"Ray, I need you to listen to my voice." Jenn tried to hold him down, but he pushed her away again. She stumbled backwards, surprised at his strength.

"Leave me alone!" Ray shouted, clutching his head. "Stop messing with my head."

The office door flew open, and her partners came out in a rush to see what was going on. Ben frowned at Ray's condition and turned to Jenn with a questioning look. Jenn met his gaze, and something flickered in her eyes.

"Mr Darce," she called out suddenly, waving at Ben.

Ben gave her a confused look. Was she finally out of her mind?

Ray blinked, releasing his head. "Dad?" Ray let his hands drop to his sides and turned to Ben, puzzled. "I thought you were in Milan."

"Nope, he's back." Jenn said in a cheery voice. To her partners, she mouthed, "Play along." Then she said to Ray, "See, Mrs Darce is back too." She swung her gaze to J. Lee, hinting her to step in.

Immediately, J. Lee's composed face broke into a spontaneous smile. "Ray darling, come give your mummy a big hug," she said, beaming.

Jenn and Ben raised their eyebrows at her, blatantly surprised at her quick acting.

Ray grinned brightly at his "mother", not suspecting anything. "Mum, I missed you so much," he said as he engulfed J. Lee in a hug.

J. Lee visibly gulped in his embrace and mouthed to the two agents, "Some help here."

Jenn suppressed a laugh as she hurried forward and patted Ray's shoulder. "Wake," she commanded.

Ray's body tensed for a moment before he was out of his trance. "What the ...?" He trailed off as he realised what he was doing to poor J. Lee. Then he quickly released her, muttering an apology.

J. Lee simply gave him a grim look. "You owe me big time." She exhaled sharply and sat down on the couch, raising an eyebrow at Jenn. "How did he go all haywire just now?"

"Yeah, what happened?" Ben asked.

Their questions were left hanging. Ray just stared at Jenn, still appearing dazed from the trance. He rubbed his forehead, feeling the headache after the intense session with her.

"The trance the killer induced was too deep," Jenn simply replied. "Sorry, Ray. I shouldn't have done that. How are you feeling?"

Ray plopped down on the couch. "Exhausted." He put his head in his hands. "And I feel a splitting headache coming on." He muttered, releasing a low groan.

"Can you make some tea for him, J?" Jenn said as she went and sat down beside Ray.

Ben stood there awkwardly. "Is he okay now?"

"What do you think?" Jenn frowned, studying Ray's pallid face. "He needs to get some rest."

"Got it," Ben muttered as he moved towards Ray. Carefully he placed Ray's arm around his neck and lifted Ray off the couch. "Damn. I think he's going to faint." He brought Ray into their bedroom as quickly as he could, and Jenn helped him get Ray into bed.

Ben collapsed on the bed beside Ray, who seemed to be drifting off into unconsciousness already. "What does his mother feed him?" Ben grumbled, sounding slightly out of breath.

"Don't blame him for working out too much," Jenn said with amusement. "He just wants to impress the opposite sex. Don't all guys do that?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

He smirked humourlessly. "Did he impress you?"

She sighed wearily. "Are you're implying that I'm attracted to him?"

Ben pushed himself up into a sitting position, watching her with accusing eyes. "Well, the kid's obviously interested in you," he stated flatly. "And I've seen the way you look at him."

"And what did you observe?" she asked, feigning interest.

He ignored the taunting look on her face and replied, "Well, I've never seen you treat anyone else the way you treat him."

Jenn was silent for a moment. She recalled everything that happened between her and Ray throughout the last few days and remembered the few times when she felt weird tingling feelings inside her during her time spent with Ray. She knew what those feelings meant, but she wasn't attracted to him in that way – was she?

"I care for him," she finally said, choosing her words cautiously. "I've known him since we were young. Of course I would treat him differently than how I treat others. Not everyone I know of is my childhood friend."

Ben pursed his lips. "I truly hope that you don't let your past blind you on this case," he muttered.

She laughed dryly. "Isn't that why you're here, to keep an eye on me for your dad?" she jeered. She knew that she had crossed the line, but she didn't like his tone. Ugh, why was she letting him get under her skin again?

At this, Ben clenched his teeth. "I'm just looking out for you, Jennifer," He said calmly with a composed face.

She smiled at him coyly. "Well, thank you, then," she replied, mirroring his tone. "I am truly touched, partner."

Just then, someone knocked on the door, interrupting their little banter. J. Lee walked in, holding a cup of hot tea. Jenn went over to take the tea from her and turned to Ray, who was supposedly deep asleep. Seeing this, Jenn sighed.

"Anyone else wants some tea?" she asked as she gave Ben a glance, putting their conversation behind her. When no one answered, she sighed. "I'll have it, then. Thanks, J. Lee."

With that, Jenn left the room.

~

The next day passed by in a flash. J. Lee had managed to narrow down their list of possible targets for the killer's final kill. The next target, Kayla Brown, was the only redhead in the town who had dyed her hair black over the last week right after returning home from her university studies in Ireland. It seemed that the scent at the last crime scene was the fragrance of the perfume that she used to wear. She fitted the profile perfectly. Now J. Lee was on a stake-out at the girl's house.

Jenn spent the whole day in the office with Ben, poring over the files repeatedly, but they were no closer to figuring out who the killer was. J. Lee had checked Ray's house phone and cell phone record, but there weren't any suspicious phone calls. There were just a couple of missed calls from Isabella, Tom, Nick, and his parents, all calling Ray to ask if he was okay because they hadn't seen or heard from him in days.

She had finally resolved to ask Agent Turner to conduct interviews with all people who attended the party again and with three suspects on their list. And the results were despairing. It turned out that those people were really just naïve that they thought that hiding the truth about Gina's birthday party was best for them. As for the three suspects, each of them had a solid alibi.

On the night of the party, he was having a movie night with Isabella, so it couldn't have been him crashing the party and committing the murder.

As for Paul Tanner and James Hendricks, they were back at the bank the whole time during the party. Apparently, they were trying to solve some bank account problems for their client. They had conveniently forgotten to inform Nick about that, which then led to raising all the suspicions.

So now they were basically stuck.

"There must be something that we're not seeing," Ben muttered, leaning back in his chair.

"No, I think we're seeing too much. That's the problem," Jenn mumbled tiredly as she crossed her arms on the table and rested her forehead on them. "I wish J. Lee were here instead of you – no offense."

"And why is that?" Ben asked, sounding offended despite her last two words.

"In case you hadn't noticed why I asked to have her on the team, it's because she can easily identify crucial elements in all kinds of situation. Her mind is built in such a way that she's able to sift through every grain of information we have to find the focal point of the case," Jenn explained in a bored voice. "I think that we're seeing too many possibilities here. That's why we need her to simplify things."

"Huh," Ben uttered, seeming to comprehend what Jenn had just told him. "So that's why she's always so blunt."

Jenn just grunted in response, her mind starting to run again after hearing her own words. What if the case was just how it looked? What if she was wrong about the last target? Perhaps this was just a psychopathic serial killer that they were dealing with. Then there would be no last target. It could be that the killer just had a change in his victim preference, so he started going after brunettes. Maybe this was just a thrill killer's game with them.

But then how could she explain the break in time pattern? And what about the scented note the killer left at the crime scene? The killer had made it clear that this was a scheme to get some sort of revenge.

According to his method of killing, the serial killer displayed a strong urge to break his target from the inside and to make her feel hopelessness, to let her feel the life being sucked out of her. That was the cruellest way to kill a person. The way she saw it, the killer must have suffered through some kind of psychological pain to cause him to perform such a diabolical act. It could most probably be that he lost someone dear to him and was blaming his target for being the cause of his loss. This brought her back to the relationship-gone-wrong theory.

"Hey, are you okay?" Ben's voice broke through her reverie.

She waved her index finger at Ben to silence him, not bothering to raise her head. "I'm thinking."

"Mind sharing your thoughts?" he asked again.

Jenn huffed. "Why don't you go check on Ray?" she suggested, feeling annoyed at him for breaking her train of thought. Then she heard the sound of his chair scraping noisily on the floor as he got up and left the room. He did it on purpose. She was sure of that. He knew that she didn't like it when people slammed doors and dragged chairs on the floor. She thought that it was disrespectful and unprofessional.

She rolled her eyes and went back to her perusal of the case. With Ben gone, she finally raised her head and leaned back against the back of her chair. It was rather hard to focus on her thoughts when she kept noticing his gaze on her every two minutes while they were studying the papers in front of them.

Back to the case, she remembered that she had stopped at what was the cause of the killer's revenge. Okay, so the killer wanted his target to feel his pain. But if he really wanted that, couldn't he just finish the target off straight away in the first place? She understood if he meant to use the first six murders to cover his tracks, to hide his motive, but then why did the killer decided to break pattern? What made him change his plans? Could it be that Kayla Brown had somehow provoked him again? Or was it the killer who had slipped up and raised suspicions?

More and more questions arose, but she found no answers to them. Something vital was missing. She needed to do some digging into Kayla Brown's past later.

The door opened suddenly, interrupting her thoughts again. She sighed as Ben came back into the office and closed the door behind him.

"The kid's doing fine," he said to her, sitting down opposite her. "I just don't get why he's so tired."

"Imagine the Great Wall of China inside your head and you're trying to put a hole through it to remember something. Get it now?"

"Huh," he uttered, plainly not liking the look she was giving him. "There's another thing that I don't get. Yesterday you said that you were going to lift his self-induced trance. And yet when J and I came out, he just went maniac on us instead. So what exactly were the two of you doing?"

She laughed unexpectedly. "What did it look like to you?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her, but he made a guess anyway. "He was still in a trance."

"You're just stating the obvious," she said. Her face was composed again. "Well, I did lift the self-induced trance. But then I decided to help him find the trigger, so I put him under again and brought him back to the night of the first murder."

"You did what?" He widened his eyes, leaning forward towards the table.

"I was just hoping to use his memory to get a glimpse of how the trance was induced by the killer," she explained. "If I can get him to remember his interaction with the killer, something might just jump out in the memory. You never know."

"Then how on earth did he go all haywire?" Ben asked in puzzlement.

Jenn sighed. "Well, after he got to the part where the killer steps in, I improvised a little. I asked him to try to get a look at the killer's face." She muttered with a hint of regret. "It was foolish of me to allow myself to do so. I went too far." A frown started to form on her forehead, revealing the guilt and anxiety that was building up inside of her.

"Hey, everyone makes mistakes," Ben said quietly, his eyes softening. He longed to reach out and hold her hand, but he stopped himself. Jenn rarely showed her true self to him these days. He didn't want scare her off now.

"I clearly knew that it wouldn't end well, not when he was in so deep." She turned her gaze away, feeling her emotions surfacing. "Whoever did this to him, I have to say that this hypnotist sure knows what he's doing."

His lips formed a thin line. "And I'm sure that you know what you're doing too. You're Jumping Spider, the master of human manipulation," he reminded her, sounding proud of her despite her situation right now.

Hearing his reassuring words, Jenn smiled absentmindedly. "Yeah, that's what everyone in the service calls me, but do they realise that I'm human too? That I might lose my touch someday?" Her smile became mirthless. She was so immersed in her self-doubting thoughts that she didn't notice Ben getting up and moving around the table towards her. "Do they even know that I get tired and upset like everyone else does?" She continued to speak sullenly.

"I do," Ben said as he stood behind her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. He felt her body stiffen at his touch. "I don't know about the others, but I do realise that your talents might just slip away someday. And when the time comes, I'll still trust you."

Jenn swallowed hard, trying to suppress the emotions that were threatening to burst out of her. She felt her will softening at his familiar warm touch. She realised that she missed him so much. But then her heart writhed as she remembered why she had banned herself from him in the first place. No, she couldn't let herself be fooled by his gentle touch and tender words anymore.

Not again.

"Thanks for your reassurance, but please know your limit, partner," Jenn said, her voice turning impassive. She shrugged off his hand as she stood up. She didn't turn around to reprimand him on his action just now. Instead, she just left the office and went straight into her room.