The need to fit the last piece of the puzzle in place is a compulsive force propelling me forward. I walk toward Kyrie’s office, not sure how I feel about leaving her here with Hayes, but if I’m right…then I’ll know exactly why he’s here.
Kyrie doesn’t look at me as I hover at her office door, and I know she’s shaken. But not from the kiss. From the secret she’s kept from me for far too long.
I drive straight home and go to my office. Behind a false bookshelf panel is the biometrically sealed door that leads to my personal cold room and study—my trophy room. I pass by the glass-encased bones, not stopping until I reach the storage shelving where I stuffed a box of items from ten years ago.
I dig out the near ancient camcorder, then retrieve a power adapter.
My leg bounces as I’m seated on the sofa and impatiently wait for the 8mm tape to rewind.
When the girl’s face appears on the static-filled screen, I hit Pause on the device.
There, on the grainy screen, are the pale-blue eyes I’ve been obsessed with for the past three years. They’re open and wide and there’s no mistaking the terror held in their depths.
I press Play, and the sound of Kyrie’s grated scream cracks through the small speakers.
The footage plays back the earlier events of a night where a serial killer stabbed a teenage girl during a family massacre.
And as I stare at the screen, I witness her die all over again.
Because that girl was dead. I watched her die.
I drag a hand down my face. “Jeg forlod hende.”
Setting the camcorder down, I bound up and head to the glass case. I unlock the door and select the fragile bone displayed in the middle of my other trophies.
The Silent Slayer’s hyoid.
I run my finger over the smooth bone—a bone that doesn’t need the connection of any other bone to exist within the skeletal framework. The innermost part of the bone contains a hollow cavity, where blood vessels course through every layer, carrying nutrients and oxygen.
Even though I’ve studied this particular bone the entirety of my career, I feel as if I’m seeing it for the first time.
No, the lone hyoid needs no other structure to exist. Yet it’s reliant on the life-sustaining marrow for survival.
That night ten years ago, when I set out to extinguish another killer in my territory, I strangled that killer to death right next to his last victim—a girl with haunting pale-blue eyes; eyes I never once looked into until the moment she showed up at my university.
This entire time, she wasn’t dead. She’s not the dead one at all. She’s been what’s sustained me here.
She’s the marrow.
She’s my marrow.
Kyrie didn’t start as a killer—she was made.
And I helped make her.
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ELEVEN
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WINTERS
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KYRIE
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.
