Page 13 of He Sees You

When she's ready.

When she's here, in this cabin, wearing my marks and my claim and nothing else.

When she understands that every word she's ever written was a summons, and I'm the thing that answered.

After a couple of hours, the scanner crackles again. "Sheriff, we've got... Christ, you need to see this. It's like the others but... there's something different. A message maybe?"

I smile.

They found my gift for Celeste—the first page of her debut novel, laminated and placed under Monica's hands.

The page where her heroine meets the villain for the first time.

Where she writes:

He looked at her like she was already his, like her opinion on the matter was irrelevant, like the universe had already decided and they were just going through the motions of discovery.

Let Sterling puzzle over that.

Let him wonder why the killer is quoting his daughter's work.

Let him fear what that means.

The sound I've been waiting for finally reaches me—an unfamiliar engine, expensive and well-maintained, coming up the mountain road.

I move to the window that faces the road, though I'm too far back to be seen.

The black Audi passes, moving carefully on the snow-slicked road.

New York plates.

The glimpse I get through the windshield is brief but enough—dark hair pulled back, pale face focused on navigating the unfamiliar road, hands gripping the steering wheel like she's holding onto more than just the car.

Celeste Sterling has come home.

I walk to my desk and pick up the skull of a doe I've been saving.

Smaller than the others, more delicate.

I've painted the inside with something that will glow in moonlight—a detail she'll only notice if she gets close enough.

Whenshe gets close enough.

Because she will.

Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon.

She'll hear about the hermit in the mountains who reads philosophy and plays violin in the darkness.

She'll be curious about someone else who chooses isolation, who lives surrounded by death but isn't afraid of it.

She'll come looking for inspiration for her monsters.

But more importantly, she'll find it.

I pick up my hunting knife, the one I'll use later tonight.

Not on her—never on her.