26th June

"Here's your paper, miss Stein," The nurse says. It's been two days since I left my apartment. I walked, that is I limped, a little while away from the apartment before managing to get a cab to take me to a hospital at the other end of town. I told them my name was Charlotte Stein - no one would ever believe I would willingly use my mother's name, and Stein was the fake 11,22,33 killer. I figured that name was safe enough to use, while also being a name I could remember. I also told them I was mugged, it fit my injuries I thought, and it explained the lack of ID (I threw my wallet away, keeping on the cash that was in it). Only problem is, I can't give them my insurance without alerting John and the others to where I am.

"Thank you," I say and open the paper. The front page bears the title 'Monster under arrest, but schoolteacher still missing'. Joanna survived then. Good. I didn't want her blood on my hands.

"When can I leave?" I ask the nurse.

"I'll have a doctor come and talk to you," she tells me and smiles reassuringly. The knee might end up being what keeps me here. They did scans and all that, and it seems that without surgery I might not be able to walk properly again. She leaves me and I open the paper to study it more carefully. Most of it is about the Monster being caught, but thankfully there's no mention of any new murders or disappearance. The paper doesn't guarantee anything though. There are no guarantees at all - the 11,22,33 string was hidden for a long time, there's no guarantee that... No, it's just about trust now. Trusting that the right 1,8,11 is behind bars. Trusting that it is over. I pull up the memory of Joanna again, blood spilling from her stomach, her eyes full of fear. I am safe. I have a future again. 

But what future? What kind of life do I have now? Will I ever be able to live in my apartment again? Will I ever be able to go back to the school? To my students?

I lean my head back against the pillows. What comes next for me?

A few hours later I put my new crutches into the back seat of a cab. I still don't know what kind of life I will have, but I know what comes next. The doctor told me not to worry about the bill or insurance, it was all pro bono, and he urged me to have the surgery. As relieved as I am to not have to figure out a solution on my own, it doesn't sit right with me. In fact, it makes me furious. I can think of only one person who could have made that happen. Doctor Lucas is the only one I can imagine would be able to do this, and if Doctor Lucas is involved so is Special Agent Lucas, which would mean they know where I am. I don't know what kind of game they think they are playing, but it's gonna stop now.

I let the cab take me downtown, to the café I was dropped off at last time. I take a seat, tell the waitress I'm waiting for a friend, and stretch out my bad leg under the table. Even without putting any weight on it at all it still hurts. I close my eyes and just wait. I doubt it will take long.

I wait for half an hour, and nothing happens. The waitress comes back and asks if there's anything she can get me. I look around. They still have two available tables. I hand her a 20 and tell her to let me know if they need this table. I think she feels sorry for me, because she agrees and lets me sit undisturbed. It works. 10 minutes later a chair next to me is pulled out and someone takes a seat. I open my eyes and look at Catherine.

"How are you feeling?" she asks softly, cautiously.

"You tell me," I reply. "You guys seem to know everything." She looks down at her hands in her lap.

"It took a lot for him to ask," she points out without looking at me.

"I didn't ask him to get involved." My voice is harsh and firm. She doesn't deserve that - and yet, somehow she does, going all big brother and stalking me like this. You'd think it would have been clear to them I didn't want to be around them. She raises her head and studies my face. I know what she's thinking, and I don't want to hear it. I don't want to be reminded of how Robert said I was one of them, I don't want to be told I am turning my back on "my people". None of this was my plan, from the beginning, from before I met the team, all of it was Joanna's plan. I don't want to live the rest of my life on the square she placed me on. It is my life, and she has no more control over it. I'm done. I'm out.

"Can you do it?" I ask instead. "Can you make a case stick?" She looks down and away from me, but the waitress comes back with a bright smile and asks if we are ready to order. I ask for a hot chocolate, but Catherine hesitates, still looking down. If she is hesitant to order anything, it can only mean one thing.

"Who?" I demand. Someone else is sitting outside, hoping to be given the clear that it is alright to come in - no doubt they didn't want to risk overwhelming me with too many people. To my surprise, she actually answers.

"Lindsay," she says, and I feel relieved to not hear John's name. I nod, and she looks up at me.

"Fine," I say. She smiles.

"Two coffees then," she tells the waitress and waves a hand in a summoning motion. A few seconds later Lindsay walks in and pulls over a third chair.

"How are you doing?" she asks in a tone suggesting I'm on my deathbed. I ignore the question and instead return to my previous inquiry.

"Can you make a case stick?" They look at each other as if unsure of the answer, but then Lindsay starts out in a stream of information.

"We've connected her to a few other strings, like she represented the former cellmate of one of them, and she attended a legal conference with another eight years ago. We're working on building the complete picture, and we will get it in the end. It's a lot of tracking down people and research now."

"In other words, circumstantial," I say.

"Which is why we need your testimony," Catherine tells me. I meet her eyes, but she looks away after only a second.

"I know," I tell her without looking away. "I didn't think I could get out of that."

"You should know," she starts out, but her careful tone tells me the subject is about to be turned to John now, so I interrupt.

"Have you gotten as far as a motive yet?" Lindsay looks at Catherine before answering, but Catherine is looking down in shame.

"Five years ago her father died on New Year's Eve, at a big party Joanna had arranged. He died of a heart attack. He was big on occult religions, found them fascinating. We believe that was her stressor, what made her start all those years ago. We also believe that is why she fixated on John, she saw a similarity between them. Her father and John's mother both died on New Year's, they both worked with the law in some capacity, and they both had younger sisters who had become their responsibility to care for.

"We think the MO was about her father, about the legacy he left behind."

"You think," I repeat. "So she isn't talking." Makes sense, I suppose. Other than me, all they have are circumstantial evidence and the things from her bag she brought to my apartment - none of which, I assume, have her fingerprints on it. Though perhaps they found matches for the prints at the storage unit.

"She says she will talk to John." Her voice is so low I can barely make it out.

"And he says?"

"We found scopolamine in her bag too," Catherine interrupts. "It's commonly known as Devil's Breath." She pauses, still not daring looking up at me.

"You think that's what she used?" I ask. It isn't her fault, it shouldn't be her who feels this bad. She looks up at me, her eyebrow raised and a confused look on her face.

"You knew?" She asks. "You knew she drugged him? That John didn't act of his own free will, and you still..." There's an accusation in her tone, an indignation. It is my turn to avoid eye contact now.

"I didn't know, I assumed," I say. "He's not a bad man, or a bad agent, it seemed unlikely he would..." The memory of what I heard in the box floats back, with imagined images added through time, repetition, and dreams.

"He's in hell," she tells me, her voice raised to almost a shout. People all around look at us. "He feels terrible for what he put you through, and he had no control over it! After everything he's been through, everything you've been through... Everything you two went through together, and you want to end it all with treating him like this?" I let her shout, and I hold back the tears that threaten to overflow. She is his friend, I remind myself. Of course, she would take his side. And she's right, he didn't actually do anything wrong, he was basically raped. No, not basically, actually. I just... I can't do it. I can't go back and pretend like it didn't happen. I have to somehow make my own way past it.

"I can't change what she did to him," I whisper.

"But you could absolve him of the guilt he feels! You could tell him you don't blame him, that it wasn't his fault."

"I am sure you have already tried that."

"As if he would believe it coming from us!"

"He'll have to." I can't make myself look up at her, but my voice is raised and carries more force now. "You guys are his people, not me." She's about to shout something at me again, but Lindsay holds out a hand and stops her. "I can't..." I say quietly. They're John's friends, no matter what I say, they will always value his pain over mine, and more importantly his relief over mine. 

"You can't look at him without remembering," Lindsay finishes for me. Catherine looks sideways at her colleague, a mixture of wonder and anger on her face, and I can't help feeling a little grateful to Lindsay for not making me the one subjected to that look.

"He needs to know," Catherine insists. "That you don't blame him, that you don't hate him."

"Then tell him," I say, my own anger rising up again. I have no one to fight for me like that. I am on my own, again, just like when I left Hill Lake. "Tell him you met with me, tell him I told you to pass on a message, and make that message whatever you think he needs to hear. Tell him whatever you want, just don't make me say it first. I'm not ready." The anger fades a little, but I can't look at her. Instead, silence just spreads between us. The waitress comes over and places our drinks in the table and hurries off again, not wanting to linger.

"She's sick," Lindsay says after a while. "We believe that was the trigger, what made her start killing publicly after five years. She's refused treatment, but we think... Between her father's books and what you found with the religions, we think these killings might have been meant to expand her own life. Like with the Aztecs, sacrificing people to delay the inevitable. You also said tattoos were supposed to have healing properties in some religions - though not like this, not when applied to other people."

"She took what she needed, what she wanted, from the religions, with no respect for them," I say. "We knew that already. She doesn't play by anyone's rules but her own, and even those only when she feels like it."

"Take it," Catherine says, not paying attention to Lindsay's attempt at changing the subject. "The operation. Let John do that for you, let him give you that." I look down at my cup. I don't like letting people pay for me, it is one thing I have despised since childhood, since knowing that some stranger who wanted nothing to do with me was paying our bills to relieve his own guilt over abandoning his children. Letting people pay for you means one of two things: being in their dept, or letting them absolve themselves of guilt without ever having to apologize.

Perhaps this is the one time where it is acceptable though. To absolve a guilt that is felt but isn't deserved.

"I'll think about it," I say. I pick up my crutches and stand up.

"You're leaving already?" Lindsay asks.

"I know all I need to know now," I assure her. "I don't need the details, you can keep those for the trial." I know all I need to know, I know who 1,8,11 is. There's power in a name, and I have that power now.

"Unless we win the fight of course," Robert reminds me. "Then we all get to celebrate."

"I like that option, let's go for that one." We both laugh.