Chapter 10 - "Methods of Dying"

Each victim dies differently—but those with a second hand share one wound too many.

The case file was brittle with age. No digital copy existed-not officially. It had been buried under misfiled suicide reports and decades-old psychiatric holds.

Mason sat at her desk, the blinds drawn shut, her fingers flipping carefully through each faded page. The victim's name had barely even been recorded.

Karen B. - Age: 29 - Found deceased in stairwell of a residential building. No witnesses. No next of kin.

She'd seen a hundred files like it. What made this one stand out was the handwriting.

Same angular strokes. Same pressure. The same small, curved underline on the "t" in time doesn't heal; it counts.

And in the original ME's report, scribbled in the corner.

"Marking on inner thigh-symbol unclear. Possibly a timepiece?"

There had been no photo of it. No sketch. No follow-up.

Mason leaned back in her chair, heart kicking up slightly. The date stood out, August 1993. Ten years before Eloise.

She turned to Vega.

"Dig into any suspicious deaths or 'psych episodes' tied to stairwell falls in that area. Look for clock references. Especially between '91 and '95."

Vega just nodded.

Tick.

The morgue was quiet. Clinical. Cold, even for the dead.

Mason stood next to the Medical Examiner, Dr. Latham, as he flipped on the overhead monitor. Amelia's file glowed blue in the darkened room. Next to it, Victim Six, the one with 3:41 carved on his wrist.

"You asked me to compare the cause of death across victims," Latham said, voice even. "Here's what I found."

He clicked the remote once. Images flicked by.

"No two deaths are the same. Morgan and Joice-slight overdose, trace barbiturates. Paulon-gunshot, but no powder residue. Amelia-cardiac arrest, no blockage. All unusual, but nothing exact."

Mason frowned. "So, no repeat method?"

"Not exactly," he said. " Except..."

He clicked the remote again. A new image came up. Wrist. Carving. Secondhand.

"This is where it gets interesting. The victims with the second hand carved in? Their trauma sites align. Not method, but placement."

He gestured to the body.

"This one, ruptured artery in the upper left thigh. Amelia had a faint hematoma on the same side. And Joice? Crushed vertebrae, but guess which side she landed on?"

Mason stared at the screen.

"Left."

He nodded. "All of them. Every second-hand victim had trauma centered on the left side of the body."

Her mind spun.

"Intentional?" she asked.

"If it's not a coincidence, then it's a pattern."

She stepped back, something crawling beneath her skin. The pictures of the clocks Eloise drew always had a second hand, and the image of Eloise in the hospital came to mind, her left wrist bandaged. That was her mark. But now the wounds said something else-something hers.

"Are we looking at two killers?" she asked.

Latham hesitated. "I don't think we ever weren't."

Tick.

Tock.

She stood in front of the mirror, a scalpel in one hand, a piece of fruit in the other. She carved slowly, patiently, letting the juice run in rivulets down her wrist.

Not blood. Not yet.

She wasn't practicing anymore.

She was choosing.

Her own list was growing now-people she remembered, people who made her who she was before he found her. Those who wounded her abandoned her. Those who made her believe she was broken.

He didn't need to know about those.

Not yet.

She traced a line in the condensation on the glass. Drew a tiny clock.

7:06

She smiled.

Tick.

She didn't wait for the tock.