Twisted (Burbank and Parker 1)

2:45 P.M.

Nurse Kate Reilly was more than ready to go off duty. That unexpected Code Blue had really thrown her. When she last checked, Mr. Remis had been doing just fine. He was recovering from a head injury sustained in a car accident. His vitals were stable. The respirator had been functioning perfectly—every connection checked and double-checked.

It hadn’t been hard to restore the situation to normal. But the fact that someone had unplugged him from his respirator? That was beyond chilling. Who would do such a thing? Especially to Mr. Remis, who was a sweetheart, with a loving family, very little money, and a kind heart. The whole incident had been a nightmare.

To top that off, she was getting a little worried about her supervising nurse, Gertrude Flyer. Gertrude was a stickler for punctuality and responsibility. She never missed a day, never neglected a patient, and never gave less than her all. The instant the Code Blue had sounded, she’d rushed off to get potentially needed medication for Mr. Remis. But she’d never come back. That was unprecedented.

Bothered, Kate went looking for Gertrude. As she passed the front of the nurses’ station, something on the floor toward the back of the station caught her eye.

Abruptly, she stopped, all the color draining from her face.

She never heard herself scream. She just stood there, her hands covering her mouth, staring at the gruesome sight before her.

A river of blood was flowing out from the back of the nurses’ station. And crumpled in front of the open medication cabinet was Gertrude Flyer’s butchered body.

FBI New York Field Office

26 Federal Plaza, New York City

3:45 P.M.

Sloane paced back and forth in Derek’s cubicle.

“Okay, you ordered me to accompany you to your office straight from our interview with Tina. I’ve been here for hours while you tried to hunt down your language analyst and then your partner. Are you going to tell me what they said or what I’m doing here?”

“I bought you lunch,” Derek reminded her, settling himself at his computer and calling up his e-mails. “That’s two meals in one day. One for each hour you had to wait. To my way of thinking, that makes us even.”

“Derek.” Sloane marched up to his desk, folding her arms across her breasts and staring him down. “I’m not amused. I’m pissed. And not only about this afternoon’s runaround. About this morning’s, too. What was that phone call you took during the interview about? I know it had something to do with this case. I could feel it when you came back. You were practically vibrating.”

“Such an astute woman,” Derek taunted under his breath. “Can’t pull the wool over your eyes.” He concentrated on his computer screen as he ran through the new e-mails in his in-box. “No, no, no…yes. There we go.” Double-clicking, he opened the e-mail from Joe.

Here’s the rough photo, it read. Let me know what you think. Final version in the A.M.

Derek glanced around impatiently, then spotted a chair. He dragged it over and set it behind his desk, then gestured for Sloane to walk around and view the screen with him.

“First, I couldn’t find either Jeff or my language analyst, Yan Dié,” he replied. “I have calls in to both of them. We’ll have our dialect answers soon. Second, that call I got during the meeting was from Quantico. It was the forensic engineer who’s enhancing the video footage for me. He found something.” Derek went on to detail what Joe had told him. “So let’s take a look and see what we’ve got.”

Sloane leaned forward, watching intently as Derek opened the jpeg. The image appeared slowly, and it was definitely rough and gravelly looking. But the glint of light was unmistakable, as was the shadow around it. And they each had a definite shape.

“That light is a knife,” Sloane stated decisively. “A long, thick knife, just like the one Tina described. And the shadow around it could definitely be a man.”

“I agree. So does Joe, at least about the knife. He’s fine-tuning the image for us just to be sure. I’ll have his final jpeg first thing tomorrow. If it turns out we’re right about the knife and the man—which I think we are—I’m going to ask Joe to check out the corresponding footage from the path around the lake. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe we’ll not only get a good fix on the Unsub, but we’ll be able to spot Penelope from one of the camera angles.”

“Look at the time stamp,” Sloane said, pointing. “Eleven twenty-nine. It coincides perfectly with the time line Deanna Frost gave us for Penny’s walk around Lake Fred.”

“Yup. So if Joe’s final product comes in as I suspect it will, we’ve got our Unsub placed at Penelope Truman’s crime scene. We’ve also got more than enough connections between the three woman—and you—to establish a pattern. It’s time to get the BAU involved.”

“I agree.” Sloane looked pensive as she raked a hand through her hair. “The only thing that’s still bugging me is how the Unsub knew Penny would be at Stockton that day, taking a walk around Lake Fred at that specific hour. Tina and Cynthia had routines that he could easily have kept track of. But Penny’s routine was to catch a subway to work. So how did he know—” Sloane broke off as a possibility occurred to her.

“What?” Derek asked, reading her expression.

“Give me a minute to follow up on a lead. It’s a long shot, but it might give us our answer.” She opened up her file folder and flipped through her notes. “Here we go,” she murmured. She held the spot she’d found by placing her index finger on it, then flipped open her cell phone and punched in the relevant number.

“Doug Waters’s office,” a professional female voice announced.

“This is Sloane Burbank. I need to speak with Mr. Waters immediately.”

“He’s in a meeting, Ms. Burbank. If you’ll leave me a phone number where you can be reached—”