Three days after accepting Agent Briggs’s offer, Cassie leaves for the Naturals program. Nonna remains openly unhappy about Cassie going, warns Cassie to be careful, and threatens Michael when Michael arrives to pick Cassie up in a black Porsche. Cassie says goodbye, aware that Nonna’s protectiveness comes from love and worry.

During the drive, Cassie and Michael test each other’s abilities. Michael reads Cassie’s emotions through facial expressions, posture, and small gestures, while Cassie realizes Michael deliberately changes his clothing, posture, and mannerisms to make himself hard to profile. Michael suggests a truce: he will stop reading Cassie if Cassie stops profiling him.

Michael then offers Cassie three questions. Cassie asks about the Porsche and learns it was a gift from Michael’s former life and one of his conditions for joining Briggs’s program. Michael reveals that his father was involved in tax fraud, suggesting Michael’s recruitment may be tied to family trouble. Cassie also asks about the program, and Michael says he has only been there a few months and was sent to retrieve Cassie partly so Briggs could gauge whether Cassie was emotionally safe to bring into the program.

Michael drives Cassie to an airport hangar, where Cassie sees the FBI jet used by Briggs’s specialized team. Briggs greets Cassie and helps with Cassie’s bag after Michael mockingly echoes Nonna’s earlier complaint. Aboard the jet, Michael immediately breaks his promised truce by reading Cassie’s emotions again, and Cassie chooses a seat in front of him rather than beside him.

As the plane takes off, Michael offers Cassie another question if Cassie stops giving Michael the silent treatment. Cassie asks whether Michael is leaving the Porsche in Denver, and Michael answers that the Porsche is not his only car, reinforcing both Michael’s wealth and his evasive, teasing nature.

The chapter ends by shifting into the killer’s perspective. After days of frustration over a prior failure, the killer chooses a new victim only because the victim’s hair resembles someone else’s. The killer murders the victim in a motel room, cuts makeup and skin from the victim’s face, and regains a sense of control, while admitting that no victim will ever match the first.