The kind of place where successful people live successful lives, untroubled by correspondence with killers or memories of helping position bodies with clinical precision.
Apartment 15-C sits at the end of the hall, marked with brushed steel numbers that catch the hallway lighting. I stand outside her door for thirty seconds, listening to the sound of my own breathing, before raising my hand to knock.
Three sharp raps, neither aggressive nor apologetic. The sound of someone who belongs here, who has every right to be standing in this hallway at nine-fifteen on a Tuesday evening.
Footsteps approach from inside, pause at the door. I can picture her checking the peephole, processing what she sees, making calculations about threat level and response options. The seventeen-year-old would have opened the doorimmediately, eager to see me despite the complications. The woman she's become is more careful.
Smarter.
The deadbolt turns with a solid click, followed by the security chain, then the main lock. Multiple layers of protection, because Dr. Lila North understands that safety requires redundancy.
The door opens, and I'm looking at her for the first time in nine years.
She's beautiful in ways that have nothing to do with the seventeen-year-old I remember. Sophisticated, controlled, dangerous in the way of someone who's learned to weaponize intelligence and professional authority. Her green eyes are the same, but harder now, like gemstones that have been cut and polished until they can slice through pretense with surgical precision.
And she's pointing a gun at my chest.
The Glock is held in a perfect Weaver stance, muzzle steady despite what must be the shock of seeing me on her doorstep. Professional grip, proper sight alignment, finger positioned alongside the trigger guard with the discipline of someone who's received formal training.
Dr. Lila North knows how to kill someone. The knowledge sits in her posture, her breathing, the absolute stillness of someone who's calculated the mathematics of violence and found them acceptable.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. Nine years of silence condensed into the space between heartbeats, between the woman she's become and the girl I abandoned, between the muzzle of her gun and my chest.
Then her voice cuts through the silence, steady as winter morning, carrying nine years of controlled fury refined into something sharp enough to cut:
"I will not think twice before blowing your fucking head off."
PART III
Chapter 19 - Lila
The peephole reveals a face I haven't seen for the better part of a decade. For a moment, my mind refuses to process what my eyes are showing me. Kent Shepherd stands in my hallway at 9:15 p.m. on a Tuesday, looking exactly like the man who walked away from me in that hotel room and disappeared into whatever careful anonymity has kept him alive all this time.
My hand tightens on the Glock's grip, muscle memory from countless hours at the shooting range taking over when rational thought fails. The weapon feels solid, reassuring, real in ways that his presence doesn't. Because him showing up at my door feels like a hallucination, like my subconscious has finally snapped under the pressure of analyzing crime scenes that match his signature too perfectly to be coincidence.
I'd felt insane sending that email. Absolutely unhinged, crafting careful sentences about custom furniture and hidden compartments while part of my brain screamed that I was losing my grip on reality. Forensic psychologists don't reach out to serial killers through coded business inquiries. Successful professionals don't risk everything they've built to make contact with ghosts from their past.
Except apparently they do, because he's here. He's actually here.
I've been on edge for weeks, ever since Marcus Chen's body appeared arranged with the surgical precision I've seen only once before. Every crime scene photo, every autopsy report, every detail of the copycat's methodology has been filtered through the question that's been eating away at my professional composure like acid: Is Kent doing this?
The Marcus Chen murder could be explained away as a coincidence, maybe someone who'd studied the old Carver files and learned to mimic the positioning. But Rebecca Martin's death shattered that comfortable denial. Two murders using methods I witnessed firsthand, arranged with the same obsessive attention to detail I helped perfect in my father's kitchen nine years ago.
Someone is using Kent's signature. The question is whether that someone is Kent himself.
I check the hallway through the peephole again, noting his posture, the way he holds himself with that particular stillness I remember from the night he killed my father. Controlled, alert, dangerous in the way of someone who's calculated every variable before making his move.
But also different. Older, obviously, with lines around his eyes that speak to years of careful distance. He's wearing civilian clothes—dark jeans, a plain jacket—that suggest someone who's learned to blend into normal life. Not the careful precision of the killer I knew, but the practiced anonymity of someone who's spent years being invisible.
Three knocks on my door. Not aggressive, not apologetic. Just steady, confident raps that say he belongs here, that he has every right to be standing outside my apartment at an hour when normal people are settling in for the evening.
Normal people. As if I've ever been normal, as if he's ever been anything other than the most dangerous person I've ever known.
My hands are shaking as I approach the door, though whether from fear or anticipation I can't say. Nine years of silence, nine years of building a life that has nothing to do withthe girl who once thanked a killer for committing murder, and now he's here to remind me of who I used to be.
Who I might still be, underneath all the degrees and professional credentials and carefully constructed respectability.
I unlock the deadbolt with movements that feel disconnected from conscious thought. The security chain follows, then the main lock, each click echoing in my chest like small explosions. Multiple layers of protection, because Dr. Lila North understands that safety requires redundancy.
