CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Forest Suites had the kind of optimism you only ever found on motel signage—big green font, a stylized pine tree, a promise of serenity that disintegrated the moment you stepped under the flickering canopy light.
The place smelled faintly of chlorine and old cigarettes, and the carpet pattern—once possibly a tasteful burgundy—had faded into something the color of dried blood.
Kate sat on the edge of the bed, phone pressed between shoulder and ear, staring at the air-conditioning unit as it rattled quietly to itself. It was a shabby room, dominated by an ugly pine wardrobe that belonged somewhere much larger.
Her mother answered on the second ring.
"Kitty?"
“Hey, Mom.”
“Well, thank God. You had me worried, young lady.”
“I’m fine,” Kate said automatically, because that was the script. “Really. I’m just on the northern edge of town, at the Forest Suites.”
A pause.
“The old motel,” Kate clarified.
“Oh, Lord,” Catherine groaned. “That place still exists? It wasn’t Suites when we were there. It used to be called Motel du Lac.”
“They dream big, obviously.”
“Please. Your grandmother stayed there once and declared that the shower gave her tetanus.”
This was a familiar anecdote, but tonight Catherine sounded almost relieved to tell it.
“One Thanksgiving,” she went on, gathering steam.
“She insisted on staying there. All that nonsense about ‘not imposing’ on us. Your father tried to reason with her, I tried, but nooo. And then at three in the morning she rings the house in a blind panic because a drunken fisherman was trying to get into her room. ‘Catherine,’ she said, ‘he wants my honor.’ As if he cared about anything except finding the nearest piece of furniture he could pass out on.”
Kate laughed weakly, more exhale than mirth. “Yeah. I think I remember.”
“Oh you were tiny, you wouldn’t. You probably just remember being told the story.”
“Well, whatever,” Kate said, suddenly feeling like she was about fifteen.
“Your father had to go and rescue her. In the snow. He never let her live it down.”
Kate let her mother continue—stories were safer, lighter, easier than trying to explain why she was here.
“I’m really fine, Mom,” she said when Catherine paused for breath. “There’s no crisis. I just… acted impulsively.”
“Impulsively?” Catherine echoed. “You boarded a plane to Chicago without telling your boss, your partner, or your mother. That’s not impulsive, Kitty. That’s—”
“—manageable,” Kate said firmly, before Catherine could supply a more accurate, more damning adjective. “There’ll be some blowback. But nothing I can’t handle.”
“Okay.”
It was remarkable how much skepticism her mother could pack into two syllables. And it was justified. Kate was very possibly out of a job.
Kate swallowed. “Really. It’s under control.”
“You don’t sound under control.”
“I’m just tired,” she lied, very smoothly.
Catherine said nothing. The silence hummed between them—soft but perceptive, the kind of silence that let Kate know her mother didn’t believe a word of it but was choosing, mercifully, not to dig. For now.
“Actually,” Kate pivoted, grasping for safer territory, “I went by the old house.”
“Well, I didn’t imagine you went all that way for the trout, honey.”
Kate suppressed a smile. “I met the family who live there now. The Kingsleys. Sweet people. Kind. And their little girl, Claudette—she’s adorable. Smart, serious. The kind of kid who studies you before deciding what she thinks.”
Catherine exhaled gently. “I’m glad there’s nice people there now. The guy who bought it off us was a Grade A turd.”
Kate laughed, involuntarily. “They gave me a tour. Inside the house. The backyard. The tree I used to climb.”
“And the treehouse?”
“Gone,” Kate said. “But I suspect little Miss Claudette will be lobbying strongly for a replacement.”
"Ah yes. Pester power. That wasn't a thing when I was growing up. For Christmas, I'd get an orange, some socks, and a nickel.”
Kate raised her eyebrows. “Yep and Dad’s family was so poor they had meatloaf shaped like a turkey.”
There was a fragile comfort in trundling over these old, well-worn anecdotal ruts—like lowering herself into water that was exactly body-temperature, not warm enough to melt her guard, not cold enough to bite.
“Well,” Catherine said, “at least one part of your day was nice. The Forest Suites, less so, I’m guessing.”
“If they gave out minus stars,” Kate echoed with a smile. “They’d have five.”
“Are you safe?”
Kate hesitated. Not long—less than a heartbeat—but Catherine must have felt it through the line.
“I’m safe,” she said, leaning into the lie more than she meant to. “I promise.”
Another pause. Then her mother said, very softly,
"All right. Tell me again tomorrow."
It was the closest Catherine ever came to saying, I know you’re not telling me everything, but I’ll take what you can give me for now.
“I love you,” Kate murmured.
“And I love you. Go to sleep.”
Kate hung up, staring at the phone a moment longer.
Then she checked her email.
Nothing from Winters.
Nothing from Marcus.
Not even a question mark.
A slow, prickling unease traced up her spine.
If Marcus wasn’t calling, that meant—
He'd stopped. Too angry to talk.
And if Winters wasn’t calling, that meant—
She was waiting for formal reports.
She guessed Hirschfeld had already briefed them about the arrest. She believed, too, that the Chicago agent would have done her best to pour oil on troubled waters. But she doubted that would have helped any.
She thumbed the screen once more, checking for messages she knew weren’t there.
Still nothing.
It troubled her—
Not entirely because of the job.
The man at the Kingsleys’. The one in the greenhouse. The one with a gun instead of a blade.
No knife.
No art.
Different M.O.
Wrong M.O.
Her mind wanted to dig into that discrepancy. Pull at it, tease it apart, dissect it. But exhaustion was dragging at her, fogging the edges of her thoughts.
Tomorrow, she told herself.
That can wait until tomorrow.
Her stomach grumbled. Right. She hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.
She shoved her feet into her boots and headed to reception. The car park was empty. Was she the only guest?
The kid behind the desk—a teenage boy with earphones in and the defeated air of someone counting minutes until closing—barely looked up.
“Vending machine’s broken,” he said flatly.
“I noticed,” Kate replied. “Can I get a Coke?”
He slid one across the counter without ceremony. It was warm.
"And… chips?" she added.
Another slide.
“Good job I like sour cream and onion.”
He gave her a withering stare, then nodded toward the payment terminal.
“Busy day?” she asked, half teasing.
He blinked at her as if the idea of conversation were a foreign concept. “Not really.”
“What do you do after work?”
His eyes narrowed. “Look. I have a girlfriend.”
Kate found herself reddening. More out of anger than embarrassment. Did this monosyllabic child really think she was coming on to him? Someone should slap his face.
She drifted back across the parking lot, drink and chips in hand, smiling by this point.
She couldn’t wait to tell Marcus about the kid at the desk.
The night air held a faint diesel tang, mixed with the lingering sweetness of cut grass.
Two moths battered themselves against the neon ‘VACANCY’ sign like tiny, exhausted souls.
The room felt different when she stepped back inside.
Not visibly.
Not tangibly.
Just… off.
Was there a faint chemical note overlaying the stale-damp smell she'd catalogued earlier? Something sharper. Something she couldn't name.
She paused.
Sniffed.
Nothing specific. Nothing alarming. Mainly mothballs.
She checked the bathroom. Nothing untoward. Messy, but quite clearly, her mess.
Probably just the clash of inside and outside smells, she told herself. Or the mattress. Or that hulking great wardrobe, full of mildew and naptha.
She tossed the Coke onto the plastic nightstand, ripped open the chips, and sank onto the bed.
The sheets were thin enough to be nearly transparent.
The television remote had one button missing.
The TV itself crackled to life with a baritone voiceover and the faded colors of an early-2000s police procedural.
She kept the volume low. Just a murmur. Just enough to drown the silence.
Then she lay back.
Closed her eyes.
Exhaled.
The day unspooled behind her eyelids:
The Kingsleys.
Claudette's solemn face.
Hirschfeld's cool defiance.
Cox's insinuations, shadowing her thoughts even from a thousand miles away.
She put the tv on, the sight of other humans giving her a kind of reassurance, even with the sound turned down. Let the flickering scenes suck in her attention until she began to drift.
Not into rest, exactly—
But into something like it.
The dream came slowly.
A corridor.
Long. Familiar in that dreamlike way that meant it belonged to no place real.
Doors on either side.
Closed.
Each with a latch that rattled softly.
Someone calling her name from very far away—her father's voice? Marcus's? She couldn't tell.
A wind that smelled like bleach and concrete and…
She surfaced.
Not fully.
Half inside the dream, half in the room.
She became aware, dimly, of the TV light flickering on the wall.
The hum of the air conditioner.
The strange, metallic taste of adrenaline pooling at the back of her throat.
Something was wrong.
Her eyelids fluttered.
A shape sat in the chair at the end of the bed.
A man.
Bulky.
Ill-fitting overalls.
Shoulders drooped forward.
Face half in shadow.
And in his hands—
Held with an eerie, careful precision—
A gun.
Pointed at her head.
Kate’s breath seized in her chest.
The man didn’t move.
Didn't speak.
He simply sat there, as though he had been waiting a very, very long time for her to notice him.
Then he said, quietly,
“Don’t scream.”