Page 135 of Fatal Pattern

Anton shifted. “Well, I guess the surveillance will tell you that Rich was a patient. It came up that he’d known my father, and he liked me so much he wanted all his staff to see me exclusively.”

Anton’s head dropped into his hands. “They knew who I was the whole time.”

“From the day you set up the retainer,” Platt said. “They picked you because they could control you. McCrary sent his employees from the firm to give Wells access. We’ve swept your office, and it appears you were under surveillance for quite some time.”

Anton went very still. “Someone was listening . . . All my sessions?”

“Every one. The recordings were in Wells’s files. They’re sealed now under federal privilege protocol, but they exist.”

“That’s just . . .” Anton’s hands flexed in his lap. “It’s not just an invasion of my privacy. It violates patient privilege in the most egregious way.”

Tori watched him. She couldn’t say anything without making it about her, so she waited.

Anton looked at her. “They knew who I was.”

“They brought you in,” Tori said. “They wanted you specifically. A psychiatrist they could use to keep tabs on their people.”

“Florek.” Anton’s voice was flat now. “He was going to expose the shell accounts. They were listening to him talk to me about it. They killed him because of what he knew.”

“All part of the Nexus Initiative,” Platt said. “It’s a cabal we’ve been tracking for years. Barclay and Wells are just the tip of the iceberg.”

Tori’s chest tightened. They were right. All of it. Every instinct, every connection, every sleepless night chasing shadows that turned out to be monsters.

Garrison leaned forward. “Dr. Crew, Detective St. James, you did it. You brought them to justice. We can’t thank you enough.”

The words should have felt like victory. Instead, they settled over Tori like a blanket she couldn’t quite pull tight enough.

“That’s not the real reason we called you here,” Garrison said.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Garrison’s pen stopped clicking. Blade’s hand went still on his knee. Even the air conditioning seemed to quiet.

Platt’s professional mask didn’t slip, but his focus narrowed, laser-sharp, onto Tori and Anton. He pulled out a chair and sat, folding his hands on the polished table. “In Barclay’s confession, and in the files we recovered, we found a discrepancy in the original Crew murder file. Another lie. They were all lies.”

Tori’s pulse spiked. She’d lived with the weight of her parents’ deaths for twenty-eight years. She’d accepted the brutality, the randomness, the way evil could slice through a family and leave only fragments. What more could they possibly—

Platt slid a document across the desk.

A birth certificate. Official seal, crisp edges.

Tori’s fingers trembled as she picked it up. The names jumped out at her immediately:

Nikos Stavros Crew and Ji-Yeon Park Crew. Her parents. The date of birth made her stomach lurch.

October 12, 1998.

Two days before the murders.

Her mind flashed to the autopsy report she’d read weeks ago.

Victim three, unborn female child.

The line had haunted her, the idea that she’d lost not just her parents but a sibling who never got the chance to breathe.

“The report was a lie, Dr. Crew.” Platt’s voice cut through her thoughts like glass. “Your mother wasn’t pregnant when she died. She had just given birth. Barclay’s first official act for the Initiative wasn’t just murder. It was kidnapping.”

The oxygen seemed to vanish from the room. Tori’s lungs locked, as if her diaphragm had forgotten its most basic function. Her eyes dropped back to the birth certificate, scanning for details she’d missed.

The time: 3:47 a.m.