Chapter 27 Small World After All
TWENTY-SEVEN
SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL
JACOB
The realization slams into me like a freight train, knocking the air from my lungs.
Sheila.
Lyla was investigating Sheila’s murder.
What are the fucking odds?
I jolt upright, the bed creaking beneath me, pulse hammering in my ears. The camper walls close in, suffocating.
I need air. I need to move.
I swing my legs over the edge, feet hitting the floor as I push up, pacing in nothing but my underwear. The space feels too damn small to contain this.
Behind me, the sheets rustle.
“Jacob.” Lyla’s voice cuts through the fog, but beneath it, something fragile.
I turn. She clutches the sheet to her chest, shoulders rigid, eyes dark with concern.
“Explain.” Her voice doesn’t waver. “Please.”
I drag a hand through my hair, gaze flicking anywhere but at her. “It’s . . . complicated,” I mutter, gripping the kitchenette counter like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
“Then uncomplicate it.”
A bitter laugh escapes—sharp, humorless. It’s never that simple.
Lyla waits, patient in a way that twists my stomach.
I take a breath. “Sheila,” I start, her name foreign on my tongue. “She was one of my best friends.”
Lyla’s expression softens. “Tell me about her.”
I close my eyes for a second, enough for the memories to flood in, unstoppable. “I met her at the local elementary school. Trish and I were giving a fire safety and first aid assembly. Sheila was a second-grade teacher. Sweet. Kind. Lit up a room just by being in it.”
Lyla stays silent, watching with quiet intensity.
“Trish introduced us. They were in the same book club. That’s how I met Jessica too, they’d grown up next door to each other.”
I shake my head. “Sheila and I . . . it was easy. Easy to talk to, easy to be with. We dated over a year. I proposed. She said yes.” A hollow chuckle slips out. “Wedding plans started almost immediately.”
I still can’t look at Lyla. Not while my head drowns in what-ifs and the cruel joke the universe just played.
Because Sheila Tatters, the woman I was supposed to marry, had been one of his. And Lyla had been chasing her killer.
“But as the months went by, things changed.” My jaw clenches. “Or maybe I changed. We grew apart. I got bored.”
The words scrape like glass.
“Sheila wanted stability. A house, kids. Me? I wanted adventure. Excitement. Anything but the routine we’d fallen into.”
My throat tightens but I force myself to continue. “I couldn’t give her what she wanted. I sat her down, tried to make her see reason. She refused. Stormed out—hurt, confused, furious.” My nails bite my palms. “That was the last time I saw her.”
I glance at Lyla. Her expression holds understanding, not pity.
“The next day, the police came to the station. The way they looked at me . . .” My jaw locks. “They found her body in the alley behind the grocery store on Main.”
Images flash, the words Sheila Tatters is dead leaving the detective’s mouth, the world tilting.
“They questioned me, asked where I was, when I’d last seen her. Then they showed me the pictures.”
Her body crumpled in the alley, limbs bent wrong. Bruises, so many bruises, violent against pale skin. Deep lacerations, carved into her like she was a jack-o’-lantern. Her lavender dress soaked dark, clinging like a second skin.
And her eyes—once bright and laughing—empty.
Bile burns my throat.
“I couldn’t believe it. Knowing it was my fault she was out there alone.” My voice breaks. “I threw up in the station.”
Lyla doesn’t flinch. She just watches, steady, as I pace.
“The police grilled me for hours. It took two weeks for them to look anywhere else. A rookie profiler suggested they contact the FBI. Thought the posing matched another killer. They kept details out of the papers, just a brief notice. But by then the world was already unraveling.”
I drop onto the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, head in my hands.
“I didn’t pay attention to any of it. I shut down. The flowers, the memorial, the sympathy looks—all a blur. People talked at me. Hugged me. Cried. I just stood there, hollowed out and nodding like a coward.”
The guilt hasn’t loosened its grip since.
“A month later, the world fell apart. Riots. Panic. The infected. The news shifted. Sheila became another name lost in the noise.”
The awful part? I liked it. The chaos kept me moving. No time to drown in guilt.
“I never told anyone Sheila and I broke up,” I admit. “To everyone else, she was still my fiancée. When the world went to hell, I went on autopilot. Saving people. Fixing things. Doing something. It was easier than thinking. Easier than remembering.”
I know it makes me sound like an asshole, but I say it anyway. “I needed to forget. Otherwise, I’d lose someone else.”
The mattress dips. Lyla’s arms wrap around my shoulders, chin resting on my right one. She says nothing at first, just stays, cutting through the storm like a lighthouse.
“I’m so sorry, Jacob,” she whispers. “I read about her. Before they sent me out here.”
Her breath brushes my skin.
“Her case crossed my desk. But I didn’t get far before—” She stops. Before the world burned.
I turn slightly. “Why did you get her case file?”
Her arms tighten. “It matched da Vinci’s MO,” she says.
“But something felt off. He never targeted small towns, always big cities where his ‘art’ made headlines. Sheila’s murder didn’t fit.
I thought maybe it was a copycat. Or he was shifting patterns.
But now, knowing he was here, right before the outbreak—” She stops, fingers flexing against my chest. “It makes sense now. Killing her in a quiet town bought him time.”
Her voice cracks. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop him before he got to Sheila.”
I turn fully to face her. The grief, the guilt, the fire in her eyes, it slams into me. “You couldn’t have known,” I say, voice low, rough. “None of this is on you.”
“And it’s not on you either,” she says, cupping my face. “You didn’t know what would happen. You did what you thought was right. She needed space. You didn’t know what would happen that night.”
Her thumbs press into my jaw.
“You didn’t kill her. You couldn’t control it. You can only control what you do now, for the people you still have.” Her eyes mist, but her jaw is set as though she is talking to herself too.
The words soak in, slow, reaching places I’ve kept sealed. I shake my head, faint smile tugging. “We’re quite the pair, huh?”
“Both carrying guilt like it’s a backpack we can’t take off. Maybe our guilt together will cancel out?”
A rough chuckle escapes. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Worth a shot.”
Silence settles—heavier, but steadier. “So, what do we do now?”
Her thumb brushes my jaw like she’s burning my face into her memory, like she’s still not convinced she gets to keep it.
“Now,” she says, tracing my face, “we help each other let go. It doesn’t matter what we did before tonight. We move forward. We do better together.”
I search for hesitation. There’s none. “Together, then?”
She nods. “Together.”
She settles back against the pillows, still watching me, softer now.
I lie beside her, tracing the curve of her face, the candlelight gilding her cheekbones and lips, lips I want back on mine.
Outside, rain taps the roof—a steady heartbeat. Something shifts inside me. The weight’s still there, but it’s lighter with her beside me.
I pull her close, fingers slipping into her hair, stroking down her back. We stay like that, skin to skin, letting touch speak where words can’t.
My body comes down from the adrenaline. My eyes start to close.
Then—
“So, I remember the itinerary tonight included me sitting on your face.”
My eyes snap open. She’s grinning, her wicked gaze dark with hunger.
A smirk tugs at my lips. “I’m all yours.”