We didn't sleep that night.
Ava and I sat in the kitchen with every light on, every lock checked twice, and a knife from my block clutched in Ava's white-knuckled hand. Not the murder weapon. Just a regular knife. The kind normal people used to cut vegetables.
I'd given the murder weapon back to Jonathan. He'd looked at me strangely when I handed it over—like he could see something different about me, something shifted—but he didn't ask questions.
He was good at that.
Around 3 AM, Ava fell asleep with her head on the table. I covered her with a blanket and sat by the window, watching the street below.
No one was there.
But I knew they were watching.
I could feel it. A prickle at the back of my neck. A weight in the air. The same feeling I'd had as a child, lying in bed, knowing something was in the closet even though my father had checked three times.
The phone hadn't buzzed again.
That was almost worse. The silence. The waiting.
At 6 AM, I made a decision.
"I'm going to see Ethan," I told Ava when she woke up.
"In prison?"
"In prison."
She rubbed her eyes. "Is that safe?"
"Probably not."
"Then I'm coming with you."
"No." I said it firmly. Too firmly. "You're going to stay with a friend. Someone the killer doesn't know about. Someone off the grid."
"I don't have friends off the grid, Leah. I have friends who post brunch pictures on Instagram."
"Then go to a hotel. Use cash. Don't tell anyone where you are."
Ava stared at me. "You're scared."
"Yes."
"Good." She stood up. Stretched. Picked up her phone. "I'm scared too. That's why we're not doing this separately. You want to see Ethan? Fine. I'll drive you. But I'm not leaving you alone."
I opened my mouth to argue.
She held up a hand. "Save it. I already texted my boss. I'm taking sick days. You're stuck with me."
And that was that.
The county detention center was a gray slab of concrete that looked like it had been designed by someone who hated natural light. We parked in the visitor lot—Ava insisted on driving, which meant I spent twenty minutes watching her tailgate every car on the highway—and walked through three security checkpoints before we reached the visiting area.
"I'll wait here," Ava said, settling into a plastic chair that looked about as comfortable as a dentist's waiting room.
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. Go. Do your psychologist thing."
I walked through the final door.
The visiting room was small. Cinder block walls. A table bolted to the floor. Two chairs, one on each side of a plexiglass partition. Ethan was already there, waiting.
He looked different than he had on the news.
Smaller. The orange jumpsuit drained the color from his face, made him look almost sick. His hair was disheveled, his jaw shadowed with stubble. But his eyes—his eyes were the same. Sharp. Intelligent. Watching me the way he'd watched me through the rain.
"Dr. Cross," he said. His voice came through a speaker mounted on the wall. "I was starting to think you weren't coming."
"I'm here."
"So I see." He leaned back in his chair. Studied me. "You're not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"Someone older. More... clinical."
"I'm full of surprises."
He smiled. It was a small smile, barely there, but it changed his whole face. Made him look almost human. Almost vulnerable.
"Eleanor tells me you touched the knife."
"Eleanor talks too much."
"Eleanor is terrified of you." He said it casually, like he was commenting on the weather. "She won't tell me why. But I can see it in her eyes. You did something. Something that scared her."
I didn't respond.
Ethan leaned forward, pressing his palms against the glass. "I need to know, Dr. Cross. Did you see her? The woman?"
"Yes."
His breath caught. "What did she look like?"
"That's the problem. I can't tell you. Because she doesn't have a face. Not a real one. It changes. Every time you look, it's different."
Ethan closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet.
"I thought I was going crazy," he whispered. "I kept telling them—I saw her face. I know I saw it. But every time I tried to describe her, the words wouldn't come. Like the memory was dissolving."
"It's not dissolving. It's being hidden."
"By what?"
"I don't know yet."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Why are you helping me?"
The question caught me off guard. I'd been so focused on the mystery, the killer, the symbol—I hadn't stopped to ask myself why I cared about Ethan Blackwood.
"I don't know," I admitted. "Maybe because no one else believes you. Maybe because I know what it's like to carry a truth that no one else can see."
His eyes searched mine. "What truth?"
I thought about the knife. The memory. My mother's face flickering in the darkness.
"I can't tell you," I said.
"Then we have something in common."
The interview lasted forty-five minutes.
I asked him about Marcus. Their relationship. The night of the murder. He answered every question with a honesty that felt real—not rehearsed, not polished, but raw. He talked about the arguments they'd had over the company's direction. The way Marcus had started acting strange in the weeks before his death. Jumpy. Paranoid.
"He said someone was following him," Ethan told me. "I thought he was being dramatic. Marcus was always dramatic. But now..." He shook his head. "Now I think he knew. He knew someone was coming for him."
"Did he mention a woman?"
"No. But he mentioned a symbol. He drew it for me once. Said he'd been seeing it everywhere. In his office. In his car. On his skin when he woke up in the morning."
My blood ran cold.
"What did the symbol look like?"
Ethan reached for a piece of paper on his side of the glass. I watched as he drew it—slowly, carefully, like he was afraid of getting it wrong.
When he held it up, my heart stopped.
It was the same symbol. My mother's symbol. The one carved into the knife. The one I'd drawn a thousand times in my childhood nightmares.
"Where did Marcus see this?" I asked.
"Everywhere. He said it was following him. Watching him." Ethan's voice dropped. "Dr. Cross, what is that symbol?"
I couldn't answer. Because I didn't know.
All I knew was that my mother had drawn it obsessively in the months before she died. And now, sixteen years later, it had found me again.
I left the detention center with more questions than answers.
Ava was waiting in the car, blasting music and scrolling through her phone. She looked up when I got in.
"Well?"
"He's telling the truth."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
She started the engine. "So what now?"
I pulled out my phone. Scrolled through my contacts until I found a name I hadn't called in years.
Detective Reyes.
He was the lead investigator on Marcus's case. The one who believed Ethan was guilty. The one who didn't trust me.
We had history.
Four years ago, Reyes had consulted me on a case—a woman who'd killed her husband and claimed she couldn't remember doing it. I'd evaluated her. Determined she was telling the truth. Reyes had called me naive. Said I was too soft, too willing to believe the best in people.
He wasn't entirely wrong.
But he also wasn't entirely right.
"Who are you calling?" Ava asked.
"Someone who owes me a favor."
Reyes agreed to meet me at a diner on the edge of town.
He was already there when I arrived, nursing a cup of coffee that looked like it had been sitting out for hours. He hadn't changed much in four years. Same tired eyes. Same permanent frown. Same way of looking at me like I was a puzzle he couldn't solve.
"Dr. Cross."
"Detective."
"Still wearing the gloves, I see."
I sat down across from him. "Still avoiding the truth, I see."
He almost smiled. Almost.
"You said you had information about the Blackwood case."
"I do. But first, I need you to tell me about the locket."
Reyes's expression didn't change. But something shifted in his eyes. A wariness. A calculation.
"What about it?"
"It contains a photograph of a woman. I need to know who she is."
"The photograph is damaged. We can't—"
"You can't identify her through normal channels. But you have other ways. Cold cases. Missing persons. Unsolved homicides." I leaned forward. "I think that woman is connected to a series of killings going back at least sixteen years."
Reyes set down his coffee. "That's a serious claim."
"I know."
"Back it up."
I hesitated. This was the moment. I could tell him the truth—or I could lie, deflect, protect myself the way I'd been doing for sixteen years.
I thought about my mother. About Ava, sleeping with a knife in her hand. About the figure on the fire escape, watching, waiting.
"The knife," I said slowly. "I touched it. As part of my evaluation."
Reyes's eyes narrowed. "That evidence is—"
"I know what it is. I had permission."
"From who?"
"Doesn't matter. What matters is what I found." I took a breath. "The knife has been used in multiple murders. At least five. Maybe more. The same killer, over years, using the same weapon."
"Serial killer."
"Yes."
"And you expect me to believe you got all this from touching a knife?"
"I expect you to trust me."
Reyes laughed. It was a bitter sound, hollow and sharp. "Trust you? Dr. Cross, I've been a detective for twenty years. I've learned that trust is just a lie we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night."
"Then sleep with this." I slid a piece of paper across the table. "The symbol carved into the knife. I've seen it before. In connection with an unsolved death from sixteen years ago."
He looked at the drawing. His face went pale.
"Where did you see this?"
"My mother's case file."
"Your mother—" He stopped. Stared at me. "Leah Cross. Your mother was Evelyn Cross."
"Yes."
"The woman who died in her living room. No forced entry. No suspects. Case went cold."
"It wasn't cold. It was frozen." I held his gaze. "Someone made sure that case never got solved. Someone with power. Someone who's still out there."
Reyes was quiet for a long time.
Then he pulled out his phone. Scrolled through something. Turned the screen toward me.
It was a photograph. Another Polaroid. Old, faded, creased at the edges.
A woman. Dark hair. Pale skin. Eyes that looked familiar because I saw them every day in the mirror.
"Is this your mother?" Reyes asked.
"Yes."
"This photograph was found at a crime scene in 2009. A man named David Chen. Stabbed to death in his apartment. No witnesses. No suspects. The case went cold."
I stared at my mother's face, young and alive and smiling at someone off-camera.
"How did you get this?"
"It was in my partner's files. He worked the Chen case before he... disappeared."
"Disappeared?"
Reyes's jaw tightened. "Ten years ago. He was investigating a string of unsolved homicides. All of them had one thing in common." He tapped the photograph. "This woman. Your mother. Her face kept showing up at crime scenes. In lockets. In photographs. Always damaged, always partial, but always her."
I felt the world tilt beneath me.
"Someone is framing my mother," I whispered.
"Or someone wants you to think that."
The bell above the diner door jingled. I looked up—and froze.
A woman was walking in. Tall. Slender. Dark hair falling past her shoulders.
The same woman from the memory.
The same shifting, impossible face.
She walked past our table without looking at me. Sat down in a booth across the room. Ordered a coffee.
Her hands were steady. Her expression was calm.
But when she turned her head, just slightly, I saw her eyes.
They were my eyes.
"Leah?" Reyes was saying something. "Leah, are you listening?"
I couldn't answer.
Because the woman was smiling.
And her face was changing.
TO BE CONTINUED...