“No.”

“Brian.”

“She doesn’t need to know.”

“Yes she does. This is serious.”

“I know it’s serious, Kara. I’ve been a cop almost as long as you’ve been alive.”

“Then tell her.”

“She knows that there’s a killer out there. She knows that the killer may target a cop. She doesn’t know that it’s a cop connected to Liberty Lake.”

Unbelievable. “Fucking tell her, Brian.”

“You’ve gotten bossy.”

“I’ve always been bossy.”

“If I truly thought that I was the target, my family wouldn’t be here.”

“You have to consider it, Brian.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I am.” He paused. “This guy isn’t going to come after me until Tuesday. If I get any sense that I might be on his list, I’ll send them away tomorrow. Okay? But it just doesn’t make any sense.”

“He’s a psychopath. It doesn’t have to make sense to us. It makes sense to him because his brain is twisted.”

The sliding glass door opened and Matt stepped out. “Your wife said I could come out. I hope I’m not disturbing anything.”

“Not at all. Just in time for dessert,” Brian said.

“I don’t want to put you out.”

“You’re not.”

“Well, I have something to discuss before we go inside, if that’s okay,” Matt said.

“Give it to me straight. You found something?”

“Maybe.”

Matt felt intensely uncomfortable under Kara’s gaze. It wasn’t that she was looking at him in any specific way, just that he couldn’t read her.

He wouldn’t have come over at all, if he didn’t think it was important.

“Brian, I am concerned that you may be the target.”

“We were just talking about that,” Kara said.

Brian shook his head. “You’re going to have to have some damn solid proof.”

“I don’t have proof—yet. But Zachary Hamilton, the Liberty Lake guy you evicted after the bank foreclosed some years back? I went through the file completely—including everything that the bank had submitted as part of the documentation to get the warrant. The house is located at 369 Vine Street.”

“You’re basing your threat assessment on the address having a three in it?”

“No. It’s just one piece. Hamilton was fired from Spokane High School only a week before a terminated employee attacked Marston in the parking lot—based on a witness statement. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. So now I have confirmation that you, Marston, and Anne Banks all had a confrontation with Zachary Hamilton.”

“What about the cop who arrested him for his third drunk driving charge? I just put him in county lockup for three days. The other cop put him in prison for a year.”

“Andy’s talking to her now—that was Spokane PD. That cop has no connection to Liberty Lake. She’s never lived here, never worked here.”

“But you’re still just making a guess that the Triple Killer is targeting a cop from Liberty Lake.”

Before Matt could argue, Kara said, “For shitsake, Brian, you’re deflecting. This is real.”

“I just don’t think this is enough to put me on the list. Hamilton is older than me. Your initial report said the killer would be under forty. I’ll be fifty next year.”