The Profiler

Evelyn tried to put on her most professional voice, but it vibrated with emotion she couldn’t hide. “We don’t have one of our agents on-site yet?”

Dan’s jaw jutted out and she sensed that he was debating whether or not to share something. Finally he said, “Vince is in Florida. He was supposed to be on his way, but his current case just had a major turn.”

Before Dan could tell her who he planned to send instead, Evelyn interrupted. “I’m already up to speed. I can leave now.”

Dan made a noise that might have been laughter, except instead of amusement it was filled with frustration. “I have to choose the agent best suited for the case, Evelyn. And we have agents who’ve worked many, many more child abductions than you. Agents without a conflict of interest.”

Evelyn stepped closer, rested her palms on Dan’s desk. She had to convince him. Nothing was keeping her off this case. “There is no one—no one—who cares about this more than I do. Okay, you’re right. It is a conflict of interest. But maybe that’s exactly what will solve this case after eighteen years.”

She stared at him, unblinking, certain the passion in her tone and the truth in her argument would convince him.

But he frowned, emphasizing the deep lines bracketing his mouth as he reached into his desk drawer and popped a handful of antacids into his mouth. “Evelyn, I’m sorry. I can’t assign you.”

“I’m going, anyway.” The words burst from her mouth without thought, then her heart started pounding a rapid, almost painful tempo. Her job was everything to her.

Dan’s lips compressed into a thin line that hooked up at the corners with disapproval. When he spoke, his voice was quietly intense. “You’re willing to throw away your career for this? Because if I don’t send you and you go, anyway, any OPR investigation will be for show. You’ll be out of the Bureau.”

Pain pierced her eyes. She’d given up everything to be in the Bureau. But she’d joined for Cassie.

“I have to.” Her voice quavered, but she pressed on. “Whatever the consequences, I can’t turn my back on this. She was my closest friend.” Evelyn clenched her fists. “I have to do this for her.”

Dan jolted to his feet, his face a mask of fury. “You are the biggest pain in the ass I have ever supervised.”

“What?” Hope pushed through her dread.

“If you fuck this up, do you know how much heat I’ll be in for sending you? Damn it, Evelyn! You’re a good profiler. I don’t want to lose you. And I don’t appreciate being put in this position.”

He didn’t give her a chance to respond, just pointed at the door. “Get the paperwork in order now. And when this case is over and you come back here, you are going to be the most obedient employee in the whole damn office—do you understand me?”

“Yes,” she choked out, suddenly wanting to run around the desk and hug Dan. Instead, she croaked, “Thank you,” and hurried out the door.

After thirteen years, she was finally going home to Rose Bay. And this time, she wasn’t leaving without knowing what had happened to Cassie.

* * *

“You’ve got to send her home.”

Police chief Tomas Lamar looked up from the information about the Nursery Rhyme Killer covering his desk. “What?”

Jack Bullock, longtime police officer, son of the previous police chief of Rose Bay and general pain in Tomas’s ass, stood in the doorway of his office. Jack was scowling as he let the chaotic noise of the station blast in.

“Evelyn Baine,” Jack snapped, a tic quivering near his eye and a vein throbbing on his forehead.

Tomas jerked to his feet. “The FBI profiler is here?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Jack gaped at him. “You don’t know who she is?”

It figured Jack would have some kind of problem with the profiler. The head of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit had told Tomas that Evelyn was originally from Rose Bay, but he’d gotten the impression she’d left town at seventeen.

“What now, Jack?”

“Wow. Really? Did you even read the case file?” Jack made an ugly sound through his nose. “She was named in one of the damn notes!”

Tomas leveled a warning look at him. “Lose the attitude.” Then he frowned. Jack had a decade less experience than he did but knew the town better. And Jack had been a rookie during the original investigation eighteen years ago. “What are you talking about?”

Jack’s nostrils flared as he made an obvious attempt to rein in his temper. “Evelyn Baine. She was best friends with Cassie Byers. The note said the perp had also taken Evelyn. We don’t know why he didn’t, but Evelyn is way too connected to this case. She shouldn’t be here.”

Frustration bubbled up, amplifying nerves already frayed to the breaking point. As if he didn’t have enough problems. A police force he’d inherited from Jack’s father, too many of whom distrusted him because of the color of his skin or where he’d grown up. A child abductor hunting for victims. And a terrified town looking to him to stop a predator who’d gotten away with it for eighteen years. “Damn it.”

Jack nodded, the vein in his forehead disappearing. “You’re going to send her home, right? We have plenty of FBI crawling around. We don’t need an intended victim mucking around in the investigation.”

Tomas’s shoulders slumped. He’d spent nineteen hours at the station, running on adrenaline and caffeine, but he suddenly felt bone tired. “Tell her to come in.”

“Chief...”

“Just tell her to get in here, Jack.”

Resentment sizzling in his eyes, Jack nodded curtly and left the office.

When the door opened again, Tomas wasn’t sure who was more shocked, him or the woman standing there in her prim, boxy suit and tidy bun.

Her surprise must’ve been because the top law enforcement official was black in a town she would’ve remembered as almost entirely white and intent on keeping it that way.

His was because when Jack said she’d been an intended victim, he’d assumed she was white. And she was. Partly. But she was partly black, too.

When he was a boy, Rose Bay had been a town stuck in the past. North of Hilton Head and south of Charleston, nestled in a small bay, it was mostly old money. The town had relegated its poor and unwanted to the outskirts of town, near the marsh. Rose Bay had been almost totally segregated.

Tomas had spent his childhood in the marshes, but he’d been long gone by the time the Nursery Rhyme Killer struck. Still, he knew attitudes hadn’t been vastly different then.

He studied Evelyn curiously, her light brown skin so different from that of the girls in the pictures he’d spent the past few hours reviewing. All the Nursery Rhyme Killer’s victims had been white. But if Evelyn had been an intended victim...

Dread rushed over him like a tidal wave. He’d already drilled it into each of his three boys that his youngest—his only daughter, who was in the age range of the perp’s victims—wasn’t to go anywhere alone. As soon as he talked to the profiler, he was calling home to make certain they were following orders.

Shaking himself out of his stupor, Tomas held out a hand. “Agent Baine. I’m Police Chief Tomas Lamar. Thanks for coming.”

She put a tiny hand in his and he shook it briefly, carefully. “When I spoke with Dan Moore, he didn’t discuss your personal connection to the case.”

Evelyn dropped the FBI blue duffel bag that was about as big as she was from her shoulder to the ground. Then she placed her briefcase on the floor, settling back in her seat and unbuttoning her suit jacket, which made the gun on her hip visible.

He didn’t need to be a profiler to read that move. She was telling him she wasn’t leaving, no matter what he thought of her personal connection. “Relax, Agent Baine. I’m not thrilled that I had to find out from my officers, but I’ll take all the help I can get. And I’ll assume the fact that you requested this case file a month ago means you’re committed to it and you’re going to help us nail this son of a bitch.”

Her shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch and so did the tight line of her mouth. But the intensity in her eyes didn’t diminish as she said, “He’s not getting away with it this time.”

He hoped to God she was right. Brittany Douglas had been missing for thirteen hours. And to his mind, catching the Nursery Rhyme Killer wasn’t a success unless they could also bring Brittany home alive.

He sank into his seat, couldn’t keep his shoulders from slumping as he took a gulp of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. “Give it to me straight, Agent Baine. Are we already too late?”

She leaned forward and locked sea-green eyes on him. “I can’t tell you that. Not yet, not even when I’ve reviewed the case—not with one hundred percent certainty. Which is what you’d need in order to call off all the searchers I saw when I arrived. But I do have to see Brittany’s file. Everything you’ve got. And the ones from eighteen years ago, as well. Then I’ll give you a profile of who you’re looking for. Sometimes, if you can’t trace the victim’s movements, you get inside the abductor’s head. Because if you can find him, you’ll find Brittany.”

Tomas nodded quickly, the sliver of hope that had refused to vanish even as the hours ticked by beginning to grow again. “I talked to the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team the FBI sent. They said they knew you were coming.” The FBI’s CARD team had shown up fast, set up a command post in his conference room at the back of the station and gotten to work immediately. But so far, they still didn’t know where Brittany was. Maybe a profiler would change that.

“The CARD team has a desk for you in their command post. They have everything you need. But let me give you the basics right now.”

“Great.” She pulled out a pen and notepad.

“Brittany Douglas disappeared last night from her front yard. Her mother was inside when it happened. She didn’t see the abduction, but she said she’d been checking out the window periodically, so there’s a pretty small time span when he must’ve grabbed her. Around 9:30 p.m., Brittany hadn’t come in yet, so her mom went outside—and found a nursery rhyme.” As soon as they’d seen it, all the veteran cops on the force had gone pale.

“Just a nursery rhyme?” Evelyn’s voice was steady, but the tension in her body betrayed her.

The media had gotten hold of the fact that the abductor left nursery rhymes at the abduction scenes eighteen years ago—that was how he’d gotten his moniker. But what the media didn’t know was how the Nursery Rhyme Killer had changed the rhymes. “A twisted version of a nursery rhyme.”

Evelyn released a loud breath. “Just like before.”

“It’s the same person from eighteen years ago, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know yet. I need to study all the notes first. I’ve read part of the original case file, but to be honest with you, I haven’t read the whole thing.” She looked at her lap, obviously struggling with something, then finally added, “I only read the note they found at Cassie’s house.”

The note that had mentioned her. Tomas didn’t like it, but he understood. “Okay. So, now you can read them all. And after you go through the files, you’ll be able to tell me if this is a copycat?”

Please, please, let it be a copycat, Tomas silently prayed. Having a child abduction was bad enough. But the Nursery Rhyme Killer hadn’t left a single piece of useful forensic evidence eighteen years ago. Tomas had reviewed the old file enough to know they’d never caught one promising lead on the perp. He’d been like a ghost.

If he was back, Tomas was terrified this time wouldn’t be any different. No matter how many FBI agents with their databases and manpower and specialized experience showed up in Rose Bay.

“Yes,” Evelyn promised. “Give me a couple of hours and I should be able to tell you if it’s the same person.”

A few more hours. The weight pressing on Tomas’s chest seemed to double. It made him wish he hadn’t asked the lead agent from the FBI CARD team earlier in the day what Brittany’s odds were. Made him wish she hadn’t told him that most abducted children who were later found dead had been killed in the first three hours.

Were they already too late?

* * *

The FBI CARD team’s command post at the back of the station was the size of Evelyn’s study. Tables had been crammed into the room and covered in laptops, files and photographs. Briefcases and FBI duffel bags were shoved under tables and littered the small aisles. There was even a bloodhound asleep in the corner—from the FBI’s Forensic Canine Unit, Evelyn assumed.

At one point, the room must have been crowded with agents and officers, but now it was mostly abandoned. Only one agent remained, trying to ignore the frantic buzz from the front of the station. She spun her chair around and jumped up as Evelyn stepped into the room. Everything from the lines on her forehead to her no-nonsense stride as she met Evelyn in the center of the room, hand already out, screamed in charge.

Evelyn put her hand in the agent’s, who shook it vigorously, her mass of curls bouncing in a high ponytail. Words burst from her mouth in an overcaffeinated frenzy. “I’m Carly Sanchez, the lead agent here. We got the call about ten hours ago and we’ve been on-site for seven.”

“I’m Evelyn Baine. Tomas told you I was on my way?”

“Yep. We’ll need the help.”

“How far have you gotten?” Evelyn asked, feeling overheated in the tiny room. Despite the air-conditioning pumping through the vents on the ceiling, between the South Carolina early-summer heat and the number of computers running, the room was stifling.

“We’ve taken statements from the parents. Gotten our basics on Brittany’s routine, possible grudges against the family, that kind of thing. Most of my team’s out canvassing and conducting interviews. We’ll reconvene here as soon as you’re ready to present your profile.”

“Okay.”

“In the corner there is Cody.” She pointed to the bloodhound. “He arrived just before you. His handler will be back in a minute and they’ll be heading over to Brittany Douglas’s house. They’re from the Human Scent Team.”

Well, Evelyn would hope so, since the other Canine Unit was for victim recovery and trained to scent on human decomposition. “Any promising leads?” Evelyn shifted her heavy bag on her shoulder as she looked up at Carly, who had a solid eight inches on her own five foot two.

Carly’s lips twisted and Evelyn read frustration there, but not defeat. There were ten Bureau CARD teams, spread across the country, ready to leave at a moment’s notice to assist local law enforcement whenever a child went missing. If it was a parental abduction, chances of recovering the child were good. But for nonparental abductions, the statistics were a lot grimmer. Anyone who chose to work on a CARD team had to be either unrealistically optimistic or impossibly hardened.

Probably the same could be said about BAU. And Evelyn knew on which end of the spectrum she fell.

“We don’t have much,” Carly answered. “Brittany lived on High Street. You remember it?”

Evelyn nodded. It was a few blocks over from where she’d lived with her grandparents from the time she was ten until she was seventeen. If it was like it had been thirteen years ago, the houses were big and far apart, neighbors were cordial but not close, and landscaping was designed for privacy.

“Then it probably won’t surprise you that we had no witnesses. I’ve got a team of seven here and they’re all paired up with officers. One of my agents is running down the nearby sex offenders and five are conducting interviews with neighbors. We’re hoping to get lucky on a vehicle description, but so far, nothing.”

“What about forensics?”

Carly shrugged, shoving back the sleeves on her pinstriped blazer. “Unlikely. The note was taped to Brittany’s bike, and we dusted it, but we only got Brittany’s mom’s prints on the note. We’re running the prints from the bike, but I doubt we’ll get a hit.”

Evelyn tried not to feel disappointed. She’d expected that. She’d been too young eighteen years ago to be told much about the investigation, but she’d understood what was going on from her grandparents’ expressions. Evidence had been slim. And as the days turned into years, hope had become even slimmer.

She vowed that this time would be different. “Where’s my spot?” She raised her voice to be heard over the chatter that had picked up in volume at the front of the station. When a child went missing, people often assumed that a police station would be empty, but it was usually packed. With officers manning tip lines and coordinating with specialized resources. With civilians reporting suspicions, demanding answers and volunteering to join search parties. “I’d like to get to work.”

Carly pointed to a place at the end of one of the tables, stacked with boxes. “Right over there. Brittany’s file is on top. And the boxes contain copies of the evidence from eighteen years ago. You’ve seen those already?” Carly asked, eyebrows raised, telling Evelyn she knew her history here.

Evelyn shook her head, then walked toward the case files. A sharp whistle brought her up short, made her spin around.

The bloodhound shot to his feet and followed his handler out of the room as a pair of cops pushed their way in to give Carly updates.

Dumping her FBI bag on the floor, Evelyn squeezed around the table to get a better look inside the boxes. She tried to ignore the increasing level of noise as officers walked in and out of the room, but it was a sharp contrast to the morgue-like quiet that usually pervaded the BAU office.

Folding back the cardboard top, Evelyn looked inside one of the boxes and saw a stack of photographs. The first photo showed a well-loved and dirt-caked doll lying on the grass, an evidence marker next to it.

Matilda. The name of Cassie’s doll came back to her as soon as she saw it.

Evelyn slapped the lid shut. She felt Carly looking at her, but didn’t lift her gaze. She could do this. Dan wasn’t right about her being too close to the case to properly profile it.

She just hadn’t expected to see Cassie’s toy. She’d gotten a copy of the case file two months earlier, but she’d mainly wanted to read the note left on Cassie’s bed. She hadn’t read through the list of cataloged evidence. She didn’t know they’d found Cassie’s doll. She’d only known they hadn’t found Cassie.

Fortifying herself, she tried to open the box again, but her hands trembled. She needed to do this in private, not surrounded by the chaos of the station.

Hefting the boxes in her arms, she went back the way she’d come. She tried to make her voice sound normal as she told Carly, “I’m going to find a quiet corner to work.”

She glanced at her watch and frowned. “I’ll be back in three hours with a profile.” It wasn’t enough time, not really, but Brittany had already been missing for thirteen hours, and after twenty-four her chances decreased even more. They all had to hurry.

Three

Evelyn clutched three boxes of case details, carrying them as low as she could to see over the top. Her duffel bag swung toward them with every step and her briefcase dangled precariously from her right hand. Her thighs bumped the boxes as she hurried toward the hotel.

Normally, the files wouldn’t have left the station, since it was no longer a cold case. But they were only copies and she’d promised Tomas she wouldn’t let them out of her sight until she got them back to the station in three hours.

The chain hotel was a few miles from the police station, on the outskirts of town. It was well back from the road, hidden by a canopy of live oaks draped with clumps of Spanish moss. A hundred and fifty years ago, a plantation had claimed this spot. When she’d lived in Rose Bay, it’d been the location of a little bed-and-breakfast. But the town had grown, both the permanent and tourist populations booming in the past decade. The results of that, at least the ones she’d seen so far, were more bars, restaurants and hotels.

It felt surreal to be back. She kept expecting to turn a corner and see her grandparents. To see Cassie.

But her grandpa had been gone for fifteen years and her grandma now lived in Virginia, in an old-age home near Evelyn. And Cassie... Whether Cassie was dead or alive, maybe Evelyn would finally learn where she’d been all these years.

Greg had booked the hotel for her. He’d made all her reservations while she’d rushed straight to the airport and hopped on the first flight to South Carolina. The nature of her job meant her FBI “Go Bag,” currently weighing down her left shoulder, had already been in the trunk of her car.

As she held the boxes higher, blocking her sight, then grabbed the door and pushed through, the bag slipped off her shoulder. The strap dropped to her elbow with enough force to jar her hand from the boxes. “Shit!”

Evelyn yanked her hand back up, bag swinging, trying to catch the boxes before confidential case information spilled all over the hotel floor.

A pair of hands grasped the boxes from the other side. “Got them!”

She knew that deep, drawling voice. As the boxes were lifted away from her, Evelyn stuttered, “M-Mac. What are you doing here?”

Heat rushed up her face as Kyle McKenzie’s eyes locked on hers. “I figured you’d be staying on-site.” She’d known HRT was in the area, but they were working a case a few towns over, so she’d assumed they would have set up a command post there.

She’d thought about calling him and telling him she was going to be nearby. The idea of having Kyle to lean on while she looked into Cassie’s case had been too tempting. She’d resisted because he had his own job to do, and she didn’t really know where things stood between them.

Kyle gave her a big grin, complete with dimples, and despite the fact that he had heavy circles under his deep-blue eyes and his hair stuck up in odd directions, Evelyn’s entire body went clammy.

“The activity we’re monitoring is happening at night, so that’s when we’re surveilling. During the day, we’re here. The people we’re investigating live in a small town, and if we stayed too close, they’d definitely notice us. We’re telling the people at this hotel that we’re engineers, in town on a company-sponsored trip.”

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. Did they really expect anyone to believe that? HRT agents were the most fit group in the Bureau; their regular routine included physical training, helicopter rappelling and mock terrorist takedowns. HRT agents tended to either look like Olympic-level long-distance runners or military special-operations guys. Definitely not engineers.

“Don’t blow our cover, okay?” he added with a wink, shifting the boxes with annoying ease. “Where am I taking these?”

Evelyn held out her hands. “I can carry them. I just got here, so I need to go to my room and work on my profile.” She ran a hand over her hair, tied neatly back in a bun, aware that she was talking abnormally fast.

In an average social situation, she was shy and uncomfortable. Throw Kyle McKenzie into the mix and she was instantly self-conscious. Especially in the past month, since she’d opened up to him about her past, about Cassie. Since she’d kissed him, and considered jeopardizing her place at BAU for him.

Technically, they weren’t on the same squad, which was usually when dating a colleague meant risking reassignment. But the Critical Incident Response Group was unique, an overarching group made up of BAU, HRT and other essential units that responded to crises around the country. At any given time, she might be called to travel or to work intensely stressful situations with the other CIRG units. She didn’t know quite what the protocol was for dating another agent in CIRG, but her boss had made it abundantly clear that it wasn’t happening on his watch. And for years now, her job had been her whole life.

Still, after Kyle had helped her face down a serial killer, she’d shocked them both by acting on their attraction. She’d thought they would sort out what it all meant while she was on medical leave, but he’d been called out of town three weeks ago.