The call came at 2 AM, and Lucia knew before she answered that it was about Maya.
"She's fine," Marcus Chen said immediately. "But she's at a crime scene and she's not leaving and I thought you might be able to talk some sense into her."
Lucia sat up in bed, careful not to wake her husband. "What happened?"
"Another body. Fifth victim. Maya got there before most of my team and she's been standing in the rain for three hours staring at the scene. She won't eat, won't take a break, won't listen to anyone. I'm worried about her."
Lucia closed her eyes. She'd known this would happen eventually. From the moment Maya had announced she was joining the FBI, Lucia had felt the dread settling into her bones. Her big sister, brilliant and driven and so desperately trying to fix something that couldn't be fixed.
"Put her on," Lucia said.
A pause, some muffled conversation, then Maya's voice: "I'm fine, Luce. You didn't need to call her, Marcus."
"You're standing in the rain at a murder scene at two in the morning. That's not fine."
"It's my job."
"Your job is to catch killers, not to become one of them." Lucia heard her own voice sharpen and forced herself to breathe. "I mean—not to let them consume you. You know what I mean."
Silence. Then, quietly: "It's him."
"Maya—"
"I know you don't want to hear it. I know everyone thinks I'm projecting or obsessed or whatever. But Luce, I'm looking at her right now, and she's arranged exactly like—" Her voice cracked. "Exactly like you would have been. If he'd finished."
Lucia's hand went to her throat, an unconscious gesture she'd never quite broken. The scars were long faded, invisible to anyone who didn't know to look, but she felt them sometimes. Phantom sensations of rope and pressure and the certainty that she was going to die.
"Come home," Lucia said. "Come to Portland. Take a few days. See the kids. They miss their aunt."
"I can't. Not now. Not when—"
"Maya, listen to me." Lucia stood, walking to her bedroom window, looking out at the quiet suburban street where nothing bad ever happened. "I survived. I'm okay. You don't have to catch him for me."
"Yes, I do."
"No, you don't. You have to live your life. You have to be more than what he made us."
"I am living my life. This is my life."
And that, Lucia thought, was the problem. Her sister had been sixteen when it happened, old enough to feel responsible, old enough to believe she could have prevented it somehow. Old enough to let it define her.
"Promise me you'll be careful," Lucia said finally, knowing she couldn't win this argument. She never could.
"I promise."
"And promise me you'll eat something. Marcus says you haven't eaten."
A soft laugh. "I'll eat. I love you, Luce."
"I love you too. So much."
After they hung up, Lucia stood at the window for a long time, watching the empty street, remembering the woods. The smell of earth and pine. The sound of his breathing. The moment when she'd realized he was distracted, looking at something in the distance, and she'd run.
She'd never told anyone the whole truth. Not the police, not her therapists, not even Maya. There were some things too terrible to speak aloud, some memories that lived in the body rather than the mind.
But she remembered his face. Even after fifteen years, even though she'd only seen it for a few seconds before he'd grabbed her from behind, she remembered.
And sometimes, in her nightmares, she saw it again. In crowds, in grocery stores, in the face of her children's pediatrician or her husband's colleague or the man who delivered their mail.
Everywhere and nowhere.
Still hunting.
Still free.