One of the questions I hear most often is:

“What are you writing next?”

Sometimes the answer is a fully outlined novel.

Sometimes it’s pages of notes on a whiteboard.

And sometimes it’s something in between.

Today, I thought I’d share one of those in-between projects.

While the Samantha Hayes novels are told through the eyes of the investigators, I’ve been experimenting with a series of short stories that explore the minds of the killers themselves.

The first is called Behind the Mask.

Rather than telling the entire story, each short explores the thoughts, motivations, and moments that shaped one of the villains from the Samantha Hayes universe.

Think of them as companion pieces to the novels rather than sequels.

What you’re about to read is an early draft of the opening chapter.

It’s still very much a work in progress. I’ll almost certainly make changes before it’s ever published, but I wanted to invite you behind the scenes and let you see part of the creative process.

I’d love to know what you think.

Happy reading.

The Last Stop Killer

Alexei Novak was halfway through breakfast when his mother told him he had made his bed incorrectly.

She had not been upstairs that morning, which meant she could not have seen it, but Alexei knew better than to point that out. He continued spreading butter across his toast, covering the last bare edge before setting the knife on his plate. Across the kitchen table, his mother drank from the blue cup she had brought home from a trip to Brno and watched him over the rim.

“The corner nearest the window was loose yesterday,” she said. “You always forget that one.”

“I fixed it before I came downstairs.”

“You think you fixed it.”

Alexei looked at the clock above the refrigerator. If he left within the next five minutes, he could reach the corner before the bus arrived. If she sent him upstairs to check the bed, he would probably miss it and have to wait another forty minutes.

“I pulled the sheet tight,” he said. “I checked both corners.”

His mother lowered her cup. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No. I’m only saying I already fixed it.”

“And now you’re arguing with me.”

Alexei looked down at his toast. He had already made the mistake, and trying to explain himself would only make it worse. His mother could turn the smallest disagreement into an hour-long examination of everything he had done wrong. By the end, Alexei would apologize for something he still did not understand, and she would forgive him with the wounded patience of someone burdened with a difficult child.

“I’ll check it again,” he said.

“That would be the responsible thing to do.”

His mother reopened the newspaper and smoothed it against the table. Lenka Novak was forty-three, with dark hair she wore in a tight knot and a narrow face made sharper by the way she pressed her lips together when displeased. She had raised Alexei alone, a fact she mentioned whenever he forgot what she had sacrificed for him. She worked long hours, paid every bill, and reminded him that the only reason he had opportunities was because she had surrendered her own.

Alexei carried his plate to the sink and rinsed it beneath the faucet.

“Use hot water,” she said without looking away from the newspaper. “Butter doesn’t come off with cold.”

He moved the handle farther to the left and waited for the water to warm. After washing the plate and knife, he wiped the counter even though he had not left anything on it. He folded the dishcloth and placed it beside the sink, then reached for the backpack waiting near the front door.

“You put that in the wrong place.”

Alexei glanced back. “What?”

“The dishcloth.”

He moved it several inches closer to the wall. His mother looked at it, then returned to her newspaper without telling him whether he had chosen the correct spot.

“What are you doing today?” she asked.

“I need to go to the library.”

“Why?”

“I have a biology assignment.”

“You finished your biology assignment on Thursday.”

“This is another one.”

His mother folded the newspaper again. She aligned the edges before setting it aside, giving herself time to consider everything he had told her about school during the previous week. She remembered conversations in exact detail, including things Alexei did not remember saying. When his version differed from hers, she told him his memory had always been unreliable.

“What kind of assignment?”

“Animal behavior.”

“Which animal?”

“We’re supposed to choose one and observe it.”

“At the library?”

“I need to do some research first.”

She studied him long enough to make him aware of every movement in his face. When Alexei was younger, she had made him stand in front of the hallway mirror and repeat answers until he looked sincere enough to satisfy her. She said his eyes moved when he lied and the left side of his mouth tightened when he withheld something. Whether those things were true no longer mattered. He felt them happening whenever she questioned him.

“You should have completed the research yesterday,” she said.

“The teacher only assigned it yesterday.”

“Then you should have gone to the library after school instead of coming home late.”

“The bus was late.”

“You were seven minutes late.”

“I came straight home.”

“That isn’t what we’re discussing.”

Alexei stopped himself from asking what they were discussing. The bus would reach the corner in less than three minutes, and he could already hear traffic from the main road. If he missed it, the best part of the morning would be gone before he arrived.

His mother rose and crossed the kitchen, stopping directly in front of him. Although Alexei had grown taller than she was, she still had a way of making him lower his head when she approached. She adjusted the collar of his shirt and smoothed the fabric across his shoulders, pausing when she found a wrinkle near one sleeve.

“You were going outside like this?”

“It’s just a shirt.”

“That is exactly the kind of thing people notice about you.”

“No one at the library will care.”

“People care. They simply don’t tell you because they wait until you leave to discuss it.”

Alexei remained still while she tugged his collar into place. She had warned him for years that people laughed at the way he spoke and watched them. Whenever he said he had never heard anyone laughing, she told him that proved how skilled they were at hiding it.

“I tell you because I’m the only person who cares enough to be honest,” she said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Her expression softened, and she brushed a strand of hair away from his forehead. “There’s my good boy.”

Alexei hated when she called him that, but he had learned not to let the reaction reach his face.

She turned toward the table and reached for the blue cup. Her right hand trembled slightly as she lifted it, causing a few drops of coffee to spill onto the saucer. Alexei had noticed the same tremor twice that week, along with the cough she tried to hide whenever she thought he was asleep. When he asked whether she felt sick, she accused him of treating her like an invalid and reminded him that she had never been allowed the luxury of illness.

“You spilled your coffee,” he said.

His mother looked at the saucer. “Because you upset me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You never do.”

She carried the cup to the sink and wiped the saucer with the dishcloth he had just folded. When she finished, she returned the cloth to the place where Alexei had originally put it.

The bus engine grew louder outside.

“I need to go.”

“You haven’t checked your bed.”

Alexei tightened his grip on the backpack strap, then released it before she noticed. “I’ll do it now.”

His room was exactly as he had left it. The sheet lay smooth across the mattress, the blanket had been pulled evenly on both sides, and the corner near the window was tucked so tightly that he could barely fit his fingers beneath it. He pulled it loose and remade it anyway. If he returned too quickly, his mother would know he had not checked it properly.

A photograph rested on the dresser beside his schoolbooks. It had been taken when Alexei was seven, young enough to believe the warm, attentive woman his mother became in public might someday follow them home. In the photograph, she stood behind him with one hand resting firmly on his shoulder while the crowded headstones of Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery rose beyond the iron gate.

Alexei remembered walking through the cemetery and asking why so many stones had been left on the graves. His mother explained that flowers withered and disappeared, while stones endured. Leaving one behind proved that someone had visited and that the dead had not been forgotten. Before they left, she placed a small gray stone on a grave and held Alexei’s hand over it, pressing his fingers down until he understood that he was not supposed to move it.

The photograph leaned slightly to the right. Alexei straightened it, checked the bed once more, and went downstairs.

His mother stood beside the front door holding his jacket. The bus had already passed the house and was approaching the corner.

“You’ll need this,” she said.

“It’s supposed to warm up.”

“It is cold now, and I don’t have time to take care of you if you make yourself sick.”

Alexei put on the jacket, allowing her to zip it halfway up his chest and straighten the collar she had already adjusted. She told him to be home by four, answer his phone when she called, and stay inside the library until it was time to leave. He agreed to each condition because the bus had stopped at the corner and its doors were already open.

When he reached for the doorknob, his mother tapped one finger against her cheek. Alexei bent down and kissed her, then waited while she reminded him that affection should not always have to be requested.

He reached the bus just before the doors closed.

Alexei took a seat near the back and watched through the window until the house disappeared behind a row of buildings. Only then did he remove the jacket and open his backpack to make sure his notebook was still inside. The black cover had softened at the corners from months of use, and nearly every page contained observations he had made during his Saturday visits.

The bus stopped outside the library twelve minutes later, but Alexei remained in his seat. He continued across Prague before getting off near the zoo.

His mother had purchased the annual pass because he told her the visits would help with school. She liked telling people that her son studied animal behavior in his spare time, particularly when the story allowed her to mention the cost of the pass and everything she did to encourage his education. Alexei never told her that he went to the zoo because it was the only place where he could spend hours without worrying that someone was searching for his next mistake.

He entered with a group of families and followed the main path toward the cat exhibits. The zoo was crowded on Saturdays, but the visitors followed predictable patterns. Parents studied maps while children pulled them toward whichever animal they wanted to see first. Couples stopped to take photographs, and volunteers pointed lost visitors toward exhibits marked by signs directly above their heads. Everyone was occupied with someone or something else, which allowed Alexei to move among them without attracting attention.

At the leopard enclosure, he found an open place near the far end of the glass. The animal was pacing along the same route it had followed the previous Saturday, moving from the rocks to a tree and continuing beside the fence before turning back. Alexei removed his notebook and recorded the time, the number of visitors, and the leopard’s repeated path.

A young boy pushed through the crowd and struck the glass with both hands. The leopard stopped immediately, lowered its body, and turned toward the sound. Its ears shifted back, and the tip of its tail moved once across the ground. The warning was obvious to Alexei, but the boy laughed and slapped the glass again until his father pulled him away.

After the family left, the leopard remained still for several seconds before resuming its route. Alexei wrote down the changes in its posture and the moment it decided the threat had passed.

People often said animals attacked without warning because they failed to recognize the warning when it came. Animals did not hide what they felt and then punish someone for failing to guess. If Alexei watched long enough, they always told him what he needed to know.

The leopard stopped near the glass and looked directly at him. Alexei stayed where he was, careful not to move closer or challenge it with a prolonged stare. After several seconds, the animal turned away and continued pacing.

Alexei sat on the nearby bench and opened his notebook to a clean page. The pressure he had carried from the house began to loosen as he followed the leopard’s steady path around the enclosure. Its movements had a purpose, and its reactions had a cause. Nothing it did was meant to confuse him.

He stayed there watching until the world felt orderly again.