My breath caught.

Mrs. Ellery wasn’t staying silent after all.

I typed back with trembling fingers:

“Thank you.

You saved us.”

The reply came instantly, as if she’d been waiting:

“No.

You saved yourself. You woke up. You fought. Now finish it.”

I stared at the words long after the screen dimmed.

She didn’t mean revenge. She meant survival.

And survival, I realized, wasn’t a moment.

It was a choice I would have to keep making, over and over again.

Two days later, Detective Harper met me in a private interview room.

Caleb was downstairs in the pediatric unit, drawing animals with crayons a volunteer had brought him. His drawings were usually cheerful—dinosaurs, dogs, superheroes—but today, everything was dark gray.

Harper placed a sealed evidence bag on the table.

Inside was something small, metallic, chillingly familiar.

Ethan’s key.

Not the house key—but the one to the storage unit he’d secretly rented under a different name.

“We executed a warrant this morning,” Harper said quietly.

“You need to see this.”

I didn’t want to.

I already knew Ethan was dangerous. But Harper’s face told me the truth was deeper, uglier, older.

The storage unit was cold, smelling of oil and mildew.

A single overhead bulb flickered as we stepped inside.

There were two duffel bags, identical to the one he carried the night he tried to kill us.

One was empty. The other—wasn’t.

Inside the duffel bag was a nightmare made tangible:

Printed guides on undetectable poisons

Fake IDs with Ethan’s picture under different names

Three prepaid phones

A notebook filled with dates, amounts, and chillingly casual notes: increase dosage next time

And a photograph of me and Caleb—taken from outside our living-room window

My breath hitched.

“He… he stalked us?”