Chapter 35
Special Agent Tessa Quinn
Consciousness crawled its way back. When her vision finally sharpened, she made sense of the lamp in the corner.
The light was angled in from above through a frosted pane, along cream walls and white beams. Skylights.
Her body felt wrong when she woke—limbs heavy, eyes gritty, head thick. A clock ticked nearby, slow and even. Then touch: the slide of something soft against her skin—cashmere, not state-issue, not hers.
She let the inventory finish before she moved. A quilt—folded. A faint smell of cedar, threaded with something sterile and sharp.
Memory surfaced: Sam Cooke on the speaker, Tallulah’s yelp, the basement stairs. The shadow. Hands.
Then nothing.
She opened her eyes.
She lay beneath a white duvet, a lofty, expensive weight over a body that didn’t feel like hers.
She flexed her fingers. Slow. Deliberate.
No restraints.
Tessa turned her head. Her hair slid against the pillow in loose waves, brushed out, not in the practical knot she wore to drive home. A silk scrunchie rested around her wrist like a bracelet.
She hadn’t put it there.
Her pulse kicked under the skin.
She eased one hand under the duvet. Cashmere met her fingers—pajama pants, a matching top. Quality. Chosen.
He undressed me.
He dressed me again.
And he took his time.
For one split second, her vision tunneled.
Heat crawled up her throat — not fear, not exactly. Violation.
They trained for this.
Not the room.
Not the cashmere.
But the moment when panic tried to take control.
Slow breath in.
Count.
Slow breath out.
She swallowed it down.
Then filed it. Panic wouldn’t change the fact.
He had taken her badge. Taken her gun.
No one had ever taken her skin.
She breathed in, slow and measured. The room smelled like new books and hotel soap. Under it, faint and human, a stranger’s cologne clung to her collarbone.
“Okay,” she whispered to the ceiling. Her voice came out rough, but it came. “Quinn. Wake up.”
She pushed the duvet back and sat up. The room swam, then steadied.
It was beautiful.
An antique desk anchored the far wall, the old Royal typewriter she’d seen the case for in Raines’s office centered on its surface.
A white slipcovered chair waited in lamplight. Writing guides above. Blank journals below.
Recognition hit cold.
The same room Sara had described.
Cream walls. Skylights.
A beautiful prison.
Everything you need, she thought. Nothing you chose.
A glass-fronted fridge hummed in the corner, stocked with fruit, soup, water. Coffee pods gleamed beside a single-cup machine.
Feeding me. Managing every variable.
This isn’t ransom. It’s research.
Her bare feet found the rug—wool, expensive, pale. She stood, testing her balance. The room dipped once, then settled into place.
She crossed to the wall. No door, just unbroken molding. Then she noticed it: a narrow seam where the molding stopped. No handle. No visible hinges.
Pocket door. Opens from his side only.
She pressed her palm flat to the panel. Solid. No give.
Tessa let herself feel the urge to pound once—just once—then stepped back.
Force won’t work. He wants you loud.
Observation first.
She walked the perimeter. Vents high and small. No cameras obvious, but she’d bet her badge there were lenses behind the grates or in the clock face. The skylights sat twelve feet up, glass angled and frosted, snow blurring whatever lay beyond.
“Hello?” she called, voice even. “You’ve made your point. I’m awake.”
Only the clock answered.
She waited two beats more.
“Coward,” she added, mild. “Hiding in the walls doesn’t make you a god. It just means you’re scared to show your face.”
Static hissed from nowhere and everywhere at once—then a voice slid into the room.
“Agent Quinn.” Calm. Male. Amplified. And pleased with himself.
Her spine went cold.
“You made good time waking up,” he said. “Your deputy, Sara Parker, took longer.”
“Sara. What have you done with her?”
Tessa kept her eyes on the bookshelf. “Where is she?”
He ignored the question.
“Eat,” he said. “Rest. And write. The story is your freedom.”
Same script he’d given Sara. She’d seen that line in Sara’s journal.
“What do you want?”
Static crackled. He was enjoying this.
“Your story, Agent Quinn.”
“What story?”
“Oh, we’ll get to that.” He sounded almost indulgent. “I like that you don’t flinch.”
Silence stretched.
“You took cover when I fired at you and Scout,” he went on, conversational. “You moved him first, even bleeding, you pushed Scout toward cover. Just like when the fire burned your shoulder.”
She went still.
Heat flickered along an old scar under the cashmere. That case was buried in sealed reports and a line in one medical file. Not in press, not in interviews.
“How do you know about that?” she asked. “That was years ago.”
“All my characters are researched. And you, Agent Quinn… you’re disciplined.”
A beat.
“I can see why Scout is so taken with you.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t give him anything back.
“What do you want from me?” she asked. “Specifics.”
He sounded almost amused. “Honesty. On the page. Begin with Lauren. You’ve read some already.”
Her gaze slid to the desk.
A journal lay open there, leather worn from use. Lauren’s name marked the front page in a hand Tessa now knew as well as any case file.
“Write, Agent Quinn,” he said gently. “Your story is the one I’ve been waiting for.”
Static sighed, and he was gone.
Tessa stood very still.
And then—
From somewhere beyond the frosted glass, a train whistle sounded.
Low. Distant.
Her gaze flicked to the analog clock on the shelf.
10:00 a.m.
Right on time.
Tessa walked to the desk, picked up Lauren’s journal, and flipped through pages of neat, increasingly frantic script—dates, punishments.
Profile work. He’d profiled her. Now she profiled him.
On the shelf above, blank journals watched her like unopened case files.
She set Lauren’s volume down, opened a fresh one, and turned to the back—near the end, where he’d be least likely to look first. He’d read it eventually; men like this always circled back to their own experiments. But later was enough. She only needed a head start.
She uncapped the pen.
Special Agent Tessa Quinn — Day 1
Status: Alive. Drugged, moved, redressed (cashmere set, bare feet). Hair brushed out; foreign scrunchie on right wrist. Door: pocket; no handle inside. Skylights: frosted; light-controlled. Speaker system hidden; subject monitoring in real time. Message: Eat. Rest. Write. “Story is your freedom.”
Assessment: Not ransom. Ideological captivity. Offender positions victims as authors within a controlled environment. Prior subjects: Lauren Pierce, Deputy Sara Parker (status unknown). Action: Observe. Decode ritual. Use pages as evidence, not confession.
“You think you’re writing my story,” she murmured, barely more than a whisper. “We’ll see.”
She pictured Scout on the porch, his hand settling at her waist like something he’d finally stopped fighting. Burke when bad news landed—quiet, iron-steady. Kyle, stubborn, refusing to leave a scene.
Then she bent over the page and began to write anyway.