Page 12 of Fatal Pattern

“Please.” She hated the desperation in her voice, but she couldn’t stop it. “The pattern. What is it? What happened that night?”

Damien struggled against the guards, chains rattling like wind chimes in a storm. “Give me one minute!”

“Not happening.” The sergeant jerked Damien’s other arm.

The toes of Damien’s prison-issued shoes scraped against the floor as they pulled him away.

He strained to look back at her. “It started with them. Your mother. She knew about the fractals.”

“Move it,” the sergeant said, jerking his arm.

Sullivan’s face flushed red as he struggled against the chains, against the officers, against time running out. The veins in his neck bulged. “It wasn’t just me there that night! It was the start of the pattern! Barclay lied!”

Barclay? Millie Beach Police Chief Barclay?

“Lied about what?” she demanded.

The officers shoved him through the doorway. He twisted in their grip, eyes wild and locking with hers one last time.

“The report is a lie! A cover-up! Barclay created a whole second story—there’s a second murder book!” Damien fought against the guards, desperate now.

The door slammed shut, cutting Damien off midsentence, but his words hung in the air like gunpowder smoke. She felt her hands begin to tremble. Her knees went loose, like the floor had dropped six inches without warning.

A second murder book.

4

A voice drifted through layers of darkness. Muffled. Sound through water. Male. Familiar, but . . . blurred in the fog that had become Stryker’s world.

Move. Open your eyes. Do something.

Nothing. His body remained a prison. Unresponsive to every command his mind screamed.

“I’m sorry, Stryker.” The voice carried regret. “This wasn’t supposed to go this way.”

Who are you? What happened?

He tried to force his eyelids open. C’mon, muscles. Respond.

The effort exhausted him. Consciousness began to slip away like sand through fingers.

Fingers. Move your fingers.

Were they moving? He couldn’t tell. The disconnect between intention and action had become absolute. His toes. Could he feel them?

The question dissolved, and darkness pulled him deeper.

Twenty-six years melted away.

“Third donut, King? How do you stay so skinny eating like that?”

Stryker glanced at Damien Sullivan across the patrol car’s center console. His partner’s gut strained against his uniform shirt, the buttons working overtime. Steam rose from their coffee cups in the October chill.

“Maybe you should trade beers for dumbbells,” Stryker said. “Then you could lift more than your cup, there.”

Damien snorted into his coffee. “Funny. Real funny.” He gestured at the donut box between them. “Seriously, though. Your metabolism’s unnatural. You eat twice as much as me and look like you stepped off a magazine cover.”

“Yeah, Mad magazine maybe.” Stryker pushed the last bite of donut into his mouth and wiped his glazed fingers on a crumpled napkin.