Now You Don't

Detective Cal Dempsey has spent twenty years building walls between her work and her life. At forty-eight, she's never been in a relationship, never let anyone past her defenses, never been anything but the job. Then crime scene photographer Mara Snowden-the police chief's niece and a fixture at crime scenes for years-disappears without explanation.

Left behind: a single photograph of a murder victim with three words written on the back in Mara's handwriting: For U Callisto.

Callisto is a name Dempsey buried at eighteen. A childhood nickname from a group home, known only to people from a life she's never discussed. A name that no one in her current world should know.

Assigned to find her missing colleague, Dempsey breaks into Mara's apartment and discovers a black leather journal. Inside: surveillance photographs of Dempsey taken over years without her knowledge. Detailed observations of her routines, her habits, her solitary life. Explicit sexual fantasies about a woman Mara has been watching, studying, wanting-but never approaching. The journal reveals an obsession that's been growing in the dark, patient and methodical.

The victim in the photograph is Stefan Tapani, a police confidential informant with a history of violent crimes he's never paid for. Two years ago, he sexually assaulted Mara. Three witnesses-all connected to law enforcement-gave statements claiming the encounter was consensual. Tapani walked free. The case was closed.

Now those three witnesses are dead within weeks of each other: a drowning, a suicide, a fall down the stairs. The kind of deaths that don't look like murders until someone connects them. Dempsey connects them.

As she traces the pattern through old case files and crime scene reports, Dempsey realizes Mara hasn't just been watching her-she's been leaving breadcrumbs. Each crime scene disguised as tragedy. Each death perfectly executed. Each piece of evidence placed where only Dempsey would find it. The investigation isn't a hunt. It's an invitation.

When Mara finally surfaces, the confrontation isn't what Dempsey expects. There's no denial, no deflection. Instead, Mara offers something Dempsey has never had: to be truly seen. To be chosen. To matter to someone beyond her badge and her cases.

The confession becomes a seduction. The evidence becomes foreplay. And Dempsey-who has spent two decades alone, who has never been wanted, who has never let herself want anything beyond the job-feels the walls she's built beginning to crack.

The choice before her is impossible: turn in the first person who's ever desired her and maintain her integrity, or become complicit in the only justice Mara could get. Because in a system that protects informants over victims, that values procedures over people, that let a rapist walk free-what is justice actually worth?

Now You Don't is a noir psychological thriller about obsession, complicity, and the terrible freedom of finally being seen-even when the person seeing you is destined to destroy you, or perhaps especially then.