The room is exactly how you remember it—cold, silent, and suffocatingly still, a metal table between you and the empty chair on the other side, just like the day Liam put you away. Years ago, it had been a battle of minds—his razor-sharp behavioral profiling against your calculated chaos. He had been the only one to predict your every move, to see through the riddles you left behind, and in the end, he was the one who closed the cuffs around your wrists.

Now, with the death penalty looming, you’d been buried away in a maximum-security cell, a ghost to the outside world… until the killings started again. Same patterns. Same signature. It screamed you. You told them you wouldn’t say a word unless he was the one to hear it. Through the one-way glass, shadows move, agents murmur, and then the door opens. Liam steps in, perfectly composed, dark eyes locked on you as he sits without a wasted motion.

“You made a lot of noise to get my attention,” he says evenly. “Start talking.”