Chapter 2

2: 2

When he walked out of the prison, a voice message popped up on his phone.

It was Yara, asking when he was coming home.

Aaron didn't reply. He went straight to the records room, dug out the case files, and carried them over to the major crimes unit.

"New physical evidence has surfaced in the mountain kidnapping case."

"Starting today, we're reopening it."

He took out the final letter sealed in an evidence bag.

The others crowded around it, their faces grim.

"It's been too long. The paper's weathered, extremely fragile."

"The blood's bled through and the writing's blurred. All we can do is have the forensics lab try to restore it."

I stood behind them.

Aaron didn't join the discussion.

He felt his way to a chair and sat down, pressing a tired hand over his eyes.

"Harper, what exactly are you trying to tell me?"

"This letter... if it's real, then were you dead all along?"

"Was my profile actually wrong from the start..."

Beside his hand lay a thick notebook.

Over five years, he'd profiled and sketched the kidnapper more than a hundred times.

Working from nothing but one blurred, dim frame of surveillance footage,

he'd reconstructed countless possible faces of the killer, and every one of them pointed back to me.

He didn't want to believe it either. Again and again he'd tried to overturn the profile,

and not once did it work.

The blood-written letter was sent to the forensics lab.

Aaron didn't go with it.

He sat there, spine straight, eyes shut, calling up the killer's face one more time.

Pencil down, lines drawn, the shape taking form.

I sat beside him and watched his sleeve lift, baring the unhealed knife scar on his wrist.

Five years, and he still hadn't let himself off the hook.

When his fingers pressed hard, red seeped into the gauze.

I wanted to stop him, but my hand passed right through his.

In that moment, I suddenly didn't want the truth to come out so badly anymore.

The lab tech came in carrying the evidence bag.

Aaron's breathing turned heavy all at once.

He thought of what Stephen had said.

"Leona lied to you."

If that was true, then everything he'd built with his profiling was a castle in the air.

The pencil snapped against the paper.

He came back to himself with a jolt and found that the face under his hand,

blurred as it was, still looked like me.

A colleague perched on the edge of the desk and picked up the notebook to look.

"Same as always. Still Harper."

"Mr. Abbott, how do you explain new evidence showing up out of nowhere now?"

"You don't think this is some scheme of Harper's?"

"It was found at my house. The searches back then never covered that place."

"Five years ago, didn't Leona already turn in Harper's taunting letter to be sealed at the station?"

"How is there suddenly another one, a final letter?"

Aaron stubbed out his cigarette on the corner of the desk, not even noticing the spark burning his fingertip red.

The hands that had once treasured nothing more than his sketches were now covered in small scars from cooking for his daughter.

A little burn was nothing.

The forensics tech took his place at the big screen and pressed the remote.

"The results are in."

Aaron pressed his lips together and held his breath.

"The report shows the handwriting on the letter is Harper's."

"And judging from the state of the blood on the paper alone, she lost a massive amount. There's no chance she survived."

Five years ago, Aaron had found both me and Leona at the same time.

He'd walked the mountain for three days and three nights, until the snow blinded him.

All he could do was drag Leona and push toward the way out.

And in that moment, I lay ten steps behind him, my body caked in filthy blood frozen into icicles.

But all Aaron could make out was a smear of red at the edge of his vision.

He shot to his feet as if he'd touched a live wire and fled into the bathroom.

He let no one see his face.

He turned the water on full to cover his sobbing.

"It can't be."

He said it to himself, his voice thin and drifting.

Then he plunged his whole head into the sink, trying to shock himself clear with the icy water.

Three seconds later, Aaron jerked his head up.

He seemed drained of all strength, sinking slowly to the floor.

He opened his mouth wide, wanting to cry, to scream.

In the end all that came out of his throat was a few twisted moans.

Water dripped down, mixing with his tears.

Aaron covered his face with his hand, and suddenly the moment after they'd come down the mountain came back to him.

He'd refused rescue, set on going back to search for Harper.

But Leona, eyes rimmed red, had grabbed him and shown him her raw, bloodied palms.

"Aaron."

"She tried to kill me. I fought back as hard as I could, and I barely made it out alive..."

"I begged my sister to turn herself in, but she said she'd flee somewhere no one could ever find her, that she'd never confess."

And so, back then, he'd given up.