“I am glad Marsh brought you this far,” he said.“Truly.It will make the next act that much more… profound.”
“There is no next act,” she said.“Not for you.Not for your little fan club.”
He smiled.“You cannot close what you did not open.”
She set the phone back in its cradle with more force than necessary.The line clicked off.On the other side of the glass he remained still, watching her with that unsettling, inward-focused attention, as if he were memorising her for later use.
For one brief, absurd moment, she had the urge to lay her palm flat against the glass.To feel the cold, to confirm the barrier, to reassure herself that this man was contained by more than words.She let her hand hover an inch away, then dropped it to her side.
Bailey opened the door.“This way, Agent.”
Her legs felt heavier on the way out, as if each step had to be negotiated with gravity.The fluorescent lights seemed harsher, the buzzing louder, flattening her thoughts into a dull hum.Rivera met her at the security desk, returning her watch, her phone, the small constellation of items that meant outside.
“Everything okay?”Rivera asked, not unkindly.
“Fine,” Kate said.“He was… himself.”
Rivera shrugged.“Ain’t we all?”
Sunlight and heat hit her as she stepped out of the last door.The fences shimmered, razor wire haloed by pale sky.Her car looked small again, waiting obediently in its space.
In the driver’s seat she sat for a moment with her hands on the wheel, the fabric surprisingly cool against her palms.
Was any of that necessary?Did I need to give him that?
Yes, she decided.She needed to say it out loud, if only to hear herself choose the version of the story she wanted to live in.
Her phone buzzed.A text from Marcus.
YOU ALIVE?
She typed back:
ALIVE.HE WAS SMUG.AGAIN.MARSH = “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” IN HIS HEAD.CALL LATER.ON WAY TO MOM’S.
Three dots appeared, then disappeared.Then the sequence repeated.Then there was nothing.She guessed what was happening at the other end.Cheryl was probably telling him to put the phone down.She huffed a small, genuine laugh at that, the tightness in her chest easing an inch.
On the drive down to Portland, the road unspooled in long, bare strips.The trees along the highway were skeletal, branch-bones laced against the low sky.Everything was pale and withered, the result of an early heatwave.The radio muttered background noise she barely heard.
Honor thy father and thy mother.
The words had stalked her through this entire case, popping up in crime scenes and phone calls and now, apparently, review board notices.For years she’d heard them in King James cadence, her father’s voice reading from a church bulletin, her mother’s softer echo at the dinner table after he was gone.
What did it actually mean?
She thought of Marsh again.Of the way he'd spoken about his mother: Mary, the woman who'd worked three jobs and painted pets for extra cash, who'd gone hungry so her son could have new brushes.Of how that love had been twisted into a justification for murder.Honor as obsession.Honor as a weapon.
She thought of her own father: the hospital corridors, the long nights, the worn lines at the corners of his eyes.The way he’d scoop her up when he did make it home, smelling of antiseptic and coffee and exhaustion, and listen—really listen—as she told him about a drawing or a science project or some outrage in the girls’ corner of the playground.
How sometimes his pager would go off and he’d set her down with an apology and be out the door again, leaving a mug half-drunk on the counter.
He’d saved lives.He’d also missed vital parts of hers.Both were true.
Honoring him, she realized, had never been about pretending one cancelled the other out.It was about the choices she made now, with a badge he’d never see pinned to her jacket.It was about driving toward danger when staying home would be easier, because someone’s kid or lover needed her to.It was about pushing back against men like Cox who tried to turn commandments into knives.
Living his values didn’t mean replicating his mistakes.Maybe that was the point Marsh had accidentally illustrated, in his monstrous way: idols had feet of clay.The only safe place to put your worship was nowhere at all.
By the time she pulled up in front of her mother’s terraced house, the sky had turned lovely: summer blue with fluffy clouds, the threatened downpour a distant worry.Warm rectangles of light spilled from the front windows.
