She did not allow herself time to simply sit there and stare at the building, asking herself why the hell she was back here. Instead, she got out right away. She checked in with the same person shed checked in with before and was escorted to the eleventh floor by a beefy-looking guard who looked to have maybe had a little too much fun over the weekend and had not yet recovered.

This time, she arrived in the small meeting room first. As she sat there and waited for a guard to deliver Alex Lynch to the room, she found her thoughts turning back to Grandma Tate. Rachel did not try to fool herself; she missed the woman terribly sometimes and it pained her heart when she realized that there was much about her childhood spent with Grandma Tate that she couldnt remember. To think she might be in some sort of trouble was scary and with every day that passed, the more Rachel did not want to make that trip down to South Carolina. Aside from her own parents, shed not dealt with death a great deal. Shed heard how FBI agents and other law enforcement agents sometimes started to get desensitized to death if they dealt in violent cases. She found that hard to believe as she thought about potentially losing Grandma Tate.

Stop it, she told herself. You dont even know for certain thats why she wants you to visit.

She was rather happy when the door opened, breaking apart those thoughts. If she focused on the Grandma Tate situation for too long, shed convince herself that the worst possible scenario was correct and shed obsess over it. So to her strange surprise, she was nearly relieved when the same beefy-looking guard escorted Alex Lynch into the room. The guard then looked to Rachel and said, Im right outside.

He looked to Alex and said nothing, though his eyes seemed to say: Just give me a reason…

When the guard left them alone, Alex looked at Rachel intensely through his bifocals. He smiled and said, Is your case closed now?

It is, she said.

And was our conversation of some help?

She nodded, not wanting to inflate his ego but also figuring her mere presence here was showing her hand. Yes, it helped. Im still trying to process exactly how it helped, but it did.

So then why are you here? If its more of just wanting to get a peek inside my head to see how a killer ticks, Im afraid Im really not interested in that.

Theres a cold case Ive been working off and on for the last two years, she lied. Three people killed in West Virginia in 1991. Brutal and just

Do you have children, Agent Gift? Alex interrupted.

A hundred different defenses raised up as she thought of Paige while in the presence of this man. What business of it is yours?