POV: Amber Hayes
"I'm not a criminal."
I've said it seventeen times in the last three hours. The detective across from me—balding, tired, smelling like coffee and disappointment—doesn't blink.
"Then explain how you knew Julie Marks was going to push Richard Huang off a balcony." He taps his pen against the metal table. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound drills into my skull. "Explain how you knew the exact time. The exact location. The exact method."
My throat is sandpaper. They haven't given me water since we got here. "I told you. I heard—"
"You heard voices through walls that don't exist." The detective leans forward. "Ms. Hayes, do you know what that sounds like to me?"
"Crazy. I know how it sounds." My hands shake in my lap. I clench them into fists. "But I'm telling the truth."
"Truth?" He slides a folder across the table. Inside are printouts. Articles. Headlines I wish I could forget. "JOURNALIST FABRICATES EVIDENCE—Amber Hayes Destroys Innocent Man's Career." "DISGRACED REPORTER LOSES LICENSE." "Hayes Family Cuts Ties with Daughter After Scandal."
Every word is a knife. Every headline a reminder of how far I've fallen.
"Your history with truth is questionable at best," the detective says. Not unkind, just factual. Which somehow hurts worse. "You destroyed a man's reputation with fake evidence. Lost your journalism license. Got sued by three different parties. Your own parents won't talk to you." He closes the folder. "Why should anyone believe you now?"
Because I'm different now. Because I've lost everything and have nothing left to lie about. Because the voices are real and terrifying and I just want them to stop.
But I don't say any of that. I just stare at my hands and feel small.
The door opens. A female officer pokes her head in. "Detective Harris, we need you. The Marks woman is asking for a lawyer and making accusations."
Harris stands. "Don't move, Ms. Hayes. We're not done."
The door closes. The lock clicks.
I'm alone in a box that smells like fear and industrial cleaner. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. My borrowed coat-check vest sits on the chair beside me, evidence bagged and tagged like I'm already guilty.
Eight months ago, I had everything. Career. Love. Family. Respect.
Now I'm barefoot in a police interrogation room, trying to convince people I'm not insane.
The voices took even more from me—they took the option of hiding. Of staying invisible. Of surviving quietly.
I drop my head to the cold metal table and fight the urge to cry. Crying won't help. It never does.
The door opens again.
I don't look up. "I already told you everything—"
"Detective Harris has been dismissed."
That voice. Silk over steel. Cold and precise and absolutely in control.
I lift my head.
Dante Cross fills the doorway like he owns it. Still in that perfect suit, though his tie is loosened now. His ice-blue eyes lock onto mine, and I feel stripped bare. Exposed. Like he can see every broken piece of me and is cataloging them for later use.
"Everyone out," he says without looking away from me.
"Sir, this is our interrogation—"
"Out. Now."
Something in his tone makes the officers obey. They file out like students dismissed by a strict teacher. The door closes. The lock clicks again.
We're alone.
Dante pulls out the chair across from me and sits with careful precision. He doesn't speak. Just watches me with those calculating eyes that miss nothing.
The silence stretches until I can't stand it anymore.
"You got what you wanted," I say. My voice cracks. "I'm destroyed. Again. You can leave now."
"I don't want you destroyed." He leans back, somehow making a cheap plastic chair look like a throne. "I want answers."
"I gave answers. Nobody believes them."
"Because you sound insane." He says it matter-of-factly, not cruelly. "Hearing voices through walls. Predicting crimes before they happen. It's either a psychotic break or the most elaborate con I've ever seen."
"It's neither. It's real." I meet his eyes, forcing myself not to flinch. "I know you hate me. I know I ruined your life. But I'm telling the truth."
"My life isn't ruined." Something flickers in his expression. "Damaged. Complicated. But not ruined." He pulls out his phone, taps something, then sets it on the table between us. "Tell me exactly how you knew about tonight. Start from the beginning. Leave nothing out."
"Why? So you can use it against me?"
"Because three months ago, someone started feeding information to a serial killer targeting tech executives." His voice drops, deadly serious. "The FBI suspects someone with inside knowledge. Your predictions match their pattern exactly."
My stomach drops. "You think I'm helping a serial killer?"
"I think you're either involved, legitimately hearing something impossible, or running a con that's gotten people killed." He leans forward. "The woman you 'saved' tonight—Julie Marks—just confessed that anonymous calls have been blackmailing her for weeks. Threatening to expose her affair with Richard Huang unless she killed him. She claims she didn't know she was being recorded during those calls."
The pieces click together in my head. "Someone's setting up the murders and recording the setups. I'm hearing the recordings."
"Or you're part of the setup." His eyes bore into mine. "Prove you're not."
"How?"
"Tell me everything. Every voice you've heard. Every prediction. Every impossible detail." His jaw tightens. "And if I believe you—if you convince me you're telling the truth—then maybe we can stop whoever's doing this before they kill again."
The word maybe hangs between us like a lifeline I'm terrified to grab.
"And if you don't believe me?"
His smile is cold and beautiful and terrifying. "Then I'll make sure you spend the next twenty years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder."
My heart hammers. "That's not fair. I saved Richard tonight."
"Or you staged a dramatic rescue to gain credibility." He tilts his head. "How do I know you weren't working with Julie? That this whole scene wasn't planned to make you look like a hero?"
"Because I have nothing! No money, no reputation, no reason to risk everything on some elaborate con!" The words burst out of me, raw and desperate. "I'm barely surviving. My sister has cancer and I can't afford her treatment. I write garbage articles for websites that pay pennies. I live in a studio apartment that smells like mold and desperation. Why would I risk the tiny bit of stability I have left?"
Dante studies me for a long moment. "Your sister. Lily. Sixteen years old, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, currently in treatment at Mission General."
The fact that he knows this makes me cold. "You investigated me."
"The moment you showed up outside my office." He doesn't apologize. "I know everything about you, Amber Hayes. Your student loans. Your credit card debt. The medical bills you can't pay. The parents who won't help. The ex-fiancé who married your best friend." His voice softens, just slightly. "I know you're drowning."
Tears burn my eyes. I blink them back furiously. "Then you know I'm not some criminal mastermind. I'm just trying to survive."
"Desperate people do desperate things."
"Not this desperate." I take a shaking breath. "You want the truth? Fine. It started three weeks ago. 3:47 AM exactly. I woke up to voices discussing a murder—Marcus Chen, the biotech CEO. They gave details. Method. Timing. Everything. I thought I was going crazy. But then he died exactly like they said."
Dante's expression doesn't change, but something shifts in his eyes. Interest. Focus.
"The voices came back. Different crimes. Always at 3:47 AM, always through my apartment walls. But there's nothing on the other side except brick." My hands shake. I press them flat on the table. "I started writing them down. Predicting them. Tonight was the first time I had enough warning to actually stop one."
"How many predictions?"
"Fourteen. No—fifteen counting tonight."
He pulls out a tablet, swipes through files, then shows me photos. Crime scenes. News clippings. Dates and times.
My blood runs cold. Every single one matches my journal entries.
"These are the murders the FBI is investigating," Dante says quietly. "All connected to tech executives. All made to look like accidents or suicides. All predicted by someone with impossible knowledge."
"I didn't predict them. I heard them being planned."
"By who?"
"I don't know! The voices never use names. Just code words. The Planner. The Enforcer. Sometimes a third voice—the Boss—but rarely." Frustration makes my voice rise. "I'm not making this up. I have recordings."
"Recordings?" His eyebrows lift.
I grab my phone from the evidence bag on the corner of the table—they took it but didn't lock it away yet. My hands shake as I pull up my voice memo app. "I recorded them. Proof that I'm not—"
I play the first recording. The night I heard about Marcus Chen.
Silence. Just my breathing and ambient apartment noise.
No voices.
My stomach plummets. "No. No, that's not—" I play another recording. Another. Another. All the same. Just silence.
"They were there," I whisper. "I heard them. They were real."
Dante takes my phone, examines the recordings himself. His expression is unreadable. "Either you're having auditory hallucinations that don't record, or—"
"Or what?"
He sets the phone down carefully. "Or the voices are being transmitted through a frequency that phone microphones can't pick up."
Hope flares in my chest. "You believe me?"
"I believe something impossible is happening." He stands, paces the small room like a caged predator. "But I need more than belief. I need proof. Evidence. Something concrete."
"How do I prove voices that don't record?"
He stops pacing and turns to me. "You work with me. The next time you hear something, you call me immediately. We document everything. We catch whoever's doing this in the act."
"Work with you?" My laugh is bitter. "The man who just threatened me with twenty years in prison?"
"Consider it a deal." His smile is sharp. "Help me catch a killer, and I'll make sure the district attorney doesn't charge you as an accomplice. Refuse, and I'll make your life exponentially worse than it already is."
It's not a choice. It's an ultimatum wrapped in expensive legal threats.
I should say no. Should demand a lawyer, protection, something other than throwing myself into the orbit of the man I destroyed.
But Lily's medical bills flash through my mind. The voices that won't stop. The chance—tiny and fragile—to mean something again.
"Fine," I say. "I'll help you."
Dante nods once. "Then we start now. Where's your apartment?"
"Mission District. Why?"
"Because if you're hearing voices through the walls, I need to see those walls." He moves toward the door, then pauses. "One more thing. If you're lying to me—if this is some elaborate con—I won't just send you to prison. I'll destroy every tiny piece of life you have left. Your sister's treatment fund? Gone. Your freelance work? Blacklisted. Your apartment? Evicted." His ice-blue eyes pin me in place. "I will make you wish you'd never heard my name."
The threat should terrify me. Instead, it makes me angry.
"You already did that," I say quietly. "Eight months ago, when your career got damaged, mine was obliterated. So go ahead and threaten me with destruction. I'm already living it."
For a moment, something flickers across his face. Surprise? Respect? Guilt?
Then it's gone, replaced by cold control.
"Let's go," he says.
He opens the door. I stand on shaking legs and follow him out of the interrogation room, past the curious stares of officers, through the police station that smells like bad coffee and broken lives.
Dante's car is a sleek black Mercedes that costs more than my entire year's rent. He opens the passenger door, waits for me to get in, then closes it with careful precision.
As he walks around to the driver's side, my phone buzzes.
Unknown number.
Against every instinct screaming at me not to, I check it.
A photo loads. My apartment building. My window. Taken from across the street.
Below it, a message:
"Clever girl. But bringing him into this was a mistake. Now you both die. —The Boss"
My blood turns to ice.
The driver's door opens. Dante slides in, keys in hand.
"We need to—" He stops, seeing my face. "What's wrong?"
I show him the phone. Watch his expression go from curious to granite-hard.
He reads the message twice. Then he starts the car and pulls into traffic with controlled violence.
"Change of plans," he says, voice deadly calm. "We're not going to your apartment."
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere they can't find you." His jaw tightens. "Because whoever's behind this just declared war. And I don't lose wars."
As we speed through San Francisco's night-dark streets, one thought echoes through my mind:
I just became bait in a game I don't understand.
And the hunter knows exactly where I live.