Page 107 of Fatal Pattern

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The digits on the wall clock crawled forward like they were swimming through molasses. Four fifty-five.

Five minutes until the vault closed, and Rene Garrison still hadn’t shown.

Tori knocked her knees together, a jittery beat syncing with the clock’s tick. Beyond the glass wall, Blade paced lines across the marble lobby. Left, pivot, back again. His shoulders rode high, one fist flexing open and shut.

Liz Reynolds looked up from her computer screen and pushed her long blond hair behind one ear. She was pretty, with freckled skin and the kind of no-nonsense attitude that said she’d heard every excuse in the book and wasn’t about to fall for anything.

“I’ll have to close the vault in five minutes,” she said. “Is your warrant coming or not?”

“She’ll be here.” But traffic had strangled them on the way over. What should’ve taken thirty minutes stretched to forty. Rene might not make it. “If she’s late, can you wait just five more minutes? Please?”

Liz shook her head. “Federal regulations don’t bend for anyone, hon. I’ve got protocols to follow, and my supervisor breathes down my neck about closing procedures.”

“I understand.”

But the waiting. Every second stretched like an eternity while crucial pieces of her life hung in limbo. Information about Aletheia, the Mandelbrot Group, Stryker’s condition, who killed Damien and why. All of it just out of reach. And now, familial DNA results that could reshape everything she thought she knew about herself.

Days. It could take days. Like Tori wouldn’t spend every one of them looking at her own hands and wondering whose they resembled. Wondering whether Jeremy Hoult’s eyes were shaped like hers. Whether the thing that made him violent lived somewhere inside her too.

Her fingers drummed against her thigh. The same restless energy that had her bouncing her knees earlier now demanded some other outlet. Some way to burn through the questions that circled her mind like vultures.

The bank’s front door chimed.

Tori sprang to her feet. Garrison strode across the lobby, warrant folder in hand. She swept into the office at four fifty-eight, slightly breathless.

“Sorry. Traffic was a nightmare.”

Liz reviewed the warrant. Tori watched her eyes scanning every line before nodding. “This’ll work. Let’s go.”

The vault door stood like a monument to security. Thick steel bars behind reinforced glass. Liz’s key turned with a solid click, and the electronic lock disengaged with a soft beep. Inside, rows of safe deposit boxes lined the walls in perfect formation.

“Box 894.” Liz ran her finger along the numbers until she found it. “Dual key system. You’ve got one, I’ve got the other.”

Liz inserted her key, twisted, and stepped back for Blade.

Tori stopped breathing as he inserted his key into the slot. His massive hands blocked her view of the mechanism, and she couldn’t tell if the key had turned or if the box would remain locked forever.

Then he looked at her with that grin she’d known since she was a teen.

The box slid out smooth as silk. A long metal rectangle that could hold a life’s worth of secrets. Liz carried it to the table in the center of the vault.

“I’ll give you privacy.” She stepped just outside the vault door, close enough to maintain protocol but far enough to respect the moment.

Blade pulled on latex gloves and handed Tori a pair. “May need to preserve prints and DNA.”

The gloves felt cold against her sweaty palms. This was it. They might finally get answers.

Blade lifted the lid with his good arm, wincing slightly from the knife wound. Tori stood on her toes, craning her neck, but she was too short to see anything except empty metal space. Her heart plummeted.

Blade’s face fell. “It’s—”

“Empty?”

“No. Wait.” He reached in with his uninjured arm and pulled out a stack of manila file folders. Then his hand disappeared again and emerged with a black leather notebook, the elastic closure strap wrapped diagonally to hold a pencil against the side.

Damien’s blackmail book.