Page 8 of He Sees You

His arm healed, crooked, just like I intended.

People think isolation makes you weak.

They're wrong.

Isolation makes you pure.

Removes the unnecessary noise until all that's left is purpose.

Mine drives a black Audi with New York plates, and she'll be here within the hour.

I walk back to the cabin, my boots crunching through fresh snow.

Inside, everything is precise.

Clean. Organized.

The complete opposite of what people expect when they think of a mountain hermit.

Books line one wall—first editions mostly, arranged by publication date.

Philosophy, classic literature, true crime.

And on a separate shelf, every novel Celeste Sterling has ever written, including the advance reader copy of her latest that Juliette doesn't know I lifted from her apartment last time she invited me to the city.

That was eight months ago.

The last time I pretended to be normal for my sister's sake.

Dinner at an overpriced restaurant where she introduced me to her colleagues as "my brother who lives upstate."

Celeste wasn't there—touring for her book—but her presence was everywhere in their conversation.

How she was dating someone boring. How her writing was suffering. How she needed something to wake her up.

Icould wake her up.

I could wake her up in ways that would make her previous understanding of consciousness seem like fucking sleepwalking.

On my desk, her photo from the book jacket stares at me.

Not the professional one—I have that too—but the candid Juliette took at last year's Christmas party.

Celeste is laughing at something, her head thrown back, throat exposed.

She's holding a glass of red wine that matches her lipstick.

In the background, someone's wearing a Santa hat.

She looks alive in a way she doesn't in recent photos.

I'm going to bring that back—that life, even if I have to kill everything else around her to do it.

My violin sits in the corner, waiting.

I pick it up, run my fingers along the strings without playing.

The Lockwoods insisted on lessons—part of their perfect family image.