"Because I'm seventy-three years old and I don't need some man half my age putting his hands on my hips to 'adjust my alignment.'"Diane snorted."I told him once that I didn't like being touched and he apologized, said he understood, but then he did it again the next week.That's when I switched."
"Did you report him to the owner?"
"What was I going to report?He didn't do anything technically wrong.He was just...persistent."A pause."Look, I've been around long enough to recognize when a man is testing boundaries.Seeing what he can get away with.Most of the young women in that class are too polite to say anything, or they convince themselves they're imagining it.But I know what I saw."
"What did you see, Mrs.Foster?"
"The way he looked at them.Like they were...I don't know how to describe it.Not like people.Like objects.Beautiful objects that he wanted to possess."Her voice hardened."I've seen that look before, Agent Rivers.In the ER, in the faces of husbands who brought in wives with 'accidental' injuries.It's the look of someone who sees other people as things that belong to him."
Isla's pen had stopped moving.She stared at the words she'd written, feeling the weight of them settle into her bones.
"Mrs.Foster, do you remember if Nathan Cross was ever particularly attentive to either Monica Hayes or Amanda Pierce?"
"I don't know those names."A pause."Wait—Pierce.Was she the teacher?Small woman, light blonde hair, always wore the same purple yoga pants?"
"That's her."
"Oh, God."Diane's voice changed, the sharpness giving way to something softer, sadder."She was one of his favorites.He was always finding excuses to help her with poses, to talk to her after class.I remember thinking she seemed uncomfortable with it, but too nice to say anything."Another pause."Is she the one who died?The woman in the news?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you think Nathan..."
"We're just gathering information at this point."Isla's voice was steady, professional, revealing nothing of the certainty that was building in her chest."Thank you for your time, Mrs.Foster.You've been very helpful."
She ended the call and looked up to find James watching her, his own phone still in his hand.
"My last two calls both mentioned the touching," he said."One woman said she stopped going because Cross made her feel 'like he was undressing her with his eyes.'Her exact words."
Isla stood and walked back to the whiteboard, where the photographs of Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce still smiled out at the room.She added a new name below them, circling it twice.
NATHAN CROSS.
"We need to talk to him," she said."Today.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Lakeside Grill sat on a stretch of road that tried too hard to be charming.
Isla spotted Nathan Cross through the restaurant's front window before she and James had even parked.He was seated at a booth near the back, leaning across the table toward a woman with light blonde hair that fell past her shoulders in loose waves.The woman was laughing at something he'd said, one hand touching her collarbone in that unconscious gesture of flirtation that transcended culture and context.
"There he is," James said, killing the engine."And he's got company."
Isla studied the woman through the glass.Mid-thirties, slender build, delicate features.The same general profile as Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce.The same profile as Maria Carlisle, though that connection had proven to be nothing more than a cruel coincidence.
"He has a type," she said quietly.
James followed her gaze to the woman, and she saw the same recognition dawn in his expression.The same tightening around his jaw that meant he was cataloguing details, filing them away for later analysis.Two bodies in two days, and here was Nathan Cross having a cozy lunch with a woman who could have been their sister.
"Could be nothing," he said, though his tone suggested he didn't believe it any more than she did."He teaches at a yoga studio.Probably has lunch with students all the time."
"Probably."Isla pushed open her door, letting the February cold flood the car's interior."Let's find out."
The warmth of the restaurant hit her like a wall as they entered—that particular blend of cooking grease and coffee and central heating that every diner in America seemed to share.The lunch crowd was sparse but present: a few tables of retirees nursing cups of decaf, a young mother trying to wrangle a toddler into a high chair, a pair of construction workers in orange vests attacking plates of meatloaf.Normal people living normal lives, oblivious to the two FBI agents walking past them.
Nathan Cross looked up as they approached, and Isla watched his expression shift through several stages in rapid succession.Confusion first—who were these people interrupting his lunch?Then recognition, or something close to it—the particular wariness that came from being approached by strangers with purpose.And finally, underneath it all, something that might have been calculation.
He was handsome in person, she had to admit.The photograph on the studio's website hadn't done him justice.Up close, his features had a sharpness to them, a definition that suggested discipline and control.His dark hair was swept back from his face, and his eyes—a pale gray that seemed almost colorless in the restaurant's fluorescent lighting—tracked their approach with an intensity that made Isla's instincts prickle.
