Sharon didn’t scare easy, but there was something about this voice that sent a chill trickling down her spine.

‘You know what? That’s one horrible joke, whoever you are.’

‘Who said it was a joke?’

‘Fuck you, you sick freak. Don’t call me again.’ In a burst of anger, Sharon almost slammed her cellphone against the sideboard but she stopped herself just in time.

A few seconds later, it rang again – same number. Sharon just let it ring out.

A few more seconds after the ringing had stopped, a text message came through.

C’mon, answer your phone, Sharon. Don’t you want to play?

Sharon knew that she should just ignore it, but after such a long day her anger got the better of her. She quickly typed a reply.

Go fuck yourself, freakshow. Whoever you are, I’m blocking your number.

Ping.

Just moments after Sharon had replied, a new text message arrived.

You know what? Forget about the phone. Let me ask you something. Did you remember to lock your front door?

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

All of a sudden, the handle on her front door twisted three times in quick succession.

‘Jesus!’ Sharon jumped back, almost dropping her cellphone. Her frightened stare shot toward the door. ‘What the fuck?’

Thankfully, she had locked the door. Ping. A new message.

She looked down at her phone again. Only then did she realize that she was trembling.

C’mon, open the door, Sharon. I’m right outside. Let’s have some fun.

The handle on the front door moved again, this time a lot slower, and only once.

‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

As Sharon began panicking, her eyes immediately filled with tears.

Ping.

OK, who needs the door anyway? Maybe I can get in some other way.

The pause that followed was suddenly punctuated by desperate fear.

Oh fuck, Sharon thought as the memory came back to her. The window.

Despite how frightened she actually was, Sharon’s survival instincts took over and she exploded toward the living room window. She never knew her legs could move that fast. As she slammed it shut and drew the curtains, her towel came undone and fell to the floor. She was way too scared to care.

Between heavy breaths, her terrified gaze flitted between the door and the window for a long moment. Finally, her brain, which had gone momentarily numb, re-engaged.

What the fuck are you waiting for, Sharon? she told herself. Call 911 now.

She quickly tapped the numbers into her cellphone and pressed the ‘call’ button.

Nothing. No dial tone.

‘What the hell?’ She looked at the display screen. She had not one signal bar. ‘How can this be?’ she yelled at her phone through clenched teeth. Just a moment ago she’d received a new message.

What Sharon had no way of knowing was that every time the caller got off the phone, he switched on his own cellphone signal scrambler.

Instinctively, she stretched her arm out and moved it around, searching for a signal.

Nothing. Not even half a bar.

‘Shit. Shit.’

Her brain turned another rusty wheel.

‘Landline.’

She rushed toward the phone on the counter in the kitchen, but just as she was about to snatch it from its cradle, it rang.

Stunned, Sharon brought it to her ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Let’s play a game, Sharon.’

Sharon froze.

‘And it starts like this. Lights out.’

In that instant, her entire house fell into darkness. Sharon let out another terrified scream. Her eyes circled the room but she saw nothing.

‘Oh my God, what the hell is happening?’ she said into the phone in a shaky voice. ‘Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?’

Sharon still had her cellphone in her hand. She swiped her thumb across the screen and turned on the flashlight application.

‘Do you know what your mistake was, Sharon?’ The voice came through the landline receiver once again.

Sharon could do nothing but breathe hard.

‘You went for the wrong window.’

Terror ripped through her heart as she remembered – her bedroom window.

Panicking and completely out of ideas, Sharon frantically moved her cellphone around. The weak light that came from the tiny flashbulb at the back of it cast shadows everywhere, but as those shadows passed over the door that linked the living room to the corridor, she saw a human silhouette move across it.

The next time she heard the man’s voice, it did not come from the receiver by her ear. It came from behind her.

‘I’m already inside.’

Twenty-Five

As he finally placed his pen down on his desk, Hunter noticed that his hands were shaking. Beads of cold sweat had also formed on his forehead.

He stood up, and as he did his knees clicked noisily. He’d been sitting down for way too long. He stretched his long frame and the stiff muscles in his back and legs responded with what felt like a thousand painful pinches. Hunter forced the stretch even more, this time bringing his neck into it. It clicked just as noisily as his knees.

Damn, he thought, grinding his teeth. Carlos is right. Maybe I am getting too old for this crap.

Hunter had just spent the last three hours transcribing and re-transcribing every word from the note the killer had sent Mayor Bailey that morning. He’d made twenty-five copies of it, trying to match the killer’s handwriting as best as he could.

And he’d done a great job.

The exercise was simple. Hunter wasn’t trying to memorize the note word for word, though, after recopying it so many times, that was exactly what had happened. But no, what he was really trying to do was to get some sort of insight, however small, into the killer’s mind, into the killer’s way of thinking. He was trying to think like the killer did, to feel what the killer felt when he wrote those words. He was looking for hidden meanings and word tricks. Trying to read between the lines.

After three laborious hours, Hunter had come up with very little. To him, it felt as if the killer knew that the note would be scrutinized to its very last detail. Every word, every letter, analyzed and reanalyzed – physically and psychologically – and the killer had locked every door; he had left no openings, no pathways into his psyche.

Hunter knew that carrying on any longer would bring him no better results.

He poured himself another large cup of black coffee, returned to his chair and half swiveled it around to face the old-fashioned picture board by the east wall. Despite how young their investigation was – less than twenty-four hours old – the board was already plastered with information and photographs.

Forensics had come back with the results of the test that had been run on the blood used to write the note that had been left lodged inside the victim’s throat – I AM DEATH. As Hunter and Garcia were expecting, the killer had used Nicole Wilson’s blood to write it, but according to the forensics report, it didn’t seem as though he had used a brush to do it. Instead, he had used his own fingers, dipping them in his victim’s blood before carefully inscribing each letter. Not surprisingly, forensics had found no fingerprints, partial or otherwise. The killer, no doubt, had been wearing gloves.