"Lock your doors. Not that it will stop me, but it might help you sleep."
And then, he’s gone.
No sound of footsteps, no snapping branches. Just the wind and the distant hum of the forest. I’m left standing alone in the mud, my body still humming from his touch, my knee throbbing with a dull ache, and his name echoing in my head.
I stumble back toward the road, my hands shaking as I find my car. I sit behind the wheel, staring at my reflection in the rearview mirror, mud-stained, lips swollen, eyes wide with a haunting light and the reality hits me like a physical blow.
I didn't just let a stranger touch me. I let a mass murderer, a man I’ve been studying on my autopsy table for months, take me in a forest. No, hunt me in the forest. I’m a woman of science, logic and justice, but tonight, I traded all of it for a name and a feeling.
"What have I done?"
I whisper to the empty car.
I start the engine, but the war inside me is far from over. I’m terrified of him. I should hate him. I should drive straight to the precinct and tell Lucy everything.
But as I pull away from the forest, my fingers ghost over the spot on my neck where his lips were, and a terrifying realization settles in my chest.
I am no longer just the pathologist observing this case. I’ve become part of the evidence.
CHAPTER 11 - Lucy
The fluorescent lights of the ambulance station feel far too bright after a night shift, but tonight, they’re practically blinding.
I sit in the breakroom, staring at a cup of lukewarm coffee, my mind racing faster than the siren on my rig. Something is wrong. No, that’s an understatement. Something is catastrophically wrong with Madeline.
I know Mali better than anyone. I know the way she bites her lip when she’s nervous, the way her posture stiffens when she’s hiding something.
Back at the mortuary, she wasn't just scared; she was terrified. And that man... the one I collided with in the hallway? He didn't look like a random intruder. He moved with a terrifying kind of grace, like someone that knew exactly where he belonged.
"You're overthinking it, Lu," my colleague, Mark, says as he walks past me, tossing his keys.
"It’s been a long night. Go home."
"I can't," I mutter, my grip tightening around the paper cup.
"Mali is lying to me. She told me she didn't know him, but the way she looked at her phone... She was protecting him, or worse, being silenced by him."
As soon as I get into my car, I don't go home. I can't. My intuition is screaming. I’m a paramedic. I’m trained to see the small, physical details people try to hide.
I pull out my laptop and log into the restricted police database. Being a first responder has its perks; I have access to certain case files and reports before they ever hit the morning news. I search for the name that’s been haunting the precinct: "The Arbiter."
The screen fills with images of crime scenes I’ve seen in person, but seeing them all archived together makes me shiver. The precision. The messages left in the bodies.
It’s not just murder; it’s a twisted, clinical form of justice. And then I remember the man in the hallway. The absolute stillness in his eyes when I confronted him. He didn't have the eyes of a petty thief. He had the eyes of a God looking down at an ant.
My heart starts to hammer against my ribs. No. It can’t be.
I check the time. It’s been nearly an hour since I left the mortuary. Mali should have been home by now. I reach for my phone and dial her number.
Voice mail.
"Dammit, Mali, pick up," I whisper, my breath hitching.
I wait two minutes and try again. Still nothing. A cold lump forms in my stomach. I start digging deeper into the victim files, specifically the ones Mali has worked on at her private facility. Jake. The masquerade party. The private lounge.
I find a supplementary security log from the night of the party. There’s a gap. Ten minutes of footage missing from the hallway near the VIP rooms. Someone wiped it. Someone with high-level access.
I try to call her one last time, my fingers shaking so hard I almost drop the phone. While it rings, I notice a small, buried detail in a witness report from an old case. A bystander mentioned a man with a distinct white strand in his dark hair. The man in the mortuary. He had that exact same strand.
