He hums a tune his mother used to sing while folding laundry, soft and lilting and terribly out of place amid the craft-knives and solvents.
“The world will understand,” he murmurs.“They will understand what they owe.”
Behind him, the tea-light flares, almost as if in approval.
He smiles.
CHAPTER ONE
Monday May 12th
The prison looked like someone had dropped a concrete spaceship in the middle of rural Maine and then wrapped it in razor wire just to be sure.
From the two-lane blacktop, Northbridge Special Management Unit rose out of the scrub like an accusation.No trees within shouting distance, no softening shrubs, nothing that could be climbed or hidden behind — just gravel, fences and poured cement, everything squared off and hostile.The outer wall had the dull, pebbled texture of cheap municipal pools, unfinished and unforgiving, as if the builders had decided aesthetics were for people who could leave.
Kate eased the Bureau sedan into a visitor’s space and killed the engine.The tick of cooling metal filled the silence.For a moment she sat there, hands still on the steering wheel, watching the heat shimmer up off the tarmac.The May sky was a hard, polished blue, the kind that made the world look like a photograph with the contrast turned up.Beyond the outer fence, the hills rolled away in soft green folds, all pine and scrub and the occasional farmhouse.
Up here the air smelled of warm earth and petrol, nothing more.If she cracked the window she could probably pick out cut grass, maybe the ghost of manure from some unseen field.Ordinary smells.Farm-town smells.If you ignored the watchtowers and the floodlights and the cameras hooded on their posts like metallic crows, it was almost peaceful.
Almost.
She could see one of the towers from where she sat, a narrow grey pencil shading the sky, topped with glass and shadow.A figure moved behind the dark pane — the slow, restless pacing of a man whose entire job was to watch for trouble and be quietly disappointed when it didn’t arrive.A rifle barrel glinted once and then was still.
Northbridge SMU was the most secure facility she had ever visited.On paper it wasn’t even a prison, just “a dedicated high-risk housing extension” to the state penitentiary down the road.The brochure language, the euphemisms, were almost funny if you ignored what they were wrapped around.In practice, it was a box built to hold the worst men in America — the ones other prisons couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with.Terrorists.Serial killers.Gang leaders who could start wars with a phone call.
And Elijah Cox lived here now.
The thought landed with a dull weight in her chest and stayed there.
Three months ago, she’d chased him through a derelict hospital in Manhattan, up stairwells that smelled of rust and ghosts, all the way to a roof lined with broken glass.Three months since the sirens had converged, since the NYPD had flooded the building like antibodies swarming an infection.
Three months since they’d dragged the so-called Lawgiver back into a cage.
The images were never far away.Cox running ahead of her, coat flapping, breath rasping, the hiss of his voice when he’d turned at the parapet and said,You came, as if she’d been fulfilling some sacred appointment rather than following a trail of bodies.
Kate exhaled slowly, trying to let some of the tension go with it.The breath clouded a little on the cooled windshield before vanishing.Today was not about the past.Today was about a phone call from a US Attorney’s office and an email that had landed in her inbox like a stone.
Inmate COX, ELIJAH SAMUEL has made multiple requests to speak specifically with Special Agent KATE VALENTINE.Subject claims to have information concerning “an imminent divine action” relevant to ongoing investigations involving religiously motivated violence.Please advise if SA VALENTINE is willing to interview subject on behalf of the Bureau.
She’d stared at the email for a long time before answering.The phraseimminent divine actionhad seemed to pulse on the screen, black letters gone radioactive.
Imminent divine action.
You could never accuse Elijah Cox of underselling his material.
Her phone vibrated against her thigh now, dragging her back.She glanced at the screen.MARCUS.
She considered letting it go to voicemail; her nerves already felt thin as filament, stretched and humming.But he’d only keep calling, and besides, she’d promised him—promised all of them—that she wouldn’t go near Cox again without telling someone first.
She swiped to answer.“Hey.”
“Tell me you’re on a beach,” Marcus said, in lieu of greeting.“Tell me you’ve finally taken my advice and gone somewhere with cocktails and no mobile reception.”
His voice sounded cheerful, loose, as if newly married life agreed with him.She pictured him in their cramped office, feet on his desk, tie already loosened even though it was probably not yet ten.A half-empty coffee, a half-solved crossword.Normal things.Civilian things.
“You know where I am,” she said.“And it’s not very beachy.”
There was a beat.“Umm… You’re at a prison.”
