He's never varied it once in the fourteen months Cain’s been watching him.
Arrogance.
It'll be the last thing he ever relies on.
The night is cold and clear.
I've been in position for an hour by the time his car turns onto the road. I know its shape before the headlights reach me. The make, the color, the small dent above the rear left wheel arch that tells me definitively it's him and not someone else.
I breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
This is the part where I become something other than Hayden Crawford. This is the part where Hayden goes somewhere quiet and what's left is just the job, just the variables, just the careful and methodical execution of something that’s been planned and prepared and is now simply waiting to be finished.
I'm good at this part.
I've always been good at this part.
Tonight, though.
Tonight it's different.
The car settles into the dip in the road. Trees crowd close, branches knitting overhead, turning the lane into a narrow throat. The camera on the pole ticks through its sweep, then turns away. Four seconds. I count them as it passes. One. Two. Three. Four.
The engine dies.
Silence presses in. Leaves scrape. Somewhere deeper in the trees, something small breaks and runs.
Patrick Holt steps out of his car.
He doesn’t hesitate. One hand smooths down his jacket. The other shuts the door with a soft, clean click. He walks like the dark belongs to him, like nothing in it has teeth. He doesn’tglance over his shoulder. He doesn’t pause to listen. His eyes stay forward, fixed on the stretch of road ahead.
The camera begins to turn back.
I step out of the dark. I watch his face move through stages: confusion first, then the blankness of a man whose brain is rapidly gathering information it doesn't want to, then finally something that might be the beginning of fear.
"Who are you?" His voice is even. Controlled. He's used to controlling things.
I don't answer, and I have to stop myself from laughing, because he knows who I am.
I look at him instead. Look at the man who stood across a bed from a seventeen year old girl whose mother was dying and told her what it would cost to keep her alive. Who looked at Olivia, seventeen, terrified, completely alone and saw leverage. He’s the man who took everything that was mine.
He’s been sleeping just fine every night since.
Something moves through me.
Not rage. Rage is loud and hot; I know how to wait it out. This is something quieter. Something that’s been sitting in the basement of everything for three years, patient and certain, knowing that one day it would be standing exactly here.
I think about Olivia in the pale blue dress at her mother's graveside.
I think about her hand tightening in mine at the hospital.
I think about everything her mother never got to see.
Patrick Holt opens his mouth.
"Whatever they're paying you?—"
