Caging a Copycat - Chapter 3

She hadn’t thought about the case in years, but with the combination of the victim’s profession and the number of stab wounds... She couldn’t ignore the past anymore.

Five FBI agents had been slaughtered just as Grant Harvey had. Eight years ago, there’d been no signs of struggle or forced entry. The killer had slipped into each of the agents’ homes and slipped back out. A ghost with an unknown vendetta. The medical examiner back in DC had identified the type of knife used, but it'd been Olivia who’d given the bureau a suspect. Charles Daggett.

The former lawyer had been sentenced to life behind bars without parole. But every year, he’d petitioned the parole board for release, claiming someone in the FBI had planted evidence against him. That the pen with his bite marks and DNA discovered at one of the scenes couldn’t have been his. Because he hadn’t been anywhere near the crime scenes. But the harder the district attorney had pressed, the faster Daggett’s story unraveled. In the end, he’d become a mere blip in her decade-long career.

Only now, someone seemed anxious to make sure he hadn’t been forgotten.

A partner? A copycat?

Olivia pushed through the hotel’s front doors and out into the cold. Her exhales solidified in front of her mouth, and she buried deeper into her wool coat. The Daggett case would’ve made her career. If Grant Harvey and Silas Hart hadn’t gone out of their way to ensure she wasn’t credited with the break they needed. Instead, they’d blocked her from the recognition she’d deserved. She’d transferred to the Behavioral Analysis Unit here in Seattle less than a week later. Now here she was, head of the entire unit, but the past refused to let go.

“Let me buy you a coffee, Liv.” One simple statement. A whirlwind of mental and emotional repercussions. Silas rubbed both hands together and blew into his palms. Wind kicked up off Puget Sound and ruffled his dark hair. “For old times’ sake.”

Old times’ sake. As though he hadn’t been complicit in crushing her career and her heart in one move all those years ago. No. There wasn’t going to be coffee. There wasn’t going to be forgiveness if that was what he’d come here for. She had a job to do, and she’d do it without him. Olivia stepped into him, and that self-controlled expression cracked around his eyes. “Am I supposed to believe you being here in Seattle the same morning I find Grant Harvey stabbed to death is a coincidence?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even seem to breathe.

“Earlier you said you were here to make sure I walked away from this investigation alive,” she said. “You knew something like this was going to happen, didn’t you? What was it? What aren’t you telling me, Agent Hart?”

“Two days ago, Charles Daggett requested me to visit him at Sing Sing. I took the meeting, figuring he might give up the location of another body for some amenities or a transfer to another cell block.” The small muscles along his jaw ticked under pressure. The weight of his gaze pressurized the air trapped in her lungs. “Instead, he wanted to know about you.”