“We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He faced the two-way mirror, his attention landing on her reflection. “Doctor Montgomery should be back soon with that coffee.”
Deflecting. Again. Every time Claire got close to something real, he pulled back.
“Wolf—”
“Tell me how you track killers,” he said, turning to face her. “Your process. step by step.”
Claire sighed but accepted that he was a closed book. For now. She was a profiler, and soon, she’d figure him out. “I look at victimology—who they target, why—and apply pattern analysis. Then I look at geographic profiling—where they hunt. Behavioral markers—escalation patterns, cooling-off periods. I put it all together and build a psychological profile. It includes what drives them, what triggers them, and what they need.”
“And once you have that?”
“It’s more science than art, but once I have all of that, I’m more accurate at predicting their next move. If the team agrees, we set up surveillance on likely targets or locations and wait for them to make a mistake.”
Wolf crossed his arms over his impressive chest and leaned back on the wall. “What if we don’t wait?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Countdown Killer wants you. He’s obsessed with you. What if we use that?”
Claire’s pulse sped up. “You mean as bait?”
“I mean, we set a trap. Make him come to us on our terms.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Claire leaned forward. “What if I reach out to him? Post something online where he’d see it. Something that makes him think I want to meet. To end this. To finish what started fifteen years ago.”
“No.” Wolf’s voice was steel.
“Why not? It makes tactical sense. He’s looking for me anyway. This way we control?—”
“No.” He pushed off the wall. “You’re not dangling yourself in front of a serial killer.”
“I’m an FBI agent. I’ve done undercover work before.”
“Not with someone who’s obsessed with killing you specifically.”
“That’s exactly why it would work.”
“That’s exactly why it’s too dangerous.” His eyes were hard. “We’ll set a trap, but not with you as bait.”
“Then how?”
“We use the spyware against him. He had access to your phone. He thinks he knows you. Knows how you communicate. We use the phone to send messages he believes come from you.”
“You pretend to be me.”
A nod. “I respond to his next message. Tell him I’m tired of running. He’s outsmarted me and the entire FBI. I want to meet face-to-face.”
“He’ll know it’s not me.”
“Will he? He’s been watching you from a distance. Reading your texts. Your emails. Does he know how you think when you’re cornered? Even if he’s one of your coworkers, he can’t predict how you’ll react. Taking the doctor’s theory into account, he’s only ever seen you as a fourteen-year-old victim or a competent FBI profiler. I can pretend to be you.”
“This is insane.”
“This is tactical.”
