“Kid. Not kids,” he said brusquely, tilting his head. “You know, it’s not true that all psychopaths are completely incapable of love. Some are, and your father is one of them. He didn’t love your mother—only married her for the illusion of normalcy—and he never bonded with your sister, either. He didn’t hate either of them, of course. He just didn’t love or care for them. But you… you were different.”

  “How so?” I asked, jaw clenching.

  Malachi lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. “I suppose we’d have to ask him. All I really know is what his four friends told me. And that is: he genuinely loved you. Bonded with you the second you were born. Said as you grew, he started to wonder if you might be like him.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “A psycho killer?”

  He nodded. “Apparently he saw something in you. Signs. Traits he recognized in himself.”

  “I’m not a psychopath,” I said in a low voice.

  “I know.” Malachi smiled thinly, eyes glinting. Then he tapped the side of his head. “You’ve certainly got your issues. But you’re not like him. Or me. Not even close. I’m just telling you what your father thought about you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He stepped closer. “When he was still around, you two spent more time with each other than anyone else in your family, right?” he asked. “While your sister clung to your mother.”

  “That’s not exactly a secret,” I mumbled. “Anyone could’ve told you that. Friends, neighbors, other family members.”

  “If you say so.” Malachi smiled thinly again. “Christopher told me that your father spent every Sunday outside with you, taking you on hiking or fishing trips, or showing you how to fix things. Like car engines, for example. Is that true?”

  “Again, you could’ve heard that from anyone who knows our family.”

  “If you ask me, I think he was using that time to slowly groom you,” Malachi went on. “Trying to mold you into a mini version of himself. That’s probably why he gave the two of you that stupid nickname. To make you feel special. Like you shared a secret. These things start slow, you know. Very slow.”

  I frowned. “What stupid nickname?”

  “The outside kids. And he called your mom and sister the inside kids. Right?”

  My heart lurched. “Christopher Miles told you that?” I asked, voice cracking slightly.

  “Yes.”

  There were only two people in the world who knew those silly secret nicknames that my father had assigned to our core family members back in the day. One was me. The other was him.

  No one else. Or so I thought. And I certainly hadn’t told Christopher Miles about it, which meant my father must’ve told him.

  And that meant…

  Malachi wasn’t lying. Wasn’t delusional. He was right.

  Oh my god.

  The world seemed to tilt sideways, and I grabbed the edge of the wall to steady myself, even though I was still sitting. I felt like I might throw up. Or pass out.

  Everything I’d ever believed was suddenly crumbling beneath me like rotting floorboards. The story Malachi had told me wasn’t just a sick, twisted fantasy he made up to torment me. He hadn’t fabricated it out of grief or madness or some need to justify his monstrous behavior.

  It was real. Every awful, gut-wrenching part of it.

  My father had faked his own death. He’d killed people. And he’d used me, his own daughter, to get away with it.

  “No,” I whispered, but the protest came out hollow and weak.

  Malachi crouched again, bringing his face level with mine. “As I was saying, Christopher and the others told me that your father really struggled with the idea of leaving you. That it nearly derailed their plan,” he said. “But he did leave in the end, obviously. So that got me thinking… maybe there was a chance that all the guilt and regret he felt over leaving you didn’t disappear. Maybe it festered.” He leaned in slightly, eyes glittering. “And if that guilt eventually grew strong enough, maybe he reached out to you in some way. Let you know he was still out there, alive and waiting for you to join him one day.”

  I shook my head faintly, but the movement felt disconnected from my brain, which was still reeling from the horrifying truth bomb.

  “So, if I wanted to have a real shot at finding him,” Malachi went on, “I had to look for evidence that the two of you were in contact. Some proof that you weren’t as innocent as you pretended to be.”

  “Evidence you never found, because it doesn’t exist?”

  “On the contrary, sweetheart. I found it.” He smiled again, but it didn’t meet his eyes. “I’ve been watching you ever since I heard that story from Christopher four years ago. And not just watching. Infiltrating. That’s how I know you’ve been lying all this time.”

  I blinked, heat rising under my skin. I hated the part of me that still reacted to him. The part that noticed the way his jaw flexed when he was angry, or how his voice dipped when he called me sweetheart.

  He was a killer. A psychopath. A man who’d just gutted me with the truth and left my world in tatters. And yet, my body hadn’t gotten the memo. It still responded to his nearness with heat and confusion, like some shameful muscle memory I couldn’t shake.

  I told myself it was just adrenaline. A warped reaction to power and fear. But deep down, I wasn’t sure I believed that. Something darker was coiling in me. Something that wanted to be seen by Malachi, really seen, even now.

  “Lying about what?” I finally bit out.

  His jaw tightened. “Everything. You’ve been in contact with your father for a long time. You knew he was alive. You knew he was a killer. You’ve even spent time with him. But all these years, you’ve presented this sad, innocent image of yourself to the world. The poor little girl who had her father so cruelly ripped away from her by a mysterious serial killer, leaving her totally broken.”

  “It wasn’t an image,” I hissed. “It was the truth.”

  He sneered, shaking his head. “Like I said before, you really are a phenomenal actress,” he said. “When I first started watching you, I actually fell for it. I really believed you had no idea about any of it. You were just so convincing.”

  “Because I wasn’t acting!” I said, voice thick with disbelief, rage, and heartbreak. “I didn’t know the Carver wasn’t real, and I didn’t know my father and the others faked it all. I didn’t know any of it until five minutes ago!”

  Malachi cocked his head. “Did you forget the part where I said I found cold, hard evidence that suggests otherwise?” he said. “In two different places, no less.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “What evidence?”

  “First off: the postcards,” he said, mouth curling into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “The ones I found in a box in your third dresser drawer.”

  “You mean the troll mail?” I said, eyes widening. “That’s nothing! Just people pretending to be the Carver because they’re sick assholes who like to mess with grieving families!”

  He shook his head. “The calls and letters that other families got were troll mail,” he said. “But not all of yours were like that, were they? And you eventually figured that out.”

  “Figured what out?”

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a postcard. My breath hitched again as I recognized it as one of the troll postcards I’d received over a year ago. He must’ve stolen it from the box in my drawer last time he broke into my house.

  “The postcards that were addressed specifically to you—not your mother or sister—all used gibberish wording. But when I applied a simple Caesar cipher, they all said the same thing.” He turned the card over and read aloud. “Kennedy, it’s me. I’m still alive. Please find me. Let me explain.”

  My mouth went dry. “What?”

  “Each one of these messages ended with a location,” he went on. “Different towns in different states. All shifting every few months. He was leaving you clues to find him, wherever he happened to be at the time. And you kept them because they were so important to you.”

  “I was just doing what the cops told me to do,” I said, head shaking. “They said I should hold onto anything possibly sent to me by Carver trolls, just in case one of those assholes ever escalated their creepy behavior. So that’s the only reason I kept all those nonsense postcards—because I kept getting them! I never knew anything about coded messages!”

  He ignored that.

  “One of the postcards had a South Dakota postmark. The date on that one really caught my attention, because it was sent in early December, 2020. In other words: right before the winter break in your freshman year at CBU,” he said. “I’d actually just started looking into you at the time, so I’d been reading through all your texts and emails, old and new. And I distinctly recalled you telling your friends that you’d spent the entire winter break all the way out in South Dakota. Staying with another friend, supposedly.”

  “That’s true,” I said in a small voice. “I was.”

  Malachi’s jaw tightened. “I checked. You have no friends in South Dakota. Not a single one,” he said. “And it’s not just that. When I tried to check the location of your phone and laptop over that winter break period… well, it seems they were conveniently turned off, meaning that your activity over those four weeks couldn’t be tracked or verified.”

  Oh, god…

  I lifted a shaky palm. “It’s really not what you think—”

  “I know exactly what it was,” he cut in. “You weren’t in South Dakota with a friend. You were with him. The man who raised you. The man who groomed you. And now you’re pretending you’ve been in the dark this whole time.”

  I shook my head furiously. “That’s not true.”

  “You lied to everyone all these years,” Malachi said. “And you’re lying to me right now.”

  “Please listen!” I said, holding up a shaky palm. “You’re half right, okay? I lied about there being a friend in South Dakota. But I wasn’t with my father! I was at the Elodie Wellness Retreat. You can look it up. It’s real!”

  “A wellness retreat?” His lips curved in a mocking smile. “So you were getting massages and doing yoga for four weeks? In South Dakota, in the middle of winter. You honestly expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s not that sort of wellness retreat,” I mumbled. “It just has that name to make it sound more palatable than what it really is.”

  His smile faded. “So what is it?”

  “It’s a mental health facility. It’s out in the middle of nowhere for privacy reasons,” I said softly. “My mom and Ethan arranged for me to stay there for a month after I attacked that guy at CBU. You remember me telling you about that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I actually had a full-on breakdown, but…” I paused, gnawing at my lip for a second. “I was too embarrassed and ashamed to tell my friends how bad it was. So I lied. I acted like it was all a misunderstanding caused by a panic attack. Then I told them I’d gone to stay with a distant friend to get away from everything for a while. But really, I was in that facility doing weeks of intensive therapy. I swear, that’s the truth.”

  His brows rose. “So if I hack their system, I’ll find your name in the records?”

  “Um… no. You won’t,” I said, wincing. “They’re really hardcore about patient privacy, so they don’t have any of their records on computers, because computers can be hacked. So it’s all done the old-fashioned analog way and stored in files in a secure archive. I remember them explaining that to me when I got there.”

  “No digitized records to confirm that you were really there,” Malachi said slowly, eyes narrowing. “That’s awfully convenient for you, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not,” I said in a low voice, rubbing my left temple. “Otherwise you could hack into their system and check, like you said before. Then you’d realize I’m not lying.”

  His expression turned flat again. “I told you I had two pieces of evidence that you were in contact with your father. Not just one.”

  “What’s the second one?” I asked in a small voice.

  “You’ve been emailing each other for years. You send him poems or lines from fiction books, and he replies saying ‘that’s my favorite book’, or something like that. I’m assuming it’s some sort of coded messaging system you came up with together—one I’m yet to crack—but you’ve barely even tried to hide it. Didn’t even make a burner address or use incognito mode. I guess you never thought anyone would suspect anything and look in your emails, so you were sloppy with it.”

  “No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong,” I said, fervently shaking my head. “I understand what it must look like. Really. But I swear, you’ve got it totally wrong. Please, just let me explain.”

  “Explain what, Kennedy?” His eyes narrowed again. “Are you planning on telling me that markcampbellmd@gmail.com is a different Mark Campbell who just so happens to be a doctor?”

  “No. Just let me explain. Please!”

  He sneered. “Go on, then. I’m interested to see what you come up with.”

  I hurriedly ran through the story about the old grief support group I’d been in several years ago, and the deal I’d made with the older man in the group.

  “I know how weird it sounds, but honestly, it’s helped me a lot,” I went on. “And it’s not my father’s email address. It’s just one that Brendan created to mimic him. That’s all.”

  Malachi arched a brow. “That’s really the excuse you’re going with?”

  “It’s not an excuse! It’s the truth!” I said shrilly. “If you traced the emails, you'd see they all came from a guy named Brendan who lives right here in Corwin Bay!”

  He smiled thinly. “I was waiting for you to say that,” he replied, tone dripping with triumph. “And that was actually the first thing I did. I traced the location of the emails he was sending you. Want to know what I found?”

  “What?”

  “Every single one of those emails was sent to you from a different location within the contiguous United States. None were sent from a fixed IP address in Corwin Bay. In fact, none of them were sent from anywhere in Corwin Bay at all.”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. “But... that doesn't make sense,” I said shakily. “Unless… maybe Brendan uses one of those VPN things for some reason. Or maybe he travels for work. I don't know. I never asked about his job.”

  Malachi’s brows rose again. “We both know your story isn’t true, and Brendan doesn’t really exist, but I’m willing to humor you anyway,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me his surname? Then I can find him, give him a call, and confirm what you said.”

  Fuck.

  “I… I don’t know his last name,” I said meekly. “We only shared first names in the group.”

  “So I can’t track him down and confirm your story. Another awfully convenient thing for you.”

  My stomach lurched, and I lifted a shaky palm. “Listen,” I said in a hollow voice. “I know how suspicious all of this must seem to someone looking in from the outside. But I swear, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “So that’s what we’re going with? It’s all just a big, unfortunate misunderstanding?”

  I gritted my teeth. “It is,” I bit out. “Like I said, I can see how it looks really bad for me, because I can’t prove any of the stuff I’ve claimed. But it’s all true. I swear. I had no idea my father was alive! I had no idea about any of it!”

  “Do you know that you always do the same thing when you lie?” he asked, crouching to my level again. “You talk at double speed, blink much more than usual, and rub your left temple. You probably don’t even notice you’re doing it, but that’s your tell.”

  “Actually, I have noticed those things. But I do them when I’m extremely anxious, not when I’m lying!” I snapped. “You’d know that if you really knew me!”

  “I do know you, Kennedy. I know you better than you can possibly imagine.”

  “No.” I slowly shook my head. “You don’t. You just think you do. But you can’t really get to know someone from following them around, snooping in their stuff, and peeping in their windows. You only get to know pieces of them that way. Pieces that you can wildly misinterpret. I thought someone as smart as you would know that.”

  Malachi’s lips curved in that maddeningly calm smile again. “You know, Kennedy, this would all be so much easier if you gave up this ridiculous act and told me how I can find your father.”

  “It’s not an act! I told you, I don’t know where he is, and I had no idea he was trying to contact me all these years,” I spat. I paused to take a breath, lifting my chin. “What exactly was your plan, anyway? Kidnap me and torture me until I fucking email my dad to beg for help? Is that how you thought things would go here?”

  “Ah. That’s a good point.” He rose to his full height again. “I haven’t filled you in on the plan yet. Beyond the general revenge part of things, that is.”

  As he spoke, he mimed a throat slitting gesture. I swallowed hard and shifted back, pressing myself tighter against the cold wall as my flash of bravado faded.

  “So what is it, then?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper now.

  “Well, once I realized that you knew your father was alive and were in regular contact with him, I knew I’d have to take you when the time was right, in order to get to him,” he said. “I thought you might feel a flicker of guilt over your part in the scheme and give me some of the truth at some point. Which you did, in that message you sent me about the book club. But I also knew you probably wouldn't give up his location in the end, because you’d likely want to protect him. And so, I came up with the podcast plan.”

  I blinked. “Did you just say podcast?”

  “Yes. Your show. After the Carver.” He gave me another thin smile. “That was my idea.”

  I slowly shook my head. “No, it was Freya’s idea.”

  “I’m sure she genuinely believes that. But no. It was all mine,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “All part of the grand scheme.”