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“About what Kyle did to you?” Ryan asked.
“Yes, but also about what might have been if he hadn’t poisoned me,” she said. “About the life I might be leading now if I was already a mother. Sometimes I wake up from a dream and for a second, I think I am one. And when I realize I’m not, the ache is unbearable. I just don’t know if I could go through something like that again. It might break me.”
Ryan hugged her again. For a long time, he didn't speak.
“I understand,” he finally whispered, his warm breath in her ear making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “I’ll follow your lead. But just for the record, I don’t believe there’s anything that could break Jessie Hunt.”
She looked up at him. His eyes were wet, but not with sadness so much as pride. She didn’t think she could love him any more than she did right now. She pulled him toward her and kissed him, savoring the softness of his lips on hers.
Then his phone rang again. He ignored it. They continued to kiss. She could feel his hands running along her sides, and now it wasn't just the hairs on her neck standing up.
“What’s that smell?” Hannah called out from her room.
Jessie pulled away quickly and looked at the pan of veggies. Acrid smoke was rising from it.
“Oh god,” she muttered, “she asked us to do one thing. Now she’s going to kill us.”
She rushed over to the stove and moved the pan off the burner as Ryan reluctantly answered his phone.
"Hi, Captain," he said, "I thought we were done for the night. Is everything okay?"
He put her on speaker.
“I’m sorry to bother you again,” Parker said grimly, “but I just got a call, and I wanted you to hear the news from me first.”
“What is it?” Jessie asked.
“Hank Costabile was just released from prison.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
The clock struck midnight.
Mark Haddonfield was already asleep on the bunk bed in his jail cell. Had he been awake, it would have been hard for him to contain his glee because he would have pictured what was happening at that exact moment.
As Thanksgiving officially began, a brand new website suddenly became active. Simultaneously, dozens of push notifications were sent to a variety of media outlets and well-known conspiracy sites, announcing the existence of the new website. Despite the fanfare, the site, called Mark’s Manifesto, was surprisingly simple, containing only a title and text. Lots of text.
The manifesto described in great detail how Jessie Hunt had wronged him, why he had to punish her, and how he’d gone about it. Then, at the very end, it turned into a call to action, asking for someone to take up the mantle of vengeance and pick up where he’d left off.
In the upper right corner of the page was a counter, indicating every time there was a new visitor to the site. As of 12:08 a.m., there were fourteen visitors.
By 12:30, there were 121.
EPILOGUE
Stephanie Fowler marked the chart and happily moved on.
She was almost done with her nursing rounds for the hour and was looking forward to her 1 a.m. break. It was hard enough to work nights, but the night before Thanksgiving day was especially challenging.
At least the ICU was pretty quiet. Most patients were usually unconscious or so heavily sedated at this hour that there weren’t many requests. Of course, the tedium was sometimes broken when someone coded. In this unit, that happened every other shift or so.
She walked into the room of her last patient before break, nodding at Zeke, the security guard who was sitting outside the door, trying to keep his eyes open. There used to be a cop who manned that spot, but they’d made the switch about a month ago.
Stephanie glanced over at the patient lying in bed and, stunned by what she saw, dropped the chart she was holding. The patient’s eyes were open. Stephanie leaned out the door and whispered to the guard.
“She’s awake. Can you get Gladys—quick?”
Zeke popped out of his chair, glanced in the room to confirm what Stephanie had said, then, without a word, dashed off down the hall in search of the head nurse.
