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“Are we sure Paisley was kidnapped?” Jude asked. “Technically, a kidnapping occurs when a child is separated from his or her parent. An abduction is when the child is removed and held against their will.”

Emmy bit her lip. She didn’t need this woman schooling her son.

Cole asked, “Are you saying maybe the parents took her?”

“The father was having an affair. The mother could’ve staged the kidnapping for revenge. Or Elijah could’ve staged it to give himself leverage over Carol. Or there could be someone else in the father’s life who took her.”

Cole started nodding his head. Emmy felt her eyes wanting to roll. This woman was some kind of witch. Fewer than five minutes had passed, and Cole was already in her thrall.

Cole asked, “What if it’s a serial killer, though?”

Jude said, “If the same perpetrator abducted three children, then we might be looking at a serial offender. In those cases, the victims tell us who the perpetrator is.”

Emmy had heard enough of this horseshit. “We already looked for links between all three victims. There were no overlaps.”

“The bike? Bent tire? Blood at the scene?”

“Coincidences, not proof.”

“I’ve spent my entire career trying to bring lost children home to their parents,” Jude said. “If it’s the same perpetrator, there’s always an overlap. You just haven’t found it.”

“All right, Dr. Archer,” Emmy said. “You’re the expert. Tell me the overlap.”

“I haven’t reviewed the original case files, but my starting point would be controlling parents.”

Emmy laughed. “Welcome to the club. There’s gonna be a million more kidnappings if that’s the criteria. Cole, don’t get into any white vans.”

“Good advice in general, but the thing about controlling parents is that they are teaching their children how to be controlled,” Jude said.

“If all three girls are victims of the same serial predator, then it’s someone in or around Clifton.

Someone trusted or who’s in authority. Someone hiding in plain sight who has a history of pedophilia. ”

“Wow that really narrows it down. A pedophile. We’ve already checked all the registered sex offenders. That still leaves about 20,000 suspects in the county.”

“Around ninety-four percent of sexual abuse offenders are men.”

Emmy wasn’t going to give her the high horse on statistics, even if she wrote the damn book. “Okay, so roughly half the population is female. That leaves around 10,000 male suspects.”

“Pedophiles tend to rape within their own demographic. A white child is more likely to be assaulted by a white male.”

“Sure, good point. The county’s sixty-five percent white. Now we’re at 7,000 suspects.”

“Offenders tend to be involved in jobs or volunteer organizations that put them in contact with potential victims.”

“Okay, so let’s assume a third of the number. We’re still at nearly 2,500 white men.”

“To accurately profile a killer, you need the victim’s body. Were you at the autopsies on Baker and Dalrymple?”

Emmy felt gut-punched again. The question sent her back to the autopsy suite at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation headquarters.

Madison laid out on the stainless-steel table.

The sheet pulled away. Her small body exposed to the harsh lights.

Her hands and feet grotesquely misshapen where the bones had been shattered.

The medical examiner had explained to Emmy that the skin was black because Madison had bled internally for hours.

She cleared her throat. “I was there.”

“I’m sorry.” Jude had picked up on her shift in mood. “I’ve never witnessed an autopsy on a victim who was known to me. That must’ve been difficult.”

Emmy didn’t want her compassion. “What’s your question?”

“Were the bones in the hands and feet systematically broken or randomly broken?”

Emmy felt a lump in her throat. She had known Madison’s hand was broken when she’d held it in the pond, but she hadn’t understood the extent of the damage until she’d seen the X-rays. “Systematic. Every bone was shattered up and down her hands and feet.”

“Can we assume the perpetrator has medical knowledge?”

“We can assume he has hands and feet,” Emmy countered. “It’s not a mystery where the bones are.”

“But the breaks weren’t random and frenzied.” Jude’s measured calmness was grating. “The perpetrator is someone who’s careful and controlled. At the very least, a skilled worker.”

“Sounds like every guy at the factory. Except most of them are from North Africa. There’s a refugee center over in Clayville.”

“They were all from Cambodia when I was here.” Jude turned her face toward the window, but not before Emmy caught her pensive look.

Emmy wasn’t going to let her recover. “What was the point of that exercise?”

“If this is a serial, the predator is likely a white man who works in a skilled position that requires some education and discipline. His job takes him into frequent contact with children. He’s well respected in the community.

He’s likely a family man, but that’s only to give himself cover for his crimes.

He works very hard to present as normal, but only in service of hiding his crimes. ”

Emmy scoffed. “No wonder they didn’t want you in profiling. Adam Huntsinger wasn’t any of those things.”

“There’s always a lot of pressure when a child goes missing. With two abducted, you can get lost in the urgency. Mistakes get made.” Jude turned back to her. “Are you sure it’s Adam?”

“I’m sure I’m not going to let you disparage my father’s police work.”

“Nonetheless.” Jude turned away again. “We’ve narrowed it down from 20,000 suspects to roughly 2,500, which is much more manageable, don’t you think?”

Emmy wasn’t going to give her an inch. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what I’m thinking right now.”

“The Walkers are up on the right.”

Emmy felt her teeth grit. She knew where the damn house was. She nosed the cruiser into the curb, stopping short of the mailbox. Someone had painted the family name on the side.

The Walkers’

Jude said, “Does no one understand possessive apostrophes anymore?”

Emmy heard Cole’s laughter from the back seat. Listening to this woman run down a case like Gerald was bad enough. Hearing her snipe about punctuation like Myrna was hell on earth.

“Cole,” Emmy said. “Call the station. See if they’ve got an ETA on the brother driving over from Alabama. I don’t want to be surprised.”

“Yes, chief.”

Jude started to get out of the car, but not before turning back toward Cole. “Sweetheart, I know it’s hard, but you should call her sheriff now.”

The door closed before Emmy could correct her. She had to unwrap her fingers from the steering wheel before she could get out. She looked at Jude over the top of the cruiser. “You can stop your Socratic method with my son. He knows how to be a cop, and he knows what to call me.”

She gave a curt nod. “Understood.”

Cole started to get out of the back. Emmy closed the door, trapping him inside.

She told Jude, “I wanna make this clear in case you’re not seeing it.

I don’t want you here, and the only reason I’m putting up with your presence is because you seem to know what you’re doing.

The minute you stop being valuable is the minute you’re off this case. ”

Jude nodded. “Okay.”

“Don’t okay me like you’re part of my family,” Emmy said. “You just bragged about spending forty years trying to bring lost children home to their parents, but it never once occurred to you to bring your own ass home?”

Jude said, “Twenty-seven years.”

“What?”

“That’s how long I worked at the agency. Twenty-seven years. Not forty.”

Emmy opened the door for Cole, then walked toward the Walkers’ house.