PERFECT SHADOWS

7

PERFECT HADOWS 7

Jaco was still standing in the surveillance room, replaying the footage frame by frame, when a junior officer appeared at the door.

“Sir… you might want to see this.”

Jaco turned sharply. “See what?”

The officer hesitated. “Interrogation Room Two.”

A cold sensation crept down Jaco’s spine. He followed the officer down the corridor. Each step felt unreal. He had personally checked the cell. The hallway. The yard. Cameras showed nothing. No movement. No breach. The interrogation room door was slightly ajar. Jaco pushed it open. Selene Marlowe sat at the metal table, posture perfectly straight, hair immaculate, dressed in standard prison attire as though it were tailored silk. In front of her was a steaming plate of samp and oxtail the meal she had requested that morning. She was eating calmly. No restraints. No escort in sight. The two guards stationed outside looked pale.

“She was… already inside when we came to check,” one whispered.

Jaco’s pulse hammered in his ears. “That’s not possible.”

He had watched the feeds. Every time Selene was brought here before, she was escorted by two officers. Cleared through two checkpoints. Logged. Yet here she was. She dabbed her mouth with a napkin and looked up at him with a coy smile.

“Detective,” she said warmly. “You look exhausted.”

Jaco stepped inside slowly, shutting the door behind him.

“How did you get past clearance?” he demanded. “Every corridor is monitored.”

She tilted her head slightly. “Is it?”

His jaw tightened. “I saw your cell empty. You weren’t on any feed.”

Selene took another slow bite, as if savoring the tension more than the food.

“Maybe,” she said lightly, “you’re looking in the wrong places.”

Silence stretched. Her eyes studied him carefully.

“Tell me,” she continued, voice soft, “does Linda still stand by her brother? Still convinced Adrian was good?”

Jaco’s chest tightened. “This isn’t about Linda.”

“Everything is about Linda,” Selene replied calmly. “Mothers. Sisters. Loyalty. Denial.”

He leaned forward, hands on the table.

“How did you walk out of your cell unnoticed?”

She smiled again, faint and knowing.

“Just like how I called you using your office number,” she said gently. “You still don’t know how that happened either.”

The room felt smaller. That call. Week ago. The internal line. No trace. No breach logged. IT had sworn the system was secure. Jaco stared at her, something shifting in his mind.

“You’re telling me you can bypass prison security?” he said quietly.

She shrugged slightly. “I’m telling you, Detective, that systems are built by people. And people are… predictable.”

He felt a flicker of anger. “This isn’t a game.”

“No,” she agreed softly. “It isn’t.”

She pushed the empty plate aside.

“You saw what was in that river. You saw what was on that drive. Ask yourself something honestly… if I wanted to disappear, truly disappear… would I still be sitting here?”

Jaco had no answer. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. She leaned back in her chair, composed, patient, completely in control.

“I walked here,” she said quietly. “Through your corridors. Past your doors. Past your officers.”

A pause.

“And no one stopped me.”

Jaco’s mind raced. Had someone helped her? Was there a breach? A mole? Or something far more deliberate?

Selene’s eyes never left his.

“You’re looking for monsters in the shadows,” she whispered. “But sometimes the shadows are built by the institution itself.”

He felt the ground shift beneath everything he thought he understood. And the most terrifying part? She didn’t look like someone who had escaped. She looked like someone who had tested the system

and proven she could break it whenever she wished. Selene picked at the last few grains of samp on her plate, letting the silence stretch. Her eyes focused somewhere distant, as though the prison walls melted away and she was back in her home, with the chaos of her family swirling around her.

“Detective,” she said slowly, “I want to start with Lucas.”

Jaco shifted in his chair, pen poised but hesitant. He had braced himself for darkness, but there was something different in her voice a softness, almost reverence.

“He… was shy,” she continued. “Reserved. Meek. A child you had to worry about because the world was too loud for him sometimes. He hated arguing. Hated fighting. Hated conflict.” Her fingers traced the edge of the table. “Skinny little thing, always tucked in, hiding behind his hair or a book. And he… he loved being around me. Despite Adrian wanting him to ‘man up,’ to be tough, to act like a boy should, Lucas… he just wanted to be gentle.”

She paused, swallowing hard, her lips tightening. “He was my favourite. The one who made me feel like maybe… maybe there was something pure in all this chaos.”

Jaco nodded slowly, unsure whether to ask questions or just let her speak.

Selene leaned back, exhaling as if the words had been trapped for years. “Through everything,” she said, voice calm but pained, “through the chaos of discovering what my other children were capable of… Daniel, Eli, the twins, their darkness… I didn’t understand that Lucas… he stayed… he stayed true to what was right. Supportive, sweet, loving. Even while he had no idea that Kiara-his fiancée-was in cahoots with his father. That she had been manipulated by Adrian to pin his child on him.”

Her hands clenched into fists for a fraction of a second. “It ate me alive with passion… with rage… that someone so innocent had to endure that. That my favourite child, my Lucas, had to face deception so deep.”

Her voice softened again. “And yet… he still was kind. He still believed in goodness. He still… loved us. That’s why I… I fought so hard for him.”

She wiped her eyes subtly, careful not to appear weak. “I went to church. Two to three times a week. Prayed. Fasted. Begged for strength. For clarity. Why… why did I have to go through all of this?”

The question hung heavy in the air, unanswered. Jaco stared at her, the weight of her words pressing down, understanding for a moment the unbearable tightrope she had walked between motherhood, horror, and survival.

“And yet,” Selene added quietly, almost to herself, “he remained a light. In a house full of monsters… he was the one who didn’t become one.”

The room was silent, except for the distant hum of the prison lights. And in that silence, Jaco felt it a glimpse of the devotion, the fear, the fury, and the calculated despair that had shaped everything Selene had done. He had walked into the room expecting answers. Instead, he got a mother’s grief, a killer’s calm, and the impossible truth of Lucas an innocent in a house that had tried to corrupt everyone around him. Selene’s expression shifted abruptly, her warmth disappearing like mist in the morning sun. Her eyes hardened, icy and unreadable.

“Lucas,” she said slowly, her voice sharp now, deliberate, “he wasn’t a monster. No… he was worse. Antichrist. Devil in disguise. And I… I didn’t even notice. All this time… I thought he was my little light. But he was the darkness I failed to see.”

Jaco’s chest tightened. The calmness in her voice, the clinical precision, made her words even more chilling. She leaned back, adjusting her jumpsuit, picking at the last scraps of her meal. Then, without warning, she stood. The click of her heels on the floor echoed in the small room.

“Detective,” she said, voice measured, controlled, almost casual, “our time for today is up. Up and down, one interview done. We’ll continue on Monday. It’s the weekend. I need my rest.”

She began to walk toward the door, every movement precise, as if she had rehearsed this exit a hundred times. Then, just before leaving, she stopped and glanced over her shoulder with that familiar coy smile.

“Oh,” she said softly, “say hi to Bella for me.”

Jaco froze, a shiver crawling up his spine. His lips barely moved as he whispered, “…Bella… that’s my wife.”

Selene tilted her head, smiling faintly, almost amused, before stepping out. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving Jaco standing alone, the words echoing in his mind, a mix of disbelief, fear, and something darker he couldn’t yet name. For the first time, he realized Selene wasn’t just testing systems or manipulating truth she was testing him. And he had just walked straight into her game.