Stephanie didn’t speak during the drive to the hospital. She was still trying to process what she had learned. She had finally met someone she used to know. She had met someone who could give her the answers she had been searching for from the moment she was found in the woods outside Gavinmire. It was the nature of the relationship that made her nervous if not terrified. She couldn’t stand the thought of the expectations he must have. She had experienced those before, doctors expecting her to get her memory back in mere months when nothing ever helped her remember. She didn’t want this man to expect her to remember him after some set amount of time together. She was a new person now. While she was interested in her past, this life was all she knew right now, and she didn’t want to have to explain that to someone that she used to date.

Another part of her was eager. She had dated a few times but none of those relationships felt…right. Just talking to Liam for more than a passing moment and on some topic other than this dreadful case made her heart beat faster. It distracted her from the fact that the murderer had obviously taken an interest in her. There was something about his story that bothered her. She didn’t think he was lying as much as holding something back. What was he hiding? Stephanie shook her head. She needed to focus, focus on the survivor. They wouldn’t have long to question him, if they even could. The doctors might not allow it right away.

She parked outside the hospital and rushed inside. She could feel Liam following close behind, but she couldn’t hear him. His movements were too quiet. “Detective Hughes,” the emergency room secretary acknowledged her arrival. “I assume you are here about the boy?”

“Yes, do you know if we will be allowed to question him briefly?” she asked despite the urgent nature of this situation. The list of fatalities had been large. Fifteen dead, one survivor. All of the other murders had been singles. An escalation like this could turn into a spree if they didn’t catch the man responsible before he struck again.

“You might not be able to get anything coherent out of him. He’s been pretty hysterical since the ambulance brought him in here. The doctor said that he would allow it but only if you are quick and don’t exasperate his condition,” the woman was quick to reply. She had been worried about that, but she knew that there was a good chance that she would be able to get a few answers.

Stephanie followed a nurse to the survivor’s room. She swallowed when she saw him. The doctors had placed bandages over his face. The poor guy's eyes were removed while he was still alive. She doubted that would have been anything other than torturous. The guy was trembling like crazy despite whatever sedatives and pain relievers the doctors had given him. She looked at the name on the patient’s chart and was startled to see that this kid was Kaylie Summer’s boyfriend. His alibi had checked out, so she hadn’t given him a second thought. “Excuse me,” she said gently, hoping that she could calm the man down before questioning him. The man flinched and started blubbering unintelligibly. She couldn’t even understand a word he was saying. Stephanie sighed. This kid had suffered too much, but it was beginning to look a lot more like the murderer had been targeting Kaylie Summers and her boyfriend directly. The why of the matter was a different issue completely. He reached for his face, scratching at the bandages coving his face. Stephanie lunged forward, unwilling to let the man suffer any more. She grasped his hand, ignoring the pain of his fingernails digging into her flesh, drawing blood. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” Stephanie murmured.

She didn’t know how long she stood there repeating those words before the guy stopped actively fighting against her. Brent Collins had suffered at the hands of the murderer, but why had he been spared. “Brent, do you think that you can tell me what happened tonight?”

The guy stiffened. “I should have listened to her. I should have looked into it. It’s my fault.”

“What are you talking about?” she kept her voice light, calming. She needed to keep Mr. Collins calm if she was to get the answers she needed.

“Kaylie, we fought a few months back. She thought I was having someone follow her. I wasn’t and we fought over it. I should have looked into it, found out who was following her. She wouldn’t have died if I had.”

“I see,” she managed. The murders that Liam and his partner had been tracking stopped around the same time. A cooling-off period wasn’t completely unheard of for serial killers, but this one lasted longer than most of this murderer’s breaks. She had been right about Kaylie Summer’s murder being a targeted attack, but why had she been targeted. “Do you think you can describe the killer?”

The man went rigid at her question, and she was afraid he wouldn’t answer. “He wasn’t a man, and the bird wasn’t a bird. The bird wasn’t a bird,” he started to tremble again, and his hands started to tighten on her wrists again. He didn’t draw blood this time, but she knew that she would probably be bruised from the encounter. It wasn’t nearly the worst she had suffered during a case. “They killed everyone and then the bird stole one eye and made me watch him eat it. Then he plucked out my other eye. They were going to kill me too. Why did they let me live?”

Stephanie froze at his words. Was the man in the video, not a man? Was that a costume? She knew female serial killers weren’t exactly rare, but they were not as common as men. What did he mean by the bird not being a bird though? She had seen the bird on the security tapes. Something about it unsettled her, but she hadn’t been able to place it. The actions suggested a sort of demented nature to the crimes. “The man ate your eye?” Stephanie asked for clarification.

“No, the bird that wasn’t a bird,” the man became more frantic.

“Are you saying that the killer had trained a bird to help carry out the murders?”

“No, the bird isn’t a bird. The man is a monster and the bird is one too.” The man started to thrash almost hitting her with one of his legs as he flailed about. The only thing that stopped the man was Liam’s sudden approach. He stepped up behind her and forced the leg back down on the bed. She could have sworn that he heard him growling something foreign under his breath.

Liam went stiff as he asked, “Where did you get that necklace?”

The man immediately calmed. “Kaylie gave it to me after we stopped fighting. She said her mythology professor helped her with the stalker and she gave the necklace to me as an apology. If he helped, then why did she get killed?”

The man started to tremble again, and the door opened suddenly. “All right officers. Time to go. My patient’s vitals are all over the place, and you are exasperating his condition. He needs his rest before we can consider surgery.”

Stephanie frowned. The professor had lied to her. He knew something but hadn’t told her. It was looking a lot like Kaylie Summer’s stalker was also her killer. The drugs and trauma probably explained Brent Collins’s description of the killer or killers. Maybe there were two killers and the man just hadn’t been able to explain that through everything. She would have to talk to him again once he had calmed down and had his injuries fully treated. In the meantime, she had a professor to question.