Chapter Text
It was freezing. Ridiculously, and utterly freezing. Every time he breathed, a pathetic little puff of white hung in the air like a speech bubble in a comic strip. If there had been a speech bubble, it would have said “I am a moron" because of course it was freezing, he must have known that before he decided on this place of all places as a vacation. He must have looked through the brochures and debated which one would result in the most severe frostbite in his balls and picked with aplomb.
Except.
He couldn’t remember doing that.
He couldn’t remember booking it, he couldn’t remember getting here, he couldn’t remember how long he was supposed to be here for. He was, quite frankly, starting to get a little worried.
Rafael looked out the window at the lake, frozen solid, gave a useless shiver, and walked back to the stove. The burner clicked stubbornly for a few seconds, as if irritated by the request, before finally whooshing to life with a blue flame. He set the kettle on and waited, rubbing his hands together and feeling uncomfortably like a Dickens character.
Tea.
He would have preferred coffee. Personally, he would have preferred sucking moisture from a leaky pipe; he strongly suspected the real reason those crates ended up in Boston Harbor had less to do with taxation without representation and more to do with someone actually tasting the stuff. But tea it was, and he needed something warm.
Jesus, he felt almost bone tired. Which would make sense. He and Rita had decided to go into partnership together and then Buchanan had glommed onto them with his “look at all my clients, nah, you guys wouldn’t be interested, I know you hate money” wager which had worked really rather excellently and now they had a stumbling law firm that was finally starting to grow legs. And it was a lot of work. Especially if he wanted to keep doing as much pro-bono as his newly acquired bleeding heart demanded without starving to death like an unpublished poet.
So yes. Tired. Overworked. A little bit lonely. But it was all okay because now he was on this lovely vacation.
He looked across at the bare cabin.
Maybe Barbados had been fully booked? Or maybe he’d just lost a bet with himself.
It was …
Why the hell had he picked here? He hated the cold. He was entirely certain his relationship with Jennifer back in his thirties had imploded because she treated the thermostat like her personal ice-making machine. The woman would wait until he left the room, then creep over and crank it down to “Arctic tundra”. That, and the whole sleeping-with-her-intern thing. But on the plus side, when she finally left, he no longer had to wake up at 3 a.m. with frost on his eyelashes wondering if he was sharing a bed with a polar bear.
He sniffed and grimaced. The cabin smelled… off. Not just damp but something that he couldn’t put his finger on that had no business being in a vacation rental.
How long am I even here for again?
Lord, stop complaining. Couldn't he ever just be happy? It was good to be off the grid. Refreshing. Maybe he could finally write the great American novel. He had a vague feeling he hadn’t brought anything to write said great American novel with but details.
The kettle whistled and he poured into the mug. Sugar? Did he even have any? And milk? He couldn’t possibly go without them. The thing about tea was that, much like flowers lined up around a corpse at a wake, it needed something to distract from how thoroughly gross it was.
Hmm. It appeared he hadn’t packed either. Great. The hits kept on coming.
He carried his cup of hot leaf water to the small wooden table by the window and sat down, wrapped both hands around the mug, and stared out at the frozen lake.
Caïna.
Why here?
Why couldn’t he remember getting here?
Rafael took a sip and winced, but not because of the usual reasons. It was ice-cold. He set the mug down, confused, before realising it wasn’t just his drink that was cold. In shock, he looked at his feet. Black water was seeping across the floorboards, swirling around his ankles, freezing as it touched him. The cold bit upward, sharp and hungry, and hell, his head throbbed, a dull, vicious ache blooming behind his eyes.
He blinked.
For a moment the cabin vanished. Bright, harsh lights cut through darkness and a white, crumpled softness pressed against his chest and face. He tried to pull back and felt something bite into his fingers. Everything was at a sickening angle. To his left, tiny twinkling lights danced on the surface of something dark and sheening.
He startled hard and the cabin snapped back. Steam curled gently from his mug again.
Okay that…
That was nothing.
He was tired. Just tired.
Just so tired.
“Nice choice, Rafi." He raised the mug in a mock toast toward the frozen lake. “To vacations.”
“What have we got?” Olivia asked, walking briskly up to Renee, breath fogging in the freezing air. “Is it him?”
Renee nodded tightly, already moving. “Looks like it. Same M.O. Uniforms called it in the second they saw the tyre marks.”
They moved toward the edge of the river where red and blue lights strobed across the ice. Firefighters and EMS crews were clustered along the shoreline, shouting instructions as they worked to reach the half-submerged car.
“NYPD,” Olivia called. “Anyone hurt?”
“Driver’s still inside,” a firefighter shouted back without turning. “Unconscious. We’re trying to get him out now.” The and I’m a little occupied at present was left to implication.
She pushed closer to the edge and nearly lost her footing in the frozen mud. The car sat at a steep angle, its nose buried in the black water while the taillights glowed weakly above the surface, and water poured through the shattered windows, swallowing the wreck inch by inch. Somewhere inside was some poor bastard who had taken a left when he should have taken a right and driven straight into the path of a lunatic.
For the moment, the case could wait. Whoever was trapped in that car needed to survive.
Still, this was the closest they had ever come to the Crash Stalker, as the press had crassly christened him. Caucasian male, mid-thirties to early forties, probably with a background in motorsports, mechanics, or something law-enforcement adjacent, and driven by acute symphorophilia, sexual arousal triggered by disasters, crashes, and the spectacle of mechanical carnage. He had probably worn his copy of Death Proof to shreds.
He didn’t simply cause accidents and disappear. He chased them, tailgating at high speed until his victims lost control, then following them down embankments, into oncoming traffic, or into walls so he could watch the final moments unfold. He almost certainly filmed it, and there was little doubt about what he did with the footage afterward. Then, once he had seen enough, he vanished into the night and left everyone else with the wreckage.
That was all they had. That, and seven victims.
And now he’d finally left a survivor.
Olivia drew in a tight breath and kept her eyes on the sinking car as the firefighters fought to position the jaws of life against the twisted metal. The water would be cold enough to kill him on its own, never mind the fact that he was trapped inside a vehicle filling by the second, and whatever margin they had was disappearing fast.
Hold on. Just hold on.
How had he not packed any books? What on Earth did he think he was going to do for entertainment? Swim? Ice fishing, maybe? What even was ice fishing? Wouldn’t all the fish be dead? He should Google that if he had any reception, and… wait. Had he brought his phone? He glanced around the bare room in rising exasperation. Had he even brought a suitcase? A change of clothes? Anything at all that proved he had arrived here on purpose?
What was he even--
Light flared behind his eyes, white and searing. Pain bloomed in his chest and skull like someone had driven a spike through both at once. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Help. Help. God, help, please!
He sucked in a sharp breath and, instead of water, tasted tea.
Well of course he tasted tea. He’d just drunk half a cup of the horrible stuff. Why would he expect anything else? He dragged in several more deep breaths and forced his eyes open.
Just the cabin. The very, very bare cabin. The pain was gone as if it had never existed.
Jesus. He clearly needed this break more than he’d realised, he was starting to crack up. Actually, maybe what he really needed was air. Yes. Excellent idea. He rubbed a hand down his face, stood up and walked to the door, pulling a heavy jacket from the rack and shrugging it on. The sleeves felt stiff with cold. He needed his gloves and…
Oh.
He was already wearing them. Thick, dark leather, snug around his fingers. He flexed his hands slowly. He hadn’t felt them a moment ago. They simply… were. No. That was ridiculous. He must have put them on without thinking and simply not noticed. People did that when they were exhausted. Perfectly normal.
He opened the door and the ice-cold air hit him like a slap, sharp and immediate against his face and throat. It stole the breath from his lungs for a second.
Okay. Nope. Terrible idea. He should turn around right now and go straight back inside.
But his feet ignored him.
They carried him forward anyway, step by reluctant step, across the frozen ground toward the black, waiting lake.
“They’ve got him now,” Renee murmured as the car began to inch backward out of the river. Voices carried sharply over the wind, followed by the harsh whine of the jaws of life biting into the crumpled driver’s side.
Olivia watched as the metal peeled back. Two firefighters held the frame steady while another leaned into the wreck, supporting the driver’s head and neck, his body positioned between her and the man’s face, and a fourth manoeuvred a rigid backboard beneath him. Working together, they eased him free a few inches at a time, water streaming from his coat and hair as he hung limp in their grip, his head turned away and largely hidden against the firefighter’s arm. One hand slipped loose and dropped into the water until someone caught it, drew it back against his body, and held it there as they lowered him carefully onto the waiting stretcher, where the paramedics moved in with the straps. She started towards them as they hauled the stretcher up the embankment, but she had barely taken a step when her phone trilled inside her jacket. She pulled it free, saw the name on the screen, and answered as she turned away.
“It’s Carisi,” she said to Renee, moving slightly away as the team worked behind her. “Tell me you have good news.”
“I’ve got the warrant.”
“Seriously?” She exhaled in relief. “How did you manage--”
“You do not want to know how many Little League sessions I just promised to coach. I don’t think I’ll be having any Sunday lie-ins anytime soon.”
“You have lie-ins and leave Amanda with the kids?”
“No, but it was a long-held dream of mine.” ” A horn blared somewhere behind him. “You at the precinct?”
“No, I... Can you meet me at...” Olivia broke off and turned towards one of the EMTs on the bank. “Where are you taking him? Mercy?”
He shook his head. “Mercy’s locked down. Some kind of systems failure. We’re going to St. Luke’s.”
Damnit. That was nearly another extra thirty minutes, and looking at the man on the stretcher, she wasn’t sure he had thirty minutes to spare.
“What about Bellevue?”
“Not taking anyone. Covid outbreak.”
“Of course.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Call Griffin and have him meet you at the precinct. He and Bruno were following up with Blight's widow. They're closer.”
"You're at a scene." Carisi went quiet for half a beat. “He hit someone else?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“One, and if we’re lucky, he might be able to tell us something.”
“Good, because the eighth floor are all over me and I don't even have a case yet." He sighed. "How bad is it?”
Olivia watched the ambulance crew lift the stretcher inside, the man’s face still hidden behind bodies and equipment. “Bad. We don’t know if he’s going to make it.” Her gaze shifted back to the wreck, half-drowned at the edge of the lake. “And the time between attacks is getting shorter. He’s escalating, Carisi. Whatever’s in that lock-up, we need it.”
“I’m on it, Liv.” The line went dead.
She slipped the phone back into her coat as the ambulance doors slammed shut, then looked over her shoulder at Renee. “Meet me at St. Luke’s?”
Renee had barely nodded before Olivia was already heading for her car.
He stared down at his hand in confusion.
It felt wet, slick, dripping, so, so cold, but when he looked it was perfectly dry. He flexed his gloved fingers, closed them into a fist, opened them again. Still dry. He looked down at the lake, at the thin ledge of ice where he was standing.
“…just stay with us… sir… can you hear…”
Rafael jumped. The voice was close, almost at his shoulder. He spun.
No one.
Oh.
Oh, of course.
As the kids say, duh. It was a dream. He was dreaming. That made so much more sense. He let out a short, shaky laugh at himself and looked around. Okay. Had he ever had a lucid dream before? Could he just… He squeezed his eyes shut hard, counted to three, and opened them again.
Still here.
Hmm.
Could he turn this into a beach and put a mojito in his hand? Could he make people appear? Would it be completely creepy if he summoned Ava Gardner in that dress from The Killers?
Couldn’t hurt to try.
He closed his eyes and imagined, possibly lingering a little too intently on the Ava aspect, then opened them again.
No stunningly beautiful woman of noir. No tropical beach. No mojito. Just the same butt-clenchingly cold snowdrift and a frozen lake.
Ah. Well. His teachers had always said he lacked imagination.
Jesus, the cold seemed to bite even deeper. His toes were actually hurting now, a sharp, nauseating ache from the snow and ice beneath his shoes. He could feel the freeze settling in the back of his throat every time he inhaled. Maybe he always dreamed like this and simply forgot when he woke. He raised his hand, pulled up his sleeve and pinched the thin skin of his wrist, hard.
It hurt.
Okay.
Okay, that meant... absolutely nothing. Pain could be part of the dream; his own mind could be supplying it because apparently even unconscious, he was committed to making himself miserable. He wasn’t Freud. He had no idea what the rules were.
He only had to wake up.
Just wake up.
He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the cabin, the lake, all of it to disappear, but when he opened them again, nothing had changed.
The wind swept across the ice, carrying a low, wet sound that seemed to come from somewhere beneath it. The surface of the lake had darkened, though there was no cloud passing overhead, and his hand still felt slick with water despite the leather glove remaining perfectly dry. The voice didn’t come again.
He stood very still, staring into the blackness below.
Something was wrong here, and he was running out of ways to pretend otherwise.
Something was very, very wrong.
Olivia pushed through the emergency entrance just as the paramedics rushed the man through a second set of doors. She followed, flashing her badge when a security guard moved to stop her; he took one look at it, stepped aside, and let her pass. By the time she caught up, doctors and nurses were already closing around the stretcher, and the lead paramedic had begun his handover.
“Adult male, pulled from a submerged vehicle in the river. Unconscious when we reached him, with blunt-force trauma. Core temperature was eighty-two degrees, pulse weak and irregular. We maintained spinal precautions, started active warming and warmed fluids.”
“Captain, you can’t come through here,” the second paramedic said as they reached the treatment-room doors.
“I know.” Olivia stopped and raised her hands. “Did he wake up at all? Say anything?”
The paramedic moved her out of the traffic as a nurse hurried past. “No, sorry, he never came around, but he kept a pulse the whole ride in, so that’s something. He stayed pretty steady, considering how cold he is, but hypothermia that bad can go south fast.” He glanced back through the doors. “Look, we got him here alive. He’s got a shot.” He held out a clear property bag containing a soaked leather wallet, a set of keys and a phone. “Here. This was all we found on him.”
Olivia took it carefully. “Thank you.”
He nodded and slipped back through the doors. Through the glass, she watched the staff transfer the man onto a bed, closing around him as monitors were connected and warming blankets pulled into place.
“Did you… Did you teleport? How the hell did you get here so fast?”
Olivia turned to find Renee approaching, slightly out of breath. “I may have tailgated myself.”
“I’ll add you to the board with the other suspects.” Renee joined her at the window and tried to see past the cluster of medical staff. “What are they saying? Is he going to make it?”
“They don’t know yet. He stayed stable on the way in, but right now it’s a matter of seeing whether his body responds.” Olivia reached into the property bag, grimacing as cold water ran over her knuckles, and drew out the wallet.
“Poor guy,” Renee said. “He was probably just trying to get home.” She nodded towards the wallet. “Do we have a name?”
Olivia opened it and wiped the grime from the driver’s licence with her thumb.
For a moment, the name made no sense at all.
Then the bottom dropped out of her world.
He was very close to absolutely losing it.
Okay. Facts. Terrifying, deeply unhelpful facts. He was in a place he had no memory of arriving at, surrounded by dark, crowded trees, with a cabin behind him that contained absolutely nothing to suggest he had ever set foot inside it voluntarily. No suitcase, no coat he recognised, no half-read book, not even a receipt proving he had once exchanged money for this miserable experience.
The place had the stripped, airless quality of one of those period rooms they used to march them through on school trips when he was a kid. This is how a family might have lived during the Great Depression. Eddie, put that down. Do I need to call your mother again?
Had someone brought him here? Drugged him, dumped him in the middle of nowhere and left him to freeze? To what end, exactly? Was death by sustained inconvenience a recognised method of execution now?
Back inside, he began opening cupboards with increasing urgency. The first contained a chipped mug and a box of tea bags so old the cardboard had gone soft; the second was bare, while the third offered a stack of mismatched plates and one solitary spoon. The remaining cupboards were empty, and the drawers yielded only a few bent forks and a yellowed instruction manual for a stove that looked old enough to remember the invention of electricity.
Old Mother Hubbard had been running a warehouse by comparison.
Right. So perhaps he had been brought here to starve to death, although whoever was responsible had thoughtfully provided enough tea to make the process unpleasant in several different ways.
He stepped back from the counter and pressed a trembling hand to his mouth, forcing himself to think past the cold and the rising presure behind his ribs. He only had to remember where he had been before this, what he had been doing, and how the hell he had ended up here.
Think.
Just think.
Rita. Yes, Rita. He had been on the phone with Rita.
She was in Hawaii, explaining in vivid and legally actionable detail what she would do if he called her again while she was trying to forget that New York existed for one sacred week. She had softened slightly when he told her they had landed a wealthy new client, one who appeared to suffer from a profound and lifelong aversion to anything resembling law-abiding behaviour. After that, he had hung up, passed Buchanan’s empty office, the man having practically launched himself through the window the moment the clock struck five, and headed towards his car. The plan had been simple. Go home, screw the diet and order something from Chiazu’s, and get an early night. Perhaps, if he was seized by a truly reckless spirit, he might even have taken a long, hot bath.
Then there had been lights, headlights blazig in his mirrors, far too close and growing brighter until there was no room for anything else.
After that, nothing.
No matter how hard he reached for the memory, there was simply nothing there.
A thin, high whistle broke the silence, and Rafael turned towards it. The cabin door stood open, shifting gently in the wind.
He had closed it. He knew he had closed it.
Something cold drew slowly across the nape of his neck with the unmistakable pressure of a fingertip. He spun around, but there was nothing behind him, only the empty cabin and the faint rattle of the windows in their frames.
Then a shape passed the doorway.
It was there only briefly, more suggestion than figure, a blur slipping across the opening before the doorway stood empty again.
Was someone out there? Had he...
His heart was beating hard enough to ache in his teeth, but he forced in a shallow breath and made himself move towards the door. It was nothing more than a shadow, a branch, a trick of the light, or possibly the largest vitreous eye floater in recorded medical history. Nothing worth panicking over. It was nothing.
He only had to look.
He crossed the threshold, and the ground disappeared beneath him.
Rafael stopped with one foot suspended over an expanse of black air. The frozen lake lay impossibly far below, yet its surface seemed to hover directly beneath his shoe, close enough that he could have lowered his foot and touched it.
He stared down, unable to make sense of the distance.
What the hell?
“Rafael.”
The voice came from directly behind him, soft and almost affectionate. He spun round quickly, arms lifting instinctively as though there were anything nearby to catch hold of. And then his breath left him in a broken sound.
“You’re…” Rafael could only stare at him. “You’re dead.”
“So I’ve been told.” Wheatley smiled. “Care to join me?”