She found herself breaking speed limits as she followed the unmarked car off the shoulder, up the road and back in the direction of the city.

***

Ilse sat hesitantly in the cold interrogation room, her fingers clasped delicately over each other. The scar from her ear and along the side of her cheek itched, but she resisted the urge to reach up and scratch it, lest she bring unwanted attention to it.

She swallowed, watching Agent Sawyer where he spun his own metal chair around and sat in it backwards, folding his arms across the backrest and fixing her with a piercing glare.

“Am… Am I a suspect?” she said, hesitantly, glancing around the cold, unadorned room. No two-way mirrors. No mirrors at all. Just a table, two chairs, a light fixture, and a sealed door.

Sawyer watched her for a moment. “You’re a therapist?” he said. By his tone, he didn’t sound much impressed.

“Yes,” she said, slowly. “I work with survivors of the people you put behind bars.”

He nodded once, his tongue inside his cheek as if tracing the inside of his mouth. He cleared his throat, glanced at his fingers as if thinking, then looked up at her. He didn’t say anything.

She shifted uncomfortably, put off by the silence, by his watchful, searching gaze. At last, she spoke into the stillness. “I can’t tell you much about her,” Ilse said, softly. “Personal details fall under privilege.”

“How about dead clients?” he asked, emotionless.

She frowned. “I’m trying to help. Doing my best. Her name. I can say her name. Samantha Wright.”

Sawyer glanced down at a little notepad, scribbling in it with an old, worn yellow pencil. He looked up, waiting, as if prompting her to continue.

“That’s all I can give. That and anything pertinent to the crime itself,” Ilse said, insistently. “I’ve told you all I know.”

“Samantha Wright?” he said.

“That’s right. That’s her name.”

This time, he pulled out his phone, typing. He paused a second, then lowered his device next to the notepad.

The way he sat, backwards in the chair, baseball cap tipped up beneath the bright lights, flannel, buttoned shirt, like some old-fashioned western cowboy, plus his dusty old blue jeans made him look more like a farmhand or some laborer than a BAU agent. Even when he’d entered the precinct, some of the locals had given him long looks. He’d ignored them mostly.

Now, though, he wasn’t ignoring her at all. His eyes seemed a spotlight, fixating on her. Or, perhaps, more like needles, pinning her to a page, like a butterfly with pierced wings; some sort of specimen.

She fidgeted uncomfortably.

“No,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not a suspect,” he said.

She frowned at the delay in the comment. He was watching, studying her. Almost as if he’d only just now reached that conclusion. Not because she’d said anything, or he’d looked up any details about her. Almost as if he were going off of gut instinct alone.