WHEN SHE GOT into the car again, her cheeks were rosy from the cold. She uncuffed him and ordered him to continue driving. After a time impossible to measure, Whitt broke through the sizzling tension.
“Karmichael and Fables,” he said.
She sighed.
“You went in through the car park.” Whitt shuddered. “You shot them both. You took the file, and you fled into the building rather than back out. You passed me in the dark in the hallway. I smelled the gunpowder.”
“Whitt,” she said gently, “stay on the road.”
He steered the wandering car back toward the center of the dirt road. The headlights rolled over a group of cows resting under a tree.
“You didn’t have a swipe card that next morning, the day after we met.” He swigged the bourbon. “I didn’t even notice. I never saw your badge. No one ever questioned your presence. Everyone must have just assumed you were meant to be there. But you’re not a cop. Of course you aren’t. You didn’t know how to unjam your pistol when you—”
“Whitt.”
“That’s how he’s got around all the roadblocks. That’s how he avoided the searches. You’ve been his eyes and ears on the ground.”
“This isn’t helpful,” she said. He glanced at her. Her eyes were so dark, the whites looked pale blue.
“You must have been terrified,” Whitt said. “At any moment, I could have mentioned you to Woods or Morris and it would all have been over, the whole charade.”
“I was terrified,” she admitted. Her face was expressionless. She said the words like she was reporting the time.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Vada Reskit.” She turned to face the windscreen. Whitt thought about grabbing the gun. Was the safety off? He couldn’t see. “Regan was my patient.”
Whitt squeezed the steering wheel.
“The prison psychologist’s reports,” he whispered, almost to himself. “That’s why they were missing from the file.” Whitt laughed humorlessly. “I didn’t even chase it up. There was so much paperwork on Regan. I assumed all it would say was that he was a psychopath. But it would have mentioned your name, so you never gave it to police.”
She seemed reluctant to explain it all. Whitt drank, sucking the burning liquor down, a piece of his fractured mind desperately recording sensations, knowing these were going to be his last. The last field he would ever see, moonlit through the window before him. The last words he would ever hear.
“We were together for six years.” She gave a tiny smile. “Every Tuesday, every Thursday. Regan had been in prison for a long time when he was assigned to me. He was a lot of work. He played a lot of games. Tested me. Trying to see if he could trust me.” Vada gave a shuddering sigh. “He became my only real project. The only thing I cared about. It was like, the rest of the week I was on fire. As soon as he laid eyes on me, I’d feel relief.”
“Regan Banks is a vicious killer,” Whitt said. “He killed a child. You stood in that house back there and you looked at what he’d done to those people. You…you sat before me and you looked at the autopsy photographs of those girls…”
Whitt was almost shouting. When her words cut over his, her voice was thick with some hidden emotion.
“Regan is worthy,” Vada said. “You couldn’t possibly understand, because you didn’t sit with him for half a decade and learn about his life, about what made him this way. You don’t think what he does hurts him? He is worthy of—”
“Of what?” Whitt howled. “Of saving? You’re going to save him? You’re out of your mind! He’s not a rescue dog! He’s a serial killer!”
Whitt struggled to breathe. The car was crawling along the dirt road slowly, delaying the inevitable. She didn’t seem to mind.
“He made a killer of you,” Whitt said. “He brainwashed you so completely…I can’t believe I didn’t see this. Those five weeks. We couldn’t find him. Of course we couldn’t—you were harboring him.”
“Turn here.” Vada pointed. Whitt looked and saw a tiny turnoff, a track that died no more than two car lengths into the forest. Whitt did as he was told.
“He sent you to get close to me,” Whitt said. His throat was so tight, it was hard to swallow. “To watch the investigation, and to see if killing me would hurt her the most. You asked if she was my girlfriend. You wanted to know if I was the right choice.”
Vada motioned for him to get out of the car.
“You are the right choice,” she said.