“To offer us a puzzle?” DeMarco suggested wryly.

“Or just to see if he could lead us around by the nose?” She sighed. “I know unsubs play games with law enforcement sometimes, and we’ve sure as hell known them to play games with us, specifically, but . . . that tends to be after we’ve been following them around for a while, right? Maybe even when we’re close to catching them, or believe we are. So they start playing games, to throw us a curve or two, make us rethink. Only that doesn’t apply here. At all. We’ve only just started building a profile. So, why now?”

Bishop said, “To slow us down, maybe, keep us from building that profile.”

“Every time he leaves us a victim or potential victim he gives us more information,” Hollis objected.

“True.”

“To muddy the water, maybe,” DeMarco said. “Two victims who were family members but not psychic; a third victim who is definitely psychic. Two men and a woman. Two who weren’t missed right away, one who was. Two brutally killed, one left alive for whatever reason—but who would certainly have died if Nellie hadn’t been able to read him and lead us to him. No real pattern we can grab onto.”

“Still family members,” Hollis said. “That’s all they have in common. Members of the Five. If anything, that’s even clearer now.”

“I don’t have enough deputies to watch every elder, much less watch them twenty-four hours a day,” Finn said unnecessarily. “Even just trying to protect those who have to be out alone is going to be difficult. Obviously, we’ll do what we can, but . . . I’ve spread the word that none of the Five should be alone, even at home if possible, for the duration, but I don’t know how much protection, if any, that’ll provide when we don’t have a name or a face to put to the threat. And every deputy I have on escort duty is one less I have to patrol and keep an eye out for trouble.”

Quentin said thoughtfully, “Which could also be something the unsub wants to make sure of. To tie up your resources and keep the rest of us spread thin, give himself more time and more room to . . . work.”

“And we still don’t know what his endgame is,” Diana added. “A grudge against the families is possible—we all know that—maybe because of the Talents or just their importance, their power, in Salem, but that would be more about what they are, not who they are. It doesn’t make sense that a motive like that would lead the unsub to just randomly take out members of the five families, whoever he can grab. Does it?”

“Unless we should be looking somewhere else entirely for a motive,” DeMarco said. “Maybe he’s been playing games all along. Maybe we’re looking exactly where he wants us to look.”

Hollis frowned at him. “At the Five.”

He nodded. “As you said, that’s even clearer now than it was when we got here. So that’s where we’re looking. At the Five. At them as potential victims. Around half the people in this valley are members of the five families. Three victims so far, all three members of the Five. Everything we know or believe puts the families at the center of our focus. And yet we’ve all agreed that doesn’t make sense. Wiping out the Five as an endgame would be crazy ambitious, never mind insane.”