She liked that and hoped her assessment was right.

She almost laughed at herself. Of course it was right. She read people better than most, which had saved her life—and her cases—more than once.

But she hadn’t been able to save Sunny.

Block it, Kara. Block it out and focus. Triple Killer. Serial killer. Seven dead.

“Three victims in Portland, Oregon,” Costa was saying. “A stay-at-home mom of three, a high school principal, an off-duty cop. Three years later in Missoula, he killed a nurse, a college professor, and another off-duty cop.”

One of the officers said, “Did he target them because they were cops?”

Costa went through the case and Kara was immediately caught up in the mystery. Because the way he spoke, it was a mystery; they knew very little. The victims appeared random, but their profiler thought the killer stalked them and had a personal reason to single them out. They weren’t certain whether the cops were specific victims because they were both out of uniform. There was no known connection between any of the seven victims, and they were now running far deeper backgrounds into their lives, starting with the first victim. He went through their names, races, and ages; how widespread the victimology was; and why that made this killer elusive.

All they knew was that on March 6 the killer would hit again if they couldn’t identify him.

Yeah, she could see why the feds were all over this. Based on what Costa was saying, they had shit—but they had more now than they had two days ago.

“Our top profiler is working on this case, and I hope to have more information to help narrow our suspect pool later today,” Costa said. “Profiling is not a hard science, but we’ve been extremely successful in the past, and we have a rough profile that we’re honing as I speak. You can probably guess based on your experience that we’re looking for a male. He’s average in most every way, but he’s likely a loner. Smart, has a job, but won’t be working day to day with people. Highly intelligent, methodical. Just before this meeting, I got word that the Sheriff’s dive team will be assisting us in searching the lake tomorrow morning to look for the murder weapon.”

“Does that mean he uses a different weapon for each murder?” one of the plainclothes detectives asked.

“Local Portland law enforcement found two separate murder weapons, both generic double-edged knives, disposed of near those crime scenes. The knives were identical, but common. We believe that he uses the same type of knife with each victim—and possibly a different knife each time, suggesting that he gets rid of it immediately after the murder. The FBI only became involved after the fifth murder, and by the time we were caught up to speed, the killer took his sixth victim and then disappeared. Until now.”

As Matt Costa looked around the room, Kara caught his eye. Why did he seem so suspicious that she was here? She had a vested interest, and she was a cop. She smiled at him, mostly to mess with his head because it was fun. He looked away.