Carrie does not move. The barrel of her gun stays fixed on Buzz.

“What? Come on, Carrie. All I wanted was to get my daughter back. You can understand that, can’t you? I only wanted to save my little girl.”

That’s too much for her. She holds the pistol in one hand, keeping it aimed at Buzz. She uses her free hand to reach into her pocket, and takes out the last item from her bag of tricks for the night. Because screw it, she’s allowed her moments of drama, too.

A phone.

“So?” He’s unimpressed. They always need it spelled out for them.

“I found Hailey’s phone, Buzz,” she says.

Now he gets it. “Ah. How’d you get it open?”

“Please. Most people’s passwords are 1234 or their kid’s birthday. I saw the call log. You were the last person to talk to her before she was killed. So I want to hear it from you: Did you know they were going to kill your daughter, too? Did you let them do it?”

Buzz looks at her, and something flickers in his eyes, like a snake poking its head from a hole before hiding again. Carrie thinks she sees him — the real him — for the first time in her life.

“That was her fault,” he says. “She dragged Regan into it. She’s the one who endangered our kid. I didn’t have any choice. If you look at it my way — ”

Carrie fires a round into the air, then levels the gun at Buzz again, shutting him up. She is done looking at it Buzz’s way. She spent a whole year at VICAP thinking like a psychopath, and she’s not paid for it anymore.

“Enough,” she says. “Get on the ground. Put your hands on your head, and drop the goddamn gun.”

“Or what? Kind of a big step, from hall monitor to cold-blooded killer. You going to shoot me, Carrie Keene?”

“Well. I know what my father would say. He’d say that no matter what you’d done, you still deserved a trial by a jury of your peers. He’d say that we’re not supposed to be judge, jury, and executioner because we get to wear a badge.”

As she says it, she believes it. She can almost hear his voice saying those words, preaching the only gospel he ever really believed.

Buzz relaxes, his shoulders going down and his smirk rising the same fraction of an inch. She considers how he was always, always protected from the consequences of his actions.

“It’s a damn shame that my father isn’t here, isn’t it?”

The smirk drops off Buzz’s face. Otherwise, he doesn’t move.

Carrie considers it. For a long moment, she considers it.

But Buzz Bixby will never be enough reason for her to change who she is, deep down.