The Hyatt Place breakfast room was half-empty at 8 AM.
Most guests had decided to wait out the storm's tail end before checking out. The rain had lessened but the wind was still strong, and the roads outside were still treacherous with standing water. The weather service had issued an all-clear that was really a "proceed with caution."
James and Sarah sat at a table near the window, watching other travelers in various states of delay and resignation. An older couple reading newspapers. A businessman on his phone. A family with young children growing increasingly restless.
"We should leave after breakfast," Sarah said. She was on her second coffee, and her voice had that decisive quality that meant she'd already made up her mind. "The roads should be passable by noon. We can make good time before dark."
"Where are we going?" James asked. He was looking at his phone—the Cornell interview coordinator had sent details about a video call scheduled for Monday.
"I don't know," Sarah said. "But I know we should keep moving."
James nodded. The coffee in front of him was getting cold. He'd been staring at it more than drinking it.
Officer Smith White sat two tables away with a cup of black coffee and a newspaper he wasn't really reading.
White had been a cop for eighteen years and he knew trouble when he saw it. He was staying at the Hyatt with his family—a rare vacation, a storm detour that had turned into an unexpected day off. His wife and kids were still sleeping upstairs in room 410. He'd come down early to grab coffee and some quiet before the chaos of the day began.
He'd been reading about weather damage in the valley when he first noticed the man from the Marriott.
Blake entered the breakfast room and moved directly to the coffee station.
James didn't look up. He was still focused on his phone, on the details about the interview that suddenly mattered. Sarah was talking about the weather clearing, about how the mountains in the distance were becoming visible again.
Blake poured coffee. His hands were steady. The cup didn't rattle or shake. He was perfectly calm—that was perhaps the most unsettling thing about him. A man capable of such patient stillness.
Officer White folded his newspaper slowly.
There was something about the way the man moved. The precision. The economy of gesture. The way his eyes tracked the couple at the table near the window with an intensity that suggested purpose rather than idle observation. White had worked enough domestic violence calls and stalking cases to recognize the look of someone approaching a moment they'd been waiting for.
White's hand moved toward his coffee cup, but it was really a movement that brought him closer to his weapon.
Blake walked toward James's table.
James looked up at exactly the moment Blake said his name: "James Patterson."
For one crystalline second, James's face cycled through confusion—who is this?—to recognition—I know this face—to understanding—this is Ken Blake.
"Blake," James said. The word came out like air being released from lungs he hadn't known were holding their breath.
Officer White stood.
The movement was smooth and practiced. His hand was already moving for his holster as he began to shift his body between Blake and James. Eighteen years of training compressed into instinct.
"Don't move!" White shouted with the authority of someone trained to control situations.
Blake pulled the gun.
The moment stretched and compressed simultaneously. Blake's arm rose. White recognized the motion and accelerated his own draw. Sarah's mouth opened to scream but no sound came yet. James pushed backward, his chair scraping against the linoleum floor with a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard.
White's weapon cleared the holster.
Blake fired first.
The gunshot was impossibly loud in the enclosed space.
The sound wasn't like it was in movies. It was sharper, more violent, more final. It cracked through the breakfast room like the world breaking open. The fluorescent lights seemed to flicker.
Officer White's body jerked backward. His face registered surprise—not pain exactly, but the shock of impact, of realizing that the calculations he'd made about speed and angles had been wrong. He'd been too slow. He'd made the wrong choice.
The bullet had entered his chest at an angle. Blood began to spread across his white uniform shirt in a pattern that looked almost deliberate, like a stain spreading across fabric deliberately placed.
White tried to raise his weapon but his arm wouldn't obey. The pain was there now, a searing awareness of something fundamentally wrong inside his body. He fell backward, his weapon clattering to the floor.
Sarah screamed.
The sound cut through everything—pure animal fear. She stood up so quickly her chair flew backward and hit the wall. The older couple in the corner froze, their newspapers suspended mid-air. The businessman on the phone looked up in confusion, his brain struggling to process what had just happened.
James moved.
He pushed backward and his chair overturned completely. He was already running, his body operating on pure adrenaline, toward the side exit that led to the lobby. Blake tried to pursue but the tables and chairs created obstacles. A child from the family in the corner had started crying. Someone was screaming for 911. The orderly breakfast room had become chaos in half a second.
Blake saw James reaching the exit. Blake pushed toward him but Sarah had moved into his path, her body blocking him more by accident than design. Blake grabbed her arm and she pulled away, terror making her stronger than she should have been.
By the time Blake reached the exit, James was already moving through the lobby toward the parking lot.
Officer White lay on the floor, his blood mixing with the generic breakfast room tiles.
His vision was narrowing at the edges, like a camera iris closing. He could feel his body's systems beginning to fail. His arm lay at his side, useless. The weapon he'd dropped was three feet away, might as well have been miles.
He thought about his wife upstairs. He thought about his kids. He thought about how he'd woken up this morning thinking it was just another day of vacation, just another chance to be away from work.
His radio crackled on his belt—someone had called it in, had alerted dispatch. In a few minutes, paramedics would arrive. In a few minutes, his wife would come downstairs and find him like this.
In a few minutes, none of it would matter.
Officer Smith White closed his eyes.
Blake made it back to his rental car just as the first police car pulled into the Hyatt parking lot.
He drove calmly, maintaining speed limits, not doing anything that would draw attention. The sirens behind him grew louder for a moment then faded. Blake was already merging onto the interstate, already disappearing into traffic.
He could see James's SUV three cars ahead, moving fast, heading east on I-80.
Blake followed at a distance. The pursuing was over. Now came the next phase.
Behind him, in the breakfast room, Officer Smith White's radio continued to crackle with dispatch codes and updates. Emergency responders were arriving. The scene was being documented. An investigation was beginning.
But Blake was already gone, already moving, already planning the next step.
The hunt had only just begun.