“Not till after the ransom drop,” Kincaid said immediately.

“We could use them,” Mosley pushed. “Deliver the profile Mr. Quincy’s developed. Get the public looking for our man.”

“And scare the UNSUB into thinking he’s going to be caught at any minute, so he might as well kill both victims to cover his tracks.”

“The longer we go without a briefing, the more the press will dig on their own. And the more they discover on their own, the less I have to bargain with.”

“Not till after the ransom drop,” Kincaid repeated. And that was the end of the discussion.

Eight a.m. They fidgeted, reread the UNSUB’s past communications, and in general, worked themselves into a state.

At nine, Mac took a call on his cell phone. The Portland recruiting branch of the Army confirmed that they had record of Private Andrew Bensen, currently listed as AWOL.

Quincy offered the information to Kincaid. Kincaid ranted for twenty minutes about Quincy daring to impede an official police investigation by deliberately withholding a vital lead, not to mention the importance of trust in a multijurisdictional investigation. Sheriff Atkins issued an all-points bulletin for a man fitting Bensen’s description. Lieutenant Mosley muttered about the number of press agents who monitored police radios and that they had just added fuel to the fire.

Then, for the most part, everyone retired to their separate corners and fumed.

Quincy’s phone sat in the middle of the conference room table. It was hooked to a speakerphone, all incoming calls being recorded and traced-not that anyone held out much hope for locating the origin of the caller. Cell signals bounced off towers in random patterns, making it virtually impossible to trace back a signal. But they went through the motions, because sometimes, that’s all a task force has left.

Nine fifty-nine a.m.

The phone rang.

Candi put on the headset.

Lieutenant Mosley hit the Record button.

It began.