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nude female figures bound and gagged as they were degraded and tortured. Mutilated. Distraught, Caitlyn had removed the evidence. After an hour driving aimlessly around the city, she had met Reid at FBI headquarters and turned over the notebook.
    It was the right thing to do, Reid had assured her. He’d taken her into a private conference room and allowed her to cry against his shoulder. They had barely known one another and yet the bond between them seemed instant. Later that evening, under Reid’s guidance, Caitlyn made a televised appeal to Joshua when another woman went missing, urging him to turn himself in.
    In the end, however, Joshua claimed one last victim before the FBI could stop him.
    Caitlyn had always known about Joshua’s sickness—the schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder he had been diagnosed with, the antipsychotic medications he took—but never had she imagined him a killer. At twenty-eight, still dabbling in graduate school but in and out of psychiatric treatment centers, Joshua would seem normal for weeks at a stretch, then suddenly turn secretive and morose. Often during those times, Caitlyn, his older sibling by three years, was the only person he would talk to.
    Joshua’s psychiatry records were confidential and her parents rarely spoke of his condition, instead shieldinghim from the public eye as much as possible. When the FBI had first taken interest in Joshua due to his connection to the murdered women, Senator Cahill had done everything he could—calling in favors all over the District to get the investigation directed elsewhere. And Caitlyn had been instructed to speak to no one.
    What her father had done was wrong, she conceded. But it was out of love and a staunch denial that Joshua could be capable of something so heinous. Even though they weren’t his biological children, Braden had been devoted to his adopted son and daughter. Defending them to a fault. In the end, Caitlyn had managed what he could not—she’d turned Joshua in to the FBI. But she had been too late to halt the death of another woman and equally powerless to stop her family’s very public unraveling.
    Her father had died, disgraced by Joshua’s crimes and hating her for what she had done.
    Stop this, she thought, sitting with her feet tucked under her on the camelback sofa. Stop dwelling on the past and things out of your control. Caitlyn continued to stare at the television screen, the sound turned too low to hear. She tried to take the worrisome feelings off her chest—and her mind off Reid Novak—but without much success.
    Reid had been professional, aloof at Joshua’s trial—a change from the man who had come to her and appealed for her help in capturing a killer. From the man who had comforted her. Then he had simply disappeared,all connection broken between them. What had she expected?
    And now there was the possibility of a copycat killer on the loose. Outside, Caitlyn heard a dog barking somewhere in the distance. The room’s picture window was a large black square, the rural darkness outside opaque and all consuming. Maybe she should have taken Sophie and Rob up on their offer. Finishing the wine, she sat the balloon goblet on the end table and stood, letting the soft cashmere throw she had wrapped around her shoulders slip to the couch. Caitlyn closed the curtains, then went to the front door to double-check the lock and make sure the security system was activated. But as she stood in the foyer, her eyes fell on the small, white rectangle that lay on the hardwood floor. Had she walked over it earlier without noticing? She bent and picked up the business card.
    Harold Feingold, True-Crime Author .
    The card included his contact information. A handwritten note on its back said simply, we need to talk . She felt a spiraling sense of anxiety. He had been here today at some point, still trying to get an interview for his tell-all book despite her adamant refusal. Apparently, he’d shoved his