Annah
The sound of Wendo's final breath still echoed in Annah's ears long after she had left the crumbling house on the Mombasa coastline.
She didn't run.
She walked.
Each step away from that place felt like it should carry more weight, like the burden of his death ought to grow heavier with distance. But it didn't. If anything, it became... lighter. Like a fog lifting.
But clarity was its own kind of horror.
She had expected to feel victorious. Maybe even relieved.
Instead, she felt vacant.
The knife,still wet with his blood was tucked in her bag, wrapped in an old scarf. Her hands trembled slightly, not from fear, but from adrenaline that had nowhere left to go.
Wendo's words haunted her.
"You're just like me."
It was the kind of line a predator says when he sees his reflection in his prey. But it stuck. Burrowed beneath her skin like a splinter.
Was she?
She sat at a dusty coastal café, watching the waves crash. The sun was burning orange against the water, a painting too beautiful for what she had just done.
She sipped bitter coffee and stared at the ocean.
It wasn't the kill that disturbed her.
It was how easy it had been.
Wendo had begged, not with words, but with that sickly smug grin. Like he knew she'd cross the line and never return. Like he wanted it.
But Annah hadn't killed out of rage. She hadn't screamed. She hadn't even cried.
She had judged. Weighed his life and found it unworthy.
That scared her more than anything.
And worse,she'd do it again. If given the choice.
"Confession Three," she whispered to herself, tasting the words. "He was evil."
But even as she whispered it, her fingers dug into her palms, drawing little crescents of pain.
If she kept doing this ,killing the guilty, silencing the rot,how long before she no longer needed a reason?
Detective Stella Njoroge
The house smelled like old salt and rot.
Detective Stella stood just inside the doorway of the Mombasa cottage, breathing through her mouth, hand gloved and flashlight cutting through the gloom. Behind her, two local officers waited, hesitant to cross the threshold.
She had been chasing ghosts for weeks now,evidence that vanished, reports that didn't line up, and bodies that had no clean motive.
But this one,this scene,it screamed something different.
It reeked of intention.
Wendo Munge's corpse lay twisted on the floor, his expression frozen somewhere between surprise and a crooked smile. A deep knife wound had torn through his gut, arterial blood soaked into the floorboards.
But what caught Stella's attention wasn't just the kill.
It was the message.
Carved faintly into the wall behind him, just above his body, were the words:
"He smiled while she screamed."confession three.
Stella stared at it for a long moment.
Who was she?
And why did it feel like the killer wasn't hiding anymore?
She knelt by Wendo's body, eyeing the wound. Clean. Intentional. Deep enough to kill quickly. Not frenzied. This wasn't someone who lost control.
It was someone in control.
Someone who wanted him dead ,not out of passion, but purpose.
"Detective," one of the officers called from another room. "We found something."
She followed the voice to a cramped back room. On a chipped desk, there was a small stack of notes, a flash drive, and a photograph.
The photo showed Wendo, grinning like a man without consequence, his arm around a woman.
Stella's blood chilled.
It was Lucy Mumo.
She'd been looking for this connection for weeks,something to tie Lucy to the men Annah had once circled around.
Wendo had always been slippery, too clean, never caught.
But the photo made it real. And the note beside it, scrawled in tight, angry handwriting, sealed it:
"She begged. You laughed."
Stella clenched her jaw. This wasn't just revenge,it was righteous. That scared her.
Because righteous killers don't stop at justice. They keep going.
"Send the flash drive to forensics," she ordered. "And find out where Wendo was the night Lucy died."
As she turned back toward the living room, her mind raced through the possibilities.
Four bodies now,Mr Mbithi,Pastor John, Kevin Langat, and now Wendo Munge. All with ties to Lucy. All with signs of guilt.
And one woman who had slipped just beneath the radar.
Annah Mwende.
Stella had revisited her therapy records from Dr. Kariuki's practice. The notes were sparse,deliberately so, almost too clean. The psychiatrist had hidden something.
Stella had seen it before,people like Kariuki always thought they were smarter than the system. But his name had come up more than once now. Connected to Annah. Connected to Lucy.
She pulled out her phone and called her Nairobi contact.
"I need surveillance on Dr. Peter Kariuki," she said, walking back into the sea breeze. "Every patient he's seen in the last five years. Especially Annah Mwende."
A pause on the line. Then: "You think she's involved?"
"I think she's the key."
Annah
Back in her hotel room, Annah stared at her reflection.
She barely recognized the woman in the mirror. Her eyes looked older, her skin tighter around the bones.
There were red welts on her wrists from where Wendo had grabbed her. She ran a finger over them and closed her eyes.
Lucy had trusted her with a secret. A warning.
Dr. Kariuki had once dismissed her fears. "You're imagining threats," he'd said, scribbling notes as if her pain was a puzzle to solve rather than a fire to put out.
But now, Annah saw it clearly: He had known. About Wendo. About Kevin. About the pastor.
He had watched the predator's circle tighten around Lucy.
And he had done nothing.
Or maybe, he had been part of it.
The realization left her cold.
If she had been the knife, Kariuki had been the hand guiding it.
She took a breath and opened Lucy's notebook again, flipping to a page she had skipped over before.
The handwriting was shaky, like Lucy had written it while crying.
"If anything happens to me, it's because they let it happen. He knows. He always knew. Dr. K. warned me once not to speak. That it would 'cause a breakdown.' But it wasn't mine he feared."
Annah clenched the notebook.
Kariuki was next.
Stella
Detective Stella's boots crunched over broken shells as she stood near the edge of the beach.
She stared at the cottage behind her, Wendo's lifeless body still inside, and whispered to herself:
"She's building a trail."
Not a messy one.
Not sloppy.
Deliberate.
Four men. All connected to one woman. All left like chapters of a story.
She didn't know if Annah Mwende was a killer... or a survivor sharpening the knife the world handed her.
But Stella knew this:
The next body would be someone smarter. More careful.
And much harder to catch.
She turned to her team. "Bring in Dr. Kariuki for questioning. Today."
Then she whispered into the wind, barely audible:
"I'm coming, Annah."