A few days before Halloween, Kate was well enough to leave the hospital but still not ready to go home, so Conor hired a private ambulance to drive her to a nursing facility in Westerly. Sam had gotten her room ready for her—with her favorite blanket, a pile of books, the kai body cream she loved, and some paintings from the gallery. The nursing home’s halls were decorated with jack-o’-lanterns and cutouts of witches and ghosts. On Halloween, the residents gathered in the dining hall, and volunteers wearing costumes passed outSnickersbars and Reese’s Cups.
Thanksgiving came. Conor had hoped to take Kate home for a big dinner with the family, but the doctors advised she give it another few weeks. She still needed wound care to make sure the infections didn’trecur, and she needed more physical therapy to get her strong enough to move with more confidence and return to her regular activities.
Kate worked as hard as hell. She not only did PT, she also continued the exercises after the therapist left for the day. She stopped calling for help getting to the bathroom and did it all on her own—including showers. Instead of picking at the food, she ate full meals. She knew she needed to gain weight—she had lost twenty-five pounds when she was in the coma—so she concentrated on building up her muscle mass with healthy food and exercise.
Her mental health was precarious—she kept having nightmares, and for the first time in her life, she had panic attacks. She had almost died; her heart had stopped more than once. She hadn’t felt pain at the moment of being stabbed—she’d felt numb. The pain came later; she’d felt it even when she was in the coma, writhing in her body, beneath the sea of morphine.
Conor protected her from the news the best he could. He wouldn’t let anyone bring up what had happened. It was up to Kate, if and when she wanted to talk about it. Slowly, she began to ask him questions. Conor told her just as much as she could take at a time. And every time she absorbed a detail, she’d get incredibly tired and have to go to sleep.
And then she had a visitor.
The day after Thanksgiving, someone knocked on the door of her room. Conor was out for a few hours, and Kate had been dozing after a particularly grueling round of PT. But the knock woke her up, and when she opened her eyes, she saw Caroline standing by her bed.
“Hi,” Caroline said. “Do you remember me?”
“Of course,” Kate said. “How are you doing?”
“Oh god,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “The real question is, how areyoudoing? Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Kate said.
“After what she did to you? I ... I thought you were going to die.”
“I almost did,” Kate said. “But they brought me back. Tell me about you.”
“I got rescued that day,” Caroline said. “I watched the police arrest them all. It felt so good, seeingthemin handcuffs instead of us, taken away. I heard them screaming their excuses—telling the police they were making a mistake. Those rich, important people ... now they’re all locked up.”
“That’s good,” Kate said. She still had pangs about Maeve, who had seemed to have a change of heart at the end, and about Lincoln, whom she had come to like. She thought of all the years Crispin had been her client, how many paintings she had helped him choose, how she had enjoyed their conversations, how deftly he had hidden the person he really was.
Conor walked into Kate’s room and found Caroline there. At first, he wanted to usher her out, thinking that her presence would bring back too many bad memories. But Kate signaled that she was fine.
“I just hope 1740 eventually gets completely wiped out,” Caroline said. “I’m sure a lot of it is underground, and members are everywhere. They’ve found ways to hide, until they can pop up in another location.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Conor said. “They’re finished.”
Kate turned her head to look at him. He never talked about the case because she hadn’t wanted to hear about it.
“They are?” Kate asked. “But how?”
“Yeah, how?” Caroline asked. “There are so many members. They protect each other. And they are so good at lying.”
“That is true,” Conor said. “But one of them is going to give it all up.”
“What does that mean?” Kate asked.
“The ultimate insider has a black book with the names and numbers of every member of 1740, the dates of every meeting, every time they assaulted women,” Conor said.
“Every time a Belle met a Beast,” Caroline said softly.
“These are federal offenses because some of the victims were taken across state lines,” Conor said. “And the Feds are negotiating a dealwith the insider in return for cooperation in the trials. There will bemanytrials.”
“Who is the ultimate insider?” Kate asked.
“Nola,” Caroline said before Conor could answer.
“That’s right,” Conor said.
“Nola Aldrich,” Kate said. She still couldn’t believe it. Although she hadn’t known Nola long, she had trusted her because they had been introduced by Conor’s aunt and uncle. She knew that Mike and Anne were devastated by the fact that they had brought both Nola and Leo Kennedy into the Old Detectives family circle. And as much as Kate had tried to reassure them that she understood, they were still gutted.
