It’s a disturbing thought, but one I can’t help mulling over as I pull into my own shadowy driveway and kill the engine. The night is chilly and utterly silent here in the woods. No owl sound, no coyotes, no moon to light my way. Cricket trots ahead of me and up onto the porch, stopping once to mark her territory. I unlock the door, my thoughts still on Jenny and her tie to all this. With serial violent offenders, who they come to target is a crucial piece of understanding why. For Caleb, the complex series of triggers in his past have to include his sister’s violent murder. But his relationship with Jenny would have been heightened long before by other factors, his mother’s abandonment, his father’s neglect and alcoholism. Losing a sister doesn’t turn everyone into a killer, obviously. Something had already begun to twist Caleb at the root so that Jenny’s death had done more than plunge him into grief—it had broken him.

Whatever the specificity of his wounds—and I can only hazard educated guesses just now—at some point they became too pressing and too loud for him not to act on them. He started to hunt girls—not grown women. Girls that resemble the sister he lost. Taking them means he finally has some control over the story, over how life has shortchanged him. One victim at a time, he can overthrow the helplessness he felt as a boy, and exert a sense of power.

I’m deep in the swirl of all of this, utterly preoccupied, when I reach for the lights. They flutter on, dispelling shadows. And then my breath seizes. Caleb is here in the cabin, sitting in the middle of my couch.

Adrenaline kicks through me. I can taste it, cold and acidic, at the base of my tongue.

He’s wearing all black, as if he means to disappear. His face above his dark collar seems to hover. “Don’t try to run,” he says with an eerie calm. His hand reaches out for the back of Cricket’s neck. She’s standing beside him just as calmly. They’ve already met, after all.

The unease I felt in town and on the drive home has turned instantly into violent, electric fear. It overwhelms me with such force I wonder for a moment if I can speak or move. On the coffee table in front of Caleb, there’s a hunting knife with a serrated blade, seven or eight inches long. Somewhere in my mind, I’ve stored the knowledge that could help me now…how much damage a weapon like this could do, depending on where he plunged it into my body, with how much power, and how many times.