“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—”