“I need to know.”
I stare at him, searching his face for a motive. For anything that would compromise this case.
Then I see it. This isn’t about the case at all.
“How did your wife die?” I ask quietly, my heart hammering in my chest.
“She was Zayne Mercer’s eleventh victim,” he says. His eyes gloss over almost immediately. “I went on national news. I called him out.”
A short, humorless breath slips out. “I said he hid behind dead women. Said if he wanted me, he knew where to find me.”
I inhale, already knowing what comes next.
“He proved me wrong,” he says. His voice breaks, just once. “He took her instead. Made sure I was watching.”
The words come out tight, controlled—worse than shouting.
“I put her in his line of sight,” he says, tapping his chest. “I thought I could protect her. I thought I could outsmart him.”
His jaw locks. He scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“So no,” he says quietly, forcing the words out. “I don’t get to stop. Not until he’s in a cell waiting for death row, no matter how crazy that son of a bitch is.”
“You want me to prove his sanity,” I say, swallowing.
“Pretty much.” He starts toward the door. “Don’t fucking disappoint.”
“Detective,” I say, my voice rising. “I’m sorry for your loss. I know how grief can eat someone alive.”
“Yeah,” he says, waving without looking back as he opens the door. “Sometimes the ones we lose are the ones we fail to love the most.”
The door slams shut.
I stand there, staring at a single dot on the wall in front of me. For several minutes, my mind goes completely still. No noise. No patterns forming. No pieces trying to fit where they don’t belong.
Just emptiness.
Eventually, I force myself to move. I walk back into the living room, welcoming the noise of the space—anything to fill my head again.
It is easier that way.
When your mind is loud, there is no room for the thoughts that keep you awake at night.
THREE
Emily
19 years old
When you get to university, you somehow find a new life. New friends. New routines. And somehow, without realizing when it happens, you forget the place you grew up and the people who grew up with you. Not because you don’t appreciate them, but because you are too busy building something new. Your brain learns how to suppress memories you always wanted to escape. Even though I knew we were all running from our trauma in one way or another, this was how I escaped mine.
But trauma has a way of catching up.
So I sat eight floors above the ground, perched on the edge of the rooftop of the building where my best friend lived, and I looked down. Part of me wanted to jump, to let the intrusive thoughts win. Another part of me wanted to stay there forever, suspended above the noise below.
Cars passed like streaks of light. Tears filled my eyes, blurring the streetlamps into soft halos. From up there, people looked like ants, tiny and distant, and for a moment it made me feel large.
Then it didn’t.
