I've
studied Chelsea since the FBI teamed us up when I was twelve. She has a
move…classic Chelsea. She turns the doorknob and her body stiffens, a metal rod
shoved down her spine. As she sets a high heel inside the interrogation room,
her southern accent and soft manners are buried beneath a terrifyingly sleek,
blond exterior in a perfectly pressed pinstriped suit.
Four
years of practice, two custom-cut suits of my own, and I still look epileptic
when I try to project that sense of total control. Of I've got this. Even though I don't have her drawl and my posture's
not bad.
I
follow Chelsea, stiff as can be, into the room with the bright white walls. Our
sicko suspect glances up from the steel table in its center. I flinch at his
chilling stare. Flinching already, see. A slow smile bulges his cheeks as he
studies me. Attention from a guy in an orange jumpsuit sitting at a steel
table—to which he is handcuffed—is what Chelsea would officially term an undesirable outcome. More undesirable—me
showing I care. Like she always says, "Don't let 'em see you sweat,
hon."
No
way am I giving this psycho the satisfaction. I suppress a shiver as the air
conditioning kicks on with a groan. Tiny goosebumps break out on my forearms,
raising the fine hairs to attention. Can't rub myself warm—that's a tell.
Instead, when Chelsea slides into one of the fold-out metal chairs across from
him, I follow her lead and take comfort in her giraffe-like posture in the
chair next to mine.
Chelsea
tosses a manila folder so that its contents spill across the table. The file
details his alleged heinous crimes, the FBI's efforts to track him, and the
blood evidence in his garage that matches that of the latest missing
girl—Georgia State art major, vegetarian, and more important to the suits,
daughter of a local bigwig. Funny, the things you remember from a file when
they have nothing to do with the case, like how she specialized in collages.
They'd found cut-up pieces of magazines littered across the desk and floor of
her dorm room. The pieces trailed into the hall like flower petals down a
church aisle.
The
strewn high-gloss photos of his suspected victims—his own personal collage of
the young, female, and carved—don't solicit a cringe from him when I can barely
hold down my water and I've been staring at them for weeks. My gaze flickers to
the one-way mirror—a silent promise: We're gonna nail this freak.
"I'm
FBI Agent Chelsea Tanner. This is my partner. How are you this evening?"
This
is normally when a suspect will ask, with understandable outrage, why I'm party
to the interrogation because aren't I, at almost sixteen, too young to be in
the FBI? Pinstriped suit or not, I look my age, maybe even a year or two
younger because I've always been small—childhood malnutrition will do that to a
girl.
It's
the suspects who don't care that I'm in the room who worry me. Like this guy,
whose pale eyes flicker to my throat.
I
fight the urge to shift, even to clench my fingers tight into a fist. I don't
blink.
"Fine
weather we're having this winter." Chelsea manages not to smirk at our
sitting in a windowless room. Her face is unbreakable. "These are perfect
skies for a getaway. Do you have plans for the weekend?"
When
he doesn't answer, she shares our itinerary—a leisurely drive to Savannah to
visit her mother at their family wintering home. Yes, that's a thing. The trip
always involves mint juleps and wide-brimmed hats, not that Chelsea shares the
finer details. A genteel background rarely earns cred with criminals.
She
chit-chats as if he's not imagining the slice of his boning knife into my neck.
The careful incision he would carve against the clavicle, removing the flat
bone from the ligaments attached to the shoulder. I don't need my unique magic
to know what's on his mind. Some things in the case file stick for a reason.
My
bone structure fascinates him. His gaze caresses my cheekbones, roams over the
bridge of my nose, dips into the hollow of my neck, and brushes the stray dark
corkscrew curls that drape over my sternum.
Don't move. Don't
blink. Don't even breathe.
"Savannah's
so beautiful this time of year. Any time of year. I go as often as I can. Don't
you think you should make time for family?" The word rolls off her tongue
in three syllables, a rare ray of southern shining through her otherwise stiff
facade.
Fah. Mil. Lee.
He
closes his eyes as though in prayer. When he opens them, his pupils dilate to
nearly black and he rubs his thumbs over his knuckles. He does not take the
bait.
Come on, Chelsea. You
work your magic and I'll work mine.
That's
our deal. She gets them talking. I make them spill their guts.
