I pushed past the psychologist and bolted up the stairs, aware that Michael and Lia were following on my heels, but focused only on Mackenzie. The ledge. It’s slick now. You’re shivering. What’s he saying to you?

What is he nudging you to do?

I reached the ninth-story landing to find Mrs. McBride and the fireman standing to one side. Celine was on the other side of them, fighting with the door to the lightroom. It was jammed.

The ladder was up.

“Mackenzie let us take the boards off the window,” Mrs. McBride told me, breathless, glowing, and fighting tears. “Quentin said she needed space—but she’s coming down.”

They’d left her alone with him—and based on the trouble Celine was having with the door, he’d locked them out.

“Nichols isn’t talking her down,” I told Celine, keeping my voice low. “We have to get in there. Now.”

It took time for the fireman to cut through the door, time for Celine to pull down what was left of the ladder.

Time we didn’t have.

Per protocol, Agent Delacroix pulled herself up first. I followed a heartbeat later—screw protocol. On the far side of the room, Mackenzie stood ramrod still on the ledge, the window open, the remains of the barricade scattered on the floor.

Quentin Nichols stood between her and us—close enough that he could have pulled Mackenzie in.

If he’d wanted to.

“It’s not your fault you’re different,” the crisis specialist was murmuring. “I’m betting that no one asked you, back then, if you wanted to be saved. If there was anything left worth saving.”

Lightning flashed behind Mackenzie, sending an almost tactile shock through the room. But Mackenzie didn’t jolt. Her muscles held steady. As rain and wind beat at her, her eyes stayed focused.

On the man in front of her.

“You told yourself that you came up here for Kelley, but, Mackenzie? If this were just about Kelley, you wouldn’t still be out there.” Quentin Nichols sounded tender.

He sounded sure.

“There’s no shame,” he said, “in taking control and deciding for yourself what you need.”

Control. Decide. His word choices were deliberate—and given the way Mackenzie’s mind worked, terrifying. He shifted his weight forward, so slightly that it might not have been visible to his target on the ledge.

She would have felt it all the same.

You know what she needs. I silently addressed Quentin. You know that left to her own devices, she might not do it.

“He pushed Kelley.” I said the one thing guaranteed to draw the UNSUB’s attention my way—the one thing sure to break through to Mackenzie. “She wouldn’t jump, so he pushed her.”

“I let her go,” Nichols corrected, his attention still focused on Mackenzie, his tone still gentle. “Kelley was hurting. Some pain gets better—but some doesn’t. What you’ve lived through, Mackenzie? The fight you fight every day? It’s not going away.”

It felt like he was telling me that—not just her.

“Part of you will always be in that shack,” he continued softly, the sudden cruelty of that statement jarring. “And as long as you’re there—the man responsible wins.”

“No,” I said, my voice like a gunshot that ricocheted through the lightroom. “You win, Mackenzie, because you’re alive. Because you survived. Because that son of a bitch is in the ground, and Mackenzie McBride is still dancing.”

“Step back from the window.” Celine had her weapon raised and aimed at Nichols. The crisis negotiator didn’t even seem to register it.

Mercy is what matters. What you and only you can give Mackenzie—no one can take that away.

“Your FBI friends think you’ll come in,” he told the girl on the ledge. “They think I’m the one keeping you out there. They think you’re that easily manipulated—that you’re helpless and weak, and if they tell you fairy tales, you’ll believe them. But I’ll tell you the truth.” He paused, his expression tender. “I had a sister like you. Bad things happened to her. Like you. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. Some wounds can’t heal. Some people can’t heal.” He took a step toward her this time—a full step. “But you don’t have to do this—you don’t have to end this—alone.”

“He killed Kelley,” I repeated, close to shouting now to be heard over the storm, to make her hear me. “He wants you to jump.” No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t tell Mackenzie that everything he’d said was a lie, because it wasn’t. Even when wounds healed, the scars remained. She’d always feel them.

But this was her body. Her choice. Her life.

“Dance,” I told her. She was on a ledge. It was pouring rain. That was the last thing I should have advised, but in that four-by-four shack, when she was just a little girl, Mackenzie had danced—hours upon hours, again and again, because it was her body.

Because no one was going to take that away.

“Don’t listen to him, Mackenzie. Dance.”

Slowly, she raised her arms, rounding them in front of her, then allowing them to part. She shifted her weight to one foot, the other toe pointing.

For the first time since we’d entered the room, Quentin Nichols turned to face Celine and me head-on.

“Hands in the air!” Celine barked. “On the ground!”

On some level, I was aware that Michael and Lia had joined us, that Celine had backup. But my attention was focused solely on the man in front of me.

The man who was close enough to Mackenzie to reach out and touch her.

“I didn’t plan this,” he told me.

You didn’t search Mackenzie out. You didn’t groom her. You didn’t lead her slowly toward this, day by day.

“You planned the others,” I countered. “You found them. You listened to them.” I swallowed. “You made them trust you.”

“I volunteer,” Quentin said, closing his eyes for just a moment, the expression on his face eerily wistful. “I coach. I work with the youth group at the church.”

He didn’t just have one point of access, one set of hunting grounds. He’d cultivated several.

“There have been others,” I stated, reading into that. “Over the years.”

“I’m there for them. I help when I can. And when I can’t…” He bowed his head, the motion bordering on ceremonial. “I offer release.”

Behind him, Mackenzie stopped dancing. Her eyes meeting mine, she sank slowly to a sitting position.

She’s coming in.

I tried not to show even a hint of relief.

“What I do is a duty,” Nichols was saying, “not a pleasure.”

“It’s mercy,” I said. I had to keep his attention on me. I couldn’t let him turn around.

For a moment, I thought it was working, and then, without warning, he whirled. He saw Mackenzie. She froze. Her legs were dangling into the room. She was almost safe.

You will save her. He moved.

I lunged forward, knowing even as I did that I couldn’t get to him before he reached her. A gunshot went off. My ears ringing, I hit the ground. The impact knocked the breath from my chest. I looked up, forcing my eyes to the ledge.

Mackenzie was sitting there.

Nichols was down.

Celine approached him, her freshly fired gun still in her hands. Taking use of the cover she provided, Michael knelt to feel for a pulse. I forced my eyes from the two of them, pulled myself up off the ground, and stumbled toward Mackenzie.

She slid off the ledge, into my arms. Beside us, Michael looked at Celine and shook his head.

Nichols was gone.

I wrapped my arms around Mackenzie, blocking the dead body from view, but she fought my hold and stepped aside. She wanted to see it.

To see him.

“For the record…” Lia managed to pull Mackenzie’s attention away from the killer’s corpse. “When he said that what he tried to do to you—what he did to the others—wasn’t a pleasure?” Lia spat in the dead’s man direction. “He lied.”