“I think it could be a good way to show how deeply the families were affected,” Freya said, her tone softer now. “Like, it wasn’t just the loss of their beloved family member. They also had to deal with strangers turning their grief into a game. That’s something most people never hear about.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I actually still get crazy Carver-related letters and postcards sometimes. And I’ve heard some of the other families get them too, along with crank calls.”

  “Do you still have any of the letters?”

  “Yeah, I keep them all in a drawer somewhere,” I said. “The cops said we should hold onto them just in case one of the trolls ever decided to escalate. Like, started threatening us, or whatever.”

  “Oh, right.” Freya paused for a beat. “So… what do you think about dedicating an episode to that kind of harassment? Shine a light on the dark side of public obsession?”

  I chewed on my bottom lip as I mulled it over. “I think it’s a good idea,” I finally said. “Like you said before, a lot of people don’t realize how far that stuff goes.”

  “I really just want to know why these trolls do it. Like, what the hell is going through their heads when they decide to do something so shitty?” she replied. “They need serious therapy.”

  I snorted. “No shit.”

  “Actually, there’s another idea,” she said. “We could try to get a psychologist as a guest speaker for that episode. They can give their expert opinion about the psychology behind the behavior.”

  “Do you happen to have a psychologist cousin?” I asked, arching a brow.

  “Ha. Very funny.” Freya paused for a beat. “Ooh, I know. Are you still seeing that hot therapist from college? Could you ask him if he’s interested?”

  “My free sessions ended, so no, I’m not seeing him anymore,” I said. “But…”

  I trailed off, and Freya instantly pounced on the loaded silence. “But what? Did something happen between you two?”

  “No! Of course not,” I said indignantly. “But in my last session with him, he offered to meet up with me if I needed to talk. Outside the office.”

  “Oh my god. He totally wants to smash your gash.”

  I cringed. “Urgh, do you have to say it like that?”

  “I’ll rephrase, Little Miss Prude,” she said, voice dripping with amusement. “The handsome therapist wants to gently peel your clothing off in a tasteful manner and make sweet, tender, emotionally-intelligent love to you.”

  I snorted with laughter. “Somehow that’s even worse.”

  “Could you ask him if he’ll be our guest speaker? Preferably for free?”

  “I can try,” I said. “I’ll send him an email later.”

  “Don’t email. Call. If he hears your voice, he’ll be more likely to say yes.”

  “All right, all right. I’ll call him on Monday.” My gaze drifted toward the envelope on the counter. “Anyway, are you ready to hear Deirdre’s crazy letter now?”

  “I’m salivating with excitement.”

  I set the phone on the counter and switched the call to loudspeaker. Then I sliced open the side of the yellow envelope with a fingernail and fished out the folded letter from within. Tucked beneath it was a small, foil-wrapped package.

  “There’s definitely something in here apart from the letter,” I said. “It’s wrapped in foil.”

  “Ooh, maybe it’s weed instead of weeds.”

  I laughed. “I seriously doubt Deirdre is growing weed in her garden, let alone handing out free samples to people who piss her off.”

  “True.” Freya sighed. “Dried dog shit, I bet.”

  My nose wrinkled. “Yeah, it doesn’t smell great, so you might be right.”

  I unfolded the letter and quickly skimmed it. As I registered the words, my skin began to crawl. This wasn’t Deirdre.

  Dear Kennedy,

  It’s strange, isn’t it, how often we pass by the people meant to change us without ever realizing it?

  I’ve watched you for so long from the quiet corners of your world, and I see everything. The desk at the back of the library you think no one uses… the lipstick you wipe off before you leave the house because you still don’t feel confident enough to wear it… the way you always pause on your way home in front of Satchmo Café, pretending to check your phone but really just glancing inside to see if they’ve put out the cheap afternoon specials yet.

  You didn’t notice me watching you in those moments. But you feel it now, don’t you? That tug in your ribs. That prickle on the back of your neck. That’s your instinct waking up. Your body telling you I’m near.

  Soon, I’ll need something from you. You won’t want to give it to me, but we both know you won’t refuse me in the end.

  For now, let’s play a game. If you can solve this little riddle, you’ll find something I’ve left for you in the woods outside Corwin Bay.

  Where whispers crawl beneath the boughs,

  A fallen god sleeps on moss and stone,

  His secrets buried, but not alone.

  Find the mark where the antlers meet,

  Beneath the roots, your prize will greet.

  —K

  PS. I’ve enclosed a small gift for you. It won’t help you see me, but it might help you listen…

  For a moment, I just stood there, staring down at the letter. My fingers had gone numb, and the air suddenly felt too thin.

  I read it again, slower this time, and each word seemed to crawl off the page and wrap around my spine like icy tendrils. Whoever wrote this… they knew things about me. Things no one could know unless they’d really been watching me.

  My gaze darted toward the window. Then toward the front door. I wasn’t alone. I could feel it. Just like the letter said.

  “Kennedy?” Freya’s voice echoed down the line. “Hello? What does the note say?”

  My lips parted, but no sound came out. With trembling hands, I set the letter down and reached for the foil-wrapped bundle.

  I didn’t want to open it, but I had to.

  The foil crackled as I peeled it apart. First one fold. Then the next. My stomach twisted before my eyes even landed on the contents, a dark part of me somehow already knowing what awaited.

  Two severed human ears stared up at me.

  6

  Kennedy

  I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The words were tumbling out of my mouth so fast I couldn’t catch them, let alone make them make sense.

  “Th-there was an envelope on… on my car. Ears, there were ears. Human ears. I don’t know who—”

  The officer behind the precinct front desk was staring at me like I was a wild animal about to bolt. “Ma’am,” he said, holding up a hand. “You need to slow down so I can understand you.”

  I tried. I really did. But the pounding in my ears was so loud I couldn’t tell if I was breathing or hyperventilating. I could still smell that awful, metallic scent that clung to the foil in the envelope.

  I closed my eyes and drew in a long, deep breath. Then, with trembling hands, I set the envelope on the desk and tried again. “Someone… they sent me human ears,” I croaked. “And this letter. I’m sorry, I got my fingerprints all over it. I-I know I’m not supposed to—”

  “Kennedy Campbell?”

  I turned toward the deep voice.

  The man who’d spoken was tall and clean-cut with the posture of someone who’d worn a badge for years. Early thirties, maybe, and strikingly handsome, with dark hair and a square jaw.

  “I-I’m sorry,” I said, still half in a daze. “Do I know you?”

  He gave me a quick, apologetic smile and shook his head. “Not exactly. I recognized you from your podcast website. I’m Detective Malachi Sieger. I emailed you yesterday about coming in to talk.”

  I stared at him, barely registering his words. At a time like this, I really shouldn’t have been thinking about how unbelievably attractive he was, but suddenly it was the only thing on my mind. A coping mechanism conjured up by my brain to distract from the earlier horrors, presumably.

  “But… judging by the look on your face,” Detective Sieger continued, “you’re not here about that, are you?”

  Before I could answer, the officer behind the desk cut in, gingerly holding up the envelope of horror. “Sir, she received a disturbing letter. With what appears to be a pair of human ears.”

  The detective’s face changed instantly. Gone was the easy charm, replaced by grim, focused tension. “Take her to Interview Room Three,” he said to the officer. “And get her some water.”

  I stood frozen until his hand rested gently on my shoulder; warm, soft, and grounding. I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to feel such a small gesture of reassurance.

  “We’re going to handle this, Ms. Campbell,” he said quietly. “We just need to log everything into evidence first. Then I’ll be right there with you. Okay?”

  I nodded numbly.

  The interview room was cold in the way only government buildings could be, with gray walls, metal chairs, and a table too clean to feel comforting.

  I sat for what felt like hours with my hands wrapped around a bottle of water someone had pressed into them, though I hadn’t managed to open it yet. My fingertips were still tingling from the envelope.

  The door finally creaked open, and Detective Sieger stepped inside.

  He closed the door behind him and crossed the room with a measured, unhurried stride. Something about the way he moved made me think of a wolf—controlled and confident, but dangerous when necessary.

  “Ms. Campbell,” he said gently, sliding into the chair across from me. “How are you holding up?”

  “I feel like I’m going to puke. And also like I already did. Emotionally, if that makes any sense. And I just realized it doesn’t at all.”

  He nodded, like it totally did make sense. Then he leaned forward. “As I said before, I’m Detective Sieger. I’m here to take your statement and walk you through what’s going to happen next.”

  “Okay,” I said in a small voice. “You can just call me Kennedy, by the way.”

  “All right.” He dipped his chin in another brief nod before going on. “So, the ears have been sent to the lab. They’re running tests to see if they’re real. Sometimes people pull nasty pranks, and unfortunately, you can order some pretty realistic stuff off the internet. Props, prosthetics, even fake organs.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “If the ears are real,” he continued, “they’ll extract DNA and compare it to profiles from open missing persons cases. Most families of missing individuals provide voluntary samples. If nothing matches locally, we’ll expand the search outward to statewide and national databases.”

  As I listened, my gaze snagged on his handsome face for a beat too long. I’d just realized there was something strangely familiar about him, and it wasn’t only because I knew his name from my inbox yesterday.

  I couldn’t quite place it. The cadence of his voice, maybe, or the way his green eyes lingered a second longer than they needed to when they met mine.

  A second later, realization dawned on me. It wasn’t him. It was the setting.

  After my dad was taken by the Carver, throwing my life into total chaos, I’d spent hours upon hours in interview rooms just like this, sitting across from detectives who looked at me with the same mix of curiosity and intensity that Detective Sieger had on his face right now.

  That was the thing getting under my skin. Not him. Just ghosts from my past.

  “Does this happen a lot?” I asked in a tentative tone. “That someone sends body parts to someone else?”

  Sieger’s square jaw tensed for a moment. “No. This is a first for me.”

  “So what happens now?”

  He clicked his pen. “Well, firstly, I’d like you to run me through what happened today.”

  Slowly, haltingly, I described the events leading up to my discovery of the envelope. How I assumed it was the comically rude neighbor at first. How I was going to read it out loud to Freya as a joke.

  God. Poor Freya. Someone would have to call her back and tell her what happened to me, because in that harrowing moment after seeing the ears, I couldn’t even remember what I’d done. Had I screamed incoherently into the phone? Or hung up without a word and bolted to my car?

  Sieger listened quietly, jotting notes as I went. He nodded now and then, not rushing me or interrupting. When I finally trailed off, he looked up. “Leading up to all of this, did you notice anything strange?” he asked. “Any sign that someone’s been following you, for instance?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Someone hacked my laptop recently, but my stepbrother told me it’s a very common scam, and nothing really came of it in the end.”

  He made a note. “Anything else?”

  “Sometimes I get a weird feeling that I’m being watched,” I admitted. “But, um… I have an anxiety disorder. So I think it’s probably just that.”

  “Any signs of someone being inside your home? Items moved? Anything out of place?”

  I considered the question for a moment. “No. The letter made it sound like someone was inside looking at me whenever I did my makeup, but my vanity table is right near a window. So they could’ve just been standing outside.”

  “That’s certainly a possibility. Are you the only person with access to your home?”

  “My mom and stepdad have my spare key, door code, and alarm code in case of emergency. But they’re down in Florida visiting friends right now.”

  Sieger glanced up again. “You have a home security system?”

  “Yes. My stepdad bought it for me as a gift,” I said. “It’s really good. Motion-activated cameras at every entrance, door and window sensors, and surveillance cameras in every room and hall. That’s why I’m certain no one’s actually been inside.”

  “I see. Does anyone else apart from your mother and stepfather have access to this system? Another family member, perhaps?”

  I shook my head. “My sister is away at college, so there’s no need for her to have access to it. And my stepbrother only just moved back to Corwin Bay like I mentioned earlier, so he doesn’t have access either.”

  “All right.” Sieger made a few more notes before sitting up a little straighter. “The person who wrote the letter signed it as ‘K’. Any idea what that could mean?”

  I shrugged. “No clue.”

  “Do you know anyone whose name begins with that letter?”

  “A couple of people. There’s my friend Kelly Wulf, but she moved to England two years ago, so I seriously doubt she’s behind this,” I said, raising a brow. “There’s also Kaylee Anderson. That’s my stepbrother’s ex-wife. But she lives all the way over in Texas, and I barely know her, so there’s no reason to think she did any of this either.”

  “How about surnames?”

  “Well, my stepdad’s last name is Kilkenny. Same with my stepbrother, Declan.”

  “Kilkenny… that’s Irish, right?” Sieger asked, tilting his head slightly.

  “I think so,” I replied. “They both used to joke around about how ridiculous it would be if I ever took their last name.”

  His mouth lifted slightly at the corner. “Kennedy Kilkenny. That’s a bit of a mouthful.”

  “Sure is.”

  “You said your stepfather is away right now. But how about your stepbrother? Declan, was it?”

  “Yeah, or Dec for short.”

  Sieger’s brows furrowed. “You said you spent most of the day helping him unpack before you found the letter on your car,” he said. “How was his behavior today? Anything odd jump out at you?”

  I looked down at the table, gnawing on the inside of my cheek. “Honestly… he was a little bit off,” I said as the phone incident leapt into the forefront of my mind. Guilt instantly churned my guts, and I blurted out my next sentence as fast as I could. “I really don’t think that’s surprising, though, because he’s going through a divorce right now. He’s a bit messed up over it.”

  “Ah, I see,” he said, nodding slowly. “Relationship breakdowns can be really tough on people.”

  As his lips formed the word ‘relationship’, my gaze flicked to his left hand. No ring. No tan line.

  I mentally smacked myself a second later. What the hell was I doing? Yes, the detective was handsome—it was impossible not to notice that—but now really wasn’t the time to be checking out whether he was married or not.

  “Anyone else you can think of?” he asked, forehead creasing.

  “Um… I’m sure there are others, but I’m drawing a total blank right now,” I said. “Can I just let you know if and when I remember them?”

  “Of course.”

  “I doubt the person who sent the letter would use their real initial, anyway,” I said. “That’s practically begging to be caught, right?”

  “True. But we have to explore every angle, just in case.” Sieger tilted his head again. “Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt you? Or maybe just scare you?”

  I went quiet for a moment as I mulled it over.

  “It could be someone who’s upset about the podcast,” I finally said. “Maybe we pissed someone off by starting it, and they decided to go after me before they go after Freya. Or… maybe we even pissed off the Carver himself.”

  Earlier, my mind had been spinning so much that it hadn’t even occurred to me that the Carver might be a possibility. But it made sense. He could be worried that our amateur investigation might ultimately expose him, and that gave him a good reason to try to scare us into shutting down. The letter even included a riddle.

  “That’s a possibility,” Sieger said. “But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet.”

  I laced my fingers on the table and drew in a slow breath. “What’s your honest opinion based on what you’ve seen so far?” I asked. “Do you think this could just be a sick prank from someone who wants to freak me out? Or do you think it’s real?”