CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Riley dropped onto her couch, exhaustion settling into her bones.
The house was quiet around her. She had told both Jilly and Gabriela what had happened at the bridge, and now they had gone to bed, leaving Riley alone with the remnants of the evening’s disturbing encounter.
Echo Bridge. Leo’s message. The game he was playing.
She reached for her phone, knowing Bill needed to hear about this. She pressed his number and held the phone to her ear, listening to it ring. Then his voice came through, warm and steady.
“Riley?” The concern in his tone was immediate. “Everything okay?”
“I’m fine. Physically, at least.”
“What happened?” Paper rustled in the background. Bill was still working, even from his hotel room.
“I went to Echo Bridge,” she said, leaning her head back against the couch cushions. The rustling stopped. She could picture Bill sitting up straighter, giving her his full attention.
“Did you see Leo?” he asked.
“No. Not even a glimpse. But he left me a message. I found it in an envelope on the bridge—addressed to me, not Jilly. He knew exactly what I was going to do, Bill. He knew it perfectly in advance.”
Silence stretched between them for a moment before Bill spoke again, his voice tighter. “Riley, after all your promises, you went out there …”
“Without calling backup, I know. But Bill, I had to get there fast, the timing was tight. Backup would probably have burst in at the wrong time. Besides…I don’t think Leo was out to attack me.”
“You could be wrong about that.”
When Riley didn’t answer, another silence followed. Then Bill asked gruffly, “What did the note say?”
Riley recited the highlights from memory—Leo’s accurate prediction of how she’d handle this situation, written and posted before she had yet taken those very same steps.
When she finished, there was another long silence on the other end of the line.
“We’ll need to send it to Quantico,” Bill finally said. “Have the lab analyze it, see if they can pull anything useful.”
“I already bagged it. I’ll drop it off tomorrow morning.
” She didn’t add that she had stood there for nearly twenty minutes after finding it, scanning every shadow, every corner of the bridge and surrounding paths, half-hoping to catch a glimpse of Leo watching her.
The thought that he could be that close, observing her without her knowledge, made her skin crawl.
“Good. Though we both know what they’re going to find.” Bill’s tone was resigned.
“Nothing,” Riley agreed. “He’s too careful.
The paper will be common stock, available at any craft store.
No prints, no DNA, no trace evidence leading back to him.
I also called in a forensics team to examine the scene, but only as a matter of procedure.
It’s a public place, and I’m sure they won’t find anything either. ”
Bill sighed, and she heard the creak of a chair as he shifted. “He’s playing with us, Riley. With you specifically.”
“I know.” The words came out sharper than she intended. “Sorry. I just...” She trailed off, unsure how to articulate her frustration and unease.
“Don’t apologize. This case is getting to all of us,” Bill said. “Especially you. But we’ll catch him. Every time he reaches out, he risks making a mistake. And when he does—”
“We’ll be there,” she finished.
The conversation lulled into a companionable silence. Riley listened to Bill’s breathing, finding comfort in the simple reminder that he existed, that she wasn’t facing this alone. He had long ago become the support she most counted on, steady when everything else seemed to shift and crumble.
“I’ll be home tomorrow morning,” he said eventually. “Flight gets in at eight-thirty. I should be at home by ten.”
“Good.” The word felt inadequate. She wanted to tell him how much she needed his steady presence, his unwavering support. How the thought of seeing him tomorrow was the brightest spot in an otherwise dark landscape.
Instead, she said, “I wish you were here now.”
The admission was vulnerable and honest.
“Me too,” he replied, his voice softer. “These hotel rooms get lonely.”
Riley glanced around her living room, a pleasant place that was often filled with life. Yet in that moment, it felt just as empty as Bill’s hotel room.
“Maybe when this is over, we could take some time,” she suggested, the words coming unbidden. “Just a weekend. Somewhere quiet.”
“I’d like that.” The warmth in his tone made her smile despite everything. “Get some rest, Riley. We’ll tackle this together tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, Bill.”
“Goodnight.”
Riley ended the call but kept the phone clutched in her hand, a tether to Bill and the promise of tomorrow. Somewhere outside in the darkness, she knew, Leo Dillard was planning his next move. Watching. Waiting. Playing his twisted game.
She set the phone down and rubbed her temples, willing away the headache that had been building since Echo Bridge. Tomorrow would come soon enough, bringing Bill and, hopefully, some clarity. For now, she needed to rest, to rebuild her defenses against whatever Leo had planned next.
But as Riley made her way upstairs to her bedroom, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the game was only beginning, and that Leo Dillard was already one step ahead.
*
Patricia Walsh’s running shoes whispered against the asphalt path that wound through Liberty Meadows Park.
The night air, cool and dense with the scent of freshly mown grass, filled her lungs as she maintained her steady pace.
This late-night ritual—this solitary jog beneath the amber glow of park lamps—had become her sanctuary, a precious hour carved from her life, a place where her mind could finally untangle from the day’s complexities.
Tonight, the park was especially quiet. Most evenings, she encountered at least a few other dedicated night runners or dog walkers, but now the paths stretched empty before her, the stillness broken only by the rhythm of her breathing and the distant hum of city traffic.
Patricia welcomed the solitude. After a day of organizing depositions and managing the demands of attorneys who treated deadlines as suggestions, the emptiness felt like a gift.
Her thoughts drifted to the origami meeting scheduled for tomorrow evening.
Patricia had spent her lunch break practicing basic folds in preparation.
The meditative movements of folding paper had become a counterbalance to her professional life, where one misplaced comma in a legal document could change entire meanings and outcomes—an especially stressful job for a person who suffered from a diagnosed case of generalized anxiety disorder, as she did.
In origami, each crease was deliberate, each fold a step toward creation rather than complication.
And with every crease, she felt her chronic anxiety loosen its grip on her.
She rounded the curve where the path skirted the small pond, now a black mirror reflecting fragmented moonlight.
The water’s edge was her halfway point—from here, she would loop back toward the southern entrance where her car waited.
Patricia checked her fitness tracker: twenty-two minutes in, heart rate steady. Perfect.
Something ahead caught her attention—a splash of white against the dark wood of a park bench. She slowed her pace, curiosity piqued. As she drew closer, the white blur took shape, and Patricia’s breath caught in her throat.
An origami swan.
It perched on the bench’s center, impeccably folded, its graceful neck curved in an elegant arc. The paper gleamed under the nearby lamp, too pristine to have been abandoned there for long. Patricia stopped completely, her run forgotten as she approached the bench.
“Hello?” she called, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the park’s stillness. No answer came. She scanned the surrounding area—empty paths, silent trees, undisturbed shadows.
Patricia reached for the swan, hesitating before touching its delicate form. This was no beginner’s attempt; the folds were crisp and precise, the proportions mathematically perfect.
But why would anyone leave such a beautiful creation here, on an empty bench in a deserted park? The strangeness of it sent a sensation of unease across her skin.
She gently lifted the swan, turning it over in her palm. It was just pure white paper folded with meticulous care.
The park had grown too quiet, Patricia suddenly realized. The constant background symphony of crickets and night insects had ceased, leaving a vacuum of sound. Even the distant traffic seemed muted, as if the world beyond the park had fallen away.
Patricia placed the swan back on the bench, the desire to continue her run suddenly urgent. As she straightened, the fine hairs on the back of her neck rose in silent warning. She wasn’t alone.
The sense came to her with such certainty that she nearly gasped. Someone was watching her—had been watching her, perhaps, since she entered the park. The origami swan wasn’t a coincidence or a forgotten art piece. It was bait.
She took a step back from the bench, her runner’s instincts calculating the fastest route to the park exit. The southern entrance was closest, just beyond the copse of maple trees to her right.
That’s when she heard it—footsteps close on the path behind her. Not the steady rhythm of another jogger, but something more deliberate. More predatory.
Patricia turned, her heart hammering against her ribs, adrenaline flooding her system with the primal command to flee.
But before she could complete the motion, she saw the figure that was already too close to her.
Then she felt it—a sharp, sudden prick in her upper arm, so quick and precise that for a moment, she wondered if she’d imagined it.
“What—?” The word barely escaped her lips before the first wave of numbness spread from the injection site. A cold sensation, like ice water flowing beneath her skin, raced down her arm and across her shoulder.
Patricia stumbled back, her hand clutching at the spot where the needle had pierced her skin. She found nothing—no blood, no puncture wound visible in the dim light. But the numbness continued its relentless advance, flowing down her torso, pooling in her legs.
Her knees buckled. Patricia tried to reach out, to grab the bench for support, but her arm refused to obey, hanging uselessly at her side as if it belonged to someone else. The paralysis was swift and terrifying, stealing her body piece by piece while leaving her mind cruelly alert.
“Help,” she tried to call, but her voice emerged as a whisper, her vocal cords already succumbing to the paralyzing agent.
The world tilted sideways as Patricia collapsed to the ground, her cheek pressing against the cool asphalt of the path. Above her, the park lamps blurred into golden smears against the night sky. Her vision remained, along with her hearing and the horrifying awareness of her own helplessness.
Footsteps approached again, unhurried now. A pair of shoes appeared at the edge of her fixed field of vision—ordinary shoes, the kind anyone might wear.
Patricia tried to scream, to move, to fight against the chemical restraints binding her body, but nothing responded. She couldn’t even breathe. She could only lie there, conscious but immobilized, as the shoes stepped closer and a hand reached down toward her.
Her last coherent thought before darkness began to creep into the edges of her vision was of the origami swan—perfect in its construction, patient in its placement. Waiting for her, just as its creator had been.