Chapter Nine
Rheda
Peter’s already by the door when I arrive.
I glance down at my watch and then back at him.
I don’t think I’m late. Time just doesn’t feel right. It’s like something has been shaved off.
“Morning,” he says. I hear it, but it takes a second to land. My throat tightens when I swallow, catching halfway like it’s forgotten how to work properly.
“Morning,” I manage.
His hand moves into my space with a plastic cup.
“Coffee,” he says. “It’s not great, but it’s warm. Drink up.”
My fingers tighten around the cup, testing it. The heat feels... distant, like it’s not quite reaching me properly. I bring it to my mouth and the first sip lodges. My throat resists it for a second too long before letting it pass. I lower the cup quickly before it happens again.
“You’re slow this morning.” He says.
I blink. “What?”
His eyes stay on me. Then he steps back, opening the space.
“Drink it,” Peter says. “I don’t need you lagging today.”
There’s something in the way he says it that makes my grip tighten, but I nod anyway. “Yeah.”
He moves first, and I have no choice but to follow. I slip past him into the same chair as yesterday.
Mike leans back in his chair.
“I had a rough night too.” He exhales sharply. “I think everyone’s a bit off after yesterday.”
Sean lets out a quiet breath that might be a laugh. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Peter doesn’t look at any of us. He’s setting his things down one at a time, like he’s giving the room time to settle rather than forcing it.
“Right, listen up.” He says.
“No assumptions today,” he turns to face us and his lips thin. “Drop everything from yesterday. It got us nowhere so we start again.”
Mike pushes back with his heel before standing. “You think he’ll even talk?”
“This is his last chance.” Peter says.
It sits weirdly.
Until what?
I don’t have a chance to let my brain catch up. His gaze drags across the room, brief, assessing. Then he nods once, more to himself than to us, and turns toward the door.
“Positions.”
They move, and for a brief moment, I shift as if I’m joining them, automation working through me.
But my brain kicks in a moment later and I drop back into the chair quickly.
My cheeks burn. The chair suddenly feels a couple degrees too cold.
I readjust like that might help, fingers already grabbing for my notebook. A distraction.
The page from yesterday stares back at me, half-formed notes that don’t quite connect to anything. I read the same line twice and still don’t take it in.
My stomach twists with anticipation.
This time will be different.
It has to be.
Peter reaches over and clicks a button. The shutter on the one-way glass suddenly peels back, and the interrogation room hums to life. It’s empty for now. Three chairs and a bolted table. It shouldn’t feel different, but something about it feels...used.
He opens the door and steps through first. The corridor beyond is brighter, colder. He doesn’t open the second door straight away. His hand rests on the handle for a second, just long enough for the silence to thicken again, for everything to draw in tight.
“In,” Peter says, already pushing the door open.
They move into place quietly.
Peter pulls a radio from his pocket and speaks against the metal grille. “Bring him in.”
A buzz slips through the speakers a minute later.
The door opens. I find him immediately. Everything else drops away too easily. Guards, hands, the movement around him—it all blurs at the edges while he stays sharp, fixed in the centre of it.
He walks like the room has already settled for him. Just a steady, unbroken pace that touches the inside of my skull.
The guards bring him down into the chair. I follow the shift of his weight, the slow roll of his shoulders as he lowers, the way his head comes up just enough to expose the line of his throat.
It catches the light.
It shouldn’t matter... but it does.
My fingers press harder into the table. It doesn’t stop the way my breath shortens, the way something low in my body tightens in response like it recognises him before I do.
Beautiful.
It lands violently. I try to shove the thought away, but it drags in a way I can feel more than explain.
He breathes and his lips part minimally.
Look away. I tell myself. Look at something else.
But my eyes keep catching on his mouth.
The dark flush along his lower lip almost looks like bruising. Uneven. Violated. My attention drags over the split at the centre before I can stop it, over the slow parting of his lips each time he breathes.
Heat twists low in my stomach so sharply it makes panic flare immediately afterwards.
My thumb presses hard against the edge of my badge.
DOCTOR.
I hold the word like it can steady me.
“Let’s not waste the morning,” Peter says eventually. He glances briefly at the restraints, then back at him. “Comfortable?”
It drags like a taunt.
The silence holds.
“We identified your third victim early this morning,” Peter continues. “Male. Twenty-six.”
He turns a page in the file.
“Every opening sewn shut with blue thread.”
My stomach drops so violently I almost miss the next breath.
Sewn shut.
The words hit my body before my brain fully catches them.
I picture swollen skin splitting around tight stitches. Blood caught black beneath thread. Somebody alive long enough to feel fingers forcing a needle through flesh that was never meant to close.
My pulse stumbles hard.
Peter’s voice never changes.
“Interesting colour choice,” he says mildly. “Why blue?”
Nothing. Deogal doesn’t move.
Peter flips another page.
“We found him face down in a shallow bucket.” His eyes stay fixed on him. “Did you stay with him while he suffocated?”
Something cold slides down my spine. My fingers tighten painfully around my pen. And somehow—somehow—he still doesn’t react.
The silence feels different now like something huge pressing slowly against the back of my teeth.
“My team are building a timeline as we speak,” Peter says calmly. “It’s not complicated. These kind of decisions will reveal a motive soon enough.”
He leans back slightly. “We’ll find the others.”
Still nothing.
“Don’t forget, Deogal. You’re on all of them. Your DNA is everywhere.”
Something inside me jerks violently.
Wrong.
The thought lands so fast it feels instinctive.
It’s a lie.
I don’t know how I know that.
I just do.
The feeling slides coldly down my spine, deep and immediate, like my body has recognised something before my mind has been allowed to catch up.
“You’re optional in this.” His fingers rest flat against the table. “We will not wait forever. You can speak and tell us your version, or we dispose of you.”
Somewhere along the way, I stop trying to analyse him.
My notes sit abandoned beneath my hand. I’m just watching now.
The loose way his hands rest in his lap despite the restraints.
The complete absence of movement in his face.
Even his breathing feels wrong from this distance, too slow, like his body exists on a rhythm separate from everyone else’s in the room.
Peter’s fingers tap once against the table. A single, soft contact, then still again. “Look at me.”
Deogal doesn’t even blink.
“Mm.” He straightens, one hand sliding along the edge of the table. He inhales slowly through his nose. He waits like something might change.
My pulse slams against my ribcage.
I look away. I have to.
I look down at my notes, at the few lines, at the space where something should be. I press harder into the page, like I can force something out of it. Something useful. Something real.
But my attention keeps slipping.
Back to him.
To the stillness.
And to his lips.