For now.
I really don’t want to climb stairs. But I do, in heels, because I have the calves of a goddess and also because stopping would mean acknowledging how terrified I am.
We emerge onto a rooftop terrace, and the city opens up around us.
Across from us are sectioned-off areas with privacy plants—probably where the VIPs sit when they want to pretend they’re not being watched. To the right, food huts and a bar that’s three people deep. To the left, more open tables with heat lamps and that carefully curated industrial-chic aesthetic that screamswe’re edgy but also expensive.
Thirty, maybe forty people up here. Clusters of finance bros in button-downs with their sleeves rolled up. A bachelorette party drowning in pink sashes and tiaras. Couples on dates, leaning into each other. Friend groups taking selfies with the Philadelphia skyline behind them—City Hall’s clock tower lit up like it’s keeping time on all of us, the Comcast towers glowing blue like they’re pretending to be art instead of capitalism.
Normal people having normal Saturday nights.
Weeks ago, I would have been excited to be here.
Would have texted photos to my mom.
Would have felt like I was winning at twenty-seven.
That girl’s gone now. No time to mourn her.
“Bar,” I say, because I need something to do with my hands and my face and the anxiety that’s threatening to crawl out of my throat.
Together we walk to the bar. My eyes scan every table, every face, looking for him. Fur coat guy. The man whose voice I memorized while standing in a dark stairwell listening to him confess to murder.
He probably won’t show up. Probably too smart to return to the scene. Probably at some event or charity dinner with an airtight alibi and a photographer documenting his every move.
Not even why we came here.
We came to see if anyone knows the missing woman he killed. To find someone who remembers her. To prove she existed outside of his confession and my nightmares.
It’s like discovery on a case with no file number—searching for evidence of a woman who was never officially missing, never officially murdered, never officially existed in any database that matters. Just a ring with blonde hair and my testimony that won’t hold up in any court.
But there’s no way I could have ever lived with myself if I didn’t at least check.
We sit at the end of the bar—prime people-watching position—and Alex orders for both of us without asking. Something with vodka. Something expensive that someone else’s murder money will eventually pay for.
The drinks arrive. We don’t toast.
“What do you think she ordered?” Alex asks quietly, staring at her glass. “Before she became Dahlia. When she was still just some woman having a Saturday night who didn’t know she’d end up as a stock photo on our murder board.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I think she felt safe right up until she didn’t.”
Alex nods. Takes a sip. “We’re going to find out who she was. Not just how she died.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” She reaches over, links her pinky with mine under the bar. Twelve years old again, making promises on playgrounds. “Someone has to remember her. Not just how she died—who she was before some man decided her body belonged to him. Someone has to care enough to say her name, even if we have to give her one ourselves.”
We sit there, pinkies linked, drinking murder money vodka and pretending we’re not terrified.
I scan the crowd again. Nothing. No fur coats. No one who looks like they recently strangled someone and called their lawyer at 2 a.m.
Honestly, I’m not even sure what I expected.
Twenty people in here, and any one of them could be him. Or could know him. Or could be the next girl he decides to follow into an alley. I’m trying to sort the room into who’s dangerous and who’s in danger, and realizing with sick certainty that I’m probably both.
“He here?” Alex whispers, leaning close enough that her hair brushes my shoulder.
I shake my head. Can barely speak. “I don’t see him.”
