St. Catherine’s looked smaller than Jessie remembered. That bothered her.
Places from childhood were supposed to shrink with age. Schools, playgrounds, childhood bedrooms – the things that once seemed enormous became ordinary when viewed through adult eyes. But St. Catherine’s didn’t belong to Jessie’s childhood. It belonged to a part of her life that had been taken from her, and she had expected the building to feel monstrous.
Instead, it looked tired.
The old church sat at the end of a narrow road behind a rusted iron fence. Most of the windows had been boarded over, weeds had swallowed what remained of the walkway, and one side of the roof sagged slightly toward the centre. The brick had blackened around the upper windows where the fire had once burned hottest.
The green door was still there.
Jessie stared at it from inside Gabriel’s car.
“You don’t have to go in,” he said.
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You want to go in. Those aren’t the same thing.”
Jessie glanced at him. “Emily and Mrs. Alvarez are inside.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The photograph gave us this address.”
“That means Vale wants you to believe they’re inside.”
Jessie didn’t answer. She hated it when Gabriel was right. It was irritating.
The police had already been given the address, but Jessie and Gabriel had arrived before anyone else. Jessie had made that decision deliberately. She wanted a few minutes to see the place before flashing lights, officers and questions changed everything.
Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure whether that had been courage or stupidity.
Probably both.
Jessie looked again at St. Catherine’s.
“You remember it?”
“Pieces.”
“What pieces?”
“The door.”
Gabriel waited.
Jessie swallowed. “The smell.”
“You can smell it from here?”
“No.”
That was the problem. She could smell it anyway.
Old wood, dust, coffee, rain-soaked coats and something sweet that she couldn’t identify.
And smoke, always smoke.
Jessie rubbed her palms against her jeans.
Gabriel noticed. “We wait for the police.”
Jessie opened the car door.
“Of course we do.”
“Jessie.”
She climbed out.
Gabriel followed.
“I hate when you say something reasonable immediately before doing the opposite.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain several untreated personality disorders.”
Jessie almost smiled.
Almost.
Then she heard something.
Music.
She stopped.
Gabriel nearly walked into her.
“What?”
Jessie raised a hand.
There it was again.
It was faint and coming from somewhere inside the building.
Piano music.
Three notes.
Pause.
Three notes.
Pause.
Jessie’s chest tightened. She knew this melody.
She didn’t know how she knew it.
“Jessie?”
“Daniel played piano.”
Gabriel’s expression changed. “Yes.”
She looked at him. “You knew?”
“I heard him a few times.”
The melody continued. Jessie remembered a room filled with mismatched chairs. Daniel sitting at an old upright piano with several keys that didn’t work. Jessie sprawled across a couch pretending not to listen.
He deliberately played badly whenever he realized she was enjoying it.
A memory surfaced so suddenly that she could almost hear him laughing.
Stop smiling.
I’m not smiling.
You’re smiling.
I’m experiencing a facial malfunction.
Jessie’s throat tightened. Then the music stopped. She stared at the church.
“That song.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“He used to play it for me.”
“You remember?”
“Yes.”
“Then Vale knows too.” Jessie nodded. Every detail had been selected. The photograph, the address, the music. This wasn’t merely an invitation. It was reconstruction. Vale wasn’t waiting for Jessie. He was rebuilding the world of nineteen-year-old Jessie piece by piece.
“Stay here,” she said.
Gabriel actually laughed. “Absolutely not.”
“If something happens—”
“If something happens, you’ll need someone who remembers the parts you don’t.”
Jessie looked at him. He had a point.
“Fine. But you follow my lead.”
“I’ve been ignoring that instruction for twenty-four years.”
“Maybe today is the day you develop discipline.”
They approached the fence. They could see that the gate stood open. Of course it did.
Jessie stopped before passing through. Something was hanging from the iron.
It was a small silver key. She recognized it immediately.
Another memory struck. Daniel holding the same key above her head while Jessie tried to grab it.
You could ask nicely.
I’d rather bite you.
I believe that.
Jessie reached toward it, then stopped herself. Gabriel watched her.
“Yours?”
“No.”
“Daniel’s?”
“Yes.”
She left it where it was.
“Vale’s trying too hard.”
Gabriel frowned. “What?”
“The photograph worked. The music worked. This is excessive.”
“You’re criticizing the kidnapping psychopath’s sense of theatre?”
“I’m criticizing his psychology.”
“That’s much healthier.”
Jessie looked at the key again. “He needs me emotional.”
“Obviously.”
“No. He needs me overwhelmed.”
She turned toward Gabriel. “Why?”
He didn’t answer.
Jessie already knew.
“Because emotional people stop analyzing.”
“And you don’t?”
“I used to.”
Gabriel looked surprised.
Jessie nodded toward the church.
“That might be what he doesn’t know.”
They walked through the gate. The green door was unlocked. Jessie pushed it open. That’s when the smell hit her. It was real this time. Dust, damp wood, mould and underneath it all, the faint residue of something burned long ago.
Jessie froze.
For half a second, the ruined hallway disappeared.
The walls were painted cream again. Children’s drawings hung from a corkboard and someone was laughing in another room. Daniel was walking toward her carrying two mugs.
Then the present returned. Jessie staggered and Gabriel caught her elbow.
She jerked away automatically. “Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing for reflexes.”
“That’s surprisingly insightful.”
“I occasionally have thoughts.”
Jessie breathed slowly until the hallway became solid again.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re visibly not.”
“I’m functional.”
“Different word.”
“More useful one.”
They moved farther inside.
The old community rooms had been stripped bare. Graffiti covered sections of the walls, and part of the ceiling had collapsed near the rear staircase. Someone had recently cleared a path through the debris.
Jessie noticed immediately.
“Vale’s been here.”
Gabriel nodded. They reached the room where the piano had once stood. It was still there.
Jessie stopped.
The instrument was damaged by age and water, but unmistakable. An electronic speaker sat on top of it. The music had been a recording.
Jessie approached slowly. There was another photograph resting on the piano. This one showed Jessie at nineteen sitting beside Daniel on the front steps of St. Catherine’s. Daniel’s face was intact. Jessie picked it up by the edges. She was laughing. Not smiling, laughing. Her head tilted back, eyes closed. She was completely unguarded.
Jessie didn’t recognize herself.
“She looks happy,” she whispered.
Gabriel stood behind her.
“You were.”
Jessie continued staring at the photograph.
“I don’t remember ever being that person.”
“You were her for a while.”
“What happened to her?”
Gabriel didn’t answer.
Jessie looked at him.
“What happened to her?”
“You survived.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
Jessie put the photograph down.
A small recorder sat beneath it.
There was a handwritten label.
PLAY ME.
Gabriel shook his head.
“No.”
Jessie looked at him.
“No?”
“We know Vale wants to manipulate you. We don’t voluntarily participate in the manipulation.”
“That’s surprisingly sensible.”
“Thank you.”
Jessie pressed play.
Gabriel stared at her.
“You are exhausting.”
A voice filled the room.
But it wasn’t Vale’s. The voice belonged to Daniel.
Jessie stopped breathing.
“If you’re hearing this, something went wrong.”
She grabbed the edge of the piano. Gabriel went completely still as the recording crackled.
Daniel continued.
“And if Jessie is hearing this, she’s probably already angry with me.”
Jessie covered her mouth.
The voice was older than the fragments in her memory but unmistakable.
Warm. Steady. Daniel.
“I’ve been keeping records for six months. Names, transactions, locations. Enough to expose most of what they’re doing. Not enough to stop all of it. People like this don’t disappear when you expose them. They change names. They move. They recruit new people.”
Jessie looked at Gabriel. He was staring at the recorder.
Daniel continued.
“Dr. Vale believes Jessie could become something extraordinary.”
Jessie’s stomach tightened.
“He talks about her like she’s an experiment. He says she notices things other people don’t. He says fear makes her sharper instead of weaker. He thinks he can teach her to separate emotion from decision-making.”
Jessie’s hands began shaking.
“He’s wrong about her.”
There was a pause.
Jessie leaned closer.
“Jessie’s strength isn’t that she doesn’t care. It’s that she cares too much and has spent her entire life pretending she doesn’t.”
Jessie closed her eyes.
Gabriel looked away.
Daniel’s voice softened.
“She’ll hate me for saying that.”
A faint laugh came through the recording.
Jessie started crying.
Not dramatically.
No sobbing.
Tears simply appeared and ran down her face.
She didn’t wipe them away.
“If something happens to me, Jessie needs to know that Vale will try to convince her she belongs to him. He’ll tell her he created her. He’ll take credit for every skill she has and every hard thing she survives.”
Jessie’s eyes opened.
Daniel’s voice became firmer.
“He didn’t create her.”
Jessie gripped the piano.
“He found a frightened girl who had already learned how to survive and convinced himself her survival belonged to him.”
The recording clicked.
Then Daniel said something that made Jessie’s breath catch.
“Jessie, if somehow you’re hearing this, none of them made you.”
She bowed her head.
“Not Vale. Not me. Not the people who hurt you. Not the people who trained you. You decide who you become next.”
The recording ended.
Silence filled the room.
Jessie didn’t move.
Neither did Gabriel.
Finally Jessie wiped her face with both hands.
“Well.”
Gabriel looked at her.
She sniffed. “That was emotionally inconvenient.”
Gabriel laughed. A genuine laugh. Jessie looked at him, and somehow that made her laugh too. It lasted approximately four seconds. Then someone applauded.
Slowly.
From the doorway.
Jessie turned. A man stood there. Late sixties, perhaps early seventies. Tall but slightly stooped with age. Grey hair. Dark coat. No weapon visible.
Jessie knew him immediately. Not because she remembered his face.
Because her body did.
Every muscle tightened.
Her breathing slowed.
Her hands became still.
The man smiled.
“Hello, Jessie.”
Gabriel moved in front of her.
The man looked amused.
“Still protecting her, Gabriel?”
“Where are the women?”
Vale’s smile disappeared.
“Safe.”
“Show us.”
“In time.”
Jessie stepped around Gabriel.
Dr. Vale looked at her.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Jessie studied him.
His shoes were wet.
Mud along the outer edges.
Right cuff slightly darker than the left.
He had been outside recently.
His coat was expensive but old.
No wedding ring.
A faint tremor in his left hand.
Breathing slightly laboured after walking only a short distance.
He was older than his posture wanted people to believe.
And nervous.
That surprised her.
“You’re afraid of me,” Jessie said.
Vale smiled.
“There she is.”
“No.”
His smile faded slightly.
“You expected me to be angry.”
“I expected many things.”
“You expected nineteen.”
Something flickered in his eyes.
Jessie saw it.
“You built all of this for her. The photographs. Daniel’s music. The key at the gate. You wanted to drag me backward until I became somebody you understood.”
Vale tilted his head.
“Did it work?”
Jessie looked at Daniel’s photograph.
“Not the way you hoped.”
Vale stepped into the room.
Gabriel tensed.
Jessie didn’t.
“You’ve done extraordinary things,” Vale said.
“I’ve stolen extraordinary things.”
“You became exactly what I knew you could become.”
Jessie smiled faintly.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The narcissism.”
Vale’s expression changed.
Gabriel almost smiled.
Jessie continued.
“You’ve spent twenty-four years telling yourself that my life proves you were right. Every skill I developed became evidence of your brilliance. Every job I pulled, every person I manipulated, every room I learned to read – you took credit for all of it without even being there.”
“I gave you the foundation.”
“No. You exploited what was already there.”
Vale’s jaw tightened.
Daniel’s recording had hit the correct nerve.
Good.
Jessie noticed.
“You’ve been listening to a dead man’s version of events.”
“And you’ve spent twenty-four years arguing with him.”
That landed. Vale’s eyes hardened. But Jessie saw something else – jealousy. Not romantic or possessive.
Daniel had taken something Vale believed belonged to him.
Her.
Suddenly Jessie understood much more.
“Daniel took me away from you.”
Vale said nothing. “He didn’t just expose your operation. He rejected your entire belief about me.”
“You don’t understand what Daniel did.”
“He helped me.”
“He weakened you.”
Jessie almost laughed.
“There it is again.”
Vale stepped closer.
“Daniel taught you guilt.”
“No. Daniel taught me that other people matter.”
“And look what that has done to you.”
Vale gestured toward the photograph of Emily and Mrs. Alvarez.
“You abandoned everything because an accountant suffered consequences you didn’t intend. You walked away from twenty-two years of work because suddenly you couldn’t tolerate collateral damage.”
Jessie’s expression changed.
He knew.
Not guessed.
Knew.
“You were watching me.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
Vale smiled.
“Long enough.”
Gabriel swore.
Jessie remained focused.
“Nathan.”
Vale’s smile widened slightly.
“What about him?”
“You gave him the file.”
Vale didn’t answer.
“That wasn’t a question.”
“You always did hate uncertainty.”
“Where is Nathan?”
“Alive.”
Jessie’s heart jumped.
She kept her face neutral.
Vale noticed anyway.
“Still too compassionate.”
Jessie ignored the comment.
“Emily?”
“Alive.”
“Mrs. Alvarez?”
“Alive.”
“Where?”
“Close.”
Jessie studied his shoes again.
Wet.
Mud.
The weather outside had been dry for two days.
But part of the old church property backed onto low ground near the river.
Jessie remembered that from the map.
Wet ground.
Mud.
Vale had come from somewhere behind the church.
“They’re not here.”
Gabriel looked at her.
Vale’s expression barely changed.
Jessie saw it.
“They’re behind the property.”
Nothing.
“Near the river.”
Vale smiled.
“Very good.”
Jessie felt a surge of relief.
Information.
Fear was information.
So was arrogance.
Vale wanted her to demonstrate what he’d taught her.
Which meant he would keep rewarding correct deductions.
“You didn’t bring me here to kill me.”
“No.”
“You brought me here to prove something.”
“Yes.”
“That I haven’t changed.”
Vale’s smile returned.
“That beneath the farmers’ markets and self-defence classes and ridiculous attempt at ordinary life, you’re still exactly what I made you.”
Jessie thought of Peter and his tomatoes.
She felt unexpectedly offended on their behalf.
“The farmers’ market is actually quite nice.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“Seriously?”
“I’m making a point.”
Vale looked irritated.
Excellent.
Jessie continued.
“You took Emily because she’s innocent. You took Mrs. Alvarez because I care about her. You brought me here because you believed I’d revert to the person I used to be the moment somebody innocent was threatened.”
“And didn’t you?”
Jessie looked at him.
“No.”
Vale laughed softly.
“You’re standing in an abandoned church with a criminal beside you, interrogating an old man while the police search for kidnapped civilians.”
“I called them.”
Vale’s smile disappeared.
Jessie saw it immediately.
“You didn’t expect that.”
Gabriel looked at her.
Vale recovered quickly.
But not quickly enough.
“You thought I’d keep this private,” Jessie continued. “Old Jessie would have. Police were enemies. Outsiders. Complications. She would have tried to solve everything herself because she needed to prove she was smarter than everyone.”
Vale stared at her.
Jessie smiled.
“I called them before I came.”
“You endangered the hostages.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.”
Vale’s expression tightened.
Jessie continued.
“If you planned to kill Emily or Mrs. Alvarez because police became involved, you wouldn’t be standing here trying to convince me you’re my intellectual father. You need an audience. More specifically, you need me.”
Vale’s left hand trembled again.
Jessie looked at it.
“You’re sick.”
Gabriel turned toward Vale.
The older man said nothing.
Jessie stepped closer.
“The tremor. Your breathing. Your posture. You’ve lost weight recently.”
Vale’s eyes narrowed.
“You don’t have twenty-four more years to wait.”
Silence.
Jessie understood.
“Oh.”
Gabriel looked between them.
“What?”
Jessie never took her eyes from Vale.
“This is his finale.”
Vale smiled again, but it looked different now.
Tired.
“You always were remarkable.”
“No. I’m convenient.”
Jessie shook her head.
“You’re dying, and you can’t tolerate the idea that your greatest achievement might spend the rest of her life buying tomatoes and teaching women how to protect themselves.”
Gabriel covered his mouth, disguising a laugh as a cough.
Vale’s eyes flashed.
Jessie knew she’d hit him.
“You think this is amusing?”
“No.”
Jessie’s expression became serious.
“You kidnapped a child and an elderly woman to settle an argument with a dead man.”
Vale’s face changed.
There.
Daniel.
Always Daniel.
Jessie stepped closer.
“You hated him.”
“He was sentimental.”
“You hated him because he was right.”
Vale’s jaw clenched.
“He wasted you.”
“He loved me.”
“He made you weak.”
“He made me human.”
“You were already human,” Gabriel said quietly.
Vale turned toward him.
That was the mistake.
Jessie saw movement behind the doorway.
A shadow.
Then another.
Police.
They had arrived.
Vale hadn’t noticed.
Jessie had.
She needed to keep him looking at her.
So she did the one thing she knew would guarantee his full attention.
She smiled.
“Daniel won.”
Vale turned back.
“What?”
“That’s what this has always been about, isn’t it?”
Jessie stepped forward.
“Twenty-four years later, Daniel Mercer is still inside your head.”
“Don’t.”
“He died knowing exactly who you were.”
“Jessie.”
“And you’re dying without ever understanding who I am.”
Vale’s composure cracked.
Only slightly.
Enough.
“You are exactly what I made you.”
Jessie shook her head.
“No.”
The word was calm.
Almost gentle.
“You taught me how to read fear. Daniel taught me why I shouldn’t use it against innocent people. Gabriel taught me loyalty, badly, but eventually. The people I’ve hurt taught me consequences. The people I’ve met since leaving taught me there’s a life outside all of this.”
Vale stared at her.
“And I taught myself how to change.”
Movement behind him.
Closer now.
Jessie continued.
“So no, Doctor. You don’t get credit for me.”
Vale’s face twisted.
For the first time, Jessie saw the man beneath the calm therapist.
Angry.
Small.
Terrified of becoming irrelevant.
Then his hand moved toward his coat.
Gabriel shouted.
Police surged through the doorway.
Everything happened at once.
Commands.
Movement.
Vale turning.
Gabriel pulling Jessie backward.
Jessie saw Vale’s hand emerge.
Empty.
Not a gun.
A phone.
He raised it.
Jessie understood before anyone else did.
“Wait!”
Vale pressed something on the screen.
A woman’s scream came through the speaker.
Mrs. Alvarez.
Jessie lunged.
Officers restrained Vale before she reached him.
His phone fell to the floor.
Emily’s voice came next.
“Please! Somebody help!”
Jessie’s blood went cold.
Vale smiled from beneath the officers holding him.
“You were right about one thing.”
Jessie stared at him.
“I do need an audience.”
She picked up the phone.
The call was still connected.
“Emily?”
Crying.
Then a girl’s voice.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Jessie.”
A sob.
“Where’s my dad?”
Jessie closed her eyes.
Nathan.
“We’re going to find him.”
“Please help us.”
“I will.”
Jessie crouched with the phone.
“Emily, listen to me carefully. Don’t tell me where you are yet. Tell me what you can see.”
Vale’s smile faded.
Jessie noticed.
Good.
Emily breathed shakily.
“It’s dark.”
“What else?”
“Trees.”
“Can you hear anything?”
Emily went quiet.
“Water.”
Jessie looked at Gabriel.
River.
“What does the ground feel like?”
“Wet.”
Jessie glanced at Vale’s muddy shoes.
“Are you inside something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. It’s small. Wood.”
Jessie remembered the property map.
There had been an old maintenance building near the river.
Gabriel remembered too.
“The boathouse.”
Vale stopped smiling.
Jessie stood.
“There.”
An officer immediately relayed the information.
Jessie kept talking to Emily.
“You’re doing really well.”
“Mrs. Alvarez is scared.”
Jessie almost laughed despite everything.
“Tell Mrs. Alvarez Jessie says she still owes me better banana bread.”
There was silence.
Then, faintly, an elderly woman’s furious voice came through the phone.
“My banana bread is excellent!”
Jessie closed her eyes.
Relief hit so hard she nearly dropped the phone.
“There she is.”
Even Gabriel laughed.
Emily made a strange sound between crying and laughing.
Jessie kept her voice steady.
“Police are coming. Stay where you are. Stay together.”
Vale watched her.
Jessie looked back at him.
For the first time, he appeared confused.
He had expected rage.
Violence.
Perhaps revenge.
Instead Jessie was kneeling on the floor reassuring a frightened teenager and insulting an elderly woman’s baking.
That wasn’t the ending he’d written.
Sirens sounded somewhere behind the church.
Vale stared at Jessie.
“You think this changes anything?”
Jessie stood.
“Yes.”
“You’ll remember everything eventually.”
“I hope so.”
His expression changed.
“You should be afraid of that.”
“I am.”
The admission seemed to surprise him.
Jessie continued.
“But being afraid of what I’ve done isn’t the same as running from it.”
Police lifted Vale to his feet.
He looked suddenly very old.
“You’ll come back to what you are.”
Jessie studied him.
For years, that sentence might have terrified her.
Now it didn’t.
Because Jessie finally understood the mistake people like Vale made.
They believed identity was a destination.
Good person.
Bad person.
Criminal.
Victim.
Monster.
Hero.
As though a human being eventually became one thing and stayed there forever.
Jessie knew better now.
People were choices.
Thousands of them.
Some terrible. Some selfish. Some brave. Some impossible to undo.
Vale had spent twenty-four years waiting for Jessie Wilson to become proof of his philosophy.
Instead, she had become something much less satisfying.
Complicated.
Jessie smiled faintly.
“You still don’t understand.”
Vale stopped.
“Understand what?”
Jessie looked toward the ruined piano where Daniel’s recording still sat.
Then she looked back at the man who had once believed he owned her future.
“You keep waiting for me to become someone.”
Vale said nothing.
Jessie’s smile disappeared.
“I’m still deciding.”
Police led him away.
Gabriel stood beside her.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then Jessie looked at him.
“You lied to me for twenty-four years.”
Gabriel sighed.
“I suspected this moment was coming.”
“We are going to have a very long conversation.”
“I suspected that too.”
“I may yell.”
“Reasonable.”
“I may throw something.”
“Less reasonable.”
“I’ll choose something inexpensive.”
“Appreciated.”
Jessie’s phone rang. An officer. She answered and her expression changed almost immediately.
Gabriel watched her.
“What?”
Jessie lowered the phone.
“They found them.”
“Emily and Mrs. Alvarez?”
She nodded.
“Alive?”
Jessie couldn’t speak for a second.
Then she nodded again.
“Alive.”
Gabriel closed his eyes. Jessie turned toward the doorway. For the first time since this began, something inside her loosened. Emily was alive, Mrs. Alvarez was alive and Vale was in custody. It should have felt finished, but it didn’t. Jessie knew better than that.
“Nathan,” she said.
Gabriel opened his eyes. They still hadn’t found Emily’s father. Jessie looked toward the police vehicles outside and then she remembered something Vale had said.
Nathan was alive. Not might be, not last I heard. He was alive.
Jessie turned back toward the piano.
Daniel’s recording, his files, the organization. Vale had answered every question Jessie asked except one.
Where Nathan was.
Then Jessie noticed something beneath the recorder.
A second cassette that she hadn’t seen it before.
Gabriel followed her gaze.
Jessie picked it up.
There was handwriting across the label.
Daniel’s handwriting.
She recognized it now.
FOR JESSIE — ONLY IF VALE COMES BACK.
Jessie stared at it.
Gabriel whispered, “Daniel knew.”
Jessie looked toward the doorway where police had taken Dr. Vale. Twenty-four years ago, Daniel Mercer had prepared for the possibility that the man who destroyed their lives might someday return and he had left Jessie instructions. She placed the cassette into the recorder.
Gabriel stood beside her as Jessie pressed play. Static filled the room and then Daniel’s voice returned.
“Jessie, if Vale is back, there’s something I never told you.”
Jessie’s stomach tightened as the recording crackled.
“You weren’t the first.”
Jessie looked at Gabriel.
Daniel continued.
“And if he’s come back for you, you won’t be the last.”
Come back tomorrow for the next part…
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