Jack was twenty feet away from the phone booth, standing by the edge of the parking lot. When I walked up behind him, he looked back at me, his eyes unreadable behind his dark shades.

“What happened?”

He looked my way, but said nothing.

“Quinn told you something, and now you’re trying to figure out whether—or how—you should tell me.” My mind leapfrogged to the obvious. “Another killing. Already? He just finished—”

“Not yet.”

I stopped. “Not yet what? The killing, you mean? He hasn’t done it yet, but he’s announced it already? Come on, Jack, don’t make me drag it out of you two words at a time, or I swear—”

He motioned for me to sit with him on the edge of the restaurant porch, and started talking.

The FBI knew where the killer was going to strike next. While it would have been nice to claim that they’d deduced this through painstaking hours of statistical and behavioral analysis, the truth was far more disturbing. They knew because he’d told them.

According to Quinn, the FBI agent leading the investigation, Martin Dubois, had received his own letter from the killer. In it, the killer had promised to take a victim tonight, at a recently reopened historic opera house in Chicago. He didn’t dare them to stop him, but the challenge was obvious.

“So what you were debating was whether to tell me in advance or not, wasn’t it? Quite possibly our best chance to catch this guy, and you don’t think we should bother showing up.”

A kernel of rage rolled around my gut. I could feel Jack’s gaze on me, studying me, appraising my reaction. I closed my eyes to slits, then took a deep breath. Took another. Opened my eyes and looked at him.

“Could be a setup,” he said, words coming slow, deliberate, almost as if guiding me back on track.

I considered that. Saw the truth in his words. “Playing with the Feds. Leading them on a goose chase.”

“Playing, yeah. Goose chase…?” He pulled off his sunglasses. “Helluva challenge.”

“Killing someone in a busy public place—after you’ve given the FBI a heads-up? That’s not just a challenge. What better way to prove that no one is safe than to tell the Feds where you’ll strike next, and still pull it off.”

“Yeah.”

“So you think he’s really going to do it?”

A long pause now, really thinking it through. Then a nod. “Yeah. Think he’s gonna try.”

My nails dug into my palms as I kept my voice steady, dispassionate. “Are we going to be there to stop him?”

“Gonna try.”