Chapter 1
The fire escape was Eden's confessional. Metal grating pressed patterns into her bare thighs while she crouched outside her kitchen window, camera heavy in her lap, watching Colin Roan fuck his way through Crown Heights one woman at a time.
Tonight was different. No jazz bleeding through his windows. No bedframe percussion against the shared wall. Just silence thick as the July heat that made everything in Brooklyn feel like it was cooking from the inside out.
Eden's T-shirt clung to her back, sweat pooling where her bra cut into skin. She should go inside. Shower. Edit the food photos from today's shoot. Some farm-to-table place in Park Slope where people paid thirty dollars for dishes her grandmother made in a home with dirt for a floor.
Instead, she adjusted her position on the grating and waited.
Colin's apartment sprawled below hers, same layout inverted. She'd memorized every detail through months of observation: the water stain on his bedroom ceiling that looked like an open mouth, the vintage Monk poster he'd positioned to hide a crack in the plaster, the way he always left his bathroom light on during sex so the yellow glow spilled across his sheets like a photographer's soft box.
Eden knew things about Colin Roan that his lovers didn't. How he bit his bottom lip when he was close. How he always made them shower before they left, standing in his doorway with a towel like he was doing them a favor. How he kept a notebook on his nightstand—lack, hardcover, the kind photographers used for contact sheets—and wrote in it after each encounter.
She told herself it was just curiosity. Research for some theoretical photo series about urban loneliness, about the performative intimacy of thin-walled apartments. But the weight of the camera in her hands tonight felt different. Heavier. Like evidence.
The street below was tomb-quiet except for the hum of window units working overtime and the distant bass thump from someone's party three blocks over. Even the bodega on the corner had gone dark, leaving only the orange streetlight to cut through the humid darkness.
Then movement.
Colin's bedroom window slid open—the sound like a knife through wet cardboard—and a woman climbed out. Young, Black, barefoot. Her dress was inside-out, seams exposed, and she moved with the careful precision of someone trying not to make noise while everything inside her screamed to run.
Eden lifted the camera instinctively, muscle memory from years of catching moments before they dissolved. The woman paused on Colin's section of the fire escape, looking back through the window at something Eden couldn't see. Her face was lit from below by the streetlight, and Eden's finger found the shutter.
Click.
The sound cut through the night air like a bone snapping. The woman's head snapped up, eyes searching the darkness above until they found Eden crouched in her window frame, camera raised.
For a few seconds, they stared at each other across the vertical distance—hunter and prey, though Eden wasn't sure which was which. The woman's mouth opened as if to speak, then closed. She looked young. Maybe twenty-four, twenty-five. Beautiful in the way that men like Colin collected as trophies.
But there was something else in her expression. Like she'd been waiting to be caught. Like she wanted someone to witness what came next.
Then the woman was moving again, climbing down the fire escape with quick, desperate efficiency. Her bare feet made soft percussion against the metal rungs until she reached the ground and disappeared into the maze of parked cars and brownstone shadows.
Eden lowered the camera, hands shaking. She'd documented something. But what? Another awkward hookup ending with someone fleeing through the window? Or something else entirely?
The rational thing was to go inside. Delete the photo. Forget the woman's face and the way she'd moved—like she was escaping rather than leaving.
Instead, Eden found herself studying Colin's window. Still open, yellow bathroom light still bleeding across his sheets. But something felt wrong with the silence. Too complete. Too final.
She waited another twenty minutes, sweat dripping from her chin onto the camera's LCD screen, before admitting that whatever had happened in Colin's apartment was over. The show was done.
Inside her kitchen, Eden poured a glass of water and held it against her forehead, feeling the condensation mix with perspiration. The air conditioner wheezed in the living room, pushing around the same stale air that had been circulating since the heat wave started a week ago. Every surface in the apartment felt sticky—doorknobs, countertops, even the camera's grip had left marks on her palms.
She should shower. Sleep. Pretend tonight was just another night of voluntary insomnia and involuntary voyeurism.
Instead, she opened her laptop and uploaded the photos from the camera's memory card. Most were from the afternoon shoot—carefully composed plates of food that would look elegant on Instagram and make someone else money. But at the end of the roll was tonight's single frame: a woman fleeing in the orange streetlight, dress inside-out, face turned upward with an expression Eden couldn't decode.
The kind of expression Eden recognized from her own mirror on the mornings when she woke up having dreamed about Colin's hands and hated herself for it.
She closed the laptop without editing the image. Some photos were meant to develop slowly, in darkness, until the truth became visible.
Outside, a siren wailed in the distance—ambulance or police, impossible to tell from the pitch. The sound seemed to go on forever before finally fading into the white noise of the city. Eden pressed her face against the kitchen window, looking down at Colin's apartment. The bathroom light was still on, casting its yellow rectangle across the alley like a beacon.
Or a crime scene.
The thought came unwelcome. Colin was probably just sleeping. Or in the shower. Or writing in his black notebook, documenting tonight the way he documented all his encounters—with the clinical precision of someone who collected experiences rather than lived them.
Eden pulled away from the window and finally headed for the shower, leaving wet footprints across the hardwood floors. But even under the lukewarm spray she couldn't stop thinking about the woman's face. The way she'd looked up at Eden's camera with recognition rather than surprise.
Like she'd been waiting to be caught.
Like she wanted someone to witness what came next.
Chapter 2
Eden woke to hammering. Aggressive percussion of authority demanding entry. She rolled over, squinting at her phone: 11:47 AM. The hammering came again, followed by a voice that cut through the apartment's stale air like a blade.
"Police. Open up."
Her body responded before her mind caught up—heart rate spiking, mouth going dry, familiar guilt that had everything to do with the photograph waiting on her laptop. She'd been dreaming about Colin again. The same dream that had been visiting her for months: his hands on her throat, her camera clicking in darkness, the sound of breaking glass that never quite resolved into waking.
The hammering stopped. Footsteps in the hallway, moving to the next door down.
Eden stumbled to the window. The alley below swarmed with activity. Two police cars parked at angles that blocked the narrow alley. EMT vehicle. A van with "MEDICAL EXAMINER" stenciled in block letters across the side.
Colin's bathroom window was dark now.
She pressed her face against the glass, trying to get a better angle. Yellow police tape stretched across his fire escape landing like party streamers. Two cops stood guard while someone in a white jumpsuit moved through his apartment, occasionally visible through the bedroom window.
Her stomach dropped. An investigation.
The hammering resumed, closer now. Her door this time.
"NYPD. We need to speak with you."
Eden looked around her apartment as if seeing it for the first time. The camera on the kitchen counter, still connected to her laptop. Normal things. Innocent things. So why did everything feel like evidence?
She opened the door to find two uniformed officers, both sweating through their blue shirts despite the early hour. The younger one—maybe twenty-five, with skin that looked like it had survived adolescent acne—held a small notebook. The older one, a woman with graying temples and exhausted eyes that suggested she'd seen enough to stop being surprised by anything, did the talking.
"Miss Caldez? We're investigating an incident in the building. Mind if we come in?"
Eden stepped aside, watching them catalog her apartment with professional efficiency. The older officer's gaze lingered on the camera, the laptop, the fire escape visible through the kitchen window.
"What kind of incident?"
"Your neighbor downstairs. Colin Roan. When's the last time you saw him?"
The question should have been simple. Instead, Eden found herself parsing the difference between seeing Colin and watching Colin. Between acknowledging his existence and documenting it.
"I know him from the hallway. We've spoken a few times."
True enough. They'd spoken maybe five times in the two years since he'd moved in. Polite hallway encounters. Him asking about her photography. Her asking about the music that bled through the walls. Normal neighbor interactions that revealed nothing about the way she'd studied his routines, memorized his patterns, learned to recognize the subtle differences between his various performances of intimacy.
"But you live directly above him," the younger officer said, consulting his notebook. "Same fire escape."
"Different sections. His apartment faces the alley. Mine faces..." She gestured vaguely toward the street-facing windows, hoping they wouldn't notice the inconsistency. Her bedroom faced the alley. Had always faced the alley. And his bedroom.
The older officer moved to the window, looking down at the scene below. "Must get noisy. All that activity."
"Sometimes." Eden's throat felt like she'd been swallowing sand. "Is he okay?"
The officers exchanged a look that said everything and nothing. Standard procedure. Protocol. The careful language of people who'd learned to reveal information in measured doses.
"He's deceased, Miss Caldez. We're trying to establish a timeline. Figure out who might have seen something."
Deceased. Such a clinical word for the thing that had happened in the apartment below while Eden watched and waited for sounds that never came.
"I'm sorry. That's terrible." The words felt hollow, performative. How much grief was appropriate for someone you claimed barely to know? "What happened?"
"We're still investigating. Did you notice anything unusual last night? Sounds, voices, people coming or going?"
The photograph. The woman climbing down the fire escape with her dress inside-out and her feet bare. The click of the shutter that had cut through the night air like a confession.
"It was quiet. That's what I noticed. Usually there's music. He likes jazz. But last night was quiet."
The younger officer wrote this down like it mattered. Maybe it did. Maybe silence was evidence of something.
The older officer was still studying the window, the sight lines, the geometry of observation and concealment. "You ever see Colin with anyone? Girlfriend? Friends?"
Another loaded question. Eden had seen Colin with dozens of people. Women, mostly. Different faces, different bodies, same general pattern. Young, beautiful, trusting enough to follow him home and naive enough to believe his performance of progressive politics and emotional availability.
"Sometimes women would come by. I wouldn't know if any of them were girlfriends."
"Recently?"
"I work a lot. I'm usually editing photos in the evenings."
The biggest lie yet. Eden had made a career of paying attention to Colin's personal life. She could probably provide the police with a more detailed account of his romantic activities than he could himself. Times, dates, positions, the specific sounds each woman made. Information gathered through months of careful observation and stored in her memory like a portfolio of shame.
"Mind if we take a look at your fire escape access?"
Eden's pulse spiked. "Sure."
She led them to the kitchen window, trying to look casual as she moved past the laptop, hiding the editing software, hiding yesterday's photos, hiding the single frame that could change everything.
The older officer pushed the window open and stepped onto the fire escape. The metal groaned under her weight, a sound Eden knew intimately from her own nocturnal expeditions. She followed, hyperaware of how the positioning gave her a direct view into Colin's apartment.
"Good sight line," the officer observed.
"I guess."
"You're a photographer, right? Must appreciate good sight lines."
Eden's mouth went dry. How did she know that? Had they already been asking questions about her? Researching the building's residents, looking for potential witnesses or suspects?
"I do food photography mostly. Commercial stuff."
"Expensive equipment?"
"Camera gear? Some of it."
The officer nodded toward Eden's kitchen window. "You ever take pictures from up here? Document the neighborhood?"
The question felt like a trap. Answer yes, and they'd want to see the photos. Answer no, and they might wonder why someone with professional equipment wouldn't be tempted to capture the urban landscape spread out below.
"Sometimes. Architecture, street scenes. Nothing specific."
"What about last night? When you were up late working?"
Eden's vision blurred at the edges. How could they possibly know she'd been awake? About the nights she spent on the fire escape waiting for sounds from Colin's apartment?
"I sleep fine."
The younger officer called up from the alley. "Officer Martinez, we need statements from everyone on this side of the building."
Martinez—the older officer—looked between Eden and the alley below. "We'll need you to come down to the station later today. Just to get everything on record."
"Am I in trouble?"
"Just helping us understand what happened. Won't take long." Martinez climbed back through the window. "If you think of anything—anything at all—call us. Even small details can matter."
After they left, Eden sat at her kitchen table staring at Martinez's business card. The photograph was still on her laptop, waiting in digital darkness. A woman fleeing down the fire escape with desperate efficiency. Beautiful. Young. Moving like someone escaping rather than leaving.
Eden opened the laptop. The photograph filled the screen—the woman's face turned upward, dress inside-out, fear and something else in her expression.
The business card sat beside the laptop like an accusation. Eden picked up her phone, then set it down.
She had evidence that could help solve Colin's death. Or destroy someone who might have been defending herself.
The weight of that choice pressed down on her like the humid air that made everything in Brooklyn feel like it was rotting from the inside out.
Chapter 3
The 77th Precinct smelled like disinfectant and desperation. Eden sat in the waiting area, watching the overhead fan push around air that felt like breathing through wet fabric. Her T-shirt had been clean this morning. Now it clung to her back like a parasite.
Detective Keisha Simms emerged from behind the security door—tall, broad-shouldered, with natural hair pulled back in a style that suggested efficiency over aesthetics. She wore a navy blazer that somehow managed to look crisp despite the heat, though Eden noticed the way she kept flexing her left hand, worrying at something.
"Ms. Caldez? Thanks for coming in."
Eden followed her down a hallway lined with motivational posters that felt like threats. INTEGRITY. ACCOUNTABILITY. JUSTICE. Words that carried different weight when you were walking toward an interrogation room instead of away from one.
The room was smaller than Eden had expected. Two chairs, a metal table, fluorescent lights that made everyone look corpse-pale. A mirror that was obviously one-way glass. She'd photographed enough corporate interiors to recognize the staging: deliberately uncomfortable, designed to make people want to leave quickly enough to say whatever would expedite their departure.
Simms settled across from her, opening a folder thick with papers. Eden caught glimpses of photographs, typed reports, what looked like building schematics. Evidence of a life she'd thought she was observing from the outside.
"Coffee? Water?"
"I'm fine."
"Hot day to be fine." Simms' voice carried the slight rasp of someone who'd spent years asking questions and listening to lies. "Broke ninety before noon. Supposed to hit ninety-five."
Weather talk. The universal prelude to harder conversations.
"You live alone, Ms. Caldez?"
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Three years. Since I moved to Crown Heights."
"And before that?"
Eden shifted in her chair. The metal was already warm from contact with her skin. "Queens. With roommates."
"So you appreciate privacy now."
Eden's throat tasted like copper. The air conditioning made her skin feel tight, hypersensitive. "I like living alone, yes."
Simms made a note. Her pen was expensive-looking, silver, the kind of object that suggested attention to detail. But her thumbnail was cracked, a small imperfection that Eden's photographer's eye caught and catalogued.
"Tell me about Colin Roan."
"I already told the officers. I barely knew him."
"But you knew his name."
"We get mail mixed up sometimes. Tenant names on the buzzer."
"Uh-huh." Simms flipped through the folder, extracted a piece of paper. "Building management says you've filed noise complaints before. But nothing about Mr. Roan. That right?"
The question felt like stepping onto ice. "He played music sometimes. Jazz. It wasn't that loud."
"Most people complain about noise. Thin walls, close quarters. But you found Mr. Roan's activities... tolerable?"
Eden's mouth tasted like copper. "I guess."
"What kind of sounds did you hear from his apartment?"
The trap was elegant. Answer honestly, and admit to paying attention to Colin's activities. Lie, and risk contradicting herself when they inevitably found other evidence.
"Music sometimes. Jazz. Normal apartment sounds."
"Such as?"
"Footsteps. Water running. People talking."
"People plural?"
Sweat dripped down Eden's spine despite the air conditioning. "He had guests sometimes."
"Male or female?"
"I couldn't tell from upstairs."
The lie hung in the air like aerosol. Simms let it sit there, studying Eden's face with the patience of someone who'd learned that silence often produced better results than questions.
"Ms. Caldez, you're a professional photographer."
"Food photography mostly. Commercial work."
"Professional grade equipment. Expensive cameras."
"Some of it."
"Must have good visual memory. Attention to detail."
Eden's hands were starting to shake. "I suppose."
"So when you say you couldn't tell whether Mr. Roan's guests were male or female, that surprises me."
The fluorescent lights became too bright, too focused. "I wasn't paying attention to my neighbors."
"Weren't you?"
Simms pulled out another document. Eden's heart hammered as she recognized building schematics, sight lines marked in red ink.
"Fire escape positioning gives you a direct view into Mr. Roan's bedroom window. Photographer's dream, really. Perfect angle, natural lighting from the streetlamp."
Eden's vision tunneled. "I don't spy on people."
"I'm sure you don't. But you do observe. Professional habit, right? Seeing things others miss?"
The weight of the photograph in her camera bag felt enormous. Evidence that could either explain everything or destroy what was left of her life.
"What exactly are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting that someone with your training, living in that position, over a period of two years, would notice patterns. Would remember details."
Simms leaned forward. Close enough that Eden could smell her deodorant, the stress sweat that had been building since dawn.
"Did you take photographs from your fire escape, Ms. Caldez?"
The question hung between them like a blade. Eden thought about the months of voyeurism, the careful cataloguing of Colin's encounters, the way she'd transformed his violence into a kind of entertainment.
"Sometimes. Architecture. Street scenes."
"What about Tuesday night?"
"I was working late. Editing photos from a shoot."
"Inside your apartment?"
"Yes."
"All night?"
Eden's hands were shaking visibly now. "I might have stepped out for air. It was hot."
"Onto the fire escape?"
"Maybe briefly."
"With your camera?"
The trap was closing with mechanical precision. Eden could feel it tightening around her with each question.
"I always have my camera."
"Did you photograph anything Tuesday night?"
Eden met Simms' eyes for the first time since entering the room. The detective's gaze was steady, patient, but relentless. The look of someone who already knew the answers and was waiting for Eden to catch up.
"I might have taken a few shots. The neighborhood at night. Nothing specific."
"Nothing specific." Simms wrote this down. "Would you be willing to show me these photographs?"
Eden's throat felt raw. "They're just test shots. Low light experiments."
"I'd still like to see them."
"Do I need a lawyer?"
"Do you think you need one?"
The question felt like diagnosis. Eden thought about the photograph waiting on her laptop. Ana's face turned upward in the streetlight, dress inside-out, moving with desperate efficiency. Evidence that could either help solve Colin's death or implicate someone who might have been defending herself.
"Am I under arrest?"
"You're helping with an investigation. But Ms. Caldez?" Simms closed the folder, but kept her hands resting on top of it. "Mr. Roan is dead. Someone killed him Tuesday night. And I think you saw something that could help us understand what happened."
Eden stood on unsteady legs. The metal chair had left impressions on the back of her thighs, marks that would fade but leave traces.
"I've told you everything I remember."
Simms nodded as if she'd expected this response. "My card's on the table. Call me when your memory improves. And Ms. Caldez? Don't leave town without letting me know."
Chapter 4
Eden walked out of the precinct into heat that felt like freedom. The sidewalk radiated warmth through her sneakers, and the air shimmered with exhaust fumes and humidity.
But even the oppressive July heat felt better than the suffocating weight of Simms’ questions. Questions that had revealed how much the detective already knew, how carefully she’d been building her case.
Eden had made it three blocks before she realized someone was following her.
The woman appeared at her elbow as Eden waited for a light to change. Mid-twenties, Asian, wearing scrubs that suggested she’d come straight from work. Her black hair was pulled back in a practical ponytail, and she moved with the efficient stride of someone used to twelve-hour shifts.
“You’re the one with the camera.”
Not a question. Eden’s throat went dry.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Tuesday night. Fire escape. Colin’s apartment.” The woman’s voice carried the slight hoarseness of someone who’d been awake too long. “I followed you from the precinct.”
Eden’s vision tunneled. The street around them—afternoon traffic, people heading home from work, the ordinary rhythm of Crown Heights—suddenly felt distant and unreal.
“Who are you?”
“Mary Kwon. Ana’s roommate.” She pulled out her phone, showed Eden a photo of herself with another woman, both in matching scrubs, both holding coffee cups.
Eden’s breath caught. The woman in the photograph had a name. Ana. Real person with a job and a life and a roommate who was worried enough to stake out police stations.
“She told me about you. Woman with a camera, watching from above. Taking pictures.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Colin’s dead. Ana was there when it happened.” Mary’s voice stayed steady despite the exhaustion bleeding through. “She saw the flash from your camera. Looked up and saw you there.”
The confirmation hit like a physical blow. Ana knew about the photograph. Knew Eden had documented her escape from what was now a crime scene.
“Is she in trouble?”
“What do you think? Someone killed Colin Roan Tuesday night, and you have proof she was there.”
Mary gestured toward Eden’s camera bag. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? The police questioning, your equipment, the way you can’t stop checking that bag like it’s evidence.”
Eden’s hands tightened on the strap. The photograph felt like it was burning through the memory card, pixels that could either damn someone or save them.
“I need to know what you plan to do with that photograph.”
Mary’s expression stayed patient, like she was dealing with a difficult patient who wouldn’t admit their symptoms.
“The one you took of Ana climbing down the fire escape. The one that proves she was there when Colin died.”
The words hung between them like smoke. Around them, Crown Heights continued its afternoon routine while they discussed evidence of what might be murder.
Mary looked around the street, at the foot traffic and the way conversations carried in the humid air.
“We can’t talk here. Too many people, too much noise.” She pulled out a piece of paper, wrote an address in careful handwriting. “Red Hook. Warehouse district. Eight o’clock.”
“Why should I meet you?”
“Because Colin Roan is dead and you have questions.” Mary started walking away, then paused. “One more thing. Ana said you spent a lot of time on that fire escape. Watching Colin’s apartment.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. I think you saw things that made you wonder about Colin. About the women who visited him. What went on inside. About how they looked when they left.”
Mary’s voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of professional observation.
“Ana hopes that maybe you saw enough to understand what kind of man died Tuesday night. What kind of man she stopped.”
She disappeared into the humid afternoon, leaving Eden alone with the address burning in her palm like evidence she couldn’t decide whether to destroy or preserve.
The photograph on her camera was no longer just documentation of a strange night. It was proof that someone had been present when Colin died. Someone who might have had very good reasons for wanting him dead.
Eden stared at the warehouse address until the ink began to blur in the heat. Eight o’clock. Four hours to decide whether she was a witness reporting a crime or an accomplice helping someone escape justice.
Whether the woman named Ana was a murderer who deserved prison or a survivor who deserved protection.
Whether the photograph that had started as voyeurism would end as evidence for prosecution or defense.
The sun was setting over Crown Heights, turning the polluted air orange and gold like a photographer’s filter over the city’s accumulated sins.
In four hours, Eden would meet the woman whose escape she’d documented.
And decide which story she wanted that photograph to tell.
Chapter 5
The abandoned warehouse in Red Hook felt like the city's exhaled breath—hot, stale, thick with the accumulated weight of things left to decompose. Eden climbed rusted stairs that groaned under her feet, each step echoing in the cavernous space where Brooklyn stored its failures.
Mary had chosen the location carefully. Industrial. Isolated. The kind of place where conversations happened without witnesses, where truth got told because there was nowhere left to hide it.
Ana sat in a folding chair near the windows, silhouetted against light that filtered through glass so dirty it turned everything sepia. She looked smaller than she had in the fire escape photograph. Younger. Like someone who'd aged backward through violence into something fragile and sharp.
"You came."
Her voice carried the slight rasp of someone who'd been screaming. Or crying. Or both.
"Mary said you wanted to tell me what happened."
"I wanted to see the person who watched."
Ana stood. Moved closer. Close enough that Eden could see the faded bruises around her throat, yellow-green now but still visible. Still evidence of Colin's hands.
"You're a photographer. You know how to see things. How to frame them. How to capture moments that other people miss."
Eden's mouth tasted like copper. "I thought it was consensual."
"Did you? When you saw me climbing out his window Tuesday night, did you think I was leaving a good time?"
The question felt like surgery performed without anesthesia. Truth extracted through procedures designed to cause maximum pain.
"I thought something was wrong. But I didn't know what."
"You want to know what?"
Ana pulled up her shirt. Showed Eden fresh bruises that were still purple, still tender. Evidence of violence recent enough to photograph clearly.
"He did this Tuesday night. Before I stopped him."
The warehouse's rusted windows rattled in frames that hadn't been maintained in decades. Sound carried differently here. Amplified by emptiness, distorted by decay.
"Tell me what happened."
Ana sat back down. Looked out at Red Hook's industrial landscape, warehouses and shipping containers baking in July heat that made everything shimmer like mirage.
"I went to his apartment to get proof. Recording device from work. I wanted him to admit what he'd done to me six weeks ago."
"And?"
"Soon as I was inside, he started grabbing me. Said I'd come back because I liked it rough. Said I was begging for more."
Ana's voice stayed steady. Clinical. Like she was reading from someone else's medical report.
"I'd prepared for that possibility. Brought propofol from the hospital—anesthesia. Told him it would enhance the experience, make everything more intense."
"You drugged him."
"I gave him what he asked for. He wanted to play games with consciousness, with control. So I controlled his consciousness."
Eden thought about all the nights she'd watched Colin's bedroom window. The careful staging, the way he positioned women like objects in his frame.
"What happened after he was unconscious?"
"I had a choice. Call the police, tell them I'd drugged a man who was trying to rape me. Hope they'd believe me this time." Ana's laugh sounded like breaking glass. "Or make sure he never hurt anyone again."
"So you killed him."
"I used his own belt. His own games. Made it look like autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong." Ana turned to face Eden directly. "He died the way he lived. Taking pleasure from someone else's pain."
The words sat between them like evidence that couldn't be ignored or explained away.
"Then you climbed out the fire escape."
"I panicked. Couldn't face walking past his body to get to the front door. Went out the window and saw you there. Woman with a camera, watching everything."
Ana leaned forward. "That's when I knew someone had witnessed what happened. Someone who could destroy me or save me depending on what story they chose to tell."
Eden's hands were shaking now. The photograph felt like it was burning through her camera bag, pixels that could either damn someone or free them.
"What are you asking me to do?"
"Delete the photograph. Destroy the evidence. Let me disappear."
"The police are looking for you."
"They're looking for someone who might have visited Colin Tuesday night. Without that photograph, they have no proof I was ever there."
Mary spoke from near the stairwell. Eden hadn't noticed her there, hadn't heard her approach.
"Ana's not the first woman Colin hurt. She's just the first one who fought back effectively."
"So you think killing him was justified."
"I think Ana stopped a predator who was getting more dangerous. I think she saved other women from what happened to her."
Eden looked between them. Ana, small and fierce and marked by violence she'd finally stopped. Mary, tired and competent and carrying professional knowledge of systematic harm.
"What happens if I don't delete the photograph?"
"Then you turn over evidence that will send a rape victim to prison for defending herself," Mary said. "You help a system that failed to protect her punish her for protecting herself."
Ana stood up again. Moved to the warehouse windows, looking out at the city that had failed to keep her safe.
"I'm not asking you to lie for me. I'm asking you to understand what Colin was and what he did. Then decide whether that photograph documents a crime or documents justice."
Eden thought about Detective Simms waiting for her call. About the police investigation that would continue with or without her cooperation. About the detective's exhausted eyes that suggested she'd seen enough violence to understand the difference between predators and survivors.
"You know I've been watching Colin's apartment for months."
"Mary told me. She said you might have seen patterns. Behaviors that would help people understand what kind of man died Tuesday night."
"I saw women leave his apartment looking... damaged. I told myself it wasn't my business."
"And now?"
Eden pulled her laptop from her camera bag. Opened it, navigated to the photograph. Ana's face in the streetlight, moving with desperate efficiency down the fire escape. Evidence of escape that could be reframed as evidence of guilt.
"Now I think I enabled him by staying silent."
She selected the image file. Moved it to trash. Then opened the trash folder and selected "empty trash permanently."
The photograph disappeared. Pixels dissolved into nothing, evidence erased by conscious choice.
"It's gone."
Ana's shoulders sagged with relief so profound it looked like physical pain leaving her body.
"Why?" she asked.
Eden thought about all the nights she'd spent on the fire escape, documenting other people's lives while avoiding her own. About the careful distance she'd maintained between observation and participation.
"Because some things are more important than evidence. Some stories shouldn't be told by cameras."
Eden closed the laptop. The warehouse felt different now. Smaller. Like a darkroom where something had been developed that couldn't be undone.
"But Ana, hiding forever isn't justice either."
Ana stopped moving toward the stairwell. "What do you mean?"
"The detective investigating Colin's death—Detective Simms. She's not like the officers who dismissed your case before. She understands what men like Colin do to women."
Mary frowned. "You want Ana to turn herself in?"
"I want Ana to tell her story to someone who might actually listen. Someone who's been building a case that shows Colin's pattern."
Eden thought about Simms' patient questions, her recognition that Colin's death felt like something more than random violence.
"Simms knows Colin was dangerous. She's looking for evidence of systematic abuse. With the medical records, the hospital photos, your testimony about what really happened..."
"They'll still charge me with murder."
"Maybe. But running means you're guilty until you're caught. Surrendering means you're someone who defended herself against a predator."
Ana sat back down in the folding chair. "You think she'd believe me?"
"I think she's been waiting for someone brave enough to tell the truth about Colin Roan."
Mary shook her head. "It's too risky. The system failed Ana before."
"The system failed because Ana was alone before. Now she has medical documentation, witness testimony, evidence of Colin's pattern." Eden looked between them. "Now she has people who understand what really happened."
"You'd testify? About what you saw from your fire escape?"
Eden nodded. "About Colin's pattern. About the women who left his apartment damaged. About what kind of man died Tuesday night."
Ana was quiet for a long time, looking out at Red Hook's industrial landscape.
"If I surrender, if I tell the truth, you think there's a chance they'll see this as self-defense?"
"I think there's a chance justice looks like courage instead of hiding."
Mary moved closer to Ana. "It's your choice. I'll support whatever you decide."
Ana stood up again, but this time she wasn't moving toward escape.
"I'm tired of being afraid. Tired of letting Colin control my life even after he's dead."
She looked at Eden directly. "If I do this—if I surrender and tell the truth—will you help me tell it right?"
"Yes."
Mary and Ana left Eden alone in the warehouse with her camera and the weight of choice that was no longer theoretical. She'd moved from voyeur to accomplice. From documenting violence to enabling escape from consequences.
Outside, the sun was setting over Red Hook's industrial landscape. The heat wave continued, pressing down on Brooklyn like atmospheric pressure that made thinking difficult.
Eden had destroyed evidence that could have solved Colin's murder. She'd helped someone escape justice or enabled justice to escape the system's failure.
The distinction mattered less than the choice itself. For the first time in months of watching, she'd acted instead of observed.
She'd chosen a side.
Back in her apartment, Eden sat at her kitchen table staring at the empty laptop screen. The photograph was gone, but the memory remained. Ana's face in the streetlight, moving toward freedom or deeper trouble depending on how the story ended.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown number again.
Thank you.
Eden deleted the message without responding. Some conversations were better left unfinished.
Some stories were meant to end in silence.
Chapter 6
Three days later, Eden was photographing artisanal donuts when the news broke.
The bakery in Park Slope specialized in the kind of elevated comfort food that made white people feel sophisticated about eating sugar for breakfast. Eden moved around the display case with professional efficiency, capturing glazed surfaces that would look elegant on Instagram and make someone else money.
She’d been working since dawn, trying to lose herself in the familiar rhythm of composition and focus. The morning light through the storefront windows was perfect—soft, even, the kind of natural illumination that made food photography feel almost effortless.
But concentration felt impossible. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Ana’s face in the warehouse darkness. Heard her clinical voice describing what Colin had done, what she’d done in return.
The bakery manager—a twenty-something woman with carefully curated vintage aesthetic—had the local news playing on her laptop behind the counter. Background noise that Eden had been ignoring until she heard the name.
“—Colin Roan, found dead in his Crown Heights apartment Tuesday night. Police have arrested Ana Williams, 26, a nurse at Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, in connection with his death—”
Eden’s camera slipped in her hands. She caught it before it hit the floor, but her vision had tunneled to the laptop screen showing Ana’s hospital ID photo. Professional headshot. Competent. Young. The kind of face that made juries wonder how someone so normal could commit murder.
“You okay?” The manager approached with concern. “You look pale.”
“I need to reschedule. Something came up.”
“But we’re supposed to shoot the fall menu—”
“I’ll call you later.”
Eden packed her equipment with mechanical precision, muscle memory overriding the emotional static that made thinking difficult. Ana had done it. Had found the courage to surrender, to trust the system that had failed her before.
Outside, Crown Heights baked in late July heat. Eden walked home without seeing the sidewalk, processing what Ana’s arrest meant. Public defender or private lawyer? Would they understand what Colin was? Would they know how to tell Ana’s story in a way that made sense to people who’d never been trapped by someone like him?
Another week later, her phone buzzed as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. Unknown number.
Ms. Caldez, this is Jennifer Reyes, Ana Williams’ attorney. Detective Simms gave me your contact information. Could we meet today? Ana mentioned you might have information relevant to her case.
Eden stared at the message. Ana’s lawyer. Someone fighting for her, building a defense, trying to keep her out of prison for stopping a predator.
She typed back: When and where?
My office in Downtown Brooklyn. 3 PM? Ana said you understand what Colin Roan was.
Inside her apartment, Eden sat at the kitchen table and opened her laptop. The desktop showed empty space where Ana’s photograph used to be. Digital evidence erased by choice, but the memory remained. Ana climbing down the fire escape with desperate efficiency, moving toward freedom or deeper trouble depending on how her story was told.
Eden had helped her escape one kind of justice. Now she could help her find another kind.
The law office occupied the third floor of a converted brownstone near Borough Hall. Jennifer Reyes met Eden in a conference room that smelled like coffee—the particular atmosphere of public defenders fighting cases they couldn’t afford to lose.
Reyes looked younger than Eden had expected. Early thirties, with tired eyes and the kind of efficiency that came from handling too many cases with too few resources. Her suit was professional but not expensive. The kind of lawyer who chose this work because she believed in it, not because it paid well.
“Ana told me about Tuesday night in question. About seeing you on the fire escape.” Reyes opened a folder thick with documents. “She also told me you’d been observing Colin’s apartment for some time.”
Eden’s throat felt dry. “I live directly above him. Lived above him.”
“And in your observations, did you notice patterns in his behavior? Particularly with female visitors?”
The question felt like stepping onto ice. Careful territory where honest answers could help Ana or destroy Eden’s own carefully constructed distance from what she’d witnessed.
“I noticed things.”
“Such as?”
Eden thought about all those months of watching. Women arriving at Colin’s apartment animated and leaving diminished. The way they moved afterward—carefully, like something inside them had been damaged.
“Women would visit him. Different women. They’d arrive looking… normal. Happy, even. But when they left, they looked different.”
“Different how?”
“Hurt. Not physically—I mean, I couldn’t see injuries from that distance. But emotionally. Like something had been taken from them.”
Reyes made notes. “How often did you observe this pattern?”
“Weekly, maybe. Sometimes more frequently.”
“Over what period?”
Eden hesitated. Admitting to 18 months of systematic observation meant acknowledging she’d watched Colin hurt women repeatedly without intervening. But Ana needed this testimony.
“Almost two years.”
“And you never reported this behavior?”
“I told myself it wasn’t my business. That I couldn’t know what was really happening. That maybe I was misreading the situation.”
“But you continued watching.”
“Yes.”
Reyes leaned forward. “Ana said you understand what Colin was. That you recognized something in her situation.”
Eden met the lawyer’s eyes directly. This was the moment of choice. Maintain her distance, or finally acknowledge her own connection to Colin’s violence.
“Colin assaulted me three months ago. I didn’t report it either.”
The words hung in the air like evidence waiting to be catalogued. Reyes’ expression didn’t change, but she made careful notes.
“Are you willing to testify about your observations of Colin’s pattern? And about your own experience with him?”
“Will it help Ana?”
“It could be crucial. We’re building a case that Colin was a serial predator. That Ana was defending herself against someone with a documented history of violence. Your testimony could establish that pattern.”
Eden thought about Ana in the warehouse, shoulders sagging with relief when the photograph disappeared. The way she’d looked when she’d decided to surrender—terrified but determined.
“What exactly would I need to say?”
“The truth. About what you observed over two years. About the women who left his apartment damaged. About what he did to you.” Reyes closed the folder. “Ana’s facing murder charges. The prosecution will try to paint her as a vengeful killer. We need to show the jury who Colin really was.”
Eden nodded. “When would I testify?”
“Trial’s still months away. But we’ll need detailed statements about everything you observed. Dates, times, descriptions of the women’s demeanor before and after visiting Colin. Everything that establishes his pattern.”
Outside the law office, Eden walked through Downtown Brooklyn’s early evening heat. The city continued its summer routine while she processed what she’d committed to. Months of preparation. Testimony that would expose her own assault while helping Ana fight for her freedom.
But for the first time in months, Eden felt like she was moving toward something instead of running from it.
Back in her apartment, she opened her laptop and created a new document. “Testimony Notes.” Started typing everything she remembered about Colin’s pattern. The women who’d visited him. The way they’d looked when they left. The systematic nature of his violence.
Outside her window, the fire escape stretched down into the alley where Colin’s apartment sat empty. Metal grating that had supported months of careful observation, of documenting other people’s pain while avoiding her own.
Eden didn’t climb out onto it.
Instead, she kept typing. Building Ana’s defense one truthful word at a time, transforming voyeurism into testimony, observation into action.
Some photographs took time to develop properly. Some stories required darkness before they became visible.
Some justice began with the courage to finally tell the truth.