Chapter 24

In tense silence after private arguing among the FBI director, Agent Sterling, and Briggs, the team is summoned. The director cites 307 students in Fogle’s class and moves to leverage “all resources,” signaling a controlled but risky inclusion of the Naturals. Lia needles authority, while Cassie notes Sterling has come armored for a fight.

Briggs limits the Naturals’ role strictly to social media review—no interviews, no crime scenes, no Redding analysis. With university cooperation, schedules and transcripts are in hand; the teens are to contextualize students via their online footprints. Sterling, barely containing her frustration, outlines the preliminary profile: a male, likely college-age to late twenties, above-average intelligence, working-class background, commuting, volatile father who left around puberty, mother who didn’t remarry until the UNSUB was at least eighteen, no current romantic partner, comfortable with firearms, likely drives a dark SUV or truck, possibly owns a large-breed dog.

Parsing the profile, Cassie presses for cause and effect and asks how the professor was killed, inadvertently revealing her assumption the professor is dead. The room’s reaction confirms it. Briggs reframes the assignment as a training exercise: find online red flags among Fogle’s students; report anything suspicious.

Lia and Dean challenge the premise, reading Briggs’s strategy as a time-saving filter and Redding’s taunt as a manipulation designed to erode trust in instincts. Briggs counters that if red flags exist, the Naturals will find them. Cassie recognizes Briggs’s calculus: useful if true, harmless if not.

When the director suggests Dean sit out, Dean names the real issue: the director’s distrust—because of Redding, the case, and Sterling. The confrontation lays bare the fragile alliances and the psychological stakes as the team turns to the digital hunt.