“And what is Sunday?”
“The Lord’s day.”
“Then remember this also,” Cox said quietly.“Sunday is when the mask slips.When men who claim to believe show the truth of their faith by the things they choose to do instead of worship.They think no one sees.But He sees.And now, so do we.”
Friday nodded, almost reverently.
Cox watched him for a moment longer, then waved a hand.“Goodbye, Friday.”
Later, much later, Cox arrived back at his own lodgings.Not a church but another place with a different, original purpose.The only surviving reminder of that was a sign saying Strictly No Smoking Anywhere and a row of rusted gas taps.
He reached for a cigarette, an old habit he rarely indulged.The match flared briefly, a tiny dawn in the gloom.He inhaled once, a single, almighty drag to the bottom of his lungs, then set the cigarette down, untouched, to die in its own smoke.
He had his own wall art here.On the wall opposite, Kate Valentine stared back at him from a dozen angles.
He rose, moved closer, studying her through the years.The early photos he had obtained from newspapers, old Bureau archives, a few Facebook hacks and a childhood neighbor, willing to sell memory for cash.Later, he had taken them himself—or had others take them.There she was at twenty-eight, standing beside her partner outside a courthouse; at thirty-three, looking awkward in a peach-colored bridesmaid’s dress.
Every stage, an unfolding.Every trial, a step in the pilgrimage he had mapped.
He spoke softly, as though she could hear him through the paper.
“You have walked the path I set before you, Kate.Each loss, each terror, each test—you endured.And now you are almost ready.”
He touched one of the photographs, the pad of his thumb resting briefly on her printed cheek.“When you find me, you will understand.You will see that I was never your enemy.I was the fire of your refiner.”
A noise made him glance upward—the creak of the roof in the heat, or perhaps the shifting of a pigeon in the rafters.For a moment, the sound reminded him of Brennan, the last confession gurgling in the man’s throat.Cox had expected more from that one: defiance, perhaps, or some effort at justification.Instead there had been only disbelief, the blank animal incomprehension of a man who had no idea what sin he was paying for.
He’d been a small man, Brennan.Slight in body, slight in faith.The kind who worked on the Sabbath and pretended that his moral blindness was a different, ghastly, modern word.Drive.His death had been clean, almost merciful.Cox had prayed over him after.He always did.The prayer for release, the one that began,“Lord, take this soul who has trespassed and deliver him unto the light of thy judgement.”
He knelt now on the cracked tiles and repeated the words under his breath.
“Lord, take this soul who has trespassed, and deliver him unto the light of thy judgement.Cleanse him of the lie of labor, of the delusion of self-righteousness.Forgive his ignorance, if not his pride.”
The echo in the building made the words larger than they were, turning prayer into proclamation.
Cox stayed kneeling, eyes closed, breathing evenly.He let his mind drift.In the darkness behind his eyelids, faces appeared—Brennan’s, fading; Kate’s, vivid; Friday’s, blurred and shapeless.Around them all, the slow-turning wheel of the plan.
It had taken him years to build the pattern, each act another spoke.People thought of him as a killer, but he wasn’t.Killing was incidental.Necessary sometimes, yes, but never the goal.His true work was revelation—forcing the world to see what it was.
He rose, stretching the stiffness from his knees.His eyes fell upon the reception desk, or what remained of it: a crescent of painted plywood, spattered with mildew.Someone had sprayed NYCRIPS neatly in the center.
A gust of wind rattled the loose boards at the door, sending a flurry of dust swirling through the light.He looked toward it, sensing the shift in temperature, the whisper of rain.Evening was nearby.Soon the city’s lights would bloom like wounds across the skyline.
He took out the list of names.He sighed, in the manner of a man who has made a decision.And he smiled, basking in the calm that came only when you knew what was next.
Outside, the Sabbath waned, and the sinners worked on.
CHAPTER THREE
Monday February 10th
The helicopter blades made a noise that sounded like the end of the world.
Kate pressed her headset tighter over her ears, though it barely made a difference.Across from her, Marcus was about to fall asleep.He had that maddening ability to nap anywhere — plane, train, or an aircraft vibrating itself to pieces in midair.
The lights of Manhattan spread out beneath them, molten and infinite.Kate had seen it a hundred times before, but never like this — midnight mist rising off the East River, skyscrapers piercing through like the spines of some prehistoric animal.
Victoria Winters’s call had come at seven that evening, just as Kate was leaving her mother’s house in Portland.No preamble, no small talk.Winters never wasted words, and when she saidnow, she meantdrop everything.
