Chapter 16

The police arrived six minutes after the attack.

Evelyn knew because she counted.

Not intentionally at first. The numbers simply started appearing automatically in her head while she stood barefoot in the middle of her destroyed apartment watching Caleb Rusk bleed lightly onto her living room floor beneath flashing police lights.

One minute:

Adrian restraining him.

Three minutes:

neighbors opening hallway doors.

Six:

sirens below the building.

The precision unsettled her.

Maybe because Adrian had arrived even faster than that.

Two officers hauled Caleb upright while he continued twisting violently against their grip.

“You’re arresting the wrong person!” he shouted. “She knows what happened!”

Rain hammered hard against the apartment windows behind him.

One officer shoved him toward the hallway. “Save it for the station.”

Caleb’s eyes locked onto Evelyn again.

Wild.

Exhausted.

Certain.

“You forgot on purpose,” he said hoarsely.

The words landed harder now that adrenaline had started draining from her body.

Evelyn folded her arms tightly across herself to stop her hands from shaking.

The apartment suddenly looked unfamiliar.

Broken lamp.

Splintered coffee table.

Blood on hardwood floors.

Like violence had entered quietly and rearranged the shape of home.

An EMT approached her carefully from the kitchen.

“Miss Harper? We should check your wrist.”

Evelyn looked down.

Bruising had already begun darkening the skin where Caleb grabbed her.

She hadn’t noticed.

“I’m fine.”

“That’s usually not how shock works.”

The paramedic’s voice sounded kind enough that it almost made her cry from exhaustion alone.

Across the room, Adrian stood near the windows speaking quietly with another officer. Rain streaked silver behind him while red and blue lights moved across his face in shifting fragments.

Calm again.

Controlled again.

As though the violence from ten minutes earlier had never happened.

Evelyn hated that part of herself still noticed how steady he looked.

One of the detectives stepped toward her with a notebook.

“Can you walk me through what happened tonight?”

Evelyn nodded automatically.

Words came slowly at first.

The phone call with Mara.

The noises in the hallway.

The mask.

Caleb shouting.

She left Adrian out for almost thirty seconds before realizing the detective was waiting.

“And Dr. Cross?”

Evelyn hesitated.

“He stopped him.”

The detective scribbled something down.

“You called him?”

“No.”

“Then how did he know to come here?”

The question settled sharply into the room.

Across the apartment, Adrian looked up briefly.

Not defensive.

Just watching her carefully.

Evelyn swallowed.

“I don’t know.”

Which was true.

And becoming less believable every hour.

Nearly forty minutes later, the apartment had quieted slightly.

Most officers were gone now. The EMTs had finished wrapping Evelyn’s wrist. Rain still battered the city outside, though the storm had started drifting farther downtown.

Caleb sat handcuffed near the hallway entrance beside two uniformed officers while detectives finished paperwork nearby.

He looked smaller without the mask.

Younger too.

Fear and obsession had hollowed him out into something almost fragile.

Evelyn stood near the kitchen doorway holding untouched tea someone had handed her earlier.

She still couldn’t stop replaying the attack in her head.

Not Caleb.

Adrian.

The speed.

The precision.

The frightening absence of hesitation.

Like violence was something he already understood intimately.

The thought made her chest tighten.

Caleb suddenly looked toward her.

“You still don’t get it,” he said quietly.

One officer immediately snapped, “Enough.”

But Evelyn stepped closer anyway.

“Why did you do this?”

Caleb laughed softly under his breath.

Not amusement.

Disappointment.

“You think I sent the video.”

“You broke into my apartment.”

“That’s not an answer.”

His eyes looked bloodshot now, exhausted from too many sleepless nights and too much internet obsession.

“I didn’t send it,” he muttered.

Evelyn frowned.

“The anonymous video.”

“I didn’t send it.”

One detective glanced up from his notes. “Kid, this is not helping you.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

The certainty in Caleb’s voice unsettled her immediately.

Not because she trusted him.

Because she recognized obsession when she heard it now.

And obsessive people usually wanted credit.

“You posted my address online,” Evelyn said carefully.

“Yes.”

“You threatened me.”

“You deserved to be confronted.”

“And the video?”

Caleb shook his head slowly.

“No.”

Rain rattled sharply against the windows again.

Something cold moved quietly through Evelyn’s stomach.

If Caleb didn’t send the video—

then somebody else had.

Somebody calmer.

Smarter.

More deliberate.

Her gaze drifted instinctively across the apartment toward Adrian.

He stood near the broken coffee table now, one hand resting loosely in his coat pocket while speaking quietly with police. The blood stain on his cuff remained partially visible beneath rolled fabric.

Too old to be from tonight.

He noticed her looking.

For one brief second neither of them moved.

Then Caleb spoke again.

“He watches you constantly.”

Evelyn looked back sharply.

One of the officers cursed under his breath. “Jesus Christ.”

But Caleb kept staring directly at her.

“He always did.”

Adrian’s expression changed almost imperceptibly across the room.

Not fear.

Warning.

Evelyn felt it instantly.

“Who?” she asked quietly.

Caleb smiled then.

A strange, exhausted smile that looked frighteningly sincere.

“The doctor.”

Silence settled hard through the apartment.

One detective stepped forward immediately. “Okay, we’re done here.”

But Evelyn barely heard him.

Because Caleb was still looking directly at her when he said the next words.

Softly.

Almost reverently.

“He made me see you.”

The sentence hollowed something out inside her.

The officers hauled Caleb toward the hallway before she could ask another question.

But just before disappearing through the apartment door, he twisted slightly back toward her.

And smiling faintly beneath split lips, he repeated the phrase from the anonymous video.

“You really don’t remember.”