Killer Instinct

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, emotional abuse, and child abuse.

“The majority of children who are kidnapped and killed are dead within three hours of the abduction. Thanks to my roommate, the walking encyclopedia of probabilities and statistics, I knew the exact numbers. I knew that when you went from discussing hours to days and days to weeks, the likelihood of recovery dropped so far that the FBI couldn’t justify the manpower necessary to keep the case active.”

Killer Instinct opens with a paragraph meant to create tension and suspense by establishing the novel’s life-and-death stakes. It introduces the novel’s sense of realism with real-life statistics, which also sets up Cassie’s profiling expertise, thus contributing to her characterization.

“I knew that by the time a case was classified ‘cold’ and found its way to us, we were probably looking for a body—not a little girl.

But…

But Mackenzie McBride was six years old.

But her favorite color was purple.

But she wanted to be a ‘veterinarian pop star.’

You couldn’t stop looking for a kid like that. You couldn’t stop hoping, even if you tried.”

This passage immediately follows the opening paragraph, which focuses on crime statistics, and further develops Cassie’s point of view. Her focus on the missing girl’s personality characterizes her as more emotional than her yet-unnamed roommate, Sloane, and thus more caring and empathetic, which foreshadows her actions in the rest of the novel.

“I turned the lipstick over in my hand, staring at it in the dark. No matter how many times I tried to throw it away, I couldn’t. It was a masochistic reminder: of the people I’d trusted, the people I’d lost.”

This quote introduces the symbol of Cassie’s lipstick, which often conveys her state of mind throughout the novel. At the beginning of the story, Cassie’s struggles to “throw it away” mirror her struggle to let go of her traumatic past. The passage therefore lays the groundwork for further exploration of The Impact of Trauma on Behavior and Emotional Intelligence, including the importance of Cassie’s relationships with Locke and her mother with regard to her character arc.