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killed.  He has to be traumatized.  Livvie must be frantic.  I’ll never forgive myself for involving him in this.”
    “You didn’t involve him,” Cam reminded her.  “The UNSUB did.  You’re no more to blame than his dad is for buying him a BB gun that made him think he was invincible.”
    “I never should have agreed to the idea.”  Sophie wasn’t finished berating herself.  “I never considered…”
    “It was a good plan.”  Cam leaned his head back, pushing aside the urge to close his eyes.  Just for a minute.  “Almost worked, too.  None of us could have envisioned a seven-year-old being awake and seeing the guy enter your house.  We’re not going to spend time crying over how things went down.”  Although admittedly, he and Franks had spent more than a few minutes bemoaning their bad luck.  “That’s the way it goes, more frequently than you might think.”
    She was looking at him with an arrested expression on her face.  “You said my spare bedroom sustained damage?”
    Cam chose his words carefully.  “The offender used a gun.  We…ah…planned for every contingency.  I’ll have someone in there to take care of the clean up.”  The room would have to be stripped, painted, and recarpeted.  Somehow he’d have to arrange to get that done before she saw her place again. There were already enough memories there to haunt her.  She didn’t need more.
    “Well.”  Sophie took a deep breath, as if fortifying herself.  “I take back every complaint I’ve made about the tedium of protective…”  Her voice broke off, an arrested expression on her face.  “The UNSUB believes he succeeded.  He thinks I’m dead.”   She didn’t wait for his slow nod before going on.  “This is perfect.  This changes everything.  All we have to do now is continue to let him think that.”

Chapter 3
     
    “You want to fake your own death.”
    There was no inflection in Cam’s voice.  Shooting him a glance Sophia couldn’t tell what he was thinking.  “Vance’s accomplice set it up.  I’m just suggesting letting it spin out.  If he and Vance think I’m dead, I’m free.  No more protective custody.  I’d need to change my appearance, of course, but then I could move around openly, which means I can continue working this case at your side, instead of through reports.”  
    It didn’t bear mentioning how many of the cases she consulted on with law enforcement across the country consisted solely of long-distance involvement.   She needed to get out, to immerse herself personally in the case.  She had to have something, anything, to focus on besides the memories of the hours Vance held her captive.
    She needed to escape the screams of his other victim that reverberated in her mind like a horror-filled echo chamber.
    “This is a valuable weapon.  If Vance believes I’m out of the picture, he might relax his guard.  Courtney Van Wheton is still in a coma.”  A tight band of grief tightened in her chest at the memory of the woman Vance had kidnapped days before he’d lain in wait for Sophia.  “He’ll have every reason to think he’s going to beat the charges.  We already know he’s impulsive and ego driven.  A talented interviewer might get him to open up a little.”
    “Since he’s lawyered up, the chances of an interviewer getting at him are slim.  The first thing his attorney is going to do is press to drop the charges.”  Cam’s eyes were hooded.  “With your ‘death’, the two main witnesses are out of the way and the case gets weaker.”
    “But you have trace evidence proving Vance was in my house.”  Sophia leaned against the corner of his desk facing him, falling into the rhythm of debate seamlessly.  “The most recent evidence collected by the crime team still hasn’t been processed by the lab, right?  If they find proof tying Vance to the barn Courtney and I escaped from, the case still goes to trial.  And if Rhonda Klaussen can be