Arsen awoke violently, gasping for air as a pair of delicate, familiar hands furiously shook him.

 

“He called me,” Maya declared, continuing to shake Arsen awake even after he began to pry open his eyes. “Honey, he fucking called me. Wake up, wake up!”

 

“Who?” Arsen asked, sitting up in bed and blinking rapidly to adjust to the light that Maya had just switched on next to his bed.

 

“The fucking killer,” Maya responded, sitting down next to him and placing her hand on his shoulder. “His fucking voice was in my ear, Arsen.”

 

Arsen’s brain still took several seconds to fully process what she said, but when it did, his entire body shook itself awake, all at once. “Shit. Shit, are you serious?”

 

Maya just nodded, a small smile spreading across her face, her eyes glinting like she’d just told him good news.

 

“Why are you…happy?” Arsen asked. He knew it wasn’t the most pertinent question at the moment, but somehow, it felt like the only one that really mattered.

 

“Because!” Maya practically shrieked, shaking Arsen by the shoulder. “He’s scared! He knows we’re after him, and he’s scared. That means we’re close. We scared him somehow, even if we don’t know how. He knows about us. That means we stumbled onto something that he didn’t want us to find. We have to keep looking, searching over everything we’ve got until we find what it is that he’s so scared of.”

 

“How do you know it was even him? It could have been one of those kids we intimidated, trying to freak you out for revenge.”

 

Maya shook her head. “No. It was him. I know it. I just know it. Trust me. The….way he talked to me. He hated me. It wasn’t just a little scuffle he was mad about. He was terrified and for good reason. I freaked him out somehow, and he needs me to back off. I fucking scared him!” She grinned and punched the air. Under different circumstances, Arsen would have been smiling right along with her, happy that she felt powerful. But instead, his stomach turned over, feeling sick like he’d eaten something poisonous. If it really was the murderer, how did he know how to contact her? How’d he get Maya’s number?

 

“Did you see a number on the caller ID?” Arsen asked, slowly shifting his legs around so he could sit with his feet on the floor rather than curled up under him on the bed.

 

Maya shook her head. “No, no, it’s blocked, of course. But I figured maybe your powerful connection could help you trace it, at least geographically. Maybe we could narrow down the specific area that he lives and eliminate various suspects that way.”

 

Arsen nodded. “Good idea. I’ll get on it right away. There’s a guy across town that’ll take care of it.” Arsen paused and cleared his throat, staring at Maya, who was practically giggling on his bed, a sight he’d love to see in virtually any other context. But right now, it sent chills down into his bones, making him physically shiver beside her. She doesn’t know how scared she should be, Arsen thought. She doesn’t know how bad this could be, even though she, more than anyone, should know how real the danger is.

 

“I’ll go with you,” Maya said, reaching down to take Arsen’s hand into her own, her pulse pounding against his wrist, so hard that he could feel it even through two layers of skin and sleeves. “I want to be there when you catch this fucker. For all of them.” For me, her eyes seemed to say, the darkness within hinting at the fear that she must have felt, despite her giddiness.

 

Arsen was tempted to argue with her. He really would have preferred that she stay put in the apartment where he knew she would be safe, but somehow, he knew that she wasn’t going to listen to him, at least not right now. “Well, let’s head back to the compound, then,” he said, getting to his feet and going over to his dresser to pull out a shirt to wear. “Take a change of clothes with you,” he instructed her, knowing that her bag full of supplies was still in the other bedroom. “We might be there a while.”

 

Maya rushed into the other room to do as she was told. “We’re going to get him,” she yelled over her shoulder, returning a minute later with an overstuffed purse under her arm. “Okay, let’s go.”

 

Arsen led them back across town to the Inked Hunters’ compound, where his contact Chris usually stayed. Arsen slipped into the side entrance of the compound rather than going through the front, wanting to avoid waking up any unnecessary people that could distract them from the matter at hand. He walked into Chris’s room without invitation or warning, allowing Maya to wait outside the door while he jostled his friend awake.

 

“Chris, come on, I’ve got a job for you to do,” Arsen said as he shook Chris by the shoulder.

 

“What the hell, man? Can’t it wait till morning?” Chris asked, stubbornly keeping his eyes closed even as Arsen switched on the light.

 

“No. No way. It’s got to be done as soon as possible. There’s no time to waste. It’s a location tracing job, Chris. You’re the only one that can help us.”

 

Chris sighed, slowly blinking his eyes open and grimacing at the brightness of the light beside his bed. “Jesus, okay. Fine. Just…give me a minute, alright?”

 

“Nope, come on,” Arsen said, pulling the blanket out from under Chris, despite the latter’s protests, practically dragging him out of the bed himself.

 

“Fine, fuck, fuck! Just let me get my gear together. Christ,” Chris said as he finally got to his feet, stumbling over to a desk filled with computers and advanced equipment that Arsen didn’t recognize or understand. Chris sighed as he pulled out a small laptop computer from inside of his desk, clicked it open, and typed in a complex password to unlock the screen. “Do you at least have the cell phone in question?”

 

“Yes,” Maya said, finally stepping into the room. “It’s mine. Here.” She pulled her phone out of her purse and placed it down on the desk next to Chris. “There you go.” If Arsen had any doubts that Maya meant business, they officially evaporated that moment. Back in the day, Maya used to never let him look at her phone, let alone hold it himself. He used to be suspicious that she had something going on the side, but he finally just realized that she was an incredibly private person. She guarded her space and personal property fiercely, probably as a result of the trauma she endured as a teenager. But she was willing to sacrifice it in an instant if it meant saving another girl.

 

“Alright, now leave me alone,” Chris said grumpily.

 

“What?” Maya asked incredulously.

 

Chris sighed again, deep and drawn-out, sounding about seventy years older than he actually was. “I can’t work well with people looking over my shoulder. Get out of the room and give me an hour, maybe two. I’ll get an approximate address for you, okay?”

 

Arsen could tell Maya was hesitant to leave Chris alone with such a crucial piece of evidence, but after he nodded at her, wordlessly telling her to trust his friend, she relented, backing out of the room and closing the door behind Arsen after he walked out.

 

They stood silently for several long moments, propped up against opposite walls, listening to Chris’s non-melodic humming from inside his bedroom. But there was something nagging at Arsen—actually, there were several things nagging at him, given the whole fiancé fiasco. But there was one thing in particular that he needed to say, even if it hurt to push the words out.

 

“I never talked to you about what you did earlier,” Arsen said, biting down on his bottom lip in nervousness.

 

“What did I do?” Maya asked, and judging from her tone, it was clear that she felt as anxious about this topic of conversation as Arsen did, which somehow helped him calm down a little bit.

 

“With the girl. Roxie. You…you did really well. I think I never really understood what it is you do before right then,” he said, referring to her victim advocacy work.

 

“Oh. Well, thank you,” Maya said a little stiffly, like she was uncomfortable or didn’t know what to say.

 

“Yeah,” Arsen said, thinking back to how he felt when he saw Maya grab the younger girl’s hands. “Yeah, it was really special, watching you do that.” He cleared his throat, suddenly overcome with emotion. “I was thinking, maybe Lizzie is looking down and sees this, you know? I guess I always thought that there was some part of her still hanging around, not moving on. And maybe she needed to hear what you said to Roxie today. Maybe then she could let go.”

 

Maya’s brow furrowed as she stared silently at Arsen for a long moment before finally speaking. “Maybe there’s another reason you think she’s still around. The diary.”

 

Arsen felt his body flush a little, heat rising up his chest and neck and face, but he stayed calm, even though it felt like he was being accused of a crime. Still, he let Maya continue.

 

“I know why you haven’t read it yet,” Maya explained slowly. “And it’s not because you want to respect your sister’s wishes. That’s not it.”

 

“What is it, then?” Arsen asked, but it came out more like a sigh than a question.

 

“It’s the last little bit of her on Earth,” Maya said softly. “You don’t want to read it because then…then there’s nothing left. There’s no mystery that she might say something else to you. That’ll be it. Forever. But as long as you don’t read it now, you can picture yourself reading it in the future, hearing from her one last time. It’s your lifeline, isn’t it? Waiting to hear from her again?”

 

“I never really thought of it that way, but you’re probably right,” Arsen said, picturing the way Lizzie used to hunch over her diary, hiding it from any prying eyes with her own body, guarding it with her life. It was as if it was her life, like it was her soul, being poured out onto paper. It was the one place where she still lingered on the planet, and somehow, Arsen figured that once he read it, she’d be gone for good. There was something selfish about that, trapping his sister here on Earth, where she’d been tortured and hurt and killed. But it was what Arsen needed more than anything, especially since he was alone now. He needed to have some part of Lizzie to hold onto so that he could go on being strong or at least pretending to himself that he was okay. He couldn’t lose both Maya and Lizzie. He simply wasn’t equipped to handle it, but it was going to happen no matter what.

 

“Your fiancé seems nice,” Arsen lied, changing the subject and tapping his fingers against the wall behind him to distract himself from the falsehood leaving his mouth.

 

Maya scoffed a little and shook her head. “He’s usually not like that, by the way. He’s very calm and nice back home. I’ve never seen him get so angry.”

 

“He’s just worried about you,” Arsen said with a shrug. “I would feel the same way.” In fact, if he was being really honest with himself, he did, actually, feel a knot of anxiety at the base of his stomach, getting wider and wider the more he thought about the phone call from the killer. It just didn’t make sense. Why would he target Maya and not Arsen?

 

“He’s being an ass,” Maya confessed sharply, rubbing her own arms a second later, clearly chilly as a result of the compound’s low temperatures. “I know what I’m doing. He doesn’t get to just show up and start controlling me, even if we are planning to get married.”

 

“So that’s still happening?” Arsen asked, his voice coming out low and hesitant. His stomach pulsed nervously, but he had to ask the question. He had to know if their lovemaking changed anything for Maya.

 

Maya didn’t answer right away, instead reaching up to tangle her fingers through her hair. Arsen knew she was scratching her own scalp to calm down. She always used to do that when she got stressed out from work. “I don’t know, Arsen. I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck.”

 

“What do you mean?” Arsen asked.

 

Maya blew out her breath and shook her head, raising her shoulders up in a shrug that communicated her mixed emotions. “On one hand, I’ve got a life back home to worry about. I’ve got a nice guy who treats me right, who doesn’t deserve what I’ve done to him.” She paused to shake her head at herself, a bitter smile spreading across her face as she considered her predicament. “And then…there’s here. There’s the city and all its dirty problems, all the women who need my help. And…there’s you.”

 

Arsen’s heart picked up in his chest, skipping several beats like it was trying to jump-rope rather than send blood throughout his body. “Yeah?” he whispered, his tongue practically aching with the effort of asking her to repeat what she’d just said.

 

Maya nodded, squeezing her arms closer to her body like she was giving herself a hug to calm down. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know, Arsen. I don’t fucking know. It’s not as simple as…caring about you, which I do. I really do. But I’ve got to choose a life that isn’t going to kill me. I’ve got to pick a life that’s not going to torture me and remind me of all the shit that happened over and over and over again. Please understand that.”

 

“I do,” Arsen murmured, but he couldn’t stop himself from pressing on. “But have you ever thought that maybe this is what you were supposed to do? That maybe what happened to you happened for a reason? So you could help these women like you did with Roxie earlier today?”

 

Maya shook her head. “There’s no easy explanation for it. A psychopath got his hands on me, just like he did to Lizzie and Roxie and all the other girls that got hurt. There’s no deeper meaning than that.”

 

Arsen opened his mouth, ready to argue with her some more, when the door to Chris’s bedroom opened and Chris popped out, his eyes wide and his mouth dropped open as he clutched Maya’s cell phone to his chest.

 

“Well, shit, that took a lot less than an hour to do,” Maya commented, but Chris just shook his head and focused his attention on Arsen.

 

“Arsen. This is serious. This is bad.”

 

“What, you can’t find the location?” Arsen asked, feeling his heart drop down to his stomach in disappointment.

 

Chris shook his head again, harder this time. “No, no, that’s not it. I did find it.”

 

“Great! Tell us where he is, and we’ll get that fucker!” Maya said as her hands balled up into fists, preparing herself for a fight.

 

“That’s just it. It came from here.”

 

“What do you mean?” Arsen asked, even though his blood seemed to freeze inside him, like his body already knew the answer to his question.

 

“The call originated within the Inked Hunters’ compound. The killer is someone we know.”