CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The morning sun barely filtered through the blinds of the FBI headquarters’ briefing room, casting elongated shadows across the whiteboards littered with crime scene photos. Morgan stood motionless, her gaze locked on the images that painted a grisly narrative. Beside her, Derik hunched over a cluttered desk, sifting through a pile of suspect profiles.

"Loss," Morgan muttered, more to herself than to Derik. "It's about loss."

Derik looked up, his green eyes reflecting the gravity of their situation. "A child," he agreed, connecting the dots. "And they're targeting the justice system."

Mariana Torres's photo held the center spot on the board, her dark eyes conveying a story cut short. The document beside it showed she’d bailed out her brother Reggie after his DUI. The killer had to have seen this, known it.

"Okay, we need to figure out who had access," Morgan stated firmly, her voice cutting through the stillness of the room. She turned to face the team of agents assembled before her, their faces expectant and alert. "Secretaries, custodians, anyone in the courthouse could be our guy," she instructed, pacing slowly before them. "I want every angle covered. If they've touched a file, spoken to a clerk, or just breathed too close to a document, I want to know."

"Remember, they knew about Reggie," Derik added, standing beside Morgan now. His tone was kind, yet carried an undercurrent of urgency. "That info isn't public. Our suspect got it from inside."

Nods rippled through the agents as fingers flew over keyboards, phones were dialed, and leads were chased. The hum of activity filled the room, but Morgan's mind raced ahead, analyzing, predicting, planning steps in a dance with a killer always one beat ahead.

"Time is not our ally," she said, quieter now, her words meant for Derik alone. He met her gaze, understanding passing between them without need for further words.

"Let’s keep pushing," Derik replied, his voice steady despite the fatigue that lined his face—a testament to countless sleepless nights and personal demons fought in silence.

They returned to the task at hand, each clue a potential key, every lead a path to follow. And behind them, the whiteboards watched, silent witnesses to a story unfolding—one of vengeance, justice, and the thin line that separated hunter from hunted.

Morgan’s eyes darted across the room, a predator scanning the terrain for signs of movement. The buzz of agents collaborating formed a backdrop to her laser-focused thoughts. She could feel the weight of the whiteboards behind her, plastered with crime scene photos that seemed to taunt her with their silent screams for justice.

"Agent Cross," came a voice, slicing through the hum of activity. Morgan turned to see Agent Sanders approaching, a file clasped in her hands like a lifeline. Young, eager, with determination etched into her features, Sanders stopped at Morgan’s desk, her posture stiff with the formality of delivering potentially vital information.

"Got something?" Morgan’s question was sharp, cutting to the chase as always.

Sanders nodded, placing the file before Morgan. "Theodore Nash," she said. "Custodian at the courthouse. Forty-five, divorced, and—this might be important—he recently lost a custody battle for his eight-year-old child."

Morgan’s fingers flipped open the file, her gaze quickly absorbing the details of Theodore Nash’s life splashed across the pages. Divorced. Custodian. A recent tear in the fabric of his family life. It wasn't the thread of a child’s death they had been following, but the loss was palpable, and loss could breed the kind of fury they were hunting.

"Interesting," Morgan murmured, her brain already churning over the implications. She lifted her head to lock eyes with Sanders. "How recent?"

"Last month," Sanders replied, her voice steady despite the charged atmosphere.

Morgan leaned back in her chair, the creak of leather barely audible over the din. A loss of custody was a different kind of bereavement, but it could carve out just as deep a hunger for retribution. Her mind raced with the possibilities, weaving this new thread into the pattern of psychopathy they were up against.

"Pull what you can on him," Morgan instructed, her voice low and intense. "I want to know every inch of Nash's life. Friends, habits, routines. If he’s our guy, there’ll be something that ties him to these scenes."

Morgan hovered behind Sanders, her presence a silent weight as the young agent's fingers flew across the keyboard. The hum of the office faded into a distant murmur while they waited for the screen to reveal the secrets of Theodore Nash. A gaunt face flashed onto the monitor—his courthouse ID photo. Those hollow blue eyes stared back at them, etched with an intensity that was hard to read. Could this be the face of a killer? Morgan pondered, her instincts prickling.

"Clean record," Sanders said, breaking the silence. "Fifteen years at the courthouse. No disciplinary actions."

"Good employee, then," Morgan observed, her voice even, betraying none of her skepticism. She studied Nash's image, tried to glimpse any hint of malice in his features. Surprisingly handsome, she noted, despite the lean cheeks and the shadows beneath his eyes. But looks could be deceiving; she knew that better than anyone.

"Pull up the custody documents," Morgan instructed, still locked on Nash's photo as if it might suddenly confess.

"Got them," Sanders replied, a new window popping up on the screen. She began reading aloud, "Nash was proven to be an adulterer during the divorce proceedings. That's why he lost custody."

"Keep going," Morgan urged, her gaze now fixed on the text scrolling before her.

"Shows signs of misogyny... behaved poorly in court..." Sanders' voice faltered slightly. "Claimed bias from the female judge towards his ex-wife."

"Anything else?" The question came out sharp, a blade slicing through the air.

Sanders shook her head. "That's the gist of it."

Morgan's fingers drummed a staccato rhythm on the tabletop, her eyes darting across the sea of faces in the crowded briefing room. The stark fluorescent lights cast harsh shadows over the whiteboards, each one a grim mosaic of crime scene photos and notes. The air was thick with the tension of unanswered questions and the bitter tang of too much coffee.

"His job was on the line," she began, voice steely as she addressed the team, "but Nash managed to keep his position at the courthouse." A click of a button, and Theodore Nash's life post-divorce splashed onto the screen: a timeline of loss and bitterness. "He's still here in Dallas while his ex-wife and daughter moved away. All this happened recently—enough turmoil to trigger someone into a killing spree."

Derik leaned in, his brow furrowed. "We're talking about a man who’s had his life upended. Could be looking to even some perceived score."

The room hummed with murmurs of agreement, agents hunched over laptops, their fingers flying over keys. Morgan's gaze swept the assembly, searching for that spark of intuition, that leap of logic that could tie a suspect to the heinous acts they were investigating.

"Okay, listen up!" Morgan's command cut through the low chatter. "Nash has access to areas others don't—he has the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. It's possible he got his hands on those private documents about Mariana Torres."

"Could be our guy," someone chimed in from the back.

"Maybe," Morgan conceded, her instincts prickling with uncertainty. Nash fit the profile in many ways—a man scarred by loss and betrayal—but something didn't sit right with her. She knew better than to trust an easy answer. "Agent Sanders, what else do we have on him?" Morgan's question was a lifeline thrown into the digital sea of data.

Sanders swiveled her chair around, her youthful face alight with the glow of the computer screen. "Well, there's this." She clicked on a link, and social media pages filled the display. "Theodore Nash is quite the boating enthusiast." Pictures of Nash, wind-swept and grinning broadly aboard a sleek vessel, scrolled past.

Morgan's gaze lingered on the last photo of Gina Bellwood, displayed starkly amidst the clutter of crime scene images on the corkboard in the room. It was a haunting reminder — the rope, marine-grade and coarse, looped into a noose that had sealed the young prosecutor’s fate. They had chased down the sales of such rope to a dead end; every lead evaporated like morning mist under the relentless sun of inquiry. The killer hadn’t just acquired it; he owned it, knew its knots and binds as intimately as a sailor knows the sea.

"Derik," Morgan said, her voice slicing through the hum of activity in the HQ, "the marine rope. The list was a bust. He already had it."

Derik looked up from his notes, green eyes sharp with the realization. "You think Nash?"

"Boat owner, access to the courthouse...and now this?" She tapped on Gina's photo. "It fits, doesn't it?"

A moment passed between them, heavy with the weight of unspoken thoughts. Then, as if an invisible signal had passed, they both stood. Decision made.