“I’ve been a bad boy,” he told the operator, drawing out the adjective with a smirk in his voice that was meant for me. “I need to be stopped.”

“Sir? Are you in danger? Is it someone with you who’s in danger?”

“Everyone near me is in danger. I kill people. I murder them. I stab them. I drown them.”

He put an emphasis on that last one, and I felt myself ready to be sick. I pulled at the door again, but it wouldn’t budge. I wanted to shout, to say something, but my throat felt paralyzed with shock. I couldn’t get out the words.

“Send the police,” he said again.

“The police are on their way. Sir, are you alone? Is anyone with you?”

“No one’s with me,” he said, with an irony for me to savor. “I’m alone. Just me. Dylan Moran.”

“Stay right there, sir. The police are two minutes out.”

“I need to be punished,” he said intensely.

“Sir? Stay on the line, sir.”

“My evil is limitless. My evil is . . . infinite.”

He used the word.

Eve’s word.

Infinite.

I was still pulling on the closet door, but all of a sudden, the counterpressure disappeared. The door flew open in my hand, and I lost my balance, stumbling backward. I could still hear the dispatcher speaking on the phone.

“Sir? Sir, are you there? Sir?”

I charged the closet, but no one was inside now. I yanked the chain on the bulb overhead and squinted at the bright light. The closet was empty, nothing but Karly’s and my clothes hanging on hooks and a cell phone on the floor, still broadcasting the voice of the 911 dispatcher.

“Sir? Sir? Stay right there. The police are on their way.”

I was alone, and my doppelgänger was gone. I was the only one here.

Dylan Moran, who’d just confessed to murder.

Dylan Moran, who held a bloody knife in his hand.

My fingers opened wide, and the knife clattered to the floor. I grabbed my head in wild despair and realized that I needed to get out of this house. To leave. To escape. To never come back. I ran from the bedroom, but as I did, I saw that I was already too late.

Sirens wailed. Flashing lights lit up the windows from the front and back.

The police were here.

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

I met them at the building door.

Two burly Chicago cops stood on my front step, their squad car parked diagonally at the curb, its lights flashing. One had his hand close to the gun in his holster. The other was talking on a radio to another team of officers who’d obviously arrived at my house via the alley.