CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Kate sat at her mother’s kitchen table long after midnight, staring at the darkened window.
The reflection that looked back at her was pale and grainy, her own face cross-hatched by the faint glow from the under-cabinet light.
She’d been through Gabe’s words a hundred times, turning them over and over like stones in a riverbed, trying to feel their weight.
Somebody pretending. Somebody not what they seem.
An imposter. But which somebody? And what exactly were they pretending to be?
Her notes lay in front of her—scraps of paper scrawled with times, names, fragments of scripture. She re-read each one until the letters blurred, but the shape of the puzzle refused to settle. Every time she thought she’d found a pattern, it dissolved like smoke.
A floorboard creaked. Kate started. Her mother, wrapped in a faded blue robe, leaned against the doorframe, worry sharpening her features.
“Kate. It’s almost five in the morning. You haven’t slept at all.”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“You’re not. You look like a bad Polaroid. Get an hour. Two. I’ll give you the alarm clock.”
Kate wanted to protest, but the sudden drag in her bones made her voice thin. “One hour,” she bargained.
Her mother set the old travel alarm beside her bed like a nurse setting out medicine. “Two. And you should know by now, Kitty: I don’t negotiate.”
Kate didn’t remember closing her eyes.
When she jerked awake, the room was a furnace of late morning light. Ten-twenty-two. The alarm sat mutely beside her pillow. Her phone glowed with a cluster of missed calls—dozens. The vibration in her palm startled her. Winters.
“You’re alive, thank God. We were about to deploy helicopters.” Winters snapped before Kate could speak. “Listen carefully. Two deputies picked up Santos at seven a.m. to move him to County Jail. At nine-thirty, another two deputies arrived to do the same. Guess what? County Jail never saw him.”
Kate’s stomach turned cold. “Sprung.”
“Exactly. First pair signed the log as Officers Law and Giever.”
Kate’s mind snagged. Lawgiver.
“That’s one of Cox’s monickers, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Her pulse jumped. “Ma’am. Cox. We have to keep him locked down. His wounds from the attack weren’t healing. There was talk of moving him to the hospital today.”
Silence—then a hiss of fury. “The Governor didn’t think I’d need to know that.” A click. Winters was already calling the prison.
Kate splashed water on her face, tried to scrub the fatigue from her eyes. The phone rang again.
“Too late,” Winters said. “Cox left half an hour ago. En route to the hospital. Get to HQ. Now.”
The drive blurred. Gabe’s warning—impostors—looped in her head. At a red light she thumbed a search on her phone. Father Michael Santos. The headline hit like a fist:
Parish Priest Found Murdered, Tongue Removed. Under Investigation for Swindling Parishioners.
Just under three months ago. Florida.
Her breath caught. The real Father Santos had been the first victim. But with no cipher left at the scene, no one would later have linked it to the killings in Maine.
She felt a physical chill at the thought of Cox’s machine-like, calculating manipulation.
That he’d been preparing for this, from the moment she’d stuck him back in jail.
How relieved she’d been, how deluded, more accurately, to think that she could rest because the monster was behind bars. Bars truly didn’t matter to him.
Her next thought was obvious: the killer must have taken Santos’s identity. But a murder had happened while the pseudo-Santos was in custody at the prison. Impossible. Unless—
The light changed. Kate drove on, no answers, only the rattle of questions.
She detoured to the prison. The Governor’s face was pinched and flushed; he kept licking his lips and feeling his pulse. Not coping well with the stress levels.
He wanted to talk about the stabbing. “We conducted a full investigation. It seems someone… an inmate… moved the Out of Order sticker from a broken unit on the east wing, to the visitation suite.”
“Let me guess: they can’t explain why they did it and they deny receiving any encouragement, incentives or threats.”
“They’ve got a long time to think about it in solitary. And we’re now running weekly checks of all units.”
He looked at her almost expectantly. Did he want a round of applause? A member of the medical staff came into the office and handed him something.
“We just found this in the hospital wing,” he said, holding a small evidence bag. Inside lay a scatter of pale fragments.
“Eggshells?” Kate frowned.
“They were under Cox’s bed,’ the Governor said. “He’s allergic.”
The medical orderly, a wiry-looking con with intelligent eyes, stepped forward.
“His wound kept flaring up. We cleaned it twice a day, upped the antibiotics. Looked like sepsis. Fever, swelling, lumpiness in the wound. Couldn’t understand it.
But it wasn’t sepsis. Some allergic reactions can mimic infection. ”
Kate felt the realization slide into place like a knife. “Someone helped him to trigger an allergy. To get him sent to hospital.”
The governor’s jaw tightened. “Exactly.”
The plan was suddenly visible in outline: Santos appearing at the jail, Cox’s orchestrated illness, both men outside the prison gates the same morning. A pattern of precision.
But the center of the pattern—who was killing, and why—remained a blank.
Kate closed her eyes. Gabe’s words from yesterday echoed like a refrain.
Someone pretending.
She still didn’t know who.
Let alone why.