“Crime fighters who spent more time chasing their tails than generating any real leads,” I muttered. “Let’s just say my dad reached a new level of pissed last night when he discovered some rookie cop who was in diapers when Dad announced his retirement collared the guy he’d invested six figures of time and money into finding.”
Connor covered his mouth. “How many veins do you think he burst?”
“In which part of his body?” I replied with a straight face. “Because I counted at least three in his forehead alone.”
Connor grinned as he pulled up something on his phone and handed it to me. “The guy’s name is Samuel Sullivan. Former Army Ranger, current bounty hunter, thirty-four years old. Six feet-five inches, two hundred and thirty pounds of solid muscle from the look of him. Single, never married, no kids, lives in Los Angeles by himself.” Connor took a breath while I stared at the former army photo of the man who’d taken the fall for my husband. “Pretty much the recipe to create a natural-born killer.”
“Any priors?” I asked, unable to stop myself from drawing the differences between him and Noah.
“A couple of misdemeanors for getting into fights after his time in the army, but nothing major.”
“Instigator or defender in those cases?” I asked, scrolling through the general information assembled on Sullivan.
“Instigator.”
“So he’s got a temper. Lacks self-control,” I listed off, keeping my notes to myself when a couple of heads turned my way, eyes narrowed just enough. These people were acting like they were witnessing their child’s baptism and Conner and I were the black sheep members of the family smoking and cackling in the back pew.
“Has an on-again, off-again relationship with a tire iron.”
I frowned at Connor. “Is anyone raising any questions or doubts as to his role in the murders?” I handed Connor back his phone.
“What’s to question? He was caught in the middle of an attack and confessed to the killings.” Connor blinked at me. “In our world, we’d slap a bow on that and put it under the Christmas tree for Father Prosecutor himself.”
“Seriously, Connor. Because this guy is found taking out his anger issues on a known pedophile and claims to be the Huntsman, the whole world is signing off on his confession as the be-all-end-all?”
He was still blinking at me. “Since when did you start questioning the confessions of criminals?”
“I’m not questioning it. I’m just wondering if anyone else is.” I nudged him. “There’s a difference.”
“To my knowledge, everyone is happy someone caught the bastard.” He gestured at the television. “Well, except for those swarms of people who are about to begin tearing down the jail walls holding him.”
My phone was vibrating with more messages coming in, and I had a hundred different things to get caught up on at work after taking yesterday off, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the news. Around the office, phones rang and calendar alarms chimed, but there was no one nearby to acknowledge them. It reminded me of September 11th, 2001, when the entire nation had stood dumbfounded in front of their television sets, questioning the reality of the situation.
“It’s crazy after all of the things you wonder, all of the faces you imagine, that the curtain’s been dropped.” Connor’s eyes narrowed at the video footage of Sullivan being escorted into the LA precinct. “Does he at all match the image you had for our mass killer?”
I hesitated. “Maybe a little. Not really.”
“Me either.” His nose creased. “I pictured someone a little less GI Joe and more Loki, I guess. I expect to look at a serial killer’s face, and think, okay, yeah, you kill people on the regular. Buzz cut and cleft chin wasn’t filed in my mass murderer stereotype bookcase.” He shook his head when a picture of Sullivan’s army ID popped up on the television. “Dark, brooding, nerdy by day, hunter by night, basically a villain version of Clark Kent. That’s what I expected the Huntsman to be.”
When Connor glanced at me, I diverted my attention to the television, shifting in place. “You were way off. Sorry.”
Connor swatted the air in my direction while I succumbed to the inevitableness of my missed messages, wandering back to my office to sort through the day.
A string of messages from the task force group had started coming in sometime around ten last night and hadn’t stopped pinging twelve hours later. I knew we’d be assembling soon for our final meeting to rehash the past twelve hours, so I moved to the next string of texts, which were from Noah.
The skin at the back of my neck prickled when I read the first few he’d sent while I’d been at the airport, phone powered off and brain reeling. The latest message from him had come in several minutes ago.
When are you free?
A fresh surge of adrenaline drained into my system when I considered the implications tied to our next conversation. An entire ocean of decisions separated us, and I wasn’t sure either of us were capable of swimming the vast expanse to reach the other shore.
Whenever. Now. I typed back.
Go about your day as planned. We can talk later.
Without stating it, I understood what his message implied. Both of us needed to go about our lives as normal, so as to arise no suspicion should any filter our direction.
I should be finished at the office by six. I responded.
I’ve got a group meeting that runs until 7. I’ll come home right after.
My eyes lifted to the door, anxious someone, somehow, knew the truth. There was no one there, not even the steady flow of bodies milling down the hall.
See you then.
I stalled as I was about to hit Send, the instinct to attach a sentiment I hadn’t included in my messages to him in years pricking to the surface. It seemed the worst possible time for something so simple and yet so complicated where Noah and I were involved to make its revival. Ten hours ago, he’d confessed to the murders of over thirty lives. In so doing, he’d admitted he’d been keeping secrets from me for years, lying to me, keeping me in the dark as to his darkness.
I should have been feeling any other emotion than the one I did. Any other one.
Yet there was no mistaking it. The surge swelling inside me, the tug of the current I felt pulling me under. Love. It was so similar to drowning—struggling for breath, both floating and sinking as invisible waves ebbed over you, drawing you deeper into its depths.
Maybe I’d drowned, where Noah was concerned, years ago. Maybe only recently. I didn’t know.
We humans were odd creatures. For being as advanced as the race was ascribed to be, more often than not, our emotions did not align with the actions that created them. For our ability to reason, we were quite irrational at times.
I pressed Send before I could contemplate my parting words any longer.
Ignoring the harsh, yet brief, messages my dad had fired off sometime this morning, likely explaining away his behavior last night, and yet still finding some way to blame me for it, I was about to give a client an update on her case when another message chimed across my screen.
It was from Ed Baker. I assumed it would be a brief message letting me know there was nothing left to investigate on the Skovil murder now that the Huntsman had been caught, but his text was brief. Bordering on cryptic.
We need to meet. Today.
A moment later, a follow-up message came.
It’s urgent.
My fingers froze around the phone. Nothing good had ever been ascribed to that two-word qualifier.
What time? I wrote back, thoughts spinning as to what this could be about, every one of them revolving around Noah and his secret identity.
Ed couldn’t know about Noah. This had to do with one of my open cases.
As soon as you can get here.
The urgency did nothing to calm my nerves.
I can be at the precinct in thirty minutes, I typed, already rising from my chair and collecting my purse. Apparently this was not the day for catching up on of
ficial work business.
Don’t come to the precinct. Another message came a few moments later. Meet me at the diner a few blocks north.
After confirming with a quick ok, I rushed out of my office, unhindered by anyone needing a signature or to soundboard an idea or to impart a brief greeting. Everyone was still stuffed in the conference room, watching one of the news stories of our lifetimes unfold.
Once I was in the elevator, I shot a message to Connor, letting him know I had an important meeting pop up and would be back sometime before lunch—I hoped. He must have been distracted by the television because his typical under-thirty-second response didn’t follow.
The drive from the office to the diner was an utter and total blur. When I turned off the SUV after squeezing into a parking space, I realized I had no recollection of the drive. The roads I’d taken to get there, the stop lights I’d hit or missed, the pedestrians I’d yielded to or not.
Outside the SUV, the scent of rain mixed with the aroma of coffee—the quintessential fragrance of Seattle—but something else was bleeding in between. The metallic tang of fear—my own.
“Grace!” someone shouted from the parked vehicle I was flying past.
Stopping mid-stride, I discovered Ed situated in the driver’s seat of his 1970s Buick. The thing was more than twice as long as the little Prius parked beside it. I’d only seen him in anything other than his patrol car a handful of times, and this one of those instances.
“I thought we were meeting in the diner.” I hitched my thumb over my shoulder as I approached.
“Too many people.” Ed leaned across the passenger seat, pushing open the door. “My car’s safer.”
I hesitated on the sidewalk, fear crawling its way a little deeper when I noticed the look on Ed’s face. “What’s going on?”
He hit the back of the passenger seat with his big hand. “Just. Get in.”
His vintage Buick was one of his few prized possessions. He kept it covered and in a garage most days of the year, reserving those few special drives for clear, sunny days in the summer. I’d never been inside it, and I tried not to let myself consider what urgent item had spurred its voyage out into the rain-drenched skies late in October.
“Does this have to do with the Skovil case?” I asked, wiping the rain from my face.
“To a degree.” Ed stared out the windshield, the scrape of the wipers sweeping across the glass filling in the silence. “It has more to do with your husband.”
I gripped the door handle. “Noah?” I took a breath in hopes it would even my tone. “What about him?”
Ed sighed, then reached into the back seat to grab a laptop. He fiddled with it for a few moments before tilting the screen so I could see. “I finally scrounged up some of the intersection footage from the area around Skovil’s apartment the night he was killed.”
On the screen was a black-and-white video clip that had been taken from one of the many cameras the city had set up at various intersections. I’d probably watched a month’s worth of video surveillance in my career, but I didn’t want to watch this clip. I couldn’t.
Because I knew what Ed had found buried in the countless flow of cars coming and going that night back in September.
My throat burned as I struggled to form words. “Did you find anything?”
“I did.” Ed nodded, hitting Play on the first clip he pulled up. “And it wasn’t Samuel Sullivan.”
A city bus rolled through the intersection, followed by a couple of nondescript vehicles, followed by another that wasn’t. Ed punched Pause, glancing at the screen before looking away. A heavy sigh rumbled from him.
“There’s another one of him making the return trip an hour later. Exactly during the time the coroner placed Skovil’s time of death.”
My eyes burned from staring at the laptop screen, unable to blink. It was Noah in his silver sedan, license plate clearly visible, several blocks away from Skovil’s apartment a few minutes past eleven at night. I knew the reason for his late-night journey into one of the most crime-ridden areas of the city.
I also knew that with a stretch of creativity, a good defense attorney could come up with a half dozen theories as to why an esteemed psychiatrist with a family would be making a run into a sketchy section of Seattle. Making a house call on one of his clients, checking on a support group member who’d missed a meeting. Noah worked with people our society preferred to shun. His car captured moving through the same intersection in the span of an hour within the timeframe a man had been murdered didn’t prove Noah was responsible. There was no blood on his hands.
Just dark gloves.
My eyes closed when I could look at the still frame no longer. “Why are you showing me this?”
He exhaled. “I think you know why.”
My ears rang, the volume moving from a dull hum to a deafening blast in a few moments. “The Huntsman’s been arrested.”
“I’m aware of the arrest.” The leather seat creaked when Ed shifted. “But I think we both know they got the wrong man.”
The scream of noise filled my head, growing in strength every second I spent trapped in the car. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m simply stating facts.”
“No, you’re speaking in conjecture and insinuations.” I pinched the bridge of my nose in an effort to dull the pain, but it didn’t help. “Just . . . tell me what you’re trying to say already.”
The laptop clicked closed, Ed settling it into the back seat again. “Your husband, Noah Wolff, is the real Huntsman, and at his hand, thirty-three men have had their lives cut short, masked as self-inflicted departures.” Ed took a breath. “That clear enough for you?”
Something fractured. I wasn’t sure what part or to what extent, but I knew I had to get out of the car before the rest shattered.
“Grace? What are you doing?” Ed asked, looking between me and the car door I’d thrown open. “We’re not done talking.”
“I’m done,” I answered, leaping out of the car.
Ed’s finger’s brushed my arm, but I was out of reach before he could get a hold of me.
I ran, not knowing what I was running from, only certain it was essential I keep moving. Maybe I was trying to outrun reality, or the accusation Ed had made, or maybe I ran because the physical toll on my body was a reprieve from the mental one I’d been enduring for hours . . . days . . . years.
I couldn’t imagine the stares I got from strangers as I flew by or how I must have looked to drivers as I carved through bodies milling across intersections, but I didn’t stop running until my shoes reached their limit. The heel of my left pump snapped off between Third and Fourth Streets.
Lungs straining, legs aching, I discovered my mind had finally quieted. Clarity surged into the stillness, patching in the cracks and seams forged by doubt and fear.
The haze of life’s minutiae had lifted, leaving blinding conviction in its place.
I knew.
What to do.
Who I was.
Who I wanted to be.
The path unfolded before me, one shallow breath at a time, right there on the corner of Third and Main.
Twenty-Seven
Noah wasn’t answering his phone, and I didn’t know if it was because he was slammed with back-to-back appointments or if something less benign was to blame. If he had picked up, I couldn’t tell him what evidence Ed had dumped on me earlier. I doubted Ed or anyone in the department had managed to finagle a warrant for our phones yet, but I was taking zero chances.
Only seven hours had passed since the meeting in Ed’s car, but an era had passed in that span of time, one ending, a new one rising.
I’d returned to the office to wrap up a few things, and when six rolled around, the office had been mostly empty for a couple of hours. The nationwide broadcast had kept bodies glued to the conference room most of the day, but the local news had advised everyone to get home early tonight if possible, thanks to all of the riotin
g and protesting cropping up around the city.
I’d mostly ignored the onslaught of news streaming on the screens scattered around the office, but ignorance wasn’t possible when I left work and embarked onto the dark streets of downtown Seattle.
There was no such thing as rush hour in the Emerald City. It was rush hours, which typically ran from four to seven on workdays, yet tonight the streets were so quiet, it was as if we’d gotten hit with several inches of snow. Police cars, cabs, and a brave handful of commuters like myself littered the empty streets, giving an eerie omen of an apocalypse nearing.
Most of the stores were closed, but a handful of coffee shops and restaurants remained open, an act of rebellion. A silent fuck you to the powers that be.
At first, I couldn’t see what all of the fuss was about with the alleged riots— media fear-mongering at its most insidious. That changed when I turned down the street the police precinct was located on.
A barrier had been set up around the station, policemen in full riot gear keeping the pack of protesters from breeching the perimeter. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of protesters dressed in black were shouting, stabbing signs exhibiting the Huntsman’s mark into the air.
Stopped at a red light, it changed from red to green and back to red but my SUV didn’t budge. I’d never seen anything like the scene playing out in front of me—not in real life anyways. All of this for one serial killer an expanding populace had elevated to a near god-like status. It seemed counterintuitive that a murderer would be the entity to raise a rabble of followers that spanned the nation, stirring citizens in a manner that resembled a revolution, a movement. A change.
At our core, we were a nation of revolutionists. Two hundred fifty years later, it appeared we’d revived our origin story.
After double-checking the calendar in my phone, I plugged the church’s address into my navigation and moved through the intersection with the next green light. The time of arrival showed as 7:04 p.m., which would have put me at the nineteenth-century Catholic church after the meeting ended, but at least half of the time allowance factored in heavy traffic. Since there was no traffic, I guessed I’d arrive five to ten minutes before the meeting wrapped up.
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