The Hunted Girls by Jenna Kernan (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

“They want a preliminary offender profile ASAP, so…”

Juliette took the rejection with a smile.

“Okay. Maybe next time. Are you getting the alerts?”

She’d shut them off instantly after getting the bird-spotting app at Juliette’s insistence. Her friend was outdoorsy, but Nadine preferred air-conditioning.

“Oh, guess what? They’re letting me set up my spare cage for Jack-Jack next to Petunia.”

“Will he be safe there?” asked Nadine.

“I have the staff at reception’s assurance and I’ll keep him in his cage for now.” She glanced at her phone. “Six-thirty for dinner okay?”

Nadine gave her a thumbs-up.

Juliette ended the video call and she had two glorious hours to work on the profiling, interrupted only by Tina delivering coffee before heading out for lunch. Nadine ate her yogurt and apple at her desk.

Skogen found her in the break room refilling her coffee.

“There you are,” he said, by way of a greeting.

He sat at the round table using the man-spread position, occupying as much room as possible. Nadine leaned against the counter facing him.

“I have some news. Good news, I think.”

“Yes?”

“Our profiler, the one we expected, has been reassigned to California. I told DC that we didn’t need a replacement. They’ve agreed to appoint you as lead profiler.”

Her eyes widened. “They have?”

“Yes.”

“I’m just a consultant.”

“You’ve assembled a team. You’ve a proven track record. You’ve completed the necessary training. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t take the assignment. Is there?”

Other than terror and the constant feeling that she was a charlatan, there was not.

“Nadine, don’t turn me down. We need you.”

“This will be made public?”

“Not at all. Your involvement will remain confidential, as we agreed.”

“All right then,” she said.

He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction and then rose. “Great. Just great.”

He held the door for her and they parted ways.

Nadine headed for her office and set to work collecting information on known offenders who had committed violent acts involving deprivation, torture or hunting behavior. Gathering commonalities among apprehended offenders of similar crimes was, in her opinion, a far superior method of giving investigations tangible information useful to the apprehension of a hitherto unknown suspect.

She used the current crimes only, to find commonalities in offenders. This prevented succumbing to hunches, unsubstantiated assumptions or gut feelings. Data led her to her last suspect. This series would be no different.

The devil was here in these details, the pieces that would lead to the killer.

She had begun formulating both the suspect-based profile and very sketchy victims’ psychological autopsies. Knowing these background characteristics and understanding psychological qualities helped in creating a profile of the type of individual targeted by their killer.

But the connections were forming now, an affinity to this killer building. She understood the hunt and the prey. She didn’t think that the capture was the part he relished. The victims were starving at the time of death. She believed that was not so much for pleasure on the killer’s part, as preparation for the hunt. He weakened them, and then, before these victims died of exposure, he released them.

Did they run or attack? The images in her head reminded her of a bullfight, the weakened animal finally facing its tormentor, the odds no longer in the creature’s favor. Why did this killer feel it necessary to weaken his prey? Was he incapable of hunting otherwise?

An old toothless lion, unable to bring down healthy prey?

Or was it for the pleasure of seeing the desperation, turning them back into animals? Yes, that was it.

Stripping away all veneer of humanity. Leaving what lay deep within. Turning them into wild creatures with only instinct. Fight. Flight.

Escape or die.

But there was no real chance of survival, was there?

It only added flavor to the hunt. And he relished this part. Seeing the desperate hope in their eyes. Watching them run, naked, through the tangle of undergrowth. Knowing they couldn’t get away.

She had already put forth that the unsub was likely male, an outdoorsman, but she now added hunting or trapping experience.

Nadine did not yet know if he was using an unknown lure to draw likely victims into the territory where he felt most comfortable, or was patrolling a comfort territory and capturing victims who chanced into that area. The two kinds of killers were very different, the first brought victims to him and the second attacked targets that happened into his range. One more premeditated and organized, and the other opportunistic. His method of capture remained unknown.

Time frame was approximately a week between kills and his handling of both bodies involved outdoor body dumps in a public space.

They had so little on the victims. Demko was checking local missing persons. Hopefully, they’d make an identification soon because the killer and victims were interdependent. She needed to know these women intimately to catch this killer. By focusing on the type of victim likely to be chosen she might extrapolate where she might live and what activities brought her and the unsub together.

She could not save these two. But she could give their deaths meaning by letting them inform her profile and the hunt.

For now all she had was their treatment at capture, imprisonment, murder and, ultimately, handling after death.

All such killers sprang from somewhere and she knew that, although human behavior was unpredictable, it was also repetitive. This killer showed a similar technique with both known victims and already she saw commonalities, recurring behavior. She took those behaviors and broke them down into the sort of earlier crimes in which this unknown subject might have engaged. Just before two in the afternoon, she brought the list to Skogen in his office.

“So, we should look for similar crimes committed on animals.”

“Yes.”

“‘Hunting behavior’?” he read.

“I’m looking for similar treatment by stabbing or shooting at the living animal and/or similar disposal of the remains.”

“‘Using living animals as bait’?”

“Yes. Or partially covering the remains. That seems an invitation to scavengers, or possibly a way to shock the one discovering the mutilated carcass.”

“How would we determine the kill wasn’t