“Cancel him,” Kate said.“Henry Buchwalter can spiral for a while.This isn’t negotiable.”
A beat.Kate could hear the shift in her mother’s breathing—the moment a person moved from arguing to obeying because the fear in the other person’s voice cut through everything else.“Alright,” her mother said softly.“I’ll put the kettle on and tell Henry to go home and add commas.I’ll lock the door.I won’t go anywhere.”
“Good.”Kate swallowed.“I’m going to get a patrol car outside.If anyone knocks and says they’re police, ask them to show ID pressed against the glass, then call dispatch and confirm.No exceptions.”
“I know the drill,” her mother murmured, and despite everything there was a thread of wry in it.“I taught half of campus how to spot a con.Don’t treat me like someone who replies to those Nigerian princes.”
“Sorry,” Kate said, and sounded like she wasn’t.“I love you.”
“I love you more than the alphabet,” her mother said.“Go be ferocious.”
Kate ended the call.She didn’t sit.She didn’t breathe in a way that felt like a breath.She met Marcus’s eyes.
“Winters,” he said, already fishing his phone out.“Campus police.Local PD.We’re going to have a crowd on her lawn so fast the neighbors will think she’s won a prize.”
“Do it,” Kate said.It was a mess, because she was meant to be off the case, taking leave.But it just had to be faced.She sent Director Winters a terse text with address, threat vector, code provenance; it was the kind of message that never looked like enough until you realized that people like Winters knew how to read the white space.
A reply pinged almost before she’d locked her screen:On it.Portland PD rolling.University security alerted via chief of police.No comfort, no hand-holding.No why aren’t you where you said you’d be… Blessed be.
Marcus was already giving a lieutenant a version of what could be given without handing the world to the press.“—credible threat, specific identifiers, keep her residence under observation, we need an officer on the fourth floor outside three-oh-four, and yes, Sergeant, I know it’s Monday, no, I can’t fax you the affidavit because there isn’t one, that’s why I’m asking rather than ordering.”He paused, glanced at Kate.“She says the 96 bus stop is directly opposite the south gate.”He listened.“Thanks.”
A knock on the glass.A flash of curls and a dark blazer—Torres, damp around the edges from a morgue that always felt like the inside of a steel drawer.She read the temperature in the room instantly.“What?”
“The markings at the Kellerman scene yielded some scary stuff,” Kate said.“Related to my mom’s routines and today’s date.”
Torres’s mouth flattened.“Shit.”She shoved the door wider with her shoulder.“I’ve got updates from the autopsy, but they can wait. If he’s poking at your family, we can assume he wants you looking, not panicking.”
When she’d gone, the room felt both larger and more difficult to breathe.Marcus lowered his phone.“Two cars en route,” he said.“One to track the bus route.One outside your mom’s.”
“Good,” Kate said.The word landed squarely.It didn’t feel like enough, but nothing ever could.
She reached for the handbook again, not because she needed to see anything in it, but because it was something to hold.The eagle on the cover looked faintly ridiculous.She thought about all the years Cox had spent constructing his theology out of fragments, how he kept making altars and calling them classrooms.She thought about the spotted calf, not golden, raised and fed and paraded until a knife made it into a lesson.
Whatever Cox was teaching, she refused to be the student.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Monday 24thFebruary
It was half-four in the afternoon and the coffee tasted of metal and exhaustion.They’d spent the day hunting Cox in derelict churches; the smell of dust and pigeons clung to their clothes.
Now Kate sat behind the wheel of the Bureau-issued sedan, one hand loosely on the steering wheel, the other cupped around the paper cup for warmth.Outside, the afternoon light had flattened to grey, the kind that made everything—cars, sidewalks, even faces—look slightly colourless.Beside her, Marcus scrolled through the latest briefing on his phone, the screen light reflected in his tired eyes.
“Umpteen locations,” he said finally.“Umpteen dead ends.”
Kate gave a humourless laugh.“And one active meth lab.Thank you Kowalski.”
“Who’s Kowalski?”
“The sane one of the urban explorers Cox got pally with in prison,” she said.“That kid did us a favour.He might’ve been trespassing, but he’s got good instincts.If I can, I want to put in a good word for him.”
Marcus turned his head.“You think that’ll help?”
“I think it’ll give him a chance not to spend the rest of his life in a cell.He deserves that much.Only problem is, I wasn’t at the prison on official business.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow.“Somehow, you’ve got this way of making things complicated for yourself.Always.”
She shrugged.“It’s just how I roll, as my mom would put it.”
