Chapter 9 - "Through Her Eyes"

A sister’s documents lead to a corpse and a truth Mason can't ignore—these deaths aren't all his

He hadn't always been a killer.

That was the mistake most people made, even the smart ones. They thought killers snap. That they're made by rage or trauma or something sharp enough to split the psyche down the middle.

But that's not how it worked.

He started as a collector.

He remembered the first one. Not the first victim, no, that was later, but the first moment. He'd been fifteen. His father dropped the glass clock he'd kept on the mantle for decades. Time stopped at 7:46 p.m.

They didn't speak after that. Not once.

It was stupid, the fight. A missed appointment. A late dinner. But it had fractured something in both of them. And when his father died five years later, alone and surrounded by silence, that moment-7:46-was the only thing that remained.

He'd carved it into the back of the clock.

Then the collection began.

Tick.

Tock.

He watched Eloise now, silently, as she stared at the newest carving. The 3:41 victim. He had no need to look at the body anymore. He'd already committed the shape of the wound to memory.

"You're getting better," he said.

She didn't look up. "I always was."

He smiled faintly.

But something inside him itched. Not jealousy. Something colder. Possessiveness, maybe. She had taken his gift and made it her own. Second hands, extra lines, delicate curves. Her clocks whispered where his shouted.

She was becoming too good.

Tick.

Tock.

Mason stood over the sixth victim. Male, early forties. Pale, expression vacant but peaceful. Upright again, like Amelia, but this time at a desk. A voicemail left open on his phone, never played.

Carving: 3:41

The clock on the desk said 5:12, but Mason had learned by now these weren't deaths. They were timestamps.

She turned to Vega. "Get his records. Family. We need voicemails, too. Find out what happened at 3:41."

Vega raised a brow. "You think we can still trace that far back?"

"Someone could," Mason said, flipping through Sarah's folder. A torn hospital intake form caught her eye. Eloise's name. Date of admittance : August 14, 2003.

The day she stopped talking.

Below that, scribbled in a corner, a sentence in quotes:

"Time doesn't heal. It counts."

Mason whispered it aloud, her fingers tightening.

"That's not her handwriting."

Tick.

Tock.

She had been clumsy with the blade the first time. But not scared. Never scared.

He watched her carve 4:56 into the arm of a man who hadn't even known she was there.

It was her moment-the one she claimed. The time she woke in that tub all those years ago, soaked and shaking, heartbeat hammering against nothing. It wasn't the time of trauma. It was the moment of survival.

That was when he knew she wasn't just a copycat.

She was something worse.

A mirror.

She didn't kill because of him. She killed for the same reason as he did.

They didn't preserve time for the dead. They preserved it for themselves.

Tick.

Tock.

The handwriting in the corner-it matched one of the other files. Not Eloise's, but another earlier case. One is not connected. One marked as suicide.

Mason pulled it out and laid it beside the others.

The style of carving. The timestamp. The lack of trauma.

Her hands shook.

"There was someone before Eloise," she said aloud. "Someone who taught him."

Tick.

Tock.

He felt it again. That ticking beneath the surface. A time he had never shared. Not with Eloise. Not with anyone.

6:33 a.m. The moment his clock had started. Not from grief. Not from guilt. From something quieter, older. A breath that ended too soon.

A woman.

A stairwell.

A voice calling his name, then silence.

He carved that time only once, into the floorboard beneath his childhood bed.

It was still there.

Untouched.

Waiting.

Tick.

Tock.