Chapter 8: The Echo of the Past
The air in Evelyn’s apartment was heavy with the suffocating weight of unspoken words. The phone call with Liam still lingered in her mind, gnawing at the edges of her sanity. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was spiraling, trapped in a world of her own making, where every step forward led her deeper into a maze of lies, manipulation, and terror. And Liam—Liam had played a part in all of it.
The flashbacks hit her in relentless waves. Faces, names, memories she’d long buried began to resurface, clawing their way to the forefront of her mind. She had tried to forget the case. She had tried to forget the faces of the victims, the twisted reality she had uncovered. But she couldn’t. The past had never let go, and now, as the killer closed in on her, it was clear that the past wasn’t finished with her either.
She paced the floor, her eyes darting from the cluttered desk in the corner to the half-empty glass of water on the coffee table. Her phone buzzed again, breaking her from her thoughts. She glanced at the screen, her heart skipping a beat when she saw the name.
Liam
She hesitated for only a moment before answering, her voice taut with controlled fury.
“What do you want, Liam?”
There was a long pause on the other end before he finally spoke. His voice was low, almost tentative. “Evelyn, you have to trust me. We’re running out of time.”
The words hit her like a punch. She clenched her fist around the phone, her knuckles turning white.
“Running out of time? For what? You’ve been feeding me half-truths and lies from the beginning, Liam. You knew about the case, you knew about the killer, and you never told me. What the hell is going on?”
“I’m not the one you should be angry with,” Liam’s voice cracked. “I’m trying to help you, but you don’t understand—there’s more to this than you think. The killer isn’t just targeting you. He’s targeting everything you’ve ever worked for, everything you’ve ever believed in. And it’s all connected to what happened years ago.”
Evelyn felt the room close in around her, the air thick with the weight of his words. She sank into the nearest chair, her head spinning as she tried to make sense of what he was saying.
“Why now? Why is he coming after me again?” Evelyn’s voice was barely a whisper, her throat tightening with the fear she had tried so hard to suppress.
“You were never meant to uncover the truth, Evelyn,” Liam replied, his voice steady now, as if he had rehearsed the words. “You cracked the case, but the pieces never fit. There were things we couldn’t see, things we didn’t understand. And now, the killer wants to finish what you started. He wants to erase the evidence, erase the truth.”
Evelyn stood, her mind racing as she tried to make sense of the puzzle before her. “What truth? What do you mean?”
Liam was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke again, his words sent a chill down her spine.
“You’re part of the truth, Evelyn. You were always meant to be. The killer—he’s not just targeting you because of your work. He’s targeting you because of what you know. What you saw. What you uncovered.”
Her pulse quickened as the realization began to sink in. The killer didn’t just want her to suffer. He wanted to expose her—her darkest secret, the thing she had buried so deep inside her that she had convinced herself it wasn’t real.
“No,” she whispered, her breath coming in ragged gasps. “No, that’s not possible. I—”
“You were there, Evelyn. You saw it. You saw the truth, even if you didn’t want to.” Liam’s voice became urgent, almost pleading. “It’s all connected. The victims, the case, the killer—everything. And now he’s come for you. The truth is too dangerous to leave in the open. He’s making sure it stays buried. He’s making sure you stay silent.”
Evelyn slammed the phone down onto the table, her hands trembling. The world around her felt like it was spinning out of control. The killer wasn’t just toying with her—he was revealing a truth so horrific that it could destroy everything she had ever worked for.
Her mind raced as she tried to piece it all together. She had been part of something—something dark, something twisted. But what? What had she seen that had been so damning?
Her gaze fell onto the file on the desk—the one she had been avoiding for days. The case that had started it all, the one she had thought was closed. Slowly, her hands reached for the file, fingers trembling as she pulled it toward her. The weight of the paper felt like an anchor, pulling her back into the depths of a nightmare she had never fully escaped.
She opened it carefully, scanning the familiar names and photos. The faces of the victims. The notes. The theories. And then, she found it. A single line of text, tucked at the bottom of a page, almost overlooked.
“Witness: Evelyn Hawke, forensic psychologist.”
Her heart stopped.
She had been there. She had witnessed it. She had seen something she wasn’t supposed to, something so terrible that it had caused her to bury the memory deep within her mind. But the killer remembered. The killer never forgot.
A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts, sending a jolt of panic through her chest. She quickly shut the file and stood up, heart pounding.
“Evelyn?” a voice called from the other side. It was Liam. “Evelyn, open the door. I can help you.”
She froze, her hand hovering over the door handle. She didn’t know who to trust anymore. She didn’t know who was the hunter and who was the prey.
The knock came again, louder this time. “Evelyn, please. We don’t have much time.”
She glanced at the phone lying on the table, the call still open, the faint sounds of Liam’s voice coming through the speaker. Her breath caught in her throat.
She was caught in the web of the killer’s game now—trapped between the man who had once been her ally and the murderer who was determined to expose her past.
And the walls were closing in.
She didn’t have much time left.
The question was—who would make it out alive?
