Outside, the light had shifted.The lunch crowd was thinning; the city was moving into afternoon.The waitress cleared a neighbouring table, stacking plates with the weary efficiency of someone who’d done it all her life.
Gabe waved a hand at Kate, bringing her back.“Have you really thought about coming back to academia?I don’t mean just now…” He tapped the table between them.“Not in a moment of panic.In a clear-headed, life-plan kind of way.”
She shook her head slowly.“Sometimes.But I think that door’s closed.”
“Doors reopen,” he said.“You just have to knock.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
They lingered a few minutes more, neither quite ready to end it.When they finally rose, Gabe reached for his wallet, but she was quicker, dropping a handful of bills onto the table.
“My turn,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow.“I grudgingly accept.”
They stepped out into the wind.The city hit her like a wave — noise, motion, the tang of diesel.Gabe stood beside her on the pavement, squinting up at the grey slice of sky between buildings.
“Take care of yourself, Kate.”
“I will.”
He touched her shoulder lightly.“And remember: he’s not inside your head unless you invite him in.”
She nodded.“I’ll try to keep the door locked.”
“Good.”He smiled, that small, weary smile she remembered from office hours and late-night thesis rewrites.
He hailed a cab, and she watched him climb in, one hand raised in farewell.The cab merged into traffic and was gone.
She turned and started walking south, the wind whipping her hair, the city roaring around her — alive, indifferent, eternal.
Somewhere out there, Elijah Cox was breathing the same air, maybe even walking these same streets.
But Kate Valentine no longer felt hunted.
She felt ready.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kate was still smiling when she pushed through the precinct doors.
The weather had taken an upward turn — the rain like tiny silver needles through the weak sunshine — and the patter of it had followed her all the way from the diner.It sat in her chest, too, like a rhythm: soft, expectant.For the first time in days, she felt almost light.Gabe had that effect.
She carried the warmth with her up the stairwell, one hand trailing along the rail.The building smelled the way police buildings always did — old paper, spilt coffee, lunches long past edible.When she reached the temporary office she shared with Marcus, she was rehearsing how she’d tell him about Gabe’s suggestion: the preparatory networking Cox could have done in prison.She was halfway through the imaginary conversation when she saw their door.
It was closed.
That, in itself, wasn’t unusual — but the light beneath it was a dull, uncertain gold, like a candle under a lid.And something in the air—some shift in energy—stopped her just long enough to register it.
She turned the handle.
Inside, the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees.Marcus was at the desk, his posture wrong — not his usual forward lean but slouched, almost apologetic, as if he’d been caught in someone else’s room, hand in the drawer.Torres stood near the window, arms folded tight, her expression unreadable.
Kate blinked.“Okay,” she said lightly.“Who emptied the cookie jar?”
Neither of them answered.
“I was joking,” she added.“I thought.”
