Chapter 4

Evelyn waited until she got home to replay the interview.

Not because she wanted distance from Adrian Cross, but because she didn’t trust the effect his office had on her while she was still inside it. Something about the room — the quiet, the warmth, the deliberate calm of everything — had unsettled her more thoroughly than open hostility would have.

By the time she reached her apartment, dusk had settled over the city in bruised shades of blue and gray. Rain still drifted lightly past the windows, softer now but stubborn, clinging to the evening like unfinished conversation.

She dropped her bag beside the couch and stood motionless in the middle of the apartment for several seconds before finally pulling the recorder from her coat pocket.

Her hands were colder than she realized.

The interview began playing through her laptop speakers while she crossed toward the kitchen.

At first she only half-listened.

Cabinet door.

Glass.

Water running.

Her own voice asking prepared questions she no longer remembered writing.

Then Adrian’s voice filled the apartment again, low and controlled beneath the rain tapping softly against the windows.

“You keep pressing your thumb against your wrist.”

Evelyn stopped moving.

The glass remained suspended halfway to the sink.

She listened more carefully this time.

Not to the words.

To the spaces between them.

The strange thing about Adrian Cross wasn’t that he observed people. Lots of men built careers on observation. Detectives. Therapists. Journalists. Predators.

It was the precision of his attention that disturbed her.

Nothing in the conversation sounded accidental.

Every pause felt chosen.

Every answer revealed exactly enough.

She carried the water back toward the couch and sat down beside the laptop, pulling one knee beneath her as the interview continued.

Outside, headlights moved slowly through wet streets twelve floors below.

Onscreen, the audio software tracked their voices in rising blue waveforms.

Her eyes drifted absently toward Adrian’s name typed across the recording file.

DR. ADRIAN CROSS — FULL INTERVIEW

The sound of paper shifting crackled softly through the speakers.

Then her own voice:

“You remember Lena Vale?”

A pause.

Almost invisible.

Then Adrian answered.

“Yes.”

Evelyn leaned closer.

There.

Something faint in the background beneath his response.

Like fabric brushing against skin.

She rewound ten seconds.

Played it again.

The office remained quiet except for rain and distant traffic.

Then she heard it.

A barely audible movement just before Adrian spoke.

Not paper.

Leather.

Evelyn frowned.

She replayed the section three more times before opening the archived article beside her.

The old Blackwater investigation photo loaded slowly on the screen.

Adrian stood near police barricades in the rain, coat darkened by water, one hand partially lifted toward reporters.

Black gloves.

She stared at the image.

Then at the waveform.

Then back at the image again.

A strange uneasiness crept slowly through her chest.

Not because gloves were unusual in October.

Because she remembered something from the video.

The cameraman shifting position.

Leather creaking softly near the microphone.

Evelyn sat very still.

Her phone buzzed beside her.

Mara.

“You alive?” Mara asked immediately.

“Unfortunately.”

“That bad?”

Evelyn rubbed tired fingers against her forehead. “I keep replaying the interview.”

“Healthy.”

“He knew things about me.”

“Psychiatrists usually do.”

“No.” She looked back toward the paused image of Adrian. “I mean personal things.”

Mara was quiet for a moment.

“What kind of personal things?”

Evelyn hesitated.

The answer sounded irrational out loud.

“Things that felt... familiar.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know.”

Rain tapped steadily against the windows again.

Mara sighed softly. “Eve, I looked deeper into Cross.”

Evelyn straightened immediately.

“And?”

“He consulted on Blackwater for less than three weeks before disappearing from the investigation completely.”

“Why?”

“No idea. Officially he requested removal.”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Evelyn opened another browser tab, searching through older case archives while Mara continued talking.

“I also found something strange.”

“What?”

“There’s almost no digital footprint connecting him to the case anymore. Like somebody scrubbed him out afterward.”

Evelyn’s stomach tightened.

“Scrubbed by who?”

“That’s the fun part. I can’t tell.”

She leaned back slowly into the couch cushions.

Outside, thunder rolled somewhere farther uptown.

Mara lowered her voice slightly. “You need to be careful.”

“With what?”

“With whatever this is becoming.”

Evelyn almost laughed at that.

Too late.

She had crossed into obsession sometime around sunrise.

“You think I’m overreacting,” she said.

“I think you haven’t slept in twenty-four hours and you’re chasing a man who studies unstable people for a living.”

“I’m not unstable.”

Mara was tactful enough not to answer immediately.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Evelyn muted the call briefly while another thought surfaced.

The gloves.

She opened the anonymous video again and replayed the final seconds frame by frame.

Rain distorted most of the image beyond recognition.

Police lights flashed weakly through static.

Then—

Movement.

The camera tilted slightly downward for half a second.

Just enough.

A black leather glove entered the bottom edge of the frame before disappearing again.

Evelyn’s pulse quickened.

The same dark leather from the courthouse photograph.

Maybe.

Or maybe she wanted connections badly enough that her mind had started manufacturing them.

She unmuted Mara again.

“There’s a glove.”

“What?”

“In the video.”

Mara groaned softly. “Eve.”

“I’m serious.”

“Lots of people own gloves.”

“These look exactly like his.”

“You saw one blurry frame from five years ago.”

Evelyn didn’t answer.

Because the truth was, it wasn’t really the glove bothering her anymore.

It was the possibility that Adrian had been closer to that night than anyone admitted.

Closer to Lena.

Closer to her.

Closer to whatever happened on Blackwater Bridge after memory disappeared.

By the time she ended the call, the apartment had grown dark around her except for laptop light and passing headlights reflecting off wet glass.

She looked at the time.

8:42 p.m.

Too late to do anything reasonable.

Which was probably why she grabbed her coat.

The rain had weakened into mist by the time Evelyn reached Blackwater Bridge.

Traffic hissed softly across wet pavement while river water churned black beneath the steel structure. The police barricades were long gone now, replaced by tourists during daylight hours and silence after dark.

But standing there beneath the bridge lights, Evelyn could still feel the shape of that night pressing faintly against the edges of her memory.

Cold wind pushed damp strands of hair across her face as she approached the railing.

For several seconds she simply stood there listening to the river below.

Trying to feel something.

Trying not to.

Then she saw it.

Caught near the base of the railing where rusted metal joined concrete, half-hidden by rainwater and shadow—

A black leather glove.

Evelyn’s breath caught.

She crouched slowly, staring at it.

The leather looked worn smooth at the fingertips.

Expensive.

Familiar.

A car engine started somewhere behind her.

Not passing traffic.

Close.

Idle and low beneath the rain.

Evelyn turned slowly toward the sound.

Headlights glowed through the mist at the far end of the bridge.

Waiting.