“I’m saying—”
“I know exactly what he can do.”Her voice rose, sharp enough that Torres glanced at the door.“I know it better than anyone, and that’s why I’m the one who should be out there, not sitting in some office cataloguing old manuscripts.Jesus, Marcus—don’t you see?If we back off now, we hand him the narrative.”
He winced.“I’m just saying—”
“No, you’re not,” she snapped.“You’re agreeing with her.”
The air between them felt suddenly thin.She could feel the pulse hammering in her throat.Torres opened her mouth, thought better of it, and turned toward the window, giving them space.
Kate shoved back her chair.“I need to get out of here.”
“Kate—”
“Don’t,” she said.“Not now.”
She snatched her coat from the back of the chair and left before either of them could follow.
Out in the corridor, the hum of the precinct swallowed her.Phones rang, printers clicked, someone shouted across the bullpen — all the ordinary sounds of order in motion.But for her, it was all wrong.The rhythm that had carried her up the stairs an hour earlier had turned against her, cold and hollow.The optimism from her meeting with Gabe — gone, as if it had never existed.
At the end of the hall, the stairwell yawned open, dim and quiet.She took it without thinking, boots echoing on the concrete.By the time she reached the street, the rain had thickened to a steady fall.
She stood under the awning, breathing hard.
Across the street, traffic blurred through the wet.The city moved as it always did — indifferent, relentless.Somewhere in its sprawl, Elijah Cox was watching.Waiting.And she could feel it again, like a thread pulled tight between them.
She reached into her pocket for her phone, thumbed it once, then stopped.
No.Not yet.
She needed to be angry.To stay angry.
Anger, at least, was a kind of clarity.And she knew just where she was going to take it.
CHAPTER NINE
Tuesday February 11th
The morning sun had the brittle clarity that only comes towards the end of northern winters — the kind that makes even frost look polished.Kate drove north out of Portland with the heater humming, a takeaway coffee cooling in the cup holder and an unmarked folder on the passenger seat.Frost clung to the trees like icing sugar.The sky was pale, eggshell blue, and the fields on either side of the road glimmered faintly where the ground had frozen in shallow ruts.
She’d flown back from NYC the night before, and left her tiny Portland apartment just before dawn, without telling anyone.That was the point.Marcus thought she was back at the field office, working up an authentication case on a batch of four-hundred-year-old land deeds.Winters thought she was taking a few days’ personal leave to “recalibrate.”
Only one person knew where she was going — Charles Day, Governor of Sherborne Federal Penitentiary.And even he didn’t know why.
Kate wasn’t sure she knew, either.She told herself it was follow-up work, the necessary housekeeping of unfinished business.But deep down, she knew it was something darker: curiosity, or compulsion, or the simple need to stare again into the hole Cox had left in the world.
The prison was fifty miles northwest, squatting in the hills above a shuttered logging town.The last stretch of road wound through pine forest, the trees packed tight, their needles edged in ice.Kate rolled down the window an inch, letting in the air — sharp, clean, and carrying the faintest tang of woodsmoke, like bacon frying miles away.
She tried to focus on the road, but her mind kept circling back to the lie she’d told the Governor.The first lie, she’d better call it, since she felt certain it would have siblings before the day was out.Small, strategic, necessary — but a lie all the same.And once you started the line between necessity and obsession blurred fast.
She told herself Cox had forced her hand.That was always the justification: he’d made her doubt what she knew, who she could trust.He’d made her build a wall around her own investigation, because every time she let someone in, he found a way through.
The road crested a ridge, and she caught her first glimpse of the prison — a massive, low complex of concrete and wire, the colour of weathered bone.Beyond it, the Atlantic shimmered faintly, miles away but visible in the clean air.The sunlight gave everything a false warmth, like a photograph of summer printed in winter ink.
She slowed as she approached the checkpoint.The guard recognised her name on the list and waved her through without comment.That was good.She wanted to be invisible here — just another Bureau visitor, nobody worth gossip.
Inside the outer fence, the landscape turned to gravel and razor wire.Watchtowers stood like chess pieces, their windows flashing in the light.She parked outside the admin block, switched off the engine, and took a moment before getting out.
She hadn’t been back here since the escape, a little over three months ago.The memory still carried a sour, metallic taste — grappling with Cox in the forest, the sirens, the sight of Marcus in the hospital bed, his skin an unnatural, chemical puce, a whole kraken of tubes and leads keeping him alive.
