Chapter 22: The Hunter's Pattern
The alarm rang at 5:30 AM, but Cole was already awake.
He'd spent most of the night running scenarios, refining the plan for Marsh's elimination until every detail was committed to muscle memory. The parking garage approach. The timing window. The equipment check. The escape route.
Professional. Clean. Nothing like the chaos of Volk's warehouse.
He rolled out of bed and started his morning routine—pushups, stretches, a protein shake that tasted like chalk and ambition. The Blutbad metabolism demanded fuel, and Cole had learned to feed it before it started demanding other things.
By 6 AM, he was running through Forest Park.
The November fog hung thick between the trees, reducing visibility to maybe fifty feet in any direction. Cole's enhanced senses cut through it easily—he could smell the rain-soaked earth, hear the footsteps of a jogger half a mile away, track the heartbeat of a deer watching him from the undergrowth.
This is what the power is for. Not just killing. Experiencing the world in ways humans never could.
He pushed harder, letting his legs carry him up trails that would wind most runners. The burn in his lungs felt honest, earned, completely different from the violence that paid for these abilities. For forty-five minutes, he was just a man running through a forest, nothing supernatural, nothing predatory.
The simplicity was a gift he couldn't afford to keep.
Lake Oswego spread across the hills south of Portland like money made manifest—gated communities, manicured lawns, the kind of aggressive respectability that announced its owners had something to hide.
Victor Marsh lived in one of the nicer developments, behind walls and security cameras and a gate that required codes Cole didn't have. His house was a three-bedroom craftsman with a view of the lake, purchased eighteen months ago through a shell company that led nowhere interesting.
Respectable cover. Human girlfriend. The appearance of normalcy while he traffics people thirty miles away.
Cole had spent two days learning Marsh's personal routine. The Hundjäger left for the warehouse at 7 PM most nights, returning around 3 AM. He ate breakfast at a café in Lake Oswego Village, read the paper, and occasionally met with legitimate business contacts who had no idea what he really did.
But Thursdays were different.
Every Thursday, Marsh visited a bar in downtown Lake Oswego—McMenamin's, an upscale establishment that catered to professionals with expensive taste and discretion. He arrived around 9 PM, sat in the same booth, drank scotch for two hours, and left alone.
No guards. No backup. Just a man having a drink.
Personal time. Everyone needs it, even monsters.
Cole visited the bar on Tuesday night, playing the role of a businessman unwinding after work. The layout was exactly what he needed: dim lighting, high-backed booths that obscured sightlines, a parking lot around the back that emptied after the dinner crowd left.
Marsh's regular booth sat in the rear corner, near the hallway to the restrooms. The service entrance opened into an alley that connected to a side street three blocks from the nearest police station.
In, out, gone. If I time it right.
The route from Marsh's booth to the parking lot passed through a section of the lot that was poorly lit—a single overhead lamp that cast more shadows than illumination. A man could disappear there. A body could fall there.
Professional. Clean. Quick.
Cole ordered a beer he didn't drink and memorized every detail.
The suppressed pistol cost $4,000 and three days of careful inquiries.
Cole's previous life as a defense attorney had introduced him to people who existed in the margins of legality—fixers, investigators, the occasional client whose charges had been dropped but whose connections remained. One of those connections lived in Beaverton and sold firearms to people who valued discretion over paperwork.
The weapon was a Glock 19 with a custom suppressor, clean of serial numbers and previous history. Cole tested it at an outdoor range in Washington County, adjusting for the way his Blutbad reflexes affected his aim.
His accuracy was excellent. Three shots at twenty feet, all within a two-inch grouping. The suppressor reduced the report to something that might be mistaken for a car backfiring—not silent, but quiet enough that it wouldn't carry through walls.
Two shots. Center mass. Walk away.
He practiced the draw until it became automatic, the weight of the weapon familiar against his hip. The plan called for minimal confrontation—intercept Marsh in the parking lot, fire before he could woge, confirm the kill, and disappear into the night.
The absorption would happen during the drive back to Portland. Sixty seconds of proximity was all he needed, and a dead body in the passenger seat of his car would provide plenty of that.
Messy. But effective.
He cleaned the weapon, loaded it with hollow points, and stored it in a lockbox under his bed.
Thursday was three days away.
The Adalind file sat on Cole's desk, growing thicker despite his best intentions.
He'd told himself he was researching her for operational reasons—she was connected to Renard, who was watching him. Understanding her movements meant understanding potential threats. The logic was sound.
The logic was also bullshit.
Cole knew exactly why he kept tracking her schedule, noting her coffee orders, memorizing the way she walked. The attraction was inappropriate, dangerous, and completely irrelevant to his actual goals. But it persisted anyway, a constant low-level awareness that pulled his attention whenever he let his guard down.
She's going to poison Hank Griffin. She's going to manipulate Nick into a relationship that will damage everyone involved. She's going to become a mother and lose her child and find him again and—
The future knowledge was supposed to inoculate him against her. Instead, it just made her more interesting. She was a puzzle he could solve, a tragedy he could see unfolding, a potential intervention point if he ever decided to play god with the timeline.
Not your problem. Focus on Marsh.
He closed the file and opened his surveillance notes instead.
Wednesday night, Cole conducted a final reconnaissance of McMenamin's.
He parked two blocks away and walked the route Marsh would take from the bar to the parking lot, timing each segment. Thirty-eight seconds from the front door to the edge of the lot. Twelve seconds through the shadowed section. Another twenty to where Marsh typically parked his BMW.
Seventy seconds total. I need maybe five for the kill. That leaves sixty-five for anyone to notice something wrong.
The bar's closing time was 2 AM. Marsh typically left around 11 PM—late enough that the parking lot was mostly empty, early enough that the streets still had traffic to blend into.
Cole checked the alley behind the building. The service entrance was locked but not alarmed. A dumpster provided cover near the corner. The alley led to a side street that connected to Highway 43 within three blocks.
Service entrance out. Alley to the street. Car parked on Lakeview. I'm gone before anyone knows what happened.
He walked the escape route twice, committing every turn to memory.
Thursday night, Victor Marsh would die. And Cole Ashford would become something a little less human.
Worth it.
The words felt true. He chose not to examine them too closely.
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