The metallic taste in my mouth is what wakes me first. Then the smell—copper and earth, like old pennies buried in dirt. My eyes flutter open to a ceiling I don’t recognize, wooden beams crossed against white plaster that’s yellowed with age. The floorboards beneath me are cold, unforgiving against my cheek.

I try to sit up and the world tilts sideways, nausea rolling through my stomach like a tide. My head throbs with each heartbeat, a percussion that makes my vision blur at the edges. When I finally manage to prop myself up on my elbows, I see it.

Blood.

So much blood.

It’s everywhere—splattered across the hardwood floor in arterial sprays, pooled in the corners where it’s had time to congeal into something thick and dark. The coffee table is overturned, its glass top shattered into a constellation of deadly fragments. A lamp lies broken beside it, its shade torn and twisted.

And there, in the center of it all, is a body.

A woman. Middle-aged, with graying brown hair matted to her skull. Her eyes stare at nothing, glassy and vacant. She’s wearing a floral dress that might have been pretty once, before it became soaked in red. Her throat—

I turn away and vomit onto the floor, adding to the chaos. My hands shake as I wipe my mouth, and that’s when I notice them. My hands. They’re covered in dried blood, dark crescents under my fingernails, stains that run up my forearms like I’ve been painting with crimson.

What did I do?

The thought hits me like a physical blow. I scramble backward until my spine hits the wall, trying to put distance between myself and the horror in front of me. But I can’t escape it. The evidence is right there on my skin, under my nails, probably in my hair and clothes too.

I killed her. I must have killed her.

But I can’t remember. God help me, I can’t remember anything.

My name floats back to me first—Michael. Michael Lewis. I’m thirty-four years old. I live in Portland. No, wait—I lived in Portland. What am I doing here? Where is here?

The cabin around me is small and rustic, all knotty pine walls and river stone fireplace. Through the windows I can see dense forest stretching in every direction, pine trees so thick they block out most of the sky. No neighbors. No witnesses.

No help.

I force myself to look at the woman again, searching for recognition. Do I know her? Her face seems familiar in the way that faces sometimes do—a cashier you’ve seen a dozen times, a neighbor from down the street. But I can’t place her specifically, can’t summon a name or a relationship or a reason why I might have wanted her dead.

Because I’m not a killer. I know that much about myself. I remember being the kind of person who catches spiders in cups to take them outside instead of squashing them. I remember crying when my childhood dog died. I remember—

But memories are slippery things, and mine feel full of holes. The harder I try to grasp them, the more they slip away like water through my fingers.

My phone. I need my phone. I pat down my pockets with trembling hands and find it in my jacket—a jacket I don’t remember putting on, stiff now with dried blood. The screen is cracked but functional. No signal, of course. We’re too far from civilization for that.

The timestamp reads 6:47 AM, October 15th. But October 15th of what year? And how long have I been unconscious? The blood on my hands is dry, flaking off in rust-colored pieces when I flex my fingers. Hours, at least. Maybe longer.

I need to think. I need to figure out what happened here.

Standing on unsteady legs, I make myself search the cabin. The kitchen yields nothing useful—dishes in the sink, a coffee maker with yesterday’s grounds still in the filter. The refrigerator is stocked with basics: milk, eggs, lunch meat. A rental, maybe, or a vacation home.

In the bedroom, I find men’s clothes in the dresser. My size. My style, even—simple jeans and t-shirts, a couple of flannel shirts that look worn and comfortable. But I don’t remember packing them, don’t remember coming here at all.

The bathroom mirror shows me a stranger. My face is gaunt, stubbled, with dark circles under eyes that look haunted even to me. There’s a cut on my forehead, scabbed over, and bruises along my jaw that suggest I took some hits in whatever fight led to this carnage.

But from who? The woman doesn’t look like she could have done this kind of damage. She’s small, delicate-boned. Even if she’d fought back, could she really have left me looking like I went ten rounds with a heavyweight?

Back in the main room, I force myself to examine the scene more carefully. The blood spatter tells a story, if I can read it right. The heaviest concentration is near where the woman lies, but there are drops leading away from her body toward the door. My blood? Hers? Someone else’s?

Someone else.

The thought stops me cold. What if there was a third person here? What if I didn’t kill her—what if I was trying to help her? What if whoever did this knocked me unconscious and left me here to take the blame?

It’s a desperate hope, but I cling to it anyway. Because the alternative—that I’m a murderer who can’t even remember his own crime—is too horrible to accept.

I’m searching for more evidence when I hear it: the distant sound of a car engine working its way up what must be a dirt road. My blood turns to ice water in my veins. Someone’s coming.

The police? A neighbor? The real killer returning to clean up loose ends?

I have maybe two minutes before they reach the cabin. Two minutes to decide what to do. Run into the woods and hope they don’t find me? Stay and try to explain a situation I don’t understand myself?

The engine gets closer. I can hear gravel crunching under tires now.

That’s when I see it—a piece of paper that must have been knocked under the couch during the struggle. I grab it with shaking hands and unfold it. It’s a letter, handwritten in careful script:

Michael,

I know what you did to Allison. I know you think you got away with it, but I have proof. Meet me at the cabin on Pine Ridge Road tomorrow night if you want to keep this between us. Come alone, and bring $50,000 in cash. If you don’t show, or if you bring anyone with you, the police get everything.

You have 24 hours.

—A friend

Allison. The name hits me like a physical blow, and suddenly memories come flooding back in broken fragments. Allison Lewis—my ex-wife. The divorce that turned ugly. The custody battle over our daughter Emma. The night Allison disappeared three months ago, and how the police questioned me for hours before letting me go for lack of evidence.

The night I can’t remember.

The car door slams outside, and I hear footsteps on the porch. Heavy boots. More than one person.

I understand now. The woman on the floor—she must be the blackmailer. She knew what happened to Allison, had proof that I killed my ex-wife. So I came here to pay her off, but something went wrong. Maybe she wanted more money. Maybe she threatened to go to the police anyway.

Maybe I snapped.

The footsteps stop outside the door. I hear voices, low and urgent.

“Police! Open up!”

They found me. Of course they found me. Someone probably saw my car, or found my registration, or traced my phone. It doesn’t matter how—what matters is that they’re here, and I’m standing in a room with a dead body and blood on my hands.

But wait—if this woman was blackmailing me about Sarah’s murder, and now she’s dead too, what does that make me? A serial killer? Someone so dangerous that I kill to cover up my kills?

The door explodes inward as they breach it, and suddenly the cabin is full of shouting officers with guns drawn. I raise my hands instinctively, the letter still clutched in my right fist.

“Don’t move! Get on the ground!”

I comply, dropping to my knees beside the overturned coffee table. The glass crunches under my weight, and I feel it bite through my jeans into my skin. More blood to add to the collection.

As they cuff me, one of the officers—a woman with kind eyes despite the circumstances—leans down close to my ear.

“Michael Lewis, you’re under arrest for the murder of Detective Linda Morrison.”

Detective. The word hits me like a sledgehammer. The dead woman isn’t a blackmailer—she’s a cop. Was she here officially? Was this some kind of sting operation gone wrong?

But as they haul me to my feet and read me my rights, one more memory surfaces through the fog in my brain. It’s just a fragment, but it’s enough to change everything:

The woman—Detective Morrison—arriving at the cabin alone. Her hand on her weapon, but not drawn. Her saying my name, telling me she knows what happened to Allison. Me protesting my innocence, begging her to believe me.

And then her radio crackling to life: “Linda, we found the body. Allison Lewis’s remains were discovered in Millfield Park two hours ago. Looks like she’s been dead for months, but not from foul play. Medical examiner thinks it was an overdose—accidental or intentional, hard to say. The ex-husband’s been cleared.”

I remember the relief flooding through me like a physical force. The vindication. The knowledge that I wasn’t a killer after all.

I remember Detective Morrison’s face changing, confusion replacing certainty. Her apology. Her explanation that she’d been so sure, had found evidence that seemed to point to me, had been working the case off the books because her superiors thought it was closed.

And I remember the third person stepping out of the shadows behind her—someone I hadn’t seen, hadn’t heard. Someone who’d been waiting for exactly this moment.

The real killer.

Not Sarah’s killer, because Sarah died by her own hand. But someone who wanted me to believe I was guilty, who’d manipulated evidence and fed Detective Morrison false leads, who’d used my memory loss to gaslight me into thinking I was capable of murder.

Someone who needed me to confess to a crime I didn’t commit.

Someone who knew about my blackouts, my memory gaps, my history of trauma and depression.

Someone close enough to me to know exactly which buttons to push.

As they load me into the back of the police car, I catch a glimpse of another vehicle parked behind the patrol cars. A familiar blue sedan that makes my blood run cold.

My brother David’s car.

David, who’s always been jealous of my success. David, who coveted my life with Allison and Emma. David, who visited me in the hospital after my accident last year—the accident that started the memory problems. David, who’s been so supportive through my divorce, so understanding about my blackouts.

David, who probably killed Detective Morrison when she realized she’d been played, then staged the scene to make it look like I did it. Who’s been manipulating me from the beginning, feeding me false memories and manufactured guilt.

The car door slams shut, and through the rear window I see him standing with the other officers, playing the concerned brother perfectly. He catches my eye and gives me the slightest smile—not gloating, just satisfied. Like a man who’s finally won a game he’s been playing for a very long time.

As we drive away from the cabin, I close my eyes and try to remember what really happened in that room. But the harder I try, the more elusive the memories become. Maybe David’s right. Maybe I am a killer. Maybe the blood on my hands tells the only truth that matters.

Or maybe that’s exactly what he wants me to think.

The forest flashes by outside the window, dark trees keeping their secrets. And somewhere in the space between what I remember and what I’ve forgotten, the truth waits like a predator in the shadows, patient and hungry and utterly unforgiving.