Julia's body went rigid.
Of course she knew.
The reagent bottle—that was where every last sin began.
On the other side of the soundproof glass, someone who'd worked an acid case before couldn't hold back：
“Both sides share some blame here. Is it really necessary to keep hammering at Julia's role?”
“Seriously. She's probably just stalling. An hour and a half until the deadline and he kills the hostage!”
Inside the room, Julia's face had gone so pale it was almost translucent.
Captain Bennett frowned slightly and pressed her earpiece, relaying through the wire.
“Tech just traced the kidnapper's signal to……Professor Baxter's residence.”
“I've already sent a team to rescue Mr. Barnes. All you need to do is keep the kidnapper talking.”
Julia let out a hard, shaking breath of relief.
But the next instant her pupils shrank to pinpoints—because the kidnapper had just produced the real evidence, the kind that ends everything.
On camera, a bloodstained piece of shirt fabric appeared.
Striped. The stitching was clearly amateur, but neat.
“This belonged to Joel Sullivan. It was on him the night he died.”
“I've examined it. The killer's fingerprints and blood are still on it.”
The kidnapper coughed, a dry, exhausted sound, and took a sip of water before continuing.
“Professor Baxter. You hid this in your home. Did you really think I wouldn't find it?”
That was the first shirt Julia ever made for me by hand. An anniversary gift.
Ten years ago, I wore it to dinner and was murdered.
Julia said nothing. Slowly, she turned her face away.
The panic in her eyes was impossible to hide.
Her hands lay on the table, every finger trembling.
“Impossible.”
She murmured it, so faintly that only I, pressed against her back, could hear.
In the silence of the interrogation room her heartbeat hit like something detonating—beat after beat after beat, fast and savage, a sledgehammer cracking against her ribs.
A night from ten years ago flashed through Julia's mind. A rainstorm.
Sebastian, drenched in blood, coming to find her.
Lightning illuminating his features, half-dissolved by acid, like a helpless ghost.
“Professor Baxter, I killed someone……”
“Don't wait for him. Joel's not coming back……I didn't mean to, Professor……the pain in my face, it was too much.”
“Professor, I don't want to go to prison……please.”
Back then, she'd given in.
For the next half hour, Julia didn't move.
No matter how Captain Bennett urged her, she sat as though turned to stone, not saying a word.
I drifted overhead, watching her, my thoughts impossible to still.
The first time we met, I was wearing a striped shirt.
She was carrying a heavy anatomy textbook when she crashed into me. Before I could even speak,
Julia had already launched into a perfectly straight-faced explanation：“Blunt-force impact can cause contusions and subcutaneous bleeding. You should let me walk you to the infirmary.”
I only found out later that she'd engineered the whole thing—camped out in the library for a full week waiting for me, then tipped off a friend in the medical school. Make sure the injury sounds serious. Insist he needs someone with him for the follow-up.
Julia was never a romantic person.
Spending every day with the dead had made her quiet, hard to get close to. People called her the dissection fanatic.
But only I knew
that after anatomy lab we'd sneak off to the alley behind campus for offal hotpot.
She couldn't handle spice, but she'd order the hellfire broth without flinching.
“When you love someone, you want to do the same things they do.”
She could replicate my walk perfectly, every small habit. She knew the length and width of every bone in my body—had even commissioned a little plastic skeleton figure built to my exact proportions and clipped it to her backpack, fiddling with it every day.
The day I proposed, I was out in Westmere State for an academic conference.
And somewhere in that same region, a killer who only targeted young men was still on the loose.
