Chapter Forty-Four
Rheda
“I’m going to get a bottle of water,” Mike mutters eventually. His face is still flushed, ears tinging. He stretches once, rubbing at the back of his neck before glancing toward the darkened glass. He looks away just as fast.
The door buzzes and then shuts behind him. Silence rushes in immediately afterwards.
It’s different, thicker now.
My breath shudders before I can stop it.
Alone.
The realisation lands low and heavy in my stomach.
Alone with him.
I keep my eyes fixed on the desk at first.
On the scattered paperwork. The coffee rings staining the surface. Peter’s abandoned pen beside the keyboard.
And then—the lump under Peter’s mouse pad where the key is.
The photographs.
No.
Absolutely not.
My fingers tighten around my coffee cup instead. The paper crumples softly beneath my grip. I force myself to look away toward the blackened glass, toward my own warped reflection staring back at me faintly from its surface.
This is insane.
My pulse says otherwise.
Slowly, I set the cup down and the silence drags. My curiosity deforms into something uglier. I stand without realising I’m doing it. and the chair wheels scrape softly backwards across the floor. I’m across the room before I can even register the consequences.
Peter’s desk smells faintly of coffee and aftershave and paper that’s been handled too many times. Everything is arranged with impossible neatness. Pens parallel. Files squared perfectly. But the mousepad sits slightly crooked.
I stare at it. Then slide my fingers beneath it and cold metal brushes my skin immediately.
A horrible rush floods through me so fast my chest physically tightens around it.
The key slides free into my palm with a soft scrape.
My mouth goes dry. I’m already turning toward the black steel filing cabinets lining the back wall. The key shakes once between my fingers before I force my hand steady enough to push it into the lock.
The mechanism gives with a deep metallic clunk that echoes too loudly through the room.
My breath catches.
I wait for a moment, listening out for movement, but nothing comes. Just the faint humming of the monitors.
I pull the drawer open and see dozens of black folders with red tabs. Some are thick enough that they barely fit inside the rails and others are so thin they look unfinished.
My eyes move automatically across names and case numbers until one catches immediately.
ATTOR.
The folder is enormous.
My stomach twists before I even touch it.
The sheer weight of it nearly drags it from my hands as I pull it free. The overhead monitor light washes the pages pale blue as I open it.
The first pages are procedural: transfer summaries, interrogation reports, psychological assessments. Most of them heavily redacted. Things I know or things I could guess.
I turn a page and a photograph slips loose. It lands face-up against the desk.
For a second my brain refuses to process what I’m seeing. White tiles. Medical equipment. A stainless-steel operating table. And blood, so much blood, but not sprayed wildly. Positioned.
My throat tightens.
The body sits upright in a chair at the centre of the room. Male. Late fifties maybe. The skin around his chest cavity has been opened with surgical precision, peeled back neatly enough to expose the ribcage beneath.
I catch the ID badge clipped beside him.
DR ELLIOT VALE.
Something hot rises sharply into my throat.
My fingers shake when I take it.
Library shelves, tall oak bookcases disappearing into darkness.
The victim lies across a reading desk beneath a pool of warm yellow lamplight; lips tightly sealed with horrible blue thread mangling the skin.
Surrounding him, there are thousands of pages.
Hundreds of manuscripts torn across the floor and painted with blood.
My stomach lurches violently when I realise what I’m looking at. There’s a hole where the heart should be. And around it—God—dark bruising between the ribs. The skin torn wider. Used.
My hand flies to my mouth too late.
The photograph trembles violently between my fingers. I catch black writing scribbled across the back.
Professor Adrian Wells.
Historian. A specialist in medieval religious history.
The words blur together beneath the sudden roaring in my ears.
My fingers drag out the next image automatically now.
Sharp orange burns through the picture. It’s bright beneath the camera flash next to a body.
The victim hangs against a stone wall, wrists nailed high above his head.
Everything else in the room is destruction.
Flesh. Blood. Torn skin dragged across ancient stone.
Symbols have been carved into the walls around him.
MERCY.
MERCY.
MERCY.
But I’m fixated on the robe. It is spotless. The only thing untouched by rage.
I check the notes unwillingly.
Father Lucien Marek.
Clergy.
I feel sick. I flip another page too quickly.
And freeze.
THERAPIST.
The word sits cleanly at the top of the report.
My body goes completely still. There’s no photograph attached yet, no crime scene. Just a missing person’s report paperclipped loosely to the file.
Dr Dahlia Reynes.
Clinical psychotherapist.
Last seen three days ago.
A cold wave moves slowly down my spine.
His victims were not random. They were doctors, historians, clergy. Therapists.
My breathing turns shallow. And suddenly I understand something so awful my stomach physically clenches around it.
He has been hunting people like me.
The room feels smaller now.
Hotter.
My eyes flick instinctively toward the blackened glass beyond the viewing room. Even knowing he cannot see me through it, something inside me still recoils like he somehow can.
A noise sounds behind me.
My heart nearly stops.
I jerk upright so fast the photographs slide half off the desk.
Footsteps. Coming closer.
My hands move desperately now, shoving photographs back into place, pulse hammering so violently I can barely breathe around it.
The folder slams shut.
The key—fuck—where is—
My fingers close around the cold metal just as the handle outside shifts slightly. I push the cabinet shut fast, other hand already sliding the key under the mat.
I stop breathing entirely. The footsteps pause outside the door.
My hand moves automatically, reaching for the coffee machine before my thoughts can catch up with what I’m doing.
My pulse crashes so violently against my ribs it feels visible beneath my blouse. I can hear it in my ears, thick and heavy and wrong. Every instinct in my body screams at me to turn around, to check the desk again, to make sure nothing is crooked or out of place or betraying me.
The coffee machine hums loudly beneath my shaking hands as I grab the nearest paper cup and shove it beneath the nozzle. The sound of pouring coffee fills the room too slowly. Far too slowly. My fingers tighten around the edge of the counter until they ache.
Don’t turn around.
Don’t look guilty.
Behind me, footsteps cross the room with the same measured rhythm they always do. Calm. Unhurried.
My pulse hammers harder with every step.
Then—
“Jesus Christ,” Mike mutters. “You look like I caught you hiding a body.”
I flinch violently enough that coffee sloshes over the rim of the cup and burns across my knuckles. “Fuck.”
Mike snorts softly behind me.
“Relax, Doctor.” I hear the rustle of a chair scraping back out. “It’s just caffeine. Not a drug test.”
I force out something that almost sounds like a laugh and finally turn around, clutching the cup too tightly between my hands.
“You startled me.”
He drops back into his chair with a tired groan, dragging one hand down his face before reaching automatically for the monitor controls again.
“Thought Sean drank all the coffee already,” he scowls.
“Apparently not.”
My voice sounds almost normal.
Mike doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong. He settles back into place beside the monitors, one boot hooking around the chair leg while he tears open another packet of crisps like the last few minutes never happened at all.
But my heart still hasn’t slowed.
It keeps pounding violently against my ribs, heavy enough that I’m terrified he’ll hear it if the room goes quiet long enough.