Chapter 1

1: 1

My twin sister was kidnapped, and I ended up the prime suspect in the profile drawn by my own fiancé, the forensic profiler.

The night before they came to arrest me, I finally learned the whole thing was a farce my sister had staged herself.

I meant to expose the truth, but Leona Delgado seized me and dragged me up Mount Rainier.

The avalanche came without warning. Aaron Abbott rushed in and saved my sister, and lost his sight for it.

And I slept forever in that snowfield, together with a truth that never saw the light.

When he woke, Aaron asked Leona to read out my last letter.

Leona paused for a moment, then said it was nothing but a taunt.

"She confessed her crimes. Thank you for giving her the chance to walk free."

The case broke wide open, and Aaron's uncanny profiling method made him famous.

The media fell over each other to report on the man who had turned in his own to serve justice.

Half a month later, he married Leona, and they had a sweet little daughter.

Steady treatment, a smooth life.

Until his daughter, who had only just learned to read, dug out that yellowed sheet of paper.

Soft little fingers pressed against those bloody words, her eyes full of confusion.

"Daddy, these two words, 'wronged,' what do they mean?"

1.

In the living room, the little girl was gripping her pencil, laboring over her letters.

"Daddy, my teacher at preschool said today I can write more words than anyone!"

She lifted her head and tapped her own cheek.

Aaron followed the sound of her voice, pulled her close, and kissed her there.

"Yara Whitfield's amazing. How about Daddy cooks barbecue ribs himself tonight?"

"Yes! Daddy's the best!"

The little girl cheered and bounced, her eyes full of adoration.

And I hovered in the air, cold and hopeless, wholly out of place in that warm little scene.

This was the fifth year since I died.

My fiancé Aaron had married the killer. He no longer buried himself in profiles; he'd become a consultant for the major crimes unit and turned back toward home.

Because of that manhunt five years ago, he had gone blind, and his one fixation had been to bring me to justice.

While I was still lost in the thought, Yara had already rummaged through a drawer and pulled out that yellowed letter.

Aaron turned his ear toward her, frowning, and was about to speak when she asked, innocent as anything:

"What does the last thing someone ever writes mean?"

Yara clutched the letter and climbed into his lap to sit, reading it out one word at a time:

"By the time you read this letter, I will already have died wronged. Daddy, the person who wrote this is named Harper Delgado. Who is she?"

Aaron's fingers clenched hard, his knuckles going white.

"It's nothing. Someone I used to know."

Calmly he let the girl go, took the letter, and turned to pick up his cane.

Yara trailed after him, at a loss.

"Daddy, are you going out? You're being so strange. You're scaring me..."

"Don't be scared. Daddy has something urgent. I'll be back soon."

Aaron shut the front door and drew a deep breath.

Rather than wait for Leona to come home and confront her, he wanted to dig into the truth right now.

He opened his phone and quickly arranged to see the other man convicted in the kidnapping case.

I followed him into the prison.

On the far side of the glass, Stephen Harding sat with a strange smile on his face.

Seeing Aaron's sightless eyes, he burst out laughing, rocking back and forth.

"Aaron, so even you get a day like this."

"How does it feel, being a blind man? Can you still profile me now?"

Aaron lifted his head and said evenly:

"You're scared."

"Since I walked in, you've touched your nose three times, and your fingers have rubbed together twelve times without you noticing. You're hiding something from me."

The chains rattled as Stephen straightened up.

"Aaron, you think too highly of yourself. So what if you see through me? Everything I had to say, I said long ago."

"I saw a letter. It says she's already dead."

Aaron slapped the letter against the glass, and Stephen's breathing stopped.

A long while passed before he suddenly spoke.

"That's right. She's been dead a long time. Died wronged."

Aaron's body went rigid, and his cane clattered to the floor.

"What's the act for? Aaron, you were the first person to name her a suspect. She's dead, and you served your justice."

"You've got a good life now. Why go digging?"

"To close the case."

Aaron crouched, feeling for the cane, and gripped it tight in his palm, as if gripping the last thread of his reason.

"Five years on, the real culprit behind the Mount Rainier kidnapping is still free."

"Whatever the lead is, I'll hold onto it."

"And someone like her, so cunning, so obsessive, so changeable, I don't believe she's really dead."

At that his throat worked, and he dropped his gaze to feel the scar in his palm.

"Five years ago, she cut my hand open trying to escape. Nearly severed the tendon."

"You don't need to lie to me. How could someone like that die so easily?"

Stephen scoffed.

"Aaron, Aaron."

"To think you can't tell a killer from a victim, and you can't tell a person from a ghost either."

"What are you getting at?"

Aaron lifted his head and said:

"Leona's legs are crippled, and she's soft, gentle. She's just an innocent victim."

I hovered across from him, and all I could see was that cold, distant look on his face,

the same as five years ago, the day he cut me off and ended it.

Back then I raged and screamed, half out of my mind,

and he only watched me like that, then shut the door and left.

"Besides, five years ago I analyzed every single person around Leona."

"Only Harper ever said she wanted Leona dead, and only she had a motive."

In the chat thread between Aaron and me, his reply was still there.

He'd written: "Harper, stop this madness."

"I can understand you treating your own sister like some imagined enemy."

"But if you kill someone, I will absolutely put you behind bars. For someone as obsessive and violent as you, prison would be better."

I looked at the certain little curl at the corner of his mouth.

Aaron, do you really think you're always right?

Stephen leaned in, intrigued.

His eyes turned mocking.

"But when Leona knelt in front of me, begging me to help her stage a kidnapping, she didn't look one bit crippled."

"Aaron, has it never occurred to you that everything your profile was built on was a lie?"

"Leona staged the whole thing herself, and there was never anything wrong with her legs."

Aaron shot to his feet.

The chair behind him toppled, crashing to the floor.

His face darkened further.

"To muddy the investigation and throw off the police, you really have gone to great lengths."

"Too bad your testimony won't be accepted."

"I'll find the truth myself."