Exhausted by the previous day, Cassie goes to bed early but wakes after midnight to footsteps outside her door. She finds Michael there with a copied file from the active investigation, explaining that Briggs took Sloane’s computer but not his. Despite Briggs’s threat to send Cassie home, Cassie hides the file under her mattress and plans to show it to Dean.

The next morning, Cassie finds Dean with Agent Locke, who gives them a large cold-case file. Locke says Briggs believes Cassie may be ready for the next step, but the assignment also functions as a way to keep Cassie and Dean occupied and away from the current case. The file concerns a string of unsolved execution-style home-invasion murders from the 1990s and similar later homicides.

Because Cassie fears Lia or Judd might overhear, Cassie suggests that she and Dean work in the soundproof basement. Once there, Cassie tells Dean that Briggs caught Cassie trying to access the file, that Cassie shared her theory, and that Briggs refused to let Cassie work the active case. Cassie then reveals Michael’s copied file and asks Dean to examine it while Cassie keeps Locke’s cold case ready as cover.

After reading the active file, Dean concludes that some victims may be substitutes: the killer may be reliving an original murder or acting out a fantasy against someone the killer cannot directly target. Cassie connects this idea to the unsolved attack on a red-haired psychic whose body was never found five years earlier, and Dean says he would want to know everything about that case.

In a shift to the killer’s point of view, the UNSUB prepares a special package: a red present placed in white tissue inside a black box, tied with black silk ribbon. The killer decides the target is no longer an imitation and writes Cassie’s name on the card, revealing that the killer has been watching Cassie and knew Cassie’s mother.