“It wasn’t your fault,” Ilse murmured.

“No… No, but it was. I didn’t do anything, Dr. Beck! Nothing!” Samantha’s hand tightened around the tea mug all of a sudden.

“Careful, that’s hot.”

Samantha didn’t let go, her teeth set.

“Sam, it’s going to be all right,” Ilse said, quietly. “There’s nothing you could have done.” She reached out and gently pulled Sam’s fingers from the mug.

For a moment, Ilse paused, frowning. She thought she heard a gentle knock on the door. But when she listened, all she could hear was the rustling of trees outside the window.

Samantha finally released her grip. But her other hand had clenched into a fist, and she pressed it to the table. In a ghost of a whisper, she murmured, “I should have done something… I—I should have fought back. Anything. Both times, I didn’t do anything, Dr. Beck. I just let him—let him…” She shivered and glanced off.

Ilse patted Sam’s hand again. “You were a child the first time. He snuck up on you this time.”

“I didn’t even run! I didn’t fight. I was so helpless, so scared…” Sam closed her eyes. “I promised myself, if I ever faced him again, I’d do something. I’d fight back. Protect myself. Even… even if it meant…” She glanced off and sniffed. “Even if it ended for me. At least I would have done something, you know?”

Ilse tried to console Sam, but inwardly, her own mind was whirring.

She did know. Knew more than Sam even realized. She pictured the two postcards. Hilda Mueller. Someone taunting her. Pictured the surfacing memories, repressed, hidden. Memories she had long since forgotten, long since buried deep beneath shovel after shovel of neglect and willful ignorance.

Memories that refused to stay buried, as if washed free by a storm.

Someone was hunting her too. It was as if fate had aligned. As if, like Dr. Mitchell often said, his clients’ lives mirrored his own life. Small truths were often hidden in the places where one might help another. Dr. Mitchell often claimed he learned just as much from his clients as they did from him. Just as much from his students. She wasn’t sure she’d ever believed him before…

But now…

Nothing could be more true of Samantha’s returning tormentor.

Ilse could feel, even now, eyes fixed on her. Something, or someone, hidden somewhere watching her, stalking her. She wondered if this was how Sam felt. Ilse had thought her client had been paranoid. Ilse had dismissed the woman’s cry for help. She’d failed to act.

And now there Sam sat, a bandage around her neck, her voice trembling. She’d been left in a room of corpses. Left to bleed out among the dead. The killer, it seemed, had wanted her to suffer the most. Wanted her fear, as if he’d been feasting on the terror itself.

Ilse shivered and closed her eyes for the briefest moment. She found her own hand curling on the table. Found it forming a fist.