Cassie, Michael, Sloane, and Lia find Dean Redding in the garage, where Dean is bench-pressing with such relentless control that Cassie reads the exercise as punishment rather than a workout. Michael mocks Dean by pretending to count repetitions, but Sloane quietly steps in to help rack the bar when Dean’s arms shake.

Michael introduces Dean to Cassie as another Natural profiler. Dean’s immediate discomfort around Cassie is obvious, and Lia nearly says that Dean’s polite greeting is not strictly true before Dean stops her. Cassie studies Dean’s body language: open posture paired with clenched fists, a wall at his back, and shadows around his face, suggesting guardedness and tension.

Michael continues needling Dean by telling Cassie that Dean knows more about how killers think than almost anyone. The comment provokes Dean enough that Dean throws down his towel and leaves. Michael frames Dean as temperamental, Lia counters that Michael would be dead if Dean truly had a temper, and Sloane insists with literal seriousness that Dean will not kill anyone.

That night, Cassie cannot sleep because Sloane snores. Instead, Cassie mentally reviews the other Naturals and then uses an old profiling exercise: imagining herself inside someone else’s skin. Cassie chooses Lia, reconstructing Lia’s physical habits, messy room, clothes, locked door, and defensive confidence until Cassie senses a deeper truth beneath Lia’s performance: Lia is at the house because she has nowhere else to go.

The chapter shifts into a second-person killer perspective. The unidentified killer returns home, places a murdered woman’s lipstick with a collection of other lipsticks taken as keepsakes, and reflects that the authorities never notice the missing trophy. The killer savors the memories and plans future violence, making clear the murders are ongoing and compulsive.