Standing, he buttons his suit blazer, the concern etched in his deep complexion thoughtful. “We did. However, Dr. Roth said she needed to reschedule, that she wasn’t feeling well. She’s working from home today on a few things.” He lowers his gaze to the screen and clicks the mouse. “I received an email from her just a few minutes ago…”

His voice drifts out as I take off down the hallway.

Her home is my home.

And I would have received a security alert if she’d gone there.

I pull out my phone and check the logs. There’s one recorded entry from about twenty-five minutes ago. The system was accessed using my login information. Adrenaline rushes the chambers of my heart as I tap on the cameras to view the rooms.

My feet come to an abrupt halt when I glimpse her sitting at a desk in one of the guest rooms.

Everything about this is off. Why is she in a different room? Why did she lie about the meeting? My questions die when I notice her hand hovering over the mouse on the desk, then blink out.

“Son of a fucking—” I hurl the phone at the wall, watching with satisfaction as it cracks and skitters to the floor. I plant my hands to the cool cinder block, eyes sealed shut while I try to think past the furious pounding of my heart.

“Jack…?”

Lifting my head, I glance over to see Joy nervously clutching a purse to her chest. The silence of the department filters through my senses, and I turn to take in the wide and concerned gazes cast my way. Dr. Cannon stands at his office door, watching me intently.

I push off the wall and step toward Joy. “Give me your phone.”

She blinks. “I don’t understand. Jack, this isn’t like you. What’s wrong?”

Patience shorn thin, I feel a layer of my fabricated mask slip away, and Joy registers this transition. Fear crests her shiny dark eyes.

“Your phone, Joy,” I say around my clenched jaw. “It’s for Kyrie.”

She plunders in her bag and holds out her phone, her wide gaze never leaving my face. “Oh... Is she all right?”

“I’m going to make damn sure of it.” I take the device and light the screen. “Passcode?”

Her mouth parts. “Uh… One-two-three-four-five-six.”

I punch the code in to verify, then frown at her. “Tell Dr. Cannon my afternoon class is canceled.”

“Sure, Jack…”

Without any further explanation, I leave Joy and my other colleagues staring after me with concerned expressions. I exit through the emergency door to reach the parking lot faster and, once I’m seated behind the wheel of my car, I breathe in a stable breath, then use Joy’s phone to call Kyrie.

The call goes straight to voicemail.

Clutching the device in an iron grip, I mentally comb her letter, looking for any clues I missed. Despite Kyrie’s tendency to be emotionally volatile at times, this doesn’t feel like the way she’d leave things between us.

She’s not leaving. She’s not running away from me.

Setting up a loop on my security feed… Establishing an alibi with Cannon… Keeping me busy defleshing a body…

She’s buying time.

I key the engine and crank the car. “Goddammit. She’s going after Hayes on her own.”

Why the fuck would she do this without me.

She’s being impulsive, putting herself in danger. Hayes may not be the ultimate villain to fear, but he’s unhinged enough we can’t discount him. I wipe a hand down my face, not knowing whether I want to strangle her or kiss her when I find her.

Panic rises up from the bowels of some dormant part of my soul to torment me.

I will find her.

Bypassing the road to my house, I drive straight to Hayes’s last known location. He’s been holed up in a cheap motel since he arrived in Westview. According to the PI I hired to dig into the ex-agent, Hayes is staying in room 212 of the Homestead Inn.

Hayes’s Honda isn’t in the parking lot. Outside the room, I first scope out the window, noting the lowered blinds, listening closely for any signs of movement inside.

Then I stand back and kick the door. It groans but doesn’t budge. Muttering a curse, I ram my shoulder into the weakened door, falling into the room as the frame cracks and the latch gives.

Righting myself, I glance around for any signs of a struggle. But then there wouldn’t be, would there. Kyrie would be prepared. She’d lure him under false pretenses. She’d hunt him like one of her victims, then drug him, subduing him in a remote location under her control.

Where would she take him? Not to her cabin, to her kill room where she wanted me kept out of the way.

I rifle through the nightstand drawers, comb through the sparse contents of the closet. No gun. She would make him leave his weapon.

Spotting the laptop on the foot of the bed, I open the device and scour the files. Obsession takes on a whole new disturbed meaning as I open file after file of images of Kyrie through the years. Soon, however, his unhealthy fixation on her transfers to me, where he’s been digging into my past to connect me to the Silent Slayer murders.

And I realize in a singular moment of clarity that Kyrie thought she was protecting me from Hayes. In the event she didn’t succeed, she was saying her goodbye. One last kill together. One last heated moment. Handing over her amassed collection on me…and the bodily evidence of Mason Dumont.

She was setting me free.

I yank the alarm clock off the nightstand and smash it against the wall. Chest heaving, I stare down at the destroyed appliance.

Apparently, I’m only capable of two ranges. Shallow affect and full-blown rage.

Collecting myself, I turn the laptop around and dig deeper into Hayes’s archives of Kyrie and uncover the purchase documentation for Kyrie’s childhood home.

How the hell did the PI miss this?

I slam the lid closed on the laptop and, before I’m tempted to smash it against the wall too, I curb the violent tendency and tuck it under my arm, taking it with me as I storm from the room.

A game board needs to be set. Pieces placed. Rules have to be followed.

As I drive away from the Homestead Inn, I make a call to the local police department to report Dr. Kyrie Roth as a missing person. I’m not depending on authorities to act; it’s a counter-measure.

We’re going to need a few of those.

If Kyrie discovered that Hayes owns her family home, she’d want to tear out his still-beating heart. When I find them, I’m going to make damn certain she does.

So that’s where I go. With no gun. No knife. No ligature. No physical weapons.

We won’t need them.

We are the weapons.

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TWENTY-TWO

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FALLEN

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KYRIE

My neck aches, the muscles and tendons stretched for too long with the weight of my tipped-forward head. Nausea churns in my stomach and I groan.

I open my eyes but press them closed the instant my drug-addled brain processes my surroundings.

“No,” I whisper. Bile climbs my throat, but I manage to keep it down. “No.”

“It’s just a memory,” Jack had once said. “It’s not real anymore.”

I take a few deep breaths, letting them out in a thin stream of air between pursed lips.

He’s right. It’s just a memory.

I open my eyes again.

“It’s real,” I say.

My eyes brim with tears as they sweep across the empty living room of my childhood home.

I summon my wrists and ankles to strain against the zip ties binding me to a wooden chair near the center of the room, but it’s as though they’re on a delay, weakened by the chloroform. Deep breaths flood my chest as I try to clear the drug from my body. I whimper as I turn my gaze to the ceiling, away from the cream carpet that replaced the one that once absorbed blood and broken glass. It looks just the same as I remember it.