They were finishing something. And she was the end.
Twenty
Gideon Ward was dead.
He died right in front of her — eyes open, lips still moving as if the words had been ripped from his throat before he could finish them. One second, he was there, speaking in that steady, deliberate way that always made her feel like he had a plan. The next, life left him.
He wasn’t pulling the strings. He told her that. With his last breath, he said, “It’s not me. It’s them.”
Them. Who were they?
Charlotte stood frozen, her arms wrapped tight around herself as if she could hold everything in — her fear, her grief, her unraveling sense of control. Her mind was spinning, looping the same awful truth: he’s gone. But also: they’re still out there.
Graham’s voice cut through the fog. Sharp. Calm. In command. “I want access to his cell. Now,” he told the warden. “And I want the file on his last cellmate. Every note. Every visitor log.”
He paused. “And bring me the photo. The one of the prisoner known as Victor Graves.”
Charlotte looked up just in time to see him glance her way. His eyes didn’t linger, but they didn’t have to. She felthis suspicion, the calculation happening behind those clipped words.
She turned away. She didn’t want him to see her like this — cracked open, desperate, exposed. Gideon Ward was her link to the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but something. A breadcrumb trail.
And now it ended in blood.
She needed a new plan.
There wasn’t time to fall apart. Not when she knew, with a sick certainty, that whoever they were… they weren’t done. Ward tried to warn her. Whatever game had started, it didn’t end with him. She was still on the board.
Her pulse thudded in her throat. She could feel it now — the shift in the air. Like a storm building, like someone watching. She had to move. She had to find out who Ward left behind. Who he trusted, who he feared. Who might have answers. Because if she didn’t—they’d come for her and everyone she loved next.
Charlotte had to dig into Ward’s past. There was no way around it now. Ward didn’t die from a bullet or a staged suicide. No clean execution. No government black-bag special. Cancer ate through him — fast, aggressive, miserable in its speed. She had seen this kind of death before. Whatever secrets he’d kept, they died rotting him from the inside out.
And that wasn’t how this was supposed to end.
She arrested Gideon Ward. She was the one to drag him in, bleeding, spitting lies, eyes full of fire. She put him away. For life. And yet, somehow, he still found a way to rise back into her world, like a ghost. A whisper. A trigger.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
A day earlier, just before Ward’s death, she saw Henry Byron. A man she hadn’t seen in nearly three decades — a young cop once, when all of this first broke open. Back then, he was all swagger and sarcasm, too young to realize the case would hollowthem out. Now, he died a shell. Pale. Thin. Haunted. His eyes didn’t quite focus, like he was watching something no one else could see.
He didn’t say a word. Just lay there. A different kind of misery.
Where had he been all these years?
And more urgently: were there others?
Charlotte had the sick feeling Ward wasn’t the only one who’d crawled out of the past. Someone triggered this — maybe to finish something, maybe to restart it. Either way, she was back in it. No badge this time. No official authority. Just history and instinct, and the truth no one wanted to touch.
And still — she would need to face Alex. His name was pressure in her chest. Alex, who begged her to let him in. Who stayed even though she did her best to push him away. Who knew what this case could cost.
But now? There was no avoiding him. She needed him — or at least what he knew. And maybe, if she was being honest with herself, she needed more than that.
Charlotte took a shaky breath and turned toward the storm she knew was coming. This wasn’t over. It had never been over.
Alex steppedinto the conference room inside the technology center at the college and immediately felt the weight of it.
Ethan stood in the corner, a paper cup of coffee in one hand, his phone in the other. Brad Killian, ever the picture of authority, was giving orders to six uniformed highway patrol officers like he hadn’t missed a minute of sleep. Alex checked in with the six investigators from his own office—young, sharp-eyed, full of the kind of urgency that only came with not yet knowing what real horror looked like—his and Noah’s to lead now.
He walked over, shook each of their hands. “Morning,” he said quietly, pointing them to one of the empty tables. No preamble. Just the facts.
