He wanted to hear Sam’s voice.
She’s fine. She’s protected.
Knowing she wouldn’t be there even if he took the file back to the hospital right away, he paused, unable to get Flynt off his mind. The man had known so much, especially if his note was to be believed. But how? How could he have realized Sam was in danger, that someone was using e-mails to “hurt” people? Was it possible the Professor had an accomplice, somebody who was now imprisoned and might have talked? He questioned whether the unsub would trust anyone, but how else could Jimmy know?
Though he thought about it, no answers came to him. He didn’t get that buzz he usually experienced when he was on the right track. And he didn’t have any time to waste.
“All right, enough,” he told himself. Alec shook his head and put his attention back on the task at hand. Glancing at his pad of paper, he realized just how deep in thought he had been. He’d been doodling all over the page and hadn’t even realized it. He’d written Sam’s name, Jimmy’s, the Professor’s, Darwin’s.
Darwin. He’d scratched the letters boldly, in all caps. For some reason, Alec couldn’t stop staring at it.
And just like that, the buzz started. Thoughts clicked in his head, as they often did when he sensed he was on the edge of something important.
He’d called their unsub the Professor for so long, it had been hard adjusting to the name he’d chosen for himself. The killer had never referred to himself that way until Wednesday night, when he’d posted those responses to Sam’s blog. Right there, in black and white, spelling out his motives, his philosophies.
Darwin.
Only… in one of those three posts, he had spelled it differently, hadn’t he?
Darwen. He wrote it down.
A typo? But the Professor didn’t make mistakes. At least, not often. The page from the book was the first, and it was pure luck the man hadn’t realized how that red ink would stand out. So why would he misspell what he considered his own name?
Alec stared at the letters, tracing them again with his pen, digging even harder until the paper tore beneath the pressure.
“Son of a bitch!” he snapped, suddenly seeing a possibility.
His hand moved, almost of its own volition, rearranging the unsub’s chosen name-not the correctly spelled version of it, the other one. And those six letters transformed into another word entirely.
The answer had been right in front of their eyes all along. “Darwen. You bastard.”
Frantic, he leaped to his feet, grabbing the files, knowing he’d need proof but desperate to get on the road. Because Sam was headed to the prison.
Shoving everything into his briefcase, he cursed as one of the slick, glossy brochures for the legal symposium slid out. He grabbed it, spared it a glance. Then glanced again.
Right on the front of it was a paragraph describing the backgrounds of some of the speakers, though not naming them. One stood out. And when he flipped the brochure open to read the name that went with the title, he knew he had just identified the killer for certain.
The Professor had been toying with them.
No, not the Professor; Darwin. Or rather, Darwen.
Warden.
“My God, what have you done?”
Sam stared in horror at Warden Connolly. He stood in the doorway to his office, a gun in his hand, calm and cool, despite having just cold-bloodedly shot a police officer.
A police officer she truly liked. Sam started to bend down, to check Myers’s pulse, to stanch the blood flowing freely from his chest.
Connolly tsked and shook his head, reading her intent.
“Why?” she asked, unable to form another word.
He made a motion with the gun. “Turn to your right. About five inches.”
She did, until she was nose to nose with the book-laden shelf she had grabbed onto for support a few moments ago. Nose to nose with a copy of her own book. Reaching for it, she was not surprised to see the title page had been torn out.
No, not at all surprised. Sam had realized a few minutes ago that she had been lured here by the very man she had been trying to evade, the killer known as the Professor. She’d just been wrong in thinking he was Dale Carter.
“You were at the law enforcement symposium last winter,” she murmured.
He smiled, delighted. “Ah, you remember! How wonderful.”
She didn’t respond, didn’t let on that he had made a mistake when using that red-inked page. “Is Mr. Carter all right or did you shoot him, too?”
“He’s fine. I sent him away right after he’d played his part with his phone call. I told him you’d called and said you couldn’t come today after all.”
So she could look for no help there.
“Where is your FBI friend? I expected to see him with you and had arranged this whole scenario just to catch his blood on that drop cloth.” Connolly waved his gun toward Myers’s limp form. “I was disappointed to see this fellow instead.”
Sam kept her mouth shut, knowing she had to tread carefully. Saying the wrong thing could set him off.
She did want one question answered. “Is Jimmy really dead?”
“Oh, yes. I’m afraid Jimmy was a bad boy. Writing that note about how someone was using e-mail scams to hurt people. That was supposed to be our little secret.”
Understanding washed through her. “He helped you.”
“Just a bit. And in exchange, I made sure he got the medication he needed.”
Sam’s heart twisted in pity for Jimmy Flynt. A thief he might have been, but his last days couldn’t have been pleasant with this psychopath holding the strings to his failing liver.
“I went to see him last night, to ask him about his interview with the FBI, and saw what he’d been writing. Poor Jimmy ingested a deadly dose of medication shortly thereafter.”
God. This man talked about murder as he would talk about flicking off an ant.
“Too bad, really. Jimmy had a good mind, despite his coarse methods. He took care of another inmate who was giving me trouble, all because I whispered in his ear that the man had done something to hurt you, Samantha.”
She understood immediately. “So the man he attacked had nothing to do with what happened to my grandmother?”
“Of course not. As I said, Jimmy was very helpful.”
“I would think criminals like him would be part of the gene pool you’d want to clean up.”
His eyes widened and his mouth opened in delight. “Oh, my dear, you’ve gotten it, haven’t you? I knew you would understand.”
She wished she had kept quiet. She did not want to be considered his ally.
“Yes, the filthy inmates inside this prison are indeed the ticks on society’s scalp. But they’re sucking from a worthless bloodstream. Their victims are worse-stupid sheep, not merely uneducated, but unwilling to educate themselves. Like the fools who respond to my messages, despite all the warnings not to. The flock must be culled for the good of the future.”
Sam wrapped her arms around herself, wondering how he could sound so normal when spouting such hateful rhetoric. “Tricia is not stupid, and she didn’t deserve what you did to her.”
“She was greedy, thought I was a rich investor looking to buy some expensive property. Plus she was convenient, especially since your mother broke our date,” he said with a smile.
A shiver rolled through her at the confirmation of something she’d already, deep down, known. Her mother had been this monster’s first target last night. Wanting to wipe that smile off, she said, “By the way, your ugly plan didn’t work. Tricia’s fine.”
The lips remained curved up, though his gray eyes hardened. “I don’t believe you.”
“Call St. Joe’s. She’s a little out of it, but otherwise okay. Not even assaulted the way you obviously wanted her to be.”