He grabbed the folder, got out of the truck, and crossed the street. The door to the building was unlocked. Stairs led up to the second floor. At the top, a frosted glass door was devoid of any title or name.
Covert as hell. Fine, then.
He didn’t knock. Just opened the door and walked in.
A reception desk sat empty. Down a short hall, he saw the lights on. He moved quietly and found Dr. Montgomery behind a desk, reading something on her computer. She looked up when he entered, and her expression didn’t change. “Commander Cross,” she said. “Sooner than I expected. Come in. Sit.”
Garrett dropped the folder on her desk. “I have conditions,” he said.
She leaned back in her chair and removed her reading glasses. Two tiny parakeets fluttered in a large cage behind her. A small smile played over her lips. “I’m listening.”
CHAPTERTWO
Claire
Washington, D.C.
10:47 p.m.
Special Agent Claire Dawsonhad spent five years hunting predators. She refused to become prey.
The three women staring back at her from the computer screen hadn’t had a choice. Sarah Mitchell, thirty-one. Rebecca Torres, twenty-eight. Amanda Greenwood, thirty-three. All brunetts. All with careers in law enforcement or victim advocacy. All dead within a week of receiving their stalker’s first direct message.
Claire’s own FBI photo sat in the fourth position on her screen.
She leaned back in her desk chair, the squeak of worn leather loud in the nearly empty office. She was the only agent still at her desk in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in that particular shade of institutional white that made late nights feel even longer.
Her coffee had gone cold an hour ago. She didn’t care.
The pattern was there. She could feel it, just out of reach. Something that connected these women beyond the obvious similarities. Something the stalker saw that made them targets.
Survivors. They were all survivors.
Sarah Mitchell had escaped an abusive relationship. Rebecca Torres had fought off a carjacker. Amanda Greenwood had been sexually assaulted in college and testified against her attacker.
And Claire... Claire had survived the night Lily died.
Her hand moved unconsciously to the scar on her left forearm. Fifteen years healed, barely visible now, but she felt it every time she worked a case like this. Felt the break, the cast, the helplessness of being fourteen with a concussion while police asked her what happened to her best friend.
I tried to fight him. Lily told me to run. I should have stayed.
Her phone buzzed.
Claire glanced at the screen, expecting another update from the protection detail that had been shadowing her for the past three days. Instead, an unknown number. A text message that made ice slide down her spine.
Day 3, Claire. Your friend couldn’t outrun him. Will you?
Her hands shook as she screenshotted the message, forwarded it to the case team, and documented the timestamp. Calm and controlled. Never mind that her heart was trying to hammer its way out of her chest.
Three days since the first direct message. According to the pattern, she had four days left. Maybe five if she was lucky.
The intercom on her desk crackled. “Dawson. My office. Now.”
SAC Marcus Reeves didn’t wait for acknowledgment before the line went dead.
Claire stood, checked her weapon out of habit, and walked down the hallway. She tried not to feel like she was walking to her own execution.
Reeves looked like he’d aged five years in the past week. The Special Agent in Charge of the BAU was in his fifties, a former profiler himself, with the kind of experience that made agents feel safe under his command.
