For David,
a deep, rich navy blue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Prologue
Isaac Keaton shifted the scope of his M16 from the five-year-old tripping on his own shoelaces to a forty-year-old guy ten paces to the side of the boy outside the Futureland Chow Station. Kid might grow up to be stupid and pathetic like the man Isaac was about to gun down, but hell, he might’ve spared the next great. Kid might grow up to be just like Isaac, hoping and praying someone would take out his parents with two quick shots. Isaac laughed.
Idiots, all of them. Treat kids like they need to be protected from these kinds of valuable experiences. Teach ’em tolerance, make sure they know it’s okay to cry. Media screamed for a national campaign to stop school bullying after those two kids lit up that high school in Colorado. Parents freaked out about what kind of music their teens listened to, whether or not a trench coat hung in someone’s closet. Morons didn’t realize that if those two kids hadn’t shot up the school and then themselves, they’d have had a lot worse on their hands a couple decades later.
They’d have had someone like him.
The guy in Isaac’s crosshairs licked at his ice cream cone, which dripped over his grubby fingers. Maybe coincidence. Could be fate. Either way, this dude happened to be sitting right in Isaac’s line of vision under the cable that carried the little fairy from the top castle turret over the park of wide-eyed, middle-class imbeciles every night. He glanced at his stopwatch. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten.
Time to fly.
He squeezed off round one, and a hundred faces pinched and looked in his direction. He watched the ice cream guy slam away from him into the bench he was sitting on.
No time to think. Anyone obviously over thirty equals goner. The grayer the head, the easier the mark. He took down three more: a tall, slim black woman in faded jeans, dude with a lip ring, fat Indian chick. The crowd ran in different directions, some into each other, others ducking. Then they all scattered, screamed. Isaac’s head was quiet. His scope slipped over two kids, up to the dad holding one’s hand, urging the kid to run. Bang.
The dad dropped. Isaac coursed over the crowd. Old Asian man, brunette with a fanny pack. A ginger-haired theme park worker yelling into his walkie-talkie. One by fucking one.
When he had fewer fresh targets than people he’d already hit, he finally heard them coming. He laid the M16 on the ground, turned around to face them, hands in the air. They wouldn’t understand, of course. Give them time.
“Freeze!” the lead cop yelled, gun trained on Isaac’s chest. Guy had probably never shot a man in his life.
Isaac ducked his head. “Don’t shoot!”
His hands were twisted behind his back, his face pressed into the floor. He had the right to remain silent . . .
But he didn’t want to remain silent. These half-wits had no idea.
The fun was just beginning.
“Dad! Have you seen my keys?”
Jenna Ramey turned over couch cushions, squatted to look under the baby’s playpen. “Dad!”
Her father appeared in the hallway, holding Ayana on his hip. Jenna’s towheaded daughter held her pacifier in one hand and Jenna’s ring of keys in the other. In her thirty years of life before her daughter, Jenna had never once lost her keys. Now they found their way out of her purse daily.
“Whoever thought to make giant key rings into toys, I’d like to see,” Vern said.
Jenna smiled and pecked her father’s cheek. “Ayana, can Mommy have those?”
Her little girl plugged her paci in her mouth but stretched the keys toward Jenna.
“Thank you, miss,” Jenna said, and she kissed Ayana’s forehead. Then, to her father, “I’ll be back in a few hours, I hope. Don’t know the damage yet.”
“Must be bad if they’re calling in a bigwig like you.”
Jenna pressed her middle finger against her thumb and flicked her dad in the arm. “I was an FBI profiler, Dad. I can detect sarcasm.”
“Go get ’em, El Tigre.”
• • •
The sun shined in Jenna’s eyes the whole drive to the Orlando Police Department. Her duct tape job held the visor on but didn’t allow her to fold the thing down. So helpful.
While en route, she’d talked to Supervisory Special Agent Hank Ellis, the man she’d reported to and worked with every day back when she was with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.
“Let me get this straight, Hank. You guys caught a serial killer operating in mid-Florida this morning, and now you’re inviting me in? No offense, but what for?”
“Oh, boy,” Hank replied, his frustration seeping through. “Thought they’d told you more when they called you from the OPD. Shit.”
“Hank, I’d love to rant with you about the incompetent lackey who called me, but I’d rather know what I’m walking into.”
“Right. You’re right. I apologize. Yes, we caught a serial, but not one only operating in Florida. They’ve been up and down the East Coast. You already know about them.”
“Them?” Jenna couldn’t hold in her surprise. “You can’t mean what I think you mean.”
She pulled into the OPD parking lot.
“Yep,” Hank said. “The Gemini. But we only caught one of the pair, and he says he’ll only talk to you.”
Officer Mel Nelson met Jenna at the door and led her through the halls toward the interrogation room. “So cool to meet you in person, Dr. Ramey. Heard all about you, of course.”
If only her reputation wouldn’t precede her quite so fast. “Thanks. Catch me up, will you? I know next to nothing.”
Hank had told her enough, but getting it from different sides helped. Someone might throw in a crucial detail.
Nelson straightened, seemed to shake off the starstruck. His short steps quickened, stocky frame moving faster to impress. “Right. Suspect apprehended at the top of the castle. Had already put down his weapon, hands up. The gun was an M16, standard. Twenty dead, seven more wounded. Suspect is Isaac Keaton of Norton, Virginia. Still trying to run backgrounds, but not much on the guy. Asked for you almost right off, didn’t say why. They said you were coming with the BAU. I thought you weren’t with the BAU anymore. Thought you were in a private practice now.”
Typical. Someone reads about you in a textbook, they think you’re as good as best friends, or at least next-door neighbors.
“I’m not,” Jenna said. “And I am.”
They’d come to a closed door, which Nelson put his hand to. “You gonna do that color thing on him?”
Grapheme-color synesthesia—Jenna’s ticket to the spotlight for better or for worse. Since she could remember, she’d associated everything—letters, days, numbers, people—with colors.
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said and nodded toward the door.
Nelson twisted the handle. Inside, the man standing in front of the one-way window turned to them.
“Detective Arnold Richards, this is Dr. Jenna Ramey,” Nelson said.
The hulking bald figure stretched out his palm. “Dr. Ramey. Good of you to come. BAU team is in the air. They’ll be here within the hour, but we thought it best to bring you in right away. I’m the head of the task force for the park shootings.”
Chin lifted, smile that didn’t extend to his cheeks. That extra note of authority in his voice telling her she was only there because it was his idea.
The man gave Jenna a curt nod, and Jenna nodded back.
Richards turned to Officer Nelson. “Thank you, Moose.”
Nelson backed out and closed the door. Richards’s eyes followed him, then cut to Jenna. “He’s Canadian.”
He focused on the two-way mirror, and Jenna did the same. Aside from his hunched shoulders and the bags under his eyes, the man sitting in interrogation on the other side of the glass might’ve walked straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. His fawn hair was cut in a trendy style that was shaggy but still neat, maybe even highlighted. Clean-shaven, strong jaw. Fit.
“Do you mind if I ask what color you see him as?” Richards asked.
“No, I don’t mind,” Jenna replied, “but I can’t answer that. I haven’t met him yet.”
“Your interviews said it didn’t have anything to do with what you felt about a person.”
Isaac Keaton rocked back and forth in his metal chair, his palms flat against his dark trousers. Interesting. Jenna closed her eyes, then reopened them to look again, specifically attempting to gauge color. Nothing.
“It doesn’t. Anything on the other shooter?”
Detective Richards’s hands went to his pockets, jingled his keys. “Ballistics not back yet, but looks like a Magnum .308. Six dead.”
Jenna blinked a few times as she tried to compute. “Wait a second. Officer Nelson said twenty dead, seven wounded. That by him”—she nodded toward Keaton—“or is that total?”
“Total,” Richards replied. “Fourteen dead and three wounded near the castle, six more on the other side of the park, DOA. Four wounded there. Near the ferry.”
Jenna filed away the information about the second shooter and returned her attention to Keaton. “And what of the interaction with the suspect?”
Richards’s brows creased. “Arresting officer said he’d already ceased fire, dropped his gun. He went easy.”
“Too easy,” Jenna mumbled. This guy either really didn’t want to die, or he really wanted to be caught. Or both. “And they recovered Keaton’s weapon?”
“Mm-hm. M16, standard issue. Stolen, probably. We’re on it. Recovered one slug at the ferry site, hopefully others from the victims. For twins, their gun choices pack a different punch.”
Thirty rounds, and Keaton squeezed off a good many of them. Still, it’d take some time for police to hear the shooting, react, and find where it was coming from. In theory, firing an automatic rifle—even in single fire mode—he should’ve managed to fire many more.
Jenna was speaking before she realized the words were coming out. “The newspapers might’ve nicknamed them the Gemini, but don’t be fooled. Chances are they’ll be two entirely different beasts.”
“Meaning?” Richards asked.
Jenna stared one last time at Isaac Keaton from behind the glass, where she could view him as a completely objective party. Then she stepped toward the door to the interrogation room. She might not still be with the branch of the FBI that was called in to analyze the behavioral patterns of mass murderers, kidnappers, and serial rapists, but once you’d studied these monsters, you didn’t forget how they worked. To get into their heads and discover their motivations took some part of your humanity, not because you became them, but because you had to understand why they would possibly do what they did. “In serial pairs, one will always be dominant. The other is the follower, submissive. In other words, one is the soldier, the other the general. Before we do anything else, we have to figure out which one we have.”
Jenna entered the inner room. Isaac Keaton’s head was down, eyes hooded. Fearful? Defensiveness intentional? Only one way to know.
“Isaac. I’m Dr. Jenna Ramey. I understand you wanted to speak with me?”
He glanced over her, a slow perusal from head to toe, reading. This guy had just shot more than a dozen people at a theme park for children, and here she was introducing herself as though they were business associates. The job was never boring.
“So you’re the famous Jenna Ramey,” he said, his voice weary.
Colors flashed in. She pulled up a rolling chair across the table from Keaton. “Why did you want to speak with me specifically, Isaac?”
He leaned forward, squinted. Worry lines creased his forehead. “You were the only person I could think of who’d understand. You know. How someone can be a whole person, even if they do a very bad thing.”
Jenna pursed her lips. She knew exactly what he was referring to, but she wasn’t ready to give him that much yet. Granted, many people knew about her mother, but the fact that he referred to her so specifically spoke volumes. The years had taught her not to assume. “That I do. Are you saying you’ve done a very bad thing?”
He nodded emphatically, rocked again. “Uh-huh. I did. I killed those people.”
Different colors struck her, but Jenna didn’t try to reel them in. Her deeper brain would settle on one when it was ready.
She tossed the facts, quick and furious. He’d picked a vantage point that boxed him in, no escape, but then hadn’t tried to shoot his way out. Hadn’t committed suicide, either. Yet now he appeared tortured, remorseful. Wanted to be caught, not killed. Definitely wanted to get caught.
To end it or to play?
“Why did you put down your gun?” she asked evenly.
“I didn’t . . . I expected it to stop the pain. Then they were dead. Blood everywhere, people hurt. My fault. I knew I should talk to you.”
Interesting, but I didn’t ask why you shot them. The vacillating colors coalesced, and a shade flashed in her mind. It lasted only seconds, but it was enough for Jenna to file it away, to use the ever-growing database of her color associations to define what the color said about Isaac.
“Would you like a drink of water, Isaac? I think you should have one. Keep your strength up. It’s been a long, hard day,” Jenna said, standing.
She stepped out of the box, where Detective Richards waited.
“Keep your strength up?” Richards repeated.
Jenna stared at Keaton, who was still rocking himself. He knew he was being watched.
She turned back to Richards to answer his earlier question.
“I see him as red.”
“Huh?”
This part was never easy to explain. “Red. He could be either of the team, the mastermind or the submissive. He either picked a spot where he was sure to get caught, or someone chose it for him. He wasn’t afraid of being caught. Backed into a corner, but didn’t take everyone down with him. Could mean he wanted to stop, but not necessarily. He also knew to ask for me. Again, could’ve been told to by his superior. But when I asked about the gun, his speech pattern was strange. I asked him a question, and he answered something totally different. He’s pushing his own agenda. He comes in as red.”
Most people associated red with anger. To Jenna, it was less definitive. Her color associations proved more random and yet not random all at the same time. She never knew them until she felt them, saw them. The color would flash in, but after the flash, even when the color wasn’t readily present, if Jenna closed her eyes and thought about a person or an event, she could draw up the color she tended to associate with them or it. A color association for Jenna was just like any other detail she would note about a person that might affect her perception of them, no different than the way she might read into someone’s body language or note a person’s tone of voice. The initial flash was fast, but it left its brand on something forever. In the bizarre color dictionary in her brain, red could mean wrath or love or a host of other things. Red often showed up for people she saw as strong, type A. Isaac Keaton headed the Gemini. He was the general.
“In this case, red tells me he’s a power player. He’s the dominant of the two, and for some reason, he wanted to get caught.”
“I thought you said the color thing had nothing to do with emotions,” Richards said.
“It doesn’t.”
Richards put his hands up. “Whatever. Where do we go from here?”
Jenna walked to the water cooler, filled two cones from the dispenser. “That’s what I’m trying to decide. If he wants us to believe his act and we call him out, he might button up. If that’s the case, better we play along.”
“Seems like knowing the truth without him realizing is an upper hand,” Richards ventured.
“The problem is, we might get more out of him if he respects a worthy opponent,” Jenna said. She took a sip of water. If she hadn’t met enough of these monsters, pretending to be clueless would seem the obvious way to go.
Red flashed in again. As it was, obvious wasn’t accurate here. “He’s testing us.”
Jenna reentered the box and handed Isaac Keaton, who was wiping his palms on his pants, the little cone of water.
She watched as Isaac lifted the cup, sipped. His hand didn’t shake. The cone tilted smoothly, the water slid down easy.
Done.
Things were about to get either good or bad. “Good show, Isaac.”
His chin tilted upward, and his hazel eyes met her own. In an instant those eyes transitioned from wild and scared to focused, calculating. Intense.
The side of his mouth turned up first, then he chuckled. “Whaddaya know? You’re not a complete fraud.”
Jenna’s stomach knotted. Just because she’d suspected this outcome didn’t make her less uneasy about it.
“I’d hate to think all that training was for nothing,” she countered.
Isaac laughed again, hard and loud. “Oh, come on, Dr. Ramey! We both know your gift didn’t come from one of those ‘I have a high school diploma and can carry a gun’ training courses!”
Gift. Kind of like the “gift” of foresight. “Tell me about your partner.”
Isaac’s thin brows lifted. “Partner is an interesting word choice. Implies equality.”
“And he’s not your equal,” Jenna supplied. It wasn’t a question. “Most people aren’t, are they?”
Isaac threw his head back. “Oh, Dr. Ramey! You’re shrinking me, aren’t you? That’s cute. Can I try? You like saving people. You saved your dad and brother, but you can’t come to terms with the fact that you couldn’t save your mom. You rescue other people to make up for the guilt.”
Bile rose in Jenna’s throat. “I’m not shrinking you, Isaac. Not any more than you want me to. I’m trying to wrap my head around why you did what you did. That I’ll admit.”
“Of course you are! That’s your job.”
Certain brands of sociopaths were like that: oppositional kindergartners wanting to be both first and not first for show-and-tell. When they showed the propensity, refocusing on something else tended to do the trick. “Tell me about the other half of the team.”
“Third.”
“Okay,” she conceded. “The other one-third.”
“Did you always see your mother as black?”
Flashes of the steak knife jutted in. Bloody palm prints dotting the kitchen countertops, a sick trail to the door. Freedom. “We’re not here to talk about me, Isaac.”
“Hmph,” he smirked. “I am.”
Jenna’s heart clenched. Panic built in her chest. Something ugly pressurized it, readying it for explosion.
Chill out.
This psycho shot a bunch of people and hung around to be caught. Couldn’t be only because he wanted to talk to the “famous” Dr. Jenna Ramey, no matter how bored he got. No. He was stalling. Waiting for something.
His smirk made purple flash in. Grapheme-color synesthesia worked for Jenna like inverted colorblindness. Where for most people, traits blended in, the colors that flashed in her mind at certain statements or mannerisms could make a quality stand out like a brunette in a sea of bald heads. In this case, the purple that crossed her mind brought up thoughts of narcissism. Flattery would get her everywhere.
“I don’t believe for a second that you let yourself get caught so you could shoot the breeze with me, Isaac.”
“You tell me, Dr. Ramey. Why would I let myself get caught?”
Notoriety. You’re playing a game, proving you’re smarter than we are. “You didn’t enjoy your knitting class?”
“I wouldn’t want to be caught, would I?”
Normal people didn’t want to be caught. Isaac did. “You already told me the other guy is only one-third of what you are, and he’s out there. By your own reasoning, either you’re underestimating him, or you’re lying to me. Which is it?”
“Did you know she was lying, Jenna? Your mother? How could you tell? The news stories said you had a hunch about her based on the color you associated. They said you couldn’t explain it. They said your colors had nothing to do with your emotional feelings for someone, Jenna, but they did, didn’t they? You didn’t want them to, but they did.”
She swallowed the surge of angst that crept in. Isaac was quite a fan.
But Jenna would rather donate a kidney to this guy than talk to him about her past. Best to keep him on task. “Speaking of your partner, if this guy is only one-third of what you are, why team up with him? Seems like a liability.”
Isaac puffed out his cheeks, then let the air out by pushing on his cheeks with a handcuffed hand on either side of his face. “You know the answer to that, don’t you?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”
He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms. “You asked me if I thought most people were my equals, and you knew that answer.”
Good memory, too. “Why don’t you humor me?”
He tipped his chair farther back so it stood on its two back legs. “’Cause if I did that, Dr. Ramey, you might not need to ask more questions, and I do hope you’ll stay and chat awhile.”
Sebastian Waters blinked into the fluorescents overhead. Damn, he was groggy. He couldn’t feel his left side. What the—
Then he remembered. Pops. Bullets. People falling. He’d yelled that someone was shooting from above them, from the castle.
He jumped when he saw the nurse in the corner of his eye. “Who’s there?”
The young brunette nurse with the sleek ponytail smiled. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Mr. Waters. I’m your shift nurse. You’re at the hospital. Do you remember what happened?”
Boy, did he.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice solemn. So much blood.
“A bullet got you in the shoulder. It passed straight through, thank goodness. No major damage, didn’t hit any arteries. You do have a good gash on your stomach where you fell. The doctor put in five stitches. You were one of the lucky ones.”
Lucky? Try preordained.
“Did they . . .” Sebastian winced. The stitches in his side burned when he talked. “Did they get him?”
“The police will want to talk to you as soon as the doctor gives them the okay, but yes. The police caught the castle shooter. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only shooter. Another one shot people by the ferry. He’s still out there somewhere.”
“Unbelievable,” Sebastian whispered. The magnitude of the whole thing shocked him, amazed him. It seemed so impossible. It reminded him of an arcade tournament he’d played in once years ago, how the adrenaline coursed during what seemed like a never-ending event. But all of a sudden, this huge moment was over, and you could only look back in shock that you’d won or lost.
“I know. Unreal, isn’t it? But they’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time,” the nurse replied.
“How many”—Sebastian’s breath caught again—“dead?”
The nurse frowned. “Are you sure you want to talk about all this so soon, Mr. Waters?”
“Yes. I have to know.”
The nurse took a deep breath, exhaled. “Twenty. Seven more wounded, you included. Some are still critical. Others’ll be all right. Physically, that is. You’re probably in the best shape of all of them, to tell you the truth.”
Sebastian thought back on his morning. He’d gone in dressed as a cast member for customer convenience, in charge of making sure tourists found the attractions and rides. At one point he’d disappeared into one of the crew tunnels, headed away from the castle. He’d finished business, gotten back to the castle right when the shooting from above started.
Just like Isaac had told him to.
• • •
Jenna leaned in and propped her elbows on the gray metal table in the conference room. Time to switch tactics. “All right, Isaac. You want to talk about me so bad. You asked for me because you know about my mother. You said you read an article, huh?”
For a second, Isaac’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t expected her to concede so easily. Then he smiled, smug. “Yeah. Read a few of your interviews and things.”
She hummed what might have sounded like agreement in the back of her throat. “And you want to know if I always saw my mother as black?”
Isaac’s gaze bore into her, excitement radiating off him. Mind-fucking at its finest.
“Yes, Dr. Ramey, I’d very much like to know that,” he said, practically salivating.
She leaned back, folded her arms. “You know what I think, Isaac? I think you’re a liar.”
“That’s pretty textbook for you, isn’t it, Doc?”
Jenna smiled, though none of this was funny. Remaining genial was key to keeping him talking. She’d met his breed before. To stay engaged, this type wanted something from her. Her best guess was that he craved a worthy adversary. If she didn’t fulfill this requirement, he’d either zip up or start spouting off complete bull that wouldn’t tell them anything.
“I mean you’re lying about the article research. You didn’t read my interviews, or you’d know I never saw my mother as black. You assumed. Popular misconception, of course. Nope. I didn’t give that information in any interview.”
Isaac Keaton tossed his honey-colored bangs out of his face, blinked. Grunted. “Touché. What color did you see her as?”
Finally. The upper hand.
“That’s for me to know, and you to bargain for.”
Isaac winked. “Now you’re the one assuming, Dr. Ramey. Assuming I’ll play along.”
“You will if you want me to play, too,” Jenna argued. “Are you going to tell me about the other killer?”
Isaac glanced around the blank pea green walls of the room. “Don’t I get a phone call or something?”
Not your everyday I’m-playing-a-game psychopath request. The ones caught for the allure of infamy weren’t often looking for someone to bail them out. “A few more questions.”
As usual, he changed the subject. “Most people like you want revenge, Dr. Ramey. You know. Victims. What do you do when you can’t get revenge? Or do you even want it, if the person who hurt your family is your family?”
“Is that what this was, Isaac? Revenge?”
He snorted. “Of course not. I asked because lots of people do want it.”
Where was he going with this? This was coming from somewhere. Had to be. “Who wants revenge? The other killer?”
Anger flashed across his face as his jaw tightened, then in an instant, complete calm replaced it. “Do yourself a favor and forget the other killer for a second.”
So he wants this to be about him. Or wants it not to be about the other killer.
“Okay. Like who, then?”
Isaac folded his hands on the table, twiddled his thumbs. “I’
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