“No,” I said again.

And once more. Again I told him I had no idea who the woman was. That was the truth. They were all strangers to me.

“None of these women look familiar?”

“No, they don’t.”

“It seems to me they all look a lot like your wife,” Detective Bushing said.

I glanced at the photographs again, and I realized that he was right. There was no denying the resemblance. The hair, the look, the smiles—they definitely all had a touch of Karly in them.

“A little, I suppose. Who are they?”

“They’re murder victims, Mr. Moran.”

I began to feel dizzy. “Murder?”

“Yeah. All four stabbed to death in the past few weeks. We figured the cases were connected, because the method was the same and the victims all looked so much alike. We couldn’t figure out what they had in common, though. Their homes, work, background—all different. It was driving me crazy, because I couldn’t find any overlap, nothing that would suggest how the same killer would have come into contact with them. Until very recently, that is.”

“I hope you don’t think the connection is that they look like Karly. Because they look like a million other blond women, too.”

“True. That’s true. No, that wasn’t the connection. I mean, it’s interesting, but only because of what else we found. Actually, I stumbled onto it mostly by accident. A witness mentioned something to me in passing, and that tied in with a restaurant receipt I remembered from one of the other victims. See, what links these women together is that they all attended an event in the ballroom of the LaSalle Plaza Hotel within a few days of when they were killed.”

I couldn’t stop myself. I gasped. “What?”

“That’s right. So I’m sure you see the problem here, Mr. Moran. Four women who look an awful lot like your wife got murdered right after they went to your hotel. And now your wife is dead, and so is the man who slept with her. Stabbed. Just like my other vics. To top it off, today we get a 911 call from someone calling himself Dylan Moran and saying he’s ready to confess to murder.”

I bolted out of the chair.

“You going somewhere, Mr. Moran?”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

I turned around and stumbled down the hallway. I went into the bedroom and closed the door behind me. My eyes were drawn to the knife on the floor. The faces of the women in Detective Bushing’s photographs smiled at me in my head. I didn’t know them. I had never met them. And yet, now that I was alone, something about them stirred echoes. I remembered them. Worse, the echoes in my head weren’t of these women alive. I could see them dead. Their faces drained and pale. I could see my hands, covered in their blood.

They all looked like Karly.

My stomach turned over. I didn’t need to fake it. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door, and I fell to my knees at the toilet and vomited, once, twice, three times. When my stomach was empty, I rinsed my mouth. I stared at myself in the mirror, but the man staring back was the stranger I had seen for days. Exhausted. Out of control, out of my mind. I didn’t recognize who I was anymore.

From outside the bedroom, I heard a pounding on the door. “Mr. Moran?” Detective Bushing called.

“I’ll be right out.”

As soon as I said that, I went to the bathroom window. I slid it open silently and studied the walkway between my building and the neighbor’s next door. I didn’t see any police. As quietly as I could, I slithered through the opening and dropped to the concrete below me.

I grabbed hold of the adjacent fence and threw myself over.

Somewhere close by, the rottweiler began barking again. I heard voices, saw streams of light coming my way. A man shouted.

“Stop!”

I took off running and didn’t look back.

CHAPTER 12

An early sunrise broke over the lake and made pink slashes in the clouds. I sat on a bench by the water at the far end of Navy Pier. The old brick pier building behind me was closed, and I had the boardwalk mostly to myself. On my left, overnight lights lingered in the downtown skyscrapers. The wind made whitecaps on the dark surface of the lake.

Physically, I was tired from running and from lack of sleep. I’d barely made it out of the neighborhood without being captured, but fortunately, I knew the area better than the police did, from my teenage days exploring the riverbank with Roscoe. I assumed they’d be looking for me throughout the city now. The serial killer, on the loose. Get him before he kills again.

A bus took me downtown. When I got off, I stopped at a twenty-four-hour convenience store to clean myself up. I assumed it wasn’t safe to use any of my credit cards, but fortunately, my wallet was flush with cash. I shaved and washed my hair and sponged off the sweat. I bought a pair of sunglasses, but the whole effect didn’t make for much of a disguise. From there, with my head down and my mind spinning, I walked the empty streets to the pier.

I’d been waiting for an hour now. I was getting nervous about staying in one place for so long. I’d called Eve Brier, but I didn’t know if she would come, or whether she’d send the police after me instead. But when I glanced down the pier, I saw her heading my way, her steps quick and determined.

She wore a knee-length navy-blue dress, which the fierce wind was playing with, plus the same dark trench coat she’d worn when we met in Grant Park. She had a beret tugged low on her forehead, and she had to keep it in place with one hand while her long hair swirled around her face. She sat down on the bench a couple of feet away from me, as if we were strangers, which we still were. At least to me. Her eyes were lost in the lake, but then she turned to stare at me with a passionate intensity.

“Tell me again what you said on the phone.”

“Because you don’t believe it?” I asked.

“That’s right. I don’t believe it, because it’s impossible.”

“Think that if you want, but there are two of me. Two Dylan Morans in the same world, sharing the same space. You brought him here.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he used your safe word to get away. Infinite.”

“My treatment couldn’t possibly make that happen.”

“I think you’re wrong. I think your therapy opened the door, and somehow another Dylan Moran walked through it. He’s a killer. The police showed me photographs of the women he killed. Four of them—all of them look just like Karly. Now he’s gone somewhere else to do it again.”

She reached out her long arm to stroke my hair, invading my personal space as if I were a pet. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe it’s all you.”

“I’m not a killer. I’m many things, but I’m not that. Not in this world.”

Eve took away her hand and looked off at the lake again. “If you’re right about this, the implications are . . . disturbing.”

“Why are you surprised? You said the whole point of this therapy was to create a bridge to other worlds.”

“Yes, of course, but what you’re talking about—”

“I’m talking about a Dylan Moran who is dangerous. Eve, you said that I came to you for treatment. If the Many Worlds theory is right, there are endless other Dylans going to you for the same treatment in other worlds. Imagine that this doppelg?nger—this violent Dylan—became aware of what was happening. He interacted with one of your patients and followed him into a completely new world. Into a hunting ground. He could kill without worrying about getting caught, because all the evidence would point to the Dylan who really lived in that world. And he had an escape hatch whenever he wanted to leave. You. He’s been using you to come and go, Eve. Who knows how many times he’s already done this and in how many different worlds? It’s the perfect crime.”

Eve frowned. “What do you plan to do about it?”

“Follow him and stop him before he kills anyone else.”

“Into the Many Worlds?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head firmly. “You can’t. The rules say that even if you find him, all the choices come into play. That means you can never stop him. There will always be a world where he gets away.”

“Maybe, but the rules also say you can’t jump between timelines. He’s breaking the rules. For all we know, he’s the only Dylan who has figured out how to do that.”

“What if he stops you? What if you don’t make it back?”

I stared at the city around me. My city. My home. “I’m done here, Eve. There’s nothing for me anymore. Roscoe is gone. Karly is gone. When the police catch up to me, I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison. It doesn’t matter whether I come back.”

“This won’t work,” Eve insisted. “You can’t actually cross over to these worlds.”

“Well, if I don’t try it, some other Dylan will, right? You said that every choice comes into play. So it might as well be me. Did you bring the drugs?”

Eve glanced around the pier to make sure the two of us were alone. She reached into her handbag and extracted a small vial of clear liquid and a hypodermic needle. “This is what I use.”