Once I was in the elevator, I shot a message to Connor, letting him know I had an important meeting pop up and would be back sometime before lunch—I hoped. He must have been distracted by the television because his typical under-thirty-second response didn’t follow.
The drive from the office to the diner was an utter and total blur. When I turned off the SUV after squeezing into a parking space, I realized I had no recollection of the drive. The roads I’d taken to get there, the stop lights I’d hit or missed, the pedestrians I’d yielded to or not.
Outside the SUV, the scent of rain mixed with the aroma of coffee—the quintessential fragrance of Seattle—but something else was bleeding in between. The metallic tang of fear—my own.
“Grace!” someone shouted from the parked vehicle I was flying past.
Stopping mid-stride, I discovered Ed situated in the driver’s seat of his 1970s Buick. The thing was more than twice as long as the little Prius parked beside it. I’d only seen him in anything other than his patrol car a handful of times, and this one of those instances.
“I thought we were meeting in the diner.” I hitched my thumb over my shoulder as I approached.
“Too many people.” Ed leaned across the passenger seat, pushing open the door. “My car’s safer.”
I hesitated on the sidewalk, fear crawling its way a little deeper when I noticed the look on Ed’s face. “What’s going on?”
He hit the back of the passenger seat with his big hand. “Just. Get in.”
His vintage Buick was one of his few prized possessions. He kept it covered and in a garage most days of the year, reserving those few special drives for clear, sunny days in the summer. I’d never been inside it, and I tried not to let myself consider what urgent item had spurred its voyage out into the rain-drenched skies late in October.
“Does this have to do with the Skovil case?” I asked, wiping the rain from my face.
“To a degree.” Ed stared out the windshield, the scrape of the wipers sweeping across the glass filling in the silence. “It has more to do with your husband.”
I gripped the door handle. “Noah?” I took a breath in hopes it would even my tone. “What about him?”
Ed sighed, then reached into the back seat to grab a laptop. He fiddled with it for a few moments before tilting the screen so I could see. “I finally scrounged up some of the intersection footage from the area around Skovil’s apartment the night he was killed.”
On the screen was a black-and-white video clip that had been taken from one of the many cameras the city had set up at various intersections. I’d probably watched a month’s worth of video surveillance in my career, but I didn’t want to watch this clip. I couldn’t.
Because I knew what Ed had found buried in the countless flow of cars coming and going that night back in September.
My throat burned as I struggled to form words. “Did you find anything?”
“I did.” Ed nodded, hitting Play on the first clip he pulled up. “And it wasn’t Samuel Sullivan.”
A city bus rolled through the intersection, followed by a couple of nondescript vehicles, followed by another that wasn’t. Ed punched Pause, glancing at the screen before looking away. A heavy sigh rumbled from him.
“There’s another one of him making the return trip an hour later. Exactly during the time the coroner placed Skovil’s time of death.”
My eyes burned from staring at the laptop screen, unable to blink. It was Noah in his silver sedan, license plate clearly visible, several blocks away from Skovil’s apartment a few minutes past eleven at night. I knew the reason for his late-night journey into one of the most crime-ridden areas of the city.
I also knew that with a stretch of creativity, a good defense attorney could come up with a half dozen theories as to why an esteemed psychiatrist with a family would be making a run into a sketchy section of Seattle. Making a house call on one of his clients, checking on a support group member who’d missed a meeting. Noah worked with people our society preferred to shun. His car captured moving through the same intersection in the span of an hour within the timeframe a man had been murdered didn’t prove Noah was responsible. There was no blood on his hands.
Just dark gloves.
My eyes closed when I could look at the still frame no longer. “Why are you showing me this?”
He exhaled. “I think you know why.”
My ears rang, the volume moving from a dull hum to a deafening blast in a few moments. “The Huntsman’s been arrested.”
“I’m aware of the arrest.” The leather seat creaked when Ed shifted. “But I think we both know they got the wrong man.”
The scream of noise filled my head, growing in strength every second I spent trapped in the car. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m simply stating facts.”
“No, you’re speaking in conjecture and insinuations.” I pinched the bridge of my nose in an effort to dull the pain, but it didn’t help. “Just . . . tell me what you’re trying to say already.”
The laptop clicked closed, Ed settling it into the back seat again. “Your husband, Noah Wolff, is the real Huntsman, and at his hand, thirty-three men have had their lives cut short, masked as self-inflicted departures.” Ed took a breath. “That clear enough for you?”
Something fractured. I wasn’t sure what part or to what extent, but I knew I had to get out of the car before the rest shattered.
“Grace? What are you doing?” Ed asked, looking between me and the car door I’d thrown open. “We’re not done talking.”
“I’m done,” I answered, leaping out of the car.
Ed’s finger’s brushed my arm, but I was out of reach before he could get a hold of me.
I ran, not knowing what I was running from, only certain it was essential I keep moving. Maybe I was trying to outrun reality, or the accusation Ed had made, or maybe I ran because the physical toll on my body was a reprieve from the mental one I’d been enduring for hours . . . days . . . years.
I couldn’t imagine the stares I got from strangers as I flew by or how I must have looked to drivers as I carved through bodies milling across intersections, but I didn’t stop running until my shoes reached their limit. The heel of my left pump snapped off between Third and Fourth Streets.
Lungs straining, legs aching, I discovered my mind had finally quieted. Clarity surged into the stillness, patching in the cracks and seams forged by doubt and fear.
The haze of life’s minutiae had lifted, leaving blinding conviction in its place.
I knew.
What to do.
Who I was.
Who I wanted to be.
The path unfolded before me, one shallow breath at a time, right there on the corner of Third and Main.
Twenty-Seven
Noah wasn’t answering his phone, and I didn’t know if it was because he was slammed with back-to-back appointments or if something less benign was to blame. If he had picked up, I couldn’t tell him what evidence Ed had dumped on me earlier. I doubted Ed or anyone in the department had managed to finagle a warrant for our phones yet, but I was taking zero chances.
Only seven hours had passed since the meeting in Ed’s car, but an era had passed in that span of time, one ending, a new one rising.