I was worried you were in the middle of it.”
She frowned back at him, but then seemed to realize what she was doing, and said, “Thanks for the help. It got nasty out there fast.”
“Is the station going to need reinforcements?” Gabe asked as cops streamed back inside, some hauling prisoners.
Evelyn shook her head, then put her fingers gingerly against the bump on her forehead. “I don’t think so. They just didn’t expect this reaction to bringing in Brittany’s father.”
“What a fucking mess,” the veteran cop with the shield contributed as he came in the door hauling a cuffed and bleeding resident.
“Is anyone hurt, Jack?” Evelyn asked as Gabe signaled a free cop and swapped the cuffs on the prisoner he’d brought inside.
“Nothing serious.” Jack pushed the resident into a chair. “Stay there,” he told the man, then turned his gaze on Evelyn. “What the hell were you doing out there? Inciting them with the bullhorn? Are you crazy?”
Kyle forced back a response, because he knew it would piss Evelyn off to have anyone stand up for her. It always did.
“I was trying to calm them down, remind them what we all need to be focused on,” Evelyn replied, a lot more calmly than Kyle had expected.
Jack snorted. “Yeah, that worked well.”
Kyle couldn’t stay silent any longer, but he tried to keep his tone nonconfrontational. “The problem wasn’t trying to talk the crowd down. The problem was not planning better for that arrest.” He should know. He’d helped execute arrests on enough high-profile targets.
Jack shot him a look, then turned pointedly to Evelyn. “How do you know those guys? Who are they? More feds?”
Instead of answering Jack, she asked Kyle, “Can you give me a ride back to the hotel?”
“You’re just going to leave now?” Jack cut in.
What was this guy’s problem? Kyle stepped closer, angling into Jack’s line of sight with the kind of warning glare he liked to use on uncooperative targets.
“Let me grab a file, okay?” Evelyn raced off as though she hoped her disappearance would make Jack lose interest.
But Jack just moved forward, giving Kyle his own cop stare.
“You might want to watch your prisoner,” Gabe said mildly as Jack got in Kyle’s face.
“Shit!” Jack took after the bleeding resident he’d brought in a minute before, who was hobbling for the door.
Then Evelyn was back, and Kyle ushered her out the door toward Gabe’s car. “What’s with that guy?”
“Apparently he’s held a grudge for eighteen years.”
Kyle steered her around the broken glass from the patrol car headlights since she wasn’t wearing shoes. “He had a grudge against a twelve-year-old?”
Gabe looked questioningly between them as Evelyn shrugged. Evelyn had told Kyle about her past, but Gabe didn’t know what this case meant to her, or her history here.
Kyle had tried to respect her privacy and keep it to himself, but if she was in danger—and with a town that fast to mob, she definitely could be—he’d have to tell Gabe soon.
And he really didn’t like the atmosphere in the police station, either. There was definitely something off about Jack.
To hell with sleep. When he got back to the hotel, he was going to check into the guy’s history. “What’s his full name?”
“Jack Bullock,” Evelyn answered. Then she seemed to realize why he’d asked, and added, “I think it’s just this case. He was on it eighteen years ago and couldn’t solve it then. It’s probably haunted him ever since.”
Like it had haunted her.
She didn’t have to say it; the words were written all over her face.
But considering why she was here, she was handling it a lot better than he’d expected. Maybe she was still too numb from learning that her best friend’s abductor was back to really take in what was happening, or maybe she was just burying it all.
Either way, the calm wasn’t likely to last long.
* * *
Evelyn sat on the edge of her bed in her hotel room, a police file on her lap. She needed to remove her dirty, torn clothes and take a shower. She needed some ice for her forehead. But she couldn’t think about any of it until she looked in the file.
Inside was the original FBI profile of the Nursery Rhyme Killer.
She hadn’t reviewed it when she wrote her own, because that could have subconsciously influenced her analysis. Now that she’d given her independent profile, it was time to look at everything else—from the original suspects to the original profile.
Since she’d profiled the abductor as being the same man from all those years ago and not a copycat, now was the moment of truth.
Did her profile match the one prepared eighteen years ago?
Back then, when Cassie had gone missing, an FBI profiler had come to Rose Bay. Evelyn had seen him at the police station once, confident and a head taller than most of the cops. She’d been leaving after another round of questioning from Jack Bullock. She’d seen the agent studying the volunteers as she’d walked at the rear of the search parties with her grandparents. When she’d spotted him leaving the Byerses’ house, she’d run over and demanded to know who he was and when he was going to find Cassie.
He’d leaned down to her level and actually shook her hand. He’d been aware of who she was, of course, but back then she hadn’t known why. Then he’d told her his name and explained what he did for the FBI.
And that conversation had changed the entire direction of her life.
She’d never seen Philip Havok again. But she could still remember the exact shade of his sharp blue eyes, the dark gray of his suit, the quiet confidence in his voice. He was the picture she’d had in her head all the years since, the idea of what she wanted to be. A profiler. Someone who could bring girls like Cassie back home.
She’d looked him up when she’d been accepted to the Academy, wondering if he was still in profiling, and discovered he’d retired the year before. He’d spent nearly twenty-five years in the Bureau—meaning, he’d been granted an exception to the FBI’s mandatory retirement. More than half of that time had been spent profiling serial predators. Now it was her turn.
Evelyn opened the file. The basic description was right at the top: “white male, between the ages of twenty and thirty, works a job with flexible hours.” Add eighteen years and that matched what she’d profiled.
She kept reading. “Unclear whether he is single, but if married, the relationship is controlling. Could have his own child, and if so, likely to be the same age as the victims.”
Evelyn paused, realizing she hadn’t considered every
