The Eighth
Aiden’s POV
Now that date crawls under my skin like a parasite, a tumor of remembrance and terror. Every day on the calendar, when it makes that circle, my heart skips a beat, and I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack. It’s more than a number; it’s a date.
This rhythm he began, and my body is doomed to follow it.
I get out of bed hours before the alarm goes off, and I lie on my back looking at the ceiling. I listen. I wait for something—anything—to break the fragile silence.
And today, it does.
Normal is how the sun rises in the morning. Cold coffee in a discolored mug reeked of ash. Dana was across the room, cursing at her shattered laptop, its power cord frayed and jangled. Me, looking at a murder board that resembles more a mural of madness than an actual case. Four women gone.
Red strings tie smiling faces to places, to timelines, to nowhere. No answers. Only faces.
The precinct is rather quiet what with it being the weekend and all.
The most prominent sound is the buzz of fluorescent lights, a shrill acoustic buzz that grates on the nerves. A suspenseful hush that seems to occur ahead of a thunderstorm, ahead of the rending of the heavens.
From there dispatch calls. The tone was tinny, official, and anxious.
“Detectives, possible homicide. Midtown. 300 West 54th. Victim identified as corporate lawyer. Scene secured.”
The room never freezes. It shatters.
Dana meets my eyes. Dark, all business are her own. “What date is today?”
I look at the wall clock, the second hand moving incessantly. "The thirteenth.”
There’s no need for us to say anything else. We bolt, grabbing our jackets.
By the time we arrive, there are already hundreds of cops here. The high-rise lobby is a sea of blue, the revolving doors sealed off. Strobe light illuminates the wet street in streaks of red and blue.
A yellow tape cordons off the entrance, a harsh, unnatural demarcation line. A small crowd of onlookers, huddled in the rain under umbrellas, is kept at a distance by officers who appear rattled already, pallid in the morning light.
Dana and I force our way through, badges out. “Detectives.” The word sounds hollow.
The victim sprawled on the white marble floor of the firm's 40th-story private lounge. The room is all glass and steel and sterile and cold. She’s still in her blazer — sharp, expensive gray, that we know wasn’t taken off. Her eyes are apparently half-opened and fixed on the ceiling with a dull surprise. Mouth slack. Blonde, hair meticulously styled, is splayed out around her head like a broken halo, stark against the dark, pooling blood.
There is her name tag has not been removed from her shirt: Andrea Holt.
Lead litigation partner.
I kneel down next to the body, the metallic tang of blood sharp in the air.
There was blood pooling at the nape of its neck—clean, crisp. The same signature wound as all the other victims. One clean cut.
Dana swallows hard next to me, her knuckles white as she clutches her notebook. “Same angle. Same precision. Left-handed, single-edge blade.”
I nod, my hands trembling as I don a new pair of latex gloves, the snap against my wrist sounds in the silence. The body hasn’t been moved by the coroner. “Let’s see the mark.”
We tilt her head a little. Already, the skin is cool. And there it is — not a letter, but a clean, purposeful incising just behind the ear, where the skin is thinnest.
Two numbers this time. 8 9.
Dana furrows her brow and leans in. “Numbers now? What the hell?”
“Maybe it’s not numbers,” I murmur, because I don’t want to be heard. “Maybe it’s some other code. A new cypher.”
She shakes her head slowly and you can feel the frustration. “Why would he change from letters to numbers? It screws the profile. He’s evolving.”
“Or he’s escalating” I whisper. “He’s leaving something that only he can understand.”
Again, I trace the mark with my eyes. It’s painstaking, executed by the steady hands of a man who isn’t hurried, and who shows no pity. Not a drop of hesitation. It’s not violence; it's artistry to him.
The coroner approaches, his mouth a grim line. “No defensive wounds. No sign of struggle. No broken nails, no skin under her fingers.
She knew him. Or at least, for a long time she wasn't afraid of him.”
Of course she did. They always do.
The firm’s HR head — a jittery man named Peters with too much gel in his hair and sweat gathering on his upper lip — informs us that Andrea was expected at a client luncheon near the middle of the day. When she didn’t show, her assistant came looking. Discovered her in this way, the immaculate lounge became a tomb.
No cameras in the lounge itself. "Privacy issues," Peters says, twisting his hands. There is just one camera at the reception, and the feed is conveniently corrupted. Not static, but a clean, digital void. A solid block of gray that begins at 09:58 a.m. and ends at 10:59 a.m. Too clean to be an accident. It’s a wipe.
Typical.
Dana signs notes, her pen scratches angrily on the pad. "Who else was in the building?"
“Roughly a dozen staff on this floor. Half were on lunch or in meetings elsewhere.”
“Anyone see her with someone?”
He hesitates, patting his lip. “She had a meeting at 10. A visiting guest. Male. He signed in as ‘E.Lewis.”
The earth lurches. The air inside my lungs turns to ice.
Dana and I share a look that conveys more than words ever could. This is it.
“Ethan Lewis?” I say, my voice flat and neutral. without any inflection).
The man nods, oblivious. “Yes, that’s the right one.” He had presented his ID at the reception. University credentials Said he was a consultant on a partner project with Ms. Holt’s firm.”My jaw tightens so much it hurts.
We’d been trying to pin him to the New York killings for weeks, but he was a ghost. We couldn’t tie him to any of the victims directly. Now,he just strolled right into the middle of one, as bold as brass, using his own name.
I back away, heart pounding a heavy, torturous beat. Dana calls dispatch to send a tech team for the recovery of security footage, fingerprints, and dna swabs from the entire floor.
I head for the lounge window. It has a view of the city, the glass spotless and icily cold.Andrea's reflection stares back
at me from the ground her life was frozen in space.
The 8 and 9 glare at me like it’s personal.
what does that mean?
In the afternoon, a coroner confirms the death_time between 10:15 am and 10:45 am for the victim.
Lewis had checked in at ten. Signed out at ten-fifty-eight.
Right on schedule.
We wait in the car outside the station so long, the rain begins to let up, drumming an agitated beat against the windshield. Dana’s quiet to my left, looking over the digital doss on her tablet once again, the glow illuminating her face.
It’s like now she mumbles, 'this isn’t random anymore'.” He’s not just hunting. He’s... curating.”
“It never was,” I say, the wipers pounding out a frantic, futile rhythm. ”But now he’s toying with us. He wants us to see him.”
Maybe those numbers “could be dates? Or ages? Or chapters of his book.”
She looks at me. "You think the book again?"
“Everything stems from that,” I reply. “The Thimeen Verse – poetry on flawless endings. 89 might be a verse, or a page number, or a message to himself. In either case he wants us to know that he’s not done.”
The rain darkens and hammers on the roof. I reel. I can sense the pattern inching closer, but it’s not solid enough to make out.
Lewis. Colorado. Lawyers. 13th. Earrings missing.
I watch the dashboard, mesmerized by rain roll until danna lips “You think ruthie’s safe?”
Like a slap, her name brings me back.
“She should be,” I say, but somehow it sounds like I’m accusing it of being a lie. “She's cautious. She knows the risk ..."
But I don't believe it. Ruthie is kind. She's open. And this bastard preys on kindness. She works in a clinic that accepts walk-ins. Anybody could come. Lewis could charm his way through those doors; we’ve seen his type before—cultured, calm, too normal to suspect.
I clutch the wheel with my thumb, battling the primal, visceral need to drive straight to her place.
Dana notices. “Go check on her, Aiden. I’ll take care of the paperwork. I’ve got this.”
I shake my head, trying to suppress the panic. “No. We can’t let him think he’s got us under his skin. He wants a reaction. That’s the game.”
Still, my pulse won’t calm.
Inside the station again, we gather the proof. The board is given a new photo.
• Surveillance footage: corrupted, confirmed digital wipe.
• Entry log: verifies E. Lewis at 10 a.m.
• Victim’s phone: gone. He took it.
• Earrings: one missing.
Always the right one. A tiny, blood-stained pearl earring nestles in the evidence bag on my desk. Her left one is still in her ear.
When the forensics report comes in, it only makes the hole in my stomach bigger. The lab techs are quick, but the word is not good. No DNA, no hairs, no fibers. The man is clean. A phantom.
Except for one thing.
A partial fingerprint on the polished edge of the coffee table — a clean ridge pattern.
Not quite enough to make a match in CODIS, but the analyst highlights one thing in red ink.
“Same unique ridge break pattern (bifurcation) as partial recovered from Greta Johnson’s windowsill, Case 45A-NY.”
That’s it.
The thread we’ve been missing. The first real piece of science that connects him to more than one scene.
I push back from the table and exhale a breath that I feel like I’ve been holding for weeks.
Dana leans forward, her eyes electric. “That’s him, Aiden. That’s the tether.”
I nod. “Yeah. But until his military or university records provide us with a complete match, it’s just suspicion.”
She slams the file shut, a hunter’s smile on her face. “Then we’ll get a full match. I am going to request the evidence samples from Colorado in the Elise Morgan case. If the prints line up... I’m getting a warrant for his university records right now.”
“Then we have him,” I say, finishing the line.
The burn from the adrenaline felt like electricity in my veins. We’ve been blindfolded, groping in the darkness for weeks. Now the lights are coming on, one by one.
But it isn’t victory I’m feeling. It is dread.
Because murderers like Lewis don’t cease when they’re almost too exposed. They don't run. They accelerate.
The precinct is emptying out by the time it gets dark. I remain, already hypnotized by the board once again, the janitor's buffer humming down the hall.
Veronica Amira. Greta. Marjorie. Tessa. Andrea.
Six women.
Six dates.
The letters we’d plucked from their bodies now said: T,E,S,A,EE
And now, two numbers. 8 9.
T,E,S,A,EE, 89
It’s nonsense Until it isn’t.
Dana once joked that I dream in evidence boards. She’s not wrong. My brain cycles through combinations, spells out different words, I trace them on the board until my fingertip is stained with ink from the dry-erase marker.
Maybe they’re initials. Maybe they spell a word in reverse. Maybe they’re coordinates.
Then I remember something Lewis said in that old interview: “Symmetry demands repetition. ”
If this is mirror writing—letters, then numbers—he’s filling something in. Counting down or building up.
I close my eyes and scroll through all of our files, his lectures, his poetry.
Eighth and ninth... Might be octaves eight and ninth.
I grab my laptop, and the screen blazes on. I open the scanned version of The Thirteenth Verse that we retrieved from the university archive.
Verse 8: “Muse quakes at the price of formation.”
Verse 9: To bring her silence to perfection, I must first make her sound vanish.
I fix my gaze on the writing until my bowels cramp.
It’s not like he’s just randomly picking people on whom to inflict harm—he’s choosing the poems.
And verse nine—silencing her voice—indicates he’s going after someone who speaks, who has a voice.
A lawyer, like Andrea. Her “sound” was her job.
Or a witness.
Or someone who knows him.
I swallow hard, the coffee I drank hours ago turning to acid.
Ruthie.
The breath-snatching thought crashes into me out of nowhere. She’s the only one outside the investigation who’s seen my routine and my doubts and my obsession with the thirteenth. I’ve talked to her. I’ve confided in her. I’ve given her a voice in this. If Lewis ever listened—if he ever looked through me—he could find her. He would see her as part of my creation.
My phone buzzes on the desk, making me jump.
Dana again. “Aiden, are you still at the precinct?”
“Yeah.” My voice is a croak.
“Rest up. We’ll chase the warrants with fresh eyes in the morning.”
“Sure.”
But as I hang up, I know I won’t. I look at the photo of Andrea Holt one more time. Her smile is
frozen in the pan. The numbers etched in her flesh.
8 9.
The killer is still writing his story.
And the next chapter isn’t here yet.