don’t want to hear there’s no more hope,” she admitted.
“I know.”
Greg didn’t let go of her hand as she pulled out her phone and stared at it, not wanting to dial.
“You need to get it over with. It’s not going to get any easier, and waiting won’t change anything. You can do this.”
Evelyn nodded, tried to prepare herself. She dialed the number fast, before she could change her mind. Some cowardly part of her hoped Julie wouldn’t pick up, but before the first ring ended, she did.
“Mrs. Byers? It’s Evelyn Baine.” Her voice sounded strange, too high-pitched and winded, as if she’d just run the Marine training course over at Quantico.
“Evelyn.” Julie’s voice betrayed that she’d been crying.
Dread intensified, and slivers of ice raced along Evelyn’s spine.
“I’m so glad I found you.” Julie’s voice evened out. “I heard you joined the FBI.”
She had? Evelyn had left Rose Bay at seventeen, after her grandma had gotten sick and her mom had suddenly shown up again. She’d never gone back and she hadn’t talked to anyone from Rose Bay in more than a decade.
“Yes,” Evelyn managed. Get on with it, she wanted to say. Just tell me Cassie’s dead.
A sob welled up in her throat and Evelyn clamped her jaw tight, holding it back.
“You probably figured after all this time I’d only be calling... Well, it’s about Cassie.”
Evelyn’s fingers started to tingle and she realized she’d squeezed Greg’s hand so tight both of their knuckles had gone bloodless. But she couldn’t seem to loosen her grip.
“You found her?”
“No. But the person who took Cassie is back.”
The Nursery Rhyme Killer was back.
The words repeated themselves in her head the way gunfire echoed after the shooting stopped, but she couldn’t make sense of them. Eighteen years of silence and then another abduction? It wasn’t completely unprecedented, but it was really rare.
Eighteen years ago, before kidnapping Cassie, her abductor had taken two other girls, from two other communities in South Carolina. No bodies had ever been found, but the press had called their abductor the Nursery Rhyme Killer.
After Cassie went missing, all of Rose Bay had been terrified, expecting him to strike again. But he never did. The trail had been cold ever since.
And Evelyn had waited eighteen years for the chance to investigate. Determination put speed in her steps as she strode through the bull pen toward her boss’s office.
“Attitude incoming,” Kendall White singsonged as she marched past his cubicle. “I knew that laid-back thing you had going for the past two weeks was just a ruse,” he called after her.
She ignored him, but something uncomfortable wormed around in her gut. In her year at BAU, her work ethic had been intense and nonstop. The past two weeks had probably seemed like an anomaly to her colleagues, but she’d intended to make a real change.
It wasn’t going to happen now. Not with the Nursery Rhyme Killer grabbing new victims. She pushed open her boss’s door without knocking. “Dan, I need to go to Rose Bay, South Carolina.”
Dan Moore, the assistant special agent in charge who ran BAU, lifted his frustrated gaze to hers and sighed. “Damn it.” Then he said into the phone at his ear, “I think I know who has it. I’m going to have to call you back.”
He hung up the phone and then barked, “Shut the door.”
Shit. She should have knocked. But Dan wasn’t exactly her biggest fan on the best day, so she tried not to let his reaction worry her.
When she’d closed the door and turned back to him, Dan said, “That was Chief Lamar from Rose Bay.”
Relief swept through her. If Rose Bay was formally requesting a profiler, it would be a lot easier to get herself assigned. “I already know the case. I—”
“Because you requested the case file under false pretenses?” Dan interrupted, his cheeks darkening to an angry, mottled red. “Chief Lamar was calling to find out if the FBI had come up with anything on the abductor since we’d asked for a copy of the file a month ago. I was in the process of telling him we’d never requested that file when you barged in.”
He slapped the desk hard, making her jerk backward. “What the hell are you doing, Evelyn? Assigning yourself cases without the Bureau’s knowledge or approval? Are you trying to get yourself investigated by OPR again?”
Evelyn stood a little straighter and prepared for a fight. The Office of Professional Responsibility hadn’t really investigated her, but they had reviewed the case she’d profiled last month that had cost another agent his life and almost took hers, too. She’d never been in trouble before that case. It hadn’t occurred to her that requesting Cassie’s case file could put a stain on her FBI personnel file.
When her grandma had let slip after seventeen years of silence that the note left by Cassie’s abductor had said he’d taken her, too, she’d needed to know. And the case file had told her it hadn’t been her grandma’s dementia talking.
Eighteen years ago, she’d somehow escaped dying alongside Cassie.
Evelyn reached a hand up to smooth hair she knew was tucked neatly into its usual bun. “I had to find out what really happened. This is why I joined the Bureau in the first place.”
Dan rubbed his hands over his temples, sending the hair on the sides of his head—the only place it grew—shooting outward. “This is that case?”
He hadn’t realized? She knew he was aware of her past. Having been best friends with a kidnap victim and being so intensely invested in the case had almost prevented her from being accepted into BAU. But apparently Dan either hadn’t looked into the case too closely or had forgotten the details. He’d been a lawyer before joining the Bureau, and since he could easily spout court case details from thirty years ago, she suspected it was the former.
She’d nearly lost a spot in BAU and Dan hadn’t even known the facts of the case. She pushed her annoyance aside. It didn’t matter now.
“Yes, this is the same case. If the perp is back, I’m in the best position to profile him. I know the case and I know the people involved.”
Dan shook his head. “Or you’re the worst possible choice, because you’re too personally involved to be objective.”
“I’m the only one who can—”
“A CARD team is there now,” Dan interrupted, his tone hard and final.
The FBI had Child Abduction Rapid Deployment teams throughout
