[10: WHEN THE BIRDS LIGHT UP THE SKY]

SEONG-JAE DID NOT TRUST HIS own perception of reality right now.

Not when sometimes, when he looked into that room, he saw Adam Ivers.

And sometimes he saw long, silken blonde hair, one green eye, one blue, looking at him with a knowing smile that seemed to say I know.

I know what you want.

What you think, what you feel.

I know you inside…and I can turn you inside out.

His head was killing him. But he forced himself to follow Malcolm into the interrogation room, and took up point near the door—the silent rook standing guard as always, for now letting Malcolm do the talking while Seong-Jae merely added the weight of his presence.

He did not think he could handle much else, right now.

Malcolm dropped into the chair across from Adam. Adam only regarded him with a bland smile, while Malcolm said, “It’s pretty bad date etiquette to make a girl shit in a bucket, then push her off a bridge.”

Adam’s eyes glinted. “It would be, yes. Is that what happened to Anne?”

“You tell me,” Malcolm said. “We’re going to send out forensics to your house, Adam. They’re going to find Anne’s blood, biological matter, and fingerprints. And then you’re going to jail for murder.”

“Except without actual witness testimony, you can’t say that I pushed anyone, Malcolm.” Adam was almost smug, so very convinced of his position. “We gave Anne a place to live. We can’t help that she chose to live in squalor. Our only crime was not cleaning the place immediately after she left.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Malcolm said. “Hard to clean up after yourself when you’re being held captive. Really makes me wonder what the last few months of her life were like. Why the burns? What did they do?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Adam said. “Was she burning herself?”

“I know why,” Seong-Jae said—and took a certain perverse pleasure in the touch of very real fear in Adam’s shielded gaze as it darted to him. “You are Adam, looking for your Eve. The first mother. Like the mother who left you, and needs to be punished for that.” He lofted his brows. “After all, what unworthy woman would ever leave the son of God?”

Adam hesitated, then shrugged glibly. “I do hear that Jesus was actually married, instead of the common idea that he was celibate.”

“Really?” Malcolm asked sardonically. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“Because he has nothing else,” Seong-Jae said. He could not seem to stop himself any more than he could seem to tear his gaze away from Adam; something vicious was building inside him, something that knew far too well about punishment. “He knows. He knows that we see him for what he is. That he burned and tormented and mutilated that girl because he wants to burn and torment and mutilate the mother who left him. If he hurts her enough, he will be able to forgive her. Purify her. And then…what? A new earth with your adherents, as the fresh faces of Adam and Eve?”

Adam laughed politely. “I think you have the wrong idea about New Revival—”

“No,” Seong-Jae hissed. “I have the right idea about you. I know about your mother, Adam.”

Both Adam’s and Malcolm’s widened eyes flew to him. Malcolm regarded him strangely—while Adam stared at him with the first honest emotion he had shown thus far.

A deep and satisfying terror, wet beads forming on his brow.

Seong-Jae had been bluffing…but he had bluffed right.

And he held that stark, frightened gaze, giving back the only thing he was really good at.

Pain.

“She wanted to escape your father, did she not?” he asked softly. “She wanted to get out. He frightened her. But he also controlled her, and there was only one way out. One night, all alone, she just…jumped. And they found her in the water later, leaving you all alone with him. She left you behind.”

“Shut up,” Adam whispered.

Seong-Jae did not shut up. “Is that why you pushed her? Did you hope, if she survived, she would be your Eve? That it would prove her worthy?”

“Shut up!” Adam cried.

“Why?” Seong-Jae demanded. “Tell me…is Anne your first? Or were there other Eves? Did they all fail you just like your mother di—”

“No,” Adam shouted in great gasps, his eyes wet, his face red and blotchy. “I didn’t push her! I didn’t push her.”

Seong-Jae only stared at him coldly. Latent violence shivered inside him, and he could not stay here. He shot Malcolm one more flashing look, then yanked the door of the interrogation room open and stalked out into the hall.

He paced back and forth, scrubbing his fingers through his hair, trying to breathe. Malcolm followed moments later, catching up to him—and pulling him into his arms, enveloping him from behind and stilling Seong-Jae in his tracks.

“You’re not okay,” Malcolm murmured against the back of his shoulder.

Seong-Jae hung from Malcolm’s grip, staring straight ahead at nothing. “Just keep him away from me,” he rasped.

“Seong-Jae…?”

“I am sorry.” He breathed in shakily. “He reminds me too much of someone. I think I may need you to complete the interrogation alone.”

“I can’t. I can’t do it without you. The way we work together…” Malcolm shook his head against Seong-Jae’s shoulder. “How did you know that about his mother?”

“Guesswork and profiling,” Seong-Jae said faintly. “Killers often repeat formative incidents that traumatized them, attempting to engineer a better outcome.”

“It was brilliant. Terrifying and disturbing, but brilliant.” Malcolm’s arms tightened around him, sheltering him in strength and in warmth. “Was this what Ms. Feng said about using your anger?”

“Likely.”

“So use it,” Malcolm urged softly. “He doesn’t know what to do with anger when he can’t control the situation. Once he has time to recover it’ll be back to the misdirection. He’s still smug, hoping he can outmaneuver us. It’s a game to him where he knows he’s guilty, we know he’s guilty, but he gets to smile and laugh because we can’t really prove it. So whatever you’re so angry at…use it. Use it on him.”

“I…” Seong-Jae closed his eyes, leaning back into Malcolm’s bulk. “I may cross a line, Malcolm.”

“You won’t. Because you have discipline. You have self-control.” Malcolm smoothed one broad palm over Seong-Jae’s stomach, as if he could hold him inside himself. “And you have me. I’ll be there to keep things on the up and up. And if it upsets you too much…” Malcolm nuzzled into Seong-Jae’s back. “We’ll stop. I’ll take over.”

Ah. Seong-Jae supposed that made sense, but the idea of going back in there…

But “As you say,” was all he said.

“So what’s the game plan?”

“As you said,” Seong-Jae answered. “Use his own tactics against him…and let him go. Both of them.”

“Let him go? Why?”

“Because he will not expect it. Then he will wonder why, and his curiosity will be his downfall. He will need to insert himself into the investigation, and that will get him caught.”

Malcolm rumbled a thoughtful sound. “So we’re going to tail him?”

“No,” Seong-Jae said. “We will not have to. He will come to us.”

Because he could not go back in there. He could not look Adam Ivers in the face and see Sila again and again, or Seong-Jae would crack.

No matter Malcolm’s faith in him…

Seong-Jae did not have such faith in himself.

^

NONETHELESS, HE DID NOT QUITE expect to be so right, so soon.

The Ivers had been smug over being released, even if that smugness itself was more of a pantomime, that constant sense of something off that made each of their emotive responses so uncomfortable to witness. It had almost been galling to let them go, but they were right; there was no evidence to present a compelling case on anything other than speculation, and holding them for the maximum forty-eight allowed was pointless.

And so Seong-Jae and Malcolm had returned upstairs to wait, sharing Malcolm’s desk in silence. Malcolm continued to give him strange sidelong looks, but seemed content to hold his peace while they searched older records.

Records that showed Seong-Jae had been absolutely right about Adam’s mother, almost down to the letter.

Katerina Ivers.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Malcolm murmured. “It’s uncanny.”

At great cost to myself, Seong-Jae thought, but held his silence when his headache was only growing worse.

Within hours, however, Sade leaned out of their office, frowning at Seong-Jae and Malcolm both before beckoning with a flailing arm.

“Hey. I got something I think you want.”

Seong-Jae and Malcolm glanced at each other, then rose and crowded into the rainbow-lit clutter of Sade’s lair, server lights blinking everywhere. Sade perched on their chair with their legs drawn up, frowning at what looked like an email.

“So,” they said, swinging their chair from side to side. “Guess who gets all the anonymous tip line emails?”

Malcolm quirked a brow. “I take it you got something good?”

“I did.” Sade flung their arm out toward a lager flatscreen monitor mounted on the far wall. “If you would direct your attention to the big screen, gents and gents.”

The screen flickered, before the smaller monitor mirrored and the email flared to larger than life text, easily legible.

 

Subject: TO THE MR DETECTIVES ABOUT ANNE

Sender: NICOLE DERWIN <[email protected]>

 

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE LOOKING FOR

 

I KNOW WHO KILLED ANNE

 

I CAN SHOW YOU TONIGHT ON THE HANOVER BRIDGE

 

PLZ COME 3 IN THE MORNING

 

DO NOT TELL ADAM

 

HE WILL HURT ME

 

COME ALONE

 

N.D.

 

Malcolm whistled. “That looks more like a ransom note than a tip. Who is she?”

Sade clicked over to a website—and rows of photos, nearly interchangeable girls with white daisies in their hair. “I checked the New Life website. One of the members of the youth group. Seems like some kind of weird…”

“Cult, yeah,” Malcolm said.

“The email is not from the girl,” Seong-Jae said, rubbing his fingers to his temples.

“Ruin my big announcement,” Sade said, pouting, then clicked back to the email. “So take a look at the message headers.”

A few more clicks, and more information expanded at the top of the email. Most of it looked like gibberish, but one thing jumped out in bright blue text:

A field reading [email protected].

Malcolm frowned and stroked his beard. “That’s…not who the email address says.”

“No, it’s not.” Sade bounced in their seat. “So here’s the thing, when you use a desktop email client…you have to set up both the inbound server credentials for receiving mail, and the outbound server credentials for sending mail. It has to authenticate for each message transaction, either way it goes. Buuuuut…” They smiled brightly. “If you have multiple accounts on the same sever, it’s possible that if you add a new account to your email client, it can still use the same outbound credentials to send with your original email address in the authentication fields.” Their smile widened to a devilish grin. “He apparently didn’t know that when he borrowed Nicole’s email address to send this. Unless they’re on a shared computer, which I doubt.”

“That was fast,” Malcolm muttered.

“The interrogation struck at his ego,” Seong-Jae pointed out. “He risks collapse as a narcissist if he does not re-establish his superiority once again.”

“So he’s pretending to be one of the girls in the youth group to tip us off,” Malcolm said. “She fits the profile. Looks a lot like Anne. What’s the purpose?”

“A setup.” Seong-Jae shook his head. “He did not even try. The tone is wrong. The language inflections of it. It is too deliberated, too aggressive.”

“Great. Now we’ve got a murderer with no evidence we can use against him, and he’s mad,” Malcolm growled.

“He,” Seong-Jae said, “is giving us the opportunity we need. This is bait. He wants us to pick up on this. Go to the bridge tonight. Be the heroes. Save the girl, when in truth he intends to either mislead or dispose of us.”

“Fun. But there won’t be a girl, will there?”

“No.” Seong-Jae shook his head. “Only him, and whatever games he wishes to play with us.”

“Then I guess,” Malcolm said, “tonight we’re going to ‘save the girl.’”

^

THREE IN THE MORNING.

That was when the onset of coming winter began to become truly apparent, when Seong-Jae could taste frost and the promise of snow on his breath. He stood and looked out over the rippled black water of the river, far below the expanse of the bridge, dark through the plumes of smoke spilling past his lips. At his side, Malcolm made a soft, shivering sound, drawing his coat tighter around himself, but said nothing.

He had been unusually silent, since the afternoon—particularly after Seong-Jae had declined to return to Malcolm’s apartment to wait until the appointed hour. Malcolm had not seemed overly offended.

He had just seemed worried, but at least he had agreed to sleep in Seong-Jae’s absence.

Seong-Jae had tried to sleep as well, but had failed—and he did not think he would be able to rest easy again until he had unspooled the tangle that Sila had created. First, however…Adam Ivers.

And eradicating any reminders that could put Seong-Jae so far out of himself that he did not even recognize who he was.

Tonight he had needed to be alone with that, if only so Malcolm would not have to carry the burden of him if Seong-Jae snapped.

Malcolm checked his watch and made a half-amused, half-disgusted sound. “I think we’ve been stood up.”

“Wait,” Seong-Jae said softly.

“While we wait…”

Seong-Jae glanced over—to find Malcolm offering one hand, those thick knuckles bristling with a dark coating of fur. After an uncertain moment, Seong-Jae slipped one chilled hand into Malcolm’s, and let them warm each other as he looked out over the water again.

And told himself he did not feel particularly better, at that small and simple touch.

Even if that hollow feeling inside him no longer felt quite so empty.

“You know,” Malcolm said, “if this were anything other than a stakeout, it would almost be romantic. Like our first date.”

Seong-Jae smiled faintly. “We can improvi—”

His voice punched out of him as a heavy weight slammed into his back, shoving him hard; he doubled over, slamming against the railing of the bridge, the breath knocked from his lungs.

While at his side, Malcolm let out a harsh cry.

And went tumbling over the railing, his heavy bulk plummeting downward as Seong-Jae shot himself up to lunge after him.

“Malcolm!”