She called Matt.

“Are you back? At the hotel?”

“I’m with Ryder,” he said.

“Hamilton got a room here on Saturday night. After I saw him in the bar, he got a room. The manager is checking to see under what name and if he checked out.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. I’m looking at the security feed now.” She switched over to the entrances and ran through them triple time. “He left by the side exit an hour later.”

“He got a room here...shit shit shit. Where are you?”

“Security room. Behind the reservation desk.”

“I’m coming down.”

Glen had made a tactical error by returning to the hotel. He watched from his window as Matt Costa, the fed, entered through the front door. There were three police cars outside, each with two officers. He was confident that he could slip out—they didn’t know about this identity or his second car. He had altered his appearance a bit. It wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, but at a glance he didn’t think anyone would realize it was him.

He didn’t see Brian Maddox come into the hotel. The snow came down at an angle because of the steady winds, and driving in this weather would be difficult, at best. He wanted to stay the night, come up with a plan in the morning, but he was itchy. Itchy to act.

He wouldn’t be able to get to Maddox before midnight. The realization irritated him, like fingernails on a chalkboard, but once he accepted that Maddox was scared and in hiding, a certain peace fell over him.

He would, eventually, get to the old cop. He wouldn’t know when. Next year? Three years? He would live his life in constant fear that he would die.

And then Glen would kill him.

Glen breathed in, breathed out. Calmed and focused himself.

If he had difficulties driving, then so would the police. They might have four-wheel-drive vehicles, but it was dark, helicopters couldn’t track him, and he would have an advantage of getting out first.

You should have left this afternoon. You should never have come back to the hotel, you idiot.

His father’s voice echoed in his head. Glen scowled, drowned it out by hitting the side of his head until his skull hurt.

His father was dead, long dead.

Glen had everything ready. The jars, the accelerant, the locations. He’d studied enough science to know that the top floor—since there was no basement—was the best place to start the fire. Everyone would leave. He would be waiting. In the chaos, he would take as many trophies as he could before he slipped away. And by the time anyone realized what had happened, he would be gone.

It had to be chaos. Chaos was his only chance to fix this.

Fix? Maybe he hadn’t screwed up. Maybe it was always supposed to be like this. Bring all the FBI agents into one building and destroy it. Destroy them. They were the ones who caused all these problems. If the FBI hadn’t arrived so quickly, Glen would have killed Brian Maddox and disappeared. No one had acted so fast in the other two cities he hit. How they had found him now—and got his name... He took a deep breath before he got angry again.