Two weeks. That's how long I spent telling myself it was just a night.

Fourteen days of professional composure. Updated the Gentleman profile with Kill #17 data. Gave a guest lecture at Columbia on geographic profiling. Met with three ongoing therapy patients. Ate lunch with Jess on Tuesday and didn't mention the man from the bar.

Didn't mention the texts, either. He'd left his number on my kitchen counter, written on the back of a grocery receipt. I'd thrown it away. Then fished it out of the trash two hours later and saved the number without a name, which is the kind of self-deception that would make any first-year psych student laugh.

We'd texted four times. Nothing explicit. Nothing romantic. He'd asked what I was reading. I'd asked if he'd finished that beer. He'd sent a photo of a finished French press with the caption Thought of you. I'd sent nothing back for six hours, then sent a period, which is the emotional equivalent of a woman standing in a doorway she refuses to walk through.

I was fine. I was back to normal. The bar was a blip.

Then my receptionist buzzed at 3:47 PM on a Wednesday.

"Walk-in. Says he found you online. Wants to discuss availability."

"I'm not taking new walk-ins this month."

"I told him. He's still here. Polite. Says he'll wait."

I opened the waiting room door.

He was sitting in the chair by the window. Not the one closest to the door — the window one. Where the afternoon light hit his shoulders and turned his hair from brown to something warmer. He was reading a magazine. Actually reading it, not performing patience. Legs crossed at the ankle. Same composure as the bar. Same stillness in his hands.

"Hi," he said. The exact tone of that morning in my kitchen.

The clinical part of me — the Dr. Cross part that had its own filing system and never lost a folder — identified seven problems in the first three seconds. Former sexual partner. Known personal history. Emotional transference risk. Countertransference risk. Dual relationship. APA Ethics Code 3.05. Potential boundary violation reportable to the licensing board.

The Maren part said: Oh no.

"I'm not taking new patients this month," I said.

"Your website says you are. Updated yesterday. Three openings."

He'd checked. Recently.

"I — those are for specific referrals."

"I'm not a referral." He stood. He moved the way he did everything — no excess. "I'm not here because of that night. I have things I need to talk about. With someone qualified. You're qualified."

"There are other qualified therapists. I can give you a list."

"I don't want a list." He looked at me. "I want someone who'll actually hear what I'm saying. You heard me at the bar. In forty-five minutes you understood something my last three therapists missed in six months each."

That was — either genuine or the most precisely targeted manipulation I'd encountered since my interview with the Greenvale arsonist in 2021. The problem was that I couldn't tell which. And I could always tell which.

I should have handed him a referral card. I should have said conflict of interest and closed the door. I should have called Jess and admitted the whole thing — the bar, the texts, the grocery receipt, the fact that I was standing in a clinical doorway looking at a man whose resting heart rate I'd counted in my own bed.

"Thursday," I said. "Four o'clock."

His eyes changed. Not a smile — something quieter. Recognition.

"Thursday at four."

He left. I closed the door. Locked it. Leaned against it with my palms flat on the wood.

My hands were shaking. Not fear — I've been in rooms with convicted murderers and my hands don't shake. This was different. Adrenaline without a clear source. The way my body reacts when it identifies a significant event before my conscious mind has caught up.

I picked up my phone. Jess's name on the screen. My thumb hovered.

Calling Jess meant saying it out loud: I slept with a stranger and now he's my patient and I didn't refuse because I wanted to see him again.

I put the phone down.

I spent the next twenty-four hours building a clinical justification. He had a previous therapeutic history — he'd mentioned past therapists. He'd presented with a genuine concern — pattern recognition, self-awareness. The sexual contact had been a single isolated event two weeks prior to the therapeutic relationship. If I documented the timeline carefully, maintained strict professional boundaries going forward, and consulted with a colleague —

I was constructing a defense for a case that hadn't been filed. That's how I knew I was already guilty.