Ash’s vision swam. His knees buckled. He tried to curse, to spit, to cling to anything—but the word was already inside him, filling his head, burning out thought. For one breathless instant, he felt something vast press close, listening through Gordon’s borrowed flesh. Then the darkness surged up, obliterating him.
Chapter Fifty
(8:19 a.m.)
“Rick!” A high-pitched voice shot through the haze, too bright, too sharp. Rick jerked upright, hand halfway to his sidearm, before he realized it was only Kitty, standing at the threshold of his office, still in her hat and coat, eyes wide and jittery as a colt.
“Jesus Christ, Kitty.” He groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face. “You trying to shave a few years off my life?” His neck ached; a knot of muscle pulled tight, the price of spending the night half-folded on the couch. The blinds were still drawn, the room steeped in that dull gray morning light that made the city look half-drowned.
With a quick snap of the door, the bullpen chatter vanished. “Sorry.” She chewed her bottom lip, fingers knotting together. “Is it true? About Frost?”
Rick swung his legs to the floor, trying to get his bearings. His shoes were somewhere under the couch; his tie a noose loosened at his throat. He raked his hair with his fingers, straightened his suspenders. “What about him?”
“I heard he’s under arrest.”
Rick exhaled slowly, hunting for one shoe in the shadows. “Yeah. We got him. He’s the Sculptor. All the pieces fit.” His voice was still rough from sleep, but the words carried weight.
Kitty blanched, her lips parting like she’d swallowed nails. She hovered near the file cabinet, glancing toward the glass wall as if the bullpen might grow ears. “Rick, I need to tell you something.”
He found the other shoe, dragged it on, and sat up straighter. “Go on.”
She paced the office, heels clicking a nervous rhythm. Once, twice, then she spun around, lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m the one who gave him the details.”
That cut through the fog in his head sharper than a razor. Rick shot to his feet, all sleep burned away. “What?”
Kitty flinched at his tone, but pressed on. “The victims. The crime scenes.” Her voice trembled, but there was no stopping it now. “I… I was seeing him.”
Rick’s pulse thudded, hot and ugly. He stepped toward her, fists clenched. “You were what?”
Her eyes brimmed behind the glasses, but she didn’t back down. “We were dating. Quietly. No one knew. He was so…” She bit the word off, shaking her head as the tears came. “He kept asking, kept pressing, and I thought—God, I thought it was harmless.”
Rick’s anger snapped loose. “Harmless?” The word was a low growl, rattling deep in his chest. “Christ, Kitty, you had to know better. You didn’t just compromise the case—you put yourself in his hands. What if he decided you were next?”
Her composure crumbled. With a jerky motion, she yanked off her glasses, dropped them on the desk, and buried her face in her palms. “I feel like such an idiot! He was using me.” The words spilled out between sobs. “I thought he cared, but he… he dropped me. Two nights ago. Just cut me off. Because he didn’t need me anymore.”
Rick stood over her, jaw tight, rage still buzzing under his skin. Every instinct told him to yell, shake some sense into her. But seeing her like that—small, broken, a kid who’d let her heart blind her—twisted the anger into something else. He cursed under his breath and put a heavy hand on her shaking shoulder. “Hey.” His voice softened. “Enough.”
She lifted her tear-streaked face, lip trembling.
He gathered her into his arms, solid and unyielding, holding her while she shook. She was nothing in his grip, fragile as wet paper, and it hit him how easy Frost had played her, peeled her open, sucked her dry.
After a long silence, she whispered against his chest, “It’s on me. He knew because of me. I had to tell you.”
Rick tightened his hold, gaze fixed on the window and the gray morning sky. “You came clean. That’s what matters.”
But even as he said it, his mind was already grinding, turning over the evidence, feeling out the new fault lines Kitty’s confession had carved through the case. Everything hinged on the murder weapon now, that damned scalpel unearthed in Frost’s home. He needed to know if Gloria had matched the prints on it to Frost’s, and he needed to know now.
Kitty pulled back and dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue. She slipped her glasses on again, trying to put the pieces of her armor together.
“You gonna be all right?” Rick asked as he grabbed his suit jacket and flung it over his arm.
She gave a sharp laugh that caught in her throat. “Yeah. Give me five minutes and a gallon of mascara, and I’ll be the picture of professional composure.” Her voice wobbled, but she made the effort, and he respected that.
He rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay, dollface. Go get some coffee.”
“Right. That’s exactly what I need.” She straightened her hat, the sharp little shrug of someone already stacking her walls back up.
They left the office together. The bullpen met them with its low thrum of morning activity, the hum of computers and muted chatter as a couple of detectives traded jokes over paper cups of joe. A thin haze of cigarette smoke hung stubbornly in the air, mixing with the scent of fresh toast from somewhere down thehall. No one looked twice at the pair of them, and that suited Rick fine.
