He slid the folder across the table.
No badge. No seal.
Just paper.
Just names.
Julian didn't move.
Vivienne held her breath.
Carmen opened it slowly, like she already knew what was inside—but wanted to feel the weight anyway.
The first photo stopped her pulse.
Not visibly.
Not outwardly.
But somewhere under her skin—
beneath bone, beneath memory—
something snapped.
A tremor that lived behind her eyes.
The name, scrawled in ink across the back:
Adrian Morrow
He shouldn't be here.
Not in this century.
Not in this city.
He was from her time.
Her timeline.
2025.
A predator.
Someone she'd hunted, seduced, gutted, buried.
A man who filmed women as they begged.
Smiled when they broke.
Treated pain like art.
And now he was here.
Alive.
Killing again.
Hargreave watched her face closely.
Didn't press.
Just said:
"You know him."
Carmen looked up.
Eyes like a scalpel left in the flame too long.
"If he's here," she said, "he's not just killing."
"No," Hargreave replied. "He's building something."
Julian leaned forward.
"Another spiral?"
"Worse."
"Cruder. Sloppier. But louder."
Carmen stood without a word.
Crossed to the window.
Lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled just once—quick, invisible—before going still.
Vivienne moved beside her.
"He's not just another killer, is he?"
Carmen's voice dropped.
Soft. Flat.
"He's the one who almost broke me."
Julian spoke next.
Voice like a blade still wet.
"Then we kill him."
Carmen turned.
"No."
Her eyes caught flame.
"We do worse than that."
Hargreave left in silence.
No goodbyes.
No questions.
Because he was beginning to understand:
Carmen Vale didn't follow the rules of this world.
She wrote them.
But this time—she wasn't the only author.
That night, she opened a journal.
Not Vivienne's.
Hers.
She flipped to the back.
Found Adrian's name.
And the date she killed him:
April 4, 2023.
She drew a line through it.
Lit the page on fire.
Watched it burn.
And whispered—"Round two."