Chapter 2 – The Mark
The next morning began with a knock on Clara’s office door. Sharp, deliberate, carrying the weight of bad news. Clara set down her coffee, already bracing herself.
Detective Sam Holden stood in the doorway, his gray suit wrinkled, his eyes carrying the fatigue of a sleepless night.
“We’re heading to the victim’s home,” he said without preamble. “You should come.”
Clara grabbed her coat. She didn’t need to be convinced.
The Hartman residence sat on a quiet cul-de-sac near the northern cliffs, the kind of neighborhood that looked like it had been pulled from a postcard. White picket fences. Freshly cut grass. A row of mailboxes lined up like soldiers. Peaceful—at least on the surface.
But the house at the far end, painted a fading blue, was anything but. The curtains were drawn tight, and a single police cruiser idled at the curb. The air was heavy, as though grief itself had thickened it.
Inside, the atmosphere was suffocating. Emily Hartman’s parents sat in the living room, their faces pale and swollen from crying. The mother clutched a tissue in one hand, twisting it until it tore. The father sat rigid, his jaw clenched, staring blankly at the floor.
Clara introduced herself quietly, her voice softer than usual. She didn’t press them with questions—she knew timing mattered. Instead, she let Holden handle the initial exchange.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Holden said, his tone carrying a practiced balance of sympathy and professionalism. “We need to look through Emily’s room. Just routine. Anything unusual might help us.”
The parents nodded weakly. The mother gestured toward the hallway.
Clara followed Holden upstairs. Each step groaned under their weight, the house itself seeming to protest the intrusion. At the end of the hall, a door stood slightly ajar. Pink paint, stickers peeling along the frame. Emily’s room.
Inside, the space was frozen in time. Posters lined the walls—bands, movie stars, scraps of teenage identity pieced together like a collage. The bed was neatly made, untouched since she’d left the house. Makeup sat on the dresser, a few brushes scattered as if she’d been in a rush. A laptop lay closed on the desk.
Clara scanned everything, her instincts sharpening. She pulled on gloves and opened the laptop, powering it on, but a password screen blinked back at her.
“We’ll need tech to get through this,” Holden muttered.
Clara nodded, though her attention was shifting. Something tugged at her peripheral vision—a faint discoloration on the window. She moved closer.
At first, she thought it was dirt, maybe condensation. But no. As the light hit just right, the lines became clear: a shape, crudely drawn on the outside glass with what looked like chalk or white paint.
Her breath caught.
It was the same angular symbol carved into Emily’s wrist.
Clara leaned in, tracing the outline with her eyes. A jagged triangle intersected by a line, sharp and deliberate. It wasn’t random. It was intentional. And it had been placed here, on her house, before Emily ever died.
“Holden,” she called, her voice low but urgent.
He came over, squinting. When his eyes landed on the mark, he stiffened. “Jesus…”
“They marked her,” Clara whispered. “This wasn’t a random kill. She was chosen.”
For a long moment, neither spoke. The silence pressed in around them, heavy and suffocating. Clara’s mind raced. This changed everything. The killer wasn’t just attacking victims—they were announcing it. Signaling it.
Holden pulled out his phone and snapped a picture. “Forensics will need to test it. Figure out what it’s made of, how long it’s been here.”
But Clara barely heard him. She was staring at that symbol, the way its edges caught the light. It was a signature, but also a threat. A declaration.
She stepped back, scanning the room again with fresh eyes. Had Emily noticed it? Had she seen the mark on her window and felt the chill of dread creeping in, even if she couldn’t explain why?
The thought twisted in Clara’s stomach.
Downstairs, the parents were waiting, their eyes searching the detectives’ faces for answers. Clara kept her expression neutral, but Holden gave the practiced reassurance: “We’re following leads. We’ll be in touch.”
Once outside, Clara exhaled sharply, letting the foggy air fill her lungs.
“She was marked,” she said again, needing the words out loud.
Holden ran a hand down his face. “I’ve worked here twenty years. We’ve had accidents, suicides, the occasional overdose. But this? This is different. And if you’re right…” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to.
Clara’s mind was already three steps ahead.
If the killer marked Emily’s house before her death, that meant there was a pattern. A cycle. A method. Which also meant—
“There could be another house already marked,” she said, her voice tightening.
The possibility hung between them like a storm cloud.
That afternoon, Clara drove the streets of Seabreeze, eyes sharp, scanning windows, doors, walls. She searched for that symbol, for any sign of it lurking on another unsuspecting home. Every chalk line on a sidewalk, every crack in the paint made her heart jolt until she realized it was nothing.
Still, paranoia crept in. The symbol had been placed in plain sight, and yet no one had noticed—or if they had, they hadn’t understood.
By the time dusk fell, Clara parked near the cliffs, staring out at the darkening ocean. The waves crashed violently, carrying secrets back and forth with the tide.
She pulled out her notebook, sketching the symbol from memory, over and over. Its angles mocked her, daring her to decipher it. Was it random? Ritualistic? A gang sign? Or something more personal?
Her phone buzzed. A new message.
This time, it wasn’t a threat. It was a picture.
The same symbol, scrawled across another house in Seabreeze.
And beneath the image, a single line of text:
“You’re too late.”
Clara’s stomach dropped.
Another victim had already been chosen.