2026-09-14 20:09:38Chapter 6
Sophia had always run herself ragged at the office, skipping meals, drinking coffee instead of water, and her stomach had paid the price for years because of it. Ethan remembered how his cooking used to settle her ulcers back when he still bothered trying to help her. He doubted that mattered anymore. She had someone else now to bring her soup when her stomach turned sour, someone with a far prettier face than his own. Ryan left early that morning for an unexpected work call, apologizing twice before he rushed out the door, leaving Ethan alone to get ready for the interview by himself. He studied his reflection in the mirror for a moment, adjusting his collar carefully. Not the ethereal, magazine cover look of Sophia's precious doctor, but a solid, handsome face all the same, one that had simply been buried under years of exhaustion and neglect. The address Ryan sent him led to a glass skyscraper downtown, and something about the lobby tugged at Ethan's memory the moment he stepped through the doors, familiar in a way he couldn't quite place at first. The secretary at the front desk took one look at his resume and nearly knocked over her own coffee cup. "Wait," she said, eyes going wide as saucers. "Ethan Cole? The concept artist? You did the character designs for Dream Forge?" "That's me," Ethan said, mildly startled by how loud her reaction was. "Everyone thought you disappeared off the face of the earth," she gushed, already reaching for her desk phone. "A whole year with no new work, no interviews, nothing at all from you. Where have you been hiding? Our manager mentioned President Morgan personally arranged for you to come meet with us today." Ethan's stomach dropped hard at the name. "President Morgan?" "Not that Morgan," the secretary laughed, waving a hand. "President Nicole Reyes. She's an old friend of a Morgan, I think, some big CEO family downtown. Runs half the entertainment companies in this city, and she doesn't exactly keep her personal life quiet, if you know what I mean by that." Ethan went cold as the memory surfaced slowly. Nicole Reyes. He had delivered takeout to her office once in his old life, back when Sophia's company had money tied up in one of Nicole's ventures. He barely remembered the woman herself, only that Sophia had warned him once, half joking, to stay far away from her circle of friends entirely. He turned to leave before either woman could appear, but the elevator doors chose that exact moment to slide open behind him. Sophia stepped out first, phone already in hand, and stopped dead the moment she saw him standing there. Behind her, Nicole Reyes emerged a half step later, sharp heels and an even sharper smile, already lighting up with open delight. "Well, well," Nicole said, spreading her arms wide like she meant to hug him right there in the lobby. "If it isn't my dear brother in law. Look at you, hiding out in my building like a stray cat somebody forgot to feed." "I was just leaving," Ethan said, moving to step past both women. Sophia's hand shot out and caught his arm, fingers digging in hard enough to stop him cold in his tracks. "Where do you think you're going," she said, her voice low and clipped tight. "We need to talk right now." Nicole laughed outright at that, clearly delighted by the whole scene unfolding in front of her. "Oh, this is new. Since when do you chase after him like that? I don't think I've ever once seen you look twice when he walked out of a room before today." Sophia's expression darkened instantly, a muscle working hard in her jaw. "This doesn't concern you, Nicole." Her eyes cut back to Ethan, cold and furious all at once. "And you. Stop making a scene and dragging this out in public like some kind of stray dog barking in the street."
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THE ROAD BESIDE THE RIVER, OUTSIDE THE REMAND PRISONEthan looked at the white van, and at the open doors with their dark empty mouth, and at the polite, regretful, perfectly shaved face of Commissioner Hale, and he understood in a single cold instant that if he stepped into that vehicle he would never reach the end of the road alive, but instead of arguing or running, which was what the Senator's man expected, he only smiled slowly and put his arm round his wife's shoulders, like a man who has been offered a lift by a friend."That is very kind of you, Commissioner," he said warmly, "but my wife and I would prefer to ride in the front, because I find that the back of a prison van is bad for the ribs.""I'm afraid it's against regulations.""Then I'll write to the Senator, and tell him how helpful you've been."It was the faintest hesitation, no more than the flicker of an eyelid, but Ethan saw it, and he knew that Hale had not been told what to do if the prisoner refused, and while t
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THE CITY REMAND PRISON, CELL BLOCK CThe remand prison had been built in the eighteen hundreds for the kind of men whom society wished to forget, and in all the years since, nobody had bothered to improve it, so that when the steel door slammed shut behind Ethan on the first night, and the long echoing corridor of Block C swallowed up the sound of the guard's boots, he stood for a moment in the cold green gloom of a cell the size of a coffin, breathing in the stink of old sweat and damp concrete and other men's fear, and thought with a grim sort of amusement that he had never in his life been so well prepared for anything.He had spent twelve years in the back kitchens of the city washing dishes for a man named Bruno who beat his staff with a ladle, and he had died, once, in a hospital bed, with cancer eating through his belly like a rat in a sack of flour, and compared to those two experiences a stone cell with a bucket in the corner and a cracked window high up in the wall was very
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THE CITY HOLDING CELLS, EAST BLOCKThe city was still asleep when Ethan went down the steel stairs into the east block behind Chief Pell, with Sophia pressed so close to his side that he could feel her shaking through his sleeve, and the first thing that struck him was not the sight of the dead men but the smell, a sweetish, coppery, almost warm smell of blood laid over a thick sharp layer of bleach, as if somebody had started to clean the place and had been interrupted halfway through the job.Six cells stood open along the grey corridor, and in each of them a body lay on a narrow iron cot with the blanket pulled up under the chin, so neatly that for one wild moment he thought they were sleeping, until the lamplight fell across the nearest bed and showed him the thing that had once been his father, with his head tipped back at an impossible angle, his throat laid open from ear to ear in a single clean line, and the steel wire that had held his jaw together snapped and curling out of
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ST. JUDE'S PARISH CHURCH, THE CRYPTEthan went down the narrow stone stairs with the phone still pressed against his ear and his pistol swinging in his other hand, and by the time he reached the bottom, where the air turned thick and cold and tasted of damp earth and old candle wax, he could already hear his wife breathing in the dark like a woman who was trying very hard not to be sick.The crypt was a long low cellar of grey brick and cracked flagstones, lit only by a single oil lamp that Sophia had set down on the floor beside the open coffin, and in the trembling yellow light she stood with her back pressed against a pillar and her hands clamped over her mouth, staring at the thing on the slab with eyes that had gone wide and glassy and far away."Sophia," Ethan said gently, "step away from it and come to me.""I thought the lid had been pushed from the inside," she whispered through her fingers, "because it was lying sideways across the top and the wood was split, and I thought s
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"Sorry, kid," said Abel Harrow, and the pistol did not waver by so much as a hair.Ethan Cole looked at it, then at the scarred face above it, then at the sleeping baby on Gerald's knee, and he let out a long, slow, theatrical sigh, the sigh of a man who has been served a cold dinner in a very expensive restaurant."You know what, Abel?" he said. "I'd like to say I'm shocked. I'd like to say I'm hurt. But honestly, I picked you because you had the face of a man who sells his mother for a sandwich, and you've lived up to it beautifully.""Ethan.""Don't Ethan me, you dried up old walnut. Twelve years you've been hiding in a motel, drinking the cheap stuff, telling me 'that's why they chose you', and all along you were Silas's bitch.""It isn't.""What's his price? A pension? A cabin? A nice little urn for your ashes?""Ethan, it's not.""Shut up, Harrow," wheezed Gerald, through his wired teeth, in a gleeful whistle. "Let the boy talk. I do so love it when he talks. It makes me feel ri
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The yellow duck sat on the pillow exactly where Ethan had left it two nights before, with its little orange beak and its fat painted eyes, and round its neck, tied in a neat bow of white surgical thread, hung a square of card that said TICK TOCK G in thick black marker.Ethan stood over the empty cot with his hands in his pockets and did not touch it.He did not look at the card, either.He was looking at the floor."Sir," said the nurse, a fat young woman with a blotchy face and a lanyard that read Chloe, "I swear on my mother's life, I only went to the toilet for two minutes.""Two minutes.""Three, maybe.""Which is it, Chloe?""Three!" She burst into tears. "The guards were right there, sir, they never moved! He came in with a trolley, in scrubs, with a badge, I thought he was from Theatre!""What did he look like?""Tall. Thin. A mask.""Eyes?""Brown.""Walk?""I don't." She sniffed. "Limped, a bit. On the left."Ethan crouched, slowly, and looked at the lino, and there, in the
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