Page 125 of Fatal Pattern

His eyes drifted to where Stryker lay on a stretcher. IV lines snaked from his arm. An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth.

Stryker’s eyes fluttered.

Blade’s knee screamed as he jumped to his feet.

“Tori, look.”

Stryker’s eyelids twitched. They opened a sliver. Barely there then gone. Like a body trying to drag itself back from somewhere deep.

His eyelids cracked open, but Stryker didn’t move. They were already by his side at the gurney.

Tori’s hands wrapped around Stryker’s with the kind of desperation that made Blade’s chest ache. “Stryker? Stryker, can you hear me?”

Stryker’s eyes tracked to Blade’s face, recognition flickering. His mouth moved, but no sound came.

“Don’t try to talk,” Blade said. “Save your strength.”

The older man’s gaze shifted to Tori, to the paramedic, to the officers in the corner, then back to Blade. Questions lived in those eyes. Questions that would have to wait.

“We’ve gotta get moving,” one paramedic said. “This man needs to get to the hospital.”

Tori stepped back and said, “Call Corbin King, he’s a Special Agent with FDLE. He has medical power of attorney.”

They took Corbin’s number and rolled Stryker toward the exit. His eyes were closed again.

More voices rang through the building, shouting orders. Two grim-faced FDLE investigators Blade recognized and trusted had taken control of the scene. No BSO uniforms. No FBI. Not yet.

Crime scene tape had gone up. Photographers documented everything. The studio that had been a serial killer’s shrine was now little more than evidence.

Blade gave his statement to Special Agent Marsha Bondi, a twenty-year veteran of the FDLE whose word carried weight in court.

The facts came out clean and simple. A detached account that felt like a story about someone else. The knife attack on the beach. Acting on Garrison’s intel that brought them here. The confrontation with Dean Barclay and Sebastian Wells. Shots fired in self-defense and defense of others.

Marsha recorded it on her phone, stopping him now and again for clarification.

When Blade had finished, Marsha released a loud sigh. “Well, this is one for the books. I’ll need to get Dr. Crew’s statement.”

“She’s with the EMTs.” Blade nodded toward the gurney, where Tori had returned to have the paramedic clean the cut on her arm she’d reopened along the way.

“And the older gentleman? The one they took to the hospital?”

“Kidnapping victim. I doubt he can give a statement. He’s been in a coma for months.”

Marsha stared. “Oh—okay then. I’ll coordinate with the hospital.”

For years, Tori and Blade had trusted a man who’d held a secret.

Stryker had walked away from that crime scene in 1998 knowing exactly what Barclay had buried. He’d watched Tori train in his gym for years, watched her chase a past she couldn’t remember, and never said a word. One day he’d have to answer for that. But the man had been in a coma for nearly a year and he’d just survived a kidnapping.

The reckoning could wait. Healing came first.

35

Tori pressed her back against the molded plastic chair in the ER waiting room, trying to ignore the kid three seats down who’d been sniffling for the past hour. Each wet, congested breath made her skin crawl with imaginary germs.

Half an hour ago, some guy had stumbled through those doors clutching a baggie packed with ice and his own severed hand. Gator bait, the nurses whispered. He’d dangled raw chicken too close to those prehistoric jaws.

The coffee in her hands had gone cold an hour ago, but she kept holding the cup anyway. It gave her something to do with her fingers. The liquid looked like motor oil and tasted worse. Bitter enough to strip paint. Her stomach cramped with hunger, but the thought of the vending machine sandwiches made her nauseous.