Page 57 of Go First

“Boss,” Kate said.

Winters blinked once at the word.Out of the office, she preferred ‘Victoria’, but she’d never say it out loud.“I thought you’d be here,” she said.“I’ve been in the parking lot for fifteen minutes.Practicing walking to the elevator.”

Kate studied her face.There was a fine crack in the lacquer today, not decorative.

“Hospitals,” Kate said, with a shrug.

“I hate the dead ends they represent,” Winters said, which wasn’t what Kate had meant and also exactly what she had meant.She exhaled a laugh with almost no pleasure in it.“I lost someone.A long time ago.Different job, different mess.Tubes.Beeping.I’ve avoided the whole scenario ever since.”

“I can get Cheryl to text you when they… when he’s more himself.If that helps,” Kate said.

“No,” Winters said, and then, softer, surprising herself: “Thank you.”Her gaze flicked to the machines behind the counter, then back to Kate.“Walk with me.I’ll buy you coffee and tell you the part you’ll hate.”

“Only if the coffee is terrible.”

“Of course it is,” Winters said, and ordered two.

They took a table by a fake plant with dust on its leaves.From this angle, the café framed the corridor like a stage set.

“Augustus Crichton made it,” Winters said, not troubling with a preamble.“Second member of the ambulance team.Lost some blood, bullet went in and out without tangling with any of his organs.Frightened out of his wits.The driver, well… you know.”

Kate nodded.“I heard.”

“And the third survivor,” Winters said, “is presumably Elijah Cox.”

“Presumably,” Kate repeated, and let the word lie there like a mousetrap.

Winters’s mouth tipped.“The killer carrying out his instructions was a man named Werner Jakes.”

Kate waited.

“Former marine,” Winters said.“Iraq.IED took out the rest of his unit.Cashiered.Las Vegas for a while, doing muscle and messes for the mob.Then the long slide: homelessness, meth, the whole American Dream.Somewhere along the line he ended up at a street-mission run by Cox.We don’t know the ‘how’ yet.We just know the ‘yes’.”

“So Cox outsourced the killing,” Kate said.‘Serial-by-proxy.That’s got to be a first.”

“A letter on his person led to an apartment,” Winters went on.“Inside, surveillance photos.One of Whitfield’s study window.Another of Harper on his porch.Sister Dorothy buying bread at 6:18 a.m.A tidy little chemistry set—bottles of the paralytics used on all three.Something that stank bad enough to make your eyes shrivel.”

“That’ll be the whale oil.”

“Lots to tie him to the three murders.”

“Which leaves us with a puzzle we already knew we had,” Kate said.“How does a man achieve all this from a federal prison cell?”

Winters’s eyes did that narrowing thing she did whenever someone handed her a form to sign.“He has a network,” she said.“That’s the part that changes everything.We knew he had… acolytes.We didn’t know he had employees.”

She ticked points off on fingers that had bitten a few people in their time.“He gets one man to impersonate Santos and carry out a stabbing in a federal prison.He recruits a former marine to execute three carefully staged murders.Either he has so many followers that losing three is nothing.”She held up the second finger.“Or he has such a hold that dying for him feels like a goal, not a consequence.”

“Suicide as a leadership technique,” Kate said.“Hard to put that on a performance review.”

“Either way,” Winters said, not smiling, “the hill we thought we were climbing turned into a mountain range.And you’re the flag he keeps planting on the peaks.”

Kate felt the old heat rise—anger’s little cousin.“His obsession with me hasn’t faltered.”

“You know it,” Winters said.“He wants your attention.Whether that’s down to some sort of perceived rivalry on his part or…”

“He has a plan for me,” Kate said, simply.

Winters nodded, stirred her coffee as if it had personally offended her.“Because of that, I’m going to say something you will disagree with.Duck out, Kate.Transfer.I can move you into a different unit.A different building.Let somebody else pick up the thread.You’re—”