing you down with shock and awe.”
If he really wanted to slow her down, he should try shooting himself in the face. That would shock her more than anything he was doing.
