Page 29 of Forsaken

"What did you mean then?" Morgan pressed, her gaze never leaving Thorn's face.

The artist's eyes darted to the studio door, then back to Morgan. "I meant... sometimes we're forced to make choices. Terrible choices. To protect what matters most."

Morgan narrowed her eyes. “Save it, Thorn. Your path of destruction is over.”

***

They led Marcus into the interrogation room at FBI headquarters. He settled into the metal chair, his paint-stained hands now clean but still trembling slightly. Morgan hadn't even closed the door when he spoke.

"I killed them all," Marcus Thorn announced, his words hanging in the air like smoke, heavy with implications and something that felt almost like rehearsed desperation. "Emily Whitmore, Laura Benson, Hannah Smith, and Jessica Clarke. I transformed them into art. Into statements about the impermanence of seasons and the transcendence of death."

Morgan stopped halfway to her chair, caught off guard by his immediate confession. In her experience, both as an FBI agent and an inmate, guilt didn't usually announce itself so readily.

"Why don't we start at the beginning?" she suggested, settling into her chair while maintaining eye contact. She'd learned how to read people in moments of stress, how to spot the difference between genuine remorse and performed contrition. "Tell me about Emily Whitmore."

"You understand," he continued as if she hadn't spoken, his artistic passion evident in every carefully chosen word, "that death is the ultimate transformation? Each woman became part of something greater, something more profound than their ordinary existence." His hands moved as he spoke, painting invisible pictures in the air between them. "Emily was the first, yes. The cornfield seemed... appropriate. She dealt in art but never truly understood transformation. I showed her its true meaning, surrounded her with the harvest, made her part of nature's cycle of death and renewal."

The interrogation room's lights caught the sweat beading on his forehead as he described Emily's final moments in detail, his artistic passion evident in every word. But something about his account nagged at Morgan's instincts. Small discrepancies accumulated—the wrong type of knot used to bind Laura Benson, incorrect flower placement in Emily's tableau, details that didn't quite align with their crime scene photos. `

"The flowers," Morgan interrupted, adjusting her chair slightly. The metal legs scraped against concrete, making Thorn flinch. "In Laura's hair. You said they were arranged in a spiral pattern, moving outward from the crown of her head."

"Yes, exactly." His eyes lit up with artistic fervor. "A spiral, representing the endless cycle of—"

"No." Morgan's voice cut through his performance like a blade. "The flowers formed a crown pattern. Evenly spaced, perpendicular to the scalp. We have very detailed photographs." She leaned forward, watching his face with the careful attentionshe'd developed during years of reading other inmates for signs of deception. "If you killed her, you'd know that."

Something flickered behind Thorn's careful composure—fear perhaps, or calculation. His fingers twitched against the table's surface, leaving invisible paintings in nervous sweat. "Did I misspeak? Memory plays tricks sometimes. Art is subjective, after all. The overall effect was what mattered."

Thorn's composure cracked like dried paint, revealing raw fear beneath. His hands trembled as he reached into his jacket, producing a stack of letters held together with a rubber band. The paper carried the soft wear of frequent handling, each page covered in precise typing that reminded Morgan of old case files. Coffee stains marked several corners, suggesting long nights spent reading and re-reading their contents.

"They started coming three months ago," he said, his cultured voice breaking. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the room's chill. "Anonymous letters with details about the murders, instructions on what to say if the FBI caught me. They have my sister—photos of her at work, at home, proof they can reach her anytime." His shoulders slumped, the perfect posture of an elegant artist crumbling into something more human. "The first letter came with pictures of Elizabeth leaving her yoga class, getting coffee, picking up her daughter from school. Then photos of her house at night, taken through windows. I'm not a brave man, Agent Cross. When they threatened Elizabeth, I... I agreed to play my part."

His fingers shook as he spread the letters across the table. "They knew everything about the murders—details that weren't in the papers. About Emily's cornsilk crown, about the specific flowers in Laura's hair. They told me exactly what to say, how to act when you came. Said if I didn't convince you, if I didn't take the blame..." He swallowed hard. "They sent a picture ofElizabeth's bedroom, taken from inside her house. While she was sleeping."

Morgan spread the letters across the table, cataloging every detail. The paper was expensive, the type of stationery used in formal correspondence. Each page carried the weight of authority, of someone used to issuing commands and expecting obedience. The same kind of authority that had orchestrated her own frame-up a decade ago.

"The paintings in your studio," she said, studying his face. "The agricultural scenes, the ritual elements. Were they part of their instructions too?"

Thorn laughed bitterly. "No, those were already there. That's why they chose me, I think. My work fits their narrative perfectly. They just had to arrange the evidence, point you in my direction." He gestured helplessly at the letters. "I'm just another brushstroke in someone else's masterpiece."

"The same person who's been staging these murders," Morgan said, watching his face for confirmation, "has been using you to take the fall. Just like they used Diana Grove's greenhouse, just like they arranged evidence to lead us down carefully constructed paths." The words carried the weight of bitter experience. "They're playing a longer game than we realized."

"There's more," Thorn said, his voice barely above a whisper. He pulled another envelope from his jacket—this one unopened, the paper crisp and new. "This came yesterday morning. They said not to open it until after I'd confessed. Said it contained instructions for what comes next." His hands shook as he pushed it across the table. "I don't know what's in it, but... they said it would prove my cooperation, ensure Elizabeth's safety."

The letters seemed to pulse with significance beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, each page another breadcrumb in a trail that led somewhere darker than they'd imagined. She knewsomething about false evidence, about carefully constructed lies. She'd spent ten years paying for someone else's perfect frame-up.

"We'll protect your sister," she told Thorn, gathering the letters with careful precision. The unopened envelope felt heavy with malevolent potential. "But we need to know everything they told you, every detail they shared. Someone's orchestrating all of this—the murders, the frame-ups, the elaborate deceptions. And we're going to find out who."

This time, she intended to expose the truth before anyone else could be transformed into their killer's next masterpiece. The game wasn't just about seasonal rituals anymore—it was about power, about control, about someone playing an elaborate game of deception that felt unnervingly familiar. Someone with the authority and resources to arrange evidence, manipulate investigations, and destroy lives with surgical precision.

Someone, Morgan suspected, very much like the people who had stolen ten years of her life. The question was whether she could stop them before they claimed their next victim.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

The forensics lab's fluorescent lights cast harsh shadows across the evidence table where Marcus Thorn's letters lay spread like tarot cards predicting doom. Morgan traced the edge of one envelope with her gloved finger, studying the precise folds and careful creases that spoke of someone who paid attention to details. The expensive stationery carried a subtle watermark—the kind used in formal correspondence from people who wielded real power. She knew something about that kind of power, about how it could destroy lives with a signature on a warrant or a carefully placed piece of evidence.

Dr. Chan moved around the table with practiced efficiency, her latex gloves making soft whispers against the paper as she worked. The young forensic scientist had been one of the few people who'd welcomed Morgan back without reservation. Now Chan's dark eyes narrowed as she examined another page under specialized lighting, her shoulders tense with concentration.

"No prints," Chan reported, adjusting her magnification goggles. "And the handwriting analysis is fascinating—look at these letter formations." She gestured to the monitor, where microscopic images revealed subtle inconsistencies in the strokes. "Definitely written with the non-dominant hand, probably to disguise natural patterns. But there's confidence in the strokes, even with the wrong hand. Our writer is someone used to detail work, someone with steady hands and excellent motor control."

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