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“He must have been so quiet,” she said. “Nobody woke up as far as I know. He just went into those rooms one by one. I heard footsteps on the stairs. That was distinct. That’s what finally woke me up. I saw a shadow across my doorway. He went into Annabelle’s room.”

Derrek Sidney had been accused of killing eighteen women over a fifteen-year period. The Deadwater Lake murders were his last. I pocketed my phone.

“I saw it,” Geneva whispered. “I saw this figure standing over Annabelle’s bed. I was just frozen. It was dark but the moon was really bright that night. I could see across the hall.

“He put his hand over her mouth. I saw her kicking her legs but he was so strong. He muffled the sound. I tried to get to my phone. I was afraid to scream. I didn’t know he’d already killed everybody else. I panicked.”

“Anyone would,” I said.

“I tried to hide under the bed but there were all these board games stored there. I heard Annabelle die. She didn’t scream. It was this wet, gurgling sound. I still hear it every day. When he was finished, he came for me.”

I felt a knot in my stomach. This poor woman.

“He grabbed me by the ankles,” she said. “He was on top of me. He had a mask on. I couldn’t even tell you the color of his eyes. He had my bathing suit top in his hands. He must have picked it up off the floor. He wrapped it around my throat and started to squeeze.”

She ran her hand across her neck. “I thought I was dying. I thought I had actually died. He leaned in close. I could feel his lips against my ear. He said atrō te benedicto. Then everything just went black.”

“Atrō te benedicto?”

“It took them almost six months to figure out Derrek Sidney was the killer. Eighteen women. I was supposed to be his nineteenth victim. But I’m still here. I don’t know why.”

“You were lucky,” I said. “And it’s not your fault.”

She wiped a tear away. “That’s not why I’m here. I didn’t come for counseling. Atrō te benedicto. I never told anyone that. That’s why I’m here.”

I didn’t follow.

“No one,” she said. “Not the police. Not my parents. No one. In fact, I’ve never uttered that phrase aloud until just now.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Pure terror. I just couldn’t say it. It’s about darkness. Death. The abyss, I guess. He said it like a blessing. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like he wanted me to thank him for what he was doing. And I heard him say it to Annabelle too.”

Why hadn’t she told the police? Would it have mattered?

“Then they caught Derrek Sidney,” she said. “They had proof he did it. DNA. I went through a really rough time. I stopped talking altogether for months. My parents wanted to put me in a psychiatric hospital for a while. But I came out of it. I don’t know how. Just day by day. I’ve tried to put it behind me. Derrek was in jail. Six years ago, he was executed in Ohio for a pair of murders he committed there.”

I did recall hearing something about that.

“I was there.”

She said it so abruptly, it took me a beat for it to sink in.

“You were there? At the execution?”

She nodded. “I got a call from this victims’ advocacy group. They were inviting the families of some of Sidney’s other victims. They invited me too. I didn’t want to go at first. I was afraid of the notoriety. But they promised me they’d protect me. That the press wouldn’t know. So I went. I watched that man die. They brought him into a room behind glass. He saw me. He looked right at me. He smiled and he mouthed those words. Atrō te benedicto. Nobody else knew what was going on. Just me. Then they dripped that poison into his IV and he was gone.”

“Geneva, you are strong. That was so brave of you to do.” Her story was compelling. But I still didn’t know why she thought I could help her.

“No one knows. You understand? I never told a soul what Derrek Sidney said to me that night, or the day he died.”

“I do understand,” I said. Geneva took out her phone. She opened her phone app and pulled up a recent voicemail.

“Two days ago,” she said. “It went straight to voicemail because it’s an unknown caller.”

She hit play and put the memo on speaker. There was static at first. Street noises perhaps. But then someone spoke using that metallic sound from voice distortion software.

“I’ve missed you, Geneva. I can’t wait to catch up on old times.”