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The dead didn't scream in Ella's dreams. They never had. Even when the victims came back to haunt her, they did it with a terrible silence that made every nightmare worse than the last.

Jenna sat in an armchair that didn't exist anymore. The one Ella remembered from their old apartment before life and circumstance had pulled them in different directions. Blood dripped from the black stitches that held her lips together, each drop hitting the carpet with a sound like distant thunder.

Across from her, Julianne Cooper folded laundry on the coffee table. Her movements were precise, mechanical. The same black threads crisscrossed her mouth in a pattern that reminded Ella of a child's connect-the-dots puzzle. Neither woman acknowledged the other's presence. They just performed their mundane tasks while their sewn-shut lips leaked red tears.

‘They'll all die,’ said an invisible voice. ‘Everyone you know. Everyone you forgot.’

Knock. Knock. Knock.

For a disorienting moment, Ella couldn’t place herself in space or time. The unfamiliar ceiling above her, the scratchy blanket tangled around her legs, the persistent throb of adrenaline in her veins. It all felt unanchored from reality.

Then the knocks came again and memory clicks back into place.

The Granville Motor Inn. Room 14. Ohio. Three bodies and counting.

‘Dark? You alive in there?’

Ripley's voice carried through the door with its familiar blend of concern and irritation. Ella blinked at sunlight that seemed too bright, too real after the nightmare's shadows.

Ella stumbled to the door and fumbled with the chain. Ripley stood in the hall looking freshly showered and annoyingly alert, wearing what appeared to be a new sweater from her shopping trip yesterday. Ripley looked her up and down, taking in her black t-shirt that reached her knees .

‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been waiting ages.’

Ella squinted at her partner. ‘What time is it?’

‘Potato clock, as Max would say.’

‘Huh?’

‘Eight o’ clock.’

Ella's brain caught up with reality. She rarely slept past seven, even on her worst days. But then again, she usually wasn't up until 3 AM counting other people's corpses.

‘Jesus, I never sleep this late.’

‘You never used to. I’ve already had breakfast and read today’s paper. Want me to wait downstairs?’

‘You go. I'll meet you at the precinct in half an hour.’

‘No precinct this morning. We're going to see Frank Torres.’

The name took a moment to register. ‘Rebecca's husband?’

‘Yeah.’

Ella's stomach dropped. Notification duties. She hated them more than anything else about the job. Death notifications were bad enough when the victim was just a case number. They become something else entirely when you'd seen the body, studied the wounds and theorized about why someone wanted this specific person dead. Telling someone their loved one was murdered twisted something inside her that never quite straightened out again.

‘Uh. That’s not going to be fun.’

‘Don't worry about that part.’ Ripley pulled a folded newspaper from under her arm and thrust it at Ella. ‘He already knows. Everyone knows.’

In thick text, the front page declared: COUNCIL PRESIDENT MURDERED. Rebecca Torres Found Dead Outside City Hall.

Below the headline, Torres smiled from her official portrait. Perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect mask. The photo they always used of murder victims, showing them in better times, before someone decided they deserved to die.

‘Nice of them to get the word out.’

‘Yeah, but he doesn’t know about the branding or the message. That’s still under wraps.’

‘Good. Have you spoken to Westfall?’ Ella asked, calculating how much time she could afford to spend in the shower.

‘Yeah. The security guard is cleared. Cameras from the lobby showed Torres walking through just before midnight, then show the guard peering out the door into the alleyway and calling the cops. Guard was in view the whole time.’

‘Great.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, I’ll meet you downstairs. Hurry your ass up.’