The phone rang first thing.
McGee surfaced out of sleep to the sound, Thomas's arm heavy around her waist, the morning light coming through the blinds in lines. She fumbled for the phone. Hannah's name on the screen.
"Miggy, are you up? Tell me you're up."
"I'm up. What's—"
"They're closing the banks." Hannah's voice was going too fast, the way it did when she was scared and covering it with speed. "All of them, Miggy. Overnight it was lines around the block, everybody pulling cash, and this morning — they just closed. Every bank in the country. The whole system's frozen and nobody knows for how long."
McGee sat up slowly. "Panic."
"Full panic mode. Anderson wants everybody in. Like, yesterday."
"I'm on my way." She hung up and sat there for a second, the phone in her hand, the news settling over her like ash.
Thomas was awake. He got up without a word, pulled on yesterday's shirt, and went to the kitchen. A minute later she heard the coffeemaker gurgle. Then his voice, conversational: "You want eggs? There's eggs in here. They're still good."
She smiled despite everything — a small, helpless smile — and then Hannah's voice came back into her head and the smile went away. Serious mode. She got up and started getting dressed.
In the kitchen, Thomas was at the stove in his shirt and her spare apron, which would have been funny any other morning. Coffee was already poured for her. She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around him, hands on his chest, her head against his back. His heartbeat under her cheek, steady and unhurried.
For a moment she just stood there, listening to it.
"I have to go," she said finally. "I wish I could stay for the eggs, but it's chaos. I have to get to the precinct."
"I know." He turned in her arms, spatula in one hand. "I'll clean up and head out. Lock up behind me."
She nodded, and then he set the spatula down and said, "Last night was amazing," and kissed her — slow, unhurried, like they had all the time in the world.
She left him in her kitchen with the eggs going and her keys on the counter.
---
The age-progression was waiting on her desk when she got to the precinct.
She sat down and stared at it. Twenty years, extrapolated from an eleven-year-old boy's mugshot — the software's best guess at the man Matthew Blake had become. Mid-thirties. Strong jaw. Deep-set eyes.
It looked familiar.
She turned it sideways. She held it at arm's length. The familiarity sat there like a word on the tip of her tongue — someone she'd seen, somewhere, recently. The news footage, maybe. The week had been full of faces. She told herself that was all it was and set it down, but she set it down facing up, where she could still see it.
She definitely didn't put two and two together.
That wasn't going to be the highlight of her day anyway.
---
It was half past ten when the desk officer called up, his voice strange.
"Detective Summers? There's a — you need to come down to the lobby. Now."
She went down with Hannah and two agents, already moving fast — and stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
He stood in the middle of the lobby like he'd been waiting all his life. Black suit. Black tie, knotted perfect. White shirt. And the mask — the grinning Guy Fawkes mask, the one from every camera, every broadcast — turning slowly toward her as she came down the steps.
"Detective Summers," he said politely, in a normal voice. A familiar voice.
The lobby went still. Then everybody moved at once — weapons, shouting, the whole choreography of a takedown. He didn't resist. He stood there with his hands out while they cuffed him, the mask's grin fixed and cheerful, and he didn't say another word.
They took him to Interview Two. The mask stayed on.
McGee stood outside the door with Anderson and Hannah and half the task force crowded behind the glass, and looked at the masked man sitting at the table with his cuffed hands folded, patient as a saint.
"He asked for you," Anderson said quietly. "Specifically. Said he'd only talk to Detective Summers."
"Then let me in."
"McGee—"
"Let me in."
---
The room smelled like disinfectant and old coffee. The camera in the corner blinked red. Behind the glass, she knew, everyone was watching.
He sat with his hands cuffed in front of him, the mask's empty eyes on her as she crossed the room and sat down across from him. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then he lifted his cuffed hands — unhurried, deliberate — and took off the mask.
Thomas looked back at her.
The man from her bed that morning. The man from her kitchen, the eggs, the heartbeat under her cheek. The man who'd brought tiramisu to this building yesterday and asked the desk for Detective Summers. It was all there in his face, calm and undisguised, looking at her like there was no one else in the world.
Behind the glass, someone made a sound. Hannah, maybe. McGee heard it from very far away.
He set the mask on the table between them, folded his cuffed hands, and said — in his normal talking voice, the voice from the phone, the voice from her kitchen that morning —
"Good morning, my lady."
Chapter 33