A door opens slightly at the end of the hall. Raelynn partially steps out with Tessa clinging to her arm.
“I-Is he gone?” Tessa’s voice trembles, eyes wide and glassy.
I open my mouth to answer, but the closet beside me explodes open, and I’m immediately met with something coldthat punches through my shoulder with enough force to steal the breath from my lungs. Everything goes wrong in a single, brutal second. My Glock slips from my hand and clatters across the floor. Rae and Tessa scream and retreat into the room, slamming and locking the door. My back slams into the opposite wall, and I gasp for breath. Pain flashes—a hot, immediate line from the joint up through my neck.
“Fuck,” I hiss, looking down just long enough to see the hilt buried deep in my shoulder, blood soaking through my gray shirt. My eyes flick up to the person holding it. A white mask stares at me, tilted, as if curious, and I swear I can sense the grin forming behind the emotionless vinyl.
He shoves the knife deeper. I scream, my good hand flying to the wound, trying to stop him from twisting it. He yanks it free with a wet sound that makes bile rise in my throat. Blood splatters his mask. I stumble, slam my hand over the wound, hot liquid leaking between my fingers.
“You weren’t here for her, were you?” I grind out, voice strangled.
He lunges again, blade flashing toward my chest. Pain screams through my shoulder, but adrenaline burns away the rest. I throw my body sideways, hit him with my full weight, and drive my knee up—hard. The impact connects square in his groin. He grunts, a harsh, muffled sound behind the mask, and drops back a step.
I dive for my gun. My fingers brush the grip, slick with my own blood, and I snatch it up. I twist, aim, and fire. The shot rips through the apartment, deafening. He dodges, and the bullet lodges in the wall just above the couch, drywall spraying from the impact.
Screams erupt behind me, and my attention briefly shifts to them, but it’s a moment too long, because the second I turn back, the bastard is already running out of the living room. I fireagain. The bullet rips through the tail end of his black coat, but he doesn’t stop. He slips through the shattered patio door and into the night just as my backup arrives.
My arm trembles. Blood runs down to my wrist in steady drops. Pain blooms hot and bright where the blade chewed me open. I drop to a knee and press a hand to the wound, fingers slick with blood I can taste. Outside, red and blue lights strobe across the glass shards littering the floor. Sirens crescendo, boots thud on the porch, voices calling. Somewhere, a radio crackles, someone yelling for scene control.
I force air into my lungs and turn toward the hallway. “RAELYNN! TESSA!” My voice is hoarse, but it carries. Backup floods through the door, shouting commands and sweeping the apartment, but all I can hear before everything goes black is her wails, her voice splintering apart from the end of the hall.
TWENTY-NINE
RAELYNN
I’ve never beeninside an interrogation room before, and I hate every second of it. The walls feel too close, the air too sterile, the hum of the overhead light too loud. It’s cold—clinical, almost—and the metal chair under me does nothing to help. My leg bounces uncontrollably beneath the table, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop it. My heart hasn’t slowed down since the moment the cops pulled me out of my apartment.
I know I’m not in here because they think I’m involved—not directly, anyway. I’m in here because they’re trying to make sense of the chaos orbiting me. Four people I know are dead, all killed brutally, and the one thing connecting them all… is me. They’re asking the same questions I am. Why them? Why me? Why the hell is The Ripper leaving notes addressed to me?
And why did he break into my apartment tonight—not to kill me—but to wait for Emilio?
The problem is, I don’t have the answers they’re looking for. Hell, I don’t even have them for myself. How the fuck should I know why a serial killer is obsessed with me? Why he’s picking off the people around me one by one? But deep down, in that quiet, ugly part of my mind that I can’t shut up, I already have anidea. It all circles back to the first note I received—the card with the old article taped inside. My mother. Her death.
The metallicclickof the door handle makes me flinch. The door opens, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Evening, Miss Carson.”
I look up from the water ring I’ve been staring at for the last ten minutes and meet the eyes of a woman I’ve only met once—Detective Meyer. Her expression is polite, but her eyes are sharp, calculating. Her auburn hair is pulled back in a ponytail, but strands have fallen free and frame her face. She looks as if she has aged several years since I last saw her just a few weeks ago. But I guess a gruesome serial murder case such as this one will do that to you.
“Evening,” I mutter, my voice coming out hoarse.
She shuts the door behind her with a soft click. “I understand tonight has been a traumatic experience,” she says, her tone sympathetic, as she moves around the table. She carries a file tucked under one arm, a notebook in her other hand. When she reaches the chair across from me, she sets everything down—right on top of the water ring—and sits. “I’ll make this as quick as I can, but I need to ask you some questions first. Can you handle that?”
I nod, though it feels mechanical. “Yeah.” My voice barely carries.
I sit back, the metal chair creaking under me, and fold my arms across my chest for two reasons. Reason one, I don’t want to be here, and I want to make that perfectly clear. Reason two, it is fucking cold in this room. The thin sleep shirt and shorts I’m still wearing offer little warmth. I didn’t exactly have time to change my clothes when the night turned into hell. There’s also a smudge of blood on my forearm that I can’t rub off. It’s not mine. Emilio’s, maybe. Or Max’s. I don’t know, and I can’t decide which option makes me feel worse.
“Cold?” Detective Meyer asks, her eyes flicking up from her notepad to study me.
“Is it that obvious?” I ask, forcing a small, humorless smile. That was a dumb question. Of course it’s obvious. My nipples are literal mountain peaks in this fucking shirt.
She chuckles softly, the sound surprisingly warm against the sterile silence of the room. “Hang on,” she says as she stands, pushing her chair back with a scrape. I watch curiously as she strides to the door and cracks it open. “Hey, can someone grab me a blanket and some coffee, please?” she yells into the hallway.
She closes the door again and returns to her seat, the faintest smile curling on her lips. I give her the best smile I can manage, considering everything going on, and lower my arms.
“He’s going to be fine, you know,” she says, her tone gentler now. “Rodriguez called in before I came in here. She said there is no internal damage, so they’re stitching him up. He’ll surely be sore, but he’ll be released tonight.”
My breath catches in my throat. “You’re sure?”
