Chapter 10
Eddie
The summons comes via email.
—Admin
I read it twice, then delete the email and check my watch.
13:44.
Plenty of time to get there. Not enough time to prepare for whatever Vincent has planned.
The walk down the hallway to his office feels longer than it should. My boots sound too loud on the linoleum, and every step echoes. Officers glance up from their desks as I pass, their eyes following me with a curiosity that feels like insects crawling over my skin.
No one walks this stretch of hallway because they feel like it; they do it because they’ve been summoned.
When I reach Vincent’s door, it’s already open.
He sits behind his desk, his hands folded. “Detective. Sit.”
I sit. My spine stays straight, my hands resting loosely on my thighs. Every instinct I have screams trouble, but I keep my face neutral. I’ve interrogated enough suspects to know the value of silence, of waiting for the other person to fill the void.
Vincent sighs. “I wish this conversation wasn’t necessary.”
He slides a thin manila folder across his polished desk, and it whispers against wood like a serpent through grass.
“What is this?” I ask without touching it.
“Open it.”
I reach out for the folder. Inside, the pages are neatly arranged, each one a nail hammered into a coffin I didn’t build but am apparently expected to climb into.
The first page is a lab report that details the chemical adhesive analysis on Farley’s severed hand from Michael Devlin’s toolbox.
Polymer No. 412-L, with a match probability of 99.
7%. It’s cross-referenced to previous case usage with my name highlighted in yellow across the three cases listed, the dates and file numbers all correct.
My stomach sinks.
The second page—
My heart stops.
It’s a still image from security footage.
Timestamp: 02:47 a.m., the night of James’s break-in to Devlin’s house.
A dark sedan parked on a residential street, illuminated by a neighbor’s motion-sensor light.
The make and model are visible in enhanced zoom.
The license plate is partially obscured by shadow, but the visible digits match perfectly.
That’s my car, parked on a street I’ve only been to once before, but not at night.
That’s Michael Devlin’s street, at a time when I wasn’t there.
The night I woke tangled in sheets that smelled like Sera, my head still foggy from nightmares of footprints on walls and ceilings.
The night I stumbled into the hallway and saw irrefutable evidence that something inhuman lived in that house with her.
Except my car wasn’t there, or near there, since I’d parked almost a block away from Sera’s house in the cover of some trees so no one would see me. My car was here, on Devlin’s street, without me in it.
“This came to me anonymously,” Vincent says, his voice smooth.
“Of course it did,” I rasp out.
“I wish it hadn’t.” He leans forward slightly, elbows on the desk. “A neighbor says she saw someone heading toward Devlin’s house with your height and build, wearing a black leather jacket, and that tip did not come anonymously.”
Oh my fucking god.
I swallow thickly.
“You’re a great detective, Eddie,” the sheriff continues. “Good arrest record. Clean service history. But the evidence is…”
He trails off, letting the implication hang.
I look up. His expression is perfect—concern layered over duty, both laid atop something harder.
He believes this. Actually believes I’m dirty.
The realization is almost funny.
“I wasn’t there,” I say. “That wasn’t me.”
“The evidence says otherwise.”
“Evidence can be manufactured. You know this.”
“Can it?” Vincent leans back, fingers steepled. “The adhesive is specialized. Restricted access. You’re one of three people in this county who’ve ever requisitioned it. And the eyewitness, the footage…” He taps the photo. “That’s your vehicle, Eddie. Your license plate. How do you explain that?”
My mind races. My car wasn’t James’s mistake—this was someone adding evidence after he left. Layering it. Making it impossible to ignore. A horrible, planned “coincidence” that made me look guilty as fuck.
But my car… How did someone get my car to that street without me knowing? I keep my keys on me at all times, same with my gun and badge. That’s just paranoia bred from years of police work. Even when I sleep, they’re on the nightstand within arm’s reach.
Did someone hot-wire it, drive it there, then drive it back? If that’s the case, they must have been tailing James too and figured out what he was doing. Maybe they knew about the adhesive. Maybe they didn’t.
“I don’t know what you thought you were doing, Crowe.
” Vincent’s voice pulls me back to the present.
“Maybe you thought you were serving justice. Maybe someone convinced you the system wasn’t enough.
” His eyes flicker, just for a second, with something that may be genuine curiosity.
“But you just destroyed your career. And for what?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer because he doesn’t need one.
“Turn in your badge and gun. You’re suspended pending formal investigation. Internal Affairs has scheduled your interview for tomorrow morning at eight o’clock sharp. If this goes bad, and if you’re smart, you’ll resign before this goes public. Save yourself the humiliation of a trial.”
The words hit like body blows, but I don’t flinch.
My hands move mechanically, unclipping my badge from my belt.
The weight of it—a weight I’ve carried for eight years—suddenly feels immense.
I set it on the desk with a soft metallic click.
My service weapon follows. I eject the magazine, clear the chamber, set the gun down with the slide locked back, professional and by the book even now.
Especially now.
“I’m sorry it came to this,” he says, and the terrible thing is, part of him means it.
Part of him genuinely believes he’s rooting out corruption, cleaning house, doing the right thing.
That’s what makes him so dangerous. Monsters who know they’re monsters can be predicted. Monsters who think they’re heroes are chaos incarnate.
I stand. My legs are steady, but inside, I’m free-falling. “You’re making a mistake. An active serial killer is still on the loose. Plus, if it was me who went to Devlin’s, and it wasn’t, it’s pretty stupid to park on the same street as the crime, knowing there are cameras everywhere.”
“The law still applies,” he says simply.
But it doesn’t. He knows that better than anyone since he is above the law. The verdict in Sera’s court case against him proved that. The law bends and breaks around men like him.
“I didn’t do this, Sheriff.”
“Then prove it.”
I leave both his office and the building in a daze. My car—my traitorous, impossible car—sits three spots from the entrance, exactly where I parked it this morning.
I stand beside the driver’s door, key fob in hand, staring at the familiar dents and scratches. The bumper sticker that reads To Protect and Serve is peeling at the edges, the letters faded from sun exposure. Everything looks normal.
I open the door. The interior smells wrong, faint, almost imperceptible, but there, like fresh earth. Not my smell. Not the coffee-and-case-file scent this car usually carries.
My hands shake as I check the odometer. Last night, it was around 47,293. I only noticed because I need an oil change. Now it reads 47,308.
Fifteen miles I didn’t drive.
Roughly seven and a half miles to Michael Devlin’s neighborhood from Sera’s. Seven and a half back.
Cold horror crawls up my spine. Someone took my car. Not to steal it—to use it. To create a narrative where I’m the villain, the dirty cop, the one who planted evidence and destroyed a case.
Why didn’t I notice this morning? Probably because my nightmare last night had rattled me just as much as waking up to realize not all of it had been a nightmare.
I’d stumbled to my car in a fog, driven to the station on autopilot, my mind still half trapped in that house with its bloody, impossible footprints.
I didn’t check the odometer. Didn’t notice the faint smell. Didn’t think to look for evidence of intrusion because I was too busy trying to process what I’d seen.
After donning some rubber gloves from my jacket pocket, I sink into the driver’s seat and try to think. But all I can hear is my own pulse hammering, and all I can smell is that faint residue of dirt. I need to dust my car for prints and search for fibers or hair. I need to tell Sera.
The break-in wasn’t just about framing Michael Devlin for severing Farley’s hand.
It had become something more. It had become the fuel to systematically remove me.
The adhesive was just a coincidental hook.
The neighbor seeing a man with my appearance was the line, and my car was the absolute sinker.
Someone stole it, drove it to the scene, made sure it was caught on camera, and returned it before I even knew it was gone.
This is the definition of patience, of a philosophy that will quickly dismantle.
The pieces align with sickening clarity, each one clicking into place like bullets loading into a chamber.
Red Hands.
He was in my car, just like he was in Sera’s.
This is what Red Hands does. What he’s always done. He doesn’t just kill—he reveals. Strips away masks. Forces people to confront what they really are.
And now he’s turned that philosophy on me.
He’s not trying to kill me. He’s trying to remove me. Dismantle the structures I rely on—my badge, my authority, my legal power—to leave me vulnerable and exposed.
Just like he does to his victims before he ends them.
But I’m not the target. Not really.
Sera is.
I’m just in the way. The detective who got too close, who saw too much, who may actually be able to protect her.
So he neutralized me.
And now she’s more exposed than ever.
No badge. No gun. No legal authority to investigate or intervene.
I’m off the board.
And Red Hands is still out there, circling closer with every breath.
I grip the steering wheel, my breath coming in short gasps.
I start the engine. The car rumbles to life, that familiar vibration I’ve felt a thousand times. Except now it’s tainted, violated. Someone else sat here, touched these controls, breathed this air.
The violation is visceral, intimate. Worse than if he’d broken into my apartment. A car is personal in ways people don’t think about—your smell soaks into the upholstery, and your habits shape the space. Someone else driving it feels like someone else wearing your skin.
I pull out of the parking lot, my tires squealing slightly. I don’t know where I’m going.
Yes, I do.
Sera’s house. Even though Sera’s monster is there—even though the ghost hates me, tolerates me at best—at least she’s protected within those walls.
The house is her fortress of rot and shadow and jealous, possessive fury, her prison, her weapon. And right now, it’s the only thing standing between her and whatever Red Hands has planned next.
But what happens when she leaves? What happens the next time she walks to her car, keys in hand, oblivious?
What happens when Red Hands decides his patience has run its course?