Chapter 13 #2
Day 6. Police involvement noted.
"It's her," I said.
Clairmont was around the desk in two steps. "Don't open it. Let me—"
I ignored her instruction.
Day 6. Police involvement noted. I see you've chosen to escalate rather than accept help.
This is disappointing but not unexpected.
Conditioning is strong. You don't yet understand that I'm saving you, not harming you.
Six days remain. If you continue down this path—if you persist in involving those who cannot understand what you truly need—I will be forced to adjust my approach.
Your family's safety is not guaranteed if they stand between us.
Choose preservation or accept destruction. There is no third option. —V.K.
The phone nearly slipped from my hands.
Eamon caught it. Read the screen.
"She's threatening the family now," Marcus said.
Michael was already pulling out his phone. "I'm calling Ma."
Clairmont held out her hand. "Mr. McCabe, I need your phone. We'll run a trace."
I gave it to her.
She disappeared into the bullpen. Her voice rose—sharp commands to someone in tech.
Eamon spoke. "We assume she can see us now," he said. He used his tactical voice. "She knows we're at the precinct. Knows we're looking at evidence."
"Fuck," Michael muttered.
Marcus moved away from the window. Put his back to the interior wall.
She'd been inside every version of my life. The condo I thought was private. The spring training field. The family gatherings I thought were safe. She'd documented everything and photographed me through windows and across crowded stadiums.
She wanted to strip everything away until I was just a specimen under glass.
Not a person.
An object.
Eamon leaned in close. "Breathe, Mac. Four counts."
I tried. Failed. Tried again.
Four in. Hold. Four out.
The panic receded enough that the room came back into focus.
Clairmont returned. Her expression told me everything. "No trace. She's routing through multiple servers."
"Or right outside," Marcus said.
Michael looked up from his phone. "Ma's locking down. Everyone's coming to the house."
Clairmont nodded. "Until we locate Kensington, you should all stay together. We've got patrol units doing drive-bys, but she showed us she can get close."
Six days. Six days until December eighteenth. Six days until she made her move.
Unless we find her first.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
Clairmont's gaze met mine. "Now? We turn you into bait."
The room turned on edge.
Bait. I'd be the thing Vanessa wanted, dangled in front of her—everything she'd been watching for eighteen months, finally within reach.
Available.
Vulnerable.
Exactly what she'd been waiting for.
I made it fifty feet from the precinct entrance before my legs gave out.
I leaned against Eamon's car. Pressed my palms flat against the cold metal. My hands still smelled like the office—recycled air and photocopier chemicals.
I couldn't get it off my skin.
Eamon did a complete circuit around the vehicle. Checked underneath, including the wheel wells. When he finished, he opened the passenger door.
"In the car, Mac."
I stumbled inside. He closed the door. Came around. Got behind the wheel.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
My phone buzzed.
It was a text from Clairmont. A compressed file. The photos from Vanessa's apartment.
It would have been wise not to open it, but I did anyway.
The images loaded. Me at the stadium. Me leaving my building. Me running at dawn. Each marked with date and time stamps—clinical notations.
One made me stop scrolling.
It was a close-up of my face. Taken through a telephoto lens. I was smiling at something off-camera, appearing almost relaxed.
The caption read: Subject requires proper display conditions. Current environment causes deterioration.
"She talks about me like I'm a painting."
Eamon reached out for my hand to stop me from scrolling.
"You're not." He paused. "You're the person I'm falling for."
My throat closed.
For eighteen months, someone had been documenting me like a specimen. Subject. Object. Thing to be preserved.
And Eamon called me a person.
I looked at him. He was staring straight ahead through the windshield, jaw tight, like he'd admitted something that scared him.
His hand stayed on mine.
I turned my palm up. Threaded my fingers through his.
Held on.
The light turned green. He didn't let go. Just shifted to drive one-handed and pulled into traffic.
Neither of us said anything else.
Eamon took us through Beacon Hill first. A detour that added twenty minutes and looped past Mom's neighborhood. He drove slowly. Checking mirrors and waiting for the gray sedan to reappear.
It didn't.
I watched the city slide past through the passenger window. Holiday lights were strung along rooflines, some in racing colors.
Mom's street came into view. Her house sat tucked back from the road—small, precise, surrounded by the stone garden she tended with discipline. No lights visible. She was already at Ma's.
"Clear," Eamon said—more to himself than me.
He turned back toward the main road. We climbed the hill heading north.
My reflection stared back at me from the window. Hollow-eyed. Jaw tight.
I looked like some of the photographs from Vanessa's apartment.
Beauty through discipline. Perfection as devotion. Mom's lessons, twisted into something monstrous. Vanessa had taken everything Claire taught me about shaping clay and decided to apply it to me.
The worst part? I'd been doing the same thing. Shaping myself, controlling the display, and performing perfection.
I'd just never locked myself in a cabin to do it.
My stomach turned.
"Mac." Eamon's voice cut through my spiral. "Breathe for me."
I did. Once. The air caught halfway down.
"Again."
Four counts in. Hold. Four out.
We crested the hill. The city sprawled below us—downtown towers wrapped in fog, and the Sound barely visible beyond.
"She picked Christmas week on purpose," I said. "It's when we're open. When we're together."
Eamon glanced at me. "Then we close ranks."
Simple. Direct. Tactical thinking that made sense.
Ma's street appeared ahead.
Lights blazed in every window of her house. Not only the porch light, but every room lit against December dark. Her Christmas tree was visible through the front window—colored bulbs reflecting off the glass.
In other years, it was a comforting sight. Now, it looked like a fortress under siege.
Cars lined the curb. Marcus's truck. Michael's SUV. Claire's sedan. Matthew's Subaru. Miles's Prius. The whole extended McCabe apparatus was mobilizing.
Eamon pulled up behind Michael's vehicle. Killed the engine.
Neither of us moved.
"They're all here," I said.
"Yeah."
"Because of me."
He turned in his seat. "Because you're family. This is what families do."
"Let's go," I said.
We got out. Drizzle was starting to fall. Cold seeped into my bones. Eamon touched my back and guided me up the walkway.
The porch light flickered once. That same loose connection that had persisted for years. Uncle Graham had meant to fix it before he died. Then my father, Ronan. Then Marcus. Now it just flickered.
The door opened before we reached it.
Ma stood framed in the doorway. Small and solid and utterly immovable.
"Everyone's here, sweetheart." She reached for me. Pulled me into a hug that smelled like Christmas cookies. The scent of home. "We've got you."
I held on longer than usual.
When she pulled back, her hands stayed on my shoulders—checking for damage.
"Come inside."
Eamon followed me across the threshold. Ma grabbed his arm as he passed.
"You too. Both of you. Inside."
The house was as overwhelming as I'd expected.
Voices overlapped from every room. Michael had commandeered the dining table, maps and files spread across the surface where Ma usually served Sunday dinner. Marcus stood behind him, phone to his ear, speaking in the clipped tones he used with cops.
"—patrol units every thirty minutes, but I want—" He looked up when we entered. Whatever he saw in my face made him pause mid-sentence. "I'll call you back."
Matthew appeared from the kitchen carrying mugs. Set one in front of me without asking. He'd already doctored the coffee the way I liked it—too much cream, too much sugar.
"Drink," he said.
Miles was in Uncle Graham's chair by the window, but he wasn't reading everyone's emotional state from a distance. He stood when I came in and crossed to me. Didn't say anything, just gripped my upper arm once.
Claire occupied the corner near the kitchen. Straight-backed. Hands folded. But present. Fully present.
The Christmas tree blinked in the corner—red and green lights reflecting off decades of mismatched ornaments.
Holiday cheer and crime scene photos existed in the same cramped space.
Claire stood. Crossed the room.
Picked up one of the journal pages from the evidence pile.
Her hands trembled as she read. When she looked up, her voice came out flat. She spoke like she was holding back something enormous.
"She treated you like an object of study." Each word precise. "That's not conservation. It's desecration."
I'd never seen my mother angry, not like this.
Claire Akiyama McCabe, who taught that you should refine your emotions like clay, who believed in discipline and restraint and beauty through control—she was shaking. Her hands. Her voice.
Because someone had written a manual for breaking her son.
The room was silent.
Ma's voice cut through. Blunt. Uncompromising. "That means we stop her. Nobody damages my family."
I moved deeper into the room. Michael was already pulling up maps. Marcus fielded a call from Clairmont. Matthew scrolled through something on his phone.
They'd all dropped everything. Reorganized their lives.
For me.
I wasn't alone.
A pang of guilt shot through me.
Your family's safety is not guaranteed if they stand between us.
Six days until December eighteenth.
"Mac?" Eamon's voice. Quiet. Just for me.
I turned.
"Yeah?"
"We're going to end this."
I wanted to believe him.
Wanted to believe the McCabe chaos, holiday lights, and stubborn love filling the house would be enough.
"Okay," I said. It was the best I could offer.
Around us, the family kept moving. Planning. Preparing for war.
The Christmas tree lights blinked on. Off. On.
Six days until December eighteenth.
Somewhere in Seattle, Vanessa Kensington was watching. Waiting.
Counting down with us.