CHAPTER 6 — The Teacher Nobody Suspected
One week later, life slowly returned to normal.
Or so everyone believed.
Gavin went back to school under discreet security protection.
Two plainclothes officers waited outside every classroom.
No one questioned it.
Most assumed his family had entered witness protection.
Then something strange happened.
During art class, Gavin stopped drawing.
He simply stared at his teacher.
Mrs. Evelyn Carter.
A kind woman in her late fifties.
She smiled warmly.
"Is something wrong?"
Gavin hesitated.
"You smell the same."
The classroom laughed.
Mrs. Carter looked confused.
"What do you mean?"
"The fake maintenance workers."
"They smelled like your perfume."
Silence.
Mrs. Carter's smile faded for just one second.
Almost nobody noticed.
Gavin did.
That afternoon Bishop quietly investigated.
Mrs. Carter had taught at the school for twenty-three years.
Perfect reputation.
Perfect background.
Perfect references.
Too perfect.
When investigators searched archived records, they discovered something impossible.
Her identity officially began twenty-two years earlier.
Everything before that...
Had vanished.
No birth certificate.
No college records.
No childhood photographs.
It was as if she had appeared from nowhere.
That evening Chase personally visited the school.
Mrs. Carter welcomed him politely.
"You've come about Gavin."
"I have."
She poured tea with perfectly steady hands.
Then Chase noticed the silver raven pendant hanging beneath her collar.
The same symbol found on the coin outside Gavin's house.
Neither of them spoke for several seconds.
Finally she smiled.
Not kindly.
Knowingly.
"You've been asking the wrong questions, Mr. Holloway."
Chase's eyes narrowed.
"Who are you?"
She stood slowly.
"I'm only the messenger."
"For whom?"
Her smile widened.
"For the man your father betrayed twenty-five years ago."
Before Bishop could enter the room...
The lights went out.
A deafening explosion shattered every window in the building.
Children screamed.
Smoke swallowed the hallway.
And when emergency lights finally flickered back to life...
Mrs. Evelyn Carter had disappeared without leaving a single trace.
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Only one sentence remained, written in red paint across the classroom wall:
THE PROFESSOR IS COMING FOR THE BOY.
