Agent Briggs arrives at the Naturals house with a team of agents and immediately treats the box sent to Cassie as potential evidence. Cassie challenges Briggs’s earlier doubt that the current murders are connected to Lorelai Hobbes’s case, but Briggs focuses on processing the package, tracing its origin, and rushing DNA testing on the red hair inside.

Agent Locke warns that the package may not have come from the killer and could be a prank. Suspicion briefly falls on Lia because she found and opened the outer package, and Lia reacts defensively. Lia then turns the suspicion back on Cassie, implying Cassie may have staged the contact to force her way onto the case.

Dean unexpectedly intervenes and firmly argues that Cassie would not risk derailing an escalating murder investigation. Dean admits that Cassie gave him the active case file, that Dean profiled it, and that Dean believes Cassie is right: the victims may be stand-ins for Cassie’s mother. Briggs rebukes Dean for working an unauthorized case but does not dismiss the point.

After Lia is sent from the room, Briggs asks Locke whether the current murders are connected to the Lorelai Hobbes case. Locke says the connection may matter less than Cassie’s present danger: Cassie has red hair, the killer is escalating, the dyed hair may have been a message, and the killer may have followed the agents to the house and seen Cassie. Before Briggs can respond, Briggs receives a call reporting another body.

The chapter shifts to the killer’s perspective as the killer watches the FBI at the newest crime scene. The killer reveals that this victim was killed with scissors, that the body was planted as part of a plan, and that the hair sent to Cassie was real. The killer fixates on Cassie, sees her as Lorelai Hobbes’s daughter, and believes Cassie is uniquely connected to the killer and will eventually know everything.