CHAPTER FOURTEEN #3
Marcus shot her a glance, reading her silence but not yet agreeing with it.
“All right,” he said, closing his notebook. “For now, Mr. Holloway, you remain a person of interest.”
Holloway nodded once. Slow. Accepting. Hurt flickering beneath the surface.
“Do what you need to do,” he said. “Just—catch the person doing this. Please.”
Kate stood. So did Marcus. Holloway rose last, his bulk filling the room, but his manner unthreatening now—almost gentle.
As they stepped into the hallway, Holloway paused.
“Agent Valentine?”
She turned.
"For what it's worth," he said quietly, "the people doing this… whatever they say, or quote, they're not fighting for honor. They're fighting for themselves. That's the difference." He tapped his chest. "Real advocacy doesn't start here," he pointed outward, "—it starts here."
She nodded. “We’ll be in touch.”
The receptionist flashed them the peace sign as they exited. The center door clicked softly behind them.
Outside, Worcester’s afternoon light felt colder.
Marcus shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “Well,” he said, “that sucked.”
Kate snorted. “Which part?”
“The part where he seems like a surprisingly decent human being,” Marcus said. “Big, hulking, perfect-on-paper suspect—except he’s… not.”
Kate glanced back at the building.
“No,” she agreed quietly. “He’s not.”
Marcus leaned against the car. “So what now? Because that felt like our strongest lead.”
Kate exhaled, long and tired. “Now? Now we admit we’re stuck.”
“Stalled,” Marcus corrected grimly.
She nodded. “Stalled.”
They stood there a moment, both staring at nothing, both feeling the same cold truth settling in: they had no viable suspect, no clear pattern, no path forward.
Somewhere out there, they felt sure, the killer was eyeing up his next victim.
And they were no closer to stopping him.
*
Kate let her head rest against the wall and let out a long, slow breath. The room smelled of industrial detergent and Marcus’s cologne. He’d been in and out earlier, swapping notes, discussing tomorrow’s priorities. Even the air felt like it still remembered him.
She wished it didn’t.
She wished the whole night didn't.
The bed springs groaned when she sat. A miserable, lumpy mattress, blanket like sandpaper, pillows that had the collective softness of three dinner rolls. She’d stayed in worse—God knew the Bureau’s per diem often assumed agents were made of titanium—but tonight it scraped at her nerves.
Everything scraped at her nerves.
Through the too-thin wall, Marcus’s voice lifted in muffled cadence—warm, affectionate, unguarded. Cheryl. Of course he was calling Cheryl. Ordinarily Kate would have found some part of that sweet. Tonight it made her stomach twist.
“Yeah, babe,” she thought she heard him say, his voice maddeningly soft. “Miss you too. Mmhmm… I know. Me either.”
Kate closed her eyes.
Christ. She really didn't want to hear this.
She turned the TV on for noise, then immediately shut it off again—some saccharine laugh track bleeding through the static like poison. She stood, paced, sat again. The floorboards creaked like old joints.
Dinner replayed in her mind—if one could call it dinner.
Soggy burger bun, watery ketchup packet, limp fries.
She’d eaten exactly four bites before abandoning the rest. Between that and the emails waiting in her inbox, she felt hollow and wired all at once, like a marionette whose strings had gotten tangled.
She pressed the heel of her palm to her brow.
Marcus murmured something soft through the wall. Kate’s jaw clenched.
She wasn’t jealous.
She wasn't.
She was just… tired. Alone. And aware, suddenly and viciously, how long it had been since anyone had said her name with anything approaching affection.
Fine. A bath.
A bath would drown the noise. Literally. The fan in motel bathrooms could smother a small jet engine.
She stood, already peeling off her blazer, and padded toward the bathroom—just as her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
GABE.
She froze.
He only called her this late when he’d discovered something. Something he thought was important. Something he couldn’t possibly hold until morning.
She answered. “What’s up Gabe?”
Gabe didn’t hear the lead in her voice—he never did. He was too excited.
"Kate. Oh my God. You're awake."
“Barely.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got something. The crows? From the drawings? I’m telling you—they’re important.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Gabe—”
“No, listen. I went down a folklore spiral for four straight hours, and guess what? In Central and Eastern European traditions, if a crow caws when a child is born, that child is destined to be ugly.”
"…Okay?" Kate said patiently. "And is that supposed to help me catch a murderer or help you win at pub trivia?"
“No, no—think about the paintings. The medieval knight, that weird Victorian glutton—both hideous. Deliberately hideous. But historically—this is the cool part—the real Sir Miles de Coverleagh? He was famous for being beautiful. ‘Miles the Fair.’ It’s in the archives.”
Kate blinked. “Right. And?”
“And so whoever’s drawing these is twisting those images. Corrupting beauty. Warping it. This is symbolic, Kate. Deeply symbolic.”
She let out a slow breath, wondered if Gabe had been smoking something. “Gabe, I’m missing the part where this helps me.”
“I’m not finished,” he said, breathless with his own momentum. “Once I got onto ugliness as a theme, I did some more digging. Did you know there’s a patron saint of ugly people?”
“Oh for—Gabe—”
“St. Drogo.”
“That sounds made up.”
“It’s not,” he said, triumphant. “And guess what else? The hospital where your dad first worked in Chicago—the old one, before they rebuilt it, I looked it up—it used to be a church-run elder home called—wait for it—St. Drogo’s.”
Kate stared at the wall. For a moment, she wondered if she’d fallen asleep and this was the stress-dream version of a phone call.
“Gabe,” she said carefully, “have you taken something?”
“I did have a couple brownies over at Sally’s. Hours ago.”
Sally’s? Who in hell was Sally?
“But Kate, I’m telling you, this is connected.”
“It really isn’t,” Kate said, massaging her temple. “The killer is not choosing victims based on some medieval patron saint of facial misfortune.”
“Kate, I just think you might be being premature in assuming this element is missing. By which I mean the element of you. I mean, think about it. Commandment killings one to four, all referencing your past, glancingly or comprehensively. And now, what? Bubkes? Can we afford to—”
Kate felt a flash of anger, cold, then hot. Screwed up her fingers.
“Gabe, these are different. Everything points to a freelancer, a kind of homage to Cox, but without his—"
“But the symbolism—”
“—is a coincidence. A very weird, very specific coincidence, which is your favorite kind. I appreciate the enthusiasm. Truly. But I’ve had a long day and I need sleep.”
A beat. A hurt-sounding breath.
“Oh. Sure. Yeah. I just think you should—”
She softened instantly. “Gabe. Thank you. Really. I’m glad you told me. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Even though she was one hundred percent certain this was nothing more than Gabe enthusiastically free-associating himself into a folklore wormhole.
They said goodnight.
She hung up.
Silence closed in around her—except she wasn’t truly alone. Gabe might be away with the pixies, but something in his spiralling logic struck a chord.
Cox’s voice, from memory: This particular case will be close to your heart.
Her meeting with him had been days ago, but suddenly it felt like he was sitting in the motel chair opposite her, fingers steepled, eyes bright with knowing.
She shook the thought off.
Ridiculous.
Cox knew nothing.
He had nothing. He had no hold on her anymore. That spell was broken.
And he had no hold over this killer, either. He’d as good as said that himself. And this killer, his style was personal, unique. It bore precious few signs of coming from Cox’s stable.
Except…
Cox didn’t always tell the truth.
But even when Cox lied, Cox didn’t say things by accident.
And the worst part was—
She didn’t quite trust her own certainty anymore.
Her father’s hospital.
St. Drogo's. In Chicago, where she'd spent the first eighteen years of her life.
Close to her heart.
No. That was just stoned logic, clutching at coincidence.
No. She refused to let that lodge anywhere deeper than irritation.
Kate stood, snapped off the lamp, and headed for the bathroom.
Steam. Heat. Silence.
Blessed silence.
But even under the spray of water, even with the fan drowning out Marcus’s muffled sweetness on the other side of the wall, the unease burrowed its way inside her ribs.
Because she knew—
she thought?
No, she knew.
Cox was still involved. Still playing his game.
And not all of it was a game.
And the more she tried to shake that truth off…
…the more it held her.
Tight.