“Thanks for the access, Governor.And for keeping it quiet.”
He gave her a look that might have been amusement or warning.“You worry too much about being found out.”
By the time she reached her car, the light had turned brittle.The air had the electric stillness that comes before snow.She started the engine, turned the heater up, and sat for a moment, watching her breath fog the windshield.
Cox’s words — the ones she’d read in transcripts, the ones she’d heard whispered in interrogation rooms — looped in her mind:Truth is a contagion.Once you breathe it, you can’t go back to sleep.
She pulled out of the lot.
The road wound back through the forest, shadows stretching long between the trees.For the first few miles, she told herself the unease in her chest was just fatigue.She’d slept badly, she was driving alone, she was thinking too much.But when she checked the mirror, she noticed the car behind her.
Old.Boxy.Pale blue under the road grime.An Oldsmobile, maybe late eighties.She wouldn’t have noticed it at all if it hadn’t been keeping the exact same distance for the last five miles.
Her pulse quickened.
She changed lanes.So did the Oldsmobile.
She slowed for a bend.So did it.
Every instinct she’d trained herself to trust came roaring back.
At the next junction she indicated right — then at the last moment, swung left onto a smaller road.The car behind hesitated, then followed.
Definitely not coincidence.
Her heartbeat steadied.Fear had no place here; fear clouded judgment.She flipped her phone into the passenger seat, GPS still active, though she doubted there’d be a signal this deep in the woods.
A mile ahead, the road forked again.To the left, the main route to Portland.To the right, a service road leading to a disused quarry.She took the right, hard and fast, tyres spitting gravel.The Oldsmobile followed — slower, heavier, engine growling.
She accelerated, the trees blurring past.Then, halfway up the incline, she cut her lights.The world went black except for the silver slice of sky.She braked, swung the wheel, and rolled the car into a narrow layby screened by fir trees.
The Oldsmobile’s headlights swept past moments later, carving brief arcs of light through the trunks.Then they were gone.
Kate waited, counting silently.Ten seconds.Thirty.A minute.
No brake lights.No reverse.
She exhaled slowly, muscles unclenching by degrees.She wished Marcus was with her.
After another minute, she started the car again, taking a different route back toward the highway.Her hands still trembled slightly on the wheel.
Maybe it was nothing — some out-of-towner who’d taken the wrong turn, a local tweaker forever getting high and lost.Or a paranoid mind seeing patterns where there were none.She’d learned long ago, though, that paranoia was just pattern recognition in overdrive.Sometimes it kept you alive.
As the sky darkened to violet, she caught sight of the ocean again, faint and cold on the horizon.
She told herself she’d done the smart thing, the professional thing.But the truth pressed harder the closer she got to Portland.
Cox was alive.He was likely in New York, and watching.And maybe — just maybe — he was right about one thing.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror, half expecting to see the Oldsmobile again, its headlights blooming in the dusk.
Nothing.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d crossed a threshold today — that something in her had shifted.But she didn’t know what, or why.
CHAPTER TEN
The diner was half-empty, the air heavy with the scent of burnt coffee and fried onions.Kate sat in a booth near the window, hands wrapped around a mug that had seen better decades.The waitress—pink uniform, tired smile—had offered pie twice already, and twice Kate had refused.Sugar would only make the adrenaline worse.
