CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Echo Bridge loomed ahead, its stone arches ghostly beneath the sparse streetlights.
Riley slowed her car, scanning the area—the empty benches, the shadowed walkways, the scattered parked cars that might conceal a waiting observer.
At this hour, the park surrounding the historic bridge was nearly deserted, just a few distant figures walking dogs or hurrying home.
Perfect conditions for a meeting no one was meant to witness.
Perfect conditions for an ambush. Riley parked her car at an angle that would allow for a quick departure, checked her weapon once more, and stepped out into the night.
The air was heavy with moisture. It dampened sounds, created halos around the street lamps, and left a slick sheen on the stone of the bridge. Somewhere nearby, water trickled beneath the structure, a persistent whisper beneath the occasional distant car passing on the road beyond the park.
Riley moved carefully, staying close to the shadows cast by the trees that lined the approach to the bridge. She hadn’t called for backup because she’d thought that a police presence might spook Leo if he was watching.
The bridge itself was perhaps sixty feet long, with stone balustrades and a series of overhead arches that created pools of deeper darkness between the lamps.
Riley paused at its entrance, surveying the structure from end to end.
No obvious movement, no waiting figures.
Just the empty expanse of the bridge stretching before her, vulnerable and exposed.
She drew her weapon and held it at her side, hidden by the folds of her jacket but ready. Then she advanced onto the bridge, moving in a slight zigzag pattern that would make her a more difficult target if someone were aiming from the shadows.
Halfway across, something caught her eye—a white rectangle affixed to the base of a streetlamp. As she drew closer, she saw that it was an envelope, standard letter size, attached with clear tape. Even from several feet away, she could see the neat, precise handwriting on its face:
Agent Riley Paige
Not Jilly. Her own name.
Riley glanced around once more, confirming she was alone on the bridge, before approaching the envelope.
She studied it without touching it, looking for any signs of tampering, any indication it might contain more than paper.
Satisfied it posed no immediate physical threat, she holstered her weapon and pulled on a pair of gloves, then peeled away the tape using the edge of her car key and caught the envelope as it came free.
The paper was good quality, heavy stock. No return address, no postmark, nothing but her name written in blue ink with a steady hand. Riley opened it, extracting a single folded sheet that matched the envelope’s quality. She unfolded it beneath the streetlamp’s glow and saw a handwritten message.
Dear Riley,
By now, you’ve pieced everything together, haven’t you? Let me confirm your suspicions:
Yes, I texted your daughter this afternoon. Jilly is impressively perceptive—she recognized me almost immediately, though she tried to hide it. Such a bright girl. She reminds me of you in that way.
Yes, I knew she would tell you about our conversation and the proposed meeting at this bridge. I counted on it, in fact. Jilly is too smart to walk into what might be a trap without consulting you first—a trait you’ve cultivated in her, no doubt.
And yes, I knew you would forbid her from coming herself. You’re protective of those you love. It’s one of your most admirable qualities, and also one of your most predictable.
So here you are, alone on Echo Bridge at 9:00 p.m., while I am elsewhere.
Did you bring your gun? I’d wager you did.
Did you call for backup? Probably not—there wasn’t much time, and you weren’t certain what you’d find here.
Or may you just think you have nothing to fear from me. I won’t comment on that.
I want you to understand, Riley, that I know you. I understand how you think, how you act, how you prioritize. This little exercise was merely to demonstrate that fact.
Until next time,
Leo
Riley’s hand tightened around the paper, crumpling its edge.
She scanned the bridge and surrounding area once more, this time with the knowledge that she was alone—that she had been meant and expected to be alone all along.
This wasn’t an attempted meeting. It was a demonstration of power, of knowledge, of control.
Leo was playing with her, showing off his ability to predict her actions and manipulate her family. And he’d succeeded. Every step she’d taken since walking through her front door had been anticipated and accounted for.
She folded the letter and slipped it into an evidence bag from her pocket. Forensics would process it, but Riley harbored no illusions about finding useful fingerprints or DNA. Leo was too careful for such elementary mistakes.
The bridge suddenly felt exposed in a different way—not as a potential ambush site, but as a stage where she had unwittingly performed exactly the role Leo had scripted for her. The realization left a bitter taste in her mouth.
She walked back to her car, refusing to give in to the urge to hurry, to flee. If Leo was watching, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled.
Once inside her vehicle, however, Riley allowed herself a moment of raw honesty.
Two killers now occupied her thoughts. The origami murderer, methodical and elusive, targeting patients with impulse control issues for reasons she had yet to uncover.
And Leo Dillard, brilliant and obsessed, focused not on random victims but on Riley herself—and by extension, her family.
The origami killer was a professional challenge, a case to be solved.
Leo was a personal threat, a predator circling what he perceived as his prey.
As Riley started her car and pulled away from Echo Bridge, she couldn’t escape the feeling that she was being watched—not just by cameras or from a distance, but by eyes that saw through her, understood her, anticipated her.
And she knew that somewhere in the darkness beyond the bridge, Leo Dillard was smiling.
*
Leo Dillard sat alone in the half-light of his apartment. She would have found it by now. Riley would have come alone. He knew her well enough to be certain of that.
His modest one-bedroom apartment existed in a perpetual state of order.
Nothing out of place, nothing without purpose.
The walls were bare except for a single framed print of Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory,” hanging precisely centered over the sofa.
The melting clocks had always spoken to him—time as something malleable, something that could be manipulated, just like people.
Leo rose, his movements fluid as he crossed to the kitchen.
The refrigerator hummed—the only sound breaking the silence.
Inside: protein shakes, precisely arranged produce, nothing expired, nothing excessive.
He wasn’t hungry, but routine demanded adherence.
He poured himself a glass of filtered water, the clear liquid catching the dim light from the single lamp he’d left on.
An hour had passed since Echo Bridge. By now, Riley would be home, the contents of his message turning over in her mind. He smiled at the thought.
“You’re mine now,” he whispered to the empty room.
The night had gone exactly as planned. He’d chosen Echo Bridge carefully—a location significant enough to register in her consciousness but not so well-used that others might intercept his message.
The bridge connected two halves of Lanton Park, where Riley occasionally jogged when work allowed.
He’d observed her there five times over the past weeks, always noting her route, her pace, the way she seemed to withdraw into her thoughts as she ran.
He settled into the straight-backed chair at his desk and awakened his laptop with a touch. Files supplied by ShadowCipher were open in front of him—page after page of Dr. Michael Nevins’ notes on Special Agent Riley Paige.
Leo skimmed the text, though he’d already memorized most of it.
The sessions from several years back held particular interest—Riley’s lingering trauma from her capture by Sam Peterson, her concern for her daughter April’s emotional stability, and her complicated feelings about her father’s death.
All of it raw material that he could shape and use.
His first glimpse of Riley had been in the lecture hall at Quantico.
He’d secured a place in her course through months of careful maneuvering—a perfectly crafted application, recommendations that couldn’t be ignored, test scores that placed him at the top tier without drawing undue attention.
And then she had walked in, commanding the room without effort.
“Understanding Serial Killers,” she had said that first day, her voice carrying to the back row where he sat. “We begin by acknowledging that we can never truly understand them. Not completely.”
But she had been wrong. Leo understood perfectly. He understood the need to reshape reality into something more suitable, the careful selection of targets, the planning. What Riley failed to grasp was that some minds were simply built differently—superior, unbound by conventional morality.
Leo closed the laptop. He didn’t need the notes anymore; they were imprinted in his mind.
He rose and moved to the window, pulling back the corner of the blinds to look at the night sky.
His reflection stared back at him from the glass—dark hair neatly trimmed, features that most people found handsome in a conventional way.
A face designed to be forgotten, to blend in. The perfect camouflage.
In the first weeks of Riley’s class, he had been careful to be unremarkable.
He answered questions competently but not brilliantly, participated enough to be considered engaged but not enough to stand out.
He observed how she responded to other students—which ones she favored, which ones she found tiresome.
He noted the slight tilt of her head when something interested her, the almost imperceptible narrowing of her eyes when she detected falsehood.
Leo had studied Riley Paige as thoroughly as she had ever studied any killer.
The realization that they were meant for each other had come gradually.
It wasn’t merely that she was beautiful, that she fascinated him.
It was that they were complementary pieces of the same puzzle, negative and positive space creating a complete picture.
He returned to his desk, opening the drawer to reveal a neat stack of photographs.
Riley leaving the FBI Academy. Riley at a café with Bill Jeffreys.
Riley standing on her porch, checking her phone.
Riley with April and Jilly, the three of them walking into Brody Middle School for some evening event.
There was a power in this collection, a magic of sorts. Each photograph represented hours of patient waiting, of perfect timing. Each one was a testament to his devotion.
Leo selected one—Riley alone on a park bench, her face in profile, sunlight catching in her hair.
It had been taken three weeks ago, on one of the rare afternoons when she’d allowed herself a moment of solitude.
He’d been fifty yards away, his telephoto lens capturing what anyone else would have missed: the slight downward curve of her mouth, the tension in her shoulders, the way she gripped the edge of the bench. Stress. Worry. Vulnerability.
He returned the photographs to their drawer, sliding it closed with a soft click.
The game was accelerating now. The envelope at Echo Bridge was merely the overture—a promise of what was to come.
In his mind, he could already see it unfolding—Riley’s carefully constructed world crumbling around her.
Not physically—he would never damage her body, her perfect form.
But emotionally, psychologically, the walls she’d built would come crashing down.
And then, in her moment of greatest vulnerability, he would be there. Not as her student, not as her adversary, but as her equal. Her perfect match.
Leo returned to his chair, calm settling over him. He closed his eyes, imagining the chaos that would engulf her family—the precious daughters she protected so fiercely, the colleagues she relied on, all of them drawn into his design.
A soft ping from his phone interrupted his reverie.
A notification from one of the security applications he’d installed—movement detected at Riley’s house.
Leo reached for the phone, swiping to access the camera feed he’d established three streets away from her home.
Just a glimpse of her driveway, enough to confirm her car was there.
And it was—the dark sedan parked at an angle that suggested she’d arrived in haste.
She’d found the envelope, then. Had read its contents.
Leo smiled into the darkness of his apartment, certain that sleep would elude him tonight.
But that was fine. He had preparations to complete, final details to arrange.
Tomorrow, he would unleash a disaster upon Riley’s family that would shatter the foundations of her world.
And from those ruins, he would build something new—something perfect.