Page 23 of He Sees You

One page just has "MINE MINE MINE" written over and over across Celeste's author photo.

The books themselves are destroyed, spine broken from repeated reading, pages yellowed with finger oils and God knows what else.

Page 247 of her second novel is bookmarked—the scene where the heroine first submits to the darkness.

Roy has underlined every word about surrender, adding his own commentary:

"She'll learn." "This is how it starts." "Soon."

Deeper in the bag: newspaper clippings about her success, printed blog interviews, photos cut from magazines.

A notebook filled with his own twisted version of her stories, where the heroine ends up chained in a basement, begging.

Where she learns to "love" her captor through pain.

I flip to the last entry, dated yesterday:Saw her arrive. Sheriff's daughter who writes dirty books. Thinks she knows about darkness. I'll show her real darkness. Make her write about me. Make her write FOR me. Make her beg to write whatever I want. She'll be my greatest work. My masterpiece. When I'm done, every word she writes will be about me, for me, because of me.

My hands don't shake as I read.

Rage doesn't make me tremble—it makes me precise.

Clinical.

Every word he's written is another minute I'll make this last, another level of pain he's earned.

There's more.

A ziplock bag with trophies—driver's licenses of women from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont.

Some date back twelve years.

All young, all dark-haired like Celeste.

Roy's been hunting for a long time, it seems.

The police will find these eventually, match them to cold cases, give families closure.

But not yet. Not until I'm finished.

One license makes me pause.

Sarah McAllister, age nineteen.

From the date, she disappeared three weeks after Roy was released.

He didn't wait long to start hunting again.

Her photo shows a bright smile, college ID attached.

She was studying literature, just like Celeste once did.

He starts to stir, a groan escaping his cracked lips.

I pull out my hunting knife, the one I've sharpened to surgical precision.

The blade catches the moonlight filtering through pine branches, and I admire its simple beauty.

Tools can be pure in a way people never are.