My head was throbbing, as if someone had taken a hammer and a nail right to the left side of my scalp. I went to check and see if there was any blood, but to my surprise, I couldn’t lift my hand. I couldn’t move my feet, either. I was tied up with thick, rough rope. My arms were bent back behind the wooden chair, the rope cutting in tight around my wrists.

It took me a few more seconds to piece everything together: the moment that led up to the blackout, the realization, and the question that followed.

“Susan,” I said, my voice shaky. I looked around. Thankfully, she hadn’t blindfolded me. I was still in her living room, the lights all off except for a floor lamp next to the old couch. The rain was hammering against the window, harder than it had been before. A bright white light filled the room. A loud clap of thunder followed seconds later.

“Susan,” I said again, my voice stronger. Another bright, hot flash. Another booming clap. “Susan, where are you?”

I craned my head left and right. My back was to the hallway that led to the rest of the apartment. I felt vulnerable. The door was probably fifteen feet in front of me. I could shake the chair, try to tumble over, and maybe I’d be able to get loose like that. It would leave me even more open to an attack, though, if that was what Susan was planning. I had absolutely zero idea of where her mental state was currently at. She had killed her sister and brother-in-law, she was unstable and dangerous, and I was currently tied up like a fucking pig in her living room ready to get roasted.

“Susan.” I could yell for help, but I didn’t think that would do me much good. Her window was closed, and the neighbors wouldn’t hear anything over the rain and wind.

“Sorry,” I heard behind me. “I was getting things ready.” Her footsteps sounded from down the hallway, moving toward me.

“What? What are you doing, Susan?”

“There’s no other way out for me, Detective Holden.” She sighed, still behind me. “Not unless you die tonight. Then I can start fresh. No one will know. I can leave everything behind me and try to move past things.”

“Killing me isn’t going to solve any of your problems, Susan. People know I’m here. They know you would have done it. My assistant knows your exact address.”

“That’s what I was getting ready.” I felt a cold, thin blade press against the nape of my neck. Immediately, every hair on my body stood straight up. A primal chill crawled down my neck, constricting my spine as it traveled through my body. “It’s a sad story,” she continued, the blade pressing harder. “A grief-stricken girl is being interviewed by a big, handsome detective, when suddenly someone breaks into the apartment. A stalker. A man the girl’s already complained to the police about. The big, handsome detective, he jumps up and goes to save the day. Instead, he gets stabbed. The girl is left behind, a crying mess, traumatized as the dead detective lies on the floor. So much loss. A GoFundMe page raises enough for the girl to never have to work again. She moves out of the country to avoid the stalker, never to be heard from again.”

Fuck.

That was when cold dread started settling into my chest. She had a plan. She knew this was coming, and she was ready for it. I was at a massive disadvantage. I took a few deep breaths, trying to center myself before panic overtook me. I had to stay sharp if I was going to make it out of this.

And how badly I wanted to get out of this. My mind immediately went to Enzo. The smiling Italian Prince Charming straight out of my dreams. The man who fixed my shattered heart. I had a profound feeling that our story wasn’t over, and yet, there I was, sitting with a psychotic woman holding a sharpened blade against the back of my neck.

A literal ‘the end’ to our story.

“People will figure it out,” I said. “People will know.”

“No one will know anything.” The blade disappeared from my neck. I could feel her moving around me until she was standing in front of me. She was holding a long, slightly curved hunting knife in her left hand. Her face was bloody and bruised, a fresh gash on her forehead bleeding down her brow in a bright red trail. That’s what she must have meant by getting ready.

“Trust me,” she said, “I’ve made four reports of my stalker in the past month. The cops are probably surprised I’m even still alive with the reports I’ve given. I’ll just stage a break-in after I kill you to really get all the details right.” She smiled, her teeth pink with blood. “And they’ll see that the crazy man slammed my head against the wall, leaving me unconscious while the entire thing happened. I couldn’t call for help while you bled to death.” Blood dripped off her chin. “I could tell you were onto things. I had to get ahead of you somehow.”

I took another breath. Another man entered the forefront of my thoughts just then. Jose. My first love. The man who’d taught me so much about the world. He was in this position at one point, staring down at the grim reaper as he sharpened his scythe. I felt a deep sense of helplessness take root inside me. The same feeling my poor Jose must have felt when the Unicorn took his life, extinguishing such a bright light.

Something else filled me just then. Fight. I wasn’t going to die before I found out who the Unicorn was, that was for sure. For Jose. And I wasn’t going to die without seeing Enzo again.

No. I refused.

I wasn’t going to die.

“Why, Susan? Why did you do it?” I had to get her talking. The most important factor ensuring my survival was time. The more time I got, the higher the chances were that I’d walk out of this alive.

“I thought you had it all figured out, Detective.” Her pupils were blown, her hair a mess. I noticed there was a tremor in her hands. She stuffed them into the front pocket of the dirty gray sweater she was wearing, the blade disappearing inside.

“You and Oscar were together and you were jealous of your sister, so you killed them both?”

“Jealousy. What an emotion, huh?” She was shaking her head, her eyes pinning me down. All the while, my hands were fumbling at the rope, my fingers trying to find some kind of purchase. “Yes. I was jealous. But I was also furious, and I was broken and sad and I was in love. It was always supposed to be me and Oscar. From when we were kids, he was supposed to be mine. We were the ones who went off to play together for hours. We were the ones who our parents were sure would have the perfect life together. He was supposed to be mine.”

So it was deeper than a recent affair. Susan had feelings for Oscar dating back years. Another lightning strike filled the room with stark white light, casting ominous shadows on the dirty white walls for a few brief seconds.

Something wasn’t making sense, though. I figured another question was exactly what I needed to buy some time, and she seemed to be in the answering kind of mood. My eyes didn’t break contact with hers. I didn’t want her to think she was intimidating me. That would only give her more power than she already had over me.

“Wait, but Luanne was cheating on Oscar. Why would she be so possessive over him?”

She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. “Oh, you didn’t figure that part out, huh?”

My fingers froze their work when Susan’s eyes dropped down, then quickly came back up to mine. “What was I missing?”

“They were in an open relationship. Both of them slept around. They just got off on keeping things secret, pretending like it was something they were doing behind the other’s back. Luanne told me one day after she downed a bottle of wine. She also told me that the one woman in the world said was off-limits to Oscar was me. Me. The woman who he fell in love with first. I was floored. By then, I’d already been sleeping with Oscar for a year, so it seemed like he wasn’t much for her rules. She didn’t know, though. No. She didn’t find out until that day at her house, when we got into a fight that left me with a bloody nose.”

That made much more sense. She started pacing in front of me, making a straight horizontal line on the crusty beige carpet. “How did Luanne find out?”

“I told her.” She looked up. “I was sick of it. Sick of hiding, sick of wondering. Wondering when Oscar was going to leave her.”

“But you both seemed so close.”

“I was close with her. I loved her. Admired her. Even when I was secretly with Oscar, I never took out my anger on her. Not until the end.”

I could see something in her eyes. A weight. She had to have been haunted by what she did, even if she convinced herself somehow that she was in the right. Maybe I could take advantage of that. It was risky. Emotions were volatile, but I had to try. “You miss them, don’t you. You regret what you did. I can see it.”

“He told me he would leave her,” she said, the rage that seethed in her soul manifesting in her voice. “He told me—he told me I was the one. I just had to wait a little longer. ‘Keep waiting, dear. Just another month.’” She was shaking. “I couldn’t wait any longer! I couldn’t. I was at home and I was drinking and I was fed up, okay? I was done!” Her sadness and anger were palpable in the air. Her arms came out of the pocket, the knife practically glowing in the dim light. “When me and Luanne fought, she told me to stop. Told me that I was a dirty whore worth nothing but a fucking shitstain. She said exactly those words. I saw red. I couldn’t stop. I loved Oscar since we were kids. He loved me. Then Luanne grew breasts before me, and all of a sudden, she was the apple of his eye. She stole him from me.” Her eyes were wide. Her hand was shaking. My heart beat hard against my ribs. “I went over that night. Luanne left the key in that dumb frog, so I let myself in. I wanted to scare them. That was all. I wanted to scare Oscar, show him that I wasn’t toying around, that he needed to leave Luanne or bad things would happen.”

The rope around my wrists felt looser. My thumb and index finger were tugging at a frayed end. The bend in my wrist was beginning to pulse with pain, but I kept tugging at the rope, trying to keep the rest of my body as still as possible.

“But then I saw them in bed together, laying there, something I could never do with Oscar—just sleep next to him. Something came over me. I don’t remember seeing anything. My vision went black. I shot them. Both. The silencer on the gun kept things quiet. Bought it off some thug leaving the police station so it wouldn’t be trac—”

A loud ringtone interrupted her. My phone vibrated against my thigh, still inside my pants pocket. Her eyes darted down to my pocket. My hands were almost free. If only I had a couple more minutes.

“Let’s see who’s calling.” She walked over, the steel of the knife glinting menacingly. She reached into my pocket without walking around me. Thank God. I couldn’t let her notice the knot on my wrist was loosening.

“Hm,” she said, checking the phone. “Lorenzo. Oh, he’s a cutie.” She turned the phone toward me. Enzo’s smiling face was looking back at me. It was a picture I had snapped a couple of weeks ago. Enzo was sitting in my living room, sunlight beaming on his face, shirtless, a silver chain hanging on his neck. The phone started to ring again. She rejected the call. “I better get this party started before your little lover boy shows up.”

My hands were almost free. I could almost slip one out, but I couldn’t do it yet without making it obvious. Just a little longer.

“Susan, think about this.”

“I already have,” she said. For a second, I thought she was going to drop my phone to the floor, but instead, she started walking behind me. “I have to remember to wash this. Don’t want to leave any fingerprints on it.”

Shit. She was behind me. I heard her set the phone on a counter. My hands went stone-still. I held them together, tight, so that she wouldn’t see a gap between them.

“Well, well, well,” she said.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“When were you going to tell me your binds needed tightening, huh? I’ve gotta kill you first before I set the scene.”

I felt the bonds tighten again, the rope chewing into my already raw skin.

Shit.