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"Why was that camera pointed at my door?"
Emma didn't flinch. She sat across from me in her dead husband's study, laptop open, that same footage paused on screen. My front door. Three days before David Roy drove off a bridge.
"Because he was watching you," she said.
"Watching me."
"Tracking you. Along with six other people." She turned the laptop. "These are his files. Dates, locations, license plates. Yours is in here eleven times over six months."
I leaned back. The chair creaked. "Your husband stalked me for half a year and you think I'll take his case?"
"He wasn't stalking. He was documenting." Her voice stayed level. Too level. "You were on a list. So was he. Now he's dead and you're still here."
"What list?"
"People who survive accidents they shouldn't."
I stared at her.
She opened another file. Spreadsheet. Names, dates, causes of death. Gas leak. Brake failure. Electrocution. Fall from ladder. The dates ran back eight months, one every seventy-two hours like clockwork.
"Accidents," I said.
"No investigation. No autopsy. No witnesses." She scrolled down. "David found twelve. He was number thirteen."
I scanned the list. Recognized two names. One was a prosecutor I'd worked with. The other was the whistleblower who got me fired.
Emma was watching me. "You see it now."
"I see a conspiracy theory."
"David got a call two hours before he died." She pulled up an audio file, finger hovering over play. "Unknown number. Forty-seven seconds. Want to hear it?"
I should've walked out. Should've told her to take this to someone still wearing a badge.
I didn't.
"Play it."
Static first. Then breathing. Then a voice, male, mid-thirties maybe, with the flatness of someone reading a script they've read too many times.
"David Roy. You ran last time. Let's see if you run again."
Click.
Emma stopped the file. Her hand was shaking now. First crack in that shell.
"What does that mean, last time?"
"I don't know." She looked at the screen, not at me. "But three weeks before that call, he was in a car accident. Minor. Fender-bender on the expressway. He walked away. The other driver didn't stop."
"Hit and run."
"He started the spreadsheet the next day."
I pulled the laptop toward me. Scrolled back through the list. Every victim had a near-miss in the weeks prior. Falls that didn't break necks. Cars that swerved at the last second. Poisonings that got caught in time.
"He thought someone was testing them," I said.
"And if they passed, they got the call."
The room went quiet. Outside, a car alarm started up, then cut off.
I looked at her. "Who knew he was compiling this?"
"No one."
"Not even you?"
"I found it after." She met my eyes. "The laptop was in his gym bag. Password was our wedding date. He never used our wedding date for anything."
"So he wanted you to find it."
"Or he ran out of time."
I sat back. Thought about that footage. My door, three days before David died. If he was tracking me, he knew I'd been on the list.
Which meant I should already be dead.
"When was my accident supposed to happen?" I asked.
Emma clicked through tabs. Found my file. "Four months ago. Hit and run, according to his notes. You were crossing at Fifth and Howard. Black sedan, no plates, ran the red. You jumped back just in time."
I remembered. Late April. I'd been coming back from a client meeting. The car came out of nowhere, fast enough that I felt the bumper graze my jacket. I'd thought it was some kid joyriding.
"I didn't get a call," I said.
"Neither did the others who survived the first attempt. Only the ones who survived twice."
She opened another file. Timeline. The pattern was clean. First accident, no call. Victim goes on living. Seventy-two hours later, second accident. If they survive that, the call comes. Two hours after the call, they're dead.
"How many survived twice?" I asked.
"Three. David was the third."
"The other two?"
"Dead within the week."
I stared at the screen. The names blurred. I'd worked homicide for six years. I knew what a pattern looked like. This was too clean. Too mechanical.
"This isn't one person," I said. "You can't stage twelve accidents in eight months without leaving a trail. You'd need resources. Access. Time to set each one up."
"Unless you had more than one chance to get it right."
I looked at her.
She leaned forward. Close enough I could see the shadow under her eyes, the crack in her bottom lip where she'd been biting it. "David's last note was three words. 'He resets everything.'"
"Resets."
"That's all it said." Her voice dropped. "Mark, what if this isn't about staging accidents? What if it's about replaying them until they work?"
The car alarm started again outside. Same car. Same pattern. Three chirps, pause, three more.
I pushed the laptop back toward her. "You're saying someone's looping time to kill people."
"I'm saying I don't know what David figured out, but he's dead and you're the only other person on this list still breathing who might care enough to finish what he started."
"Why me?"
"Because you already died once. Officially." She opened another tab. News article. My name, my photo, my obituary from three years ago after the frame-up fell apart. Corrupt cop, case dismissed, reputation destroyed. I'd disappeared. Let them think I'd eaten my gun.
"You're a ghost," Emma said. "If you dig into this and it gets you killed, no one will notice. You've already had your funeral."
She wasn't wrong.
I looked at the spreadsheet again. Scrolled to the bottom. Twelve names. Twelve dates. The last one was David's.
Then I saw it.
Row thirteen. No name. Just a date. Tomorrow.
And a note: "Callback tone detected, 11:47 PM."
"When did you find this?" I asked.
Emma checked her watch. "Two hours ago. The file updated itself. I don't know how."
I clicked the note. It opened an audio file, timestamp from tonight. I hit play.
Static. Breathing.
Then that same flat voice.
"Mark Chen. Seventeenth attempt. Let's see if you run."
The file ended.
My phone buzzed on the desk between us.
We both looked at it.
Unknown number.
Incoming call.
Emma's face went white. "Don't answer it."
I picked up the phone. The screen showed the call queued, not ringing yet. Timer counting down.
Two hours.
"He already knows I'm here," I said.
Emma grabbed my wrist. Her hand was cold. "David answered. Two hours later he was dead."
"Then I've got two hours to figure out what he missed."
I pulled free. Forwarded the audio file to my secure drive, then opened David's spreadsheet and started pulling addresses, timestamps, coroner reports.
Emma didn't move. "What are you doing?"
"Finding the pattern inside the pattern." I glanced at her. "You hired me to prove your husband was murdered. I'm proving it. But if this guy resets every time he fails, I only get one shot at him."
"And if you miss?"
"Then he tries again and I'm already dead."
The phone timer hit one hour fifty-nine minutes.
Emma stood. "I'm staying."
"Bad idea."
"He killed my husband. I'm staying."
I didn't argue. I pulled up the first victim's file and started reading.
The phone sat on the desk between us, counting down.
Outside, the car alarm went silent.
And somewhere in the dark, I knew he was watching, waiting for me to answer.
Seventeenth attempt.
Which meant I'd died sixteen times already.
I just couldn't remember.