Page 14 of Her Last Promise
Nothing out of place.Nothing to explain the sound that had drawn him out here.
Harrison shook his head, feeling slightly foolish.The new construction meant that there were, on occasion, settling noises.Surely, that’s all it had been.He was letting Smith's death make him jumpy.He turned to head back to his office, already thinking about what he'd say when he called Tammy, trying to come up with an amount that would be generous but not too showy.
As he turned back around, someone was behind him.The man seemed to materialize from the shadows.
Harrison registered several details in rapid succession: medium height, unremarkable features, clothes that could have been worn by any office worker in the building.But it was the eyes that stopped him cold—flat and empty as shark eyes, watching him with clinical detachment.
Before Harrison could speak, before he could even draw breath to shout, the man's fist drove into his solar plexus with devastating precision.All the air left Harrison's lungs in a whoosh as he doubled over.His knees buckled and he went down hard, catching a glimpse of the man's shoes—ordinary brown oxfords, the kind you'd see in any department store—before a vicious kick to his ribs sent him sprawling.
Pain exploded through his side as he hit the floor.His temple hit it hard, and a blast of pain roared through his head.Through the roaring in his ears, he heard the soft scuff of those ordinary shoes moving closer.Harrison tried to push himself up, to crawl away, but another kick caught him in the same spot.Something cracked.The pain was astronomical now, radiating through his chest with every desperate attempt to breathe.Blood from his head dripped to the floor; it looked much brighter than he might have imagined.
Lying there on the polished floor he'd walked across thousands of times, James Harrison had a moment of perfect clarity: he was going to die here, killed by this stranger.The thought struck him with the same cold certainty he'd felt when delivering closing arguments in his most airtight cases.The evidence was overwhelming.The verdict is inevitable.
The shoes stopped beside his head.Harrison forced his eyes open, looking up past the shoes, the ordinary slacks, the ordinary jacket, to that unremarkable face with its dead eyes.The man was holding something—a syringe, its contents catching the dim light like liquid amber.
"Who—" Harrison managed to gasp, but the man was already kneeling beside him, and the needle was descending toward his neck with the same methodical precision as everything else.
The last thing James Harrison saw was his own reflection in those empty eyes, and he understood with sudden, horrifying clarity exactly why no one had noticed this man, why no one had stopped him, why he had been able to walk right into this building and up to this floor.
He looked like he belonged here.He looked like he belonged anywhere.
He looked like no one at all.
The needle slid home, and darkness followed.
CHAPTER TEN
The steady drip of the ancient coffee maker in the corner marked time like a metronome as Rachel scrolled and sifted through what seemed like an endless sea of files—some from the courts and some from the bureau’s criminal database.The small conference room felt more claustrophobic with each passing hour, its walls now entirely hidden behind hastily pinned crime scene photos and timeline charts.
Reading through it all was like scanning some sort of sordid history book, viewing all the many ways human beings were, at their core, nothing more than a bunch of screw-ups.
"Here's another one," Novak said, his eyes tired from nearly two hours of reading through the files."Triple homicide, 2018.Judge Smith gave Gerald Mackenzie three consecutive life sentences."He cleared his throat, shuffling through papers."Mackenzie's brother made some pretty explicit threats during sentencing.Even punched a cop when he tried to stage a protest in front of the courthouse."
Rachel looked up from the autopsy photos spread before her."Where's the brother now?"
"Dead."Novak made a note on the whiteboard, then crossed it out immediately."OD'd in 2020."
Another dead end (pun only slightly intended).They'd been at this for nearly two hours now, combing through Judge Smith's most controversial cases.The table between them had become a landscape of human tragedy – murderers, rapists, armed robbers, all carrying their own grudges against the man who'd sentenced them.She knew this was all part of the job and that it had only been two hours; hell, she’d spentdaysdoing this exact same thing in the past.But she’d been a much younger agent then.More patient, more eager to please no matter what she was doing.
"What about this one?"Rachel pulled a file from one of the towering stacks."Martin Webb, convicted of second-degree murder in 2015.Smith denied all his appeals despite significant character testimony."She skimmed the yellowed pages."Webb's daughter wrote letters to the judge every Christmas begging him to reconsider."
“Webb…Webb,” Novak replied, consulting his laptop.After a few seconds of clicking and scrolling, he added: "Webb's still in Rockview.No contact with the outside world except his lawyer for the past three years."
Rachel turned back to Smith’s autopsy photos, drawn again to the hasty injection site on Smith's arm.The skin around it was bruised, showing signs of multiple failed attempts.Her eyes drifted to his wrist, studying the deep indentation that wrapped around it like a bracelet.It was little to go on, but she did believe it spoke volumes about their killer.Someone didn't just have this sort of stuff lying around.This had been strategically planned.
She thought back to what they knew about Smith and what had been done to him.The cocktail of drugs in his system – they weren't just meant to kill him.It had been designed to keep him unconscious, compliant.She paused, a thought taking shape.This wasn't just about revenge.It was about making him experience something specific.
Her phone buzzed, buried somewhere under a stack of witness statements.Rachel ignored it, pulling another file closer."Here – William Samson, 2019.Armed robbery gone wrong, victim ended up in a permanent vegetative state.Smith denied the family's request to have charges reduced in exchange for restitution to help with medical bills."
The phone buzzed again.This time, Rachel dug it out from under a file, finding two texts from Jack:About to eat dinner.When can we expect you home?followed byLasagna, remember?Still warm if you hurry.
The messages tugged at something in her chest.She glanced at her watch – 6:57 PM.How many times during her first years with the Bureau had she missed dinner?How many nights had she called Peter to say she'd be "just another hour" only to stumble home long after he and Paige had gone to bed?How many nights had Peter put Paige down by himself and then seemed cold and distant when she finally got home?
Was she really going to do that same thing to Jack now?Was she once again going to make Paige feel like she was not a priority?
She'd promised herself things would be different after the cancer.After coming so close to losing everything, she'd sworn she wouldn't take these ordinary moments for granted again.
"Here's a weird one," Novak said, interrupting her thoughts."A civil case from 2017.A family wanted to remove life support from a car accident victim, but the victim's son fought it.Smith ruled in the son's favor, kept the mother on life support against the rest of the family's wishes."He frowned at the file."Mother lived another three years in a vegetative state before finally passing."
