Chapter 26
Tori stepped back from the whiteboard and studied the complex web of connections she’d mapped across the surface.
Red lines linked her parents’ murders to Florek’s brutal death, blue arrows connected the Mandelbrot paintings to their victims, green circles highlighted the key players who surfaced in every thread.
They’d transformed the Kingdom MMA office into a makeshift command center, gathering the sharpest minds Tori trusted to crack this case wide open. Well, Corbin and Luna had joined virtually through video since they were still in protective custody. At least she had their expertise.
“Here’s what I think.” She capped the marker and glanced at the faces around the room. “Our unsub is Nikos Crew Jr., and he isn’t just my stalker. He’s the Mandelbrot Killer. A serial killer.”
Harlee leaned back in her chair and swiveled side to side, tattooed arms crossed, her focus riveted on the whiteboard. “You’re saying witnessing his parents’ murders at such a young age twisted his trauma. He’s recreating the crime over and over?”
“That’s my read on it,” Tori said. “Not as his sister or a survivor of the same crime. I’m analyzing as if he were any other subject on the board.”
Corbin’s image pixelated on the TV for a moment before resolving. “The psychiatric evaluation said he showed violent tendencies, right?”
“But schizophrenia? At age four?” Luna glanced at Corbin sitting beside her on the screen. “That’s a stretch.”
“The patterns fit,” Jett said, pushing off from Harlee’s desk. “But why the geometrical staging? Why the personal nature of the attacks?”
Tori turned back to the whiteboard and traced the fractal pattern with her finger.
“The geometry isn’t random. It’s control.
” She faced the group again. “Nikos witnessed pure chaos that night—blood, violence, his parents dying. The fractals represent his attempt to impose order on that trauma. Each murder recreates our parents’ death, but he stages it afterward using mathematical precision.
The fractals are his way of making sense of senseless violence. ”
“Self-similar patterns at every scale,” Jett said.
“Yes,” Tori said. “Just like his compulsion. He can’t stop reliving that night, so he forces others to experience it. Then he relives the murders but transforms them into something beautiful and controlled.”
“The paintings,” Luna said.
Harlee swiveled her chair to face the group. “But how does a four-year-old in Seattle become a serial killer targeting people in Florida?”
“He didn’t stay in Seattle.” Tori moved to the monitor, pointing at the timeline she’d constructed. “Look at the dates. The psychiatric facility transfer happens in 1998. The first Mandelbrot murder is 2023. That’s twenty-five years to plan, to research, to become someone else entirely.”
Luna leaned forward on screen. “You’re talking about a decades-long revenge plot.”
“Exactly.” Tori turned back to the board. “He’s been watching, learning, identifying everyone connected to that night. Everyone who played a role in separating us.”
“Hold up.” Blade’s fidget spinner stopped mid-rotation. So today it was that instead of the spiky green ball. Whatever kept that brilliant, scattered brain of his on track.
The room’s attention shifted to him. He set the spinner on the table and leaned forward.
“I need motive. Real motive, not just psychological theory.” His good hand gestured toward the board. “Based on this, I can understand Judge Kagay. But why Florek? Why Kaufman? What’s the connection between them?”
Tori felt the frustration of having pieces that almost fit.
“We’re missing something,” Harlee said. Her fingers began flying across her keyboard. “Some connection we haven’t found yet.”
Corbin’s voice cut through the speculation. “What about the missing painting? Sasha Robie?”
“We haven’t located it yet,” Blade said.
Tori stared at the board, at the web of connections that felt so right but remained frustratingly incomplete.
“We have to find the notebook first,” she said. “Damien’s insurance policy. Whatever he documented about that night, it might give us the missing piece. How our unsub is choosing victims.”
“Or how they are connected,” Jett said.
“The key,” Blade said, pulling it from his pocket. “We track down every bank in a fifty-mile radius of where I lived. Someone has to have a record of this box.”
“I can help with that,” Harlee said. “Financial institutions keep digital records going back decades now.”
Blade’s phone buzzed against the table. He glanced at the screen, answered with his usual crisp “St. James,” then winced as he pushed himself up from his chair.
Tori tracked his movement as he walked to the far corner of the room, his voice dropping to a murmur she couldn’t quite catch.
Harlee’s fingers clicked across her keyboard as she discussed cross-references with Jett.
Something about boxes that hadn’t been accessed since 2008, digital archives, pattern matching algorithms.
But Tori’s attention stayed locked on Blade. His free hand rubbed the back of his neck. And twice, maybe three times, his gaze found hers across the room.
The call involved her.
Blade ended the conversation and walked back to the group.
“We have to go,” he said. “BSO just arrested a man who walked into Broward General with a gunshot wound. Nine millimeter. Matches the caliber of your Glock.”
Luna leaned forward on screen. “Is it the stalker?”
“That’s what we’re about to find out,” Blade said.
Harlee’s chair squeaked as she swiveled around. “Whoa. You might be about to meet your brother for the first time.”
Tori’s heart skipped, then hammered against her ribs. The room tilted slightly, but she straightened her shoulders and compartmentalized the fear. Professional distance. She was FDLE’s behavioral analyst first, the shooter second, sister last.
Tori stood in the BSO corridor, staring at the reinforced glass of Interview Room B.
“You don’t have to do this right now,” Blade said quietly behind her.
Her reflection stared back at her from the glass. Professional blazer, notebook clutched against her chest, the scab across her throat barely visible above her collar. She looked composed. Steady. Everything she didn’t feel.
“Yes, I do.” She turned to face Blade. “If he is Nikos, if he’s my brother, I need to understand what happened to him. What turned a terrified four-year-old into this.”
He moved in, closing the space between them, and caught her hand. His grip pulled her back from the edge.
“Hey. Look at me.” His words carried the same quiet command that had pulled her through the darkest nights.
She met his blue eyes, finding the steady anchor she’d always found there.
“You survived that night when you were four,” he said. “You survived foster care, the streets, everything that came after. You became someone who helps people, who fights for justice. That’s who you are.”
“And he became a killer.”
“Maybe. We don’t know for sure yet. Whatever he became, that’s not on you. That’s not your responsibility to carry.”
She nodded, though the heaviness pressing behind her eyes refused to budge. “I keep thinking about what Damien said. About patterns. What if seeing our parents murdered was just the beginning of his pattern? What if he’s been killing ever since?”
“Then we stop him,” he said with absolute certainty. “Together. Like we always do.”
She drew a deep breath, straightened her shoulders.
“Ready?” Blade asked.
Tori gripped her notebook tighter and nodded. Time to meet the monster who might share her DNA.
She pushed through the heavy door into the BSO interview room and claimed the consultant’s chair and angled herself slightly back from the metal table to maintain professional distance. Deputy Worth Edwards settled into the lead detective’s position across from her, his posture relaxed.
“Remember, you’re here to observe,” Edwards said. “Redirect questioning if you see an opening. Only take the lead if you spot a way through his lies or denial, capiche?”
“Sure.” She’d done this a thousand times. “I’m here to watch for tells and cracks in his story.”
She glanced at the one-way mirror, where Blade stood behind the glass. The glass showed nothing but the reflection of the room and her own face staring back, but his presence steadied her racing pulse.
The door opened with a metallic click. A uniformed officer guided Jeremy Hoult into the room, and Tori’s breath caught.
This wasn’t the terrifying monster who’d attacked her in the dark.
Hoult was small, maybe five-foot-eight, with pale skin that looked yellow under the harsh lighting.
His left arm hung in a blue sling, and his entire frame trembled like a chihuahua in a thunderstorm.
Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his brown hair stuck to his forehead with sweat.
He looked like a victim, not a killer.
The Mandelbrot Killer was organized, controlled, sophisticated. Hoult appeared to be falling apart.
She searched his face for recognition, for some flicker of the brother she’d never known. There was something. A tilt of his chin, maybe the shape of his jaw. But he didn’t look like what she’d imagined Nikos would become.
Edwards straightened in his chair. “Mr. Hoult, I’m Deputy Edwards with the Broward Sheriff’s Office. Before we begin, I need to read you your rights.”
Hoult’s trembling intensified as Edwards recited the Miranda warning. Tori watched his micro-expressions, cataloging each flinch and nervous swallow.
“Do you understand these rights as I’ve explained them to you?” Edwards finished.
Hoult stared at an empty spot on the floor. “I want a lawyer.”
Tori blinked. An amateur would have started talking immediately, either protesting innocence or trying to explain away evidence. Asking for counsel was a sophisticated move, the kind of decision made by someone who understood the system.
Edwards leaned back in his chair. “Interview terminated at 11:47 a.m.”