Her heartbeat wouldn’t slow down. Rachel was usually pretty cool in combat situations. As a marine, she had to be cool. Going in too hot or too wild would just be dangerous.
But this wasn’t a normal combat situation. This wasn’t even a normal mission. This was Jack.
Thomas joined them. He also had his gun out.
It was a good thing Dylan’s building was fairly isolated. He was the only one on the second floor. The first floor was empty—and owned by Dylan.
If any neighbors had been around, the sight of the weapons would’ve sent them all fleeing.
“I lead,” Dylan said. “Thomas, you stay down here just in case he tries to run.” His gaze held Rachel’s. “You watch my back. I watch yours.”
That was the way it normally was for them. Rachel nodded.
They rushed up the flight of stairs that would take them to the second level. Her feet pounded in a fast rhythm that nearly matched her heartbeat. They burst onto the second floor.
Dylan’s door was shut.
He glanced at her.
Rachel nodded.
Dylan yanked on the knob—open—and he burst inside. Rachel was right beside him. They went in with their weapons up, and they cleared the place, room by room.
Jack wasn’t there.
No one was.
Rachel paused beside Dylan’s bed. Her feet crunched on broken glass. She frowned. The glass was there, but she didn’t know where it had come from. “Dylan...?”
“He’s gone.” He yanked out his phone and then, barely two seconds later, he said, “Thomas, he’s not up here. Start sweeping the perimeter because he couldn’t have gone far, not yet.”
Rachel backed away from the bed as Dylan kept giving his orders. When he ended the call with Thomas, Dylan contacted the EOD office and asked for a forensics team to meet at his place.
But Rachel doubted the team would find any fingerprints on the scene. Jack was too good to leave any traces behind. She turned away, determined to go and help Thomas with his search.
“No.” Dylan’s sharp voice stopped her.
She glanced back.
“Not without me,” he said. “The guy’s close, too close, and he’s playing with us.”
A break-in at her place. A break-in at his. Rachel wasn’t sure that Jack was playing with them, though. “I think he’s researching us.”
A faint line appeared between Dylan’s dark brows.
“It’s what he does,” Rachel continued. She’d made it her mission to learn as much as she possibly could about Jack and his victims. “He researches his prey. Learns their weaknesses, and then he goes in for the kill.”
It wasn’t just a game to Jack.
It was life...and death.
Chapter Three
Rachel held her body perfectly still as she sat in the conference room at the EOD. Bruce Mercer had just walked into the room. She figured the EOD boss was pushing sixty, but he was still completely fit and incredibly intimidating.
He’d intimidated Rachel from the first moment she’d met him. According to the whispers she’d heard, Mercer was the man pulling the strings in D.C. He knew all the secrets the politicians wanted to keep hidden, and he could expose those secrets at any time.
But Mercer wasn’t the only one to enter that conference room. Noelle Evers followed him inside.