I See You (Criminal Profiler #2) - Mary Burton Page 0,3

willingly climbed into his car as she’d smiled and asked him how he liked to party.

He traced a finger through the blood, creating a pale path that unveiled a rose tattoo. “After a man gets a taste for death, even the best fuck just doesn’t cut it.”

Reluctantly, he moved from the bed and washed his hands in the bathroom sink. The hot water stung his palm, and when he looked down, he noted the small nick above his lifeline. He remembered how the handle had grown slick as he had plunged it into his date and, on the last strike, how it had slipped. But he had been so possessed that a small cut had barely registered on his radar.

Now, he could see he had been lucky. The wound was superficial and would not need stitches.

He dried his hands on a fresh towel and wiped off the sink, the toilet handle, and the hot and cold shower knobs. Next, he cleaned the remote control and the doorknob before dropping the towel into his backpack.

The cops were going to collect DNA and prints, but this room was loaded with both from all previous guests. Assuming this case even made the priority list, it would be at least a year before the samples got sorted and tested. By then he would be on a beach in Mexico.

“You aren’t that important, girl,” he whispered. “Hookers are a dime a dozen, and cops got better things to do than find me.”

He pulled his still-clean shirt over his head, tucked it in the waistband of his jeans, and shoved his feet into a pair of sneakers. He double knotted the laces for good measure.

A last glance in the mirror confirmed there was no blood on his face. He combed his fingers through his hair and then rubbed the stubble darkening his chin. He could use a shave.

The mirror’s reflection caught the woman’s body lying in the pool of blood now fully bloomed on the white sheets. Soon it would be brown and lose its luster.

He hoisted the backpack on his shoulder. “No one is going to bother you, darling. Room’s paid for until tomorrow. You’ll finally get that rest you were complaining about needing so bad.”

CHAPTER TWO

Monday, August 12, 9:30 a.m.

Quantico, Virginia

One Day Before

The eyes were critical. They reflected secrets. Even when an individual tried to fake it, the eyes still echoed loss, love, fear, or hate. They were the visual portals to the soul. And they were the hardest to capture in a facial reconstruction sculpture.

Special Agent Zoe Spencer stepped back from the clay bust she had been working on for weeks. The woman’s likeness featured an angled jaw, a long narrow nose, and sculpted cheekbones. She had chosen brown for the eyes, a guess based on statistics. And it was not lost on her that the most telling part of who this woman had been was conjecture.

Zoe’s attention to detail was both her superpower and her Achilles’ heel. Many questioned her ceaseless fretting over the minutiae such as a chin’s dimple, the flare of nostrils, or the curve of lips into a grin. Some in the bureau still believed her work was purely art and not real science.

Her sculptures were not an exercise in art and creativity. The point of her work, like this bust, was to restore a murder victim’s identity and see that they received justice. But instead of arguing with the nonbelievers, she simply allowed her 61 percent closure rate to do her talking.

Sculptor, artist, and FBI special agent were her current incarnations, but she’d had others. Dancer. Wife. Young widow. Survivor. Each had left indelible marks, some welcome and some not.

On a good day, Zoe would not change her history. Her past had led her to this place, and she was here for a reason. But on a bad day, well, she would have killed to get her old life back.

She had been with the FBI criminal profiler squad for two years and almost immediately had put her expertise to work. She caught the cases requiring forensic sketches or sculptures not only because of her artistic abilities and expertise in fraud but also because of her keen interview skills. Armed only with questions, a sketch pad, and a pencil, she burrowed into the repressed memories of witnesses and victims, penciling and shadowing those recollections into useful images.

She certainly did not have a master artisan’s skill, but she was good enough. And from time to time, local law enforcement brought