Variable Onset (Wild Type #1)

Chapter 1

One

Getting called to the principal’s office sucked at forty-two same as it did at fourteen.

Sucked even worse when you were the teacher.

Standing in front of a room full of agent trainees, Lincoln suppressed his physical reaction to the gray-haired man who’d snuck into the back of his lecture hall.

His mind, though, wasn’t so easily wrangled.

What had he done now to get on Director Beverley’s shit list?

Missed another useless meeting? Marched in that protest last weekend?

Brought his daughter to the crime lab for Take Your Kid to Work Day?

Whatever the explanation, it would have to wait.

There were ten minutes left of class, the last one of the first week of Academy.

He had led the trainees through a different simulation each day: a preview of the class curriculum and the many facets of forensics.

It wasn’t just hair samples and DNA. While the basics of evidentiary forensics—collection, handling, analysis, and presentation—would eat up most of the class lessons, Lincoln also included specialty units.

Today’s topic, forensic genealogy, was where Lincoln excelled, where he focused his own work outside of routine case support.

He could teach a whole class on the subject, could go on and on with his overview today, but with Director Beverley waiting, he’d have to cut this intro short.

He returned to the whiteboard and the series of boxes he’d drawn on a chronological line graph.

Time windows that had gotten progressively smaller.

“All right, we’ve narrowed down the date of this picture”—he aimed his laser pointer at the presentation displayed on the wall monitor, the current slide a group photo from his sister’s law school study abroad class—“to a three-year time window.” He tapped the smallest box on the whiteboard with his knuckle.

“Now, can we get this window even smaller? Because if we can”—he changed the slide—“then we can figure out which of these Duke Law class rosters to use to identify the student in red.” His sister because loud was Trina’s middle name.

“Is this like a Positraction thing?” asked a trainee seated halfway up the tiered rows of desks.

Lincoln laughed out loud. He wasn’t usually a fan of surprises, but an out-of-the-blue reference to one of his favorite movies was a welcome shock. “Are you even old enough to remember that movie?”

The kid grinned. “Marisa Tomei was hot as fuck.”

“Still is,” Lincoln concurred. “So was Ralph Macchio, but he didn’t age nearly as well.”

That garnered a few wide-eyed looks and two unamused scowls, but most of the trainees laughed along with him.

He was glad for that, for the evolution of understanding and acceptance that he’d witnessed with each incoming class of FBI agents.

He’d been teaching at Quantico for ten years, been an agent for more than fifteen, and during all that time he’d never hidden his bisexuality.

His rainbow Chucks hadn’t always been so welcome, but nowadays he attributed any askance looks to his argyle sweaters more than his shoes.

“Now, come on,” he said, calling the class back to order. “You’re missing a critical detail.”

“Give us a hint,” said another trainee.

“Nope, no hints.” The only hints they’d get in the field were from the evidence itself. “Let’s go back through it. What have we assessed already?”

“The photo paper watermark,” a trainee called out.

“Always a good place to start.” He clicked through the slides to the one that showed the paper manufacturer’s logo. “It gave us this block.” He hovered the red laser dot over the biggest box on the graph, then shifted up to the smaller one. “How’d we get here?”

“The Rome Statute,” another trainee answered. “On the papers the lady in red is holding.”

“Good. So we know this picture is from a date after the Rome Statute was adopted. That puts us at 1998 or later. Help me narrow that down some more.”

“The hat,” said the Marisa Tomei fan.

“Maybe,” Lincoln hedged. “Duke is a popular sports team, and we already know this is a Duke Law class. Does the hat actually help us narrow the time window?”

The trainee was closer than he knew, but clothing had led more than one investigator astray. Too many forgot to account for hand-me-downs, vintage stores, and other ways in which threads found their way out of time.

“But this hat does go to time,” the same trainee said. “That Duke logo was introduced in 2000.”

Lincoln covered his face with his hands and groaned. “Are you a Duke fan?” He elongated the name of his alma mater’s rival, making it sound like D-O-O-K. He couldn’t help it; he was a Tar Heel, it was instinct. The class erupted with laughter again.

The recruit smiled wider. “Blue Devil for life.”

Ow, his aching Carolina-blue heart. Then again, his sister, a Double-Duke alum, had been pummeling it for years. He raised his hands, palms out. “Let’s never speak of this again.”

“But I’m right,” the trainee said.

Lincoln covered his shiver with a laugh, the I’m right too reminiscent of a certain other trainee from years back.

The one who’d been too smart, too cocky, too flirtatious, and too damn attractive for his own good, a menace to Lincoln in his early teaching years, one that still haunted his nightmares—and occasional fantasy.

Lincoln hoped Agent Blue Devil wasn’t going to be a repeat.

He wasn’t as handsome by half, but he had that same cocksure attitude about him.

That said, Lincoln was a lot more confident now in his place at the front of the classroom. He could handle this trainee.

“Indeed you are.” He drew a new, smaller box on the whiteboard, advancing the backstop to 2000. That was how to use clothing correctly—as a backstop on creation versus the more fallible sunset on wear. He clicked to the class picture again. “There’s another detail you’re missing. Can you spot it?”

A trainee in the last row slowly raised her hand.

“Your name, Agent?”

“Barrois.” Her voice shook, like she wasn’t quite sure about being here, much less speaking up in class.

Lincoln shot her an encouraging smile. The soft-spoken ones were often the most observant. Like him, they didn’t want to bring attention to themselves; just the opposite usually, observing those around them to minimize their impact. “All right, Agent Barrois, give us the missing piece.”

“Front row, two over from the end, there’s a girl holding a stack of books. Under them, she’s got a concert flyer.”

“Good eye, Agent Barrois.” He stepped behind the lectern and spread two fingers on his laptop screen to enlarge and recenter the flyer.

“Pearl Jam. Salzburg. June 18, 2000.” Rotating back to the whiteboard, he sketched another smaller box.

“So we’re talking Duke Law, Summer 2000, in Europe.

” He shuffled the slides back to the class rosters, to the one in question—and powered off the screen.

“And we’ll find out who the lady in red is when we return to this lesson next month. ”

Laughs, groans, and more than a few no fair protests came at him.

As did a line of trainees afterward, each of them trying to extract more clues from him.

It boded well for an interactive class. Caught up in their enthusiasm, Lincoln forgot about his other audience until Beverley appeared at the bottom of the raised classroom’s steps.

Lincoln finished giving Barrois the list of additional resources she requested, then once she’d exited, removed his glasses and turned to Beverley. “Sorry about that, sir.”

“Was worth it for the My Cousin Vinny reference.” Beverley smiled, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening. But the amused expression faded as quickly as it had come, the director stoic again in a blink.

“Guessin’ you’re not here for nineties nostalgia,” Lincoln said.

“’Fraid not. And I’m afraid your class isn’t going to learn the identity of the lady in red.”

Fuck. Lincoln mentally rewound the events of the past few months again. No major infractions he could recall. Whatever he’d done, it had to have been relatively minor. Surely not severe enough to cost him his job. “Look, whatever I did—”

“We need your help on a case, Agent Monroe.”

Lincoln snapped his mouth shut. Not the direction he’d anticipated—his mind tended to jump to worst-case scenarios—but this wasn’t an unfamiliar swerve.

He’d been pulled onto cases more often lately, especially those involving forensic genealogy.

A colleague’s instrumental role in catching the Golden State Killer had brought increased attention to their specialty.

Judging by the grim countenance on Beverley’s face, the case he was here about today was on that same level.

Lincoln suspected he knew which one. It had been all over the news this week, and he had a file cabinet full of research about this particular killer.

He had wanted to offer his assistance earlier, especially given his personal connection to the latest pair of victims, but he’d been with the Bureau long enough to know the protocol.

And to know his personal connection could work against him.

The higher-ups would rope him in if and when he was needed. And now here stood Beverley.

“Which case?” he asked.

“Dr. Fear,” the director confirmed.