Chapter 1
The bouquet arrived shortly after noon.
One hundred yellow roses.
I had just finished rinsing my coffee cup when the doorbell echoed through the quiet house. My husband, Daniel, was supposedly away on a week-long business trip, so I was not expecting anyone.
When I opened the door, a deliveryman stood behind an enormous wall of golden flowers.
“Amber?”
“Yes.”
“These are for you.”
The bouquet was so heavy that I had to grip it with both arms. The roses were flawless, their petals glowing beneath the afternoon light.
“Someone must really want to impress you,” the deliveryman said.
I searched between the flowers for a card.
There was none.
“No message?”
He checked the small florist label.
“Only your name.”
At first, I smiled.
Daniel had never been good with romantic notes. Once, he sent me a necklace without a card and later claimed the jewellery explained itself. After eighteen years of marriage, I knew his quiet way of showing affection.
I carried the roses into the dining room and placed them in the centre of the table. For a few moments, they seemed to transform the entire house.
Then uneasiness crept in.
Daniel knew I loved white roses.
I had carried white roses at our wedding. He bought them after my mother died. They decorated our table on our fifteenth anniversary.
He would never have chosen yellow.
Then I noticed the number printed on the florist’s tag.
Exactly one hundred.
Not ninety-nine.
Not one hundred and one.
Daniel was thoughtful, but he was not extravagant. There was no birthday, anniversary, or special occasion.
I called him.
The phone rang until voicemail answered.
I sent a message.
“Did you send me flowers?”
No reply.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
The bouquet no longer looked romantic. It appeared strangely deliberate, almost as though it had been placed in my home for a reason.
I walked around the table, studying the arrangement. The roses had been organised into ten precise rows of ten.
Near the centre, several flowers sat lower than the others.
I leaned closer.
One rose had a tiny red stain hidden beneath a petal.
I thought it was a natural flaw until I found another.
Then a third.
Exactly three roses had been secretly marked in red.
My hands began to shake.
I had seen that pattern before.
Years earlier, my father, a homicide detective, had mentioned an unsolved case involving flowers. He never shared every detail, but I remembered him sitting on our porch late one night, staring into the darkness.
“Some monsters don’t leave fingerprints,” he had said. “They leave symbols.”
I grabbed my phone.
This time, I called the police.
The dispatcher asked whether I was in immediate danger.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But the bouquet has one hundred yellow roses and three of them are marked.”
Two officers arrived within an hour. They examined the flowers politely, clearly wondering whether I was frightened by an innocent mistake.
Then a dark sedan pulled into the driveway.
A silver-haired detective named Kellan entered the house. When I mentioned my father’s name, his expression changed.
“I worked with him,” he said.
Kellan approached the bouquet.
The instant he saw the three red marks, the colour disappeared from his face.
“Secure the house,” he ordered.
One officer looked confused.
“Sir?”
“Do it now.”
I gripped the back of a chair.
“You recognise them.”
Kellan looked directly at me.
“Twenty-two years ago, three women vanished. Before each disappearance, the victim received exactly one hundred yellow roses.”
“And the red marks?”
“Three marked flowers every time.”
My stomach turned.
Kellan explained that my father believed the number represented completion—a final cycle, a final goodbye.
The flowers were not a gift.
They were a warning.
The police tried calling Daniel repeatedly.
He never answered.
Detective Kellan contacted his company while officers searched the house.
When he ended the call, his face was grim.
“Daniel was never sent on a business trip.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“No flight was booked. The hotel reservation was false. His company hasn’t seen him for four days.”
Four days earlier, Daniel had kissed my forehead, picked up his suitcase, and told me he would call from Chicago.
Now I had no idea where he was.
Or why he had lied.
That evening, police searched every room while I sat downstairs wrapped in a blanket. I listened to drawers opening, footsteps crossing the ceiling, and officers speaking quietly behind closed doors.
Eventually, Kellan returned carrying a small metal box from Daniel’s office.
Inside were old newspaper articles.
Dozens of them.
Every clipping concerned the three women who had disappeared twenty-two years earlier.
Photographs of the victims.
Reports about the yellow roses.
Investigators’ theories.
There were handwritten notes along the margins.
Daniel’s handwriting.
My chest tightened as I remembered the man I had loved for eighteen years—the man who cooked terrible pancakes every Sunday, who remembered my favourite coffee creamer, and who held me through my father’s funeral.
Had he been studying the murders?
Or had he been involved in them?
By midnight, Daniel was considered a prime suspect.
I did not sleep.
The following morning, Detective Kellan returned with forensic results from the florist order.
“The fingerprints are not Daniel’s,” he said.
Relief and confusion collided inside me.
“Then whose are they?”
Kellan hesitated.
“They belong to Amos.”
I did not recognise the name.
“He was a detective,” Kellan continued. “He worked the original case with your father.”
My father’s former partner.
Kellan sat across from me and lowered his voice.
“Your father suspected Amos before he died, but he never found enough evidence to arrest him.”
“Why would Amos send flowers to me?”
“We don’t believe they were intended as a threat against you.”
“Then what were they?”
“Bait.”
Kellan explained that Daniel had somehow obtained my father’s old investigation notes. He must have been secretly examining the case and getting close to proving Amos was responsible.
The false business trip had likely been Daniel’s attempt to investigate without placing me in danger.
Amos had discovered what he was doing.
The bouquet was designed to frighten me, confuse the police, and make Daniel appear connected to the original crimes.
The newspaper clippings had not been trophies.
They were evidence Daniel had been studying.
I covered my face.
I had spent an entire night wondering whether my husband was a murderer.
In reality, he might have disappeared because he was trying to expose one.
Police traced Amos to an abandoned hunting cabin outside the city.
I was taken to the station and told to remain there while officers searched the property.
May you like
Every minute felt endless.
I sat beneath the fluorescent lights holding Daniel’s wedding ring. He had left it on the dresser before leaving, probably because he feared it might identify him if Amos caught him.
