Curt was certain he'd cleaned up after himself.
"Whether you're doing this for Millie Sullivan or someone else, nobody's going to believe a murderer's word over mine."
"Slander us all you want. Bernice and I have nothing to hide."
"Millie's the same—can't even rest quiet in death. She should've been gone without a trace a long time ago."
I stood behind him, chest twisted tight with pain.
I'd been dead a long time, but the love and the hate had never dissolved.
Day after day, night after night, watching them build their happiness while the agony of being torn apart ground through me without end.
"She must've been something special. Dead and gone, and still someone's out here crying injustice for her."
Curt let out a cold laugh, sweeping his gaze around the room.
"Millie Sullivan, if your ghost is here, listen carefully."
"You threw acid on Bernice and disfigured her. I haven't even settled that score with you yet."
"Bernice is carrying my child now. You keep pulling this from beyond the grave, and I will dig you up and desecrate every bone you have left."
I drifted in front of him.
Those eyes that once brimmed with love now held nothing but blinding resentment.
Curt, do you really believe I'd haunt you even in death?
Ten o'clock. Another scream.
Blood spattered across the camera lens, and Curt jerked back hard.
The kidnapper wiped the lens with a blood-soaked glove,
leaned in close, and laughed.
"I'm not here to watch you put on a show."
"Professor Baxter, if you won't talk about yourself, let's talk about Bernice Barnes."
"How did she convince you to forge that autopsy report? With her body?"
The words landed, and Curt's breathing went heavy.
Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes turned razor-sharp.
"How do you know about that?"
A crack in the mask, just for an instant.
He caught himself almost immediately, smoothed his expression back to calm, and signaled Captain Carter to pause.
He walked straight out of the interrogation room and knocked on the Forensics Unit's door.
"I can stall him another hour at most. The kidnapper's patience is running out."
"Bernice is still in his hands. You need to trace that IP—now. As fast as you've ever done anything."
He paused, hiding the tremor in his hands that the urgency had drawn out.
"One more thing. The kidnapper's wearing a designer shirt. Track it down. There can't be more than a handful sold in this city."
I trailed behind him as he walked out of the office.
He stopped in the corridor and burned through three cigarettes, one after another.
Then he opened his phone, scrolled deep into a hidden folder in his gallery, and found my picture. He stared at it for a long time.
"Millie Sullivan, why won't you let me go?"
"Bernice just slipped up. You're dead already—why can't you just forgive her?"
"You always were petty..."
His head tipped back.
His body slid down the wall until he crumpled to the floor, all the strength drained out of him.
There was a folder in his gallery named after me.
Tens of thousands of photos, every one taken by his own hand.
The one glowing on the screen: me holding up my wedding ring, laughing.
Ten years, and he'd opened that folder more times than he could count.
But the ring itself—the one they'd pried from what was left of my flesh—he could never bring himself to look at again.
Curt couldn't let himself remember sitting down and writing those words on the autopsy report: *no significant investigative evidence found on the remains.*
He closed his eyes, then walked back into the interrogation room.
On the other side of the wall, the Forensics Unit was rapidly narrowing down the search, closing in on the kidnapper's location.
I followed close behind Curt, watching him put on his mask of grief, and ground my teeth.
I wanted to reach out and slap him across the face, ten times over.
My hand went right through him.
The clock read ten thirty.
After several rounds of back-and-forth, Curt was visibly agitated, pacing the room.
"What the hell do you want me to say?!"
"If it saves Bernice, I'll die. I'll do whatever you want!"
The kidnapper blinked, then burst out laughing.
"Professor Baxter, you know exactly what to say."
He mimed swirling a reagent bottle.
