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“Is he coming here?”
“Our information is he brought up a map on his laptop while his new car was prepared for him. He mapped out a route west, likely as far as Kansas, so not here. Our conclusion is he’s not ready for you yet.”
Beck opened her briefcase, took out an evidence bag. “He put this on the victim.”
“My bracelet.” In the summer sunlight, her skin went cold. “The one he took when he killed Nina.”
“He wants you to know he’s thinking about you. To keep you on edge. But the fact is, Morgan, he’s on edge. He wouldn’t have made so many mistakes otherwise. He knows cars, he knows tech, but he forgot about the tracking system in the Mercedes.”
“We can put you in a safe house,” Morrison began.
“My mother and grandmother live here. What if he comes for me, and hurts them instead?”
The thought of it, the risk of it, turned the hard knot in her belly to ice.
“And how long do I stay shut away somewhere? A week, a month, a year? I can’t live like that. No one can live like that. Miles—”
“No,” he said. “You can’t live like that. We’re doing everything you advised us to do. If there’s more, tell us and we’ll do that. How manytimes is she supposed to let him take what she has, what she is? How many times does she have to start over?”
Saying nothing, Morgan watched him. His voice stayed absolutely calm, and turned cold enough to freeze the air.
The invisible suit, she thought. He put on the invisible suit. For me.
What he said, how he said it, meant, in that moment, everything.
“She shook his confidence, isn’t that it?” Miles demanded. “You have profilers—isn’t that the reason he’s fucking up? She dented his shield, so she has to pay. But he has to make sure he dents hers, too. Shakes her confidence. Otherwise, he’d have gone after her right away. It’s got to eat at him, but he’s waited more than a year.
“She scares him. And he damn well should be scared of her.”
“I don’t disagree,” Beck said. “But unless we stop him first, he will come sooner or later. Because yes, it eats at him. The three women he’s killed since Morgan survived? They’re substitutes, and a substitute never satisfies like the real thing.”
“Then you’d better find him first.”
Beck sat back, picked up her glass, set it down again. “If he’d waited one more day in South Carolina. We’d just walked into the agency he used for the rental. If we’d walked in a few hours earlier. But we didn’t, and he didn’t.”
“It’s hard for me.” Morgan stroked Howl’s head. “It’s hard for both of you.”
“It’s the job,” Beck began, then both her and Morrison’s phones beeped. “Excuse me.” She rose, stepped away.
“Is that your dog?” Morrison asked Morgan.
“No. He’s Miles’s dog.”
“More or less,” Miles muttered.
“It wouldn’t hurt to get a dog. A dog’s a good deterrent. You could—”
“We’ve got a break,” Beck interrupted. “He checked into a hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. Local LEOs responding now. We’ve got to go. We’ll be in touch.”
Morgan stood to walk them out, but they were already rushing away. “Good luck,” she called out. “Maybe this time,” she said to Miles.
“Maybe. You’re okay.”
“You think?”
“No panic attack.”
“There’s that. I want to tell you, it meant a lot, what you said.”
