“I never denied that. We were colleagues in a pressure-cooker situation. We were working a gruesome case. You know how it gets, sir. It wasn’t the first time two teammates turned to each other for solace.” Baldwin refused to look away, met Tucker’s eyes squarely. Come on, you wanker. You*ve been boning your executive assistant for years, and we all know it. What are you really looking for?

Tucker had the good grace to blush. “I think we can fast-forward through the gory details now, Dr. Baldwin. Let’s begin again, with Susan Travers. She was the fourth alleged victim of Harold Aden, correct?”

“No, she was the fifth.”

Northern Virginia

June 15, 2004

Baldwin

The smell made him nauseous. No matter how many autopsies he participated in, which thankfully were few and far between, he could never get his stomach to cooperate properly- The drive up from Quantico, coupled with the wicked hangover and a slightly dirty feel from screwing around with Charlotte, had made him even more queasy than usual.

He let his mind drift away from the little body being examined on the autopsy table. Susan Travers was the fifth victim in as many weeks. Baldwin had been brought in after the third victim, eight-year-old Ellen Hughes, had disappeared on her way home from school. She’d been found dead three days later-legs broken, stabbed once in the chest-tied to a tree in Great Falls Park.

His team was still relatively new. Two months ago, they’d been fresh-faced agents recently acquired into the behavioral science unit. They still thought it was cool to be working there, hadn’t seen enough of the horrors the work held in store for them. They were normally only tasked for crimes against adults, but they’d been pulled in on this case to help out when the lead profiler for BAU One had suffered a heart attack.

This Great Falls case had tempered their enthusiasm pretty damn quick.

Baldwin had handpicked the team: Caleb Geroux was from New Orleans, a homicide detective with a nose for wheedling confessions out of suspects; Jessamine Sparrow, as fine-boned as her name foretold, his new computer genius and a former hacker; and Olen Butler, his forensics expert.

Butler was an especially significant find-in the months before Baldwin brought him on the team, he’d developed a brand-new DNA program for their CODIS systems. The combined DNA index system was working hard to match DNA samples from crimes across the country, and Butler’s intuitive program utilized an aspect of ViCAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, to make the CODIS matches quicker and deeper than ever before.

The team was a load of talent wrapped into one small entity, the Behavioral Analysis Unit Two. Baldwin’s unit.

Charlotte Douglas was the most experienced profiler on his team, with a doctorate in criminal psychology from Georgetown and a gift for self-preservation. Unlike the others, she’d been assigned to the team two months earlier. His boss, Garrett Woods, had “done a favor” for another bureau chief and brought her on board.

Baldwin only knew the basics about Charlotte; the parts of her jacket he was allowed to see were straightforward: education commendations, experience. She wasn’t one for chatter about her past, and he wondered for a moment why that was. She’d made mention of boarding schools once, of being raised away from her family, but that was all he knew.

Did he want to know more?

You know a lot more about her now than you did yesterday. That she was a real redhead, for starters. That she was fearless in bed. That she cried out in her sleep like a kitten having a nightmare.

See, dumbass? This is what happens when you fuck a teammate. Great job.

He mentally berated himself for a few minutes, then dragged his focus back to the autopsy. They were finishing up now, conclusions being drawn. The wound tracts were identical, the signature too specific. Susan Travers had been killed by the same man who murdered four other little girls in the case the media was calling the Clockwork Killer. To Baldwin, he was simply the unsub, the unnamed subject.

The medical examiner was relatively certain that Travers had been dead for four days, which meant time was running out. Their unsub was operating on a weekly schedule; it was possible that another little girl would go missing today, be murdered tonight, and turn up three days from now. Unless Baldwin got his head in the game and stopped him.

Nineteen

Nashville

10:00 a.m.

Hillsboro High School had none of the charm of the many private schools in town. It looked like an industrial plant from the sixties, all cramped windows and metal re bar. The gymnasium was close to the road, dirty white brick with green accents; the school itself set farther back, crouching on the surrounding land.

Sadness permeated the air, everything felt empty. Even for a Saturday, things were simply vacant.

They entered the building and Taylor was immediately struck by how small everything seemed. Granted, it had been a while since she’d last been here, during an escapade with a decidedly nonprivate-school boy who attended Hillsboro. She’d attended some dance with him-a requisite papier-mache, roses and hand-lettered banners in the gym affair-and found herself so incredibly bored by the whole evening that she stopped returning his calls. Hell, all she could remember of him was his first name, Edward, and that he drove a motorcycle, which was the reason she’d agreed to a date with him in the first place.

Nothing of the school looked the same to her. She shrugged; it had been nearly twenty years since she’d last been inside. A small bundle of gray-haired energy appeared before them, stuck out her wizened hand to shake. ”Lieutenant Jackson? I’m Cornelia Landsberg, Thank you for coming.”

“Ah, you’re the principal. Excellent. It’s nice to meet you, ma’am. This is Detective Renn McKenzie. He’s going to join me in our interviews today.”

Landsberg was already ushering them toward the office. Taylor couldn’t help but feel like she’d done something wrong, saw McKenzie shoot her a glance, reading her body language-when were you last in the principal’s office? She coughed, hiding her smile behind her palm.

Landsberg led them into the quiet of the main office, which looked like a thousand other school front offices she’d been in. It didn’t smell right, though. Taylor still associated the school’s main office with the inky perfume of mimeograph machines, even though by the time she was an upperclassman at Father Ryan it had all gone to computers.

Posters of mascots hung on the walls, cheering on the student council and basketball team. A young brunette, most likely a teacher’s aide, puttered behind the desk. Landsberg ignored her, led them back through a swinging sol id-wood gate into the bowels of teenage authority.

“Gwen Wood all and Ralph Poston are meeting us- they’re our guidance counselors. They’ve pulled all the files for our problem students.” She stopped and turned, looked up at Taylor with beady, black-bird’s eyes rimmed in red. Taylor was struck by the woman’s resemblance to a small pigeon.