Page 23 of Catching Fire

So she took her time cleaning up and closing the lab down, just as she made her grad students do. Her lab was and always would be immaculate, even if she was going to lose her damn job. When she was done, she dropped her lab coat in the laundry with another near-tears sigh and angrily shoved her notebooks down into her bag.

Though she tried to smile at her colleagues and passing students in the hallway, she wasn’t quite sure she achieved it.If her office had another damn note… she couldn’t handle anything from Sanders right now.

It had taken five days for the FBI to locate the next body, even though they knew to check the local rivers’ edges and tributaries. And the medical examiner had placed the time of death right around the time Seline had received her note. But the woman had never been listed as missing.

The thought still made Seline shudder. When she hadn’t shown up at work for three days straight, the restaurant manager had just marked her as “fired.” No one had checked on her. The newspapers reported that her friends said they thought she was “being moody” when she didn’t return messages.

Though Seline still struggled to process that, it was harder that the body had the initials S A M carved into the torso. It was disturbing that the Blue River killer now had a new modus operandi, matching the bodies to the notes. By the time she received the second note, she’d understood that the slashes that made up the letters were actually cuts into human flesh somewhere.

But it was far scarier that the thing he’d carved into the last body had beenher own initials.

It was equally concerning that the note had arrived in her mailbox with no envelope or stamp—so someone had put it there. No one had spotted anyone near her mailbox, except the mailman and a boy scout. The scout had only left her the Snickers bar she'd paid for in their fund drive a week earlier.

At dinner the night before, Maggie had pointed out that it was illegal in the US to leave things in any mailbox. Sebastian had replied that, in Redemption, no one was going to prosecute the Boy Scouts for leaving candy. But Seline had almost jumped up and yelled.

“I care! I care when achildis putting things into a box that also contains notes from a serial killer.”

That had stopped the conversation dead.

Way to lose your only friends, she’d thought to herself as they all stared at each other over fish and vegetables. It was Kalan who’d reached out and taken her hand in his own and she thought about that now as she headed toward her office. It had been a week and a half that they'd been playing best friends with Marina Balero.

The three couples had gone out to dinner twice and had their meal once at Maggie's home … with the dining room curtains wide open.

Officer Juan Gomez played “Wendy’s” boyfriend. The cover story was that he and “Wendy” had been online dating for a while, and she was taking the rental to be near him and see how their relationship progressed.

While Selene agreed that if William Treat Sanders wanted to torture Maggie and Seline, taking their new best friend—the blond-haired, icy-blue-eyed one—was a surefire way to do it. But so far, Marina hadn't even been followed.

Her phone rang then and she pulled it from her purse. “Hello?”

“Watching…” the voice said just the one word. It was scratchy but Seline wasn’t fully awake and wasn’t sure she understood.

“Yes?”

“Watching.” Then the line went dead.

With a deep breath, Selene realized that she was not paying attention to her surroundings. Though she felt relatively safe walking around the university, the weird call was a reminder that the BRK had already breached the safety here once.

She needed to slow down; she’d already run into one senior Professor barreling around this turn. She was thinking about the fact that she needed to call the agents again and let them know about the weird call.

Seline knew she should be scared, but she was angry. BRK hadn’t ever called her. And she didn’t want give any of her energy to the idea that it was him. So she told herself it was probably a student and she had too much to do to play games. If it was BRK, then screw him. She wasn’t going to be afraid. She barreled down the hallway and noticed that the door to Dr. Gilman’s office was open. As she passed, the man inside looked up and Seline came to a dead stop.

That was not the same man.

This man was taller than the other, broader shouldered. His clothes were all wrong. This man wore an Argyle vest over a button-down shirt, and corduroy slacks. He probably had a jacket with patches on the elbows, he could not have looked more like the quintessential American Professor than he already did.

“You’re not Dr. Gilman.” She was confronting him before she realized what she was doing.

His eyebrows went up, but he didn’t move from his seat at the desk where he sipped from the same mug the other man had held. “I assure you, I am Dr. Gilman.”

His calm nature made Seline’s blood boil. She'd had enough of this shit. She was opening her mouth when he asked, “Are you a student? Did you see my TA in here? And you thought it was me?”

Her head snapped back as though she'd been slapped.He had no clue. “I'm a professor, Dr. Seline Marchand. My lab is down the hall.”

“Oh, yes,” he said almost nobly. “You missed the meeting.”

Jesu!She’d known that would haunt her.

He at least turned a little more professional after his jab. He waved a hand around the small office. “I've been here this semester, but was on sabbatical for the last two years.”

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