Jim drank coffee and munched on a pastry he’d grabbed from the continental buffet downstairs. “I talked to the lab tech before I boarded the plane, got his preliminary report on the crime scene. Read the prelim autopsy report. No tox screens have come back yet—wish my own lab was ready, I could run them faster.”

“So far, the Spokane lab has been cooperative. I told the head tech, Miles Jordan, to expect you.”

“I’m meeting with him at nine,” Jim said. “Not many drugs can act almost immediately to knock someone out. There’s usually a risk of the victim screaming or fighting back—even for a minute—or of someone seeing them. And an unconscious body is deadweight.”

“Maybe you can light a fire under his ass this morning.”

“I read him my creds. I think we’re good. We’ll go over everything, and I’m bringing over the files for the first six victims. The kid is high-strung, but he’s smart. I’m smart. We’ll find something. Whether it’ll help locate the killer or convict a suspect, I don’t know, but it won’t be because we missed anything.”

“Thanks for coming on board ahead of schedule.”

“Once I told my superiors I was leaving for the FBI, I got the cold shoulder. I was already mentally gone. There’s a case I’ll need to follow up on—I trained my replacement, but it’s a sensitive situation and I’ll have to testify at the trial.”

“Anything you need. After we’re done here, you can go back, get things in order.”

“My daughter and her family are moving into my house—it’s in a better school district. She’s a prosecutor—they get paid shit, but she doesn’t want to go into private practice.” Jim sounded proud. “Her husband’s a cop. Good guy. They have three kids.” He pulled a photo from his pocket. Two sandy-blond-haired boys who looked almost identical except for their height and a girl with dark pigtails and round Harry Potter glasses. “The boys just turned eight and nine last month, and Trixie will be starting first grade in the fall. Boys look like their dad, Trix—my granddaughter—takes after her mom.”

“Nice family.”

“Yeah. There’s a basement I never finished—my son-in-law is going to do the work, add a bathroom, put up a wall. I’ll have my own space. And honestly, when I go home I mainly want to see the kids. We’d been talking about it when I decided to retire early. But this will work even better.” He finished his pastry. “You don’t have a family.”

Statement, not a question.

“A brother.”

“You close?”

Matt nodded. “I spend holidays with him and his family. He’s a doctor in Miami.”

Dante was brilliant, always had been. They were thirteen months apart, Dante older, and together they’d gotten in and out of trouble while growing up. He loved his brother and sister-in-law and their kids. But settling down wasn’t in Matt’s DNA—all the home and hearth genes had gone to his brother.

Then Michael Harris, the newest MRT member, walked in dressed impeccably in a dark suit and purple silk tie. He was big—bigger than Matt—and broad, former Navy SEAL. He’d joined the FBI after he served his country for eight years and been honorably discharged. He’d been in Detroit for six years, serving on their ERT unit as the munitions expert and on the SWAT team. Most FBI offices didn’t have a dedicated SWAT team—agents cross-trained. Matt wanted someone with advanced tactical training by his side in case a situation got out of hand.