On my 18th birthday, 8 years after my brother supposedly died because of me, a stranger followed me from his memorial through a freezing Seattle rain—and when I begged my mother to save me, she told me she wished I had died instead.
Chapter 1
I had been kneeling in front of Logan’s memorial for nearly an hour. My jeans were soaked through at the knees, mud clung to my palms, and the white roses my mother had ordered me to bring had collapsed under the downpour. Every birthday since I turned ten, my parents had brought me there and made me apologize to the brother they believed had died trying to come home for me.
“Tell him you’re sorry you survived,” my mother would say.
When I was younger, my father had sometimes stood behind her in silence. As the years passed, he stopped pretending silence was different from agreement.
That night, though, I was alone. My parents had decided eighteen was old enough for me to perform my punishment without supervision.
I noticed the man when I left the cemetery.
He stood beneath a cedar tree across the road, too still for someone caught in heavy rain. When I crossed the street, he crossed fifty yards behind me. When I turned toward the bus stop, he changed direction too.
My heart started pounding.
I pulled out my phone and texted both my parents.
Someone is following me. Please come get me.
Dad, please. I’m near Logan’s memorial.
I’m scared.
My father did not answer. My mother called.
Relief hit me so hard my knees weakened.
“Mom?”
“What now, Lyra?”
The disgust in her voice almost made me hang up.
“A man is following me. I think he’s been watching me since I left the cemetery.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
I glanced behind me. The man had moved closer.
“Mom, please.”
“You always do this. Every year you find some way to make Logan’s memorial about you.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’ve been lying since you were ten.”
The man stepped beneath a streetlamp. Rainwater ran from the bill of his cap, hiding most of his face.
“Mom.”
“You know what?” she snapped. “Maybe if you hadn’t begged Logan to come home for your birthday, he’d still be alive.”
I started running.
Her next words followed me through the rain.
“Why couldn’t it have been you?”
A hand seized the back of my coat.
I screamed.
My phone struck the pavement. I heard my mother say something on the other end, and then a boot came down.
The screen shattered with a hard mechanical crack.
Darkness swallowed the street.
When awareness returned, I was standing in a police laboratory.
At first, I thought I had survived.
Then I saw my father leaning over a stainless-steel examination table.
Dr. Arthur Miller was one of Washington State’s most respected forensic pathologists. He had testified in murder trials, trained detectives, and identified victims from fragments most people could barely look at.
That night, Captain Daniel Vance entered carrying a sealed evidence bag.
“This one stayed dry,” he said quietly. “We might get trace evidence.”
My father opened it.
Inside were several small pieces of human tissue.
His face changed.
“Oh, God.”
I had not seen him cry in eight years.
Captain Vance looked away. “How bad?”
My father swallowed. “These injuries were inflicted before death.”
More bags arrived through the night. Detectives found remains in alleys, dumpsters, beneath an overpass, beside a drainage canal. Slowly, painstakingly, my father arranged them on the steel table.
Me.
I tried to scream his name.
Dad, that’s me.
He could not hear.
The killer had made identification difficult. My face had been destroyed, fingerprints were useless, and one leg had not been recovered. My father estimated the victim was a young woman between sixteen and twenty.
“She suffered for hours,” he said.
Vance cursed under his breath.
My father stared at what remained of me, anger trembling through his hands. “Whoever did this wanted fear. This wasn’t just murder.”
For one wild second, I felt something I had not felt since childhood.
My father cared.
He did not know the girl on his table was me, but he cared that she had been hurt.
Then Captain Vance frowned.
“Arthur, doesn’t this remind you of the Storm Ripper?”
My father went still.
Eight years earlier, the Storm Ripper had terrorized Seattle before disappearing around the same time Logan’s plane crashed. My father’s forensic work had supposedly cornered the killer. Investigators believed the man had sabotaged the aircraft and died aboard it.
Vance lowered his voice. “If he survived somehow, your family could be at risk. You need to warn your wife.”
My father pulled off his gloves.
“And Lyra,” Vance added.
At the sound of my name, my father’s expression hardened.
Then he said the words that killed whatever remained of my heart.
“Would that really be such a loss?”
Vance stared at him.
“Arthur.”
“If she hadn’t begged Logan to come home for that birthday, my son would never have been on that flight.”
“She was ten.”
“My son was eighteen.”
Vance’s jaw tightened. “She’s still your daughter.”
My father looked toward the cold metal table without realizing he was staring directly at me.
“It might have been better if something had happened to her.”
I stood beside my own body and felt something inside me go quiet.
I’m dead now, Dad.
Is this what you wanted?
An officer entered carrying another evidence bag.
Inside was a tiny white lamb attached to a broken phone strap.
My father glanced at it.
“Cheap charm,” he said. “Send it to trace.”
I stared at him.
Years ago, after a suspect threatened our family, my father had placed that lamb in my little hand. Hidden inside was a tiny emergency stun mechanism he had built himself.
“If anyone grabs you,” he had told me, “press here. Even if Daddy isn’t around, you can still protect yourself.”
He had kissed my forehead.
Now he did not recognize it.
He did not recognize me.
And somewhere beyond the morgue doors, the killer who had followed me through the rain was still alive.
