Page 67 of Fatal Pattern

“I can’t believe you ordered dessert.” Blade shook his head, amusement flickering in his blue eyes. “You were practically comatose for the entire flight. I had to check your pulse twice.”

“I was not comatose.” She took a bite of the pie, savoring the rich chocolate. “I was digesting. There’s a difference.”

“You snored.”

“For the last time, I do not snore.”

“The pilot asked if we needed to make an emergency landing.”

Her smile broke loose anyway. Blade kept needling, and for a breath, the worries of the day lifted. She let out a laugh, fork scraping ceramic, then her gaze slipped down. Two phones rested on the scarred Formica, screens black, waiting.

No calls. No texts.

“I’ve never seen a Mexican food coma up close before,” Blade continued, stirring sugar into his coffee. “All that salsa verde and those baskets of chips. Plus the ceviche. And the rice. And the—”

“Okay, okay. I get it.” She waved her fork at him. “But I needed something sweet. And caffeine.” She gestured to her steaming mug. “This is strategic fuel.”

The coffee was terrible. Bitter and thin. But it was hot, and it was keeping her hands busy. Otherwise, she’d be drumming her fingers on the table or biting her nails or doing any of the dozen nervous habits that betrayed how wound up she really was.

Had they given Janice enough questions? The list felt comprehensive when they’d created it, but now, sitting here rolling it through her head, every gap seemed glaring. What if Damien decided to play word games the way he had with them? Or launched into another lecture about fractals and mathematical patterns instead of answering direct questions about the night her parents died?

What if the warden refused to let Janice see him at all?

“She’s probably in there right now,” Blade said, as if reading her thoughts.

Tori nodded, not trusting her voice. Janice had texted forty minutes ago: “Cleared security. Going in.” Nothing since.

She forced herself to look away from her phone to the counter, where a waitress topped off sugar shakers. A trucker perched on a red vinyl stool chuckled at something she’d said. The cook behind the grill took a swig from his soda, then pressed a mound of shredded potatoes flat with his spatula. At a corner booth, a family with two kids debated whether to share waffles or pancakes.

“What if he doesn’t talk to her?” The words tumbled out before she could stop them. “What if he just sits there and talks about God’s fingerprint the way he did with us for the first ten minutes?”

“He’ll talk.” Blade’s voice carried quiet confidence. “He reached out to you, remember? Through Corbin. He wants something. And Janice knows how to work people.”

She took another bite of pie, but it tasted like cardboard now. The sugar rush she’d been hoping for felt more like a crash waiting to happen. “What if we’re wrong about everything? What if there is no second murder book? What if Damien is just—”

“Playing games?” Blade finished. “Then we’ll figure that out too.”

But what if they were chasing shadows? What if she were putting everyone she cared about at risk? Blade had already lost Kiara.

Her phone buzzed.

Tori lunged for it, but it was just a spam text about how much money she owed to the toll authorities. Tori’s heart hammered against her ribs as she set the phone back down.

“She said she’d call as soon as she was out,” Blade said.

“Or she might just show up here.” Tori pushed the pie around on her plate. “Janice doesn’t strike me as the type to waste time with phone calls when she could just drive over.”

“True.”

The bell above the door chimed as someone entered. Tori’s head popped up, but it was just another trucker.

Twenty-six years of questions. Twenty-six years of wondering what really happened that night. And now, somewhere behind the concrete walls and razor wire of Union Correctional, a woman in a cheetah-print dress was getting the answers Tori had been searching for her entire life.

Or walking into another dead end.

The silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft clink of silverware against plates and the distant hum of the grill. Tori pushed the chocolate pie around her plate again, her mind spinning in circles she couldn’t escape.

“Is gator wrestling a real thing?” The question popped out before she could stop it. “Like, do people actually make money doing that?”