All In (The Naturals, #3)(47)

“Sorry,” I told him, coming closer. “For waking you up.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Dean said, his voice rough.

I crawled onto the bed beside him. His hands found their way to the ends of my hair, his touch soft. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking in the warmth of my body. When he opened them, they were calmer, clear.

“Something’s wrong,” Dean said, observant as always. I wondered if he could see the tension in my shoulders. I wondered if he could feel it with his featherlight touch.

“Sloane found something.” I let his touch steady me, even as it steadied him. “She derived a series of twenty-seven dates from the Fibonacci sequence. Then she did a search on the FBI’s database for serial murders where one or more of the killings happened on New Year’s Day.”

“Briggs and Sterling gave her that kind of access?”

My facial expression must have answered that question for me.

“She hacked the FBI.” Dean paused. “Of course she did. She’s Sloane.”

“She found a decade-old case that fits the same pattern,” I told him. “Nine victims, killed on Fibonacci dates.”

“MO?” Dean asked.

“Killer used a knife. He attacked from behind and slit his victims’ throats. The first victim was a prostitute. I don’t have information on any of the others.”

“Nine bodies,” Dean repeated. “On dates derived from the Fibonacci sequence.”

I shifted my body, leaning into his. “Last night, the message was ‘I need nine.’ Need, Dean, not ‘want,’ not ‘I’m going to kill nine.’ Need.”

The number of victims mattered, the same way the numbers on the wrists did, the same way the dates did.

“The case Sloane found is still open,” I told Dean. “It was never closed. Sterling said that serial killers don’t just stop killing.”

Dean heard the question I hadn’t yet put into words. Could we be dealing with the same killer?

“Eleven years is a long time for a killer to deny himself,” Dean said. I saw the shift in Dean before his words confirmed it. “Each time I kill, I need more. To go without, for so long…”

“Is it even possible?” I asked Dean “Can an UNSUB kill nine people and then just…wait?”

“Our UNSUB just killed four people in four days,” Dean replied. “And now he’s waiting. Smaller scale, same concept.”

The numbers matter. The numbers told the UNSUB where to kill, when to kill, how long to wait. But making sure a portion of the sequence appeared on each victim’s wrist?

From the beginning, we’d read that as a message. What if the message was I’ve done this before?

Suddenly, my throat tightened. Tertium, I thought.

“Dean.” My lips felt numb. “What if the word on the arrow didn’t just refer to Eugene Lockhart being the UNSUB’s third victim this time around?”

Tertium. Tertium. Tertium. I could hear the girl saying the word. I could see her gaze staring out into the crowd.

“The third time.” Dean slid to the end of the bed. He sat there for a moment in silence, and I knew he was putting himself in the killer’s shoes, walking through the logic without ever saying it out loud. Finally, he stood. “We need to call Briggs.”





Dean made the call.

Pick up, I thought. Pick up, Briggs.

If this was the killer’s third time going through this pattern—nine bodies, killed on Fibonacci dates—we weren’t dealing with a novice. We were dealing with an expert. The level of planning. The lack of evidence left behind.

It fit.

A second realization followed on the heels of the first. If our killer was slitting throats more than a decade ago, we’re looking for someone no younger than their late twenties. And if the New York murders had been the second set and not the first…

“Briggs.” Dean’s voice was terse, but calm. I turned toward him as he began bringing Briggs up to speed. “We have reason to believe this might not be our UNSUB’s first rodeo.”

Dean fell silent as Agent Briggs replied. I closed the space between Dean and me and put a hand on his arm. “Tell him that Sloane broke the code,” I said. “The UNSUB is going to kill again—in the Grand Ballroom—on January twelfth.”

Dean hung up the call without saying another word.

“What?” I asked him. “Why did you hang up?”

Dean’s grip tightened over his phone.

“Dean?”

“Briggs and Sterling got a call at three in the morning.”

There was only one reason to call the FBI at three in the morning. It’s too soon, I thought. Sloane said the next murder would be on the twelfth. The pattern—

“The Majesty’s head of security was attacked,” Dean continued. “Blunt-force trauma.”

I thought of the man who’d pulled us into the security office. The one who had come to get Sloane’s father the night Camille was murdered.

“It fits the MO,” Dean continued. “New method. Numbers on his wrist.”

“Weapon?” I asked.

“A brick.”

You bashed his head in with a brick. You took a brick and wrapped your fingers around it, and rage exploded inside of you, and you—