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"You're back in."

It’s the second time Tawill has said those words, loud and clear through the receiver, and yet I’m still not quite sure I actually heard them. How can I be back in? After everything I did… Fucking a serial killer- the very same one who murdered my husband; being the unwitting roommate of the very worst killer in Tregam without the faintest clue of who she really was; nearly getting my partner killed… my track record is blotchy at best, soaked in blood at worst.

Her voice snaps me back. "Tomorrow. Be here and be sober. You're far from being off the hook, detective," she adds, as though I could have suspected all was forgiven.

I clear the lump stuck in my throat to formulate an answer, but the line clicks, dead.

Hand hovering over the phone cradle, I stand there for several seconds. Not having my badge and my career stripped is more than I could have hoped. And yet the other side of the coin hits me. I’ll need to face everyone. Dean, Howie, Chloe… Needler, possibly, if they let me talk to him. Dirk.

God, Dirk. The last time I saw him, covered in blood and plaster… I believed I was about to watch him die.

My fingers tremble, my heart thumping too loud in my chest as I think of what so easily could have been.

Dirk dead, and me to blame.

The apartment is too cloying, too close. Leaving the receiver, I walk out onto the metal fire escape. My leg only twinges as I step over the window ledge. It wasn’t broken when Olivia pushed me off the walkway that night, only cracked. Given that I’ve spent the last few weeks lying in bed running the same thing over and over in my mind, I’ve certainly followed the doctor’s orders for ‘rest’. Of the physical variety, anyway.

The air is brisk outside, the sky clear, though not a single star is visible against the light pollution this deep in Tregam. I hug my arms around myself, breathing deeply. The air is tinged with the vague cooking smells that waft down from the air system on the roof, and the fainter scent of car fumes.

My heartbeat subsides, no longer pounding in my ears.

When I look left, along the exterior wall of red brick, I see the main street, usually lined with car lights no matter the hour. But not recently. Recently it’s so often the protestors instead, and not just here. I’ve seen them on TV, outside the courthouse, or in front of the precinct, blocking traffic in Downtown. I catch a glimpse of them now, catch the muted hum of their chants on the wind.

The people of Tregam are pissed... Pissed that we arrested Needler. Pissed that we didn’t arrest Cocooner, pissed because they know they’re not being told everything. I can hardly blame them, and I’m a part of that cone of silence. Soon, I’m going to have to face them all.

Suddenly tomorrow feels too soon.

***

Needler doesn’t look any smaller, sitting there, alone in the interrogation room. They often do; the killers that constantly skip one step ahead, only to seem like they shouldn’t have been so much work when you do get them. Not Tristan. I stare at him through the glass, there in his orange jumpsuit. He doesn’t fidget, doesn’t look even slightly concerned. Hell, he could be just waiting for his coffee at a café.

Several minutes have passed.

"He's been cooperative, incredibly cooperative, actually,” Andrea tells me, joining me in the small dark observation room. “But he won't answer any of our questions about Cassandra. He just, well…”

"He asks to speak to me," I conclude. It’s why I'm here, after all, probably the only reason. I turn and look at Andrea. "You think I should?"

"I think it’s our only option. That or get nothing from him."

I turn back to the glass. Needler —real name Tristan. With dark blond hair, green eyes, and skin that deserves a tan, he’s attractive, even if the lilt of his mouth is sometimes a little crooked, somehow unsettling. But I didn't know any of that when I slept with him, somehow getting tangled up with the man who I hunted, who I blamed for my husband’s death. No, it was all behind a silver mask then. That seems long ago now. I knew that face, sure, but I knew him as Seb, the awkward lab boy with a stutter. It turns out he's all those people. And on top of that, he’s the brother of a woman who we now know as the Cocooner. Though this was apparently unknown to him until Cassandra tried to make Dirk her next victim.

The sobriety part of Tawill’s order was the easiest. I haven't touched the stuff since that night. Even the smell, somehow constantly soured, offers no promise of dull numbness anymore. I’d been drinking when I drove to the site. The taste was still in my mouth when I found Dirk, and now it tastes like fear, and the idea of succumbing to it is not a soft descent but a stomach drop.

My hands shake, sure, and some nights I can’t sleep, but I choose that over being back in that warehouse, seeing Dirk, reliving the moment his eyes open and to his worst nightmare.

“What time is Dirk coming in?” I ask, eyes still on Tristan.

“Dirk hasn’t come in. Not since… what happened.”

My attention snaps to Andrea. “What?”

“He’s on indefinite leave.”

“Tawill’s orders?”

“The precinct offered. They had to. He accepted.”

“Oh.” Of course, why would I expect he’d be in a rush to come back here?

Hell, I probably shouldn’t have been in such a rush. The truth is I never expected to be allowed back, much less so soon. But this place and the judgmental eye of everyone who knows what went down is still a heavenly reprieve from my apartment and too much of my own company. Not that this means I’m back for good—Tawill never said anything about that. Just today.

I’ll take what I can get. I’ve never been very good at keeping myself busy when there’s self-flagellation to be done.

Better that I’m here, potentially doing some good, or at least kept distracted.

I guess I don’t need to worry about facing Dirk for today, at least. The silver lining is somewhat bittersweet. I want to be near him, speak to him, to know he's okay. Just see him, as he is, not how Cocooner had him, not the way he’s locked into my mind, all blood and plaster.

I know the meeting is inevitable anyway, his absence only stretching it out.

So, there's just everyone else left to face. I had come in at dawn, to avoid having to stare down an entire office floor of shocked faces. But I’d barely sat down at my desk before I was directed none too curtly to the interrogation room.

The Cocooner, though we know who she is now, is still at large. Needler is the only reason Dirk and I are both alive. And fortunately, or unfortunately, he’s also our best shot at catching Cocooner.

If he'll talk.

I step into the interrogation room.

Tristan lifts his head, and when he sees me, he doesn't seem surprised. One corner of his mouth tilts, white teeth glinting. He’d had them straightened in the two years between killing my husband and his next official kill as Needler. As well as growing his hair longer, losing the beard, and getting effectively buff, it was enough to fool the ones who’d thought him dead anyway. Even when he was right there, among us, the whole time. Hell, I even went on a few dates with ‘Seb’.

"Little Shadow," Tristan says in greeting.

I blanch at the use of the pet name, resisting a glance at the one-way glass. I can only hope Tawill isn’t here to hear that, but I know she almost definitely will watch the recording.

He's chained to the other side of the metal table. He’s had so many chances to hurt me, but maybe now, locked up, things are different. Maybe he’ll lash out like a caged animal. He’s not what you’d call predictable. Then again, we're not his type. His type is… specific.

I stay standing behind the other chair, staring at him. The bruise on his cheek is a faded yellow memory of the spot where the officer who reached him first clocked him. Tristan’s hands had been up, he wasn’t a threat, was even kneeling already. But Tregam’s force can be just that—forceful.

"Why won't you talk?" I ask.

"I will now."

My jaw tightens. "I mean to the others. Why not them?"

His head tilts. "You're the detective on my case."

"But you're caught now. The case is closed."

Spreading his hands as much as he can against the chains, Tristan concludes, "Well, you're not busy then, are you?"

I baulk at believing he's doing this for me so that they have to bring me back in. I sit down. Not because I feel up to this conversation, but because a sudden wave of exhaustion hits me. My hand starts to shake with the withdrawals, which are mercifully less and less every day. People always told me the first week was the hardest, but I could never get that far from the bottle before. I don’t feel like it’s gotten any easier, even though that which I crave also disgusts me. Keeping one hand under the table, I lean the other on it, meeting his eyes. "Why did you let yourself be caught?"

"What purpose did I have on the outside anymore?"

"Because of Cassandra, then?"

A shadow comes across his face at the mention of her name.

"Will you talk to me about her? Otherwise, I have no purpose here."

Tristan stares back at me. "For you to catch her? Or kill her?"

"It’s you that killed. Not us."

His shoulders ease just slightly. "Alright. I'll talk. How long have I been here?"

"About three weeks," I tell him, knowing it’s hard to keep track of time in the precinct’s holding cells. There are no windows.

The way he pauses, too thoughtfully, I almost regret telling him even that. He's too sharp, thinks too much like a killer and a lawman both. He wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did, taken out as many killers as he did, if he wasn’t one of the most intuitive people I’d ever met.

"You're not telling them she was my sister,” Tristan says, voice even.

My jaw tightens. He doesn't need me to say anything to know he’s right.

"You're scared of moving me from here, aren't you? You think Tregam won't like it.” A slight smile tugs his lips. “They'd dislike it less if they knew Cocooner was my little sister, if they knew I'm not the one to make Cocooner disappear like I made the others disappear."

He’s right. They might forsake him if they knew. But there’s too much the rioters might do, too much unpredictability that would go with it. Since Needler’s—Tristan’s—identity is known, it wouldn't take long before every person that ever encountered Tristan before his time as Needler, all the way back to childhood, would be the victim of some mob convinced they know where to find Cassandra. And there are enough mobs around these days.

The most they have is a sketch of her as she is now, which is a far cry from the woman recognised as Tristan’s sister, who is believed dead as a victim of the first Cocooner, anyway.

“You had a stutter as Seb,” I start. It’s not strictly important to the case, but I ask anyway, “Does that mean you’re not him anymore?”

Tristan spreads his hands. “What have I left to hide?”

How easily he seems to just shed an identity. I still haven’t decided whether he has multiple personalities, or if they are simply personas. The former would make him insane, the latter dangerous. “So, you’re just Needler now?”

His eyes seem to bore into me, an atypical green, pale in this harsh light.

“What’s Needler’s purpose?” I press. “Now you’re caught.” Now that both my hands have stopped shaking, I fold them in front of me on the table, leaning forward. “Maybe it’s to help us stop Cassandra before she kills again.”

Tristan tilts his head, a slight smile breaking the intentness of his gaze. “We’ll see. No sign of her?" he asks.

"None. But we can presume she'll strike again."

He nods slowly. "She will."

I take a breath. "You're the only one that’s ever really known her. We need help catching her."

"She will have dyed and cut her hair by now. New clothes, new name, disappeared."

"We know that,” I say. “We need what you know about her. To predict what she'll do next."

"Well, she's in a corner.” Tristan meets my eye. "So she'll fight."