“I was in the neighborhood, visiting a friend. Plus, the muffins here are to die for.” I nodded at my plate, where only a crumpled paper wrapper remained. “What about you?”
“Just making a quick pit stop before heading back to the station.” Detective Sawyer stood up, smoothing a hand down her coat before checking her watch. “Which means that I’ve got to run. It was nice running into you, Hayes.”
And in the next breath, she was gone.
The coffee shop came alive around me once more. Voices spilled over each other, threads of conversation tangling and slipping away. The espresso machine let out a low, continuous hiss. Ceramic clinked against ceramic. For a moment, I just sat there, staring at the empty seat across from me before forcing my gaze elsewhere—back to Alfred Thorne, who was sliding his book into the worn satchel at his feet.
I pushed Detective Sawyer to the back of my mind for now.
She had her business. I had mine. It was time to get moving.
* * *
Alfred Thorne didn’t fight back.
They never did, when I planned it right. There was no need for brute force. Strength wasn’t the key; it was control, precision, timing. The human body was nothing more than a system of chemical reactions and electrical impulses. Disrupt those reactions, override those impulses, and the whole thing would shut down like a faulty circuit.
In the corner of the room, the lamp flickered, casting fractured shadows across the planes of Alfred Thorne’s face. He was slumped in a high-backed armchair, its muted damask worn soft with age. On the low lacquered table beside him, his tea quietly cooled.
His reading glasses had slipped halfway down his nose, one of the lenses smeared with a faint impression of a thumbprint. Behind them, his pupils were dilated, but unseeing—caught in that brief moment between awareness and oblivion.
I pressed two fingers to his radial artery, just beneath the wrist. Even through the glove, his skin felt paper-thin to the touch, the veins delicate yet pronounced. His pulse was a sluggish thing, slowing down with each passing second.
From the moment Alfred Thorne pressed the insulin pen against his skin, the countdown had begun.
That was the beauty of it.
A gunshot would draw attention. A knife would leave evidence. Blood spatter, defensive wounds, fiber transfer—all forensic trails impossible to erase.
This, however? This was quiet and unassuming. Almost elegant in its simplicity. By the time he’d even realized something was wrong, the damage was already done.
Alfred Thorne’s lips parted, trembling with the effort to speak. His jaw worked uselessly, muscles straining against the fog descending over his mind.
Was it to argue? Beg? Curse? I couldn’t help but silently wonder. Not that it mattered. Hypoglycemia was setting in.
Good. That meant I’d timed it right.
I crouched beside him, careful not to knock over the stack of books teetering at his feet. A rasping sound escaped him, more breath than voice. Still, I figured it would be rude not to answer.
“You must be feeling it now. The confusion, the weakness. A little dizziness, maybe? Your blood sugar is crashing.”
But even if he somehow managed to hear me, his brain was no longer equipped to process the meaning. His body was locked into a desperate struggle against the biochemical storm tearing through his system. Every shallow breath, each twitch of his fingers told the same story—he was fighting a losing fight.
Neuroglycopenia.
The brain starved first. The confusion, the drowsiness, the panic were all part of the process.
Alfred Thorne was a diabetic. That made it easy. There’d be no suspicious puncture marks where they didn’t belong; only a slow, undetectable collapse.
Elders were always so forgetful. A few missed meals here, amiscalculated dose there, a pill taken twice by accident. Little slips that could happen to anyone. All harmless errors, until they weren’t.
Alfred Thorne’s limbs continued to spasm as though they no longer belonged to him, his body giving a last feeble attempt at resistance before it finally shut down.
The fight was fading.
It wasn’t long until he went completely still. His mouth went slack, his final words swallowed by the silence that followed.
I waited.
