She loses herself for a while, finally blinks herself out of it. Needing air, she fumbles the window crank, makes a gap for the breeze to rush in. The smell of the pines is restorative. They’re almost back on the interstate.

“Lewis?” Bell’s collar is loosened. He looks forward at the road but still somehow seems to be concentrating on her.

“How can some men hate so hard?” she whispers. But she’s not sure if it’s Bell she’s asking. She swallows against the thickness in the back of her throat. “Let’s get coffee. Can we get coffee?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bell says quietly.

He turns the pickup into the parking lot of a truck stop. The outside has been painted an unpleasant Pepto Bismol pink, but the inside of the place is clean-wholesome, and blessedly quiet. Bell orders while Emma finds a booth. She fiddles with the laminated menu until Bell slides in opposite her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. You?” She’s feeling more herself now she’s out of the confines of the car. She suddenly remembers that she’s still wearing Bell’s shirt.

“That’s one down, anyway.” He shrugs, shucks off his jacket.

“I guess.”

“Something bothering you about it?”

Emma bites her lip. “What do you think will happen when we get back to Quantico?”

Bell rolls up his cuffs. “Cooper’ll probably want to debrief. He won’t expect a report before Sunday, but he’ll want to have a look at what we got. See how we managed. McMurtry is one of the easy ones, remember.”

“Who are the hard ones?”

“Have you looked at the other summaries?” When Emma shakes her head, Bell’s eyes drift in thought. “Rylan, maybe. Gesak, definitely—he’s refused all interviews.” He pauses as the server delivers two coffees and a grilled tomato-and-cheese sandwich. When the server leaves, he adds sugar to his coffee. “They won’t all be antagonistic, but they’ll all be hard.”

Emma looks at the sandwich—it smells good, but she’s not sure her stomach is up to much—and thinks about what she wants to express next. “Bell, why are we doing this?”

“Say again?”

“I don’t mean our personal reasons. Why are we doing this? Why create this unit? I don’t understand what’s in it for Cooper. What new things are we learning from these interviews?”

“We’re learning how that kind of mentality develops. How young it starts, and what kinds of triggers—”

“The FBI knows this stuff already.” She puts her coffee down. “They’ve interviewed thirty-five adult subjects, and most of them have provided extensive histories. They know it starts in childhood. They know the patterns of upbringing. They know the warning signs, like animal cruelty and arson and bed-wetting, and how the early fantasies develop. The psychopathology has been understood for nearly ten years—it’s on my damn course curriculum. Come on, Bell. What’s new about these subjects, except that they got caught early?”

Bell shakes his head. “Look, with these kinds of sex crimes—”

“These crimes are not about sex. The sex is just incidental.”