Page 17 of Fatal Pattern

“It’s a stim ball,” Luna said. “Use that instead of turning every room into your own drumline.”

He turned it in his palm. Felt weirdly good, holding something meant to channel the restless current always working through him, that too-fast hum in his head that never really found neutral. “Thanks,” he said. “Guess I owe you one.”

“Thank her for my sake too,” Tori said with a half smile. “The last hour in the car, you were clicking the cruise button like a percussion section.”

He smirked. “You really want me quiet? Not sure I’d recognize myself like that.”

“Try me,” she said.

The corner of his mouth hitched. He squeezed the ball and let the room settle. His mind kept circling back to that concrete visitation room. Sullivan spitting out Barclay’s name and accusations about a second murder book. If any of it was true, someone had kept those files buried for decades.

If Sullivan was telling the truth.

Tori’s reflection ghosted across the one-way glass overlooking the gym. Shoulders slumped. Hands limp in her lap. The woman who’d razored him with jokes that morning—the skilled analyst who could stare down a killer without flinching—had vanished. He was looking at the fourteen-year-old girl he’d pulled out from under a pier in the dark, the one whose scream had been the first thing in his life he’d ever run toward.

She’d needed him then. She needed him now.

He was going to find that second book for her.

“The stalker in the lot wasn’t the only excitement today,” Blade said. “We made our little field trip to Union Correctional.”

That got everyone’s attention.

He leaned his elbows on his knees. “Damien Sullivan gave us the runaround at first. Started quoting math formulas and talking about fractals and God’s divine pattern. Claimed he was at the Crew house the night of the murders.”

Every head turned toward Tori. She uncrossed her arms and slid off the table edge. “He said the official report on my parents’ murder is a lie. A cover-up. And that there’s a second murder book somewhere—one that proves it. He said Millie Beach chief of police Dean Barclay is involved. But lockdown cut him off before he could give us details.”

The room went quiet for three heartbeats.

Jett frowned, spinning the pen between his fingers. “Murder book? Someone built a whole second case file?”

“Everything from crime-scene photos down to the janitor’s statement. The whole life story of a homicide investigation. Only detectives touch it.” Blade rolled the ball between his hands, the nubs dragging faint lines across his skin. “If he’s saying there’s another one, that means someone built a second record and buried the first.”

“But why would there be a second one?” Luna asked. “If Barclay was covering it up from the start, why keep any record at all?”

“Because no record is a red flag,” Blade said. “A double homicide with a surviving child? You can’t just pretend that never happened. Something has to exist on paper. Something that answers the basic questions and lets the case look finished.”

He turned the spike ball in his palm.

“Barclay wrote the first book as the official story. Anyone who came digging would find a clean file and stop there.”

“And the second one?” Luna asked.

“Damien’s,” Tori said quietly. “The real version. What actually happened that night. He kept it as leverage. If Barclay ever turned on him, Damien had proof.”

“One book for the lie,” Blade said. “One book for leverage.”

“You believe him?” Corbin asked.

Silence filled the space between them. Tori’s gaze found his, steady, searching. Blade saw the question there too. The same balance of doubt and need that had followed them since the interview room slammed shut.

“Not sure yet,” he said. “But if he’s telling the truth about that second murder book, I want it in my hands. Now.”

“You know, I gave him a Bible.” Corbin sighed. “I was hoping God could break through that mess of a heart.”

Fractals. Divine patterns. All that talk from Sullivan clicked now.

“Don’t write him off. Seems like he was actually reading it,” Blade said. “When’d you see him last?”