Page 15 of Her Last Confession

As they came back into the lobby, they waved politely to Martinez, back at his place behind the counter. He gave them a cheerful wave in return, but Rachel barely noticed. Her mind was already racing through possibilities, connections, leads to follow. They needed to touch base with Detective Wheeler, find somewhere to work through the evidence they had. It was becoming quite obvious that this case was going to keep them away from home for the night…and likely tomorrow as well.

As they walked to the car, Rachel felt the familiar tickle at the base of her skull—the one that always came when pieces were starting to fall into place, even if she couldn't see the full picture yet. After years on the job, she'd learned to trust that feeling.

"Let’s call Wheeler," she said as they got into the car. "We need to find a place to set up for the night…see if we can find anything about EndLight and MedTech Solutions that might have fallen through the cracks. For all we know, they might be part of Reeves’s financial fraud allegations.”

Novak was already pulling out his phone, but Rachel barely heard him making the call. Her eyes were drawn back to the Carson Industries building, to Reeves's office high above She felt as if he was looking down, watching…and it made her want to get answers even faster than before.

CHAPTER TEN

The bare walls of apartment 1C seemed to pulse with anticipation. It was almost as if the very apartment itself was alive. David Morton—though that wasn't his real name—stood in the center of the sparse living room, surrounded by carefully arranged stacks of papers and photographs. The October wind whistled through a gap in the weatherstripping, making the photos flutter like butterfly wings. He looked out to the basement patio on the other side of the glass of his side door and watched the few fallen leaves from the street dance in the breeze.

He'd chosen this building carefully. Bottom floor, corner unit, clear sight lines to all approaches. The property manager hadn't asked too many questions when he'd paid six months' rent in advance. Cash spoke louder than references in a run-down place like this one.

A twin mattress lay directly on the floor in one corner, its military-precise hospital corners a habit he couldn't shake after a decade behind bars. A folding table and single chair occupied another corner. The walls remained bare except for one: his peculiar little shrine to Rachel Gift.

The triumphant survivor. The devoted mother. The dedicated agent. He stared down a clipped newspaper page. His fingers traced the headline: "Local FBI Agent Returns After Beating Terminal Diagnosis."

He'd spent his prison days dreaming of this moment, but reality had exceeded his darkest fantasies. Not only had she thrived while he rotted in that cell—she'd become some kind of inspiration. The sort of little news headline that they played at the start of the evening news to make people smile—to give them hope.

A laugh escaped his throat, dry and hollow as autumn leaves. "Terminal diagnosis," he whispered to the empty room. "You don't know the meaning of the word. Not yet."

His laptop screen cast a sickly blue glow across the room from its place on the old, second-hand desk he’d gotten at Goodwill. Browser tabs filled with every scrap of information he could find about her new life. Her marriage to Jack Rivers. A brief mention of her daughter in the obituary of her grandmother. He’d even managed to discover her volunteer work at Evergreen Valley Hospice, where she spent every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon "giving back" to terminal patients.

The hospice sign-in sheet—courtesy of a sympathetic janitor who hadn't asked why he needed it—lay on his folding table like a treasure map. Rachel's flowing signature appeared weekly, right on schedule. She was nothing if not reliable.

Moving to the kitchen, he opened the single cabinet above the sink. Inside sat one plate, one bowl, one cup. Minimum requirements for maintaining appearances. And that was fine. When he’d been in prison, he’d never dreamed he’d have a place like this again. It was a bit of a shithole, really, but it was also freedom.

He grabbed a bowl and then filled it with dry cereal. He ate it like that, using just his fingers, as he returned to the wall of Rachel, letting his eyes drift over the collection he'd assembled. Articles about her confrontation with Alex Lynch. Coverage of her recovery. A write up about the crazed Lynch devotee who had killed her grandmother and came for her kid. A grainy photo of her walking into the FBI building on her first day back.

"You think you know suffering," he murmured, reaching out to touch a photo of her smiling with her new husband. "Ten years, Agent Gift. Ten years while you built your perfect little life. While you played hero and survivor."

The wind picked up outside, rattling the loose window frame. He barely noticed, lost in contemplation of his plans. The hospice volunteering—that was the key. Such a perfect symbol of her newfound lease on life. Her way of processing her brush with death by helping others face their own mortality.

That was where he’d have to strike. It would hurt her the most.

Moving to his laptop, he pulled up the hospice's staff directory. So many ways to hurt someone who had everything to lose. Rachel Gift had faced down killers. She'd beaten cancer. She probably thought herself invincible now.

But he knew better. He'd spent ten years studying how to break people who thought themselves unbreakable. Rachel Gift wasn't special. She was just another person with vulnerabilities, with pressure points, with soft spots that could be exploited.

"You should have let me be," he whispered to her image. "Should have been content with those petty charges. But you had to dig deeper. Had to find the truth. And now..."

He left the thought unfinished, moving to the window. Outside, the city was coming alive with evening lights. Somewhere out there, Rachel Gift was probably having dinner with her family, secure in the knowledge that she'd conquered every demon life had thrown at her. Or maybe she was out in the field, chasing down a killer.

He smiled at the thought. Her…chasing down killers when he was the most devious and dedicated of them all.

He pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the door to his basement patio, watching his breath fog the pane. Let her enjoy these moments while she could. Soon enough, she would learn what it truly meant to suffer. To watch helplessly as everything she cared about was stripped away.

He smiled at his own genius. After all, what better place to begin dismantling someone's life than in a building full of people already preparing for death?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The police precinct parking lot was a patchwork of harsh shadows and yellow-white light cast by aging sodium lamps. Rachel watched those shadows flicker by as Novak pulled their car into an empty spot, the headlights briefly illuminating the weathered brick facade of the building in front of them.

Rachel sat for a moment, studying the building through the windshield. After two years away from active duty, these late-night visits to local precincts still felt both familiar and strange, like putting on an old jacket and finding it didn't quite fit anymore. The thought of Jack back home in a quiet house (with Paige at a friend’s house) crossed her mind. She missed working cases with him, missed the shorthand they'd developed over years of partnership. Novak was capable enough, but it wasn't the same.

The precinct building seemed to huddle under the night sky. A flag hung limp and motionless above the entrance, and somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed—a sound Rachel had long ago learned to tune out. The few cars left in the lot were mostly patrol vehicles, their light bars dark, waiting for the next shift to bring them to life.

They stepped out into the night together and as they approached the entrance, their footsteps echoing across the nearly empty lot, Rachel again thought of the brief argument she and Novak had shared about the pods on their way to the site...about how Novak couldn’t imagine ever using a device like the EndLight peaceful passage pods. Was there something inherently wrong with her because shecouldunderstand it?

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