CHAPTER 15 The Shepherd
The security camera outside Interview Room Six showed only thirty-eight seconds.
Thirty-eight seconds that changed everything.
At 8:43 p.m., a uniformed officer pushed an evidence cart down the hallway.
He stopped outside Richard Hale's door.
Looked left.
Looked right.
Used a key card.
Opened the door.
The camera froze.
Not for long.
Exactly thirty-eight seconds.
When the image returned...
The officer was gone.
The door was closed.
Richard Hale was dead.
There was no blood.
No signs of a struggle.
No broken furniture.
He sat in his chair exactly as before.
Head lowered.
Hands folded in his lap.
At first glance, it looked as though he had fallen asleep.
Then the paramedics noticed the tiny puncture mark beneath his left ear.
Poison.
Fast.
Professional.
Silent.
Detective Brooks slammed her fist against the conference table.
"Damn it!"
No one answered.
Because everyone understood what Richard's death meant.
The only man who had ever met The Shepherd...
Was gone.
The medical examiner worked through the night.
The toxin wasn't common.
It wasn't commercially available.
It wasn't even listed in the department's standard database.
Someone had come prepared.
This wasn't murder committed in panic.
It was an execution.
Internal Affairs immediately seized every security recording.
The mysterious officer appeared on six different cameras.
Always walking.
Never rushing.
Never looking directly at a lens.
His face remained hidden beneath the brim of his cap.
His uniform looked authentic.
Too authentic.
The badge.
The patches.
The nameplate.
Everything was real.
Except...
No officer by that name had ever worked for the department.
The uniform itself had been fabricated.
The evidence cart told a different story.
A latent fingerprint lifted from its handle matched...
No one.
But investigators recovered one overlooked detail.
A single blond hair.
Not Richard's.
Not mine.
Female.
DNA testing was rushed.
Twenty-four agonizing hours later, the result arrived.
Jessica Monroe.
I stared at the report.
My sister.
She had been inside the police station.
Or at least...
She had been close enough to leave DNA behind.
Detective Brooks looked equally stunned.
"That doesn't prove she killed Richard."
"No."
"But it proves she was here."
An arrest warrant for Jessica Monroe was issued before sunset.
A second warrant followed for Deborah.
State police.
Federal agents.
Every available resource joined the search.
Photographs flooded news broadcasts.
Tip lines exploded.
Most leads went nowhere.
One didn't.
A truck driver in southern Ohio reported seeing two women matching Deborah and Jessica's descriptions buying fuel at an isolated gas station.
The surveillance footage confirmed it.
Deborah still wore her pearl earrings.
Jessica still wore the silver bracelet I'd given her on her eighteenth birthday.
The same bracelet that had identified her months earlier.
Neither woman looked frightened.
They looked...
Patient.
"They're heading somewhere," Daniel said.
"Not running blindly."
Brooks agreed.
"They have a destination."
The receipt from the gas station contained another clue.
They had purchased a paper road map.
Not GPS.
Not a prepaid phone.
A map.
People avoiding digital tracking used paper.
The destination couldn't be determined.
But investigators estimated the direction.
Toward the abandoned church mentioned in the voicemail.
"I'm going," I said.
Brooks immediately shook her head.
"Absolutely not."
"They asked for me."
"They're counting on that."
"Exactly."
For nearly an hour we argued.
Finally...
Brooks proposed another plan.
"We'll let them think you're coming alone."
It was dangerous.
It was risky.
It was also the first time we'd chosen the battlefield instead of reacting to theirs.
The abandoned church stood alone atop a wooded hill.
Its stained-glass windows had long since shattered.
The bell tower leaned slightly to one side.
Nature had begun reclaiming the stone walls.
From a distance...
It looked forgotten.
Up close...
Fresh tire tracks crossed the muddy driveway.
Someone had been here recently.
SWAT teams surrounded the property before dawn.
Snipers positioned themselves in the surrounding woods.
Unmarked vehicles blocked every road.
I remained inside an armored SUV with Detective Brooks.
"If anything feels wrong," she said quietly, "we leave."
I nodded.
Neither of us believed it would be that simple.
At exactly 6:00 a.m., the church doors opened.
One figure stepped outside.
Not Deborah.
Not Jessica.
A man.
Mid-sixties.
Gray hair.
Dark overcoat.
Hands visible.
Calm.
Almost elegant.
He looked directly toward our position.
Even though no one should have been able to see us.
Then...
He smiled.
Not cruelly.
Knowingly.
As though we'd arrived exactly on schedule.
Brooks whispered into her radio.
"Target in sight."
No response.
She frowned.
Tried again.
Still nothing.
Every radio channel had gone silent.
Jammed.
The man slowly raised both hands.
"I know you're there, Detective."
His voice carried effortlessly across the empty churchyard.
"You've worked very hard."
Brooks' eyes widened.
He knew her name.
He turned slightly.
"And Caitlyn..."
"I've wanted to meet you since you were seven."
Every hair on my arms stood up.
Seven.
The age of the cassette tape.
The age I first hid secrets inside my teddy bear.
He took one slow step forward.
"My name doesn't matter."
"Yours does."
"You were never supposed to survive."
Silence settled over the hill.
Then he smiled again.
"But survivors..."
"...are always the most interesting."
Before anyone could move, a deafening explosion shattered the morning air.
Not from the church.
From the road behind us.
The bridge every police vehicle had crossed only minutes earlier erupted into flames, cutting off the only route back.
We weren't surrounding The Shepherd anymore.
May you like
He had surrounded us.
End of Book One
