Page 37 of Carved

"Dad? Are you home?"

Key in the lock. The front door opening with its familiar squeal. I have maybe thirty seconds before she reaches the kitchen. Thirty seconds to decide: run or hide.

The back door is fifteen feet away. I could be out and over the fence before she finds the body. Clean escape, no witnesses, no complications. The smart choice. The safe choice.

But my legs won't move.

Jenkins makes a wet, gurgling sound that might be an attempt at speech. His eyes, clouded with pain and blood loss, fix on mine with desperate intensity. He's trying to warn her, trying to call out. I could end it now, finish what I started, ensure his silence.

Instead, I stand frozen in the kitchen of a dead man, listening to his daughter's footsteps approach down the hallway.

"Dad? Your car's in the driveway, but you didn't answer…." Her voice gets closer, worried now. "Are you okay?"

The kitchen door swings open.

Delilah Jenkins steps into the room and stops dead, her keys still clutched in her right hand. For a moment that stretches like eternity, we stare at each other across the blood-soaked linoleum. Predator and prey, killer and witness, two strangers connected by the dying man between us.

She doesn't scream.

She doesn't run.

She doesn't even seem surprised.

Instead, she takes in the scene with the same methodical precision I use to arrange my tools. Her gaze moves from me to her father, noting the restraints, the blood, the careful positioning of his body. She sees the surgical instruments laidout on the counter, the sterile precision of the cuts across his chest and arms.

Her eyes are impossibly green in the kitchen's harsh fluorescent light. Intelligent. Analytical. The eyes of someone who's spent sixteen years learning to read violence, to understand its patterns and purposes.

Jenkins makes another wet sound, blood frothing from his mouth as he tries to speak. "Del…." The word comes out as barely a whisper. "Run…."

She looks down at him—this man who terrorized her childhood, who broke her ribs and bruised her spirit and stole her innocence in a dozen different ways. Her expression doesn't change. No fear, no shock, no desperate concern for his welfare.

Just curiosity.

"You're him," she says finally, her voice steady despite what she's witnessing. "The one they're looking for. The Carver."

I nod slowly, not trusting myself to speak. My hand rests on the scalpel, ready to defend myself if she runs screaming into the night. But she doesn't move toward the door or the phone. She takes another step into the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind her.

"How long have you been here?" she asks.

"An hour." The words come out rougher than I intended. "Maybe more."

"Did he confess?"

The question hits me like a physical blow. Not 'what are you doing' or 'please don't hurt me' or any of the responses I'd expected from a sixteen-year-old girl walking into a murder scene. She wants to know if her father confessed.

She wants to know if justice has been served.

I pull the tape from my jacket pocket, hold it up so she can see the label I've written in careful block letters: "Harold Jenkins - Complete Confession." Her eyes fix on it with an intensity that makes my chest tight.

"Everything?" she asks.

"Everything." I meet her gaze steadily. "Your mother. The abuse. The corruption. All of it."

Jenkins tries to speak again, blood bubbling from his lips. "Del…please…." The words are barely audible now, his strength fading as blood loss takes its toll.

She looks down at him with the same clinical detachment I've seen in my own reflection. No daughter's love, no familial obligation, no desperate attempt to save a dying parent. Just cold assessment of a problem that's solving itself.

"Good," she says simply.