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“Talk to me, Peter.”

I dragged a hand down my face. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say.” We’d started at the academy together, before we’d graduated and been placed in the same bureau. Only he knew about my history with Jackson.

“First, your father,” he said carefully. “Then Evie. Now Jackson?” He leaned in, lowering his voice. “That’s not a coincidence.”

“No,” I muttered. “It’s not,” I pulled Wayne’s folder out from inside my blazer and slid it across the table. Sebastian adjusted his glasses, squinting slightly as he read the name. Then he blinked, like he thought he’d misread it.

“Wayne Gatz?” The disbelief in his voice was immediate. “You’re serious?”

“He knew my father,” I said. “Knew Evie. Knew of Jackson. And he just happens to live next door to me. Tell me that doesn’t sound wrong to you.”

Sebastian leaned back, shaking his head, a grimace pulling at his mouth. “There’s no way.”

That’s what I was afraid he’d say.

“He doesn’t fit,” Sebastian went on. “The profile we built shows that the unsub has psychopathic traits. Detachment, instability, inability to form real connections. We pegged him as a loner, someone isolated.” He gestured vaguely, like the answer was obvious. “That’s not Wayne. People like Wayne.”

“Or that’s exactly what he wants,” I shot back. “What if we got it wrong? What if he’s been hiding in plain sight this whole time, playing a part so fucking well, none of us ever thought to look twice?” Sebastian exhaled through his nose and closed the folder, and the sound hit harder than I expected. I clenched my fists, the frustration settling heavy in my gut. If I couldn’t get him on board, the rest of the team wouldn’t even entertain it.

“Have I ever led us in the wrong direction?” I asked.

He hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”

“Have I ever thrown out a name without reason?”

“Of course not, mate.”

“Then trust me.” My voice dropped, steadier now, even if I didn’t feel it. “I don’t have all the answers yet, but something’s off. Every instinct I’ve got is pointing at him, I just…can’t piece together why yet.” Sebastian groaned, dragging a hand over his face before pulling the folder back toward him. He flipped it open again, slower this time.

“We are so screwed if you’re right.”

We jumped as the door slammed open and Emily rushed in, breathless, phone still in her hand, eyes wide with something that made my stomach drop.

“We’ve got a body.”

I still remembered every little detail from when Dad’s body was found. It was a Friday night, the footy was on in the lounge room, the commentators’ voices bleeding into the house. Jackson was outside at the barbecue, the smell of sausages drifting in through the open door.

“Is this Peter Rosen?” an older man asked down the line.

“Uh… yeah,” I answered, frowning, a tea towel slung over my shoulder. “Who’s calling?”

Evie placed a fork down on the dining table and glanced up at me. “Who is it?” she whispered, coming closer to listen against the phone.

“I’m Dr. Burke. I work with the state's coroner.” My stomach dropped. “I’m sorry to inform you that we’ve found your father’s body.”

A bloodcurdling scream pierced my ears as the phone slipped from my grasp, a tiny piece of plastic still missing today from where it broke that afternoon. It wasn’t unexpected, but it was the finality of it all that hurt the most. I never did see his body, thank God. But I knew exactly what it would’ve looked like, knew exactly what the investigators would’ve found, how they would’ve felt seeing a human in such a state. It was exactly as you would imagine, the overpowering odour, the horrid sight of the remains. The knowledge that you were looking at something another human had done.

“Judging by the level of decomposition, I’d estimate the official death was before Friday,” Dr. Quinn noted as she put her gloves on and gently removed the sheet. Sebastian coughed into his mask beside me as the full extent was revealed to the room. The blonde, blue-eyed backpacker was now nothing but a slab of meat. Pale veins webbed into tendons, red flesh intertwined with bone. I could barely stomach the sight myself. “Toxicology reports found no sedatives, and no toxins.”

Like clockwork. Exactly ninety days after Liam Anderson went missing. His flayed corpse was found on the side of the road this morning. It was my third time seeing a victim of The Skinner in the flesh, no pun intended. The rotted corpse of what used to be the Englishman lay beneath a sheet on the autopsy table between me and Dr. Quinn as Sebastian stood beside me. The eerie chill that consumed the morgue only added to the dread that settled in the pit of my stomach the longer I looked at the outline of his body.

“Stomach contents? If he fed him something specific, we might be able to trace where he was being held,” Sebastian notes, his voice muffled from his mask.

“I would if I could,” she said with a regretful smile. “His intestines were removed, and his stomach cavity was completely hollowed out.” A headache began to form as I took all the information in. I rubbed at my temples as Sebastian moved closer to Dr. Quinn while she pulled the stomach open with stirrups. “Single entry to the abdomen with what appears to be a large blade, extremely sharp with no serration.”

Clean.

“Knives like that are personal,” Sebastian murmured. “He needs to be as close to the victim as possible when he takes their life.”