“Michael.” Sloane choked out his name. For several seconds, she just stared at him. Her hands worked their way into fists by her side. “You’re not allowed to go away again,” she told him fiercely. “Michael. You’re not allowed to leave me, too.”
Michael hesitated just a moment longer, then he took one step forward and then another, collapsing to the ground beside us. Sloane latched her arms around him and held on for dear life. I could feel the heat from their bodies. I could feel their shoulders racked with sobs.
And all I could think, huddled on the floor with them, a mass of grief and anger and loss, was that Beau Donovan thought he’d won. He thought he could take and kill and tear lives apart and that nothing and no one could touch him.
You thought wrong.
The clock was ticking. Instinct and theories weren’t enough. Being sure wasn’t enough.
We needed evidence.
You plan. You wait, and you plan, and you execute those plans with mathematical precision. I could see Beau in my mind, his lips upturned in something like a smile. Waiting for our time to run out. Waiting for the FBI to let him go.
Sloane sat in front of the television, a tablet plugged into the side. She wasn’t crying now. She wasn’t even blinking. She was just watching the moment her brother’s corpse had been discovered, again and again.
“Sloane.” Judd stood in the doorway. “Sweetheart, turn that off.”
Sloane didn’t even seem to hear him. She watched the camera footage shake as an agent ran toward Aaron’s body.
“Cassie. Turn it off.” Judd issued the order to me this time.
You want to protect us, I thought, knowing quite well where Judd’s need to do that came from. You want us to be safe and well and warm.
But Judd couldn’t protect Sloane from this.
“Dean.” Judd turned his attention to my fellow profiler.
Before Dean could reply, Sloane spoke up. “Six cameras, but none of them are stationary. I can extrapolate Beau’s position, but the margin of error in calculating his trajectory is bigger than I would like.” She paused the footage over Aaron’s corpse. For a moment, she lost herself to the image of her brother’s blood-spattered body, her gaze hollow. “The killer was right-handed. Spatter is consistent with a single wound, left to right across the victim’s neck. The blade was angled slightly upward. Killer’s height is roughly seventy-point-five inches, plus or minus half an inch.”
“Sloane,” Judd said sharply.
She blinked, then turned away from the screen. It’s easier, I thought, slipping from Judd’s perspective into Sloane’s, when the body belongs to “the victim.” Easier when you don’t have to think Aaron’s name.
Sloane shut off the television. “I can’t do this.”
For a moment, Judd looked relieved. Then Sloane got out her laptop. “I need stationary footage. Higher resolution.” Seconds later, her fingers were flying over the keys.
“Hypothetically speaking,” Lia said to Judd, “if Sloane were hacking the Majesty’s security feed, would you want to know?”
Judd looked at Sloane for several seconds. Then he walked over to her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She won’t stop. She can’t. You know that.
His mouth set into a firm line, Judd turned back to Lia. “No,” he grunted. “If Sloane were illegally hacking her father’s casino, I would not want to know.” Then he glanced back at Dean and Michael and me. “But, hypothetically speaking, what can I do to help?”
You had less than a minute to do what needed to be done.
As Sloane watched the security footage she’d hacked, murmuring numbers under her breath, I slipped into Beau’s perspective, trying to imagine what he’d been thinking and feeling in those moments.
You knew exactly where your target was standing. You knew Aaron wouldn’t panic when the lights went off. Aaron Shaw was at the top of the food chain. You knew it would never occur to him that he might be your prey.
“Suspect was walking toward the stage at a rate of one-point-six meters per second. Victim was twenty-four meters away, at a forty-two-degree angle to suspect’s last marked trajectory.”
You knew exactly where you were going, exactly how to get there.
Sloane froze the footage and did a screen capture, the second before the lights went out. She repeated the process when the lights came back on. Before. After. Before. After. Sloane toggled back and forth between the still images. “In fifty-nine seconds, the suspect moved forward six-point-two meters, still facing the stage.”
“His pupils were dilated,” Michael put in. “Before the lights went off, his pupils were already dilated—alertness, psychological arousal.”
“If I can do this,” Dean murmured, “I’m invincible. If I can do this, I’m worthy.”
Aaron was the Majesty’s golden son, the heir apparent. Killing him was an assertion of power. This is your inheritance. This is what you are. This is what you deserve.
“Beau’s posture changes,” Michael continued. “It’s subtle, but it’s there, beneath the poker face.” Michael indicated first one image, then the other. “Anticipation before. And after: elation.” He swung his eyes back to the first photo. “Look how he’s holding his shoulders.” He glanced at Sloane. “Play the footage.”
Sloane brought up the video and let it play.
“Restricted motion,” Michael said. “He’s fighting tension in his shoulders. He’s walking, but his arms are still by his sides.”