CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kate woke with a jolt.
Her heart was hammering.
The dream clung to her like a film of sweat — her father’s body on the floor, eyes open, blood seeping into the rug. And above him, a hooded figure. Watching. Waiting. Then it turned. Hands rose. The hood fell back.
And there — the gleam of long, silver hair.
She sat forward, pressing her palms to her eyes.
The clock on the side table read 10:52 p.m. The air smelled of stale coffee and the faint iron tang of rain through the half-open window.
The snowfall had been short-lived, which was probably a good thing, considering her plans, but all the same, some childish part of her felt a little cheated.
The phone rang.
She jumped, pulse spiking again. For half a second, she thought it might be Cox — the kind of late-night cruelty he'd enjoy. But the caller ID said Winters. Kate felt a brief stab of alarm, until she remembered that Marcus had spoken up on her behalf.
“Agent Valentine,” she said, still somewhat warily.
“Kate. I didn’t wake you, did I? I’m bad at time-zones.”
“Sort of. Doesn’t matter.” She stifled a yawn. “I dropped off.”
Winters’s voice softened a little, dialling down the boss. “I just wanted to wish you luck for tomorrow. Big day.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I’ll admit I still have reservations about your direct involvement. But I’ve come to accept that cutting out the person who knows the most about Cox would be organisational suicide. So here we are.”
Kate smiled faintly. “Thank you.”
“I’ve read the action plan,” Winters continued. “Every stage, every cross-agency protocol. I’m satisfied your safety’s been baked in properly this time. No freelancing, no improvisations. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Winters’s tone softened a little further. “Good. How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine. Refuses to let it get to her. She’s back teaching her classes.”
“That’s good.” A pause. “We do need to relax the security on her further now. We just haven’t got the budget, and Portland PD are grumbling. Besides, all the signs are…”
“It was a diversion on Cox’s part, I know.”
“She’s got an emergency number, and the local cops will do a drive-by of the house twice every 24 hours.”
“I understand.”
“Give me a quick status rundown. How are we looking for tomorrow?”
Kate sat up straighter. “We finalized everything at the inter-agency meeting this afternoon. Rodrigues left the signal mark under the Third Avenue Bridge. That’s the trigger. According to him, that’ll bring Cox out.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes. He says Cox never appears during the day. So we’re braced for anything between five p.m. and midnight. Could be a long wait.”
“Locations?”
“We’ve got multiple assets in the vicinity of the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude — the Bronx site.
Unmarked Bureau cars north and west of the church, NYPD plain-clothes units on foot patrol eastward.
There’s a gas-main repair crew up the street — they’re ours.
Half a dozen pedestrians wired in with concealed cams. And we’ve got a patrol car and ambulance staged three minutes out. ”
“Good. And center stage?”
“Tommy Rodrigues,” Kate said. “Wearing a wire, bullet-resistant vest, transmitter linked to the control van. His story’s that he thinks he’s being followed, wants to meet Cox face-to-face to discuss it.”
Winters was quiet for a moment. “He can handle that?”
Kate hesitated. The image of Tommy from earlier in the day rose in her mind — buoyant, grinning, cracking jokes like a kid on a field trip. Center-stage at the meeting, loving it and not bothering to hide it, either. She decided not to share that.
“He can handle it,” she said. “He understands how important it is. He’s nervous, but steady.”
“I hope you’re right,” Winters said. “It only takes one mistake.”
“I know.”
Another pause — longer this time. Then Winters said, “How do you feel, knowing that by this time tomorrow we could have that bastard in chains?”
Kate tried for a smile. “I feel great about it.”
“Good. Try to get some sleep, Agent Valentine.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The line clicked dead.
Kate sat for a while in the silence that followed, the phone heavy in her hand. Outside, the rain had started again, thin and persistent, tapping at the windowpane like restless fingers.
Marcus’s voice came from the doorway. “You look like hell.”
She turned. He was barefoot, holding a glass of water. “How long were you listening?”
“Long enough to hear ‘bastard’ and ‘chains’. Excited?”
“Sure.”
He dropped onto the sofa, stretching out his legs. “Then why do you look like you’re about to walk in front of a firing squad?”
“Because it feels like that.”
“Come on, Vee. We’ve got this. Tommy’s planted the bait, Cox shows his ugly face, we cuff him. Simple.”
“That’s what worries me,” she said quietly. “Nothing about Cox has ever been simple.”
Marcus shrugged. “You’re overthinking. For months this guy’s been a ghost. Tomorrow, for the first time, he’s a target we can actually see. This is huge. You should be excited.”
“I’m something,” she muttered.
Marcus leaned forward. “You’ve done everything right. The op’s tight, the teams are ready, the Bureau’s actually working with the locals for once. This is the best shot we’ve had since he went underground.”
Kate rubbed her forehead. “Tommy worries me. He was playing to the crowd today. You saw it. He loved the attention — the briefing, the gear, the stage-time. He doesn’t grasp what’s at stake. He’s treating it like a ride-along.”
“He’ll settle to it,” Marcus said.
“You hope. He’s written this half-coherent account of his dealings with Cox, and even now he admits there are names he can’t remember. How do we know he’ll even remember his lines tomorrow?”
Marcus smiled faintly. “People like Tommy don’t forget when it really counts. You’ll see. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”
She looked at him. “You actually mean that, don’t you?”
“I do. Cox has been haunting you — haunting all of us — for too long. And tomorrow we finally get to shut the door on him. That’s not just a good feeling, Kate. That’s history.”
She didn’t answer.
He finished his water, stood, and stretched. “Go to bed. Seriously. You’re no use to anyone running on caffeine and adrenaline.”
Kate nodded. “Yeah. Soon.”
He hesitated in the doorway. “You’ll see, partner. Tomorrow we end this.”
When he was gone, the room was quiet again except for the rain and the faint buzz of the TV. She switched it off, leaving only the city’s dim glow seeping through the blinds.
She tried to believe Marcus. She really did.
But somewhere in the dark, the image of her father’s body returned — and the figure standing over him, turning, silver hair spilling from the hood.
She closed her eyes, but the vision stayed.
And she knew, with the slow, certain dread that came from long experience, that dreams like that weren’t dreams at all.
They were warnings.