Page 94 of Fatal Pattern

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.