Opening
Chapters 16–20 braid Detective Darcy Halliday’s methodical hunt with Liv Reese’s fractured present and a chilling flashback that rewrites her past. As evidence converges on a woman with long, dark hair, Liv’s own body becomes a crime scene covered in warnings—culminating in a message that rewires every relationship: DON’T TRUST ANYONE.
What Happens
Chapter 16: The Shadow on the Screen
Working off the medical examiner’s window of midnight to 3 A.M., Halliday combs the victim’s building CCTV and lands on a grainy, useless shadow slipping from the apartment to the stairwell just after 2 A.M.—enough to confirm movement, not identity. She shifts tactics and rewinds to the prior morning.
At 10:08 A.M., the elevator opens: the victim—recognizable by his build and dimpled smile—guides a slender woman with waist-length dark hair, his hand steady on her lower back. She keeps her head down, hair veiling her face, and the pair disappears into the apartment. Convinced this woman is their prime suspect, Halliday prints a crisp still and orders a mass flyer drop.
Chapter 17: The Thumping Window
Two years earlier, Liv texts her roommate Amy Decker, who’s heading out of town. Alone in their apartment and rattled by Marco Reggio’s curt, out-of-town call, Liv bathes to calm down—until a heavy thumping freezes her. She rushes onto the landing in a robe, flush with embarrassment when the sound seems like neighbor noise, and retreats.
The pounding persists. In Amy’s room, a window has blown open. Later, after dozing on the sofa, Liv wakes to the same noise, shuts the window again, and steps into her own bedroom—ransacked. Drawers yanked open, clothes flung everywhere, a photo of her and Marco smashed. On the dusty glass, someone has traced a heart pierced by an arrow. Despite a deep distrust of police rooted in childhood trauma, she calls 911. Two officers find no forced entry, float theories about her cat or roommate, and leave Liv shaken, unseen, and terrified.
Chapter 18: The Woman with Long Dark Hair
Back in the present, Liv leaves the Cultura office newly styled by Claudine and feeling like an imposter in her own life. She tries Marco again; a gruff stranger insists—“for the millionth time”—she has the wrong number. When the office TV flashes the murder and the “WAKE UP!” window message, Liv feels yanked toward the crime scene. The receptionist adds that the strange man from earlier called back to say he’ll “swing by.” Liv lies about an appointment and bolts.
At the taped-off building on Lexington, she ducks into a luxury shoe store to watch unnoticed. A uniformed officer requests their security footage and says they’re hunting a woman with “long dark hair down to her waist.” The description matches how Liv looked that morning. Panic rising, she slips out, merges with the crowd, and hears someone whisper that the window message was written in blood. The sense that she is tangled in this murder hardens into certainty.
Chapter 19: Traces of a Ghost
Halliday and her partner, Detective Jack Lavelle, walk the processed scene with forensics detective James Bowen. No IDs for the victim or the woman. Women’s clothes hang in the closet, faintly mildewed. Several long, dark hairs turn up in the bedroom—one on the victim’s body, stained with his blood—bolstering the female suspect theory. But the hairs lack roots, blocking DNA testing. Additional clues: a partial print on a lipstick applicator, flecks of black paint on a pillow, and a few short, lighter hairs hinting at a possible third person.
Outside, the owner is abroad; the doorman doesn’t recognize the woman, but the night doorman might. While Lavelle coordinates the canvass, Halliday scouts the rear and spots a liquor store camera aimed at the alley exit—prime footage if the suspect slipped out the back. She secures the video, returns to the sidewalk, and hands flyers to gawkers, including a chic woman with a short, asymmetrical cut and strange black-and-blue writing across her hands. The woman denies knowing the suspect and vanishes—unrecognized by Halliday as Liv herself.
Chapter 20: Don’t Trust Anyone
The near brush with Halliday rattles Liv. The flyer image—long hair, similar clothes—looks like her. The memory of a caller asking if she’d taken a knife locks into place, and fear surges. Someone calls her name; she surges into the crosswalk crowd—until a hand clamps her shoulder.
It’s Dean, Marco’s former investor, all warmth and familiarity. He mentions hearing she moved abroad for a “clean break” and eagerly flags a cab for lunch. As he lifts his arm, Liv glimpses the side of her own hand. Inked in ballpoint: DON’T TRUST ANYONE.
Character Development
The section sharpens the cat-and-mouse between investigator and investigated, even as they unknowingly brush past each other. Liv’s identity frays; Halliday’s case coheres. The past—via Amy and Marco—makes Liv’s present fear feel earned, not imagined.
- Liv Reese: Vulnerable in the flashback, she becomes hypervigilant in the present—fleeing, observing, and decoding messages literally written on her skin. Each new clue points back to herself.
- Detective Darcy Halliday: Detail-driven and proactive; she pivots when footage fails, notes sensory clues (mildew), and scouts alternate cameras, closing the net without realizing the suspect stands before her.
- Amy Decker: Liv’s anchor in the “before,” whose absence underscores Liv’s isolation now.
- Marco Reggio: Distant then and unreachable now; the wrong-number responses and Dean’s “clean break” suggest a rupture in their shared past.
- Detective Jack Lavelle: A steady partner who manages canvassing and logistics as Halliday pursues hunches.
- Dean: A friendly face framed by unsettling subtext, opening a door to whatever Liv needed to escape.
Themes & Symbols
The chapters deepen Memory and Identity: Liv moves through the world as both witness and suspect, unable to reconcile the person she remembers with the woman the evidence sketches. The makeover, wrong-number calls, and inked warnings externalize a self that refuses to cohere.
Trust and Betrayal tightens: the dismissed 911 call in the past primes Liv to doubt authority; in the present, DON’T TRUST ANYONE formalizes paranoia into strategy. Even friendly gestures—the cab Dean hails—read as potential traps.
Through the lens of The Unreliability of Perception, screens, windows, and crowds distort the truth. The CCTV offers shape without face; a window bears messages but not meaning. Halliday sees Liv without seeing her.
Vulnerability and Manipulation hums underneath: the ransacked room and the lipstick print suggest intimacy weaponized; the mysterious caller and “swing by” threat frame Liv as target and mark. Symbols recur: windows as violated thresholds, hair as a trail that can’t be tested, and skin as a message board.
Key Quotes
“WAKE UP!” This command blares from the victim’s window and from the story’s structure, pushing Liv—and readers—out of complacency. It functions as both taunt and clue, urging a consciousness Liv can’t reliably access.
“DON’T TRUST ANYONE” Scrawled on Liv’s hand, the warning literalizes her fractured cognition: when memory fails, the body remembers. It recasts every ally as a suspect and shifts the book into paranoid thriller mode.
“Long dark hair down to her waist.” A simple descriptor becomes a net. The police’s physical shorthand maps neatly onto Liv, transforming a crowd into a mirror that reflects her as perpetrator.
“For the millionth time, you’ve got the wrong number.” The brusque denial severs Liv from her past and hints at deliberate erasure. Whether coincidence or cover, it deepens the uncanny gap where Marco—and their shared life—should be.
“A clean break.” Dean’s phrase suggests reinvention after rupture. For amnesiac Liv, it’s both accusation and invitation: what was she breaking from, and who helped her do it?
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters lock Liv to the murder on multiple fronts—CCTV timelines, forensic traces, street-level descriptions—while her own past surfaces with a blueprint of violation and dismissal. The Halliday–Liv near miss crystallizes the book’s dramatic irony: the detective’s keenest observations almost land on the truth, yet glide past it. With Dean’s reappearance and the alley camera secured, the investigation accelerates even as Liv’s reality destabilizes. The section resets the stakes: to prove innocence or guilt, Liv must decode the messages on windows, screens, and her own skin before the evidence—and the people behind it—close in.