Chapter 11: : Chapter 11

By the time eight o’clock rolls around, my eyes feel like they’re ready to melt out of my head. I’ve spent the morning in lectures, the afternoon grading essays, and the evening reviewing trail camera footage from two months ago of creatures big and small as they slowly dismantled one of the bodies in a wooded section of the Bass Research Fields. Sunny Bunny even makes an appearance, trotting off with an ulna to lay beneath the cover of a chokeberry bush, the bone gripped between her forepaws and her jaws crunching the curved trochlear notch. I smile as I rewind it and watch again. Many other animals would have gone for the femur to gnaw on the bulbous head, or the ribs which are easy to crack. But not Bunny.

“Of course you’d pick something a little bit awkward,” I say to the screen. “I bet you just did it to be cute.”

When the sting of her loss starts to burn in my chest, I shut my laptop, stretching before I rise to pack everything up. The only other person here tonight is Jack, his profile facing me as he studies something on the computer monitors in his lab. His focus is so consumed by whatever he’s analyzing that I could probably just slip away unnoticed. In fact, I’m sure he’d be happier if I left without saying a word. It’s not like he’s ever appreciated any attempts at simple civility before. What he would likely hate the most is if I interrupted him with a cheery “goodnight”.

I sling my bag over my shoulder, paste on my most saccharine, blinding smile and march my ass to the lab to deliver what will surely be the most bubbly goodbye that Jack Sorensen has ever received.

“I’m heading out, Jack. Have a super fantastic—”

“Dr. Roth,” he interjects, his voice warm and almost…anxious. It’s as though a quiet note of trepidation hangs in those three syllables. “Come in, please.”

My smile crumbles. I don’t move an inch.

I think I hear a quiet chuckle over the sound of quiet classical music playing from a speaker on his desk, but I’m not sure if I only imagined it. “I won’t bite…this time…” Jack says, the barest hint of a smile ghosting across his lips as he recites my words back to me. I hesitate a heartbeat longer before taking a step across the threshold. Jack’s gaze drops to my injury as he stands and slides his hands into his pockets. “Healing okay?”

I nod, taking a few steps further into the dimly lit lab. “I had a pretty good doctor. He didn’t even sew his initials into it.”

“He sounds very professional. And devastatingly handsome.”

“He sure likes to think so.”

Silence descends between us like a heavy curtain falling in the cool air. Maybe Jack is as weirded out as I am that he’s talking, maybe even…was he just…flirting?…like a normal person.

“Tchaikovsky?” I ask as I nod toward the speaker.

There might be a flash of surprise in Jack’s eyes, or maybe even embarrassment. It’s not really the type of thing most ridiculously beautiful, thirty-four-year-old men typically listen to, but then…it’s Jack.

“It helps me think.”

“It’s great,” I say with a faint smile, lifting one shoulder as I take a tentative step closer. “I know it. The Spell, Pas D’action. From Sleeping Beauty.” Jack’s head tilts with an unvoiced question. “It became apparent by five years old that I would never be a ballerina, despite my mother’s initial attempts. But we enjoyed going to watch together. Sleeping Beauty was our favorite ballet.”

A crease appears between his brows as his eyes fall from mine, dipping down to my side before landing at my feet.

Jack clears his throat, slipping a hand down his tie. “I have something for you,” he says, turning away to silence the music before sliding open a drawer in his desk. I bite down on the questions rattling around on my tongue and simply watch as he faces me with a small, decorative wooden box in his hand. His frown deepens for an instant, like maybe he’s weighing whether or not to actually pass it to me, but his expression clears just as quickly and he extends his gift.

I set my bag down on a stainless-steel exam table and take the box, holding Jack’s eyes for a moment before I release the brass clasp. When I lift the lid, it reveals a hyoid bone in a nest of black silk, meticulously cleaned and preserved, a fracture splitting the delicate left wing.

“Is the name Trevor Winters familiar to you?” Jack asks.

I shake my head, a surge of adrenaline blanketing my heart. The names of every man I’ve killed run through my head, but there was definitely no Trevor Winters.

I fucked up somehow.

Strangulation isn’t my thing, so the fractured hyoid doesn’t make sense. But maybe I’ve made a mistake, and of course Jack would dig until he found it, and he’s about to shove his victory in my face.

“No,” I reply, and I nearly snap the box shut and chuck it back to him when I glance up and really look at Jack. There’s no smug, gloating grin, no triumphant gleam in his eyes. His expressions are often so subtle, and I’ve spent years observing them, but this is something I’ve never seen on his face. It looks like he’s…worried. “No,” I say again, softer this time. “That name doesn’t ring any bells.”

Jack nods as though he’s not surprised, but that subtle anxiety still lingers in his eyes as they shift between mine. “Winters was a wanderer. He rarely stayed anywhere longer than a year. He thought highly of his intellect but never settled on anything long enough to prove it. He did a lot of odd jobs. Worked with his hands to make ends meet.”

I look back down at the bone, shaking my head again as I try and fail to make these broken puzzle pieces fit together.

“You might have seen him in your neighborhood, nailing roof tiles. Painting a garage. Fixing a fence. You might never have noticed him. But he noticed you.”

A chill sweeps through the backs of my arms and cascades down my spine. My lips part on a gasp as everything starts to click into place.

“Winters liked to frequent a downtown bar that was popular with college kids,” Jack says. “The Scotsman. I was there, waiting, but I didn’t see him. When I decided to give up for the night, I saw his truck drive by. He had a passenger but I couldn’t see who. It was too dark. But it was you, wasn’t it.”

I nod, though I can’t recall that part of the night. I remember sneaking into a bar with my friends just down the road from The Scotsman with a fake ID. Winters must have been there and slipped something into my drink, because I remember nothing of the journey home or entering my house.

I try to blink the sudden tears away. They refuse to evaporate. “My dad…he had a man fix the fence at the back by the alley… Dad would have recognized him when he brought me home. He must have let Winters in.”

“Probably, yes.”

The sound that escapes my control might be quiet, but it holds every facet of despair in its haunting notes.

But it’s not just despair.

It’s the rage of betrayal revealed.

I transfer the box to my left hand, curling my right in on itself, pressing my nails across my stitches to summon pain as I close my eyes. I remember the hospital, a place I hate, loathing even the faintest memories of the clinical walls and the IVs and the burn of my injuries and the crushing, consuming loss of every waking moment. But I go back. I go back to one simple moment, one little remark.

One from Agent Hayes to a police officer standing outside my room.

“…Just make sure you know who you’re getting,” he’d said to the officer who was talking about the new roof he was planning to have installed. “Don’t trust any guy off the street, you know what I mean? No drifters—you never know who you could be letting into your house.”

The cop wouldn’t have known what Hayes really meant. I didn’t either, not until this moment.

Hayes knew. He fucking knew what kind of man that they were looking for. I’m willing to bet Trevor Winters was even on his fucking radar. And whether it was incompetence, or laziness, or plain stupidity, he cost me my family. My life.

“No, Kyrie,” Jack says, pulling me from my thoughts. I blink and look down as he uncurls my shaking hand where my nails have pressed crescents into my flesh. His voice is soft as he lays my fingers back on the side of the box. “You’ll open your wound.”

A chair materializes against the backs of my legs. Cool, steady fingers curl around my elbow and then I’m sitting down, the bone inside the box vibrating with the tremor in my hands. “This is him? The Silent Slayer?” I ask, sensing Jack descend to kneel in front of me through a watery haze, but I can’t look at him.

“It is.”

My lashes are damp, my lips trembling. This moment is nothing like I expected it to be. It’s full of the kind of relief that feels cloaked by anxiety, because I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next. It’s full of grief and loss that won’t stay buried, no matter what I pile on top of the grave I try to keep them in. And it’s full of the darkest shade of rage, the kind that churns like a molten core, an incendiary begging to burn the world to ash.

“I hadn’t been able to pin down his residence,” Jack continues. “He was shifting constantly between motels or boarding houses. But I knew there were a few neighborhoods where he was doing some work, so when I saw him drive by and knew I couldn’t catch up with him, I went looking. Eventually, I found his truck parked in the alley at the back of your house.”

We both know what happened after that.

And now, Jack finally understands. The night he hunted and killed the Silent Slayer was the pivotal moment when our lives became stitched together, two halves of a raw wound that might never heal.

My fingers trace the curved, delicate bone. Part of me wants to bend it until a satisfying snap cuts through the chill in the air. But that’s why this gift is so precious to me. It’s another little piece of power clawed back from that demon still clinging to my memories, forever embedded in my darkest shadows. I could snap it in half, if I wanted to. Or maybe it’s enough just knowing that its fate from this moment on belongs only to me.

“Isobel Clark. That’s your real name,” Jack says, stealing me from the memories this tiny bone has unlocked.

“It was. Isobel Kyrie Clark. But that girl doesn’t exist anymore.”

The weight of Jack’s gaze feels so heavy on my skin, but I’m still riveted to the box in my hands, even when Jack reaches forward and gently closes the lid. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, and I cackle an unexpected laugh at his earnest question.

“Tell you? Tell you how, exactly?” I look up from the box when Jack’s only reply is silence, a muscle jumping in his jaw as I raise a brow in challenge. A kernel of rage bubbles through the thin crust of my other emotions, rising from a place where it never dims or dies. “No really, Jack…how would I say that? ‘Oh hello, Mr. Important Serial Killer Man, I’ve been stalking you for literally years and you’ve never noticed, but you saved me from the Silent Slayer and by the way, I also enjoy killing people, pleased to meet you. We have so much in common, want to hang out?’ Is that how it would go? How many seconds do you think it would have taken for you to kill me had I said that?”

“Zero, Kyrie. I—”

“Agreed. Exactly zero seconds, because you despised me from the first moment we met in your shitty old lab.”

“That’s not—”

“You sent Hugh a detailed process by which he should remove me from the department and suggested multiple alternative candidates he should replace me with. You used the word ‘furthermore’ six times in that lengthy email, Jack. ‘Furthermore, Kyrie Roth has not accrued sufficient years of field experience to assume a position of this magnitude.’”

“How did you—”

“Or what about the time you claimed I incorrectly recalibrated the settings on the CRYO freezer and you lost all your tissue samples? You asked Hugh why he would hire someone who couldn’t program something as simple as a freezer and asked to see my university transcripts. For all three of my degrees.”

“I didn’t—”

“It wasn’t even my fucking fault, of course. It never is. You know why? Because I fucking idolized you and I never would have jeopardized your work. It shocked literally no one when it turned out to be Madeleine’s fault. And even after she told you, you still never apologized to me.”

“Kyrie—”

“You hate me, Jack. And I’ve been bitten enough times by you now that I’m not very fond of you anymore either, so just because you finally put it all together, it doesn’t change anything. You’re only being nice to me now because you figure you can fucking dickmatize me into winning Thunderdome and then you’ll finally be rid of me, just like you always wanted. Well, let me tell you something, Dr. Sorensen—”

Jack’s cool palm is fixed to my mouth before I can ever finish my sentence.

“Stop. Talking,” he says, and though I give him my most lethal glare, it only lands on the top of his head where it’s bent over my lap, his forehead nearly resting on my knees as his free hand brackets my forearm. The unexpected intimacy of this sudden contact is the only thing that keeps me shocked enough to not wrestle my mouth free. “Jesus Christ,” Jack whispers, looking like he’s just run a race and lost miserably, his shoulders slumped and each breath noticeable. He gives a little shake of his head. “You are the most mercurial person I have ever met. One moment you’re in tears and the next you’re running two hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction without a map or a fucking clue. I don’t even know where to start.”

I growl unintelligible insults that are lost to the palm clamped against my mouth.

“No. Not a fucking chance,” he says, shaking his head in denial with more certainty and determination than a moment ago. He meets my eyes with a darkened, haunted gaze. “First of all, I didn’t save you. I left you.” I growl again and try to pull Jack’s hand free of my lips to tell him that’s not up for him to decide, but I don’t manage to dislodge him. His grip on my forearm tightens as he presses it to the armrest. “You were barely breathing. You had two knives buried in your chest. Your face was a swollen, bloody mess. You didn’t wake up, you didn’t look at me. If you had opened your eyes just once that first time, I would have recognized you the moment you walked into the lab.”

I roll my eyes in my best “As if, we both know you would have murdered me to protect yourself if you’d caught me watching” look before turning my glare to a darkened corner of the room.

“Also, it’s zero seconds because I would not have killed you if you’d told me who you were.”

I bark an incredulous laugh against his palm.

“Third, I did believe you needed more field experience. I didn’t realize you had taken every summer to do exactly that during your entire student career, which is what Hugh responded with. And yes, I’m aware that the CRYO freezer incident was an asshole move. One among many.”

“Still not an apology,” I shoot back with nothing more than a muffled mumble and a cutting glare.

“I’m also not trying to dickmatize you out of your evidence. I’d think that would be obvious, as I’m giving you a bone from someone I killed,” he says with a pointed glance to the box resting in my lap.

I huff.

And then we fall into the kind of silence that lurks in shadows, trapping secrets that just need a little hint of light to catch fire and burn.

I watch Jack and he watches me back, his palm still pressed against my lips and his hand across my forearm.

‘Hayes is here for you. He knows you. He’s the agent who worked on the Silent Slayer case, isn’t he. And he’s here to follow old threads.”

I swallow, holding Jack’s gaze as it darkens. I nod.

His eyes track across my face and when I tug on his wrist he finally lifts his hold from my mouth.

“If he’d done his job…” I whisper, my gaze dropping to the box in my hands. If Hayes had done his job, would I be a different person? Would I have a different life? Of course. If Hayes hadn’t fucked up, I’d have my family. I wouldn’t be alone. I wouldn’t be struggling to let go of the one person I’ve tied myself to, the one who might want to kiss me in a fleeting moment of weakness and kill me in every other steady heartbeat.

“I was about to leave West Paine. I wanted to adhere to my plans, and then you showed up,” Jack says before I have a chance to speak, his voice low and dark. “I’ve stayed longer than I should have. But I couldn’t go until you left first.”

“That makes no fucking sense. I’ve seen your contract, you can leave whenever you—”

“I’ve tried to force you out. Naturally, you’re not only the most mercurial person I’ve ever met, but the most stubborn as well. All I’ve managed to accomplish is to make myself suffer.”

A derisive laugh passes my lips. “That admission brings me no small measure of happiness.”

“But I have had enough. I’m done denying myself what I want.”

I swallow the heartbeat that seems to jump into my throat. “You’re bowing out and leaving West Paine?” I ask, trying to not let a sudden swell of hurt and disappointment color my words, even though I feel its warmth creep into my cheeks despite my best effort to subdue it. Jack makes no move to answer my question. He only watches me with sharpened scrutiny as I tilt my chin up. “Well… good. We’re finally on the same page about something.”

Jack presses in closer, enough that I notice the warmth of his chest against my legs. I could count every shade of gray in his eyes as they remain unerringly fixed to mine. “I can assure you, we are not on the same page. But we will be.”

For a moment that lingers, I feel every beat of my heart. I could lean a little forward and inhale his scent. Maybe I do.

And then Jack’s subtle warmth and his glacial gaze are gone, the temperature of the room plummeting as he heads toward his monitors, tossing a dark look over his shoulder as he goes. “Get some rest, Dr. Roth. You’re going to need it.”

It takes me a moment to move, but when I do, I leave without another word, the sound of Tchaikovsky resuming to follow me as I near the exit. The music clings to my thoughts as I drive home, a wraith that haunts the deep shadows of my bedroom.

And rest is exactly what I do not get.

I roll in my sheets, tangling my legs in their constrictive grip until I kick them off. It’s not just my boiling rage at Hayes that has me fevered as I imagine every manner of death and torture I could mete out with my bare hands. It’s not just revenge that keeps me up. It’s desire too. A deep need that burns like flame in my chest. It’s Jack.

Every word Jack has said these last few days replays in my mind only to unravel into endless possibilities. Conversations I wish we could have played out to a thousand conclusions. But even worse than his words is his touch. His kiss is seared deep into my marrow. He claimed my mouth like a man starved of light and hope. His touch was a reverential progression of worship across my flesh and bone. He gripped my throat only to let me go, pressing his mouth to my neck.

If I want to hurt you, I will.

But he hasn’t.

At one point in the night, I slide my hand into my sleep shorts, circling my clit, hoping to alleviate some of this torsional need that fills my core and twists it in knots. But I give up after only a few short moments. I don’t want me. I don’t want my imagination. I want him. And the harder I try to convince myself that I shouldn’t just makes me want him that much more.

I manage at least a little sleep, eventually. But it’s not enough, and I wake before dawn when the bedroom is still black with shadows. Cornetto long gave up on the bed with my restless turning and rises from his seldom-used dog mat when I pad a defeated path to the kitchen. I catch up on the news, social media, texts and emails, the usual Saturday morning activities as I savor my extra-large mug of coffee. Shortly after sunrise, I’m on the snakelike path that follows the river, Cornetto trotting by my side as we trace the meanderings of the slow, gray current. We run our usual loop that takes about an hour and a half, and we walk the last few blocks to the house in a cool-down.

When I round the corner to see Hayes’s silver Honda Accord parked along the curb bordering my front lawn, my first thought is an unexpected one.

Text Jack.

I pocket my AirPods as Hayes opens the driver’s side door and steps out of the vehicle, and thoughts of Jack are lost to the cacophony of Cornetto’s bark. Hayes casts a nervous glance at my dog as he takes a few cautious steps from his car. I could silence Cornetto with a single word, but I don’t, not even when I close the space between me and the grizzled agent to stop a few feet away.

“Hello, Isobel,” he says with a faint smile.

It takes great effort not to grind my molars. “Kyrie.”

“Right. Of course. Kyrie.” The tension in our silence is worsened by the low growl that rumbles from Cornetto’s throat. “Mind if we chat for a few minutes inside?”

“Sure,” I say with a single nod. “Come in.”

I give Hayes a wide berth as Cornetto strains against his leash to keep between me and the agent, nearly losing his shit when he realizes the unknown man is coming into our domain. I give him the command to break in a firm voice once we’re inside, and Cornetto quiets but keeps his eyes on Hayes as I lead us deeper into the house, motioning for Hayes to sit at the dining table while I make a pot of coffee. My phone taunts me on the granite countertop of the island as I pull two mugs out of the cupboard. I’m sure replying to Jack’s pawn and skull emojis with an eye roll and a police officer would send him into a meltdown, but I have a feeling he’d be on my doorstep within minutes. Something about that is both worrisome and exhilarating.

“Nice husky,” Hayes says when I bring the coffees through to the dining room. Cornetto sits within striking distance, his eyes following Hayes’s hand as he reaches for the mug I pass over.

“Elkhound,” I correct with a brittle smile.

“Ah. They’re used for big game hunting, aren’t they?”

His nonchalant tone is too forced. He already knew it was an Elkhound. With the comment about big game, he knows I still hunt. That I have guns in the house.

He’s been keeping tabs on me.

“Yes. And guarding too. But you didn’t come to talk dogs,” I say as I lean back in my chair and drag my mug across the table, raising it to my lips to take a loud sip for no other purpose than to be a little irritating. “What can I do for you, Mr. Hayes?”

“I wanted to get your thoughts on Dr. Brad Thompson.”

“What about him specifically?”

“Well, for one, he stated that he was with you on the night that Mason Dumont was last seen. Is that true?”

I narrow my eyes, keeping careful hold of every micro-expression that indicates truthfulness. “It’s true that I went to his place after the Brentwood Award Gala and fell asleep before midnight. Brad was awake when I woke at seven-thirty, dressed for work and making toaster strudel for breakfast.” I crinkle my nose and then shrug. “What he did between midnight and seven-thirty, and then after I left to my place at eight, I have no idea. I’m a heavy sleeper.”

Hayes takes a cheap pen and his ragged notebook from his jacket, turning it to a fresh page to jot down some notes.

“Did he ever raise concerns to you about the body donation program at the Bass Fields?”

“Yes,” I say, sure that he already knows.

“Did that concern you?”

I huff a derisive laugh and roll my eyes. “No. He had a handful of grad students and Madeleine working on the records. It should come as no surprise that anything she touched would be fucked up. Hasn’t anyone told you about the CRYO freezer incident?”

Hayes just gives a thoughtful ‘hmm’ as he writes a brief line, and though I try to make out the wording, I can’t manage to decipher his scribbled cursive.

“What about Dr. Sorensen?”

So this is the real reason he’s here. With only three questions about Brad, there’s no way that Dr. Thompson is the subject of his interest.

Even though I suspected he would get to Jack, it still takes great effort to keep my expressions neutral, my voice treading a careful line of boredom and helpfulness. “What about him?”

“You don’t seem to think highly of him.”

“You’re mistaken. I do think highly of him. I just don’t like him. Sometimes.”

“Why not?”

I choose my words carefully, trying to see the world through the eyes of someone searching for the signs of a serial murderer. “He can be arrogant. Not an uncommon trait for men in academia, I’m afraid.”

“Do you know anything about Dr. Sorensen’s whereabouts on Thursday night when Dr. Thompson’s house was set ablaze?”

“Yes, actually. He was at the lab, with me,” I say. Hayes darts a skeptical glance my way before returning his attention to his notes, and I have the urge to rip his notebook from his grasp and shove it down his fucking throat. I barely manage to resist folding my hands into fists. “I dropped my Brentwood Award and cut myself. Jack stitched it for me.” I turn my palm to face him, the neat stitches bracketing the jagged red line across the base of my thumb. “I…couldn’t go into the hospital. It’s too…much. Jack took care of it instead, then replaced my award. It was very thoughtful of him, actually. I’m sure if you asked, he would give you proof.”

Hayes’s lips turn down in a frown as he scribbles across the page with more concentration than before, as though his earlier notes were just for show and these are real. My heart turns over a heavy beat as adrenaline floods my veins. I raise my mug to my lips with both hands to hide the deep, slow breaths I take to combat its effects.

“What is this about, Mr. Hayes?”

Hayes regards me for a long moment, his eyes softening with a fatherly kind of affection. Maybe it’s just pity. Maybe even remorse. “You can call me Eric.”

I give him a nod.

“I believe the Silent Slayer is still active,” he says. I try to look alarmed, then confused, then worried, my mouth popping open as I set my mug down with a manufactured tremor in my hand. “It’s very uncommon for serial killers to stop hunting permanently. They may take time between killings, sometimes even years, but the urge doesn’t disappear forever. It’s possible that the Slayer changed his MO after your confrontation. And I think he could be in the area.”

“And what…you think he might recognize me?”

Hayes lays a hand on mine, and I pour all my effort into turning my rage at his touch into a mask of distress.

“I think he might have known you’re here all along.”