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 3
Captain Vance met us outside the lab.
The lamb lay sealed beneath clear evidence packaging.
“Say it,” Vance told my father.
Arthur stared through the glass.
“It could belong to someone else.”
“Female victim, sixteen to twenty. Lyra is eighteen. Her last known location is near Logan’s memorial. She disappeared two nights ago. She sent emergency texts. This charm was modified by you.”
My father gripped the edge of a counter.
Vance continued. “Her friend tried to file a report, and you personally stopped it.”
“No.”
“Arthur.”
“No.”
A technician entered carrying a printout.
Years earlier, Piper had convinced me to install an emergency-safety app. When activated, it uploaded recent texts, location information, and emergency-call data.
My messages appeared on the monitor.
Mom, someone is following me.
Dad, please.
I’m near Logan’s memorial.
I’m scared.
My father covered his mouth.
Then the technician found the recorded emergency call.
My mother had been brought to the station with Logan and Piper. She stood near the door when her own voice filled the room.
“You’re making up stories to avoid kneeling for your brother.”
My breathing trembled over the speaker.
“Mom, please.”
“You’re a pathological liar.”
Then came the words.
“Why couldn’t it have been you?”
My mother screamed, “Turn it off.”
Nobody moved.
There was a frightened breath from me.
A muffled sound.
Then the crack of my phone being crushed beneath a boot.
Silence.
Logan stared at our mother.
“You answered her?”
“I thought she was lying.”
“She called you for help.”
“I was grieving you!”
“I wasn’t dead.”
The words struck her like a slap.
Before dawn, DNA testing confirmed what everyone already knew.
Victim: Lyra Miller.
My father read the report twice.
Then his knees hit the floor.
“No.”
Captain Vance stood over him.
My father crawled toward the morgue doors.
“Let me see her.”
“You’re removed from the case.”
“That’s my daughter.”
Vance’s eyes filled, but his voice stayed hard.
“You can identify strangers from a single bone, Arthur. Your own daughter begged you for help, and you called her a liar.”
“My daughter.”
He said it like he had just remembered the meaning.
I stood beside him.
You wanted something to happen to me.
Now it has.
Why are you crying?
My mother tried to force her way into the morgue.
Piper stepped in front of her.
“I need to see my child,” my mother sobbed.
Piper did not move.
“You were her mother when she called.”
“Move.”
“You had thirty-two seconds to be her mother. You used them to tell her to die.”
My mother crumpled.
Logan stood against the wall as if his own body could no longer support him.
After a while, he asked Piper, “What was Lyra like?”
Piper looked at him for a long time.
“You don’t deserve to ask.”
“I know.”
That answer weakened her.
“She was hungry a lot,” Piper said. “She pretended cheap bread tasted good. She hated being cold, but she wouldn’t admit it because she couldn’t afford another coat. She laughed whenever she was embarrassed. She liked strawberry milk and awful horror movies.”
Logan covered his face.
“She kept a picture of you in her notebook.”
His shoulders began shaking.
“She missed you,” Piper continued. “Even after everything they did in your name.”
“I thought if I stayed gone long enough, everybody would move on.”
Piper wiped her eyes.
“They moved on to her.”
By morning, the Storm Ripper investigation had reopened.
The evidence was no longer merely similar. It was a signature.
Eight years earlier, the killer had not died aboard Logan’s flight. The crash had given him cover to disappear while authorities believed he was gone. Now he had returned to settle an old obsession with the forensic expert who once helped corner him.
My annual visits to Logan’s memorial had made me convenient.
Predictable.
Alone.
And, most importantly, someone no one would believe.
Trace evidence from the lamb charm led detectives to surveillance video. Cameras showed a man following me from the cemetery. A partial license plate led to a storage garage.
Inside, police found clippings about my father, trophies from old crimes, and my crushed phone.
The killer was arrested before sunset.
He looked smaller in handcuffs than he had in my final moments.
There was no satisfaction in watching him pushed facedown against rain-soaked pavement.
He had murdered me.
But my family had made me easy to murder.
My funeral was held ten days later.
Not at Logan’s memorial.
Logan insisted that stone be removed.
“She spent eight years being punished there,” he said. “She isn’t spending eternity beside it.”
My mother protested weakly. “We could make it a family memorial.”
“No.”
For once, Logan did not soften his voice for her.
Piper chose the flowers.
White ones.
I had once told her white flowers looked like clean paper before anyone wrote something ugly across it.
Captain Vance placed my damaged lamb charm beside my photograph. Teachers came. Dorm students came. Cafeteria workers came. Even officers who had accepted my father’s word instead of Piper’s stood in the back with their heads lowered.
My mother tried to sit in the front row.
Piper blocked her.
“I’m her mother.”
“Then sit behind the person who looked for her.”
No one intervened.
My mother sat behind Piper.
Piper walked to the front carrying the old jacket she had wrapped around me on so many bad days.
“Lyra hated plain bread,” she began. “She told everyone she liked it because it was cheap enough to eat every day.”
A few people laughed through tears.
“She loved strawberry milk. She made study schedules and replaced them every two days. She was terrified of being a burden, so she apologized for things that weren’t her fault. She was kind even when people gave her every reason not to be.”
Piper looked directly at my parents.
“She was not difficult to love.”
My father shut his eyes.
“You were just terrible at loving her.”
