“What?” I ask him as we get into the car.
I don’t crank it, because I lift my iPad, bringing up pictures from the previous crime scenes.
He turns to face me. “We haven’t know we were coming here for too long. Our unsub would have had to hit sometime between our decision and our arrival at the home today.”
I nod slowly. “I thought I had something figured out, but apparently that was wrong, because now it’s impossible,” he sighs.
“What?” I ask, curious, my fingers hovering over the screen.
“Nothing that sounds sane anymore. Guess it was all just in my head. What are you looking for?” He gestures toward my iPad.
“The unsub knew Donny and I were being attacked. The unsub knew we were coming today. The unsub has known every move of his or her victims. This unsub is a watcher. There are eyes on us somewhere, and—”
My words cut out when I notice the small holes. I barely remembered them because they seemed so unimportant.
“Each house has these in almost every room,” I tell Leonard. “Except for some of the later kills the unsub sprinted through.” I gesture toward the small holes the size of a nail head.
“Too small to be a camera,” he says.
“We’ve already suspected the unsub of a much higher intelligence. What if she has this sort of technology? It’d explain how she managed to save me in time last night.”
“You’re just saying she now,” he notes.
“Everything in me is saying it was a woman.”
“I believe you,” he says absently.
“You lack the conviction in your tone that you had on the way down here.”
I put the car in drive and push my iPad away. Knowing the unsub is watching us is actually a good thing. Hadley can tap into the video stream if she can find the signal, and possibly even back-hack the unsub to find her.
“Like I said,” Leonard mumbles under his breath, “thought I knew something else.”
Chapter 9
There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
—Voltaire
LOGAN
Two deputies block us the second we step up on the front porch of Kyle Davenport’s home.
“Sorry, Agents, but no one is going in without the sheriff’s permission,” the one in front of me says.
Chad Briggs. I remember him.
I just smirk.
“Unless you guys want me calling more of my guys in because you’re impeding a federal investigation, I suggest you step out of the way.”
Briggs takes a step toward me, a dark challenge in his eyes. “SSA Johnson is the lead on your end. If he wants to come chat with Kyle, I’ll step down. But we’re taking the threat on his life seriously, and you’re not stepping—”
His words end on a grunt when I grab his wrist and twist, sending him face first into the side of the house. Leonard pulls his gun when the other deputy stupidly tries to make a grab for his own weapon.
“Let me be very clear here,” I say to Briggs, wrenching his arm tighter behind him and making him cry out. “I’ll speak to whoever the fuck I want to speak to, considering your guys tried to take me out last night. And if you’re smart, you’ll keep your mouth shut until I’m gone. Or I’ll call in every fucking favor I’m owed inside the FBI to get an entire army of agents in this town, telling them about how the corrupt little fuckwad county deputies are trying to take down a federal agent. Now, do you want to back down, or should I start making all those phone calls.”
He stops struggling, and I feel him go rigid.